Craved by an Alpha, the fifth book in New York Times best-seller Felicity Heaton’s hot paranormal romance series, Eternal Mates, is now available in ebook and paperback. To celebrate the release, she’s holding a FANTASTIC GIVEAWAY at her website and sharing sneak peeks of the book.
Find out how to enter the Craved by an Alpha international giveaway (ends February 8th) and be in with a shot of winning a $75, $50 or $25 gift certificate at her website, where you can also download a 5 chapter sample of the novel: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk/craved-by-an-alpha-paranormal-romance-novel.php
Book Description:
Having turned his back on his snow leopard pride, Cavanaugh has been counting the days until he’s free of a role he never wanted—one that separated him from his fated female and stands between him and the future he craves with her.
Just days from the night he will finally be free to be with the low-ranking beauty who stole his heart, she walks back into his life and threatens to destroy everything he’s worked towards in the five long years they’ve been apart.
Eloise has travelled across continents searching for the male who was once her best friend and so much more to her, but was now her pride’s true alpha. Desperate to fulfil a promise to her kin to save them from the tyrant he left in charge, she convinces Cavanaugh to return to his pride, but as they journey to Bhutan, doubts bloom and old feelings resurface, tearing her between duty and her deepest desires and impossible dreams.
Will Eloise be able to resist the burning need that Cavanaugh reignites in her and remember her place in the pride? And can Cavanaugh find a way to save his kin and claim the future he craves with the woman he loves?
Excerpt:
“I’m going for a swim.”
Eloise barely had time to register those words before Cavanaugh was stripping off his charcoal fleece, tugging the dark t-shirt he wore beneath off with it too. He dropped them on top of his pack and she stared at him, unable to drag her eyes away as they slowly glided down over the hard slabs of his pectorals to the ropes of his stomach.
An ache started low in her belly and only got worse as he tugged off his walking boots, pulled off his socks, and unbuttoned his dark grey trousers. He pushed them down, revealing long toned legs, and stepped out of them, his muscles shifting with the action, mesmerising her.
He truly was a majestic male.
For a moment, she feared he would crush her strength to resist him by stripping completely, but he turned away from her, his black trunks still in place. They hugged the twin globes of his backside as he walked and she stared at them, loving the way they dimpled and flexed with each stride he took towards the water.
When he looked back at her, she dropped her gaze to her pack.
She felt his eyes leave her and lifted hers back to him, drinking in the sight of him. He waded into the water and barked out a sharp noise that echoed around the lush green valley and the mountains beyond.
“Fuck, that’s freezing.” He didn’t turn around as she had expected. He shuddered and kept wading out into the river, his shoulders hunched up and fingers flexing at his sides.
She smiled.
And hid it when he looked back at her.
He grinned, his grey eyes bright with it, a light she hadn’t seen in them for a long time. Too long. This was the gorgeous male she had grown up with, always an air of mischief surrounding him, a sense that he was going to live his life to the fullest and take every adventure in his stride.
Seeing him like it again only made her feel worse about making him return to the pride with her and only made it hit home how much he had changed when he had become their alpha. She had never thought he would smile again as he was now, full of energy and happiness. She had never thought she would see the Cavanaugh who had been her best friend, her closest companion, and so much more than that.
For her at least.
She studied him, spotting all the changes that she had failed to notice, ones that were startlingly clear to her now and told her that things had been hard for Cavanaugh at the village after he had become their alpha. She could see now how much it had weighed on him and she cursed herself for being so wrapped up in her own hurt to notice his struggle. Her heart whispered that it wasn’t only his duties as alpha that had made life at the pride hard for him and she tried to ignore it, afraid to listen to it and believe that his struggle had in part been because they had been separated and couldn’t be together.
She refused to get caught up in that fantasy.
She refused to surrender to her pressing need to question him too, because she feared the answers he might give her.
