Teresa had me at Bugs-Bunny-on-crack magic. Please welcome again Teresa Noelle Roberts with the second installment from her marvelous newest red-hot paranormal romance, Cougar's Courage!
Toronto cop Cara Many-Winters Mackenzie is still reeling from
her fiancé’s murder when her orderly life takes a turn toward the weird,
complete with voices in her head and phantom bleeding wounds.
This violent awakening is the rise of her Different gift—a
chaotic, Bugs-Bunny-on-crack magic that she must learn to control before it
destroys her. There’s only one place to get help: her mother’s ancestral
village, and a mentor who seems to have stepped straight out of the smoke of
her erotic dreams.
Cougar Dual Jack Long-Claw reluctantly agrees to take Cara
under his wing, though he’d much rather take the beautiful city girl into his
bed. As he guides her through a crash course in shamanic magic, sparks fly—some
sexy, some snarky. But when an ancient enemy attacks the village, they must
work together to hone a magical weapon against certain destruction.
Common sense tells them it’s a terrible time to fall in love.
Their spirit guides have other ideas. And shamans who don’t listen to their
spirit guides are dead shamans…
Warning: Hot shape-shifting feline hero. Strong but shell-shocked heroine. Snarky,
meddling spirit guides. And lots and lots of sex: angry sex, crazy sex, magical
sex, and just plain sexy sex.
Thanks for letting me visit your blog. I’m here to celebrate the release of my
paranormal erotic romance Cougar’s
Courage, the next installment of the Duals and Donovans: the Different
series. (It’s book 3, though there are four Duals and Donovans titles out
counting this one. Fox’s Folly takes
place several years before the numbered books in the series. Don’t worry, it
confuses me too!) Duals are shapeshifters, persecuted in the US for their
abilities. Donovans are a powerful witch clan. But while Donovans are important
secondary characters in this book, the book focuses on another flavor of
magic-users: shamans. And unlike witches, shamans don’t have to be human…
“Officer Mackenzie?” The voice sounded like her captain’s, but Bell wasn’t
known for his stealthy tread. Had Cara been that lost in thought?
Cara jumped a little and looked up from the incident report she was
struggling with, the words dancing behind a rising headache and the pervading
sense of anger and uselessness she’d been fighting since Phil’s death five
months ago. She expected to see her captain’s bulky, blue-clad form looming
over her with that awkward
no, I’m not checking up on you expression
that was way more annoying than open concern would be—and open concern had
gotten annoying sometime before her fiancé’s grave was filled in.
Instead, she saw a totally unexpected person, a tiny, wiry old woman with
long white braids, no taller than most ten-year-olds, who bristled with energy.
Cara’s rational brain took in a few things. Normally, civilians didn’t get
into the squad room without an escort, but the elderly lady was alone. Maybe
someone had dropped her off, said something about why she was there, and then
left? If that were the case, that was bad even for the mess Cara had been for
the past five months.
The visitor wore a pale buckskin dress ornamented with beads and porcupine
quills, not a fashion statement but traditional Native clothing, and no coat
despite the frigid February weather. Her silvery braids were fastened with
rawhide strips. Not something you saw every day in Toronto. Maybe the old lady
figured serious business like a visit to the police station merited her version
of a weddings-and-funerals suit or dress uniform.
“May I help you, ma’am?” The unusual visitor had roused her curiosity, which
could only be good.
“No, but I can help you, Cara.”
How did she know Cara’s first name? Her name plate just said Mackenzie.
The elderly woman extended a small, bony hand, and Cara instinctively took
it. She expected it to be icy. Instead, it was hot. As soon as they touched,
Cara felt like she was focusing properly on the other woman for the first time.
She blinked and recognized her visitor at last. “Grand-mère? Is that you?”
It couldn’t be. Cara had been ten the last time she’d seen the elder of her
mother’s village, and the old lady must have been over eighty then. But the
woman nodded and smiled. It was an odd smile, like a tree smiling, serene in a
way that you didn’t normally see on a human face. “Of course it is, silly. Who
else would I be? It’s time to come home, Cara. Come to Couguar-Caché before
it’s too late.”
Couguar-Caché—“hidden cougar” in French—her mother’s ancestral village. A
place so remote Cara had never been able to find it on a map, even though she
knew she’d been there as a little girl. Yeah, just where she wanted to visit in
the depths of winter.
As the old woman spoke, the room closed in, leaving only Cara and
Grand-mère. The rest of the squad room was still out there—Cara could hear
voices, a ringing cell phone—but they were hidden somehow, masked by a fog.
Grand-mère had been seated, but suddenly, with no transition Cara noticed, she
was standing in an archway made of snow-weighted evergreen boughs. Behind her,
where Cara should have seen Dalhousie’s chaotic desk and the captain’s neat
one, was forest and snow, woodland twilight and the corner of a log cabin. A
cold, bracing wind blew through the archway, smelling of snow and pine and wood
smoke. Somewhere in the background, she could make out a tall man with long
dark hair. He turned and looked through the weird portal straight at her with
intense amber eyes. He was movie-star gorgeous.
That proved it. She’d dozed off at her desk—it wouldn’t be the first time
since Phil had been killed, seeing that the busy squad room felt safer and less
lonely than her empty bed—and was having a particularly vivid dream. It had to
be a dream, right? Because no one else in the squad room was even glancing at
her unusual visitor, when normally, on a quiet, snowy afternoon, Goulding, who
was a wolf dual, would have been literally sniffing the air and the others
would be leaning in, hoping for something interesting. It was the first time
Grand-mère had joined the cast of beloved dead people who romped through Cara’s
mind whenever she closed her eyes, but unlike the others, Grand-mère was
cheerful. And she’d brought a very decorative man with her.
But Cara shouldn’t be dreaming about handsome imaginary men. In some ways,
that was more disturbing than dreaming about bloody dead ones. The involuntary
surge of interest reminded her of the real man she’d lost.
Amazon US/
Amazon
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Samhain
Teresa Noelle Roberts started
writing stories in kindergarten and she hasn’t stopped yet. A prolific author
of short erotica, she’s also a published poet and fantasy writer—but hot
paranormals and BDSM-spiced contemporaries are her favorites. She’s hard at
work to bring you sexy magic with more Duals and Donovans adventures and
getting kinky with hot dominant guys and smart women who submit to them—but not
anyone else!—for your reading pleasure.
Teresa is a bit of a crunchy
granola girl who enjoys belly dance, yoga, medieval re-creation, playing in the
ocean, cooking, and growing more vegetables than she and her husband can
possibly eat. She shares her home in southern Massachusetts with her husband, a
Leo who works in law enforcement, and two overstuffed cats, who deserve their
own shout-out as inspirations for her works. She and her husband often plan
vacations around food, history, and/or proximity to water.
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