Another week, another Wednesday, another Book Hooks blog hop! Celebrating Halloween all month long, I’m continuing my paranormal theme with this week’s excerpt, from my shifter romance The Eyes of Bast.
Enjoy!
Blurb
Trust your heart. Follow your dreams.
When instinct tells Shaina to visit the feral cat trap she’s set in Central Park, she listens to that inner voice. The sleek black cat she finds has a terrible secret. Tom is an unwilling shape shifter, cursed by a sorceress who craved a human plaything. Shaina vows to defeat the vicious but seductive witch and save the man she believes is her soul mate—though it might mean losing him forever.
The Hook
He raised his face to mine. Tears brimmed in his luminous eyes. A vast wave of pity surged through me. I bent to kiss him, trying to pour my strength into him.
Our mouths met. Desire flickered underneath my boundless compassion. I let my tongue play along the soft seam where his lips pressed together. After momentary resistance, he opened to me, allowing me to take what I craved. At first, he was passive. I persevered, though, and before long, he was kissing me in return, running his hands along my arms and gently fondling my breasts. My body awakened, little bursts of lightning racing through my limbs to my dampening sex.
The night came back to me, in vivid detail. I remembered the joy, the sense of connection. This man was made for me. I had to save him.
Tom finally broke the kiss and leaned back with a sigh. “Ah, Shaina! I should never have allowed you near me. But I was so very lonely… I wasn’t thinking straight. Now I’ve put you in danger too.”
“Danger? What kind of danger?” I reached over to flick the switch on my reading lamp, so I could read his expressions. Then I seated myself cross-legged at his feet and clasped his hands in mine. “Tell me, Tom. Tell me everything.”
“You will not believe me.”
“How could I not believe after—after what I saw this morning?”
His eyebrows knitted together. “I never wanted you to see—I was careless…”
“But I did see. And now I know, at least part of your secret. But I don’t know enough to help you out of whatever trouble you’re in. Tell me the whole truth. I promise I’ll keep it private, if that’s what you want. And I promise I won’t be shocked.”
Tom’s lush mouth twisted in a grimace of disgust. “You might not be able to keep that promise. But never mind. You’ve asked. I’ll tell you.”
He stared off into the distance, above my head. “I was born in a small town in coastal Maine, about seven years ago.”
“Seven years?”
“I was born a cat.”
I choked down my cry of surprise. How could it be?
“Yes. I was born under a wharf. I spent the first six months of my life as a black kitten, a stray living off the scraps from the fishing boats and clam shacks. Then she caught me and made me her prisoner.”
“She?”
“I don’t even want to utter her name. There’s danger in the very word. She is a witch, centuries old, a practitioner of the darkest arts—the epitome of evil. Out walking one evening along the rocky shore, she caught sight of me and wanted me as her familiar. It was easy for her to lure me into her clutches.
“At first she just used me to facilitate her spells. The rumored powers of black cats are more than just legend. Before long, though, she began to experiment.”
His ominous tone sent a chill through my naked body. I pulled the towel around me.
“You see, her advanced age hadn’t diminished her lust. Quite the opposite. She wanted a sexual plaything, someone she could use to satisfy her perverted desires. A male body she could own and control. So she delved into her books of magic, seeking a spell that would turn her poor innocent feline familiar into a man—at least when she wanted him that way.
“Her first attempts failed.” Tom shuddered at the recollection. “She barely managed to save my life. I guess she’d grown fond of me at that point—in her own twisted way.”
“Oh, Tom…”
“Finally, she found a ritual that would change an animal into a human during the hours when the sun was banished from the earth. I’ll never forget the terror of that first transformation, when I found myself wobbling on two legs in front of her naked body. It was even worse than what came after.”
“What was that?”
“Oh, Shaina—I was human, but scarcely a man. I was barely thirteen.”
Find all the buy links for The Eyes of Bast at https://www.lisabetsarai.com/eyesofbastbook.html
Be sure to visit the other authors participating in this week's Book Hooks hop!
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