Ares, book 1 in New York Times best-seller Felicity
Heaton’s hot new paranormal romance series, Guardians of Hades, is now
available in ebook and paperback. To celebrate the release of Ares and Megan’s
romance, she’s holding a FANTASTIC GIVEAWAY and sharing sneak peeks of the
book.
Enter the ARES international giveaway (ends December
11th) and be in with a shot of winning a $75, $50 or $25 gift certificate by
using the Rafflecopter form at her website, where you can also download a 4
chapter sample of the novel: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/guardians-of-hades-ares-paranormal-romance-book.php
Here’s more
about the book and the sexy Greek god hero and his heroine…
Ares (Guardians of Hades Series Book 1)
Felicity Heaton
Prince of the Underworld and Lord of Fire, Ares was banished from his home by his father, Hades, two centuries ago and given a new duty and purpose—to keep our world and his from colliding in a calamity foreseen by the Moirai.
Felicity Heaton
Prince of the Underworld and Lord of Fire, Ares was banished from his home by his father, Hades, two centuries ago and given a new duty and purpose—to keep our world and his from colliding in a calamity foreseen by the Moirai.
Together with his six brothers, he fights
to defend the gates to the Underworld from daemons bent on breaching them and
gaining entrance to that forbidden land, striving to protect his home from
their dark influence. Caged by the manifestation of his power, held apart from
those he loves by his own fire and starved of physical contact, Ares lives a
cold existence driven by duty and the desire to return to his world.
Until his world collides with a daemon who
steals his power and a mortal female who shatters the ice around his heart and
awakens the true fire within him—a soul-stirring passion both dangerous and
seductive.
Megan has wandered far from her home,
driven from everyone she loves by the devastating realisation that she is
different to them all. Unsure who to trust in the world, she keeps to herself,
until a fateful stormy night brings a temptingly handsome warrior crashing into
her life and into her heart—a warrior who seems to hold powers more frightening
and marvellous than her own.
When the New York gate comes under threat,
and Ares is put to the test, will he choose his duty and regain the power he
needs in order to save his world or will he choose the desires of his heart and
sacrifice his fire so he can be with the woman becoming his whole world?
ARES is
available from Amazon Kindle, Kobo Books, Barnes and Noble Nook, Apple iBooks
stores and other retailers. Also available in paperback. Find the links to your
preferred retailer at: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/guardians-of-hades-ares-paranormal-romance-book.php
ARES – Excerpt
The Frenchman ducked to evade a punch and
threw his palm at the larger man. Was he trying to push him over? Megan
couldn’t see why he would want to do that and it was the only explanation she
could find for him pressing his palm against the man’s chest.
The immense brunet flung his head back and
threw his arms out at his sides as he roared in agony at the storm. The lights
on the wall of the alley died as his garbled scream filled the night, battling
the growling thunder. He fell to his knees and arched backwards, the
Frenchman’s hand still pressed against his chest. Orange light shone from the
point where they connected, illuminating the blond man’s face as he grinned.
“It was too easy.” He drew his hand back
and stared at his fingers.
Something glowed in the centre of his palm,
strange light illuminating threads that ran around the back of his hand. He
turned his cruel gaze on the large man.
The man collapsed forwards, palms pressing
into the wet ground, and the lights on the wall blinked back into life again.
His big body heaved as he breathed hard and she frowned as she realised
something.
He was shaking.
Flames flickered over the Frenchman’s hand
and a fireball grew from the centre of his palm. He aimed it down at the other
man.
In an instant, Megan knew what he was going
to do and she couldn’t allow it to happen. She couldn’t let this man kill the
brunet. She wouldn’t stand for it. Her gaze quickly scanned the dimly lit
street and darted back again. One of their guns lay on the wet tarmac only a
few feet from her. She reacted on instinct, pushing off the ground and running
for it.
She scooped it up.
Raised it.
Fired.
A loud crack like thunder split the silence
and she jerked back from the force of the recoil.
The bullet nailed the Frenchman in his
right shoulder, knocking him backwards, away from the other man.
