by Karol, Helen
************
I weave my way through the crowds in a daze. What the fuck just happened! I have never seen that thug before. They way he kept looking at me, I was starting to get worried that even if I didn’t know him, he knew me from one of my undercover gigs. When he said Marguerite’s name it was all I could do to keep it together. How long has it been since anyone said her name to me? It doesn’t matter, everything still crashes into me with the sorrow and anguish as fresh and raw as the moment it first happened? How come it doesn’t heal? How come solid skin doesn’t grow over the wound? Why is it still only an ugly scab that bleeds incessantly and agonizingly when ripped off?
I duck into the next alley and lay back against the wall. Attempting to calm myself using police protocols, I start my breathing techniques. I feel I am taking command, calming my fears. That is why I am so stunned to find I have slipped down the wall and am now sitting in the cobbled street, wracking sobs shaking my body.
Intimate Knowledge – End of Part 2
A note from Helen
Hi,
I hope you enjoyed this book. I love feedback from my readers and would appreciate it if you could take the time to rate it and write an honest review on Amazon. Just a few words really count!
Helen Karol x
Can’t Wait for the Next Installment?
If you would like an advanced complimentary copy of the next installment to read for review, email me at [email protected] and I will send you one. (Available to the first twenty readers to email me)
Scroll down to see some more of my current titles and excerpts from my two planned 2014 releases Haunted Spaces and A Calculated Choice.
Detectives & Desires Series. By Helen Karol
Detectives & Desires is my new erotic romance series. Each story centers on a detective, their cases and most importantly the passionate desires that bring them, eventually, to their HEA. The three detectives are Detective Raisa Gordon, a Boston 15th Precinct vice-cop, Detective Rick Andrews, a small town cop for the Lake Andrew’s Sheriff’s department, and Detective Luke Kincaid, Boston 15th Precinct homicide detective. The action takes place in Raisa’s and Luke’s Boston. Rick and Sara’s Lake Andrews. As well as in Leo’s native Italy. Although separate novels, the characters visit in each other’s stories and the plots entwine now and then. Each story is a trilogy told from the alternating POV’s of the two main characters. I will release the books in installments as I am writing them only a few installments ahead. I try not to make them too horribly cliffhanging, but it is inevitable to have teasers, as that is a big part of the fun of a series. I hope you will join me in the world of Detectives & Desires.
Intimate Knowledge Detective & Desires Series#1
A Fifty Shades and Because You Are Mine fan, but are ready to move on from reading about 20 something virgins and young tortured CEO’s? You will fall in love with this new series of a seasoned vice-cop and her obsessive younger lover.
How long can Detective Raisa Gordon resist, Leo Gold, her undercover target? It is one thing to imagine and explore all kinds of hot scenarios in the safe haven of your own head; it is quite another to be in the position of actually having to pay the piper. That is exactly the position Raisa finds herself in when her fantasies start materializing into reality everywhere she turns.
One of Gold’s operatives stumbled upon an encrypted file of letters she wrote years ago exploring her deepest darkest taboos. Now, Leo possesses intimate knowledge and is setting out to to satisfy her needs by enacting those taboos one by one. Will the FBI’s plan to use his passion for her to bust the entire Gold operation wide open succeed? Or will Raisa surrender to her treacherous desires?
This the first part in a series that will unfold over multiple volumes ranging from 10,000 to 20,000 words each. Intimate Knowledge is an erotic romance with explicit sexual content with elements of BDSM. It has a delectable slow build to consummation
Her Keeper Detective & Desires Series#2
The feud between Detective Rick Andrews and Sara Michaels is legendary and no one ever wants to stand in the line of fire when they go at it.
Rick can’t deny the chemistry between him and Sara. Hell, just the thought of her makes him hard. Her intelligence and her spirit intrigue him and, for some unfathomable reason, the need to protect her consumes much of his waking hours and a few of his dreams as well. But she’s too high maintenance. Especially as she holds a long time grudge and knows just how to push his buttons. No way does he want an argument with his woman every time he turns around, no matter how beautiful her face and adorable her ass.
