Lisa Phillips

Excerpt from Obsession Everlasting:

“This place reminds me of the dreams I’ve been having.” The wildflowers and the waves crashing to the shore in the distance, familiar things about a place and a man she didn’t know existed until hours ago.

“Tell me about your dreams, Fallyn.”

“The rain.” Lightning illuminated the forest, the wind flinging leaves from the trees. Thunder rumbled in the distance as she watched fiery fingers claw at the sky. “I can smell it,” she whispered.

“The storm?” He glided a hand through her hair, loosening pins and tresses dark as the night.

“A gentle rain at first, but I can hear it blowing in. I can feel them. The storm and the man I can’t see.” When his hand cupped her cheek, she froze.
His hands, strong and cool against her flushed flesh…

Her gaze met his in the shadows. “We all dream,” he said softly, his thumb lazily tracing her bottom lip. “Most often about what we truly long for, I suppose.”

“I can’t see him. I’m not sure I want to.” She slowly rose, bunching the skirt of the gown in her hands. It was like walking in quicksand, the earth quaking beneath her feet as the thunder boomed overhead. “I should be getting back to the city.” Her heels clicked along the flagstone terrace as she tried to dismiss the senseless panic bubbling up in her chest.

“No.” He caught her before she could get the door open, spinning her in his arms. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. You can’t go.”

“Oh, I think I can. This is all just too creepy. I’m having weird dreams. I feel things…intense, amazing things I’ve never felt before. And then out of the blue the reclusive Simon Clairmont wants me to write an expose on him.”

“Really?” He grinned, his eyes molten cobalt in the dark. “Never before?”

“My imagination is working overtime, that’s all,” she assured herself with a nervous laugh. “And you’re a little weird, Simon.” She tapped a finger to his chest.

He laced her fingers with his. “Do you believe in destiny, Fallyn?” His lips brushed her palm, his teeth grazing the pad of her thumb.

“Yes. No.” She watched the swan disappear into a thicket of reeds. “I don’t know. This place. And you.” Her gaze shifted back to him as she pulled her hand away. “You’re just some harmless, rich eccentric who–”

“I think you know why you’re here.” He caught a dark lock the wind sent flying around her face, twirled it around a finger.

“To get a story,” she said, shaking her head to clear it of ridiculous notions. “I’m here to get a story, but apparently you have other ideas.” Turning on her heel, she marched into the library. “Goodnight, Mr. Clairmont.” The candles sputtered with a gust of wind, the room suddenly pitch black. She couldn’t see her hand in front of her face, but she could feel him behind her. “This isn’t funny, Simon.”

“Close your eyes,” he whispered in her ear.

“I can’t see you.” She reached for him, but he was gone, leaving only a chill rippling over her skin.

“You don’t need to see me.” His voice came from the other side of the room now.

“I’m freaked out enough without you pulling parlor tricks.” She felt for the sofa, falling down onto it. “And by the way, this is not my idea of a good time.”

“Close your eyes, Fallyn.”

She was more curious than scared, so she did as he asked. “Okay, now what?”

“Can you smell the rain?”

His lips brushed hers once, and again. When she reached for him, she caught the heavy air scented with beeswax and smoke. “I can’t see you.”

“Perhaps it’s time you do, love.”

They stood by the pond as the rain danced on the murky water. The wind sang in the trees, the thunder pounding in time with her heart as she opened her eyes. For the first time she saw his face, eyes that held secrets holding hers.

There was no tenderness this time.

His kiss was desperate, ravenous, the helpless sound rising in her throat ending with a moan as the onslaught of feeling swamped her. Her nails pierced the soaked silk of his jacket as his mouth glided over the tops of her breasts, his teeth scraping, his tongue lapping raindrops beading her skin.
Her heart hammered violently, her head spinning with the primal beat. His hands molded her body through wet satin warmed by fevered flesh, his fingers impatiently knotting in the drenched fabric. It shredded, slapping against her hips in tattered sheets. She gasped and shivered even as the heat singed her blood. His eyes, gleaming and greedy, raked over her as the rain splattered her breasts and belly.

Raw, wicked lust licked along her veins as he sucked the tip of one breast into his mouth, his hands shoving fabric from her hips to pool at her feet. Her head fell back with a whimper, his tongue sweeping past her lips as she tried to pull air into her lungs. She sank into another deliciously brutal kiss, fisting his hair in her hands as he held her up to the raging storm. He would devour her.

And she would let him.

His fingers furrowed her thigh, curling under lace and silk to jerk it away, and plunge inside her. He groaned with something akin to torture, his eyes fixed on her face as she cried out, shocked and shuddering. Her body arced with a staggering stab of pleasure as the lightening flashed in her eyes.

