Night Rider by Dee Ann Palmer – #Free On Amazon 11/16 Through 11/20

Dee Ann Palmer’s steamy short story, Night Rider, is free on Amazon through Nov. 20.

Night Rider coverBeware the stranger who comes riding in the night.

He’s an irresistible, powerful ranchero, destined to marry a woman of Californian or Mexican nobility. She’s just a foreigner he hired to care for a frail aunt. When they label her a loose woman, she secretly leaves the rancho for good one night.

Free on Amazon from 11/16 to 11/20.

EXCERPT

The thunder and lightning roared off into the distance, leaving only darkness and the sound of rain beating against the adobe walls of the hacienda.

Outside Jenny Dalton’s bedroom door, hammering and shouts intensified until they rose above the angry night sounds and finally wakened her. Heart pounding, for no one would have summoned her unless it were an emergency, she fought against sleep and stumbled out of bed. Pushing long curls of caramel-and-cream colored hair out of her face, she grabbed her wrapper. The door, swollen from the damp, creaked as she struggled to pull it open.

Don Soltero leaned against the door jamb. In the light cast by the oil lamp he held, she could see his wet hair, usually a sandy brown, looked dark and was plastered against his head. Rivulets of water from it ran down his forehead and cheeks, and he had trouble focusing his eyes. His poncho dripped black puddles against the sienna tiles of the floor.

“Stampede. Searched everywhere…my cousin. Lost.”

Fear chilled Jenny’s heart. She covered her mouth with her hand to muffle her gasp. “Don Rafael is lost?”

“In the foothills. Dead, I think.” Soltero swayed.

Paralyzed with shock for a moment, Jenny finally moved, calling for a servant. “Juan! Come quickly!”

Taking the lamp from the exhausted Soltero’s hand, she steadied him until the servant arrived, trying to avoid breathing in the smell of mud from his boots. Even as the servant approached, Jenny noticed Soltero’s gaze wandering up and down her body in a way that made her pull her wrapper closer. Even in a crisis you can’t help but ogle a woman.

It was not a trait she admired in him.

Juan arrived to assist him, and Jenny closed the door to her room. As she threw on her warmest clothes to find him, the idea of the death of Rafael Raul Miguel Allende, Don del Rancho Simi, assaulted her senses. It couldn’t be. She would not let it be. It didn’t matter that she was only a gringa hired as companion to Lucita Allende, the frail aunt of the Allende cousins, Jenny loved this man who had hired her. Had loved him almost from the first moment she’d seen him only months ago.

And had hidden all signs of her feelings…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In every age, the heart loves, and Dee Ann Palmer’s romances over the past twelve years have reflected those eras in contemporary, historic and fantasy tales. Palmer is a member of Sisters in Crime and Romance Writers of America’s PAN group. She’s married to her college sweetheart, and they live in beautiful southern California in easy reach of mountains, desert and beaches.

Night Rider began its life as an erotic short story called Dark Stranger, written under a pseudonym, and was a winner in the 2004 Amber Heat Wave Contest sponsored by Amber Quill Press. Palmer recently regained the rights, changed the eroticism to sensual, and has indie published it under her own name. Note: Since this is a short story, the full first chapter of Christiana’s Choice, Palmer’s medieval romance novel, is included.

Dee Ann’s Website: http://deeannpalmer.com

Blog http://deeannpalmer.blogspot.com

Facebook http://www.facebook.com/AuthorDeeAnnPalmer

Dream Casters: Light by Author Adrienne Woods #PNRThursday

Paranormal Romance logo

Today’s Paranormal Thursday Tour focuses on Dream Casters: Light by Author Adrienne Woods.

AW-Dreamcasters-600x917Blurb:

Mr. Sandman, send me a dream, ta da da da…..Seventeen year old Chasity Blake knows the Sandman is just a silly children’s story parents tell their children to get them to sleep. At least she thought it was, until the day a mysterious, light golden sand appeared in her hands during a high school prank that went horribly wrong. A sand that has the power to send anyone it touches into a deep, sound sleep.

Fearing she had lost her mind, Chasity soon discovers the shocking truth of her heritage- she is a Dream Caster. Chasity was never supposed to be raised on the Domain, or what humans call Earth and she is forced to return to her true birth place, Revera – the world of Dreams.

However, in Revera there is no balance between good, the Light Casters, and darkness, the Shadow Casters, and Chasity is caught square in the middle. She soon learns that there is no place for anyone containing both the light and the darkness within them, and the shocking truth that if anyone in Revera ever discovered her shadow self, Chasity would be thrown into the Oblivion – the world of Nightmares.

Dreams are always more than they seem, and this time Chasity is going to discover just how different they can be.

Buy links:

Amazon Kindle: http://amazon.com/dp/B00YBBTBYU

Excerpt:

TWO SETS OF FOOTSTEPS made barely a sound on the rough and weathered wood as they walked across the bridge that led from Main Pacific to the Glands. The streetlights were dimmed as dusk began to settle and last vestiges of light from the setting sun were fading to night. The lumbering clouds were moving in, blocking out any light from the two moons that shone overhead, even the stars seemed less bright dotted across their velvet backdrop. With his golden dust Graig Chen could conjure and wield anything by simply believing in its reality. If he wanted it to be real, it would be.

