RELEASE
BLITZ
Title: A
Leap in the Dark
Series:
Assassins of Youth MC #2
Author:
Layla Wolfe
Genre: MC Romance
Release Date: March 7, 2016
BLURB
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.
GOODREADS LINK: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28534386-a-leap-in-the-dark
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
PURCHASE LINKS
EXCERPT
“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.
ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE ASSASSINS
OF YOUTH MC SERIES
#1 Through A Glass, Darkly
AUTHOR BIO
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.
Layla Wolfe is the pen name of multi-published erotic romance author Karen Mercury.
AUTHOR LINKS
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/bGUkzz
Amazon: http://amzn.to/1VUp5b2
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/laylawolfe/
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Thanks for the shout-out, Virginia! :)
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