Title: Pure and Sinful
Author: Killan McRae
Series: Pure Souls #1
Publisher: Tulipe Noire Press
Published: September 20th 2012
Book Description:
Statistician Riona Dade knows all about probabilities. Still,
even she'd tell you the chances of discovering you’re a witch, being appointed
to the demon-slaying trio known as the Pure Souls, and finding yourself
sinfully attracted to a catholic priest who uses amen and other four-lettered
words with equal enthusiasm are pretty slim. Also learning your ex was once
Hell’s first-round draft pick, and realizing you're a prize catch for Satan’s
soul-damning quota leaves a girl feeling like she just won the lottery while
being struck by lightning while riding a unicorn across Atlantis.
Trying to keep her mind off role playing the Thornbirds with Father Angeletti, Riona leads the Pure Souls against a maniacal menagerie of Mephistopheles’s minions plaguing greater Boston. Giving in to lust is a direct flight to damnation for both her and the priest, leading Riona to distract herself by striking up a romance with her new, foxy neighbor, Lucy. But she can't shake her attraction to Marcello, and as the tension between them grows thicker than a lumberjack’s beard, temptation may become too difficult to resist.
How long can they deny the pull growing between them, knowing there will be Hell to pay?
Trying to keep her mind off role playing the Thornbirds with Father Angeletti, Riona leads the Pure Souls against a maniacal menagerie of Mephistopheles’s minions plaguing greater Boston. Giving in to lust is a direct flight to damnation for both her and the priest, leading Riona to distract herself by striking up a romance with her new, foxy neighbor, Lucy. But she can't shake her attraction to Marcello, and as the tension between them grows thicker than a lumberjack’s beard, temptation may become too difficult to resist.
How long can they deny the pull growing between them, knowing there will be Hell to pay?
Excerpt
A
demon horde was no laughing matter. Riona was an equal-opportunity vanquisher
of scum, and each of these minions’ numbers would be called soon enough. The
VIP floating somewhere in the crowd was her target, however. Her gaze scanned
the room and found his Mediterranean blue peepers fixed in her direction,
joined farther down his face by an irksome grin, one corner of his devilish
mouth curled.
“Didn’t
know it was ladies’ night,” he grumbled.
Riona
flexed her hand, cracking her knuckles like a string of firecrackers. “If
there’s one thing I’ve never been accused of, it’s being a lady.”
Even
without his bronzed-skinned and brawny-shouldered glamour, Riona recognized
Jerry from twenty paces. He wore smugness like a well-tailored shirt, and, oh,
how she wanted to rip that from him and toss it to the floor. This
green-skinned, yellow-freckled, damned-soul-incarnate sipping a pint of
Bavarian brew was the reason she was here, after all, and the sooner she
toasted his ass and sent his soul “disembodied” back to Hell and into the
unloving embrace of Papa Satan, the better.
Demonstrating
that he had a bit of backbone left, Jerry didn’t make a run for it. He gave her
one pulse-spiking wink, and turned back to the bar. A demon who drank lager
with one raised pinky off the stein would have gotten his ass kicked if he’d
been any other evil minion. Not Jerry. As one of Lucifer’s top agents
earthside, she’d recently come to learn, Mr. Romani had been spreading evil
since before the calendar flipped to A.D. The almost unheard of longevity and
ability to outmaneuver demon slayers made him a bit of a legend in these
circles. The reverence gave him airs. Jerry thought himself a demon of decorum
and class. Riona had always said his eccentricities made him look like a friend
of Dorothy in public.
But
damn it all, if he hadn’t disproven that association to her time and time again
in fervent, pulsating, speak-in-tongues and curl-your-toes demonstrations of
lust and pleasure against her burning flesh.
But
that was before. In his magically-engineered facade, he appeared to her as a
black-haired, blue-eyed, Italian-American underwear model, sleek, shiny and
sinfully lustable. The glamour, and their ensuing hot and heavy relationship,
all amounted to an ingenious scam. Jerry was on a mission, and it wasn’t to win
her heart. Lucifer had somehow gotten a heads up that Riona was next up on the
roster to be vested as the Keystone Witch of the Pure Souls, she figured.
Hell dispatched Jerry to assess her corruptibility, and feel her out
(feeling her up was just a bonus). At some point, the need for the game
evaporated and it nearly cost Riona her life. No one could have predicted that
it would be at that particular moment that her powers would manifest, allowing
her to walk through a solid wall and escape. It had to be a one in a million
chance, right?
Riona
actually knew. The chances stood at 3,456,783 to 1. She had been the power ball
winner in the supernatural lottery.
Jerry
chuckled from across the silent, tension-locked room. “Of all the bars in all
the netherworlds, she has to come walking into mine.”
Riona
put up a false front of confidence in her best attempts at a bluff. “Why, hello
handsome. Fancy seeing you here.”
He
took another swig of his beer before gently placing the bottle on the counter
and pushing himself off his barstool. With a swagger that still melted her
internally, despite the less than desirable exterior she now beheld, she still
remembered the delectable ways in which those hips could swing. He made each step
golden as he crossed the room. When they stood face to face, that unique
mixture of anticipation and disgust only he could instill took up residency
among the butterflies in her stomach. Despite the fact that his demon
physiognomy was now clear as day, those azure discs that undid her so often
during their short-term fling excited her in ways that weren’t proper for a
Sunday.
“I
take it you’re not here for a drink, so I can only assume this is that long
overdue booty call you know you’ve been hankering for.”
Her
breath went jagged as his scaly hand reached up and stroked the flushed
alabaster of her cheek. She closed her eyes and tried to regain the locus of
control. She would not, could not, let him get the better of her.
“What
can I say?” she bantered back, opening her eyes, now brimming with code orange
vigilance. “Once you go demon, it’s them that you’re needin’.”
“Cute.
We should print that up on t-shirts."
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