Elven Duty will be here in less than a month and I've got another swoon-worthy excerpt for you!
Excerpt
The lighthouse loomed over us the closer we got, its beam swirling around itself in a dizzying endless dance.
“Wow. It’s beautiful,” Jude said, looking out at the white building and the nature it illuminated.
“Yeah. It’s my favorite place on Earth,” I told him. “There’s a local legend about it.”
“What is it?”
I drove us over the last part of the road that would take us to the building.
“That the light will go out when one meets their soulmate,” I said.
Jude leaned back in his seat, and although he tried to appear composed, I could hear his heartbeat going haywire, pounding in his chest, courtesy of my super-sensitive hearing.
“What does one do around here?” he asked.
I turned the wheel slightly to the left and brought us to a stop. The land continued for a few more feet before ending in a small cliff that led directly to the water.
“Local trade. Farming. Deliveries. Fishing,” I said.
“Which one are you?” he asked, and we both unclipped our seatbelts.
I pressed the button to pull the roof down and watched Jude as he followed it with his gaze until it was nestled in the trunk.
“My trade is… different,” I said.
That was putting it mildly.
“What does that mean?” he smirked, staring right at me.
“It’s… long and complicated. And I’d rather we talk about anything else,” I said.
“Mysterious…” he hummed. “I like it.”
“And dangerous,” I added with a laugh.
He raised an eyebrow, and I pursed my lips.
“That came out wrong.”
Jude nodded and laughed.
“You think?”
“I meant my trade is… danger—”
I didn’t get to finish. He leaned close to me and closed the distance between us with his lips, claiming mine with a gentleness I’d never experienced before.
I leaned forward a little and reciprocated the chaste kiss we found ourselves entangled in until my hands came up on either side of his face and smoothed my fingers along his jaw.
He pulled back slightly and opened his eyes, looking at me with a beautiful grin that made me want to give in to him even more.
“You’re a good kisser, Roman,” he said.
“You-you’re not so bad yourself,” I told him.
“I always kiss without tongue first. That’s when you can tell a good kisser,” he whispers. “As soon as tongues are involved, it becomes a sloppy, hot mess.”
I tittered and licked my lips. He was so irresistible.
“Shall we test some more?” he asked.
Just as I leaned to kiss him some more, we sunk into darkness. Jude paused, and we both looked up at the pitch-black lighthouse.
Blurb
My legacy is to hate him, but I can’t.
This woman appears and tells me I’m an elf and she’s my grandmother. Not quite what I expected on a Thursday evening after another day at the office.
Soon, I’m thrown in a world of duty, magic, and monsters.
And a family feud as old as time itself.
I would have run. I would have gone back to my old life. Or started a new one.
But when the man I’m supposed to hate turns out to be my elven soulmate the only thing I can do is fight for my right to love him.
No matter what kind of monster gets in the way.
Elven Duty is part of the multi-author Magic Emporium Series. Each book stands alone, but each one features an appearance by Marden’s Magic Emporium, a shop that can appear anywhere, but only once and only when someone’s in dire need. This book contains a forbidden love, a ton of creatures, a secret “baby”, and a guaranteed HEA.