Nestled in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, the beautiful town of Paradise is the perfect place to raise a family, have dinner at the local diner...and chase a ruthless killer.
Jacob Stone is an undercover DEA Agent dead-set on getting vengeance for his sister’s death. When his sources tell him that the drug dealer he’s been searching for will soon be setting up a distribution center in the seemingly innocent town of Paradise, he moves in for the kill.
What Jake wasn’t counting on, however, was falling in love with gorgeous Harmony McKinnon – the ex-wife of the man he was determined to eliminate.
Harmony McKinnon never believed she’d find love again....not after the horrors she lived through with her ex-husband. When she meets secretive Jacob Stone and soon falls in love, she never expected that her life would be in danger again...or that the man she’d come to trust would betray her.
Can Jake make Harmony understand his motives? Can Harmony trust him in spite of the past? Will they have their happily ever after?
Not everything is as it seems in the sleepy, little town of Paradise, Tennessee!
Hard as Stone is the second book in the Passion in Paradise: The Men of the McKinnon Sisters Series, but is a stand-alone novel (165,000 words) that can be easily read without reading the first book.
Safe Version; all rights reserved
Meeting Jake’s eyes as she reached the bottom of the stairs, Harmony felt her heart jump into her. He looked delicious. No, he was beyond delicious, she decided quickly with a slow blink of her eyes.
Jacob Stone was YUMMY with extra emphasis placed on the YUM. Completely freaking edible, her libido sang joyously as her girly parts did a happy little dance beneath her dress.
Dressed in a fitted, collared black dress shirt that clung to his sides and his normal tight fitting jeans, he stood with his legs braced slightly apart, a bouquet of tulips clutched in one manly hand. Tonight, he’d traded the motorcycle boots for tan Justin boots, and he’d obviously shaved his handsome face, leaving only a shadow of his whiskers behind. Swallowing, she forced herself to smile and offer a low, breathless “Hi, Jake,” in greeting.
She could feel his warm gaze caress her as his eyes slowly slid over her face and down her body. Her heartbeat noticeably shifted into overdrive when his hooded eyes seemed to stall over the low bodice covering her breasts before leisurely moving down her legs. Before she realized it, he’d moved to stand in front of her, and even with her standing in heels a step above him, he towered over her.
Licking her lips quickly as she felt his wide palms reach out and grip her hips, pulling her toward him, she stumbled slightly. Bracing her hands against his solid chest, she caught herself against him, enjoying the feel of his muscles jumping beneath her fingertips.
“You look beautiful.” His deep voice rumbled against her ear as he leaned forward and brushed his lips against her cheek. “Glad you decided to let me cook for you tonight. I’d really hate sharing this view with anybody else,” he murmured for her ears alone. “With you in that dress, I’d be beating the men back with a stick and probably spend my night in Zeke’s lockup.”
“I seriously doubt that.” Harmony laughed self-consciously even as she felt herself warm under the glow of his flattery. She wasn’t used to compliments like that. She’d had exactly one serious relationship, and it hadn’t exactly been filled with praise.
“You shouldn’t, darlin’. You’re gorgeous,” Jacob replied, taking a small step back and pulling her off the last step. “These are for you,” he stated, passing her the arrangement of long stemmed tulips.
“Jake, you didn’t need to do that,” Harmony whispered, taking the flowers from him and running a finger over the delicate petals. She loved tulips. Now how did he ever know that?
“When a man gets lucky enough to take a pretty woman like you out for the evening, then he damn well should show up with flowers, Harmony. If he doesn’t, you kick his ass to the curb.”
Sexy Excerpt; all rights reservedHarmony’s fingers curled around the corded tendons in his shoulders, hanging on tightly as his fingertips trailed lower across her quivering abdomen just above the elastic band of her panties. “Jake, hurry” she begged when his fingers merely plucked at the elastic at the waist of her underwear, popping it against her hot skin.