Sara Michaels has never forgiven Rick Andrews for humiliating her during her freshman week in college. Now eight years later, their ongoing feud is reaching combustion level, in no small part because of the throbbing his angry, alpha male hotness creates between her thighs. If only he wouldn’t frame his advice in ‘do as I say’ commands, she might be inclined to listen now and then. His dominant attitude just makes her go for the knee-jerk response every time Only, now Sara has crossed the line and Rick is determined to use the power her transgression grants him to lay down the law in a way she can't escape.
This the first part in a series that will unfold over multiple volumes ranging from 10,000 to 20,000 words each. Her Keeper is an erotic romance with explicit sexual content with strong elements of BDSM. It has a hot cop (two actually), sexy frisking, spanking, cuffing, a crazy, hot proposition yet to come and two people who are stubbornly in love.
Haunted Spaces Detective & Desires Series#3
Excerpt
She is hauntingly lovely.
Luke Kincaid doesn’t often depart from the down to earth and straight and narrow – but she plucks at him and draws him from the mundane. Not that murder could ever be mundane, but the paperwork is another matter. She seems familiar, but he knows he’s never seen her before. Despite her beauty, nobody pays her any attention and she makes no claims on anyone in the bustling detective room. Here, tragedy is commonplace and victims invisible, so it is no big deal that no one appears to notice her.
Luke is pretty much entranced.
She doesn’t notice his looking. Her attention is fixed elsewhere. She is expectant, waiting, hovering. He’s seen that look before. His gut clenches because in this room that look never ends well. There is someone she is hoping to see, someone who may not want to see her or who is past that capability. He goes back to his paperwork.
Minutes pass and he looks up and she is still there. Time passes. He imagines it flitting around them in stop motion sequence from an indie movie or TV show. Everyone a moving, colored blur around the two of them. Him intent at his desk looking across at her standing with that suspended tautness, waiting for the one she needs. Deep in the pit of his stomach, he wishes it was him just so he can erase that troubled look. Don’t engage he tells himself. Too late. Already done.
He pushes away from his desk and walks over. Her gaze never wavers. She doesn’t seem to notice his advance or she thinks he doesn’t notice her. He reaches her and stands beside her. He is too close. Too much in her private space, but she stays put, no flinching or stepping back.
“Hey.” He asks in a soft drawl. “Is there something I can help you with?”
She starts as if his voice reverberates from a disembodied void, instead of oozing richly out of him like honey, a sound sexy enough on its own, but when it is supported by his 6’1” 200lbs of ripped, solid masculinity is just plain sinful. He is a man most women consider pretty fine. A bit rough around the edges maybe, but fine. She’s clearly not most women. She ignores him and then when he stays she turns and says.
“Oh, you mean me. You’re talking to me.” Neither sentence is a question; they are statements, incredulous ones. Like she is surprised he means her, as if she doesn’t expect to be noticed. Like his seeing her is out of the ordinary. It is, because he’s breaking protocol. You’re not supposed to engage with victims or suspects that you’re not directly attached to, and th
ose are the only non-law enforcement personnel that ever enter this room.
“Yeah, gorgeous. I mean you.” He is already out of bounds, but he decides she’s needs shaking up. The honey drawled endearment will either arouse or incense her. Either way he reckons he’ll get to see those turquoise eyes catch fire. He’s wrong. They darken into deep, dark navy pools; it is the rosy, fleshy moistness of her parted lips that that starts the fire in him.
