Kerri M. Patterson's Blog: Stay for Me by Carlene Love Flores

Hello everyone!

Hope you are having a brilliant Monday! smile emoticon I'm posting for an author friend today. It is release day for Author Carlene Love Flores! Now doesn't this cover look awesome? I'm sure the inside of this book is awesome as well smile emoticon Below is an excerpt from Stay for Me and you can pick up an e-copy of your own at:http://www.amazon.com/Carlene-Love-Flores
www.evernightpublishing.com
www.allromance.com

Excerpt from Stay for Me by Carlene Love Flores

“Are you okay?” she asked as he felt his back move against the wall.

No. In fact, he was ashamed of the slip in control as the thrill of that shot of her breath reminded him. He’d once thought of nothing else besides making love to her and had been pretty damn reckless in going after it as a twenty-one-year-old man. Didn’t matter that they’d been best friends since they were thirteen. In fact, that was what should have stopped him. How much time she and her family had given to improving his home life should have been his reminder not to touch. Not to kiss.

The sudden mind game didn’t stop there.

Tight knots shot up through his gut. Damn, he was not getting aroused, except for damn, he was. It was her eyes and her hair and what she’d been trying to do for him. He pushed down and adjusted the growing and inappropriate bulge so it didn’t bust the overworked zipper of his god-awful, tight pants. As soon as he did that, she finally spoke.

“You’re still in costume.” He watched her chest rise and fall with her deep breath, wondering what exactly it meant.

God, was she responding to him? He’d lie if he didn’t still have the clearest picture of her smile taking over her face when he came off the plane to meet her and her parents. She’d even told him how good he looked in his Army uniform. Haunted by the knowledge of how badly he’d hurt Emma trying to make love that night, he prayed for her sake that he was wrong. And now here he was thinking what? Two years he’d lived up to that vow. There had to be a way to crawl back into the hole he’d dug where feelings for Emma were buried.

Then she did the most dangerous thing of all. She crawled over to the wall where he’d escaped, reached out, and touched his shoulder.

“Didn’t have time to take it off,” he said and came out of his squat to rest on his knees, preparing to get up and leave before he did something stupid.

He could not hurt her again, and he was dangerously close to breaking his vow.

This was about quitting one job and replacing it with another, finances, and upholding secret arrangements with her parents who he loved like his own. Not drudging up the night he’d put everything on the line and asked her to be his, how eager she’d been to say yes, and how he’d screwed it all up. But now he couldn’t ignore the flood of fire as Emma’s brown eyes did their best to lie for her, same as his tried on his behalf.

“Emma, I should go. Gotta clean out my locker.”

Get some fresh air and a pair of pants that aren’t so damn tight.

He vaguely noticed the slight shake to the ends of her hair before she said the words that rocked his world, taking this completely off the playing field he’d been prepared to run around.

She rubbed at the tip of her cute little nose. “I only took this job because I knew if you left without me that night, you’d find a way to stay away for good. For my good. Just like you’re trying to do now. I’m calling bullshit, on all of this. I’ve wanted to be yours since the eighth grade, Sam. You tell me how to quit that. I’m tired of lying.”