A
Demon in Love
Sons
of Gulielmus
Book
2
Holley
Trent
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Publisher: Crimson Romance
Date of Publication: 5/5/14
ISBN: 978-1-4405-8150-2
ASIN:
Number of pages: 163 (PDF)
Word Count: 79,000
Book Description:
Charles Edison has spent most of
his 123 years courting women for Hell. As a faithful son of the demon
Gulielmus, he’s never known true affection for women. Which is funny, seeing as
how he’s descended from a love god on his mother’s side. Now that he sees his
brother falling head over heels, Charles wants the same for himself. He wants
to belong to someone.
The Fates conspire to right old
wrongs, and Charles learns the woman destined for him is one he shouldn’t want.
Marion Wilder’s family has been on the supernatural Most Wanted List for
twenty-five years because they were responsible for the demise of a demon.
Gulielmus would kill her if he had the chance.
But Marion’s the only human woman
Charles can touch without harming. She’s his one chance at having a normal life
and a real family, and he would give up anything to keep her. Even his father’s
favor.
Excerpt:
She bent to pick up the receipt
she’d dropped, and then yelped at the sight of the stranger six feet from her.
She blew her fright away on an exhale and put her hand to her heart.
Why did they always frighten her?
By now, she should have been used to strange men approaching her. Sometimes
they heckled her—the “little girl” truck driver. Occasionally, they tried to
sell her things. Dick and weed, mostly. One she didn’t partake in. The other
she sure as shit wasn’t going to pay for, even if she were that kind of
desperate.
She rolled her eyes and shook her
head, hoping he’d catch the drift. Not that they ever did. Bozos.
“Cold night, isn’t it?” he asked.
His voice was deep and cultured in the way Shakespearean actors’ voices were.
Trained. Odd, seeing as how the only culture this guy had likely rubbed off
from the newspapers he slept on. She cocked her head to the side and really
studied him. Maybe he was experiencing some sort of delusion and believed he
was on the set of a BBC miniseries or something. Maybe a modern retelling of
The Taming of the Shrew. She knew which character she’d be cast as, and was
already gearing up to play the role if he said something sufficiently stupid.
And he would. There was always something wrong with these truck stop guys.
Pity, because this one was hot. He had to be around six and a half feet tall,
and a nicely proportionate breadth to go with that height. Not bulky, but there
were definitely some muscles beneath that jacket. He had to outweigh her by a
good hundred pounds.
He fixed a stare on her she
couldn’t tell was from blue or gray eyes beneath the pole light, but either
way, it was oddly mesmerizing. She couldn’t bring herself to break free of it,
although it somehow made her feel exposed.
Naked.
Why was he looking at her like
that—like he knew her? She’d never seen the man before. She certainly would
have remembered those startling eyes and all that dark hair. Jesus, she liked a
bit of mane on her men. Someone could slap him on the cover of a romance novel.
Just wrap him in tartan, hand him a sword, and set up an unobtainable fantasy
for a few thousand women.
She pursed her lips, considering
him. Nah, she’d read probably a hundred thrift store romance novels in the past
year, and this guy was too tan to be a Scotsman and not dark enough to be a
sheikh. Greek tycoon, maybe? Oh yeah. Put him on the deck of a yacht wearing
some of those little European swim trunks and—
“Isn’t it?” he repeated, and
raised one dark eyebrow.
“Huh?” She blinked. Did he want
something?
He shifted his weight and shoved
his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, grinning at her. Shit, he
could have lit up the entire parking lot with that smile. He was so pretty—now,
what did he want with her? Whatever it was, she wasn’t paying for it.
She closed her eyes and drew in a
bolstering breath. “It’s cold,” she said blandly and hauled her toolbox up into
her truck cab.
“Montana’s a pretty inhospitable
place, huh? There’s still a month until winter, but I don’t think the snow
cares about timeliness.”
“Mm-hmm.” She patted her pockets
in search of her keys. The next thing he’d probably say was that he could make
it a lot more hospitable for her, if she had enough cash.
Prostitutes were pretty
predictable, and she certainly got propositioned enough, though usually the
truck stop hos were a little less—upright.
But, shit, did she really look
like the kind of woman who’d pay a man for sex? She wrapped her fingers around
the handle, prepared to slam the door.
He moved closer and grabbed the
door’s edge before she could pull it. “Hey, why don’t you let me buy you a cup
of coffee? You look like you could use a cup.”
“I don’t think so, dude.”
She could afford her own coffee,
obviously, but no prostitute had ever offered to buy her anything. Must have
been a new sales strategy—the hook ’em, then hump ’em.
