Hello lovelies! It gives me
great pleasure today to host Andie J. Christopher and her new book, “Dusk Until
Dawn”!
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end of this post to enter to win some exciting prizes like a print copy of her
featured book, “Dusk Until Dawn,” and a $5 Amazon Gift Card!! See below for more details. Also, come back daily to interact with Andie and
to increase your chances of winning!
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by! Wishing you lots of luck in this
fabulous giveaway!
Dusk Until Dawn
by Andie J. Christopher
Pub date: 4/18/2017
Genre: Contemporary Romance
No boundaries.
Bartender
and aspiring painter Maya Pascual loves turning up the heat. And dumping a
vodka-and-karma chaser on the man who broke her heart is perfect Bronx girl
payback. But how can she resist when Miami playboy prince Javier Hernandez begs
to make it up to her. . .
No regrets.
Between
his disastrous personal life and his wealthy family’s meddling, Javi needs to
get back on track. The only thing that’s certain is his passion for Maya. If
she’ll just let him show her how sorry he is, maybe he can move on and start
fresh. But one look in her gorgeous eyes and he knows letting her go will be
easier said than done.
No rules.
Maya
agrees to one dinner with Javi. But as their attraction threatens to combust,
she wonders if a night of no strings, no repeats surrender is the only way burn
off their desire once and for all…. Unless the light of day reveals it’s
impossible to let go.
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Chapter 1
Javier
Hernandez’s dick was bored. The rest of him was bored, too. But the dick part
had him worried.
He
slouched back on the padded bench in the VIP booth. Yvette and her
friend—couldn’t remember her name—danced near the edge of the balcony. They
were conspicuous enough that someone among the writhing mass of bodies in the
club below would snap a picture with their phone. Before sunrise, they’d be
plastered on a gossip blog as a romantic item.
He
hadn’t been to a club in almost a year, and right now, he wasn’t sure why he’d
ever enjoyed this kind of thing. Since his little sister called him out at a
family gathering, his father had kept him on lock down.
The
only reason he was off-leash tonight was a business dinner with an
out-of-towner who wanted to see the Miami nightlife. His father was quick to
nominate him for that job. But not before pushing him out the door with a few
words on how to land the client’s cash into their family’s hedge fund.
The
potential client was currently passed out in a black car on the way to the
airport. His father might not like how he got things done, but the guy was
happy, and Javi didn’t doubt that they’d have his business.
He
didn’t know why he was still hanging around. For the past year, he’d had his
shit together—working out, showing up to work on time, and staying away from
women who would garner any publicity for the family. He’d thought that being
back in a familiar environment would be a relief. Instead, it felt like pants
that didn’t fit—his old life was tight in the crotch, and not in a good way.
Both
models shot him suggestive glances, and Yvette beckoned him with one finger and
a flutter of her eyelashes. A year ago—fuck, six months ago—he’d have been with
them, taking a selfie, and posting it on social media. Thinking that people
would be jealous of him—Javier Hernandez, asshole who cavorts with models.
Losing
the regard of his family had cured him of the idea that he was living some sort
of charmed life. He’d used that image to bolster his wounded ego after his wife
left him. He didn’t need that Band-Aid now that the wound had closed up. If he
wanted to fuck, he fucked. But he didn’t make a big production of it. He didn’t
make a point to be photographed with models, strippers, or club girls. He’d
even closed down his Instagram account. There wasn’t any point. All of those
women had made him feel precisely nothing.
Javi
drained his vodka soda and reached for the half-full bottle. He’d made some bad
life choices if the sight of two underwear models grinding on each other
inspired the need for a drink instead of a boner.
There
might be some sort of temporary disturbance in the Force, or maybe he was
permanently out of the game. Living like a careless fuckboy hadn’t made him
feel alive, it had deadened everything inside him that his marriage hadn’t
killed.
