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Excerpt“Gloria,” he began, his deep, slightly accented voice causing the group of hopefuls to gawk at him in startled disbelief. His voice was heavenly, the stuff dreams and fantasies…erotic fantasies…were made of. “I believe Auntie Caressa is expecting me.” His mellow voice hinted at the mysterious and the exotic. Where on Earth did this one come from? Who was he? They all wanted to know. “Spark!” her breathy voice was almost infused with a little excitement. What was going on here? He began to feel like a lamb being led to the slaughter under her anxious gaze. “Caressa is waiting in her office for you now.” He almost turned and ran away when the cool and patrician Gloria half stood and eagerly motioned him to the door. What was happening? Gloria considered everyone she met beneath her and never had an excited moment in all the years that Spark had known her. She never even called Caressa, her mother, Mom! So, with a little trepidation, he turned and walked to the large double doors embossed with the Crystal Faces logo. Out of curiosity, he looked back and froze like Lot’s wife. Gloria had a half smile on her face. “My God!” Spark shuddered as he quickly turned and opened the doors to his aunt’s office. “Sparkles, my dear!” His aunt Caressa almost leaped across her large glass desk to take his hands and clasp them into her uncharacteristically damp ones. Her green eyes were wide with…relief? And her long brown hair was flowing freely around her head, slashed and curled into the latest trendy style. “Eek!” another voice sounded out almost at the same instant. Spark whipped around and eyed Eric, amusement lightening his concerned mood. “What have you done to yourself!” The tall man barreling from the corner of the room looked as if he was about to have a massive coronary. “You rode that monster of a bike over here, didn’t you? Do you know what dry skin can do to your career? And that hair, honestly!” He was called Eric the Terrible on the sets. The master hair and makeup artist was easy to spot. Every time Spark saw him, he pictured a Viking wielding a hair comb as if it were a sword, and a makeup mirror like a shield. The massive blond could easily be a model for Muscle and Fitness, but instead chose to work his magic behind the scenes. “Hello, Eric,” Spark said with a grin, trying to disconnect himself from his aunt’s ever tightening grasp. Before he could continue, Caressa began to make a pitch. Wait! A pitch? “Here he is!” she announced to the room at large. “The perfect male model for your needs.” “Model!” Spark managed as his aunt began to talk to a person seated in front of her desk. He had been too shocked by his aunt’s reception to notice her. The tall woman was definitely a suit, a scout for a large company. She was dressed in a red power pantsuit, wore her black hair in the requisite French roll, and gazed at him through gold, wire-rimmed glasses. Definitely a suit. “He definitely is big enough, but is he proportional?” The woman pulled her glassed down to the tip of her nose and began examining him like a prized animal at a 4H show. He turned back to his aunt who seemed to grow a little more nervous. “Take off your, ah, vest, Spark.” She avoided his sudden scowl and motioned with her hands to the garment in question. Caressa knew that Spark wanted to end this phase of his life. He’d modeled for her agency before he made the serious decision to go into the family business. The extra money had been a big help when he moved out of his parents’ house, but he never liked the way modeling made him feel. Once he graduated from college, he told his aunt that he was through and hadn’t looked back, despite years of her begging and pleading. He had too many things to do now, and prancing down a catwalk just wasn’t one of them. Determination stiffening his features, he turned to his aunt and was struck by the tears swimming in her large eyes. Damn! He hated to see women cry. It was his one weakness and Caressa knew it. Although usually manipulative and underhanded, Caressa wouldn’t trap him like this unless it was an extreme emergency. Then he began to smile a slow, wicked smile that had the suit catching her breath and Eric rolling his eyes waiting for whatever bomb he was about to drop. There had been a few changes to his body over the years, changes that just might make him…slightly less than perfect for any modeling job. The suit would turn him down; Caressa would fail at whatever her plan was while giving it the old team try. And best of all, he would be off the hook. This was so perfect it was almost foolproof! The thick silver carpet that covered the floor muffled the sound of his saddlebags hitting the floor, but still it sounded like the final nail being driven into the coffin of his aunt’s plans. Wearing his trademark wicked grin, he began to undo the three buttons holding the rawhide vest closed, building tension just as his aunt had taught him to do in his modeling days. With a flourish, he whipped the vest off and let it slowly slide down his arms until it dropped to the floor. Eric muffled a small chuckle and Caressa bit back an unladylike curse. There, clamped onto his golden right nipple was a tiny golden nipple, ring so small it almost blended in with his skin. If it were not for sunlight pouring in from the massive window behind Caressa’s desk glinting off of it, not many would have noticed it. But Spark wasn’t through. In a move that made prancing horses famous all over the world, Spark tossed his mane of fiery red-gold hair while turning his back to the small crowd gathered in the office. In doing so, the thong slipped from the ends of his hair, striking Eric in the chest, prompting his startled “Hey!” and releasing his waist-length hair to flow freely down his body. Still smirking, he shoveled one arm beneath that mass of hair, flipped it forward, and exposed his perfectly naked, perfectly