I’m peddling Ancestral Reunions to anyone that will listen.  If anyone’s interested in a review or whatever, please feel free to email me. I’ve had some requests and I’ve done what I can to assist.  Just let me know and I’ll be there!

Signing off now, but wanted to put somethin’ up.  Look forward to May.  I’m sure it’ll be a better month than April!

Concentration was nearly impossible and I found myself inadvertently retreating to the happiest place I could find—my lovely fantasy at six-foot-two.  There was no other comfort to be found in the strange circumstances that led me to that point.

Everything around me faded as my body shifted into autopilot.  I felt like I was in a TV commercial for bath soap, contemplating the virtues of a carefree world.  A hand seemed to rest on my shoulders and my other-self turned, peering up at the man who had danced with me on the drive to the law office.

The sensuality was replaced with a sense of sympathy.  I felt myself respond to his touch, melting as I leaned against him and closed my eyes.  I didn’t want to contemplate the strangeness of my shift from reality to the Twilight Zone.  He seemed to caress my hair, as if he might be able to pet the worry away.

“I don’t want to understand it,” I muttered, enjoying the perceived scent of his expensive cologne.  The comfort was real.  Even in this dream world of mine, I felt like a real person was holding me.  This made up vision of a man was able to hold back the shadows and preserve me from their wiles.  “I just want to have it all be over.”

“Shh.” The sound was felt rather than heard.  I turned to look up at him.  His features, as always, were indistinct, but I could sense his smile.  The flicker in his eyes was honest affection.  As long as I had been toying with that fantasy, it was only in the past few days that he had begun to affect me in such a way.

I imagined him kissing me, a quieting gesture that was able to dismiss my troubled thoughts.  It was more loving than the intense version during our earlier dance.  He leaned, bending at the waist so his hands could easily lift me against him.  Weightless, I was oddly at ease in his embrace.  This was the sort of comfort that I was craving.

For several moments, I could find my center and focus.  I was safe in his arms, held up, small and adored.  I knew that he meant to keep me preserved against my own fears and concerns.  I knew, with every ounce of my heart, that this man…this phantom…loved me. 

He drew back, a mere inch from being free of me when the entire vision disappeared in a single grumpy ahem.

I looked up and saw Allan watching me curiously.

“Is everything alright, Miss Aldridge?” I was blushing but otherwise fine.  I cleared my throat—a mirror of the sound he had used to attract my attention before.

“Of course,” I smiled at him and returned my attention to the forms.  “Everything is just fine.”

Come see me outside the fantasy sometime. I extended my thoughts toward that specter who was so rudely banished. Tonight for instance?  No really, tonight would be great.

I think that it’ll turn out nicely in the end though I’m not sure where it will finish up.  Hop over and check out the Tuesday posts and see what you think!

I’m going to die.

The thought ran through my head as I peered down over the castle walls, staring into the thick fog that blanketed the snowy ground below.  Gray clouds acted as a ceiling in the late night hours, hiding the sliver moon and pinprick stars from view.  There wasn’t much of a breeze for a change and as snow began to fall, it drifted straight down instead of the tiny flurries to which I had grown accustomed.

His eyes blazed as they gazed at me from across the room.  He presented a powerful figure in the shadows—dark hair and eyes setting the stage for rugged features and a tone body.  The clothes were always high quality, and fit my general aesthetic at the time.  A palpable attraction formed.

I had been having that particular fantasy for a long time.  Sometimes it happened in my sleep, and sometimes I’d experience it in the middle of the day when my mind had a chance to wander away from the mundane tasks at hand.

This particular visit to my own little world came while I was driving to the lawyer’s office and dear God, did it make me blush.

I was in an old forties style cafe.  Jazz played quietly from somewhere off in the shadows.  I sipped from a glass of chilled vodka while seated at a tall stool.  My navy blue mermaid dress plunged low in the front thin shoulder straps that left my arms bare.  Most of my back was bare and my nude legs were crossed, offering me at least some sense of modesty.

I tried to ignore those eyes staring at me even as I took in every detail about him. The expensive white suit made him look like Rick from Casablanca, and allowed him to stand out in the darkness.  I kept him in my peripheral vision but somehow he seemed to know that I was watching him even if I wasn’t outright staring.

Minutes passed before he pushed up from his table and crossed the room toward me.  There was no dialogue, no pretence or pandering to flirtation or ego.  He clasped my hand and I didn’t hesitate to let him lead me out onto the dance floor.

His free hand fell to the small of my back, his thumb and forefinger kissing bare skin.  I pressed close to him, peering up into his face as we began to build a slow rhythm.  We began a fox trot of some kind.  Why was I such a capable dancer?

My Rick Blaine led like a real pro, circling us time and again.  His eyes remained fixed to mine as if that gaze had belonged only to me.  The heat from his body aroused a passion in me that made my vision tunnel.  He had become my world, a place where only the jazz and our motions existed.

We changed steps to a waltz and he moved in for a kiss, lips on soft lips, pressing with that Hollywood embrace meant to melt the hearts of the voyeurs in the audience.  My grip on him slackened but his strength held me aloft.  Desire made me dizzy and when our lips parted, I gasped in protest.

Words invaded my consciousness, plodding through the enchanted moment.  There were things I needed to ask, aspects of this little fantasy that I wanted to understand, but I fought off my curiosity.  Talking would slaughter the connection.

We hugged but it was brief.  He turned his head as if to whisper but there were no words.  Only the motion of his lips to indicate I was missing whatever he had to say.  The frustration made me bite the inside of my cheek.  Much as I wanted to ask, I couldn’t find the strength to speak. 

The music of the club faded into the background.  He was drifting back from me.  Our fingers slowly slipped apart inch by inch and when contact was lost, I wanted to shout.  He couldn’t leave, not yet.  I didn’t know his name, I didn’t know where he had come from… question after question invaded my mind and all of them refused to be answered.

Please!  The thought came unbidden but it wouldn’t pass my lips.  Don’t go!

The world around me began to make a little more sense.  Every aspect symbolized my passions from a love of history to the glamour of old-world Hollywood—this was about as comfortable as I could get outside myself. 

I struggled to move forward, reaching out my hand to pursue him.  I wouldn’t let him go so easily….

This one is a bit more of a romance than my previous erotic novels.  Check out the synopsis:

Miranda Aldridge thought violin juries were bad. When a mysterious phone call wakes her up from a bizarre dream, she finds her world turned sideways. A vast fortune falls in her lap from an inheritance and the history of a family she never realized she had comes to light.

But everything has a price and though it would seem on the surface Miranda could afford anything, the world has a way of upping the ante. Now, stuck in a strange place with memories that aren’t her own and friends that don’t believe what’s happening to her, she must solve an ancient mystery. The answer could spell the destruction of the world…or its redemption.

Go check it out ASAP!