Release Blitz: A Leap in the Dark by Layla Wolfe
Title: A Leap in the Dark
Series: Assassins of Youth MC #2
Author: Layla Wolfe
Genre: MC Romance
Release Date: March 7, 2016
PRAISE FOR A LEAP IN THE DARK
"I look forward to the next in the
series. Congratulations to Layla. In my opinion, this was her best
book." ~ Kaz, Triple Bs Book Blog
"Absolutely brilliant read and i
can't wait to see what comes next and whether the Assassins will
manage to take down the fundies!!" ~ Booklover, One Click
Aholics
"I LOVED A Leap in the Dark. And,
now I can’t wait for the next book in this series." ~
Tanya, Tasty Wordgasms
Kiss slowly. Play hard.
Oaklyn: That arrogant,
loathsome bastard had the nerve to move to Avalanche. Levon left
behind his empire of sleaze to invade the tiny, sleepy town I’d
decided to call home. I wanted to get away from smut and abuse and
into a fresh, innocent place where nobody knew my name, only to be
followed right into my very house by the King of Corruption
himself.
I could handle it if he was physically
gruesome. But he struts around with his muscles bulging and his
cornflower blue eyes sparkling. I’m a nurse, a practical, sensible
gal. But when Levon needs my help, I put away my pride and come
running. And he’s going to need a lot of help to go up against the
dirtbag Avalanche mayor, blackmailing him with his shameful
past.
Levon: She’s proud, conceited, and
holier-than-thou, everything I hate in a woman. But maybe it’s been
too long since I had one, because when she steps up to the plate to
help me, I’m doomed. I had to knock her down a few pegs once she
knew I wanted her. Joining the Assassins of Youth motorcycle club and
giving Oaklyn a few sessions over my knee just seemed to increase her
yearning, though.
She’s a sizzling hot tornado of a
woman. I need her to fight back against the fucking corrupt
politicians in this town we’re trying to transform. I might have
come from a sordid, disgraceful background. But I’m determined to
move into the light and the purity that will make this town great.
Publisher’s Note: This is a
full-length, standalone novel with a HEA and no cliffhanger. Possible
triggers include male prostitution, sexual abuse, gun running, and
crooked municipal blackmail.
“My parents, along with almost every
other Lost Boys’ parents. Every parent who threw their son to the
wolves. This is why a lot of us learn to feel no emotion. I’m
usually pretty emotionless, which is why I’m thinking maybe I can
deal with Gideon’s work inside the compound. Yesterday I had to
face this Parley Pipkin assbite who was one of the men in on the
ass-kicking I received from Zelpha Pratt’s dad. Like it takes ten
men to kick the ass of one teenager. I did all right, staring him in
the fucking face.”
“You refrained from shooting him,
anyway. That’s admirable.”
I hadn’t told anyone other than
Gideon about Ladell Pratt yet. Deloy probably suspected that he was
one of my tormentors, but was polite enough not to bring it up.
“Fifteen years of controlling my emotions has taught me well.
That’s why I like your scientific way of looking at things. We have
more in common than you might suspect. Emotion is a defect in a
perfectly logical machine.”
“No, no, not at all,” she cried,
loud enough for Nana to hear. I moved closer to her, taking her by
the upper arms to guide her into the shadows of the kitchen wall,
farther from Nana’s bedroom. “Reason alone, without human
emotion, has created more wretchedness than a zealot’s crusade.”
“You haven’t lived in Cornucopia.”
“Watching a Shakespeare performance
informs us more about the nature of jealousy, how it can infiltrate a
man’s life and ruin his marriage, than any textbook ever could.
Harriet Beecher Stowe helped rouse society against slavery more
powerfully than any spreadsheet. Dickens did more to prevent child
abuse and institutional atrocity than any welfare society report.”
I had to agree with her, because
literature had replaced emotion in my life. I could feel through
works of art, music, and writing. I allowed myself to feel outrage
and indignation on their behalf—maybe because they were “made up”
works of art, and somewhat remotely removed from my own carefully
guarded cage of feelings. “Well, yes. Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ is
still played in about five hundred languages in ten billion elevators
throughout the world. I’m sure it’s managed to soothe many a
savage beast. The photo of the napalmed Vietnamese girl or Dorothea
Lange’s Dust Bowl photos still resonate in people’s hearts.
Oaklyn, you don’t need to convince me. I feel deeply through
others’ creations. It’s just my real life where I have trouble
knowing how to feel.”
“And that’s where you’ll miss
out. You have to feel direct confrontations with people. There’s no
sense in having pity for people if you’re being ruled by
performance and profit. There’s no point in being charitable if
you’re really not experiencing the compassion directly like a stab
to your heart. I have a shitty boyfriend, I’ll be the first to
admit that. But at least we have passion. We fight with passionate
anger in our hearts.”
“That’s useless to me,” I said.
It sounded heartless even as I said it. When had I become such a
callous, insensitive jerk? “I’ve had no close relationships with
anyone in my life—ever. Not since Zelpha Pratt.”
“You mean romantic. But you love your
men.”
I stood tall and proud. “I love my
men like a protective mother hen. But passion with a woman? Nothing.
