Hi everyone!

I’m SO excited for you to read this book. It was an epic tale to write and Serenity is now on my list of top favorite heroines! LOL Ryker is pretty sexy too… *ahem* 

Thanks SO much for reading and posting reviews and telling your friends about my books! I couldn’t keep writing them without all of you!

Lisa

BLURB – 

Ryker Lawson has had a string of bad luck over the years. After a tragedy at work, he mounted his Harley and rode into the sunset, only to be attacked and bitten by a werewolf. Burying the past, he’s focused on the future as a member of the Sedona Pack and working as the bartender of their Wolf Pack Bar. 

Serenity Harlow is in the battle for her sanity and her life. After her mother’s torturous attempts to “cure” her powerful psychic abilities, she’s lost in the maze of her own mind. But a voice calls to her, a sister she lost long ago, and there’s someone else. She recognizes him even though they’ve never met. Ryker is her destiny, but if she can’t control the power growing inside of her, she could lead to his destruction.

One touch and fate sets them on a collision course with tragedy, but Ryker isn’t afraid of a fight. In fact, he’s betting his life that his luck is finally about to change… 

 

Excerpt – 

As the frustration built, a familiar scent teased my senses. Ryker had just entered my room. The chair squeaked beside the bed and again I struggled to make the connection between my brain and my body. Wake up!

“Morning, Serenity.” His voice was close, like I could reach out and touch him.

If I could move.

“Sorry about last night.” He cleared his throat. “All this supernatural stuff is new to me.”

His admission puzzled me. He was a freaking werewolf. How much more supernatural could you get? I fought to open my eyes one more time, but nothing happened. Screw it.

I opened the door in my mind, the one that led to freedom. Immediately my spirit was weightless, no pain, no weight of useless flesh. I focused on Ryker’s dark eyes.

Newsflash. You’re a werewolf. Pretty damned supernatural.

He laughed, and I wanted to shake the comatose body on the bed. Wake up. Look at this man. Pointless. This disconnect was so much less frustrating before Ryker lured me to connect with the physical world again. Maybe it was better this way. Less chance I’d hurt anyone.

“I wasn’t born a shifter.” He reached for the book he left on the nightstand. “I’m allowed to be spooked by a gorgeous woman who can speak to me without moving her lips.”

He saw beauty in that broken body?

I studied her pale skin, my skin. Dark circles covered my closed eyes. My long auburn hair looked like someone must’ve washed it recently. Maybe while I was away from this body. While I used to work out and kept in good shape, this girl had lost at least twenty pounds. Bones and flesh, clinging to life. How much time had passed since my mother dubbed me too dangerous? Until she needed to cure me so that the government she worked for wouldn’t kill me.

She didn’t know I had relocated the door in my mind to escape. I hadn’t moved anything or spoken to her telepathically. If she’d known I had reached out to Madison, clued her in to where I was being held, my mother would have finished what she started.

I thought werewolves were supposed to have enhanced vision. Nothing about the body in this bed is beautiful.

“You’re wrong.” He glanced around the room, like he might be able to see my spirit floating in front of him. “I don’t know what happened to you in that lab, but not only did you survive, you helped a werewolf pack find you and break you out. To me, that kind of determination is beauty in its rarest form.”

Before my mother’s cure, I was fierce and determined. I’d been told more than once that my intensity made some people uncomfortable. That was back when I thought I was using my gifts to help others, not hunt them.

And although my life had been far from what most people would consider “normal”, I had lived on my own, gone on dates, and even had a few boyfriends I never would have brought home to my mother.

But I couldn’t recall any of them calling me gorgeous or beautiful.

Hearing Ryker drop the word so casually, like it was a fact, instead of an opinion made my heart pound. Wait, my heart was…suddenly, I was sucked into my physical form. The carnal sensation of my rushing pulse in response to his words sent a bolt of panic through my mind.

What the hell? I’d never been forced back inside my body before.

Then I realized something. For a moment, my body and my spirit had connected on a visceral, fundamental level. Holy shit.

I tried to open my eyes again. Nothing.

Damn it.

