Congrats to Crescent Moon Press author Kate Lutter on the release of her debut novel, Wild Point Island! This looks like a great read! Keep reading for a fun excerpt.
The blurb:
Banished from Wild Point Island as a child, Ella Pattenson, a half human-half revenant, has managed to hide her true identity as a descendent of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. Thought to have perished, the settlers survived but were transformed into revenants–immortal beings who live forever as long as they remain on the island.
Now, Ella must return to the place of her birth to rescue her father from imprisonment and a soon to be unspeakable death. Her only hope is to trust a seductive revenant who seems to have ties to the corrupt High Council. Simon Viccars is sexy and like no man she’s ever met. But he’s been trapped on the island for 400 years and is willing to do almost anything for his freedom.
With the forces of the island conspiring against her, Ella must risk her father, her heart, and her life on love.
Bio:
Kate Lutter believes she was born to write. She wrote her first novel when she was in eighth grade, but then almost burned her house down when she tried to incinerate her story in the garbage can because she couldn’t get the plot to turn out right. Now, many years later, she lives in NJ with her husband and five cats (no matches in sight) and spends her days writing contemporary paranormal romances, traveling the world, and hanging out with her four wild sisters. She is happy to report that her debut novel, Wild Point Island, the first in a series, has just been published by Crescent Moon Press. She is busy writing the sequel and her weekly travel blog entitled Hot Blogging with Chuck, which features her very snarky and rascally almost famous cat.
Website: www.katelutter.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/katelutternovelist
Blog: www.katelutter.blogspot.com
Twitter: www.twitter.com/katelutter
Email: katelutter.author@gmail.com
Excerpt from Wild Point Island
Despite what he believed, I never had a relationship where I felt so bound to someone and yet so constrained in behavior. Sitting so close to him on the beach, hidden from view, wanting to hold him, I hesitated. So I’m not sure how what happened, happened next. What kept us apart—the suspicions, the fact that time had elapsed and we felt a bit like strangers meeting again—all of it abruptly dissipated like so much fog when the sun shines through.
His strong yet gentle grasp pulled me toward him, and he held me close, wrapping his arms around my shoulders. I felt in the urgency of his grip how much he’d missed me, and remembered again the dream he’d arranged for me, how cautious he’d been only days before. But dreams could not satisfy me now, no matter how real they seemed.
We pulled apart, but our eyes met. I leaned in and pressed my lips against his, chaste at first, to taste him, to spur his reaction. But that tentative reaching out soon exploded into the confirmation I’d been waiting for. Our desires cascaded in upon each other. I wanted more of him, and soon lost awareness of the cold surf, which melted against our heat. The roughness of the sea also faded into the distance. The spray of salt water was forgotten.
I couldn’t catch my breath. I didn’t want to think of the future or eternity. Only feel sweet sensations as he kissed me harder and harder.
Helpless to resist this love-making, I was the sand being thrown about by the waves around me. Soaked with a longing for him.
His kisses grew stronger, and I wanted all of them.
“Ella,” he groaned, sweeping the stray strands of hair out of my eyes.
I reached up to touch his face, to trace the outline of his strong jaw. Desire flickered in his eyes, a wildness mirroring my own needs, and I wanted to lose myself in that need, in that desire. I wanted him as I had wanted no other, knew for the first time in my life I had the potential for loving someone who knew me for who I really was.
It was intoxicating.
“Can you take me now?” I asked. “Here. Show me what I have to do.”
Indecision flickered across his face. I saw it. A look of a man who walked a tight rope and risked falling to the depths below.
“Ella.” His voice floundered in his own deep emotion.
But I reached over to pull him closer, and he tumbled on top of me. The weight of his body anchored me to the ground. Within seconds, my back was pressed against the sandy floor. His eyes grew hooded as his lips played against my mouth. Teasing. Caressing.
Suddenly, the kisses changed. Slow and carefully placed, I felt a heaviness to them that made me ache where I had felt warm and riled up before.
Aching to be with him in that way that I knew was forbidden to us.
But what did I care.
He was kissing me, and I began kissing him back, as if I had been doing this all my life, as if I were some kind of expert, allowing the pooling warmth in my stomach to find release. His hands burrowed under my sweater, nudging, rubbing against my breasts, which swelled to his touch.
The feel of his skin against my skin pushed me to a boldness I had not known until now, and I reached my hand below the belt of his pants, dared now to touch where I knew he wanted me to touch.
“Simon.” I whispered his name into the air, so sure that he was the one. Knowing as we wrestled together on the sand, in this sweetest of lovemaking, that I had a fire in me that he had set. He was the man I had been waiting for. This was the moment–
I felt resistance. Simon seemed to be struggling for control.
Over me. Over himself.
“Enough.” His voice, raw and edgy, strained against the sea that roared in the background.
Still breathing heavily, he released his hold on me, and pushed himself to a seated position.
My heart pounded.
“Have I done something wrong? Tell me,” I demanded.
“No.”
“Then why are you stopping?”
“We cannot be together, not now. I was wrong to even start.”
“Wrong? But I thought… ” I struggled to sit up, to face him, to put my own thoughts in order. When two people wanted to be together, how could there be something wrong? “Don’t you want to be with me?”
His gaze traveled down my body. I felt his stare, the desire in it. “Yes. I want to be with you.”
“Then–” I touched his arm. I needed to understand what could possibly be strong enough to hold him back.
“What I want has already been decided. You must decide what it is you want…” His voice softened. “… to do with your life.”
A chill coursed down my spine. And even though my flesh was still warm from his touch, I pulled my sweater down to cover myself, not because I was ashamed, but without his closeness, the early evening breeze now felt cold and damp. I guessed what he was saying, but I didn’t want to think about the future. Not here, not now.
“I want you to make love to me, Simon.”
“The Council forbids it,” he said.
“I don’t care about the Council. They have no say in what’s between us.”
He faced me then, and his finger touched my lips. “I could take you, Ella. Now. But it would not be the honorable thing to do.”
My fists clenched. I didn’t understand.
“I made a choice when I saved you from your uncle’s dangerous game. It was not difficult because I wanted you, Ella. But it was my choice. The moment our spirits fused, everything changed. Until you are sure I am what you want, I cannot take you. Until you are sure this island can be your home, I cannot give into my passions. My world is not like your world. There is no formal ceremony of commitment. There is the fusion and then there is consummation. When that occurs, you will be bound to me forever. There can be no turning back.”
Cindy Young-Turner 