I LOVE Eve Langlais! Yes I am an EveL Minion and proud of it! I can't tell you how much I adore her books. So I am pimping her out and telling everyone about her new book that is coming out on September 15. Here is a few short snippets and then an awesome excerpt from book 4! I hope you enjoy I know I did!
Title:
A Tiger’s Bride
Series:
#4 A Lion’s Pride
Author:
Eve Langlais
Pretty Links:
Description:
When at first you don’t succeed–turn to abduction.
It’s all in a day’s work when this Russian Siberian tiger
meets the woman he wants.
An accidental kidnapping? Check.
A forced marriage? Check.
A virgin bride? Damn. There go his plans for seduction and
here comes the pressure into making her first time perfect. Because everyone
knows that’s the one she’ll remember, forever. Gulp.
Add in a plane crash as well as hunters out to capture them
and the heat is truly on.
Can this suave Russian mobster meet the challenge?
Short snippets:
#1:
A murmur went through the crowd, and he caught the phrase,
repeated more than once by a few people present, “Here comes trouble.”
Surely they didn’t speak of the goddess he currently
undressed with his eyes.
Riveted, he couldn’t help but stare at the statuesque blonde
as she walked the aisle with grace, head held high, long neck tempting, hips
swishing. The picture of elegance. At least she was until her heel caught on a
wrinkle in the red carpet and she squeaked as she went flying.
#2:
She tried one last protest. “You really don’t want to do
this.”
He didn’t think she tread on his foot on purpose. “We are
dancing, little kitten, so you might as well hush and enjoy it.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” was her ominous reply.
While her words promised one thing, her actual reaction
proved the opposite. As they moved in a four step, her body lost its rigid
tenseness, limbs loosening, her movements falling in line with his. Their tempo
matched, their bodies synchronized.
Dmitri added some flair to their steps, and to his delight,
she adapted, her hips swiveling, her feet stepping, and her smile beaming while
her eyes lit with enjoyment.
He chose to ignore that their wild movements caused some
people to dart out of the way. That was their own fault for dancing too close
to a pair of suns because, yes, in his mind, they were both quite brilliant.
Again, not arrogance, just plain fact.
#3:
Now some would probably say, if he knew he was being chased,
and if he valued his hide, then all he had to do was give Teena up. Leave her
behind and go home.
To that, the man, not the beast, growled, “Hell no.”
But escaping with her was only part of the steps to ensure
their future. Once he reached his homeland, he’d have only a little time to
convince her to keep him before the council became involved. They tended to
frown on shifters, even practically royal ones, abducting women.
Apparently it was so
eighteen hundreds.
Long Excerpt:
Awareness came with the speed of cold honey spooling from a
dangling spoon. Slowly. So slowly, and that was why it took the third time for
her to grasp someone spoke.
“Say I do.”
“Hunh?” Eyes closed, and the lids too heavy to lift, her
mouth a fuzzy peach in need of water, Teena’s mind struggled to wake from the
most molasses sleep ever.
“Say I do,” hissed an accented voice, a voice that seemed
familiar. But it was the scent that made her smile. Manly musk intermixed with
a spicy cologne. It seemed her Russian admirer was still at her side. Had she
fallen asleep on him at the party?
It was so hard to remember.
“Repeat after me. I. Do.”
What did she do? Forcing her brain into gear, she strove to
recall events. Last she remembered, she was weaving back to the house after her
sister’s wedding—drunk as hell because she was so mad at her interfering
family—when Dmitri, that sexy Russian, waylaid her. He’d made sure the ground
didn’t get fresh with her body parts. Instead, he let them get fresh with his
solid frame.
He held her in his arms. Said stuff. Nice stuff. But forget
that and fast forward to the exciting part where he kissed her.
Oh my. Upon her he
bestowed a masterful kiss that melted her. She remembered the sense of weakness
in her limbs. The roam of his hands, then…?
Her brow wrinkled. She couldn’t recollect anything past the
amazing kiss.
Nothing. At all.
Had she seriously fallen asleep during the most intense
embrace of her life?
Was this why Dmitri held her in his arms, his musky scent
surrounding her? “Wake, little kitten. Just for a moment. I need you to say I
do.”
