© 2010 by Monica Conti

Chiara stood by the window watching the people moving along W. Peachtree as she sipped her coffee and thought about the day ahead. Her raven hair was swept off her face and fell in waves around high cheekbones. The tips of that luxuriant mane grazed the tops of her shoulders. That morning she had chosen a turquoise turtleneck sweater that fit her beautifully slim torso and gently hugged her breasts. Black trousers hung low on her hips and clung to her bottom as though the material had been painted on her. Chiara felt that too many career women imitated men in their choice of dress. She saw no reason to drape herself in curve killing pinstripes.
Chiara Bianchi had arresting, dark brown eyes. When she gazed at anyone, she had a way of making them feel as though she were looking deep into them, not just at them, but inside their being. That she stood out wherever she went was due to no special effort on her part. Her beauty and Italian heritage gave her an aura of intrigue. Most of the denizens of Atlanta found her worthy of attention. And, if her accent and beauty weren’t enough to make them notice, then her unconventional sense of style was.
Even though the letterhead of the firm of Smith, Weinstein & Brooks did not yet bear her name, Chiara felt the firm’s offices were her domain. She pretty much lived and breathed her career and years of hard work had advanced her to junior partner status but there was one last rung to climb. Each morning, she would stand in the same spot. Her eyes were on the sun rising over the distant skyline but her mind was busy ordering the day ahead. Whether she had a court appearance or a brief to work on, she was diligent and thorough.
Chiara was a worthy adversary in the courtroom and not one that prosecutors looked forward to seeing across from them at the defense table.
 

As she turned away from the window that morning she had a lot on her mind. She was undertaking the biggest criminal trial she had ever been given. If she won it, she could expect to make full partner. A pursuit of success and power was the hypnotic underpinning that kept her centered as a woman and as a lawyer.
The case involved Jack Shay, the proprietor of the largest and most well-frequented gentleman’s club in Atlanta—Club Vanity Fair.
The indictment charged Shay with racketeering and the illegal operation of a prostitution ring on the premises of the club. They were alleging serious connections to organized crime. It was a nice juicy, high profile scandal. The prosecutor saw a chance for some sweet political headlines and he had people lined up around the block to testify against Shay. Everyone in Atlanta figured he was guilty.
Most anyone in Atlanta with deep pockets called Peter Smith’s firm when they found themselves in hot water. But the most senior of the partners had not been eager to defend Shay. It seemed like a lost cause and losing a case that was getting so much publicity wouldn’t help their reputation. But there were two good reasons for him to help Shay in spite of his reservations. One, the fee would be large and there was a second incentive. Some years back there had been an unfortunate mishap. He and a few cronies had at times availed themselves of the services of some of Shay’s classier girls.

One night things had sort of gotten out of hand with one of those girls. Everything had been taken care of. It was pretty much ancient history but with them busy digging a hole to bury Shay in who knew what old skeletons might be unearthed. If the firm took the defense he would be in a better position to do some damage control if by some fluke it became necessary.
None of the partners wanted it. They felt it was an unwinnable bet and who needed an addition to their loss column. Also it had the smell of outside underworld influence written all over it. So Smith passed it off to Chiara. She was hungry and he was sure she was able enough to at least put up a good show. The prosecution would be painting Shay as a victimizer of women so having a woman at the defense table made sense.
As word circulated within the firm it became a sort of whispered joke. Her male colleagues were sure that the high and mighty Miss Chiara Bianchi would lose the trial and be one step closer to leaving. Oddly enough it was the very fact of her attractiveness that had brought about such secret animosity.
Chiara had initially been admired by all the firm’s male lawyers, but their admiration was more for her beauty and exoticism than for her skill as a lawyer. But after getting nowhere near her bedroom resentment had replaced admiration. She became known as the Ice Queen behind her back. Her defeat would provide some satisfaction for their bruised egos.
It was true that Chiara had steadfastly refused all of their seductive overtures. But she’d rejected them kindly. Chiara was not cruel to them or rude. In fact, she was femininely polite in the extreme way that Italian women tend to be. She was always respectful to her male counterparts.
In many ways, despite her career accomplishments she was traditionally feminine outwardly. She even volunteered to serve the coffee or tea at meetings. And, she never indicated any displeasure when she saw the men sizing her up physically during intra-office gatherings or at firm outings.
She had been raised by a second generation Italian-American mother and had been brought up to show respect for men. So, it came naturally for her to do so. The problem was that the men misinterpreted this behavior as meaning that she might want something more than office politesse.
In thinking she was interested in men in any way other than professionally, they had always been wrong. Chiara was a lesbian. Her personal choice was to remain in the closet. To her mind she had no alternative if she wanted to succeed as a lawyer in such a very old-school Atlanta firm.
However, being closeted had merely solved one problem by creating another. The men took her rejection of them to heart and their resentment toward her grew, as both a woman and an attorney.
Chiara had naturally become aware of this but there was little she could do beyond always maintaining her composure. The conflict was unavoidable. She was absolutely gorgeous to look at and though she tried and mostly succeeded at keeping suitors at bay with the kindest refusals, she had an allure that was bound to lead her into difficulty.
At the moment, she didn’t have time to consider any of this or what she was missing in her life. Her thoughts were consumed with a search for some angle that could be brought to Jack Shay’s defense.
She knew that Shay was guilty as sin. From the moment Peter Smith had tossed the case in her lap she had spent night, day and every waking millisecond on it. She didn’t care about his guilt. What she cared about as a seasoned defense attorney was getting him a fair trial. And winning it despite the odds against her!
Chiara had been schooled by some of the best and brightest lawyers at Harvard and she knew what it took to win a tough case. The key would be microscopic focus. There had to be a flaw somewhere she just had to prove she could find it.
On her initial meeting with Jack Shay, they were both sizing each other up. Chiara took one look at him and saw him for a sleazy purveyor of flesh. For his part, he seemed more than a little doubtful of her ability to defend him successfully. Chiara quickly pointed out to him that having a woman in his corner when he was accused of prostituting women was actually a huge advantage. In the end he had to concur. The bottom line for Chiara was that her personal opinion of Jack Shay was immaterial. Giving him anything less than the best defense she could muster would be unethical.
 

