LOVE SPANKS

Welcome to Love Spanks 2013!  Would you like to win a Kindle Fire or Nook Color (donated by Blushing Books), a $40 gift certificate to Loose Id (donated by Loose Id and Cara Bristol), a $15 gift certificate to Amazon (donated by Stormy Night Publications), or a book bundle (donated by Stormy Night Publications)?

For updates and the complete list of information, please see the main contest page.

Here is a quick rundown of THE RULES:

    •  Visit each blog between Saturday, February 9th and Sunday, February 10th to read the posted stories and excerpts.
  
 •   Leave a comment answering the story question on each blog.  You will receive one entry per blog for the grand prize drawing.
  
 •   If you have visited all the blogs, visit Anastasia Vitsky’s blog to sign up for FIVE bonus entries to the grand prize.
 Deadline is midnight EST (UTC -5) on February 10th!!
   
•   If you successfully completed the Spank or Treat challenge and were notified by Ana, you may add “VIP” to your comments.  You will earn THREE bonus entries toward the grand prize.  (Yes, we will be doing this again.  Yes, if you successfully complete the Love Spanks challenge you can become a VIP for our next activity!)
  
 •   Visit any of the participating blogs on Valentine’s Day to find out the lucky winners.  Will it be you?


FREE BOOKS!
As an extra treat, all Love Spankers are eligible for free books!  (Donated by Lazy Day Publishing)
    •    Of Yesterday by Alta Hensley
    •    To Love a Woman by Jade Cary
    •    Rules of War by Sue Lyndon
    •    Casting by Liz Borino
    •    Deep in the Heat of Texas by Amy le Blanc, Melissa Ecker, and Alta Hensley

All you have to do is visit each blog and respond to the story question in the comments section below. Good luck to you!



Here is Jade Cary's Love Spanks story. It is an excerpt from my forthcoming novel, BELLA ROSA, due out March 13 from Lazy Day.



The big man confused her. She was usually good at reading men, and then getting them to do her bidding was a snap. She was confident in her charm, and used it to her advantage when she had to. Being married to a man like Cruz Castillo had forced her to stoop to a level at which she was never comfortable, but she did it to survive. The big cop standing in the middle of her living room was an enigma. He was a man of few words, and he was wound tighter than a concert viola. She could smell something in him ready to boil over, and once it reached the surface, she wanted to be somewhere out of the country. He was unashamedly alpha, and a man like him had no idea what they did to a woman like her. He wasn’t dumb by any stretch, and she’d made the mistake of underestimating him a few times since this ordeal began. The last time it cost her a bit of her dignity.

            Yesterday had been a restless one. She needed to get out. She announced to Lieutenant Girardi that she was going shopping.

            “Good. I’ll get one of the officers to go with you.”

            “That won’t be necessary, Lieutenant. I’m fine on my own.”

            “You’re not going alone. When you’re ready, let me know.” He had walked out of the house. Frustrated, she had gone out to the patio and fumed. Then she saw him walk down the beach, away from the house. She gathered her keys and her shopping list and went through the laundry room to the garage. She got in to her red Corvette, lowered the convertible top and started the engine. She opened the garage door with the automatic opener and began to back out. Then she slammed on the brakes because, standing right behind her, hands firmly planted on his hips, was Lieutenant Vincent Girardi. She had almost run him down.

            He stood there, unmoving, a dark look in his eyes the likes of which she’d never seen on a live person. He remained that way until she threw the car in drive and eased it back inside the garage. Before she got the car door open, he followed her into the garage. With the press of a button, the garage door came down. He stood next to the car and glared at her, then he moved only slightly when she stomped past him and into the kitchen.

            He entered behind her and closed the door as she slammed her keys down on the counter. The door to the microwave oven stood open. She slammed it in great dramatic flair. It popped back open. He walked up to her and stood so close she brushed against him when she turned to face him.

            “I want to go shopping. I am not a prisoner.”

            “Give me a list and I’ll send someone. What happened to your unwavering cooperation?”

            “I never said unwavering.”

            “My mistake.” His glare was fierce.

            “I want to go shopping by myself.” She tried to move past him and instead slammed into his arm, outstretched like a two-by-four impeding her momentum. One corner of his mouth turned up in that sexy, infuriating smile of his, but this time the humor went no further. She met his eyes with equal fury—she hoped.

            “You having a hard time, Ro?” he growled. Synapses began firing at alarming speed, culminating in a mass of tingles down her body. No one but her closest friends and family called her Ro. What the hell was wrong with her?

            “I understand that—I do,” he continued. “Confined to the house while a killer runs loose, not able to go shopping on your own. I’m sorry your freedom has been curtailed.”

            She wanted to slap him. She glared at him, fury making it hard to think.

