By Grace Marshall (Guest Blogger)
I'd
like to thank the lovely Lisabet for inviting me over to celebrate
The Executive Decisions
Trilogy on day eight of a
blog tour that celebrates the joy of novel-threesomes.
I’m
celebrating the tour by giving away two print copies of the first
book of the trilogy, An Executive Decision. Enter to
win at the end of this post.
A
Pilgrimage to Fox
‘It’s
about halfway between here and Long Creek.’ The gas station
attendant looked at my sister and me like we were loopy for wanting
to go to Fox, Oregon. It wasn’t even on the map. ‘There’s a
nice café in Long Creek,’ he added. Guess he figured we might need
sustenance after our pilgrimage.
We
thanked the man and headed out on a lonely stretch of US highway 395
heading north toward Pendleton. We were on the edge of the Sheep Rock
Unit of the John Day Fossil Beds with the Blue Mountains rising up in
the distance in the east. The area is a high plain, the type of
landscape not much good to anyone but ranchers and writers like me.
In its desolation, sky and shadows and space stretch and bend and
rise almost impossibly before the eye. And the colours! I had no idea
there were so many shades of blue and kaki and golden brown. I truly
was on a pilgrimage. I wanted to visit again the route that Stacie
Emerson and Harris Walker, from The Exhibition, drove
through the John Day Fossil Beds, taking the long way back home to
Portland.
The
first time I saw Fox, Oregon was last year. My sister and I were on a
road-trip. We reached the summit of the pass coming in from the Long
Creek side just as a rainstorm blew over. It was early spring and the
huge basin below was like an ocean of gray-brown grass set below the
dark sky, desolate and empty except for the little town of Fox. As we
descended into the valley, the town took my breath away – not that
it was particularly beautiful. It wasn’t. It wasn’t much of a
town at all. I reckon that it’s just seven or eight people shy of
being a ghost town.
What
fascinated me was that it was in the middle of nowhere, in a
desolate, yet breathtaking place. It was not a destination, nor a hub
of anything. But it was there, as though it anchored the grassy basin
settled amid the mountains. As we drove through, I held my breath. I
felt my pulse accelerate. I felt something stir that had to do with
the past and the stories lost. I could so easily imagine Harris and
Stacie feeling that same thing.
Later,
after we’d returned home and settled in for dinner, I wished
desperately that we had stopped. But it had been raining, so the
pilgrimage to Fox was something I’d have to save for our next
visit.
A year
later I felt that same clench of my breath, that same quickening of
pulse as we dropped down into the basin. Nothing had changed, except
it wasn’t raining. The sun was shining and the sea of grass was
much more kaki than grey. I got out of my sister’s car and rapidly
began to take pictures of the old gas pump, of the dilapidated
general store, of the barns and garages now vacant, paint peeling and
boards warping. And god it was cold! It was early April. The high
places in Oregon don’t tend to be warm in April, and the wind never
really stops blowing. With teeth chattering and fingers like ice
cubes, I kept taking picture after picture. Then we drove to the top
of the rise and took more pictures. And then on an impulse, we turned
the car around and went back to take even more pictures. I couldn’t
get enough. I wanted to memorize the town. I wanted to find the
people who still lived there, the intrepid few who knew the stories,
who remembered why Fox was even there. I could so easily picture the
appeal of the place for Harris and Stacie.
Later,
as my sister and I ate hand-patted hamburgers at the Stampede Café
in the little cattle town of Long Creek, I thought about why some
places stay with you long after you leave. I know that there’s a
connection between land and people. There always has been. Though
that connection is a reoccurring theme in the Executive Decisions
Trilogy, it’s even more so in The Exhibition. The power of
the land to draw us, to hold us, to drive us and to heal us is a
theme that plays itself out over and over again in The Exhibition,
and the same feel and what it symbolizes for Stacie and Harris, for
some strange reason is strong for me in Fox, Oregon.
Blurb
for The Exhibition:
Book
3 of the Executive Decisions Trilogy
Successful
NYC gallery owner, Stacie Emerson, is ex-fiancée to one Thorne
brother and ex-wife to the other. Though the three have made peace,
Ellison Thorne’s friend, wildlife photographer, Harris Walker,
still doesn’t like her. When Stacie convinces Harris to exhibit his
work for the opening of her new gallery she never intended to include
him in her other more hazardous plans. But when those plans draw the
attention of dangerous business tycoon, Terrance Jamison, Harris
comes to her aid. In the shadow of a threat only Stacie understands,
can she dare let Harris into her life and make room for love?
As
successful gallery owner, Stacie Emerson, finds herself in the
clutches of a powerful enemy from her dark past, her growing feelings
for her latest exhibitor, wildlife photographer, Harris Walker, could
get them both killed. Sharing her secret could destroy their
relationship, but keeping it could be fatal.
Excerpt:
The room
felt stuffy and close. Because Harris seldom spent time inside when
he could be out, he kept as many of the windows and doors open as he
could when he was home. He’d only closed his bedroom window to keep
the deluge from blowing in. He shoved back the blankets and crawled
out of bed, nearly tripping over his discarded jeans. He bit back a
curse then moved to open the window and let some real air in. The sky
was clear and the stars now reflected off the obsidian surface of the
water. The sliver of the waxing moon looked as though it were
floating suspended there. He threw open the window, and for a second
he stood just breathing in the cool, rain-washed air. He was about to
grab the camera he kept handy to take a few night shots, then the
hard-on was back with a vengeance.
