Game On Book Highlight + Giveaway

Title: Game On
Author: Collette West
Genre: Romance
Publication: October 17th, 2014

Pitching phenom Bruce "Jilly" Gillette has a hard time talking to women. His hulking presence of tattoos and muscles is what makes him an intimidating closer on the mound, yet off the field, he's painfully shy, uncomfortable in his own skin.

Desperate to revamp his loner image, the New York Kings hold a dream date contest, granting the lucky winner a night on the town with their surly reliever, doing whatever it takes to force Jilly out of his comfort zone.

Hailey Halpert enters the contest on a whim, looking for answers as to why her high school relationship with Jilly hit the skids. Now she’s a popular romance author writing under a pen name, and her reappearance in Jilly's life is no accident. It turns out that her novels are all about the sexy players on the Kings, and Jilly has no clue that he's about to become her new leading man.

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          His clumsy attempt to show his feelings started off as something beautiful, something I'll never forget, and I want him to know that.

          "Jilly…" I say tentatively, and his eyes instantly snap to mine. "The way you held me all through the night, felt so…right. The way you touched me, running your hand up and down my arm, and later when you were stroking the inside of my palm with your thumb. God…it felt so good. You didn't have to say anything. I could feel it."

          "You don't know how long I'd wanted to do that," he whispers softly, his face turning red.

I smile, breaking eye contact because I'm completely overwhelmed. He's saying the words I've always wanted him to say. This is the talk we should've had a long time ago, and I want him to know everything that's in my heart.

          I meet his eyes again. "What made it even better was that…you didn't have to touch me in all of those places…any other guy would have to make me want you. Your fingers on my arm were enough. I was in agony being so close to you and not being able to do anything more. I wanted you to take me somewhere, anywhere, to finish what you started—upstairs to one of the bedrooms, outside on the porch, in the back seat of the car—so I could kiss you everywhere I wanted to—but you didn't."

          He's staring at me so intently that I'm afraid to go on, but I have to. I'm almost there.

          "I know neither of us got much sleep that night because all I could feel was your hand caressing my body from my neck to my fingertips. But the next morning, as soon as it got light, you couldn't wait to get out of there. You started muttering to yourself about being late for something, propped me up on the side of the couch, and left me there. You didn't even say goodbye. Do you have any idea what that felt like?" 

          He meets my eyes for a second before looking away. "If you were tightly wound, you can imagine how I felt. You don't remember what you were doing right before that, do you? How you were running your leg up and down mine? Your knee at my—” He stops, burying his head in his hands. “I had to get out of there because I—"

          I swallow, realizing now why he did what he did. 

          "But I could've…" I stammer. "Helped you…with that."

          He pushes himself away from the table, and I'm afraid he's going to leave me sitting there all alone again. "I didn't know what to do. I—"

          "Jilly, I was yours for the taking." 

          "Are you still?" His gaze burns into me.

          I look into his soulful, brown eyes, which are holding nothing back from me. He's taking a giant leap for me now, even if he couldn't do it back when we were kids. Things could've turned out so differently if he had, but here we are, in New York City, sitting across a table from each other, four years older, four years wiser. 

          I’d thought he was lost to me forever, never to be a part of my life again. But he's here, offering me a second chance at what I've always wanted—to be with him.

Collette West grew up as somewhat of a jock-nerd hybrid. Entering the world three weeks premature, her dad nearly missed her birth because he had seats behind the dugout for a sold-out, highly-anticipated match-up between two of baseball's biggest rivals. Not to be outdone, her book-loving mom taught her how to read by the time she was three. A love of the game coupled with an appreciation for the written word were instilled in Collette's impressionable brain from a young age. No wonder her characters believe in the philosophy: sports + romance = a little slice of heaven.