The Reverse was the most painful thing either of them had ever experienced, but Liam, a healer and Graig’s only confidant, had promised him that they would be able to live in the Domain like normal Nomads, humans.

Graig and his pregnant fiancé, were fleeing from their home world in secret, having no other choice if they desired a normal life for their unborn child.

They knew neither of their families would ever understand, even though it had been his grandmother who had always said, the heart wants, what the heart wants. How could he have known that his heart would want a Shadow Caster, and not just any ordinary Shadow Caster. She was special, or at least her family was. She was expected to uphold the family line with her offspring, Graig knew that did not include carrying the child of a Light Caster.

The two lovers could never live in peace, not since the balance between good and evil inside Revera was thrown into upheaval. There were only two choices for casters like them, either light or dark. The balance could not accommodate a person containing both, so for his child’s sake they had no choice but to leave Revera. Live like normal humans in the Domain, or what humans would call reality. He’d found a perfect place, one he’d made sure no one would ever find, not even his two best friends.

They knew about the relationship, they’d been there when he’d first laid eyes on her, tried to talk him out of it, to forget the blonde bombshell that would only cause him darkness and misery, but without her his life would be spent in darkness and misery.

Her silver blonde hair and bright blue eyes had done him in, if only he’d seen the bow that she’d aimed straight at his heart. If it hadn’t been for his love when arrow hit, and for Liam, a healer, he wouldn’t be in his current predicament; trying to get him and her off this dimensional world that most people would call make-believe, but Revera was far from that. It was the world of dreams, and Graig was a Level Four Caster whose mission was to seek out Selene, their only live Somnium. It was on one of these very missions that he had met the love of his live, the one woman he couldn’t live without, and he didn’t care if she had black dust, he didn’t care that she was a Shadow Caster, or what some would call a nightmare wielder. Yes, those horrible dreams that leave you paralyzed with fear are actually wielded by Caster’s, not some grave impression of ones subconscious. They are responsible for doubts and forgotten dreams. She was his nightmare, and a nightmare he was prepared to die for.

He knew deep down that she would would never survive living in Revera and he was unable to cope with the Oblivion, wherever it was. Oblivion was the realm of the Shadow Casters, created when Selene casted out Magdelena, one of the first Shadow Casters, who was the third Somnium, as a consequence for the death of her brother, Darius, the second Somnium. Magdelena had no realm to call her own, so she created Oblivion by focusing her hatred toward Selene, a world that could exist inside Revera, far from Selene’s sight. For years, Selene tried to find it, but as long as the Sodivic bloodline flowed through Shadow Caster’s vanes, Oblivion would never be found by a Light Caster.

Sodivic blood was the key to Oblivion’s secrecy, and Magdalena’s family line. There were many Sodivic’s since the dawning of Oblivion but Magdelena reigned over them all. Graig had met many Sodivic’s on his quests, each meeting always ended up in a bloody mess, and in all the years he had encountered them, not one had ever shown any kind of mercy or remorse. They were sadistic and couldn’t be reasoned with. He had been taught from a young age, if you see a Sodivic, you kill it. That was the number one rule taught to the Level One Dream Casters.

His fiancé was the only one that proved his theory wrong. Over the past century, their bloodline had been busy dying out, leaving her one of the few powerful Shadow Casters left.

Graig would pay dearly for loving her if her father ever found them, and he couldn’t even think about what would happen to the unborn child she carried.

Craig squeezed the hand that was resting tightly inside his own grip as they neared the end of the bridge.

“Were almost there, my love. Not much longer.”

“You’re sure nobody followed us?” Her eyes were wild, searching everywhere in the darkness.

“I’m sure. Besides, they won’t be able to see us, remember.” He opened his hand, just to make sure she hadn’t forgotten what he was, and threw more golden sand into the air, shielding them from anything that tried to followed them.

Then he heard it, a crunch. He stopped abruptly and she slammed into him. One second of doubt was all it took to break the spell, and before he could realize that doubt, they were surrounded by Nimgolians, the biggest and wicked shadow hounds ever imagined. They were veil, and reminded him of a Rottweiler that had chased him once in the Domain.

Find Adrienne Woods online:

Blog

Other authors participating in the tour:

Carmen Stefanescu: http://shadowspastmystery.blogspot.ro/
Daisy Banks: https://daisybanks.wordpress.com/
Flossie Benton Rogers: http://flossiebentonrogers.com/blog/
M. S. Kaye: http://booksbymsk.com/
Kim Kasch: http://www.kimkasch.blogspot.com
Cassandra Ulrich: http://cassandraulrich.blogspot.com/
Julie Dárcy: http://juliedarcystoryweaver.blogspot.com.au/
Margo Bond Collins: http://www.MargoBondCollins.com
Adrienne Woods: https://woodsadrienne.wordpress.com/
N. N. Light: http://princessofthelight.wordpress.com
Penny Estelle: http://www.pennyestelle.blogspot.com