For my Breathing Fire fans.
Thank you for being so patient with me.
The second book in this series has long been in the works. It is close to my heart, and I'm hoping to have it finished very soon.
So here is a bit of never before released info about Crossing Fire. These books were meticulously plotted out when I first started this story, over seven years ago. The love story in the book was always so screwed up that it was nearly hopeless, and the history between Jillian and Dom was always a story in itself, though it wasn't one I was necessarily going to give to the readers in its entirety. The mystery of it sort of tickled me. The torture of what you do and don't know. This still holds true, but as I've worked on book two, it's changed shape with the evolving plot of the story, and I'm excited to tell you that this book has turned into a journey of past and present, of before and after, where you will get to see Dom's POV over the years in a very unique and twisted way.
Translation: You will get some of the dirty details of Jillian and Dom's past, and many scenes in Dom's point of view.
Here's a little teaser for you:)
CROSSING FIRE (HERETIC DAUGHTERS #2)
JILLIAN
I was a fool. A masochist. A glutton for punishment. I was the type that kept picking at a scab, keeping the wound open until it scarred, then scratching at the scar until I created another deep, jagged cut.
Knowing all of this, I still found myself seeking out the grove, yet again.
"More," I spoke, my voice throaty with need.
I said it to the blood red water, and that evil water answered.
I knew it would, even before I saw the creature emerge.
It didn't take long to present itself. A white body, that odd, wrong, creepy as hell presence, was out of the water and nearly to me in the strangest motion. It never looked like it was moving fast, but it covered ground between one blink and the next.
It paused when it reached me, and I clenched me teeth.
I felt like a junkie looking for a fix, and perhaps I was. My fix just happened to be pieces of my past, our past.
And I just kept coming back. I wanted to eat every scrap of meat off this dysfunctional bone, then split it open, and suck out the marrow.
"Don't draw it out," I told it, my voice harsh. "I don't have much time."
"You know how it works here, first-born," it breathed on me. "Time stands still."
Wasn't that just the brutal fucking truth of it?
Without another word, it struck my neck and took me under.
Some part of me remained while I was in his head, in his past now, and the more I did it, the stronger it was. I could form thoughts as a watcher now, cohesive ones.
And as I came into his body for this memory, I thought: Oh no, not this one. My heart can't take this memory. It's too much.
Not only did I see what he saw when I came into his memories like this. I also felt what he felt. And the instant I got there, I felt the pain.
It was fathomless. Infinite. Never ending. So flooring I wanted to sink to the ground and never rise again.
Raw, oozing agony.
Pulsing, bleeding anguish.
Thrumming, gushing torment.
Mental, physical, spiritual, I was tormented on all fronts.
I was looking at a very somber Sloan. She had a manila envelope in her hand, but she was shaking her head, over and over.
"You don't need to see this, Dom," she told me, a weak thread to her voice I'd never heard before.
I held out my hand. I had to see. I already knew it would be bad. My lover had left me, breaking all ties, leaving chaos in her wake, and the harder I looked for her, the more damage I found.
That was Jillian for you. She never did anything half-assed. Never pulled any punches when she was being self-destructive.
She should have known me better. I'd never stop looking for her, no matter what she'd done.
No matter what things she'd destroyed, what laws she'd broken, what beliefs she'd set asunder.
I would save her from herself. That was my job. She needed me as much as I needed her.
She'd already broken our blood bond, parts of me breaking with it. What could be worse than that? What could a manila envelope hold that was more profoundly detrimental to me than the loss of her, the only woman I had ever loved?
Sloan handed me the evidence, and I asked her for a moment alone.
"Please, Dom. Don't look."
I shook my head, and she left. She knew me better. I was resolute.
I stood there for a long time before I opened the envelope, time bracing myself, staring at the thing like it held horrors I could not bear to stomach.
It did, of course. I'd known it as soon as I heard there were pictures, had it reinforced when I saw the defeated look on Sloan's undefeat-able face.
My hands shook as I pulled out the stack of photos and began to flip through them.
I was three pictures in when I began to shake so badly that I fell to my knees.
Six pictures in when I began to wretch.
Ten pictures in when I began to weep.
Not only had she left me, broken oaths, severed bonds.
She'd been unfaithful, done the thing she knew would break me the most, and with a man I despised. She'd shared her body, all of that beautiful flesh that belonged to me, with my enemy.
I was blind in my agony, lost in my pain, but even crippled and broken, I knew there was calculation behind this thing she'd done.
Why? And . . .
How could she?
It didn't matter what she'd done. And it didn't matter why she'd done it. I'd still never stop looking for her. What I'd do with her when I found her, well, that wasn't a productive line of thought.
Turns out, hate didn't kill love. In some extremely fucked up cases, the two things could coexist together.
But him. Him. I knew what to do with him. To him I'd show no mercy. Not an ounce of it. I had a target now, a focus for the unadulterated fury that had gripped me from the moment she'd broken our bond.
Heads would roll.