“I do?” Do what? Surely he didn’t demand permission to kiss
her again? Was he after something else? Blerg. She wished her brain wasn’t such
a sluggish mess.
Giving her cobwebbed thoughts a mental shake,
she pried her eyes open in time to see Dmitri’s handsome face hovering close to hers. She
also heard the words, “I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the
bride.”
What!
Before she could grasp what had happened, lips pressed
against hers in a molten touch that melted her questions and awakened a fire.
The kiss didn’t help her regain her senses. On the contrary, she slipped into a
pleasurable state with only one real thought in mind—more.
More kisses. More heat. More Dmitri.
The arms wrapped around her body held her upright and a good
thing, too, seeing as how her legs had the consistency of soft rubber. A tiny
part of her remarked she should protest, or at least make an effort to assert
some kind of control.
She wasn’t firing on all cylinders. A sluggishness still
held her. It occurred to her she should cry and be frightened, and yet…
She truly was enjoying the soft mesh of lips and the warmth
of his breath. Or she was until she found herself deposited in a chair. Talk
about a rude awakening.
Her body lamented the loss of the warmth from his while her
inner lioness meowed in frustration. A frustration she understood all too well,
given the ardor he woke refused to settle so easily.
Struggling against the lassitude in her body, she managed to
flutter her eyes open, not that it helped her comprehension much. She didn’t
recognize her surroundings.
A pen was pushed into her hands. “Sign here,” Dmitri’s
accented voice purred in her ear.
“What is it?” she muttered through numb lips as she
struggled to remain awake. She peered blearily at the white sheet in front of
her, to no avail. The words on the paper wavered.
“It is what you want.”
Truly? Because…I want
him.
Without giving it a second thought, she signed.
Then he did too, using the same pen she had, his bold
signature alongside hers on the marriage certificate.
Blink.
Re-read.
Nope, the words on the paper hadn’t change.
She stabbed a finger at the paper, not trusting herself to
speak. But if she had, it might have sounded a lot like her father, but with
fewer swear words. What the fuck just
happened?
He answered her unspoken question. “We are husband and wife,
little kitten.”
Oh my. How
unexpected.
Married. She was married. To Dmitri. I am married to the tiger.
Hunh, a coerced wedding, a first for the family and
certainly never a disaster her sister had ever managed.
Point for me?
No, because Meena evaded Dmitri’s plans.
I, on the other hand,
fell like a domino. Worse, I didn’t see it coming. I really thought he liked
me. Thought he’d meant it when he said he would woo her and prove his
intent.
What a jerk, kidnapping her like this and marrying her on
the sly. Making her his wife.
His wife?
Could a lioness giggle? Her inner feline certainly seemed a
tad too pleased.
His mate. The
mental rumble vibrated through her body like a ghostly purr, one that left her
senses alive.
Are you going to stand
up and assert your rights?
“You can’t force me to marry you. Tell him.” She addressed
the latter to the man dressed in a suit with a clerical collar of black and
white, some kind of religious guy.
Surely he wouldn’t condone this farce. “Tell him it doesn’t count
because I didn’t agree.”
“You said I do,” Dmitri reminded her.
“Because you told me to while I wasn’t even awake. It
doesn’t count. And why is that priest ignoring me?”
“Little kitten, if you calm down, we can—”
“I will not calm down.” She lunged from the chair, only
belatedly realizing the flimsiness of it.
The plastic bucket chair with its metal legs, a relic from
the seventies, cracked. The hand she’d used to push off slid as the plastic
snapped, and she lost her balance. Tipping sideways, she threw out her hand,
but her reflexes were still kind of woozy and she missed, hitting the floor
with her shoulder then a ricochet of her head. Damned industrial marble floor.She lay there, at an angle, stunned, and also exposing a lot
more leg than she should. Through squinted eyes, she noted her skirt riding
high on her hip.
Dmitri noticed too. Interest smoldered in his gaze, a gaze
stolen by the collared man, who cleared his throat.
How dare he steal Dmitri’s attention?
Grrrr.
Who growled?
“Now, now, little kitten, give me a moment to deal with this
obviously brave man, daring your vicious rage.”
“I am not vicious.” Vicious was her sister.
“I think you’re tougher than you know.”