Excerpt from Knight Everlasting:

The manor was stacked stone and roughly hewn timber with a sturdy wall circling the entire structure. Meadow and forest stretched beyond those tall walls as far as the eye could see. Stepping into the courtyard, she breathed the scent of rosemary, ran a hand over the neatly groomed hedges of it as she passed. Lavender, chamomile, comfrey, and coltsfoot… A healer’s garden, she decided, as she carefully dodged a rampant cluster of valerian. And peppermint, white sage, wormwood…

There was magic in bloom all around.

“You once asked me what part of Ireland I call home.”

Katie turned, lifted a hand to the sun’s warm rays, and watched Tristan gather kindling from a pile. Scooping a thick log as if it were no more than a pound of flour under one arm, he strode toward the manor. When she stayed rooted in her tracks, he cast a glance over a shoulder as he nodded at the massive wooden door.

“I could use a bit of help, my lady.”

Darting past him, she fumbled with the rusty metal pull until the door finally swung open. Following him inside, she examined the enormous room as he dropped the makings for a fire in front of the huge hearth. Sturdy furniture carved from solid oak was scattered along the stone floor, elegant tapestries covered the soaring walls, and she would bet her immortal soul not a single electrical switch, nor plumbing was to be found.

“Those things had yet to be thought of when this was last a home,” he murmured as he tended a sputtering blaze.

“Just so I know.” She took the candle he offered, and went around the room lighting candelabras as the looming shadows of dusk slanted into the windows. “Am I in your dream, or are you in mine?”

“Does it matter?” He stood, brushed his hands against the denim stretched over his thighs, and watched her set the room aglow.

“Yes.” Placing the candle in a charming pewter lantern, she gingerly closed the lid. “If I’ve happened to haunt your dream, I’d like to try to remember exactly how I did it.”

“You’ve done so for far too long now.” Those somber eyes held hers as the heat wound through her. “My grandfather had it built for my father when he and my mother were betrothed,” he said glancing around. “My father was twelve, and my mother still a babe on her mother’s knee.”

“An arranged marriage.” She nodded as she stepped closer to a tapestry to admire the brilliance of the needlework. “Being royalty would have required a marriage of state.” Smiling at him over a shoulder, she shrugged. “I paid attention in history class now and again.”

“He often said he never meant to love her. It wasn’t even customary. Marriage was an arrangement, business. A profitable one.”

“But, not theirs?”

“It began that way. My clansmen spent generations bloodying land they haggled for like dogs. It was my mother’s father who finally convinced the king perhaps a handfasting in the future was more advisable than watching good men die each day.”

“And so a woman was offered up to end the bloodshed.” She ran a fingertip over the broken spine of a book of sonnets on a table. “Before she even was one.” He went back to busy himself with the fire. “So, tell me how he came to love her.”

His hand stilled on a log. “He had not seen her since she was a girl.” The fire hissed, and sparks danced on the smoky air as he tossed the log. “He returned from a particularly long battle in the north, and was informed by his father the time had come. He and his men were to fetch his bride. There was already talk my grandfather intended to dishonor an agreement that had kept peace between the clans for years. To do so would have meant certain death to him, and the local battles would resume.” He rose, and turned back to her.

“According to my father, it was the same as certain death to him.”

“He loved another,” she deduced.

“No. He loved many others. As often as he could, or so the tale was told.” He chuckled, when Katie rolled her eyes. “And then he saw her. He swore it was as simple as that. No longer a girl, but the woman who would drive any thought of another from the rest of his days.”

“Did she love him?” she asked hopefully.

“Aye,” he replied with a smile. “So much that they promised their children there would be no handfastings in this house born out of anything but love. My sisters went to honorable men who stole their hearts, and not just their father’s gold.” He frowned, and dug his hands into his pockets as he rocked back on his heels. “I did not know Bram’s wife. By the time he had chosen, I had arranged to die on a battlefield as I probably would have anyway.”

“You let them think you were dead?” She was horrified, imagining what it must have been like for them to mourn him.

“Would it have been kinder for my mother to know her son was a monster, for my sisters to fear for their children, or my brother to look upon his with disgust? My father… I was his firstborn, his heir, so like him my mother would say. I could see the pride in his eyes each time he looked at me. I nearly gave my life to see that look in his eyes time and again. And I would have continued to do so. I did so. For all of us.”

Those he loved might not have been savaged by demons in the night, but they were ripped from him just the same. And like her, he still mourned that cruel fate. “Why did you bring me here, Tristan?”