Her head might be filled with thoughts of nothing but Jack Shay and Club Vanity Fair. But, at night sometimes, when all was quiet in her large home on E. Paces Ferry, private musings intruded. She would stare out across the pine-tree strewn backyard and listen to the night-birds singing. Her success had earned her a lovely home but she felt deeply lonely at these moments and wished she had someone to share all of it with.
She had been single for a year now. Her longtime lover Helen had gone back to Boston where they had met during Chiara’s stint as a law student.
Helen had left because she had felt too often ignored. She’d been angry because Chiara spent all her time at the firm and she had also resented being in the closet with her there in the conservative and deeply-religious south.
Though they had loved each other a great deal, Helen had been unable to reconcile herself to being relegated to the home and never sharing time outside of it with her lover.
Chiara had not known how to change anything, though she had wanted to do so. It was too late now. Helen was already with another woman, a painter named Sharon Blackamoor, living in a quaint house with an ocean view and two dogs.
So on the dark evenings when Chiara was alone in her big empty white house with its grand portico and Doric columns, she felt yearnings for love, yearnings for pleasure, for eroticism.
There was no outlet for her. Torturing herself was pointless so she put even more of her energy into the career that had created those evening voids, always postponing her deeper desires and repressing any overwhelming longings. It was sad and a loss…both for her and for some special woman somewhere with whom she could have shared love had she felt free to live more honestly and more truly.
She justified the situation by telling herself that the time was not right for deeper living yet. At least, that is what she tried to convince herself of.
 

