 Misery Loves Company
Available now from Total-e-bound | "Every cry for help is heard even when no one is there."
Uncontrollable events and too many bad decisions have pushed Lola to the brink of self-destruction. To help break away from her depression she rents an isolated picturesque cottage, to rest, meditate, and explore a new passion- art. It is a valiant effort to start life again.
But she isn't alone in her misery. A shadow moves, a voice calls, a hand reaches for her from beyond. She has awakened another, a dark unearthly man, whose tortured existence is wracked with pain.
Barriers of time and space crack as their empathy and their passions explode. Once promises are made, however, she discovers just how horrifying her circumstances have become.
Misery loves company, especially when reality dissolves. |
Reviews
"Lola is desperate. Suffering from severe depression and alcoholism, she makes an attempt to get her life back by spending a couple weeks at a peaceful little lake side cottage and pursuing a passion for drawing. Her plans change however when she meets Daniel, who is every bit as desperate and alone as she. However there is something dark and tortured behind Daniel’s presence and now Lola is sucked into the vortex of his suffering. Promises can’t be broken here, and Lola is about to discover... Misery Loves Company.
"Ellen Ashe is a master at making the pulses jump and the thoughts whirl with her stories. Misery Loves Company is another brilliant example of that talent. Thrills and chills are boundless as we try to figure out the mystery of Daniel alongside of Lola. As she falls deeper and deeper under his seductive spell, so too do we. Daniel is almost frightening in the intensity of his passion, yet gentle at the same time.
"Lola is a lost soul who has reached rock bottom and is desperately trying to recover some semblance of normalcy. The ending to Misery Loves Company is completely non-traditional for romance stories, but then Ellen Ashe wouldn’t be the writer she is if we did have the expected endings to her stories. While the conclusion may not be what is typical for the genre, we are still left with a sense of hopefulness, knowing that Daniel and Lola have found what they need. This is one of my favorite things about Ellen Ashe’s writing. We never know what to expect and are always satisfied with the turn of events in the story." - © Kelley A. Hartsell, March 2008. All rights reserved.
Excerpt
She had to feel him, truly feel him. A wash of sensuality pooled in her groin. Responding to its feral appeal she moved her hands across his chest, tweaked a hard nipple on a solid mound of muscle, and she smiled as he flexed beneath her caress.
"More," he said, his arms strengthening, luring her into the promise of extreme pleasures.
She lowered her hands over the silky hairs on his stomach, stopping where flesh met denim, tugging playfully at the edge. He swayed, parting his legs. Then he took hold of her wrist.
"Touch me, harder." The plea changed to demand. He sounded like a man who gave orders naturally and had others follow those orders without hesitation. There was no escaping. She didn’t want to escape. She liked being told. By him.
She had succumbed to temptation and the euphoria was taking control. She would do all he asked.
A stranger. She was dancing with a stranger who was dark and very possibly dangerous. No one would hear her scream. Even this thought added to the mystique, doubling her urges.
So she griped his groin through the denim. And bit into the flesh on his shoulder.
A whirlwind of motion, blocked sunlight—like a shadow falling over her eyes—and a forbidding rampart of muscle was suddenly thrust against her. When she stopped moving she was on her knees, submitting again to the persuasion of what was lurid, her lips parted to welcome the sticky sweet wine of lust. He had her hair firmly entwined in his fingers, and he directed her forward to his unyielding erection, perfectly aligned with her mouth.
Without hesitation she took him, obeying his command to be pleasured. His grunts of appreciation were short, sharp. His thrusts forward were similar. His palms heated her jaw, his touch gentle now because he knew she intended to do as he wanted, that she would not leave, that she would carry out her silent promises. She felt, too, his eyes on her, the same eerie sensation of eyes watching when she’d first arrived. There also was the heavy sigh that pursed into her mind, only this time she was fulfilling an act where this response was justified.
She clutched his hips, shuffled in, and took him deeper, twirling her tongue around the mighty girth, waiting anxiously for the tightening, the gasp, the short prelude to his release.
A stranger. No face. No name. No history. No past or future. Just then and now.
His thighs flinched. He sucked in a long hard breath of air. He clawed her scalp, death grip over her temples. He plunged himself into the back of her throat.
And screamed in agony.
He pulled away from her so abruptly she fell off balance. Before she had the inclination to lift her eyes, to question what had gone wrong, he turned away.
She swiped the back of her hand across her mouth, the taste of him lingering on her tongue. "Why?" she asked, her voice hoarse. "What’s wrong?"
He wanted her pleasuring; she was willing, able. Yet he baulked?
His only reaction was to stride, rapidly, in a straight path across the lawn towards the short wharf.
"Hey—wait a minute," she yelled, rising in a panic and stumbling after him, unable to keep up with his frantic pace. He reached the wharf first, lifted his arms over his head, palms together while still in full stride and without any hesitation dove head first into the water.
She stifled a shriek with her hand and raced over to where her lover had jumped.
"Oh my God," she whimpered, a terror like none other, paralysing her mind with white searing heat, blinding her to rationale. There was no ripple in the water where he had jumped! There was no man swimming in the icy cold water. There was no sign that anyone, other than her, had walked across the lawn.
"Oh my God," she repeated, shivering uncontrollably. She turned, a full circle, but the man, who’d moments ago been her passion’s desire, was nowhere to be seen.
Edge of sanity. Perhaps she had stumbled closer to it than she thought.
"Who are you?" she whispered...
Buy it here: http://www.total-e-bound.com.
