Forged by Desire Cover

So Forged by Desire has a new cover, which I'm really excited to show off, as I think it's gorgeous:

That's precisely as I imagine Perry and I love how fierce and totally focused she looks (love her brass-plated fan too). But the detail that excites me the most? I just adore how his fingers are linked with hers.

And here is the blurb from Goodreads, though it might not be the final version yet:

Captain Garrett Reed of the Nighthawk guard has a deadly mission: capture a steel-jawed monster preying on women. He hates to put his partner, Perry, in jeopardy, but she’s the best bait he has. Little does he realize, he’s about to be caught in his own trap.

Perry has been half in love with Garrett for years, but this is not exactly the best time to start a relationship—especially when their investigation leads them directly into the clutches of the madman she thought she’d escaped…

Fancy a little snippet?

As always, this work is copyrighted to me. Here's Garrett at the start of Forged (due out in September 2014), dealing with a few of the consequences from My Lady Quicksilver:

Taking up his razor, he slashed a small cut across his finger and squeezed it to make blood well. It oozed slowly through the cut, a dark bluish-red that gave blue bloods their name. Slowly the drop quivered on the tip of his finger then fell into the glass vial at the end of the spectrometer. Garrett squeezed another two drops out, but the cut was almost healed. With a grimace, he turned the dials on the spectrometer to start the acidic reaction.

The device spat out a small role of paper with several numbers printed on it. He ignored the first three and went straight to the craving virus percentage.

Sixty-eight.

Garrett stared at the piece of paper for a long time, then scrunched it up in his fist. The numbers were still burned across his retinas. They’d increased since his last reading, which had been yesterday morning.

Suddenly it wasn’t enough to clench the paper in his fist. He tore it into fine shreds, discarding them amongst the ashes in his cold hearth. He had a duty to report this. Any blue blood that reached CV levels of nearly seventy per cent was staring the Fade in the eye. It was something every blue blood feared, the final, unstoppable progression of the disease.

Soon his skin would start paling, the colour bleaching out of his hair and eyes as he evolved – or devolved – into something inhuman, something utterly vampiric. A blood-thirsty monster incapable of rational thought, driven only by its hungers. The albinism probably would have started already if his levels had climbed slowly, but the swiftness of his increase had saved him from that at least. He had time to hide this.

A rash of vampires a century ago had made it compulsory to deliver reports of high craving levels to the authorities. Nearing seventy per cent was cause for increased surveillance. Any higher and they’d consider executing him.

Panic burned through his chest. He couldn’t let anyone know. He had to find a way to deal with this, he wasn’t ready, hadn’t done everything he wanted to… Garrett turned and scraped the spectrometer off the bench as incoherent fear roared through him. Kept going. Smashing the mirror, the shaving bowl, ripping the linens from the bed… None of it made him feel better. None of it made the truth go away. He froze in the middle of the room, quivering as the rage left him. The carnage was catastrophic. The type of thing the authorities would expect to find.

Water spilled across the floor, mingling with the small patch of blood from the spectrometer. Instantly the puddle diluted, but all he could see was blood. Could smell it, feel the need for it bubbling up within him.

And suddenly Perry flashed into his mind, an image from his dream, smiling up at him from behind her fan as she flirted with him. Blood welled from her throat and the smile died as she clapped a hand to her throat, blood pouring through her white satin gloves and running down her arm and décolletage.

Garrett collapsed to his knees on the floor, sinking his head into his hands again.

If he didn’t report this, then the consequences could be catastrophic.

For he knew who his first victim would be. 

The darkness in him demanded it.