Today I am welcoming prolific paranormal writer, Felicity Heaton, to give readers a taste of something different. Take it away, Felicity!
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It’s wonderful to be here at
Linda’s blog to talk about my new book, Her Wicked Angel, which is the sixth in
my Her Angel romance series.
I’m going to be sharing an
excerpt from the book with you today, but I also wanted to let you know that
I’m celebrating the release by giving away the first book in the series, Her
Dark Angel, for FREE at selected Amazon
Kindle, Kobo Books and Apple iBookstore sites.
Here’s more about Her Wicked
Angel, including an excerpt from this long angel romance novel.
Her Wicked Angel - Felicity Heaton
The King of Demons and the Devil’s right hand man, Asmodeus is a dark angel
born of evil and created for destruction. When his master orders him to venture
into the mortal world and retrieve a female for him, he seizes the chance to
leave Hell for the first time, uncaring of what the Devil has planned for her…
until he sets eyes on the most beautiful woman he has ever seen—a female who
awakens new feelings within his black heart, unleashing passion so intense that
it controls him and desire he cannot resist.
He will not let his wretched master have her. She will belong to him.
Liora is a witch with a bad reputation and an obsession with fighting demons. A
mission gone wrong sees her sent to Paris
to cool off, but when a dark and deadly warrior with a gaze of golden fire
lands in her life, she ends up burning hotter than Hell for the wicked angel.
Nothing will stand between her and the immense, forbidding male. Not her
cousin. Not Asmodeus’s sworn enemy and twin, Apollyon. And certainly not the
Devil.
Caught up in a tempest of danger and soul-searing passion, can they survive
against the odds and seize their forever after?
Her Wicked Angel – Excerpt
“Why do you stare at me?” Asmodeus said and Liora tapped
into her power, channelling it into him in the hope of discovering whether his
awkwardness was real or an act.
She could sense no falseness in him. Her staring genuinely
confused him.
“I’m trying to figure you out.” There was no point in hiding
her intentions. The more honest she was with him, the more liable he was to be
honest with her.
“And?” A playful edge entered his eyes and she wasn’t surprised
to find the corners of his lips curling into a wicked smile.
"I’m getting nowhere.” She cocked her head to one side and
narrowed her gaze on him. “Are you evil?”
“Yes.”
A very blunt and honest answer. “Evil because everyone
expects you to be evil… or because you really are that way?”
He frowned at her and then switched his focus back to the
skies ahead of him. “I was born evil.”
“I know the story,” she said and he flicked another glance
at her, a touch of surprise in his eyes now. “You’re everything evil in
Apollyon… blah, blah, blah… but I’m not convinced that you’re only evil.”
His golden eyes darkened and crimson edged them. She was
pushing his buttons again. He didn’t like her mentioning Apollyon or comparing
them in any way. She could understand why. She hated it whenever her coven
mentioned how she should strive to be more like Serenity—all good and graceful.
Serenity had never lived through hell as she had. Serenity had no reason to
have darkness and hatred inside her.
Liora looked down as he glided around the top of the
beautiful white domes of the church of Sacré-Coeur with her and then brought
them down in the square below. She expected at least a bump as they landed, but
it was smoother than any touch down she had ever experienced.
He carried her to the iron fence edging the square and
stared out over the city. Dusk turned the elegant stone buildings and the
ribbon of the river pink and gold, making them more beautiful than ever.
Asmodeus gently set her down.
“You’ve really never left Hell?” she said while watching him
absorb the view of the city with wide eyes.
He looked like a man who had never witnessed such a view.
She had asked Apollyon about Hell. His answer had been that it was black and
grim, and that the only colours in the bleak landscape were the boiling rivers
of lava.
“Never.” Asmodeus narrowed his golden gaze and shifted it
down to her. “Have you ever left the mortal realm?”
She shook her head, the loose tangled waves of her chestnut
hair brushing her shoulders. “Never… what’s it like where you live?”
“I have a castle I built.”
“A home.” She looked out over the city, enjoying the view
even though she had come here often during the first two weeks into her stay
with Serenity and Apollyon. It was nice to escape them sometimes, finding her
own space so she could think and be herself.
“I do not think of it as a home.”
Liora frowned and looked across at him. He stood with his
profile to her, his eyes drifting over the city, the sinking sun bringing out
their colour but not warming them. They were cold and empty again. Where had
his thoughts taken him?
The more she looked at him and thought about what he had
said, the more she felt he was lonely but didn’t realise it. He had never left
Hell and he refused to view his castle as his home.
Did he have no love and light in his life?
“So what are your friends like? Are they all bad-ass demons
or are you mates with the Devil?”
Asmodeus’s gaze locked on a distant point and then flicked
straight to her. “I have none.”
He had no friends.
He had no home.
What sort of lonely life was he leading in Hell? She was
beginning to wonder how there was even a sliver of good in him. He had no
reason to feel that or any positive emotions at all.
Liora placed her hand over his on the black metal railing
and he looked down at them, his eyes slowly widening in that way that made her
feel that there was something about Asmodeus that would surprise everyone who
saw him if they knew about it.
He had always been alone.
No one had ever shown him compassion or care.
No one had ever touched him like this, as a friend would,
offering comfort and support.