The
last year of living like a monk with benefits hadn’t been all bad. Gradually,
he’d started repairing his relationships and noticing the people around him
again.
Maybe
he just needed more alcohol to get in the spirit of things. He sent a text to
the manager, telling him to send up a bottle of Dom for the girls along with
more vodka for the other people they’d invited to join them.
He
flinched when Yvette sauntered over and straddled his hips. Her black dress
crept up until he could see that she wasn’t wearing panties. They were
concealed by the table, so she wasn’t about to flash anyone. But people would
see them and make assumptions.
He
used to like this club because of the private alcoves where he could indulge in
any sort of vice he desired. That way he never had to kick anyone out of his
condo in the light of day.
Yvette
rolled her sinewy body against him and her friend sat next to him, her fingers
grazed the front of his pants on their way to making this whole scene too
X-rated for the birthday party at the next VIP table.
He
moved Yvette off his lap. She didn’t miss a beat and kissed her friend. Javi
ran his fingers through his hair in an attempt to look slightly less debauched.
He
should have gone home when the potential client left. But he hated being alone.
Coming
out with Yvette and company hadn’t fixed that. Even in a crowded club with two
women making it clear that they expected to fuck him, he felt empty inside. He
finished another drink and considered pouring another one. He bought the
bottle, why not drink it dry and bang two models? That’s what he’d always done
before.
Javi
shook his head and poured a shot. The bottle empty, he tapped his fingers on
the table, willing his order to show up faster.
He
needed to fuck. And soon. When he was inside someone else, he could stop
thinking about her and how badly he’d messed up. For a few minutes, sometimes a
few hours, he could forget what a shit he was. His head was crowded with
regrets and voices from the past that he needed to stay silent.
But
he just wasn’t interested in any of his present options.
He
considered Yvette and her friend—he remembered now, Lauren— for a long second
before fully abandoning the idea of leaving with them. He didn’t need to wake
up the next morning with a dry mouth and two people who didn’t care about him.
His hiatus from fuckery was about to become permanent.
Right
then, he decided to settle up the bill and leave.
“Yvette,
querida.” Her face snapped toward him immediately at the Spanish endearment as
Lauren nibbled on her ear. “I’m going to get out of here.” When Yvette reached
for her purse, he stopped her with a hand.
“Stay
here and have fun. I ordered you some treats. Enjoy.”
“Is
something wrong?” She moved Lauren’s face away from her neck, and the other
woman smiled a lazy, sexy grin. God, what was wrong with him? Fucking those two
would make any sane, straight man happy. “Do you want just me?”
Yvette
moved to stand, and Lauren’s beautiful face twisted into a grimace. His stomach
growled, and he thought of his way out. “No, I’m not feeling well.” He patted
his belly. Maybe he’d stop for some food on the way home. He winked at the two
women and they both smiled at him. “I’ll call you.”
He
wouldn’t be calling either of them, but the lie would get him out of there
faster.
The
two women started kissing again; he hadn’t spoiled their fun. Almost any other
man on the planet would be falling all over himself to join them, but he’d been
there and it didn’t do anything for him anymore. Stuck in his emo thought loop,
he didn’t register that the waitress approaching wasn’t just any waitress until
she was right in front of him. It was her. Maya Pascual. Maybe he hadn’t wanted
a threesome with two models because he’d somehow sensed her, smelled her on the
air, and she’d sucked his desire for anyone else out of the room without him
even knowing it.
He
didn’t know how to process her being here, working here. The last he’d heard,
she was back in New York, painting. But it was her in front of him like a
mirage.
She
stopped in her tracks as if she couldn’t quite believe it was him either. One
side of her mouth curled up in a smile, the kind she used to dole out when she
was about to say something sarcastic and wildly inappropriate. Then, she looked
over at Yvette and Lauren. Her gorgeous face twisted into a mask of disgust.
She looked as though she’d smelled something bad, but that didn’t keep her from
walking closer to him.
He
opened his mouth to explain what she would certainly pillory him for before she
took a bottle of Ciroc on her tray, thumbed off the cork, and started pouring
it on him in long stripes until the bottle was empty.
The
cold liquid against his face was a shock, but it wasn’t enough to make him back
up or move out of the way. Not when he was close enough to smell her again. He
wondered if it was the same. He could reach out and touch her if he wanted to,
and he actively fought the urge to bury his face in the skin at her neck.
“I
should light you on fire, cabrón.” The glint of rage in Maya’s eyes backed up
the suggestion that she turn him into a human candle. Jesus, she was hot when
she was angry. Feeling her against him burned. His head was all messed up, but
his dick reacted like it always had when Maya was around. It knew where it
wanted to be. More than anything.
*
* * *
Maya
had always been impulsive. She tried to behave, toe the line, follow the rules,
but then some idiot always did something to piss her off. But even her mother
and her priest would forgive her for her reaction this time. Not only did she
have to wait on this bastard, but she had to find him about to engage in a
threesome with women she thought she recognized from the Victoria’s Secret
catalogue. Fuck him.
She’d
known it was a bad idea to take this job and make a temporary move to Miami.
But her brother had convinced her that she needed to get out of Brooklyn in
order for her career to move forward—that a smaller market, filled with Latin
people with money, was a better launching pad than New York’s crowded art
scene.
Now
that she was less than an arm’s length from Javi, she realized moving here was
a terrible idea. Now that she could feel his body, she realized how disastrous
moving here was.
She’d
fantasized about what she’d do if she saw Javi again. In her nightmares, she ran
into him with a hugely pregnant Karrie. That smug grin from that stupid puta
had haunted her dreams for eight years. This was worse. Because not only had he
rejected her, he wasn’t the man she’d always thought he was. So, she’d been
wrong—not him.
By
now, the models were standing and gawking at her. The tall brunette looked like
she was about to light into her when Javi raised his hand. The other girl’s
mouth shut, just like that. That motherfucker always got his way. Even with
supermodels.
But
not with her. Not anymore. When she’d seen his wedding announcement in the New
York Times, she’d cut off all contact. Unfriend. Unfollow. Delete contact.
She’d deleted his account from her life.
She’d
successfully avoided news about Javi Hernandez and his whole family for almost
five years. All that effort, only to run into him about to break the marriage
vows he’d rejected her for.
Cutting
him off had been for her own good as much as his. She’d never been a part of
adultery, and she wasn’t about to start now. Oh, fuck. She’d have to tell
Karrie that her husband was cheating on her with models. Even though Maya had
hated Karrie on sight, she didn’t want to be the one to wreak that kind of
devastation, not with how she’d grown up.
Of
course, Karrie would probably assume that Maya was fucking her husband. God
help her, Maya had wanted Javi from the second he walked into the Philadelphia
bar she’d worked at. He had never been just good to look at. Everything about
him had enthralled her. One night, she’d stared at him roll whisky around in a
glass, committing the way his fingers rested against the vessel so deep in her
memory that she could still call it up while she masturbated. Her face heated
thinking about the fact that no one—no one—had supplanted Javi in her fantasies.
Thinking about his dark laugh and long, lean body was guaranteed to get her off
every single time. And she’d never touched him. They’d never kissed. Because he
was with Karrie.
Still,
he’d mind-fucked her so thoroughly that she’d been ruined for anyone else.
For
Christ’s sake, no one had a right to look that good soaking wet and reeking of
top-shelf vodka and supermodel pussy. She registered his longer hair, the
close-trimmed beard, and the gym-honed body wrapped up in a bespoke suit. No
tie; the hint of chest hair reminded her of how she used to fantasize about
touching him like she meant it.
He
looked down at his ruined blazer and back up at her with a hooded,
panty-searing gaze. The same way he’d been looking at another girl—two
women—getting it on for his benefit a few moments ago.