Splitting her time between the Pocono Mountains and Manhattan, Collette indulges her inner fangirl by going to as many games as she can from hockey to baseball and downloading every sports romance novel in existence onto her iPad. When she's not clicking away on her laptop, she enjoys walking her dog in Central Park, satisfying her caffeine craving at the Starbucks on Broadway and keeping an eye out for Mr. Right. But above all, she loves dishing with her readers. Email her at collette_west@yahoo.com.

She is the author of NIGHT GAMES, GAME CHANGER and GAME ON.

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Full Contact by Sidney Halston + Giveaway

Title: Full Contact

Author: Sidney Halston

Genre: Adult, Contemporary Romance

Series: Worth the Fight #2

Expected Publication: October 28th, 2014 by Loveswept

Sidney Halston returns to steamy Tarpon Springs, Florida, where a hell-raising bad boy prepares to get down and dirty for the woman he loves.

How could she have been so stupid? When Jessica Cross decides to give her violently jealous boyfriend—the otherwise influential and charming Dennis Stavros—a second chance, she very nearly becomes a statistic. After weeks of healing from a broken rib and collapsed lung, and with Dennis behind bars, Jessica finally feels ready to come out of hiding. But will she ever be able to take a chance on love again with someone new?

Mixed martial arts fighter Slade Martin knows he has a bad reputation. Hell, he's probably earned it. So it won’t be easy to convince beautiful, vulnerable Jessica that she can trust him—that from the moment she walked into his life, she’s been the only one he’s wanted. Powerful and confident, Slade knows he can honor his vow to protect Jessica body and soul. Winning her heart will be another matter . . . but a woman like Jessica is worth the fight.

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About Sidney

USA Today Bestselling author, Sidney Halston lives her life with one simple rule: “Just Do It” Nike.
And that’s exactly what she did. After working hard as an attorney, Sidney picked up a pen for the first time at thirty years old to begin her dream of writing. Having never written anything other than very exciting legal briefs, she found an outlet for her imaginative romantic side and wrote the successful New Adult series, Seeing Red and Seeing Black. That first pen stroke sealed the deal and she fell in love with writing. Currently on sale is the bestselling contemporary romance, Against the Cage and soon to be released Full Contact, the second of the Worth the Fight series.
Sidney lives in South Florida with her husband and children. She loves her family above all else, and reading follows a close second. When she’s not writing you can find her reading and reading and reading…  She’s a reader first and foremost.
When she’s not writing or reading her life is complete and utter chaos trying to balance family life with work, and writing (and reading). But she wouldn’t have it any other way., she found an outlet for her imaginative romantic side and wrote Seeing Red, among four other novels currently in the works, including the sequel to Seeing Red. That first pen stroke sealed the deal and she fell in love with writing.

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Book Highlight: Return by Skye Malone + Giveaway

Title: Return

Author: SkyeMalone

Series: Awakened Fate (Book Three)

Genre: Young Adult Paranormal Romance

Publisher: Wildflower Isle

Publication Date: October 6, 2014

Cover Designer: Karri Klawiter 

For Chloe, the ocean was supposed to mean safety and for a time, it almost did. She overcame the Sylphaen’s drugs. She discovered an unforeseen attraction to Zeke, one that he shares for her. A life underwater seemed possible, until she learned that nothing was as it appeared.

After an unspeakable betrayal shattered everything she thought she knew about Zeke’s world, she and Zeke have fled the ocean for the one place Chloe never expected to want to go.

Home.

But the challenge of living as a mermaid over a thousand miles from the ocean isn’t the only problem facing her. Home has changed. Enemies are waiting, ones she never saw coming. Her little Kansas town is full of surprises.

Including Noah, the guy she left behind.

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Other books in the Awakened Fate series

Awaken, book #1

Only 99¢!

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Descend, book #2

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Excerpt

“…do it in Jeri’s old room.”

Earl’s words filtered through the cotton stuffing in my head, barely making sense.