An unholy shriek pierced her ears, more
like the sound a bird of prey would make rather than a man, and the Frenchman
turned his gaze on her. Megan hesitated, fear washing through her stronger than
ever and her heart smashing like a jackhammer against her ribs. Eyes that
glowed ethereally locked on to her.
What was he?
He raised his hand, the light from the
fireball casting dark shadows across his face. She didn’t hesitate. She lifted
the heavy silver gun and took aim again.
The fireball exploded from his palm.
The brunet launched to his feet and
sprinted straight towards her, racing the twisting golden orb as it grew in
size.
Megan stared death in the face, and it was
fiery and painful and terrifying, and then there was darkness and heat. The
man’s thickly muscled arms wrapped around her and he crushed her against his
solid chest, shielding her, his heart pounding against her ear. He jerked
forwards and she smelled the heat of the fire, felt the force of it rush past
her, and curled into his embrace, waiting for the pain.
Waiting for the end.
Cold rain soaked into her scalp and slid
down her face, and she opened her eyes as reality penetrated the haze of her
fear and shock that she was alive and unharmed rushed through her.
The man loosened his grip on her and took
an unsteady step backwards. He swayed on his feet, his face in shadow, head
hung forwards. Smoke curled from his slumped shoulders.
“Need to get my powers back... going to
kill the bastard...” he muttered and then his hands settled on her arms, heavy
and trembling. His gaze lifted and met hers, red illuminating his irises. “You
okay?”
She nodded.
A flicker of a smile curved his lips and then
it dropped from his face as his expression went slack. He collapsed to his
knees, his head landing on her chest and his grip on her taking her down with
him. She hit the tarmac hard, pain shooting up her legs and spine. The man
breathed heavily and rolled off her, landing on his front with his cheek
pressed into the wet ground.
Megan shook so hard the gun still locked in
her fingers rattled.
She stared down the alley to the Frenchman.
Steadily raised the gun and aimed again.
Slowly squeezed the trigger just as her
grandfather had taught her.
The man disappeared.
The sound of rain filled the silence.
Megan let the gun fall from her grasp to
clatter onto the ground near her thigh. She breathed slowly, her shoulders
slumping as her tension melted away, leaving her chilled to her marrow as the
adrenaline that had been fuelling her disappeared with it. Her gaze drifted
down to the man lying on the cracked tarmac in front of her.
The scorched and smouldering back of his
black coat revealed blistered skin beneath.
He had shielded her from the blast, taking
the damage for her. She crawled over to him, removed her sodden coat and laid
it down on the ground, and carefully eased him onto his back on it. He groaned.
She welcomed the small sign of life and looked him over.
The front of his black t-shirt was missing
and there was a dark burn mark in the middle of his defined chest, right over
his heart. She didn’t know what had happened to him or what the fight had been
about, but she knew one thing.
He wasn’t an ordinary person.
He was like her.
Megan gently laid her left palm on his
pectorals, over the dark patch, and focused. The man flinched and his eyes
slowly opened, coming to meet hers. He stared up at her, his dark gaze relaying
his shock. She had always rejected her ability because it made her feel like a
freak and an outsider, but she was quick to call it now. The burnt skin on his
chest began to heal beneath her hand.
The man opened his mouth and then grimaced,
his handsome face contorting viciously as he unleashed an unholy snarl that was
more beast than man.
She focused harder, wishing she could do
this painlessly. Healing a major wound always caused the injured party pain and
it hurt her too. She was doing it as quickly as she could but for some reason,
he was slow to heal and she was already beginning to feel the effects of using
her gift.
Megan drew her hand away, revealing smooth
unmarked skin. She stroked it and looked down at his face, checking on him.
Rain poured down on them. It chilled her but he still felt warm beneath her
fingers. She shifted her hand to his cheek and cupped it.
“Can you hear me?” She frowned when he
failed to respond and she patted his cheek, hoping to rouse him. She didn’t
want him to pass out and she could feel that he was barely holding on to
consciousness. Fat drops saturated her clothing. They rolled down his face and
soaked into his overlong dark hair. She picked the strands from his face and
willed him to respond to her. “Please hear me. Move if you can. Do something to
let me know.”
His eyelids fluttered and he moaned.