He bravely dipped lower in the water, kicked off and began to swim in the deepest part of the river, entrancing her as he ducked his head under the cold water and surfaced again. He slicked his silver-white hair back and rivulets ran down his sculpted cheeks and rolled along the strong line of his jaw. He still made her heart beat hard and still drew her to him even though her memories of him were tainted by everything that had come afterwards.
The women.
The warmth that had been building inside her stuttered and died, leaving her ice cold.
Cavanaugh swam towards her, but his smile no longer affected her. The sight of him no longer made her want to rush into his arms and listen to his deep voice as he told her stories of the outside world. The pain of watching him from a distance for five long years crushed that need and the pain of being separated from him and everything she had endured destroyed her softer feelings.
“Join me, Eloise,” he hollered, his smile widening. “It’s not bad once you get used to it.”
“No.” That word came out far colder than she had intended and he frowned at her, his smile disappearing as he stopped swimming.
She looked away from him, unable to bear seeing the hurt as it crossed his face, tearing at her. She hadn’t meant to reject him so cruelly. It had been wrong of her, and not because he was her alpha and she had been disrespectful. It had been wrong of her to hurt him when deep inside she had wanted to take him up on his offer.
She wanted to swim with him, but she couldn’t shake the memories that were bombarding her, replays of the five years she had watched him from a distance as he had acted as their alpha.
She couldn’t shake the flashes of the women who had been all over him, seeking his attention.
Eloise pressed her hands to her chest as her heart hurt and tears threatened to fill her eyes. She sniffed them back, unwilling to let them fall. She had spilled enough tears in her life over everything that had happened. She was done with them now. She was stronger than the woman she had been, the one shaped by events she’d had no control over.
The one who had been torn apart every night when Cavanaugh had gone to his house, a trail of women following him.
It was the right of pride alphas to take their pick from among the females of status, satisfying as many partners as took their fancy. The females vied for the attention of their alpha because sharing his bed might elevate them into the role of his sole female.
Cavanaugh had never chosen one from the many. His father had been like that too, bedding numerous females, never settling on one.
His father had even slept with the females without status, the ones who could never be selected as his sole female.
Her gaze sought Cavanaugh and tracked him as he swam away from her, the distance between them eating at her. How many females had he bedded in the five years he had served as their alpha?
How many more would he sleep with after he returned to that role?
He would return to it. He had no choice. He would become their true alpha again when he set foot in the village, and she would go back to her quiet life, away from the pride. As much as it hurt her, it was how things had to be. She wasn’t bringing him back for her sake. She was doing it for the pride.
Eloise watched him, a deep need growing inside her again, one that she struggled to deny.
Asking Cavanaugh for the truth about how many women he had slept with and whether he had ever cared about her would only end with her being hurt again. She wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t brave enough to lay her heart on the line like that. Her stomach rebelled at the vision of him looking her right in the eye and telling her that he had bedded the females and that she had meant nothing to him, that what had happened between them had been nothing more than satisfying a biological need for him.
She wasn’t strong enough right now to hear that. Seeing him again, speaking to him for the first time in almost a decade, and being close to him had her muddled and off balance, liable to fall apart and make a fool of herself.
Cavanaugh began swimming back towards her and the resolve she had mustered crumbled again. She trembled on the brink of casting aside all the rules and swimming with him. Part of her demanded she seized this moment with him, before he was taken from her again, but the rest warned that it would only make things worse. Giving herself to him again now would make seeing him with other females unbearable. The knowledge that he could again take something precious and special and treat it as if it was nothing would destroy her.
His gaze swung her way and his expression suddenly went cold.
“Eloise!” He shoved out of the water, spraying it everywhere and startling her.
He rushed across the wet rocks, his footing sure as he sprinted towards her, leaping with agile grace from one boulder to the next, his muscles working hard as he closed the distance between them.
Her eyes widened and she turned slowly, her heart thundering against her breast and cold prickles crawling over the nape of her neck.
She wasn’t alone.
Her eyes met the huge tiger’s ones as it stalked towards her from the edge of the forest, already close enough to pounce.