He’d
rejected her in the past. And now he was humiliating Karrie by cheating on her
in public. Maya hated how much she cared about that, but it was who she was.
She never wanted to see a woman humiliated the same way her mom had been for
decades.
She
shook her head. “Cágate en tu madre, Javi.” Every single swear word and vulgar
phrase she knew in Spanish rushed to the surface as she looked at him. Anger at
him. Anger at herself and the rush of memories that made her nipples peak and
rub harshly against the silk halter top she wore. Javi licked his lips and
looked her up and down. She wished she had something else to throw. She thought
about whacking him with her tray, but she’d probably already lost the gig; she
didn’t need to get a bill for property damage. Or to be arrested for assault
and battery.
The
spark of amusement the thought of beating him senseless woke up in her told her that it might be worth it.
Maybe it would wash away the anger and the irrational rush of jealousy she felt
at seeing him again. She didn’t just hate Karrie. She hated the models. And she
hated herself because, in the years since they’d been apart, she wasn’t sure
she wouldn’t go back and do things differently.
She
was so pissed that she would go back and be the other woman for Javi. Only for
him. And even though it would have gone against everything she believed in.
Then
he wiped his face with his left hand. No ring. No tan line where a ring should
be. Maybe they hadn’t gone through with the wedding. Maybe they were divorced.
The possibility that he wasn’t married, represented by his bare finger,
tantalized her. And she’d just doused him with vodka and said some pretty
intense shit about his mother. But maybe he didn’t wear a ring to make it
easier to cheat on his wife, and she was totally righteous in ruining that
suit.
“What
the fuck, Maya?” His words echoed through her brain. Seriously, what the fuck?
Why did she react to him like she had something to avenge? She’d had years to
get over the hurt, and he hadn’t done anything wrong. He might have hurt her,
but he’d been honest—marrying Karrie instead of giving things a shot with her
was what he wanted. He hadn’t chosen her. He didn’t want her.
And
going off of him without all the information made her trashy and impulsive. Fine to crush beers with and
have a laugh, but not wifey material. She was a hot head, and truly a bitch
when she put her mind to it. Maya was not the kind of woman who married into
one of Miami’s royal families. She was the kind that got kicked to the curb for
a debutante. Or the kind of broke a debutante’s nose in a fistfight.
And
would she have wanted Javi to choose her knowing that it would probably have
ended with him cheating on her, like it had for Karrie?
Would
she ever have been able to let him go? Or would she have sat waiting at home
while Javi did God knows what, with God knows who all over Miami? She sneered
at that pathetic mental picture.
Javi
had saved her years ago by rejecting her love. If he’d accepted it, she would
be nothing right now. A shell. Just like her mother. Thinking about her
mother’s unhappiness ached.
Silently,
she said her last goodbye to Javi. She let her expression soften and she drank
him in, more handsome than ever, even though he was a royal dick and probably a
cheater. He stood there, as if he was waiting for her to say something else.
Like this was a cheery fucking reunion.
She
turned to leave and his hand wrapped around her bicep to stop her. The rough
skin of his fingers and palm lit sparks underneath her skin. He stepped close, the scent of vodka laced
his breath mixed with some Javi-specific pheromone cocktail. “You’re not going
to leave without a word. Not after you fucked up a $10,000 suit and told me to
‘spew shit on my mother.’”
“Javi,
I—” She had nothing. Nothing adequate to say that would wash her words away.
She was used to the hit-and-run—lovers, apartments, jobs. Never stay in one
place too long. Let no one in, and don’t get hurt.
Touching
Javi, who didn’t actually smell like pussy at all, really hurt. Him touching
her let the full nightmare of seeing him again seep into her bones. The sting spread from where his
fingers grazed her bare skin and wrapped around all the way into her heart and
squeezed until she couldn’t breathe.