At least you have that with your idiotic boyfriend.” It irritated
me that she had even an idiotic boyfriend. I’d grown close to her
the past week, strange to say. We sort of fit together like hand in
glove, though I knew she loathed me for my business practices. I was
used to that. I’d been denounced for my field of work for a long
time now. It was only because we serviced such a large denomination
of pious men and women in the community that no one had harassed us
to move.
She said, “Decisions such as whom to
fall in love with, how to discipline a teenager, which beloved things
to sacrifice, which dreams to follow or abandon—all of these
choices should be made with emotion ruling, not wiped out and
deadened by your logical thinking. If I let myself be ruled by logic,
I’d never have hooked up with my worthless Italian boyfriend.”
“And that’s a good thing?” I
scoffed.
She shrugged. “I’m actually trying
to get rid of him. Emotion keeps drawing me back to him. But you see
what I mean? You’re missing out on such a broad array of human
experiences if you don’t go through any of those things.”
I was getting riled, maybe with the
more Jim Beam I drank. “You don’t understand. I was kicked out of
the bosom of my family. I was told that I was a thing, a bother, an
inconvenience. I was a miniscule number in a perpetual multitude of
numbers—an ‘it,’ not even an ‘I.’”
She folded her hands in front of her
soberly, though she had drank as much as I had. “I understand. You
won’t let yourself feel because that would dredge up all those
angry, bitter feelings.”
“But I am angry and bitter! ‘Angry
and Bitter’ is my middle name! It washes over me time and time
again, trapping me in my bitterness, my rage, my inability to even
remotely forgive anyone connected to that incident.”
“You have to learn to forgive, Levon,
or else you can’t move on. Don’t you want to marry and have a
regular wife? One that wasn’t chosen for you by some moldy old
elders? Don’t you want to feel regular, normal passion and love for
a woman—a woman you chose yourself?”
I don’t know what the fuck came over
me. All at once, I knew I had something to prove to Oaklyn. Suddenly
her waist under the furry jacket looked so small, so fragile, like
she needed my big hands around it. When I grabbed her, she jumped, as
though I was going to hurt her. She held onto my forearms as I lifted
her onto the deck railing. She was so fucking light, with bones like
a little bird! I parted her thighs with my massive ones, feeling like
an ancient tree next to a swaying birch. I touched the tip of my nose
to hers, and she didn’t try to pull away.
“I might not know romantic feelings,”
I murmured, “but I know that sex can masquerade for emotions of
that type.”
And I kissed her.
I gave it my all, letting my usual rage
and indignation stand in for passion. I bit her pouty, full lips over
and over again until I felt the breath of her sighs against my mouth.
Her entire body did a full melt, and she even wrapped her ankles
around the back of my knees.
Something happened during that wild
kiss. My asshole self, who had never even really felt a passionate
sexual urge—it was strictly business with all of us—began to cave
in. Just like Oaklyn was folding up, dissolving like a sinkhole
beneath my onslaught. Some of the walls I’d built up carefully over
fifteen years began to dissolve. I could almost feel it, at the edges
of my awareness, like a curtain someone was lifting on the two of us.
Like a spotlight shining on us coupling
there on the deck railing, I began to feel like the star of our show.
Only there were two of us, because it wasn’t just me performing
like a trained seal. This was a woman who wasn’t my client. I was
voluntarily licking her lips of my own free will. My cock was
burgeoning, swelling against the wood railing, just an inch from her
pussy. It made a giant tent in the loose lounging pants I wore, but I
wasn’t embarrassed. Real feelings rushed through my lungs. Every
breath I snorted against her cheek, every intake of air was like
breathing true, real emotion.
I didn’t hate Oaklyn. I sort of even
liked her.
My hands moved up her ribcage, felt her
bony shoulders, cradled her strong jaw. Of course I never kissed
clients, so I hadn’t kissed a woman in a year, maybe even two. It
just wasn’t in my wheelhouse—I didn’t have the time. So feeling
the true, hot, aroused sensuality of a woman beneath my very palms,
well, it was a fucking turn-on.
But I knew I had to break away. I was
good at doing that.
“There,” I panted triumphantly, as
if I’d just solved some equation on a whiteboard. Oaklyn looked at
me wide-eyed with wonder, her lower lip shining as though stung by a
bee. She clearly didn’t know what to say or maybe even how to feel,
so I helped her out. “How’s that for emotional turmoil?”
I was going to stalk off jubilantly,
but Oaklyn beat me to it.
She leaped from the railing, shoving me
out of the way. She stormed off for a few steps, but then thought
better of it, and twirled back to face me. “You! Levon Rockwell.
You’re the most infuriating, contrary man on the face of the
planet!”
Then she stormed off. I saw her go into
the kitchen and grab the bottle of Jim Beam off the counter without
missing a beat, then continue to her room.
Infuriating. I liked that. It meant I
was getting to her.
Then I wondered why I wanted to get to
her.
Bestselling author Layla Wolfe likes to
bring you alpha males--sometimes two at a time--and the kick-ass
women who love them. Her BARE BONES MC series explores the dark,
disturbing life of the biker club in Arizona. Her spinoff series THE
BENT ZEALOTS MC is a gritty MM saga. She is currently at work on Book
One of THE ASSASSINS OF YOUTH MC, another spinoff set in Utah.
Layla Wolfe is the pen name of
multi-published erotic romance author Karen Mercury.
Comments
Post a Comment