Excerpt: Serpent’s Kiss by Thea Harrison

Posted October 4, 2011 by Holly in Promotions | 0 Comments

Since Thea Harrison is here guest blogging with us today, we were able to wrangle an excerpt from her third Elder Races release, Serpent’s Kiss. This is Rune’s book. I absolutely adored it.

“Rune Ainissesthai,” she whispered. “What is the riddle?”

His expression flared with electric light. Oh, I’ve got your attention now, don’t I, Wyr? She smiled. Did you think everyone had forgotten the meaning of your name?

“You know better than to ask a question like that,” Rune said. His voice had dropped to a low gravelly murmur that prowled across her skin.

“Rune Ainissesthai,” she whispered a second time, and the Power she wielded made the sound of his name reverberate between them like the singing of a Chinese Buddhist bowl. “Why do you come to me?”

“I come to pay my debt,” said Rune, and the cry of the eagle echoed in his reply.

“Rune Ainissesthai,” she whispered for the third time. “Will you do my bidding for the measure of one favor to pay that debt?”

“You know I will,” the gryphon replied, and the growl of the lion was in his voice.

She struck the reverberation between them a single blow with her Power so that it rang like a gong against the stone walls of the great hall, and the magic writ was cast. She smiled. “The bargain has been struck, and answered.”

Now he was bound and he truly had no choice but to do her bidding. You are mine, she said silently to his tall strong form. Mine to do with as I wish. For this moment in time, I own you. And what shall I have you do, you easygoing, proud, insouciant alpha male? What task shall you complete before you take your leave from me and go back to your unending life?

The smile faded from her lips. The predatory impulses in her darkened and grew invisible fangs. Her dark eyes glittered with a carapace like obsidian glass, and the line of her mouth hardened.

She said, “Kneel.”

She felt his surprise as her command jolted through him.

But then he did a thing that surprised her in return. He raised his eyebrows, gave her that easygoing insouciant grin of his and said, “Okey-dokey.”

With a flourish he went gracefully down on one knee in front of her.

What was this? He was down on the floor, his powerful broad shoulders dipped in subjugation. He even bowed his head. He gave every appearance of submission, and performed flawlessly to the letter of her order, but . . .

Deep in the axis of that fierce remarkable soul, the alpha male still reigned. She circled behind him and stepped close to his broad shoulders to put her lips near his ear. She whispered, “You’re not really kneeling inside.”

He cocked his head to look at her over one shoulder. His reckless gaze laughed at her. He whispered back, “You didn’t order me to do that. It would require an entirely different bargain for me to really kneel to you.”

Caught in the unknown riddle, she asked, “What bargain would that require?”

He gave her a slow smile. “You must give me a kiss.”

The sleek arch of her eyebrows lifted. “Just a kiss?”

“Just that.”

“The bargain is struck,” she said.

“And answered,” he growled.

Carling put a hand onto his shoulder as she prowled to stand in front of him. Then she slid her hands along the warm sun-bronzed skin of his jaw. She tilted his handsome wild face up to hers and he let her. Then she bent to place her cool lips on his hot carved lips.

Her body moved in the impulse to breathe again, and she allowed it. His masculine Power enveloped her, and it was spiced with sensuality and warmth as it caressed her like a sun-filled breeze.

She lifted her head and stared down at him. She narrowed her eyes. She said, “You’re still not really kneeling inside.”

Tap, tap, went her bare foot.

He cocked an eyebrow.

“What else did you expect, Carling?” he replied. “That wasn’t a real kiss.”

Excerpt from Serpent’s Kiss by Thea Harrison. Copyright October 2011. Published in arrangement with The Berkley Publishing Group, a member of Penguin Group (USA).