Loving Red (Loving Red #1) by Alisha Costanzo
Publication Date: September 9th, 2015
Genre: Adult Paranormal Romance
~Summary~
For Sergeant Severins Bouvier, silence means tactical planning and a large death toll, and he can’t shake how danger threatens him on the beaches of Miami, especially after seeing one of his associates in a local sandwich shop. Worse, the enemy seems fascinated with the woman he can’t stop thinking about—a woman determined not to trust him.
Everything about Sev crashes through Kaia’s carefully placed boundaries, traps, and avoidances. Regardless of her lack of interest in the majority of men, the ones that did catch her off guard left a lot of collateral damage. Who better than a soldier to understand that?
The problem is that she trusts him. Just not with her heart.
~Excerpt~
Severins stopped
fighting the vampire twins and relaxed into the hold they had on him. Bird-boy
paced a slow circle around the three of them. On his fifth loop, the bear
walked in. Sweat darkened the front of his T-shirt. He brought the spicy citrus
scent of Kaia with him. He tapped Bird-boy on the shoulder with a nod out; it
was his turn.
The blonde male
smiled back at him, like he got to keep a promise.
Thrown forward,
Severins charged the bird before assessing his enemies. He couldn’t spare the
moment, not if it meant a chance to save Kaia the pain.
A fist slammed
into his center. His feet flew out from under him. And a slender hand burned
the center of his back before he met the floor, forcing Severins to swallow the
agonizing pain. His muscles seized to protect his spine.
“He’s strong.” The
left twin sounded a bit worn and distressed. “I will need blood soon.”
“Go eat, sestra. I will play with him while you
are gone.”
“But I don’t want
to miss the fun.”
The right twin
released her hold; the bear pushed him onto his back with a heavy, military
boot to his chest. “Go, now. Don’t be too long.”
She scampered off
to the right, toward the front of the building, and the bear bent to greet him.
“How about we get better acquainted. My name’s Andre, and you’re Severins, U.S.
Army Sergeant, son of Frank and Estelle Bouvier, father of four-year-old Shawna
Miller, and agent for the Assetato.”
Gazes locked,
Severins swore he’d decorate the woods with Andre’s entrails if he though
violence on his daughter. Andre stomped his boot heel into Severins’ stomach,
tunneling his vision. Pain interrupted his thoughts, consuming him in the fight
to remain silent. Time became his enemy as rubber kicked his kidneys, ribs, and
lungs.
And the beating
continued until his sore muscles immobilized him.
Breath burned, and
he unfurled himself on the wet cement floor.
After the world
cleared enough for Andre to haul him upright. The bird returned, and they
dragged him into a room further back in the warehouse and tossed him to another
wet cement floor. A door locked closed behind him.
Severins shifted,
lifting to his hands before collapsing again. Healing took his strength; even
as a wolf, he needed time to heal.
“Sev?” Kaia’s
voice touched the very depths of him, pulling him out of the ball of pain. The
wolf inside him howled, acknowledging his need to take her in some way.
Pushing to his
elbows, he coughed through the nausea. “Are you hurt?”
“Are you serious?
Not like you are.” But she didn’t move closer to him. When his animal leaked,
when he truly endangered others, he didn’t need to warn them to stay away.
“I’ll be fine.”
His captors ensured a long recovery from what felt like internal bleeding.
Severins couldn’t put Kaia in more danger.
“You can go ahead.
I already know.”
Arms trembling, he
laid himself back to the cement to peer at her on the small, rickety-looking
bed. “Know what?”
“That you’re a
wolf. It doesn’t scare me. I knew about my ex. What he is.” Her hair gathered
in clumps at the base of her head, bangs half-plastered to her forehead.
Severins pushed
himself to his hands and knees, finally. His need to check on her outweighed
his need to heal.
“I had an idea,
the two of you are so similar.” Her chest rose and fell before she met his
gaze. “It should be the reason I don’t trust you, but it’s not.”
~About the Author~
Alisha Costanzo is from a Syracuse suburb. She earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Central Oklahoma, where she currently teaches English. She’s the author of BLOOD PHOENIX: REBIRTH and BLOOD PHOENIX: CLAIMED, and co-editor of DISTORTED. LOVING RED, a Broken World novel, is undergoing serious edits for its 2015 release. In the meantime, she will continue to corrupt young minds, rant about the government, and daydream about her all around nasty creatures.
Follow her blog, Fill-in-the-blankness, at alishamcostanzo.wordpress.com
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~Guest Post~
Severins Bouvier was literally made for Kaia Skarin...on
facebook. Four years ago.
Hello, I’m a former Role-player addict, and here’s my story.
My second role-play character was the charismatic, perverse
bear named Dev Peltier from Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunter series. I loved him.
Being him. Unleashing the sex-crazed man in my head. And the females didn’t
know what hit them.
I was merciless. (Which is fitting since Kenyon’s novel
featuring him is entitled NO MERCY. Check it out).
Worse, when Dev met Kaia—Little Red—one of my best friends
and writing partners, we created a fuck ton of character couples together. Man
did we have chemistry.
Don’t get me wrong, we still do, and we’re still good
friends, but sometimes, life gets in the way of hobbies. We’ll find the time to
write again together when it’s right. For now, I have my hands full with the
one’s that sit half-written on untouched profiles.
Wow, am I the tangent queen or what?
Back to Dev. See, I couldn’t let him fall in love with
Little Red, but he did. And a private romance brewed between them that was all
too obvious when they flirted on post.
The solution was Sev, a male fashioned in part after Dev
(hence their similar names, look, and general attitude, which I suppose will
become more clear in the coming books rather than this one) and in part after
my former soldier husband, who makes a cameo in the novel as Private Webb.
Their on-post romance flashed quick and hot without much
trouble other than the approval of his four-year-old daughter, Shawna. So much
of their book came from outside the posts.
Since Kaia isn’t my character, or wasn’t originally, I
hounded my friend about her perspective and questioned every move I made at
first—even though on post, we knew each other’s characters well enough to write
long posts and fill in their actions perfectly, or set up an action/response
with easy clues to one another. Still, Kaia gave me trouble at first.
It took some fight, but I let her go, like I do all of my
characters, to be the version of her in my made up world. And she grew into
this strong woman. I don’t mean physically, like she had to take on male
characteristics to be her own hero. She cries, she builds fires, she shoots her
attackers, she stands up for what’s right—even when it means protecting her
enemies, she’s allowed to be both smart and beautiful, and her faith makes her
brave enough to survive.
Her faith was another struggle for me since I am not a
Christian. (I’m not really anything. Labels. Raspberries.) But she was, and I
couldn’t change that just because it’s not my personal practice.
Shit, I’ve never been a soldier or an accountant. But that’s
the great thing about how these characters were made. I had someone I could
consult to be sure I was staying true to Kaia’s origins as I did with Sev’s.
Yes, Severins is mine, but he comes from an accumulation of
stories I hear from my crazy husband every day. So I would fact check with
Jason to get my details right.
And here’s the great thing about Sev. He takes on the
stereotypical hero types because he’s big and strong and a hero, but he’s
sensitive, too. He’s gentle, a good father, and he cares about what’s right as
much as Kaia does—even after the centuries of violence he’s lived through.
Still, that’s not what’s best about him.
Severins loves life. He picks himself back up, finds a new
path, and laughs at his mistakes. If anything, his attitude about life makes
him strong. I wish I could be more like him.
Like them both.
That’s the fun thing about being a writer. Characters come
from some strange places. When they’re uncontrollable, they’re at their best.
And I get to experience someone else’s life.
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