What’s up with me? Well, I’ve been musing with a cowboy. 🙂 Yep, you read that right. A cowboy, a muse, and a match made in heaven.
My latest release is a novella, A COWBOY’S MUSE. I took a mash-up of time travel, mythology and good ol’ fashioned western and turned on the blender. The result is a fun, sexy story that I had a ball writing. It was a challenge, to be sure, to mash those genres together, but worth the effort.
Clio is a goddess who is immortal yet she’s never truly lived. Getting knocked into 1875 Texas gives her that chance. While Ace, well, he’s a cowboy who finds himself wrapped up in a purple-clad goddess and he can’t do anything else but hang on for the ride. I love it!
Here is the blurb:
Clio is not only the muse of history, she has virtually lived her life through books. When a lightning strike sends her through space and time, Clio finds herself in the Old West with no way of getting home and none of her powers. Relying on her book learning is not working out like she’d hoped.
Ace Nevada is an unwilling sheriff who has spent the last year trying to get out of town. When a crazy woman lands in the horse trough in front of a saloon, he finds himself strangely attracted to her. He can’t help himself from sampling her lips or her incredibly lush body.
Clio learns how to be human and Ace remembers what it is to be human. They are two halves of the same whole. Mates. When Clio’s powers return, will their love pass the test of time?
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And now for an excerpt…
***
“Watch that beef stew, Clio. I’ll be back in a few shakes,” Maybelle said before she dashed out of the kitchen as fast as her small legs could carry her.
Clio wondered what was happening, but grabbed the spoon and stirred the bubbling beef stew on the big, black cook stove. The potatoes danced merrily in the brown liquid and the scent teased her nose. Everything she’d experienced as a mortal, including food, was sweeter, spicier, more intense than anything she’d ever had before.
One moment she was contemplating how delicious the stew would taste, the next she was pressed up against the wall with a very hard male body pressed against her.
“What did you think you were doing?” Ace hissed into her ear.
“Let me go.” It was like trying to move a boulder as she pushed against him.
“I was in your bed and between your thighs last night, and today you had your hands on other men.”
He ground against her. She couldn’t stop herself from responding and pushing her softness into his hardness. Her nipples pebbled and skittered against her new chemise. She was immediately damp between her thighs. It was amazing how quickly her body remembered his, like a dream she fell right back into.
“Let me go,” she repeated. “Maybelle is going to be right back.”
His hands grasped her wrists and held them above her head.
“You’re mine, Clio. No other man is getting to touch all of you while I am. You are branded, do you hear me?”
He bit her neck then licked it, and kissed it roughly.
“You wear my brand, like there’s an A on you for the world to see.”
That’s when she got angry—real angry. “Haven’t you ever heard of the Scarlet Letter? How dare you compare me to an adulteress like Hester Prynne as if I should be proud of it?”
“The Scarlet what?”
Clio kicked him in the shin and he let her wrists go. She twisted and pinched him under his arm, a trick that always worked with her big sisters.
“Ouch! Shit! What the hell are you doing?”
She kicked the other shin and stomped on his foot. He fell backwards and landed on his perfectly-formed behind.
A surge of power rushed through her. The power of choice. Of being a woman. “Next time you want to talk to me, don’t treat me like that. I deserve respect and care. You had one mistake coming. That was it.”