            “You want to have a temper tantrum, I’ll carry you upstairs and put you in your room. You can have your tantrum there, where your children won’t witness their mother falling apart over grocery shopping. And you’ll stay there until I say you can come out.”

            She felt a hot flush rise from her chest and infuse her face. She was mortified, and not just a little turned on. “You sonofabitch, how dare you!”

            “Your six year old is handling this better than you are,” he continued.

            Now, that was hitting below the belt. “You pompous…!”

            Vince stuck a finger in her face. “You wanna talk about pompous, babe…”

            In that instant, Rowan clamped down, trapping his finger between her teeth. She did it without thinking. Her tongue brushed the tip of his thick digit, the taste salty and rough. Her eyes flew open in shock over her instinctual reaction to his Neanderthal posturing. His face shifted from stunned immobility to instant fury, causing her to clamp down harder, when her intent was to let him go. And through it all, he kept his finger still between her teeth. His eyes narrowed, causing his brows to knit into one, long fuzzy black line. His jaw tightened, his mouth set in a hard white line. His reaction to her disobedience and subsequent hissy fit had been shocking and unexpected, given how little they knew each other—yet Rowan was surprised by none of it. He was a man ungroomed in the art of dealing with a temperamental woman, and a man like that could prove quite dangerous—or quite pliable. She was stuck for the moment on which category he fell into. The normally buttoned-up uniform he wore—crème-colored dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up his forearms, the charcoal slacks, the matching jacket tossed casually over one piece or another of her furniture, and his ever-present gun encased in a holster under his armpit, looked decidedly more rumpled today, and Rowan chalked it up to the sudden shift in the air, that swift and sure tilt off its axis the earth just experienced at her loss of control, and sanity.

            Babe.

            How fucking dare he!

            With his finger still clamped between her teeth, he grabbed her jaw with his thumb and remaining fingers, and applied just enough pressure to force her to open her mouth. Her teeth came off his dactyl with a pop. He held her face in his large hand, and took one step toward her.

            “I think,” he said, forming his words carefully in a tone low and quiet, “that in your case, a spanking might be more appropriate.” His hand tightened on her jaw. “Would you like me to take you upstairs and give you a good spanking, Rowan?”

            She closed her eyes and promptly soaked her panties. Whose fucking side are you on? she raged at her traitorous body. She willed her nipples to stop groaning against her C-cup, and the tingling to cease and desist farther south. His grip on her jaw was a gesture of supreme dominance that made her body involuntarily convulse. Her reaction to his words—to this whole sordid scene, really—was as shocking to her as it must have been to him, because when she opened her eyes, he was smiling. Now, menacing came to mind. His look was feral, and his eyes danced. She wanted to slap him; she wanted to kiss him. She wanted for the last five days to have never happened so that Vincent Girardi could remain one of those unmet, only-dreamed-of men who fucked her senseless in her best and favorite fantasies. Instead, he was right here, smelling good, and looking even better. Still, she couldn’t let this go. After all, Gloria Steinem and Bella Abzug were counting on her. She had to represent.

            “You domineering, supercilious, baboon’s ass…!”

            The pressure on her jaw increased ever so slightly, and then his nostrils flared. “You’ve exceeded your daily quota for name calling, babe,” he whispered. “Another word and I’ll turn you over my knee.”

            The air once again ceased moving, as if God himself had stopped breathing. She could relate to the feeling. His eyes were dark now, and not the bright cerulean of three seconds ago when this was fun, when his eyes danced, when his mouth turned up, when her butt tingled at the idea that this man was just the opposite of pliable. The door on the microwave stood open, a cruel reminder that her lame attempt at a proper temper tantrum was halted like a bird who mistakes a window for open air and freedom, only to be struck numb by an unseen barrier. The cupboards needed refinishing. The heat from the dishwasher filled the room with moist air and chemical soap, which did not, for a moment, mask the smell of him—clean as citrus, musky as rage. The light filtered through the skylight in the ceiling as a cloud passed over the sun. A ladybug sat on this shoulder in stark contrast against his light shirt, unaware that the man underneath was close to throttling her.

            She managed to breathe, then she pulled out of his grip. She spun away from him and banged out of the kitchen without a word, grateful to whatever gods existed that he did not grab at her, or try to stop her.

            Rowan smiled at the memory now, while he loomed somewhere behind her, sucking all the air out of the room. Good lord, that was amazing, she mused for about the millionth time.

            Vince looked at the lady sitting on the couch trying to ignore him. Yeah, babe. I can play that, too. He recalled the scene yesterday in her kitchen when he almost took leave of his senses and spanked her ass for her.