“Yeah, well, seemed fitting.” He paused. “Listen, Richard, I called you as a courtesy, on account of how you said one got away from you yesterday. But it took me an hour after the girl collapsed to get the boy to finally conk out, and with that damn scum-sucker metabolism of theirs, you know I can’t promise either of ‘em will be down for long. You and your boys want any part of this, you better hurry up and get here.”

Alarm struggled through me, weighed down by an exhaustion that wanted to smother my mind back into sleep. Scum-sucker? He…

“Hang on,” Earl said as though interrupting someone. “One of them ain’t breathing the same as they were.”

My heart began to pound harder while I fought to open my eyes. Breathing? He sounded so far away. How could he hear anyone breathing?

Footsteps clunked on the hardwood floor. Light pierced the blackness around me as I managed to lift my eyelids. I was on the bed, facing the doorway. In the window seat, Zeke was slumped, his head resting on the wall. The room was dark around us, though the hall light was on.

Earl came to the door. In one hand, he held a phone to his ear, and at the sight of me, he made an angry noise.

“What’d I tell you? The girl’s awake.”

He dropped the phone onto the window seat as he strode toward me, and all my dull commands to my muscles couldn’t make my body move. Striding past me, he retrieved something from the dresser and then returned with a sports bottle in his hand.

I tried to pull away, but he just reached down and grabbed my head from behind, lifting it toward him. With his teeth, he popped open the top of the bottle and then shoved it into my mouth.

Bitter-tasting liquid flooded my throat. I choked, the drink spewing from my lips, but he just dropped the bottle and clamped an enormous hand over the lower half of my face.

“Swallow,” he ordered.

I stared up at him. His grip tightened on my hair, tugging at my scalp.

“Now.”

Someone shouted angrily from the tiny speaker of the cordless phone, their words indecipherable. Earl’s face darkened and he glanced to the window seat.

Spikes crept from my forearms, finally answering the frantic signals from my brain. As he turned back toward me, I flopped my arm out like the dead weight it was, succeeding in catching his side.

With a pained cry, he lurched away, his hand leaving my mouth.

I spit the liquid out and struggled backward, half-crawling and half-tumbling from the opposite side of the bed.

“Zeke,” I croaked.

He didn’t move.

Earl made a furious noise while he straightened, clutching at his side. Blood darkened his flannel shirt.

But he didn’t look startled. He didn’t look surprised in the least by the tips of the iridescent knives protruding from my skin.

“What…” I tried. “Why are you…”

He glanced from me to Zeke, and then to the phone still laying on the window seat. Annoyance twisted his face. He reached over, retrieving the bottle from the floor, and then he returned his gaze to me.

Clutching the edge of the bed, I trembled. “Please. I’m not your enemy.”

“Tell that to my daughter.”

My brow furrowed.

He started around the bed. I scuttled backward, my legs still refusing to hold me, though the spikes listened and grew longer. Half-sprawled on the floor with my back to the wall, I lifted one of my arms in front of me like a shield.

Earl stopped.

“I don’t…” I managed, breathing hard with the effort of keeping my arm up. “I don’t know your daughter. Please.”

A snarl curled across his mouth. “Please,” he repeated scornfully.

He kicked my legs, toppling me sideways. His hand came down on my wrist, avoiding the spikes, and he twisted it. I shrieked as pain shot through my arm. Dropping the bottle from his other hand, he took my throat.

“Stab me again and I break your neck right now,” he growled.

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About Skye 

Skye Malone is a fantasy and paranormal romance author, which means she spends most of her time not-quite-convinced that the things she imagines couldn't actually exist.

Born and raised in central Illinois, she hopes someday to travel the world – though in the meantime she’ll take any story that whisks her off to a place where the fantastic lives inside the everyday. She loves strong and passionate characters, complex villains, and satisfying endings that stay with you long after the book is done. An inveterate writer, she can’t go a day without getting her hands on a keyboard, and can usually be found typing away while she listens to all the adventures unfolding in her head.

Skye also writes YA urban fantasy as Megan Joel Peterson and is the author of The Children and the Blood trilogy.

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