It couldn’t have been a coincidence. I hadn’t decided to rejoin my body. This was new, but whatever caused it seemed to be fading, slipping through my grasping fingers.

Think Serenity.

The electroshock therapies had blocked some of my mental pathways that had been natural for me. From my earliest memories, I’d been able to reach others telepathically. As long as my mother could control how and when I used my abilities, she’d welcomed my gifts, but the second I started to question her mission, my psychic power became a threat, a disease to be cured.

Since her “treatments”, I’d been unable to use mental telepathy unless I was astral projecting, free from confines of my battered brain tissues. Losing use of my psychic senses had been the deepest betrayal. My mother’s victory left me a shadow of myself.

But communicating with Ryker and hearing his reaction to my corporeal body had elicited both a mental and physical response. My heart had been racing, and for a moment, mind and body were responding to him in unison.  Fear gripped me as I tentatively pushed to reach him while I was within this weakened body. It wouldn’t work. I dreaded the disappointment, but I was still impelled to try.

Can you hear me?

The unwanted spark of hope made every second painful as it passed.

“Yes,” he replied.

Something rolled down my cheek. A tear. Another tangible physical response to the relief flooding my mind. Maybe I wasn’t as broken as I thought. Maybe healing was possible.

His warm hand caressed my cheek, catching the tear. Concern colored his voice. “What’s wrong?”

Please open your eyes! I screamed at myself. But no words escaped my lips, and my eyelids didn’t lift.

 I settled, testing the neural pathways again, reaching out to him mentally. Something is happening, but I still can’t make my body respond. I’m trapped.

He was closer now. His breath warmed my skin. “I’m right here. And I’ll keep being here. Take all the time you need.”

There isn’t time. They’re coming.

“Who?” he asked.

My head ached with the effort. Telepathy had been like breathing for me before, but now finding new ways to connect with my gift seemed like a weakened muscle, cramping with the strain.

I need to wake up.

“What can I do?” he whispered.

I wished I knew. There was something about him that called to me both physically and mentally. He’d lured me back into the world of the living, but I couldn’t move. Maybe my body was too far gone. It was too late.

He took my hand and a fire lit through my bloodstream. This was an awareness, I remembered. This was desire. The sudden alertness and yearning to be touched, to be consumed. This was the key. I was sure of it. This was my chance for body and soul to reconnect on a fundamental level. I fought to move my fingers, digging into the hunger for human contact, for Ryker.

“Your hand,” He leaned closer. “You’re doing it, Serenity. You’re moving.”

Hearing the pride in his voice, unlocked another chain from around my mind, allowing more hope to creep in.

Kiss me.

I’d wanted it, but until the words shot from my mind to his, I hadn’t realized I had enough energy for him to pick up on it.

He didn’t say anything, but the moment his warm mouth caressed my lips, light exploded behind my eyelids, and another door opened between us. A massive black wolf howled, his dark eyes, Ryker’s eyes, staring right into my soul. He was regal, strong, and loyal.

Mine.

I didn’t understand what was happening, but when he pulled back, the ache it left behind made a sound. A weak, hoarse, horrible mewling noise escaped my lips. God, was that me?

And then my eyelids fluttered, and finally I stared up at Ryker’s handsome face. I’d seen him, while free from my body, but seeing him through my own eyes brought the color into focus. Astral travel muted colors, making the world more of a pencil drawing than lush landscape.

His eyes were dark brown like pure chocolate, with thick black lashes framing them. His strong jaw was shadowed with what hinted it would become a beard in a few more days. His lips parted, becoming a smile that made my heart flutter, my physical body again connecting with my mind, sewing me back together, like Peter Pan and his shadow.

I wanted to reach up and touch his face, but my arm didn’t move. Baby steps.

“You’re awake,” he whispered.

My mouth curved, a feeling I vaguely remembered as a smile. I couldn’t speak, or move, but I was looking up at an amazing man who had sat at my bedside for weeks and somehow never lost faith that I’d find my way back.

I reached out mentally again despite the ache in my head. Thank you for not giving up on me.

He brought his hand up and ran the back of his fingers along my cheek. “Thank you for fighting back.”

My eyes drifted closed again, but I might never stop smiling.

~~~~~~

change…