Little Library Muse: Excerpt & Giveaway: The Crimson Gate by Whitney A. Miller

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Excerpt & Giveaway: The Crimson Gate by Whitney A. Miller

Synopsis
Harlow must stop her evil counterpart in this thrilling sequel to The Violet Hour.

Harlow Wintergreen has just been named the new Matriarch of VisionCrest, the powerful religious organization previously led by her father. But there's one big problem. The real Harlow is trapped inside a Cambodian temple, and her double, the evil Isiris, has escaped confinement and is masquerading as her.

Now initiated as their leader, Isiris intends to unleash a killer super virus aimed at cleansing the planet of VisionCrest. In order to stop her, Harlow must find a way out of the temple and locate the Resistance...or the world will be destroyed.

AMAZON | BARNES & NOBLE | BOOK DEPOSITORY

Excerpt
It shouldn't be so easy to decimate a civilization. The threads that hold things together shouldn't be nearly so fragile. But they were. I wasn't sure if anyone could put it back together, least of all me. I was sure as hell going to try, but right now all I wanted was some comfort.
As if he could feel what I was thinking, he reached his hand out and unzipped my jacket. Even though it was freezing in the palace, here in front of the fire it was blazing hot. Or maybe it was just what was happening between me and Hayes that was causing my temperature to rise. Hayes pushed the too-big jacket off my shoulders and ran his hands down my arm, tickling the tender skin on the inside of my wrists as he pulled the jacket the rest of the way off. He looked at my face, then down the rest of my body as I shivered lightly in my threadbare t-shirt, not from cold but from desire. There was a hunger in his eyes; I knew he would see the same reflected back in mine. It was the hunger that came from feeling desperate and lonely for too long; the hunger that came from knowing that the minutes were dwindling, and every one had to count. It wasn't a feeling the old Hayes and Harlow could have ever felt, but it passed between us now, lighting what was kindling into a four-alarm blaze.
"I can't believe you're really here," he said, his voice hoarse.
"Tell me about it," I said.
He made a low moan in the back of his throat and pulled me tight against him. I could feel his heart beating rapidly against his ribcage as he tipped his head down and his mouth found mine. The stubble on his chin scratched against my skin in a satisfying friction and the feel of his lips against mine was like striking a match to tinder. We were set to explode.
His hands slipped to the hem of my shirt as he kissed me urgently, lips crushing against each other, hands reaching. He pulled my shirt over my head and I did the same with his, opening my eyes just long enough to appreciate the now-pale outline of his defined chest and abs.
"I didn't think you could get any more beautiful," he said. "But here you are."
"You're beautiful too. You always were," I said.
But somewhere deep inside, I was thinking about Adam when I said it. Lightning bolts of longing for my lost love punctuated by pangs of lust for my current one. Adam and I could never go back to what we were, but Hayes still held the promise of something real. But still Adam remained, in every thought and every breath.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Whitney A. Miller lives in San Francisco with her husband and a struggling houseplant.

She’s summited Mt. Kilimanjaro, ridden the Trans-Siberian rails, bicycled through Vietnam, done the splits on the Great Wall of China, and evaded the boat police in Venice. However, her best international adventures take place on the page.Whitney is represented by Jennifer Laughran at the Andrea Brown Literary Agency.