He was a clone of Apollyon, everything evil distilled into
its purest and most vicious form, but he was a product of his environment too.
He had been starved of good and driven to do bad. He had
never been given a chance to be anything else. The Devil had moulded him into
this man before her and for some reason she wanted to be the one to show the
world that they were wrong about Asmodeus, and he could be something more than
they believed him to be.
“Do you have no companions at all?” She looked up into his
eyes, her eyebrows furrowed and a tiny flicker of hope in her heart.
He lifted his gaze to lock with hers and his thumb brushed
hers, causing her heart to leap and race.
He swallowed hard and hesitated, and she thought he wouldn’t
answer as he averted his gaze, fixing it far below them at the base of the hill
and the street there. His eyes tracked something, turning distant at the same
time. She looked down and frowned when she saw an old woman walking two
miniature poodles.
“I have Romulus
and Remus,” he said in a gruff voice and she raised her eyes back to his. He
looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “They are not quite like those
canines. Hellhounds are larger, and live far longer.”
He had dogs. Companions. Hellhounds were an evil angel’s
best friends.
“What are they like?” She couldn’t picture hellhounds at
all. Images of Cerberus, the three-headed hound sprang into her mind. “Do they
only have one head?”
He smiled and her heart lifted at the sight of it and the
way the cold edge left his golden eyes. “Yes, they only have one head. They are
black and very large, coming to stand with their shoulders around here.”
He held his hand palm down just above his hip and Liora’s
gaze disobeyed her direct command and drifted across to the taut ripped muscles
of his stomach and the sexy dip of his navel, and the dusting of dark hair that
led her eyes downwards. Her pulse picked up again and it took all of her will
to drag her gaze back to his hand.
It was trembling.
Her eyes shot up to his and he looked away again, but she
caught the flicker of desire that still darkened his gaze.
“What do they look like? Are they hairy?” Curse her voice
for shaking. She had been around men she felt attracted to before and had never
reacted like this whenever they had flirted with her or shown their interest.
She sidled closer to Asmodeus and butted her hand up against his to measure
their height against her own body.
According to his measurements, these hellhounds would reach
shoulder height on her if she included a modest addition for their heads.
“Hell is hot and rather filled with fire. Hair is not a good
thing in that sort of environment. They are shorthaired and somewhat resemble a
canine of this world… a Great Dane. Do you know of it?”
“Scooby Doo? You have demonic Scooby Doos?”
“Scooby Doo?” He frowned. “I am not familiar with this
Scooby Doo.”
“He’s a cartoon… like moving drawings with sound.” She
wasn’t sure he knew what a cartoon was. She doubted you could pick up satellite
or cable in Hell. “But he’s brown. The right breed though…”
She measured Asmodeus’s guide height against her again.
“I’m guessing yours are bigger than our version.” She waved
her hand around the height she imagined them to be.
“And broader… and they have red eyes.”
“I could have guessed.” She really could have. It didn’t
surprise her at all. Even Asmodeus had red eyes whenever he was losing his
temper.
When coupled with the way she could feel his power rising or
ebbing with his emotions, she had a barometer for Asmodeus.
At least she could tell when he was about to unleash Hell on
the poor unsuspecting population of Paris.
“And I can talk to them.”
That, she hadn’t guessed possible. “They talk?”
Asmodeus casually shrugged, causing his black wings to shift
against his bare back. “They communicate with each other in their own language
using telepathy, but I do not have that ability so I have taught them to understand
me and I can understand their responses. They are clever creatures and picked
up an understanding of the demonic language quickly.”
So he could communicate with his two hellhounds. Romulus
and Remus. Who no doubt lived at the castle that wasn’t a home.
Something came back to her, something she had heard Apollyon
say to Serenity when she had been listening in on them and Serenity had asked
why Asmodeus had given him information he could use against the Devil.
Asmodeus was complicated.
Liora stared at him.
Complicated and gorgeous, and she wanted to unravel the
mystery that he wore like a protective cloak.
She wouldn’t stop until she knew the truth of Asmodeus.
Until she knew the real him.
The one he was fighting to hide from her.
Her Wicked Angel is available
from Amazon Kindle, Kobo Books, Barnes and Noble Nook, Apple iBooks stores and
many other retailers. Also available in paperback.
Books in the Her Angel romance
series:
Felicity Heaton writes passionate
paranormal romance books as Felicity Heaton and F E Heaton. In her books she
creates detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action, intense emotion
and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from dark deadly
vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful angels and hot
demons!
If you're a fan of paranormal
romance authors Lara Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and
Christine Feehan then you will enjoy her books too.
If you love your angels a little
dark and wicked, Felicity Heaton’s best selling Her Angel series is for you. If
you like strong, powerful, and dark vampires then try the Vampires Realm series
she writes as F E Heaton or any of her stand alone vampire romance books she
writes as Felicity Heaton. Or if you’re looking for vampire romances that are
sinful, passionate and erotic then try Felicity Heaton’s new Vampire Erotic
Theatre series.
In 2011, five of her six
paranormal romance books received Top Pick awards from Night Owl Reviews,
Forbidden Blood was nominated as Best PNR
Vampire Romance 2011 at The Romance Reviews, and many of her releases received
five star reviews from numerous websites.
If you want to know more about Felicity, or want to get in touch, you
can find her at the following places: