This weeks 56 comes from the book Moonlight Warrior by Janet Chapman. Another one of those To Be Read books.

Kenzie stepped closer. “I only promised to help you lift the old hag’s curse and become a man again, Killkenny. I never said anything about your being alive when it happens.”

About the Friday 56

• Grab the book nearest you. Right now
• Turn to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog.
• Post a link along with your post back to this blog.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Now its you turn! Grab a book and post your 56. If you don’t have a blog, just post yours in the comments.

(I saw the Friday 56 over at Shiloh Walker’s blog. Be sure to visit and read her 56.)

All material &copy2005-2012 to Lily Graison

All material &copy2005-2012 to Lily Graison

All material &copy2005-2012 to Lily Graison

I’ve something a bit different today for our Tuesday Teaser. This story was originally part of Whiskey Creek Press’ “Torrid Teasers” line way back in 2007, which were erotic stories under 8,000 words. Since the story is no longer under contract, I’m offering it FREE on my website and I thought I’d post a teaser for those who haven’t read it yet. It’s perfect for today as the story takes place on Valentines Day!

(WARNING! This is straight up erotica, people. The subject matter also deals with infidelity and not everyone’s cup of tea so, you’ve been warned!)

Elizabeth Collins is determined to get out of the small town she grew up in and marrying David will make those dreams a reality. But when her oldest, dearest friend, who just happens to be the man who has set her nights on fire with passion unlike anything she’s ever felt, seduces her only minutes before she says “I Do,” doubt plagues her mind and forces her to imagine what life without him, and his sensual touch, would mean.

Jason Lowery has one chance left. He won’t let Liz go without a fight and he’s determined to show her how good they can be together, if she’d just stop being so pig-headed about it. He’ll prove to her he’s the only man she’s meant to be with one way or another.

“Why him, Liz?” Jason finally asked, his voice laced with bitterness. “Is it because I don’t have his money? Wealth won’t make you happy.”

“And you can?” she asked sarcastically. “You’re just an ignorant farm boy, Jason. You don’t know anything about what it takes to make me happy.”

“You’re not in love with him.”

“And how do you know that?” she snapped.

He stared at her reflection, meeting her gaze with deep longing. “Because…I can see it every time you look at me.”

Liz’s features softened at his words. She wished, yet again, he wasn’t right. “Maybe love isn’t every thing.”

“You know that’s not true.” He pushed his weight off the door and moved slowly across the room toward her.

Liz’s heart nearly beat through her chest watching his progression in the mirror. His jet-black hair appeared almost blue in the light from the windows. Those high cheekbones and deep green eyes gave him a look straight from the pages of some high fashion magazine. He appeared more at home in the big city than she did. Just seeing him like this caused a nervous tremble in the pit of her stomach.

Jason had to be the most beautiful man she’d ever seen, and yes, she loved him, but love wasn’t enough—not for her.

She wanted more than wide-open fields and the dirty back roads of Lincoln County. Her dreams were full of bright lights and fine things. She couldn’t get those things at home. Living in a small, one-stop-light town, with its dull scenery wasn’t for her. Lack of entertainment had always made her long for something else and getting out of there had been her dream since age ten.

Of course, getting over Jason Lowery would take time, but a determined soul always won, right? Being in love didn’t make you happy. People got married all the time and weren’t in love. If they could do it, so could she.

Focusing her attention on Jason’s face in the mirror, his intense expression sent a chill up her spine. She’d seen that look so many times she’d memorized it. It caused her knees to go weak.

He stopped behind her. His fingers brushed against the back of her arm and the tingles spread through her limbs in an instant.

“He will never love you like I do, Lizzy.”

The words were whispered across her cheek. The warmth of his breath a slow trickle against her skin, before his lips danced across her flesh to rest on the sensitive area just below her ear.

Liz closed her eyes. Her breaths coming quicker as every thought left her except for the way he made her feel. That instant lust…the rush of heat as it swam through her body, leaving her dizzy.

His touch always excited her.

The first boy she’d ever kissed had been Jason. He was her first serious crush, her first lover. He taught her everything she knew about pleasures of the flesh. He relished the knowledge that he could make her scream with the slightest touch. Hours of ecstasy were spent learning the joys of sex by his talented hands and body.

The memories of their time together filled her with regret, knowing she’d be forever denied his attention. He was her first love—and she his—now, as he seductively sucked her earlobe into his mouth, Liz knew he’d never give up until he was her first everything. “It’s my wedding day, Jason. It’s too late for us,” she whispered helplessly.

“It’s our day, Liz. Valentines Day. Don’t you remember?”

She did remember. Valentines Day had always been his. Their first kiss had been while standing under a dozen paper hearts at a high school dance. Exactly one year to the day, he’d made love to her. Every Valentines Day since had been his. Ever since she’d been sixteen. And now, she was giving his day to another man. One she didn’t even love.

“It’s never too late. All you have to do is turn around, walk out the front door—and leave with me.”

Liz sighed as he looked up at her, his eyes full of hope and determination. For the first time since leaving Lincoln, she hated telling him ‘no’, but heard herself saying, “I can’t, Jason. You’ve known from day one I would find a way out of there. And I have. Can’t you just be happy for me? I want more.”

“You mean, you want more than I can give you.”

Liz felt her heart breaking at the expression on his face. She looked away. She didn’t have the strength to hurt him while his gaze was so pleading. Why couldn’t he understand? She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life in Lincoln. She wanted more.

His arms suddenly wrapped around her and strong fingers cupped both her breast through the delicate fabric of her gown.

Liz gasped before she met his gaze in the mirror. The strapless gown barely held her ample breasts in place and it only took a small tug from Jason to release them from the confines of her dress.

His hands palmed her flesh, squeezing, before he lightly pinched her nipples. “Tell me he can make you feel like this,” his voice broke with huskiness. “Tell me he makes your body tremble with just a touch. He can’t make you feel the way I can.”

Liz stared at his face in the mirror, watching him smile at her before once again turning his attention to her neck. The feel of his tongue laving her skin sent a shock through her. The wave of heat that followed flowed through her veins. That slow, steady stream of pulsations caused her vaginal muscles to tighten.

She came alive as his hands lightly pinched her erect nipples, making the soft skin turn pink before she heard a moan. She sighed when she realized she had made the sound. He’d had just proved his point.

“Please don’t do this, Jason. I want the things David can offer me more than anything. Can’t you just let me be happy?”

He lifted his head, anger evident in his eyes.

Liz was shocked when he reached for her face, turning her head to him and plundering her mouth with his own. His teeth bit at her lips, his tongue pushing its way inside her mouth. His arm wrapped around her was the only thing keeping her from falling.

The same white-hot need she usually felt when he touched her surged through her body. She automatically responded to the kiss. Her arm rose, wrapping around the back of his neck and pulling him closer to her as his hands deliciously stroked her flesh. The delicate prickling crawling across her skin made her weak with desire. She found herself being carried away by the sensations he elicited. The tiny tingles racing up her spine and dancing along her veins ignited every nerve ending in her body before she moaned again.

The thought of someone walking through the door finally tickled her mind, but the feel of his hands and his hot mouth pushed them away.

Jason always had a way of making everything seem okay. Apparently fooling around with him on her wedding day was no exception.

Liz barely felt him pulling the material of her dress up, but as his hands touched the bare skin of her thigh, the pulsing sensations radiating from her core intensified and she gasped for breath as she broke the kiss. “Jason.” Her words were a soft murmur as his fingers swept across the fabric of her panties before delving inside the satin.

“Don’t say anything,” Jason whispered. “Just let me show you.”

Read this book for FREE at my Lily Graison Yahoo Group

All material &copy2005-2012 to Lily Graison

All material &copy2005-2012 to Lily Graison

This weeks 56 comes from the book Knights by Linda Lael Miller. One of the rare sub-genres she’s written over the years as she mainly writes westerns.

Others may have taken that last remark for presumption, under the circumstances, but Gloriana received it with warmth. The girl was far from home, in a strange country, and of a timid countenance, clearly anxious and frightened. To spurn her offer of friendship would be cruel, to blame her for invoking Kenbrook’s lust, unfair.

About the Friday 56

• Grab the book nearest you. Right now
• Turn to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog.
• Post a link along with your post back to this blog.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Now its you turn! Grab a book and post your 56. If you don’t have a blog, just post yours in the comments.

(I saw the Friday 56 over at Shiloh Walker’s blog. Be sure to visit and read her 56.)

All material &copy2005-2012 to Lily Graison

1. Laying by the pool with a book in my hand.
2. Wearing Flip-Flops!
3. Trips to the Beach.
4. Backyard BBQ’s.
5. Pool Parties.
6. The smell of tanning lotion.
7. Listening to the Cicada’s while watching the stars.
8. Lounging on the back deck while sipping an ice cold sweet tea.
9. Playing outside in the sun – (I hate being cooped up in the house!).
10. The County Fair and Home Town Parades.
11. Watermellon after an extremely hot day.
12. Tanning away the ‘winter white’.
13. And the thing I love MOST about summer…It’s NOT COLD!!!

All material &copy2005-2012 to Lily Graison

I don’t usually talk much about ‘me’ or my writing process because frankly, I don’t think readers would find it very interesting. They’re here for the books I write and probably don’t care much about my daily routine but I had a reader, Regan, ask me last week, over on Facebook, where I came up with my ideas for stories and since I started the Writer Wednesday feature to talk about my writing progress from the previous week, I figured this was a good time to get into my writing process since I was asked specifically for it.

Most of my stories are nothing more than a desire to ‘read something’ I either can’t find or want more of. The Willow Creek series came about for this very reason. I LOVE westerns, historical more than contemporary’s, and I’ve devoured all I can find. Some leave me wanting more while others, I think I would have been better off not even reading.

My desire for more cowboys led my muse into fantasizing…and the distinct vision of an outlaw popped into my head. An outlaw who kidnaps a girl, falls in love with her and… well, you’ll just have to read my upcoming book, The Outlaw, to see where my thoughts went after that.

I knew when I had the idea that one story wouldn’t be enough so, I thought my Outlaw should have a brother, one completely opposite from him. The Lawman. More siblings joined in and I had an entire family, each brother as different from the next as one could get and a father who was afflicted with something no one knew how to cure. I imaged the town they were from, what the air smelled like and saw the mountains rising in the distance.

The stories came to me quickly, the plots screeching through my head so fast, I had a hard time getting them down quick enough. When all was said and done, I had 4 stories, fleshed out inside my head with tons of scribbled notes.

I also had the beginnings of another story, set in the same town, with a new set of characters. That story originally, would have been first. An introduction to the town, but halfway through the story, I knew it would be too long. It was a novel and those characters needed time to flesh out their story without having to stop and create my fictional town so readers could see it in their mind. That could be done in the novellas, in small pieces, so His Brother’s Wife will be book 5.

My other stories came about in the same way. The Night Breeds series, my paranormal romances, was a thought after reading a paranormal series years ago. In that author’s world, everyone knew vampires and shifters were real, and I wondered then, what did all those people ‘do’ when they found out? How did they react? Who was the first vampire/shifter to make himself known?

The idea was born from no more than those 3 questions. What would the world do if they woke one morning to find out the world of the supernatural existed? That the tales of monsters weren’t stories just to scare children, but were real. That the monsters were real. I set the stage for those questions to be answered in the first 2 books of the Night Breed series, The Calling and The Gathering, and we’ll explore the ramifications in book 3 and 4, which I’ll begin writing later this year.

Other stories weren’t so ‘deep’ in the planning. Most of the time, its just a ‘what if’ scenario. What if you’ve dreamed of a man your entire life then saw him one day, in the flesh? And what if he’s been dreaming of you, too? I explore those ‘what ifs’ in the book, Destined Hearts, which was the first original story I ever tried to write. It took me 3 years to complete and is one of my favorites. It’s not an overly ‘sexy’ book like most of my others are but its more of a classic love story filled with romance and a hero who gives up everything to have the girl of his dreams.

A Touch of Heaven was nothing more than a naughty mind wanting a little adventure and what better place than a male strip club? *grin* But seeing men strip isn’t much of a story so… what if the man you’d been ogling was actually the nerdy geek you teased in high school? He’s not a nerd now and he’s out to prove it, one sexy dance at a time!

I don’t know of any writer who doesn’t have several dozen story ideas just waiting to be written. I do. I even have a handful of stories already started that stalled for one reason or another, two of those totally 40,000 words. I’ll get back to them one of these days but in the meantime, I’ll work with what I have and hope my readers follow along on my journey.

There’s always a story whispering itself to me and it doesn’t take much to trigger another. A conversation or picture can lead to a simple What If and before you know it, the muse, Benny, is screeching through my head, demanding I stop what I’m doing to jot down some notes. Too bad he’s not happy after that. He’s always eager to start writing and pitches a fit when I don’t. He’ll get over it though. He always does.

So, there’s my ‘process’ for creating new stories. If you have a question you’d like answered, leave it in the comments and I’ll tackle it on Writer Wednesday someday in the future!

Until next time,
Lily

All material &copy2005-2012 to Lily Graison