symmetrical, and perfectly tattooed back. There, on his right shoulder, rippling each tiny detailed scale with each of his movements resided a scarlet, silver, and ice blue dragon. Instead of having the evil leer of most tattooed beasts, this dragon’s familiar gray eyes seemed to be filled with knowledge and never ending patience. Spark beamed at his aunt over his shoulder, a completely innocent look on his face. And he had to fight to stifle a laugh. “Those are my dad’s eyes,” he pointed out to his mute aunt. “I was sure you would recognize them.” “Why?” Caressa finally managed to croak through her suddenly tight throat. “Why would you put that…thing…there?” “It’s simple, really,” came his chipper reply. “My dad has always “gotten on my back” no matter what I did in life. I put to there to remind me of that.” Spark had to fight to keep from bursting with pride from the ingenious way that he had handled his aunt. No one would be hurt and he would be allowed to go about his merry way. “He’s perfect!” the other woman exclaimed, causing the other three in the room to look at the suit in various degrees of amazement. “Me?” Spark questioned, once again, the feeling of a noose tightening around his neck returning with a vengeance. “Him?” both Caressa and Eric echoed, looking at each other before turning to the woman in red. “I want him on contract today. Do what ever it takes. He’s perfect for my needs. And that spiritual touch about his father was just the icing on the cake. I should have put more faith in you Caressa; you found me the perfect Brazen Man. Now tell me, my dear,” she said, turning to Spark. “Are those streaks of white in your hair natural?” In a last ditch effort to stop himself from sinking fast he nodded. They wouldn’t want someone with prematurely silver hair, would they? It was too much pop and not the classic look that they needed, right? With that, the woman rose from her chair, picked up her briefcase and walked over to Spark, who took an involuntary step back. “Yes, he will do nicely. Always a pleasure, Caressa.” The woman took his aunt’s slow-moving hand, although Caressa still seemed to be paralyzed into some state of shock, and briskly pumped it up and down. “I’ll be seeing a lot more you later, young man,” she shot at Spark before turning and leaving the room. Still in somewhat of a daze, Caressa walked back to her seat behind her glass desk and pressed a button on her intercom. “Gloria, can you come in here, please?” she requested, her normal voice sounding a little strained. Spark stood there in confusion. How could his master plan fail! He was pretty sure that tattooed and pierced models were not in vogue today. The glass doors silently opened and a tense Gloria entered the room. “I saw Mrs. Heart leave.” Gloria took in the expressions of the people in the room; Caressa slumped behind her desk with a strange expression on her face, Spark and Eric looking confused and mute standing in the center of the room. Her face drained of color. “Are we all unemployed now?” she asked calmly, for Gloria was nothing, if not…calm. “She thought that he was perfect!” Caressa responded, still looking a little shocked. “He is perfect!” she added with a little more conviction. “My Sparkles is perfect!” she finally cried as she flew from behind the desk and began to do the dance of joy. “We’re saved!” the normally taciturn Gloria cried, before she grabbed Eric and kissed him full on the lips. “We all get paid!” Eric cried, catching the happiness bug too, before he and Gloria began to dance around Spark, who stood in the center of this maelstrom still frozen in place observing these people make fools of themselves. “Okay! Does someone want to let me in on this?” he finally roared. “What’s the punch line?” “Oh, my Sparkles, you did it!” Caressa crowed as she placed her hands on his shoulders and began to jump up and down like an excited teenager. “You saved my ass!” “What?” Now Spark was more confused than ever. “My business. You saved my business. Richard was going to call in the loan he gave me to start this agency if I didn’t turn a certain profit by the end of this year.” “He was gonna what?” Spark was incensed. He always knew that his Uncle Richard was a little, well, stiff, but this was ridiculous. “He was going to cut off his own wife?” “But it doesn’t matter anymore, Sparkles.” Caressa exclaimed. “Do you know who that was? That was Amelia Heart. Ame Heart? Ame Heart of Brazen Heart Publishing? His confused look cleared up in an instant. Brazen Heart Publishing produced a wide genre of romance novels, but their claim to fame was a steamy line of books, all with a strong bondage theme. “You’re going to be their spokes-model, Spark! You will be featured on each cover and on each advertisement.” Caress looked up at him with such joy, that he almost hated himself for what he had to do next. “Aunt Caressa,” he began, removing her hands from his shoulders and holding them down in front of her. “There is no way in hell that I’m going to be on the cover of any erotic thriller. The answer is no.” The sudden cessation of all sound in the room caused him to look from his aunt’s suddenly stricken eyes to the stricken eyes of Gloria and Eric. Guilt slammed into him and made him flush a little. “I’m sorry.” “But…but you are the answer to my prayers, Sparkles. I can’t make it without you.” Caressa’s lips began to tremble and her large, brown-green eyes began to fill with tears. “I can’t make it without you.” |
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Stephanie Burke Welcomes You
Have You Been Flashed?
I love the stories of father and son in dangerous heat but i wanted to know will you be writing a 3th staring Ember.
It is almost done, Hon. Some publisher issues and then I can have it sent to my editor, who will no doubt try to kill me! LOL
Flash
Any news on a release date for Ember’s book? I hope its soon i’m about to read this book and I loved Flame’s book.