“I feel like I’m unwrapping a gift that I waited my entire life to receive,” he whispered against her breast, nipping a turgid rosy nipple with his teeth and pulling a low whine from his woman’s throat. “Did you really think I wasn’t gonna savor every single minute of this, baby? You’ve kept me hard as stone for weeks, dreaming of having you underneath me in my bed. This isn’t gonna be a hurried little encounter that I’ll let you sweep under the rug after we’re done. Nah, I’m gonna take my sweet time and make damn sure you remember every second in my arms. I’m gonna love you so well that you won’t be able to think of anything but the next time you can crawl in my bed and feel my hands all over this gorgeous body again. I’m gonna make you crave me as much as I do you, Harmony.”
Harmony panted against Jake’s neck as his dark words built a feverish need inside her. She could feel his calloused fingertips sliding down the crease of her thigh, hooking in the gusset of her panties and tugging firmly. She audibly gasped when she heard the thin material rip and tear. “You tore my panties off,” she choked, shocked by his ardor.
“Mmmmm, can’t eat your candy if it’s still in the wrapper, darlin’,” he returned, unworried by her stunned surprise at his action as he blew a heated breath against her stomach. Kissing a path across her belly, he nipped her hip before lifting the slick material he’d torn off her to his nose and deeply inhaling her heady feminine scent. “These panties are soaked with your cream, baby. A man could get high off a smell this sweet. I can’t wait to see how you taste.”
Sarah O'Rourke is the alter ego of two best friends who have taken their passion for romantic fiction and erotica to the publishing world. Born and raised in the southern United States, one lives near Louisville, KY, while the other resides in Atlanta, Georgia. Neither is ever very far from a tall glass of sweet iced tea, their dog-eared copies of Gone With the Wind, or their Steel Magnolias DVDs!
Formerly an accountant and a chemist, they are now overworked, stay-at-home moms who adore their children, their husbands...and writing about love in every way possible!
<
~ Guest Post ~
1) What's your favorite things about writing?
We love the sense of accomplishment that comes from being to take a niggling little thought about a plot line and see it turned into a full-blown novel! And we love to talk to our readers...and we talk and we talk and we talk! (Our readers may get tired of us!)
2) What has inspired you to write? Why?
Originally, when Crazy One started writing, it was stress relief because her husband was deployed in a foreign country. Crazy Two started writing as stress relief from her job. We can both lose ourselves in telling a story...and at least in fiction, we can make the characters do what we want them to do! The people in our real lives don’t listen that well!
3) What's your favorite book?
The tried and true favorite for both of us is Gone With the Wind. Margaret Mitchell wrote an amazing epic and managed to keep multiple characters rolling while never losing sight of her main couple – Rhett and Scarlett. And since Rhett Butler was the epitome of an alpha male, who wouldn’t love it??
4) Favorite Scary movie?
Neither one of us has been really drawn to scary movies, but we hear tell that there are some good ones out there! Crazy Two is a big ol’ scaredy-cat who can’t even watch a creepy TV show at night without getting nightmares. Crazy One just watches the national news and gets horrified. Who needs Hollywood when you’ve got Congress?
5) What made you decide to write the characters that you did?
We write what we know. Our Passion in Paradise series centers around four Southern sisters...and since we’re both Southern-born and Southern-raised, it was easy to develop and write these characters because each of them contains a part of one of us or someone we know. We started the series with Faith’s story, Cain’s Salvation...and seeing as how Cain was serving in Afghanistan at the start of this book, we were able to build on Crazy One’s husband’s military service to tell the story correctly. In Hard as Stone, Harmony has experienced domestic violence, which a lot of Southerners don’t want to talk about. While neither of us have ever had to deal with that, we know people who have and who work with women in this situation. We wanted to share the story in an honest and accurate manner without delving too deeply and opening any wounds that a reader might have, so we did massive research to get it right. It’s not the focus of the book, but it plays a part in who Harmony is and how she responds to her new love, Jake. We’re currently writing the third book in this series, Ready Willing & Abel, and Patience will be dealing with an unexpected surprise...which Crazy Two lived through, also! Again...we try to write what we know!