Out of the blue, Helen called one Sunday morning and asked Chiara if they might meet in New York for a showing of some recently unveiled Mapplethorpe photographs at the Modern. Chiara was surprised but also happy. The approaching trial made her hesitate but then she decided a break could actually help. If she could clear her head a fresh approach might present itself.
She had missed Helen horribly and longed to see her again. They had a rich history together and it was one that they both still valued. Circumstances more than anything else had separated them, not a lack of love or desire for one another.
Chiara agreed to meet her and they decided to share a room at the Omni Berkshire on E. 52^nd Street. They had stayed there before and both liked its convenience as well as its simple elegance.
Chiara arrived Friday night and found out at the desk that Helen had already checked into the room.
She quietly opened the room with her key card. Helen was lying on the bed with her honey colored hair down. Her soft brown eyes filled with familiar desire when she saw Chiara.
Helen arose from the bed and took Chiara’s hands, bringing them to her lips and kissing the inner palms softly and erotically. Chiara uttered a moan.
No words were exchanged between the two women. There was no need for words. They fell into each other’s arms and began kissing as though it had been an eternity since either of them had shared kisses with another living being. Such was the case for Chiara, if not for Helen. Still, she had missed Chiara’s soft full lips and the way her warm, knowing tongue always moved inside her mouth, caressing her tongue and driving her toward ecstasy.
Chiara pulled at Helen’s raw silk shirt and accidentally tore it. Helen didn’t care at all and helped her finish ripping it off. The shirt dropped to the floor and Chiara fell upon Helen’s ripe, full breasts. Her nipples, reddened and hardened with desire, were ripe for Chiara’s mouth.
She caressed Helen’s breasts and sighed loudly as she moved her hands down to seek her lost lover’s sex.
She yanked the skirt off her and found, as in the past, that she wore no panties. Her fingers probed the crease of the sex, smelling it in the room, feeling Helen’s body tense with desire as she parted Helen’s lips. She continued kissing her with deep penetrating tongue strokes.
She entered her sex then, with two fingers inside that gorgeous mound. Helen’s nether lips were wetter than she ever remembered them in the past and she pushed in and out of her cunt harder and faster, the sound of her palm hitting the hot pussy loud in the room.
She pushed her down on the bed and told her: “Spread your legs, Helen.”
Helen obeyed her, and Chiara rose above her, moving her ex-lover’s thighs open roughly and wider. She pushed two fingers in her pussy and one inside her beautiful ass and slapped at her clit with her palm as she fingered her harder.
Chiara mounted her then, riding her with her own mound behind her palm as she fingered Helen’s sweet, hot cunt. The back of her hand was pressing against her own clit, and she was on the verge of orgasm herself when Helen raised her hips up off the bed, rotated them in a semicircle and came so hard that she nearly collapsed. Chiara held tight to her hips and rode the orgasm to its completion. She too came with a deep feeling of bliss radiating out from her clit and filling her entirely with pleasure.
They both felt such intense relief to finally touch again after so long apart. It didn’t matter that they had moved on with their lives. It didn’t matter to Chiara that Helen found another lover. Somehow they still had a bond.
They ordered room service that night and stayed up late watching old movies until they fell asleep in one another’s arms.
Chiara awoke in the morning to find herself alone. Helen’s things were gone. She found a note left on the desk written in a familiar and elegant scrawl,
“I’m sorry, C. I just couldn’t stay. Last night was beautiful. I’ll never forget it but I have to go back to Sharon. She’ll be devastated otherwise. I love you always,
Helen.”
This would have been a perfect time to fall apart if Chiara were a lesser woman, but she took it in the same composed way she took most things. She was simply happy they’d been able to find pleasure once more together, even if this truly signified that it was finally over between them.
She went back to Atlanta on a red-eye Delta flight. Her mind had already returned to the case ahead. Though she was forlorn and deeply sad, she was resigned. The scent of Helen’s perfume was still on the jacket she was wearing that morning but once it faded…there would be only the memory of one last night in a hotel room.

He watched in dazed bewilderment as she stepped forward, her chestnut mane streaming loose and unpinned to the middle of her back. James swallowed. She could have been an angel dressed in the flimsy white nightdress, but he knew better. To him, she was a temptress in disguise.

His desire rose swiftly and violently, clamoring inside him like a volcano on the verge of eruption. Despite the coolness of the air, he was suddenly hot, his nerves protesting the unforgiving confines of his skin.

“Get out,” he said, his voice deceptively soft, deceptively low. The air around him had grown so dense he could cleave it with a knife.

Instead of heeding his demand, Missy took several steps forward. The glow from the solitary tallow candle suffused her in a warm light. James swallowed again, his breathing an audible rasp in the quiet of the night.

“I know you felt something when you kissed me tonight,” she said softly.

James nearly groaned aloud, convinced his worst enemy had sent her to test him, torture him.

“Yes, and I believe you felt it too,” he replied, his voice harsh.

She displayed no shock or surprise at his crude reference to just how hard he’d been pressed up against her down in the study. In fact her eyes, appearing more gray than blue at present, grew smoky, her lids weighed down by desire. Her gaze dropped to his chest and then to the unmistakable distention in the front of his trousers.

James had nowhere to go. He stood exposed and trapped, caged like a hungry lion with a voracious appetite who’d just come upon his next meal.

“You’re very beautiful and I’m a normal male. It’s lust, plain and simple. Don’t make more of it than that. As I’ve told you before, any desirable female would elicit the same response.”

Again, she said nothing but took another step forward, the light now illuminating the full glorious length of her slim figure, her nipples jutting out impudently from the soft cloth of her nightdress.

He throbbed. His whole body throbbed.

“Go back to your chamber,” he said, his voice strained and barely recognizable.

She took another step closer, bringing her within inches of his tightly wound form.