She just wanted to get back on
the road, but he was right. She did need to refill her thermos, fiend that she
was. Coffee was her one vice, and she’d forgotten to take the canister into the
restaurant with her during dinner. She didn’t want to give the guy the
satisfaction, though, no matter how good he looked.
She let her gaze fall on him once
again. He looked harmless enough, with his easy stance and hands jammed into
the pockets of his coat. His boots were actually quite good quality. Brown
leather with some scuffs. Broken in, and wet from snow, but they looked damned
expensive. Didn’t seem like hand-me-downs, either. The heels were too good.
There must have been good money
in truck stop whoring.
“No, thank you,” she finally
managed, and gripped the door handle again after two failed attempts. “I-I need
to get back on the road and get this load delivered.”
“Must be lonely,” he said. His
grin waned slowly, and this time it was he who looked away, toward a truck
entering the lot. He waited until it had circled around to the gas pumps.
“It’s a job,” she said when he
looked up again. Damn, those eyes. They were so sad, and for some reason, that
made her a little sad, too.
About the Author:
Holley Trent is a Carolina girl
gone west. Raised in rural coastal North Carolina, she currently resides on the
Colorado Front Range with her family. She writes sassy contemporary and quirky
paranormal romances set in her home state.
She’s hard at work writing other
stories set in the Sons of Gulielmus world, including one for the mysterious
Creole cambion Claude.
See Holley’s complete backlist of
paranormal and contemporary romances at her website,
http://www.holleytrent.com. When she’s not on deadline, she boldly tweets under
the handle @holleytrent.
Website: http://www.holleytrent.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/holleytrent
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/writerholleytrent
Interview:
Please welcome author Holley Trent who has stopped by to tell us about herself and A Demon in Love.
What is your favorite
part of the story A Demon in Love?
Charles and Marion are generally at odds with
each other because she doesn’t buy the whole “fated mates” thing, and he wishes
she’d just go with the flow. There’s this one shower scene where Charles shows
his lover why antagonizing psychic sex demons is a bad idea. I felt so evil
when writing it, but she totally had it coming.
How long did it take
you to write A Demon in Love?
That’s hard to say. There was a large gap
between the time I started A Demon in
Love and when I finished. Other projects had come due and I didn’t have
time to jump back into the world. I think I started it around June of last
year, but didn’t type “the end” on it until this past winter. For me, that’s
slow.
If you could be best
friends with one of your characters, who would it be?
Sweetie Wolff. She’s a secondary character in A Demon in Love who’ll become more
important later. She’s a bit intense, being a werewolf and all, but she wouldn’t
stand for anyone insulting me in any way. She’d probably take off her jewelry
and be ready to tussle at so much as a perceived
offense.
How do you overcome
writer’s block?
I don’t get writer’s block. I never have a
lack of ideas or inspiration. I do, however, suffer from burnout. There’s only
one way to recover from that, and it involves an extended hiatus away from
writing, editing, promotion—everything. I have one of those little burnout
vacations coming up in July. I’m overdue for it!
Can you share a little
of your current work with us?
Sure, here’s an unedited snippet of A Demon Bewitched. That story follows A Demon in Love and will be out this
fall. This is a tiny rant from the heroine Gail. She’s having a really bad day:
“If you know me so well, then you tell me what it
is that I supposedly have. Tell me what I’m supposed to be so happy with. I
live paycheck to paycheck, barely covering my bills because I had to be a good
girl and help my family. I’ve got this expensive education, and I’ve made a
laughingstock of myself amongst my former classmates because instead of
preparing haute cuisine in an elegant restaurant, I deep-fry chicken wings in a
titty bar and use pickle juice as a staple ingredient at the other place I
work. My grandmother thinks so little of me and my abilities that she not only
foisted a familiar on me that I can’t abandon, but I’ve been permanently
disinvited from coven gatherings. If you didn’t figure that out yet, it’s
’cause I’m weak-ass witch. Oh, and let’s not forget that my ex-husband is a
psychopath and I have to think about him every time I drive my car, ’cause it
was his and I can’t trade it in because I can’t afford to pay taxes on and
register a different car right now.”
What book are you
reading now?
Denise Tompkins’ Legacy. It has an interesting, paranormal spin on the Sherlock
Holmes and Watson relationship. The hero is a 6’7” dragon shifter. Nice!
What do you prefer
paperback, hardcover, or ebooks?
Ebooks in bed, paperbacks on planes, and I try
to avoid hardcovers. They’re just hard to manipulate. I need to be able to bend
the spine, you know?
Do you have anything
specific that you want to say to your readers?
To learn more about
the Sons of Gulielmus series, including upcoming releases and spin-off news,
visit its page on my website: http://holleytrent.com/blog/seriescollections/sons-of-gulielmus/
This book sounds great, another one on my wishlist!
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