Our Review:
**ARC received for honest review**
Review by Shirley ~ 4.5 Stars
This is the fifth book in this excellent series, Eternal Mates and as always a superb book written by one of my favourite authors in the paranormal genre.
Craved has a really great story line, telling you about a love that has survived against all odds but had not been lost over time. It is about two snow leopard shifters Cavanaugh and Eloise who belong to the same pride whose home is in the Himalayas. They had grown up together and their friendship over the years gradually turning into something more. Then on the death of Cavanaugh’s father everything changed for these two as Cavanaugh had to take his place as Alpha of the pride.
Cavanaugh became disenchanted with everything that was expected of him being Alpha, so much so that it brought about him leaving the pride all together and to find a home elsewhere. The story catches up with Cavanaugh in London working in a club. He had been travelling for five years across the world but had found London the best place for him to settle until his self-banishment from the pride was over.
He had never forgotten Eloise and he thought of her constantly, reliving the time they had spent together all that time long ago. This was why he could not believe his eyes when he saw her across the room instead of in Bhutan safe with the pride.
Looking at her he couldn't get over how dramatically she had changed. He had left a little fire brand but the woman standing there was beaten down and a shadow of herself. After the shock of seeing Eloise and when talking to her he learnt she had been looking for him for two years, he was needed back home.
And so the story begins. It tells of hardships and cruelty, but also of a love not diminished by time. It also shows you that Cavanaugh and Eloise’s feelings for each other were as strong as ever.
“It was getting more difficult by the second though. The longer he was around her, her scent filling his lungs and her curves tempting his eyes, the stronger his need to kiss her became. Every tree they passed, he fantasised about pinning her to it and stealing her breath with a kiss that would have her melting into him and moaning his name as she had the last night they had made love.
He palmed the growing bulge in his trousers, shifting it into a more comfortable position.”
He was burning for her. And Eloise felt her need for him driving her crazy.
“He had been on her mind all day, stealing her focus away from the world around her during their trek. She hadn't been able to stop thinking about him since he had woken her this morning before dawn, rousing her from a wicked dream of him. She opened her eyes to find him lying beside her, propped up on his elbow; his silver-white hair had been mussed, as if he had been tugging it all night, ploughing his fingers through it. It had tempted her to do the same. His grey eyes had been warm and bright, filled with a strange light that had left her feeling he was happy and it was because she was with him.”
But for them, to try and get back to those golden days would not be easy, too many years had passed with hurts and misguided thoughts to hinder them, but nothing was impossible not even for them. Also they had harder things to accomplish and his name was STELLAN.
Ms Heaton, another great story in this fabulous series, couldn't put the book down until I reached the end. Cavanaugh and Eloise are heart-warming with their love and I hope other readers love this book as much as I did.
Buy Links:
Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/1EIRWtw
Amazon US: http://amzn.to/18QOEXU
About the Author:
Felicity Heaton is a New York Times and USA Today international best-selling author writing passionate paranormal romance books. In her books, she creates detailed worlds, twisting plots, mind-blowing action, intense emotion and heart-stopping romances with leading men that vary from dark deadly vampires to sexy shape-shifters and wicked werewolves, to sinful angels and hot demons! If you're a fan of paranormal romance authors Lara Adrian, J R Ward, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Gena Showalter and Christine Feehan then you will enjoy her books too.
If you love your angels a little dark and wicked, the best-selling Her Angel series is for you. If you like strong, powerful, and dark vampires then try the Vampires Realm series or any of her stand-alone vampire romance books. If you’re looking for vampire romances that are sinful, passionate and erotic then try the best-selling Vampire Erotic Theatre series. Or if you prefer huge detailed worlds filled with hot-blooded alpha males in every species, from elves to demons to dragons to shifters and angels, then take a look at the new Eternal Mates series.
Author Links:
Website: http://www.felicityheaton.co.uk
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/felicityheaton
Twitter: http://twitter.com/felicityheaton
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/felicityheaton
Not long now to the end if the tour, it's been great visiting all the tour stops, thanks for sharing all these great excerpts so looking forward to the next book out in this series.
ReplyDelete