“I’ll try to heal your other wounds, but it
might hurt. Just hold on, okay?” She waited long seconds before his mouth
twisted into a grimace and he frowned. Her stomach rolled in time with the
distant thunder. She had to heal his back for him, no matter how much it
drained her or how much it hurt him, but she didn’t want to risk making him
lose consciousness.
The voice of reason said that what she had
to do was call an ambulance and then the police. She couldn’t. They wouldn’t
understand if she told them the truth. The other man had powers, and he wanted
to kill this one.
This man had protected her but the police
wouldn’t care. They would throw him in jail for being a part of the fight and
the other man would get away with everything.
She looked down at his face, absorbing how
beautiful he was, strong and masculine, like a warrior. A fine layer of stubble
coated his straight jaw and the slight crook in his nose told her he had broken
it more than once. He was a fighter, and he had risked his life to protect her
and now she would repay him by healing his wounds and taking care of him.
His lips parted.
Strange words fell from them, a language
she didn’t understand, and pain speared her skull in time with each one. She
snatched her hands away from him and covered her ears.
Her eyes widened as he stopped speaking and
silence fell.
Darkness swirled in front of her,
obliterating her view of the other end of the alley. She moved closer to the man,
afraid it was the other one come to finish them off, and grabbed the gun.
Ribbons of black smoke separated to reveal
two tall handsome men, both clad head-to-toe in dark colours and sporting black
long coats like the one her protector wore.
Megan stared up at them, her fingers
clasping the gun. She raised it and aimed, darting between the two newcomers,
and breathed slowly to steady her nerves and her hands. Neither of them
acknowledged her. They approached and she switched aim between them, and her fear
began to get the better of her again.
She glanced at the man resting against her
and resolve flowed through her. He had protected her and now it was her turn to
protect him.
“Keep back,” she warned but they kept
advancing.
She aimed at the white-haired one and
squeezed the trigger.
Her finger stiffened and palm froze, and
her eyes widened when she saw the ice covering the gun. It burned and she
dropped it. The ice shattered, scattering across the wet ground and instantly
melting.
“What the heck?” She stared at her palm,
desperately trying to move her stiff fingers as they burned, numb from cold.
Where had that ice come from?
Her eyes snapped to the white-haired man.
Had it come from him?
He towered over her now, his build slimmer
than her protector’s was but not as lean as the other man beside him. His pale
eyes held hers, glacial and dark.
“Did you do this?” the other, black-haired
man snarled in a voice laced with darkness and she made the mistake of looking
at him.
He was incredibly handsome but there was
endless cold in his dark eyes. A ring of vivid blue encircled his irises and
she shrank back, afraid of the sensation of danger that washed over her and
told her to run. He might be slimmer than the other two, but he wore an air of
lethal darkness, a threat that beat in her blood as though every sense and
instinct she had was warning her that he was dangerous and would kill her
without hesitation.
The man with softly spiked white hair
stepped in front of him, placing himself between them, and turned his head and
looked over his shoulder at his comrade.
“A gun did not do this.” He turned his pale
eyes on her. “Why did you turn his gun on us?”
The black-haired man moved past his friend,
swept both sides of his open long black coat behind his hips to reveal a worn
grey-blue shirt and lighter grey scarf, and crouched beside her protector. His
black jeans stretched tight over his thighs and she noticed he wore the same
leather army boots as her protector, but the ends of his jeans had been loosely
tucked into them.
He tunnelled his slender fingers through
the long lengths of the top of his hair, pushing it back from the shorn sides
and back, and ran dark eyes over him. Fine black eyebrows met hard above blue
eyes that seemed strangely bright in the low light, swirling like a stormy sea.
“What happened?” It was the white-haired
one who spoke but the question was there in the black-haired man’s eyes too.
“Another man attacked him,” she said, and
then added, “and he protected me, so I protected him.”
She was still intent on protecting him.
They didn’t seem like a danger to him, showed no sign of attacking, but if they
made a wrong move, she was going to grab the gun again and use it this time.
They both stared at her and then exchanged
a glance that told her the man wasn’t in the habit of risking his life to
protect people.