            He stood in the empty kitchen with teeth marks in his pointer, and a hard-on the likes of which he hadn’t had in years. The grip she’d had on his finger was not hard, but he felt it nevertheless. His first instinct was to yank his finger back, and then follow up with a good, old-fashioned arm lock and a chokehold, as he had been trained to do. A sound cuffing of hands behind her back and a rough plunk-down into the backseat of a cruiser would punctuate the scene to his liking. She was assaulting a police officer, plain and simple. That nerves and probably fear had caused her to increase the pressure had him worried that one false move on his part would lose him half his trigger finger. She was a beautiful woman, and he could certainly appreciate her fire—given that he was a normal, red-blooded man who liked a fiery woman. But Christ, she was spoiled. He’d pushed some buttons, which pleased him no end. He wondered how many more he could push. Maybe he could actually get himself pulled off this glorified babysitting job. Hardly. He was having too much fun, all of a sudden. How close had he come, really, to upending her? He imagined how her round ass would feel under his hand, her squeals of indignation fueling him on to spank her until she couldn’t sit for a month of Sundays. Then he’d stand her back on her feet and kiss her until she came. The scenario would haunt him until the day he could extricate himself from this gorgeous spitfire, and then long after. He’d slammed the microwave oven door closed. This time it stayed shut.

            An hour later she had wandered down the stairs and found him on the patio, staring out at the ocean. She waved a white dishtowel out the door, and when he laughed, she came outside and sat with him in silence. After a while, a meek ‘Sorry’ escaped her lips, and then it was over.

            And in that moment he’d never wanted to kiss anyone as much as he’d wanted to kiss Doctor Rowan Delaney.

            While he had been livid yesterday, he smiled at the memory now. She was a damn pretty lady. That wasn’t good, him thinking she was pretty. Him thinking anything at all about Miss Delaney wasn’t good. A certain mindset was needed to protect her and her kids, and that certain mindset was non-existent at the moment. A different day, under different circumstances…

            “Rowan.”

            She looked up from her reading and smiled.

            “A moment?”

            She stood and followed him out in to the hall.

            “I’m going to take a walk around the house, make sure everything is okay, and then I’m going to take off. Are you going to be alright?”

            She nodded. “Yeah, sure. Everything okay?”

            “Yes, fine. I’ve got a little more work to do back at the station,” he lied. How could he tell her that he needed to get away from her so he could think, so he could concentrate on getting her through the weekend alive? He found that he was very attracted to her, and this was something he had to get over if he was going to get a killer off the streets. “I’ll send one of the officers in with you until you turn in, okay?”

            “Sure.”

            “I’m sorry. I hope you understand,” he said to her.

            “Yeah, sure, of course,” was all she said.

            Later that night, as he took Stacey Cash for a third time, his thoughts never left the lady doctor back on Beach Drive.



STORY QUESTION:  If you were a friend of this couple, how would you respond to their argument?


Blurb for BELLA ROSA:

This is the city.

Murder and violence is all in a day’s work for Lieutenant Vincent Girardi. But there is something about this murder that doesn’t add up. When a piece of paper with an address written on it is found at the crime scene, Vince discovers that perhaps this victim wasn’t the intended target.

Dr. Rowan Delaney is biding her time. In less than a week she will give testimony that will rid her of a painful past once and for all, and grant her and her two children the freedom she has been seeking for years. When Lieutenant Vincent Girardi and his partner show up at her door to question her about the murdered woman across the street, and then suggest that she may have been the intended target, she refuses all help or protection, intending to fulfill her obligation in front of the Grand Jury without interference from anyone—including the handsome cop darkening her doorstep.

But the Lieutenant has other plans. He is convinced the pretty doctor was the intended victim, and he is determined to find out why, starting with Rowan’s absentee husband, head of a notorious drug cartel. Vince is determined to see the woman and her children safe; Rowan is determined to start her life over—after her testimony.

Can Vince protect her without his feelings for her getting in the way? And can Rowan accept his care, along with a heavy dose of hubris and alpha dominance, without losing herself in the process?

And will their growing love be enough to save them from the evil that will not take no for an answer?

** THIS BOOK IS A ROMANCE/SUSPENSE THAT CONTAINS VIOLENCE AND EXPLICIT SEXUAL CONTENT WITHIN A LOVING RELATIONSHIP, INCLUDING DOMINATION AND THE NON-CONSENSUAL SPANKING OF AN ADULT FEMALE **


Participating Authors:

Adaline Raine
Alta Hensley
Anastasia Vitsky 
Cara Bristol
Celeste Jones
Claire Colinsgrove
Constance Masters
Emma K. Gardner
Jade Cary
Korey Mae Johnson
Patty Devlin 
Renee Rose
Starla Kaye 
Sue Lyndon

For updates and the complete list of information, please see the main contest page.

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