I'm so happy to be a part of the Blog Tour for Frankie Rose's second book, and sequel to her first, Eternal Hope! I fell in love with her story and her characters when I read Sovereign Hope in the summer.
You are in for a treat today, my friends. Frankie has offered up an excerpt from Eternal Hope for your reading pleasure, and let me tell you, it's a good one.
Unbelievable. Totally unbelievable. He was a nightmare. Farley charged over to the view of the city below, surging and throbbing to a rhythm that could only be heard on the other side of the glass. The metropolis, like any other night, was a living, breathing, ugly, beautiful thing. “Coward,” she whispered.
Daniel’s reflection approached her quietly from behind, his face serious and sharp. He wound his arms around her waist and rested his chin gently on her shoulder. “I am a coward. But only when it comes to you.”
“Well, don’t be. The thought of you with someone else makes me feel physically sick but I’m not a child. I’m not stupid. You’re ancient. Of course there have been people before me, Cassie included.” Farley re-focused her eyes, not wanting to look at the intense expression on his face; instead, she concentrated on the dark outlines of the high rises, lit sporadically against the darkness. Daniel’s arms fell slack from around her, and his hands came to rest on her hips.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he murmured, pressing his face into her hair. He hooked his thumbs under her shirt and rubbed them in slow circles over the base of her spine. She shivered, fighting with herself. It was hard to be angry when he was so close, when the smell of him flooded her senses.
“Then tell me,” she demanded, placing her hands behind her over his. His thumbs stopped working over her skin.
“There was someone. Once,” he whispered.
Farley narrowed her eyes, intending to zero in on the Daniel in the glass again. Before she could see what his face was doing, though- whether he looked awkward or uncomfortable- she caught sight of her own reflection. Backlit from the room behind, she looked pallid and washed out. Her clenched jaw made her look tired and hard. Suddenly she wished she hadn’t pushed it. There was no way she wanted to hear about this. “Stop. Don’t. It...it doesn’t matter.”
“No.” He shook his head, softly brushing her hair back over her shoulder to expose her bare neck. “It doesn’t matter. This matters.” He leaned forward and slowly lowered his lips to her skin, his eyes still locked on hers in the glass. The heat from his kiss was explosive, wracking through her body. She twisted in his arms, turning to face him. He rolled with it, slouching down to continue kissing her neck, gently grazing his teeth across her skin in a way that made her legs go weak. It felt like he was holding her up, his hands rough against her back, her hips, her thighs. He shoved her against the glass, hard, and she slapped her palms against the cold surface, momentarily scared. The whole world was at her back. It felt like with one heady heartbeat they would topple back into it, lost in the dizzying sensation of the fall and the kiss and the way everything felt like it had stopped moving.
Daniel brought his hands up to cradle her face, kissing her like didn’t need oxygen to breathe, couldn’t bear the space between them. A low crackle ripped through the air, and Farley felt the sweet burn of his light biting at the skin on her neck. Her whole body tremored involuntarily. She gasped, low and shocked. Daniel sucked in a deep breath and jumped back, clenching his fists by his sides. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
Farley slid down the glass as her knees buckled. Her breathing matched his, ragged and uneven. “What?”
He raked his hands back through his hair in a motion that gave away his frustration, and shot her a pained look. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t do that. It’s... it’s kinda weird.”
She looked up at him in a daze, feeling slightly flushed and embarrassed. There was no way her cheeks weren’t fuchsia right now. “It’s not kinda weird,” she said in a breathy voice that barely sounded like her own. “It’s kinda hot.”
Whoa. And I mean, WHOA. Hot is right, my dear Farley!
Big thanks go out to Frankie for sharing this with us! If you've as-of-yet been missing out on these books, what are you waiting for?!? Go get them now!
Visit Frankie's website to see all the other stops on the tour!
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Frankie Rose was born in the United Kingdom, but now lives with her husband in sunny Australia.
She officially makes things up for a living, and when she's not doing that, she is generally making paper birds out of receipts and old lists or taking photographs that make her smile.