She is tiny. Only comes to the middle of his chest. A hot rush of lust invades him, along with a desperate need to pick her right up off her feet, to draw every inch of her softness hard and fast into his firm body. To curl her securely next to his solid chest, cupping those lush buttocks tightly so that her hot pussy is flush against his hard arousal. He will take his time, nibbling, sucking and easing in and out of the voluptuous plumpness of those blush pink lips, as he slowly conquers that soft, disbelieving, little mouth. Then he will just as slowly conquer the rest of her, especially the wet folds of her lush, lowers lips. He imagines parting those, slipping and thrusting his tongue full inside, sucking her clit and tasting her juices, just before he…
Get a grip, Kincaid.
He remembers where he is and is grudgingly grateful that he has only imagined the scene not enacted it. What’s the matter with him? He can’t remember ever getting this hot for a woman this fast. Except. Fuck! That’s why she looks familiar. They must be related. Now he takes a real good look at her, he sees the likeness is so marked, he feels like an idiot not to have seen it right away. It is the lighter hair and eye color that fooled him.
Luke can hardly remember a time when he didn’t lust after his training officer and ex-partner from vice, Raisa Gordon. From the first moment, he arrived from the Academy, that convoluted combination of badass and fragile beauty floored him. He’d given up on meeting a woman who affected him as strongly. He figured she had ruined him and just accepted it as an unavoidable fact of life, the same way he accepted the crimes he worked on each day.
He never acted on his feelings. She was thirteen years older than him and his superior while a rookie. They were colleagues, eventually partners and although she flirted now and then, she showed no signs of sharing his intensity. She made it know that she didn’t do relationships and never hooked up with anyone she might really like. He was glad when he was promoted to homicide and it took him away from her on a daily basis. There were other woman of course, but none that took. Certainly none who made him want to toss her over his shoulder and carry her off every time he saw her. None, that is, until today.
He wants to do that to her now. Pick her up and get her out of here, away from whatever tragedy she is on a collision course towards. Carry her off and find somewhere to enact that scene in his head for real. Instead, he does the next best thing. He offers to buy her a cup of coffee.
Haunted Spaces will be released in installments early 2014 as it is set slightly later and contains spoilers for the other two in the Detective & Desires Series. It is a sexually explicit erotic romance, as well as a murder mystery with paranormal elements.
Contemporary Romance Choices Series
The Plan – Chances & Choices Prequel Choices Book 1 by Helen Karol
Falling in love again just isn't part of the plan.
It has been a rough year for Julian West and Claire Fitzpatrick. They are both struggling with the loss of a loved one.
When Andrea Saunders, a Los Angeles socialite, convinces Julian to escort Claire to the Spring Charity Ball, it begins an enduring friendship. A friendship where both comfortably forget the sizzling attraction that flared between them in the first few moments of meeting.
In time, that attraction re-emerges and Julian must face emotions he has spent years repressing. A 6000 word short story prequel to Chances & Choices.
Buy at Amazon
Chances & Choices Julian and Claire Book 1 Choices Series by Helen Karol
After three years in New York and a failed relationship behind her, Claire Fitzpatrick can hardly wait to get back to L.A. to her new job as senior feature writer at Choices L.A., but most of all to the security and comfort of her best friend Julian West. To her, he is the nice guy she can turn to for advice and comfort – the uncomplicated friend she can count on.
Julian West has fooled Claire Fitzpatrick for years playing the platonic friend. But on her first night home, he blows his cover and suddenly Claire sees him in a whole new light. Now Julian must face emotions he has spent too long repressing.
“The most romantic book I have ever read.” Ibooks 5 STARS
“Get ready for fun. Oh my this is great Reading Renee 5 STARS
Buy at Amazon
Coming in 2014 in the Choices Series
Hi,
Hope you enjoy the Choices Series. I am so happy to be back in the world of Julian and Claire and Choices magazine that I don’t want to leave it. I am attached to the people in it and I want to follow them some more. I am particularly intrigued by Stella and her subtle softening. I think she needs someone lovely, strong and sexy to help her complete that journey. Don’t you?