“It’s more than lust.” Historical, historical romance, hot, Romance, romance excerpts, romance promotion, sexyHistorical, historical romance, hot, Romance, romance excerpts, romance promotion, sexy]]> http://www.romanticobserver.com/romanceexcerpts/17/romance-excerpts/sinful-surrender.html/feed/ http://www.romanticobserver.com/romanceexcerpts/35/romance-excerpts/blood-of-the-beast.html http://www.romanticobserver.com/romanceexcerpts/35/romance-excerpts/blood-of-the-beast.html#comments Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:56:35 +0000 tamela quijas Romance Excerptsdemonsmurdernew jerseyParanormalparanormal romanceromance excerptsrussiaserial killertamela quijasvampires http://www.romanticobserver.com/romanceexcerpts/35/romance-excerpts/blood-of-the-beast.html Detective Valentina Kureyev had been assigned to one of the worst cases of the century. A serial killer haunted the streets, depositing bloodless corpses throughout the section of town known as Little Europe. She hadn’t a clue to the identity of the culprit, as the appearance of more bodies had begun to cause terror and panic.
The case was hopeless.
The terror was real.
As real as Demetri Petronov.
The Professor of Russian Antiquities had been targeted with the murderer’s special form of a calling card. Val couldn’t turn away from his offer of aide in the bizarre case, even though he whispered tales of the beast feeding on human blood.
He was the primary suspect.

EXCERPT:

Uttering soothing words of comfort, Val sank to her knees before the elderly woman. She carefully pried the gilt frame from her grandmother’s strong grip. There was a moment’s struggle before the woman relented and allowed her to take the frame. Val held a baited breath as she turned the precious remnant of the woman’s past over and stared at the sepia colored images of long ago.
Old Russia was evident in the photo, a land that didn’t exist any longer. A figure, that Val immediately recognized as her grandmother as a child, stood at the forefront of the faded photograph. Dressed in a short white frock and black calf high boots, typical of the era, Val judged her to be six or seven years of age. Immensely proud, the child was beaming at the photographer.
However, it was not her grandmother’s childish image that caught Val’s attention. There, the moment forever captured in time, was a startling figure. She lifted her puzzled gaze to the elderly woman, her normally inquisitive mind spinning.
“I was six.” Her grandmother managed in a low whisper, brusquely waving an imperious hand at her daughter-in-law, ordering her away. Val’s mother, forever respectful, slipped back into the far recesses of the kitchen. “The Imperial Court was on holiday. Their caravan went through our humble town. Great stallions, proud uniforms, it was a moment of great importance for anyone to see.” She smiled, her faded eyes as faraway as the memories. “My mother, she made me wear my best dress, in case the royal family would stop in the streets. “ She smiled wistfully. “The entire village turned out for the event that day, lining the main road. We all wanted to catch a glimpse of the royal family, not realizing it would be the last time we would ever be privileged to see such again.”
“The revolution?”
“A few months later, the revolution would occur.” Her grandmother conceded with a nod and a grimace. “The handsomest of the court was the youngest baron. Women would swoon when he entered a room, attired in his official uniform. I,” She pressed a forefinger to her chest to emphasize. “Little me, in my best dress, happened to draw his attention. He rode on his great charger to my side. He was so dashing, in his uniform, with his devilish smile. I fell in love with him, at that moment.”
Val smiled tightly. Her grandmother could recall a six year old girl’s fanciful crush upon a member of the royal court. After all of these years, it seemed as if the Baron had made an everlasting impression.
“The baron, he dismounted from his horse. He approached me, smiling, with those strangely colored eyes. He took the simple spray of flowers that I held and he thanked me.”
“The picture?”
“A man in the village wanted the picture for posterity. The baron waited, patiently permitting me a moment in time to remember for the rest of my life.”
Val exhaled a strangled breath as she peered back at the image. Her grandmother’s twisted finger trembled as she touched the glass, trailing over the photograph. She stopped on the image of the man that stood at her youthful side.
“Baron Demetri Ivanovich Sergei Daskova Petronov.” She whispered. “The year is nineteen sixteen.”
Petronov. Val remembered it as the name carved upon the dead man.
Val sat heavily down upon the carpet. She felt shock, awed as she stared into the face of the man. He was, beyond a doubt, the exact image of the individual that had been in their presence. The resemblance was startling.
“He is the great-grandson, Babushka?”
“No, child.” The old woman shook her head disdainfully, her gaze straying to the still filled cup of now cold tea.
“Babushka,” Val began heavily. The old woman turned back toward her with the unmistakable expression of dread written upon her face.
“The Baron Petronov supposedly died unmarried, three weeks before the revolution.” She continued heavily, reverting back to her mother tongue. “He had never taken a wife nor had he sired children.”
“This man,” Val began, a chill washing over her flesh as she looked up into the face of the woman that had regaled her with so many fanciful tales in her childhood.
“Upyr, Valentina.” Her grandmother whispered in deep and ominous tones. “The man, the man that was here,” She pressed her fingers to her heart. “This man is upyr.”
Vampire.