“Let
me go.” He might not have heard her whisper over the pounding hip hop, but he
hesitated. His skin seared to hers, and she still felt that thing that scented
the air whenever they were together. She didn’t know how to describe it, but
the atmosphere shifted when he touched her. Like the air just before a
lightning storm. Being close to him certainly shifted her personal humidity.
Still
he responded, his cigar-rough voice in her ear. “That’s what I promised you,
didn’t I? I promised to let you go, and I did.”
She
nodded, afraid she would choke if she used her words. She hadn’t wanted him to
let her go. No matter what she was telling herself now, she’d needed him to say
the other thing. To choose her. It had been so long that she didn’t think it
could hurt anymore, but it ached. Her skin felt scarred over, stretched thin.
He could tear her apart again if she let him.
She
wasn’t going to let him.
“Even
though that’s what I promised. I don’t want to let you go right now. I
shouldn’t have let you go ever.”
She
gasped. Before she could topple over or—worse—turn around and kiss him, she
looked at his bare left hand and said, “Doesn’t look like you keep your
promises anymore.”
She pulled her arm away,
half hoping he’d stop her from leaving. When he didn’t, she got away from him
as fast as she could.
Andie J. Christopher writes edgy, sexy,
contemporary romance. Her newest book, Dusk Until Dawn, is the second book in
her One
Night In South Beach series, and hits e-readers on April 18, 2017. In
this Author Q&A, she talks about the music that gets her in the mood to
write sizzling scenes, her favorite books, and her inspiration for setting a
series in Miami.
Why did you decide to go into this genre?
I’ve
loved reading romance novels since I was way too young to be reading them. I
read everything, but I always come back to romance when I need something
guaranteed to be uplifting.
What do you like to read?
Mostly
romance, very steamy contemporary romance in particular. Although I also love a
good Regency romance once in a while. I read a few literary books every year,
and I “read” non-fiction in audiobook form.
What was your favorite book when you were a kid?
My
grandmother bought me a very old edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which I adored
when I was very young. As an adolescent, my aunt—an English teacher—introduced
me to Jane Austen when she gave me Pride and Prejudice for Christmas, and I
never looked back. I think, when I read that book, I knew I wanted to write
romance. (It was either Jane Austen or the grocery bags full of Harlequin
Romances that my grandmother gave me to read during the summer.
Do you have a favorite EVER book?
Pride
and Prejudice is still one of my favorites—every time I read it, it remains
lovely and witty. But Mating by Norman Rush is the book that knocked me on my
a$$ the most as an adult. It is the most beautiful elegiac telling of doomed
romantic relationship that I have ever read. It’s simply astonishing, and I’ve
never read anything like it.
How long does it take you to write a book?
It
depends, but I usually create a draft in about a month once the plot coalesces
in my head and I sit down to write it.
How do you get inspiration for your books?
Everywhere.
For the One Night in South Beach series, I had been spending a lot of time in
Miami with friends. I fell in love with the city, and could picture scenes in
so many of the places we visited.
Do you have any music to write by?
I
usually create a playlist for each series or book, and I listen to that while
I’m writing. Certain songs remind me of certain characters, and I like to
listen to a song that reminds me of the couple while writing sex scenes.
Do your characters ever do things you weren't expecting?
All the time, and I love it
when they do!
Andie J. Christopher writes edgy, funny, sexy
contemporary romance. She grew up in a family of voracious readers, and picked
up her first Harlequin romance novel at age twelve when she’d finished reading
everything else in her grandmother’s house. It was love at first read. It
wasn’t too long before she started writing my own stories—her first heroine
drank Campari and wore a lot of Esprit. Andie holds a bachelor's degree from
the University of Notre Dame in economics and art history (summa cum laude),
and a JD from Stanford Law School. She lives in Washington, DC, with a very
funny French Bulldog named Gus.
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Andie ~ It is great to have you here! Congrats on your new book and good luck on the book tour! :)
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