I am soooooo happy to welcome the lovely and talented Carlene Love Flores to my little corner of the interwebs. She’s here with a peek at her fabulous new release, Stay for Me. Welcome, Carlene!

Carlene: Hi Xio! Hi Xio’s friends! I’m here to share my new release with you but first, I just have to say that I was snooping around and I want to know—no, I need to know—when does Starstruck come out, Miss Axelrod??? I love the blurb and the idea. Please tell me we don’t have long to wait and if I’ve somehow missed its release, please bop me over the head and point me in the right direction!

Xio: Haha! No, you didn’t miss it. Starstruck has a new name, Falling Stars. I hope to release it around the end of May/beginning of June. It’s been a long time coming, ehehe.

Carlene: And I also know you have a mutual and profound love of music so I thought I’d share the writing play list for Stay for Me…

Move Together by James Bay

Fade Into Me by David Cook

Stay by Rihanna

Stay by Dave Gahan

The End by Kings of Leon

Xio: That’s a fantastic playlist! Mine are all miles long.

Carlene: It’s always tough keeping a playlist on the short side but it helps me focus on the emotions the artists put into those particular songs. So what about you? Can you narrow your favorite songs down to a Top 5? Please share, I’d love to hear about them.

Xio: I could never, but maybe some of the readers could. My list of favourites changes daily. Thanks for popping by, Carlene dear, and best of luck with your release.

Carlene: Have a great day everyone and please enjoy my promo…

One night to finally make it right before it all gets torn apart…

            Two years ago, best friends Emma Chester and Sam Jason tried being intimate. Due to Sam’s massive size, it didn’t work. Emma was hurt. Embarrassed, they did their best to move on. Now the day has come when Emma must suspend Sam as a dancer at the club they work at, awakening the buried pain of that one night.

Sam has seen this day coming but is shocked when Emma asks him to strip for her just once before he leaves the club. Allowing himself to feel for her again is too dangerous but she’s clearly not in her right mind and needs him.

Can he maintain his restraint and help her?

When she hands him his uniform to strip out of, is she handing him her heart? Or is it too tattered to ever belong to him again?

***

How amazing does that sound? I’m 1-clicking it right now, lol. Carlene was kind enough to give us an excerpt from Stay With Me as well. Enjoy!

“Are you okay?” she asked as he felt his back move against the wall.

No. In fact, he was ashamed of the slip in control as the thrill of that shot of her breath reminded him. He’d once thought of nothing else besides making love to her and had been pretty damn reckless in going after it as a twenty-one-year-old man. Didn’t matter that they’d been best friends since they were thirteen. In fact, that was what should have stopped him. How much time she and her family had given to improving his home life should have been his reminder not to touch. Not to kiss.

The sudden mind game didn’t stop there.

Tight knots shot up through his gut. Damn, he was not getting aroused, except for damn, he was. It was her eyes and her hair and what she’d been trying to do for him. He pushed down and adjusted the growing and inappropriate bulge so it didn’t bust the overworked zipper of his god-awful, tight pants. As soon as he did that, she finally spoke.

            “You’re still in costume.” He watched her chest rise and fall with her deep breath, wondering what exactly it meant.

God, was she responding to him? He’d lie if he didn’t still have the clearest picture of her smile taking over her face when he came off the plane to meet her and her parents. She’d even told him how good he looked in his Army uniform. Haunted by the knowledge of how badly he’d hurt Emma trying to make love that night, he prayed for her sake that he was wrong. And now here he was thinking what? Two years he’d lived up to that vow. There had to be a way to crawl back into the hole he’d dug where feelings for Emma were buried.

            Then she did the most dangerous thing of all. She crawled over to the wall where he’d escaped, reached out, and touched his shoulder.

“Didn’t have time to take it off,” he said and came out of his squat to rest on his knees, preparing to get up and leave before he did something stupid.

            He could not hurt her again, and he was dangerously close to breaking his vow.

This was about quitting one job and replacing it with another, finances, and upholding secret arrangements with her parents who he loved like his own. Not drudging up the night he’d put everything on the line and asked her to be his, how eager she’d been to say yes, and how he’d screwed it all up. But now he couldn’t ignore the flood of fire as Emma’s brown eyes did their best to lie for her, same as his tried on his behalf.

            “Emma, I should go. Gotta clean out my locker.”

            Get some fresh air and a pair of pants that aren’t so damn tight.

            He vaguely noticed the slight shake to the ends of her hair before she said the words that rocked his world, taking this completely off the playing field he’d been prepared to run around.

            She rubbed at the tip of her cute little nose. “I only took this job because I knew if you left without me that night, you’d find a way to stay away for good. For my good. Just like you’re trying to do now. I’m calling bullshit, on all of this. I’ve wanted to be yours since the eighth grade, Sam. You tell me how to quit that. I’m tired of lying.”

Grab a copy at: Evernight / Amazon / AllRomance eBooks / Barnes and Noble

Carlene Love Flores is a big fan of the stars (especially Orion), honest music (especially Depeche Mode), and her traveling family (no favorites there-she loves them all). These things inspire her intimate style of romance writing. She feels honored to be a member of Washington DC Romance Writers (WRWDC), RWA San Diego (RWASD), and the Waterworld Mermaids. Carlene currently lives in the San Diego area where she can often be found listening to live music and looking up at the sky on clear nights.  If she could touch someone’s heart with her writing the way others have done for her, she’d say truly there never lived a luckier girl.

Carlene would love to hear from you, find her here: Website / Facebook / Twitter / Evernight / Goodreads / Pinterest / Facebook Author Page