Below
him on the dock, wrapped in a blanket, stood Stacie, looking out over
the water. And in spite of his body’s overwhelming desire for her,
he felt something other than lust stirring, something that had been
easing its way into his brain ever since he’d made such a fool of
himself the other night at Ellis’s place. It was respect. This
woman was completely at home in New York City. No one could deny that
Stacie Emerson was polished to a cosmopolitan sheen. And yet the
passing of a storm would draw her outside to see the world without
city lights, to listen to the quiet, all the layers of quiet that
were practically their own symphony outside on Harris’s lake.
Almost
before he knew what he was doing, he slipped into his jeans and moved
quickly on silent feet down the stairs and through the darkened house
to where the French doors led to the decked balcony and then down to
the dock. But just before he reached her, she dropped the blanket,
and he was afforded an exquisite, if all-too brief view of her long
legs, rounded buttocks and the slender curve of her back, rendered
porcelain-pale in the diminished light. Then she stepped off the dock
into the lapping water.
Once
again, he reacted without thinking, quickly stepping out of the jeans
and leaping off the end of the dock with a splash, which resulted in
a squeal of surprise and a mad swirling of the water from Stacie.
‘It’s
me,’ he manages before swallowing a good-sized mouthful of the lake
as he lunged to touch her arm reassuringly. But her panicked flailing
dragged them both beneath the surface. For a second he felt his own
panic rising as he desperately tread water, one of his shins brushing
the mooring of the dock. Then they both surfaced coughing and
sputtering. ‘Stacie! Stacie, it’s me,’ he said. She clung to
him, shivering and sputtering water. ‘Are you alright?’ He
slipped his arms around her hips for support.
He could
feel more than see her nodded response. ‘Sorry,’ she gasped. ‘I
didn’t mean to drown you. I woke and the storm was finished and the
stars were beautiful over the lake. I couldn’t resist. Sorry I
disturbed you.’
His
embarrassed laugh forced his belly and other parts of him into her
delicious, totally naked, personal space. ‘You didn’t disturb me.
I think if anything it’s the other way around. I interrupted your
communing with nature, which is almost an unforgiveable sin in my
world.’
He felt
her breasts pressed hard-nippled against his chest in the little
laugh of her own. ‘It isn’t necessarily a given that I wouldn’t
welcome your interruption, that I wouldn’t want to share the
pleasure with someone who appreciates it as much as I do.’ In her
efforts to tread water, she kicked him in the thigh, but before she
could apologize, he kissed her and felt her breath catch as he
trapped her leg and slid it around his waist.
‘Harris,’
she breathed his name. ‘We can’t -- ’ But he stopped her words
with another kiss and lifted the other leg so that both her thighs
gripped him around his waist, his hands supporting her bottom, his
legs treading to keep them both afloat.
‘Sh!
Stacie,’ he whispered against her throat. ‘Sh.’
‘But
we talked about a clean slate, and we said we’d --’
‘Maybe
I don’t want a clean slate.’ He kissed her harder and to his
delight, she responded in kind, curling her fingers in his hair and
eating at his mouth. ‘Maybe I like our slate just the way it is.
What do you think of that?’ And then he heaved her up onto the
floating dock, causing her to gasp and mumble a protest that ended in
a little whimper as he pulled her close to the edge, pushing and
shoving her legs open until his mouth could find the warm wet depth
of her, open and inviting. His tongue made an ice-cream-lick of a
path up the soft, moist valley of her that yielded and tensed and
yielded again to his mouth. The flavor of her was honeyed and dark
and better than anything he’d ever tasted. He held her, squirming
and writhing, him licking and sucking all the way up to the apex of
her where he settled a heavy, hungry kiss that ended in a nip to her
clit. She bucked against him and tremble all over as she tugged at
his hair.
His
senses were filled with Stacie, the taste of her, the scent of her,
the overwhelming presence of her. It was the play of a cool breeze
goose-fleshing his back that made him aware her shivering wasn’t
entirely due to his sexual prowess. Reluctantly he pulled himself
away from his explorations and heaved himself onto the dock. She did
her part to drag him up next to her, then with both of them shivering
in the cool air, she hauled her blanket over them like a tent, with
him still scrambling to get another taste of her. But she wriggled
and squirmed and twisted, elbowing him in the tender part of the
inside of his arm before she settled and shifted so that he could
feel her warm breath against his pubic hair just before she cupped
his balls and took his erection deep into her mouth.
‘Oh,
god, Stacie,’ he managed to gasp before he pillowed his head on her
chilled, wet thigh and opened her legs to find his way back to her.
At his first deep dive into her softness, he felt her moan against
his cock, a moan he couldn’t keep from imitating against the open,
enticing swell of her. The muscles low in her abdomen tensed and
jerked and he could feel his belly doing the same. He could feel his
thighs tensing. He could feel his buttocks clenching and relaxing as
he rocked and shifted his hips with an in and out motion. The chilled
shivering and the convulsive tetchy arousal they were both
experiencing made their lovemaking deliciously awkward and lacking in
finesse, but way too intriguing for them to consider stopping.
Buy
The Exhibition Here:
About
Grace Marshall/K D Grace
Grace
and KD both believes Freud was right. In the end, it really IS all
about sex, well sex and love. And nobody’s happier about that than
she is, otherwise, what would she write about?
When
she’s not writing, Grace is veg gardening. When she’s not
gardening, she’s walking. She walks her stories, and she’s
serious about it. She and her husband have walked Coast to Coast
across England, along with several other long-distance routes. For
her, inspiration is directly proportionate to how quickly she wears
out a pair of walking boots. She also enjoys martial arts, reading,
watching the birds and anything that gets her outdoors.
Grace
and KD have erotica published with SourceBooks, Xcite Books, Harper
Collins Mischief Books, Mammoth, Cleis Press, Black Lace, Erotic
Review, Ravenous Romance, Sweetmeats Press and others.
Find
Grace and KD Here:
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