He reached out to thread his fingers through her hair. “You know.” His hand cupped her cheek, smoothed along her throat. “You know what it is like to long for those you love.” His fingertips trailed over her shoulder, along her arm to the tender skin of her wrist. She shivered even as the heat lapped at her cold heart. When his palm met hers, their fingers twined, and locked. “When you close your eyes you see the moors in autumn, smell the fires of Yule, and see the meadows in spring.” Pressing his lips to her forehead, he lifted his other hand to cradle the back of her neck. “And you know there is healing and magic to be found here with summer’s bounty,” he whispered against her lips.

She rose up, and met his first soft, sweet kiss with want and wonder. His mouth glided over hers, tenderly tasting and gently coaxing. She was sucked under a swirl of sensations. She floated on that shimmering ebb and flow until a wild rush of longing banked inside her. When he lifted his head, she opened her eyes.

What she saw in his eyes made her tremble.

“More, a chroi?” He dragged a thumb across her bottom lip, his eyes glinting in the shroud of shadows.

“How chivalrous of you to give the lady a choice, mighty knight.”

Victor’s hushed voice echoed through the manor as the fire smoldered into ashen coals.

 

Excerpt from Rogue Everlasting:

 

A slow, sexy grin crept across his face as Reece offered one of the two chalices he held in his hands. Sidney took it, shifting her gaze to the explosion of climbing roses spilling over the low wall ringing the terrace. Concentrating on shielding her thoughts, she sipped the chalice as the breeze ruffled the fragrant blooms.

“Spying, doc?” He lifted a brow as he watched her over the rim of his cup. When she didn’t reply, he lowered his chalice, and stepped closer. “If it is moonlight and romance you’re after, maybe I can help you out,” he whispered in her ear.

Leaning away from him slightly, she lifted her gaze to his. “I was wondering what Ryder could possibly be thinking,” she replied honestly.

Reece looked out over the lawn as the boy knelt to sprinkle more breadcrumbs onto the water for the swan. “Pretty blonde, who looks at him like he’s a god.” The grin widened. “I can assure you, Sidney, he isn’t thinking. All the blood has left his brain.”

She smiled. “I’m sure you’re right.” Stepping around him, she went to the doors. “Why else would Ryder be so enthralled with Victor’s fledgling?”

The terrace doors clicked closed behind her as the chalice slipped from Reece’s fingers. It clanked to the flagstone as he watched the kid dig his hands into the pockets of his jeans, and stare into the forest. He turned, his eyes colliding with Reece’s just before he stretched out his arms, and took flight over the sprawl of trees.

Reece stepped to the edge of the terrace, dragging both hands through his neatly combed hair. “Damn it, Ryder,” he muttered as his head dropped back onto his shoulders. The moon leered down at him as his gaze searched the black sky. Snatching the chalice from the ground, he flew into the library, and caught her before she could make it out into the hallway. His fingers tightened around her wrist as he pulled Sidney up against him.

“We have two choices,” he hissed as she glared up at him. “We tell the others about this, and risk the whole Montague’s and Capulet’s saga, which I will remind you does not end happily ever after. And the original version doesn’t even include Fallyn.” He lifted a brow. “Or we keep an eye on him, and try to figure out what the hell he’s thinking.”

“I am not going to be a party to this.” She snatched her arm from his grasp. “You want to risk Fallyn finding out we knew, and didn’t tell her?” She shook her head. “Absolutely not.”

“Sidney.” He trailed her out into the hallway. Pinning her against a wall, he pressed his nose to hers. “I know it’s probably a stretch for you, but for just a minute imagine being a teenager. A teenager who thinks you’re in love. A teenager who thinks you’re in love with the very least acceptable option as far as everyone else in your life is concerned.” He nodded his head. “Yeah. It’s gets no better than that, sweetheart.” He glanced down the hallway as she chewed her lip. “We tell him to stay away from her, and her hold on him is that much stronger.”

“Maybe she really cares for him.”

He drew a ragged breath as his gaze met hers again. “What is your gut telling you?”

“Reece, that is no way to way to reach a logical conclusion.”

“All right, let’s look at the facts. According to Ryder she runs with a faction of teenage eternals, who live in some abandoned warehouse, doing odd jobs to support themselves. Her diabolical maker is dead, thank God, and other than said teenage eternals she probably has no one. Except Ryder. Who lives in the manor on the hill with an entire host of doting guardians, one of which is the king of the eternal realm,” he gritted out. “Ryder is a great kid and all, but I’m thinking she has an agenda. Especially as it is Victor’s cold, ruthless, greedy blood running through her veins.”

“Which is all the more reason for us to tell the others,” she insisted.

“Okay.” He stepped back, smoothing his tie over his chest. “We’ll tell them. Katie will break her legs getting to the swords and stakes her mate has piled up in the cellar while Tristan forbids the kid to have anything to do with the girl. You and I can stand back and watch Simon clean up the mess, when Fallyn’s head explodes.” He gave her a chilly smile. “Sound good to you?”