Wicked Wednesday – A Wickedly Good Review and Nomination!

It’s always nice to hear from all of you or to find out online that someone really enjoyed your book! This week it’s been a dose of doubly good online news about two different books. The new, but promising to be wonderful blogspot, PASSION POSTINGS, offered up a great review of the SOUTH BEACH CHICAS books.

As exciting, I just found out that BLOOD CALLS has been nominated for a FANTASM award at the Science Fiction, Fantasy and Paranormal Blogspot. Here are the nominees for Best Vampire Romance of 2008:

Blood Calls by Caridad Pineiro
The Bodyguard by Michelle Hasker
Blood Moon by Dawn Thompson

Congrats to Michelle and Dawn. I’m very excited to be nominated with you. The voting starts in February and I’ll be sure to let you know so you can go vote.

Since this is Wicked Wednesday, here’s a sexily wicked excerpt from that FANTASM Award nominated book, BLOOD CALLS (which is still available in limited quantities!)

As he had two days earlier, he stood before her paintings, admiring them. Appreciating the sweep of her brush as it almost made love to the figures she had placed on the canvas. The movement of the brush strokes so alive, that he found himself laying his fingertips against the image on the canvas as if to prove to himself that it wasn’t real.

Ramona wondered what he was doing as he stood there, scrutinizing her artwork once more.

When he picked up his hand and touched the canvas, she had to go see what had drawn him. Feeling stronger thanks to the rest in the cab and the tea that had provided a boost to her flagging energy, she set the mug on the table and joined him.

He brushed his fingertips along the line of the woman’s hip in the painting. Slowly moved his hand upward along the slender sweep of her waist and within her, she imagined the motion of his hand against her body. Imagined how it would be for him to touch her the way he caressed the woman in the canvas — the woman she had imagined herself to be, lost in the throes of a lover’s embrace.

As he shifted his hand upward, over the shadow beneath the woman’s breast, she felt his energy beside her. Sensed his growing desire and her own.

When he looked at her, his ice blue eyes blazed with fire. “Did you feel this way as you painted?”

She had felt that way and more she wanted to say, but couldn’t confess that with each stroke of the brush, she had imagined it was them together.

“No,” she said, but he faced her and laying a hand at her waist, said “Liar.”

He bent from his larger height, but she was already meeting him halfway, wanting to experience him if only for this one moment. A moment that had sprung from nowhere but was not to be missed.

His lips were a bit cold, but wonderfully soft on hers. Exploring as he sampled the edges of her lips with his and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her close.

The body she had admired from afar was much like she had imagined. Big. Strong. Hard.

He was so hard beneath her hands as she grabbed hold of his shoulders. Hard against the flatness of her belly as he swept his arm beneath her buttocks and tightened his embrace.

She moaned at the thought of that hardness within her. Of his big body urging her downward into the giving softness of the bed that was just at the other side of the loft.

The sound of her need and the press of her small body jolted Diego from the enjoyment of her response.

As right as it felt — as she felt in his arms — this was so wrong, he thought and slowly eased away from her.

“Perdoname, Ramona. This should never have happened.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry, too,” she said and shifted away, nervously rubbing her hands up and down the front of the figure-hugging jeans she wore.

He reached out and took her hands in his to quell the jittery motion. “Please don’t take this wrong, little one. It’s not you, it’s me.”

“You’re gay?” she squeaked, obviously confused by his statement.

“No, not at all,” he began with a chuckle. “I’m just a … heartbreaker. A cad.”

“A cad? Fossilized much?” she teased uneasily at his choice of the rather old-fashioned term.

“Okay, so maybe it’s better to say I’m a dick. I’ll break your heart and I’d rather not do that.”

She slipped her hands from his and bobbed her head up and down. “I get it, Diego. No harm, no foul.”

“Right,” he said only he didn’t think either of them believed that there had been no harm.

After the heat of that kiss, their relationship would never be the same and that wasn’t a good thing.