6) Favorite candy? Anything chocolate. Chocolate drops, chocolate kisses, chocolate candy bars, chocolate bon bons....you name it! Although we might draw the line at chocolate-covered grasshoppers...only if we knew what we were eating, though!
7) What's your least favorite thing about writing and why? Writer’s block! When that crazy block hits, it can literally drive us ‘round the bend! We try everything to move out of it....we storyboard, we round robin, we read other great authors’ works (there are some wicked women writing in the romantica/erotica field right now....go read them!!!)....and we scream and yell at the writing gods for hours! Thankfully, it usually passes and we can get back to hearing the characters’ voices!
Thank you for allowing us to share with your readers! We truly appreciate all that you do to help indie authors like us!
We love the sense of accomplishment that comes from being to take a niggling little thought about a plot line and see it turned into a full-blown novel! And we love to talk to our readers...and we talk and we talk and we talk! (Our readers may get tired of us!)
2) What has inspired you to write? Why?
Originally, when Crazy One started writing, it was stress relief because her husband was deployed in a foreign country. Crazy Two started writing as stress relief from her job. We can both lose ourselves in telling a story...and at least in fiction, we can make the characters do what we want them to do! The people in our real lives don’t listen that well!
3) What's your favorite book?
The tried and true favorite for both of us is Gone With the Wind. Margaret Mitchell wrote an amazing epic and managed to keep multiple characters rolling while never losing sight of her main couple – Rhett and Scarlett. And since Rhett Butler was the epitome of an alpha male, who wouldn’t love it??
4) Favorite Scary movie?
Neither one of us has been really drawn to scary movies, but we hear tell that there are some good ones out there! Crazy Two is a big ol’ scaredy-cat who can’t even watch a creepy TV show at night without getting nightmares. Crazy One just watches the national news and gets horrified. Who needs Hollywood when you’ve got Congress?
5) What made you decide to write the characters that you did?
We write what we know. Our Passion in Paradise series centers around four Southern sisters...and since we’re both Southern-born and Southern-raised, it was easy to develop and write these characters because each of them contains a part of one of us or someone we know. We started the series with Faith’s story, Cain’s Salvation...and seeing as how Cain was serving in Afghanistan at the start of this book, we were able to build on Crazy One’s husband’s military service to tell the story correctly. In Hard as Stone, Harmony has experienced domestic violence, which a lot of Southerners don’t want to talk about. While neither of us have ever had to deal with that, we know people who have and who work with women in this situation. We wanted to share the story in an honest and accurate manner without delving too deeply and opening any wounds that a reader might have, so we did massive research to get it right. It’s not the focus of the book, but it plays a part in who Harmony is and how she responds to her new love, Jake. We’re currently writing the third book in this series, Ready Willing & Abel, and Patience will be dealing with an unexpected surprise...which Crazy Two lived through, also! Again...we try to write what we know!
6) Favorite candy? Anything chocolate. Chocolate drops, chocolate kisses, chocolate candy bars, chocolate bon bons....you name it! Although we might draw the line at chocolate-covered grasshoppers...only if we knew what we were eating, though!
7) What's your least favorite thing about writing and why? Writer’s block! When that crazy block hits, it can literally drive us ‘round the bend! We try everything to move out of it....we storyboard, we round robin, we read other great authors’ works (there are some wicked women writing in the romantica/erotica field right now....go read them!!!)....and we scream and yell at the writing gods for hours! Thankfully, it usually passes and we can get back to hearing the characters’ voices!
Thank you for allowing us to share with your readers! We truly appreciate all that you do to help indie authors like us!
HOSTED BY:
Thanks so much for hosting us today on your site and for sharing about Hard as Stone! We appreciate all that you do to help indies like us! :)
ReplyDelete