Helen x
A Calculated Choice – Stella and Aidan Book 2 Choices Series
Stella Abbot has spent the past ten years clawing her way to the top. As editor of the new L.A. edition of the magazine Choices, she has finally made it. When Aidan Carmichael arrives from the New York office to audit Choices LA’s finances, Stella finds herself both exasperated and seductively charmed by the gauche young accountant.
Small town boy Aidan soon finds himself fighting his unexpected attraction for the classy city editor. What he can’t fight is his longing to thaw her carefully constructed icy fortress and uncover the soft centre he’s convinced she’s hiding.
As they work together closely on the audit they find it harder and harder to ignore the heat between them. When his financial inquiries start to uncover some unsavory concerns that put Stella’s career at risk, Aidan finds he has to make some calculated choices.
Excerpt
Chapter One
Aidan Carmichael had been warned about Stella Abbot’s legendary frosty glare, but experiencing it first hand was nothing like he’d been told. No one mentioned those smudged chocolate brown eyes or silky, mahogany tendrils escaping from her business like twist.
Or those moist, kissable lips.
From his vantage point bent on one knee, he could almost feel the famous glare bore through the back of his head. Gathering up the papers that had flown all over the floor when he did his usual klutzy act of knocking them off her desk, his gaze strayed surreptitiously upwards. Man - she sure had a sexy set of pins.
Behind her glare, Stella tried not to give in to her sudden inexplicable desire to run her hands through the floppy mess of slightly too long auburn hair of the man who was currently at her feet. What was the matter with her? He was quite irritatingly dithering around with important files he had ineptly scattered around her office floor when he reached over to introduce himself. He reminded her of a young russet hound with his silky mop and ungainly enthusiasm. It was really quite irksome and she suspected he actually had the audacity to be eyeing up her legs while he was down there!
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, just leave them. I’ll sort them out later!”
Stella couldn’t believe she had just snapped at him like that. She was never so sharp, even when provoked, and especially not at a first meeting. Staying in command was Stella’s specialty. A deftly, delivered, sardonic remark was much more her style, but something about Aidan Carmichael just unbalanced her.
Perhaps it was because the reason he was here at Choices LA was unnerving. Audits were never trouble-free and this particular one concerned her, as it was the first since the L.A. edition was launched. As executive editor, she was responsible for any discrepancies. Not that she was anticipating any. She was always scrupulous in all matters professional, particularly finances. But the unpleasant business with Richard just over six months ago still left a bad taste and she ha
dn’t quite shaken off the feeling of instability created by the whole little ‘teleroman’ that had played out during that time.
The long-limbed accountant stood up in response to her exasperated command. As he surfaced beside her, his well over 6” rangy frame dwarfed her 5’9” figure, his body brushing against her far too intimately. Seriously, didn’t the guy have any sense of personal space!
Aidan stifled a smile at the renowned ice maiden’s undisguised irritation. He knew he was being invasive, but he couldn’t resist taking advantage of his clumsiness to get close to her. He could tell he was disturbing what was an otherwise perfect equilibrium and he sure was enjoying it.
Truth be told, he was also thrown off balance by the effect she was having on him. Expecting to be able to barely tolerate Stella Abbot, even on a professional level, he was now amazed by the overwhelming desire to sweep all the remaining files from her desk and fuck her senseless on it. His highly improper thoughts shocked him. Hell what was the matter with him! His politically correct Canadian mother had raised him well. He respected women, opening doors, paying on dates, never expecting just sex; waiting respectfully to ease into lovemaking. He had never even had a one-night stand and yet here he was, small-town Kansas nice guy indecently lusting after a female colleague after only a few minutes meeting.
It felt kinda good.
Not that he was likely to have any chance of succeeding in his lusts. Stella Abbot was way, way, way out of his league. And his professional superior. This was a job. A very important job. Now he was this close to her, he could sense an uneasiness and way back in her eyes he glimpsed an almost vulnerable chink.