The white-haired one moved forwards and
frowned down at her protector too. “We must get him to safety. Take his arm but
be careful. We should be safe while he is unconscious, but it is hard to tell.”
“You can’t move him!” Megan snapped.
Neither man looked at her.
She was getting tired of this.
She grabbed the gun and turned it on them
again. She wouldn’t drop it this time, no matter what happened. The
white-haired man pinned cold blue eyes on her and reached towards her, his
black leather gloves glistening with what looked like frost in the dim alley
lights.
Her protector jolted to his feet so quickly
that the black-haired one fell on his backside.
“Don’t touch her,” the brunet growled and
grabbed the white-haired man’s wrist, yanking his arm away from her.
He instantly turned to the other man.
“Something is wrong.”
The black-haired man looked at the hand her
protector had locked around his friend’s wrist, shock rippling across his face.
“No heat?”
Megan got to her feet and steadied her gun
with her other hand, aiming it back at the white-haired man. “Let him go.”
He gave her a pointed look. Yes, she was
aware that her protector was the one manhandling him, but she didn’t care. She
had to protect him.
The brunet growled something foul at him
and swayed on his feet. He shoved the white-haired one away and stumbled
towards her. “Must go... got to go.”
Megan dropped the gun again and caught him
as he collapsed, taking her back down to the ground. She kneeled with him
leaning in to her, his head on her shoulder and arms limp beside her hips. Her
fingers touched the wrecked back of his black coat and the blistered skin
there. It began to heal and she focused, trying to soothe his pain for him as
he breathed heavily in her arms.
The two men stared at her.
The white-haired one spoke first.
“Change of plans. We take her with us. We
need to know what she saw and she might prove useful.” He turned to the man
standing a few feet behind him. “Esher, bring the female.”
The man called Esher cast him a dark
unforgiving look and the strange glow around his pupils brightened but turned a
deeper shade of blue, veering towards stormy grey. “You better not be serious.”
The white-haired man nodded.
Esher’s expression blackened into a scowl.
“You are one cold bastard at times.”
The other one smiled and shrugged.
Was the man cold because he wanted to bring
her, like a captive, or because he had told Esher to handle her?
She could sense his reluctance, a palpable
disgust that he didn’t bother to hide as he rounded her and grabbed her upper
arm. He towered over her, far slimmer than the man slumped against her but just
as lethal in appearance.
The white-haired one pulled her protector
to his feet and settled his arm around his shoulders, supporting him. Esher
dragged her onto her feet too, the force behind his actions almost tearing her
arm from the socket.
He tossed her a grim look.
Megan opened her mouth to unleash the scream
burning up her throat.
Everything spun around her.
ARES is
available from Amazon Kindle, Kobo Books, Barnes and Noble Nook, Apple iBooks
stores and other retailers. Also available in paperback.
Find all the
links, a fantastic 4 chapter downloadable sample of the book, and also enter
the giveaway and be in with a shot of winning a $75, $50 or $25 gift
certificate at her website: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/guardians-of-hades-ares-paranormal-romance-book.php
Books
in the Guardians of Hades paranormal romance series:
Book 2: Valen – Coming in 2017
About Felicity Heaton:
Felicity Heaton is a New York Times and USA Today
international best-selling author writing passionate paranormal romance books.
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, her best-selling Her Angel romance series is for you. If you like
strong, powerful, and dark vampires then try the Vampires Realm romance series
or any of her stand alone vampire romance books. If you’re looking for vampire
romances that are sinful, passionate and erotic then try her Vampire Erotic
Theatre romance series. Or if you like hot-blooded alpha heroes who will let
nothing stand in the way of them claiming their destined woman then try her
Eternal Mates series. It’s packed with sexy heroes in a world populated by
elves, vampires, fae, demons, shifters, and more. If sexy Greek gods with
incredible powers battling to save our world and their home in the Underworld
are more your thing, then be sure to step into the world of Guardians of Hades.
If you want to know more about Felicity,
or want to get in touch, you can find her at the following places:
Website: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/felicityheaton
Twitter: http://twitter.com/felicityheaton
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/felicityheaton
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/felicityheaton/
No comments:
Post a Comment