Tori St. Claire Virtual Book Tour!

I'm happy to be apart of Tori St. Claire's Virtual Book Tour. Have you read Tori St. Claire? I was just recently recommended her books and I was very happy about it and recommend them as well!

Here's a little info about Tori...

National Bestselling author Tori St. Claire grew up writing. Hobby quickly turned into passion, and when she discovered the world of romance as a teen, poems and short stories gave way to full length novels with sexy heroes and heroines waiting to be swept off their feet. She wrote her first romance novel at seventeen.

While that manuscript gathered dust-bunnies beneath the bed, she went on to establish herself as a contemporary, historical, and paranormal author under the pen name, Claire Ashgrove. Her writing, however, skirted a fine line between hot and steamy, and motivated by authors she admired, she pushed her boundaries and made the leap into erotica, using the darker side of human nature and on-the-edge suspense to drive grittier, sexier, stories.

Her erotic romantic suspense novels are searingly sensual experiences that unite passion with true emotion, and the all-consuming tie that binds -- love.

Good morning, everyone!  It’s great to be here at Daydreaming – thanks for hosting me today.

When I asked our revered hostess for some topic suggestions, she posed a couple questions to me, and there were two I felt matched rather well:  “Why did I choose erotic romance, and why did I choose the CIA?”

I wanted something more than the mainstream romances I’ve been writing as Claire Ashgrove.  Something grittier and darker.  Something that pushes boundaries to a degree.  It was a challenge to push myself beyond a comfortable place of ‘mainstream’.

Because I am a serious plotter, I began to consider how I could achieve ‘darker’ and ‘grittier’ in terms of plot, not in terms of sexual acts on the pages.  What I felt achieved that was first suspense, and then secondly, an edgy storyline with hard action.  Heroes and heroines who play as hard as they live day to day.  That naturally threw me into thinking about covert, special ops groups.

I particularly wanted to work with morally ambiguous characters, those you can’t quite define as ‘good’ or ‘evil’.  And as I began to incorporate human trafficking into the series idea, it struck me that my covert group must be on the side of good, even if their immediate actions aren’t necessarily defined as such.  Which pretty much translated to me as men and women working in national security, engaged in activities that none of us would really like to think about.  Hence the CIA.

I also particularly like the question, “What sort of goings on don’t we know about that relates to government involvement and national security?”  A query that led me down the path of agents being involved in what we might consider the unthinkable.  I’m sure it happens, and I’m sure, after duty, they are human with human emotions.

All this led me to erotic romance and what you see in my January 3^rd release, Lie to Me, the second in my Black Opal series. 

Alexei, my hero, has been in the proverbial trenches, working in a position that makes his soul shrivel to think about what he’s done.  He’s very hardened about life, and he lives on the edge, aware that any moment might be his last.  Pleasure for him must be equally intense.  It also must be his vulnerability, because nothing else is going to get through the shell he’s erected around himself.  So in between all the action, all the suspense, all the dark and gritty circumstances, there’s a softness, a weakness if you will, that adds a bit of humanity to him, and Sasha, the woman he can’t forget. 

Hopefully that softness makes you fall in love with him.  I know he holds a very special place in my heart, and Sasha I admire for her absolute strength.  When she should hate, she finds it within herself to love.

LIE TO ME
Black Opals, #2


Berkly Heat
Erotic Romantic Suspense
Releases July 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-0425253076

 BUY IT HERE:

Amazon, B&N




A man of action…

After helping to break up a Russian human trafficking ring as part of the CIA’s elite Black Opal team, Alexei Nikanova’s newest assignment is to rescue one of the stolen women and return her to her father. When he arrives in Dubai, he discovers his target is Sasha Zablosky—a woman he knows all too well, and who has haunted him ever since their one unforgettable night together. But he finds Sasha reluctant to leave her Sheik, the only true friend she’s ever known. Only Alexei can’t give her a choice.

A woman of deception…

With their yearning roused by intrigue, Alexei and Sasha can no longer resist and spend night after night in forbidden pleasure. Soon Alexei finds himself falling for her even as he battles a shadowy menace to protect her. But Sasha is no innocent. She has a past darker than she could ever admit or that Alexei could ever forgive. And it is about to explode into her life once more. Now, as the lies they tell themselves—and each other—pull them deeper into a perilous desire, what began as simple passion becomes a love certain to destroy them and end the lives of countless innocents.

Excerpt ~

He swallowed down the sound, and his kiss took on more languor, aggressive demands ebbing into a gentle play until his mouth left hers altogether and he lifted his head. His lustful gaze scorched into her. The hard fall of his breath stirred the fine blonde hairs on her forehead. He pressed his cheek to hers, grazed her sensitive skin with the coarse stubble along his jaw.

The pleasant friction sent another bout of delightful shivers surging through Sasha’s body. She dropped one hand to his waist, plucked his shirt free, and slipped her fingers beneath to explore his warm flesh.

“Ah, Sasha,” he murmured against her temple. “Tell me you don’t hate me.”

Her hand stilled at the base of his spine. Hate him. How could she explain that feeling had never once struck? If she confessed to the truth, she’d look weak, sound like a fool. She should hate him. And yet . . . she didn’t. After everything, even after all he’d done to destroy her life, she could not hate Alexei. Turning her head, she met his gaze. “Alexei, I—”

He closed his eyes, but not before he could shutter away a flash of anguish in those green depths. “Lie to me, princess. I need to believe.”

It was a plea he hadn’t needed to utter. She lifted up into him and caught his lips with hers. “I don’t hate you,” she whispered against his mouth.

A low snarl rumbled in the back of his throat a second before his mouth crashed into hers and claimed her savagely. His hands speared into her hair, holding her head in place, imprisoning her to the fierceness of his desperate kiss. She met the stroke of his tongue eagerly, tugged on the hem of his shirt, pushing it up, exposing his abdomen, equally desperate to feel the warmth of his skin against hers.

When that moment of blissful contact came, Sasha let out a plaintive mewl. Blessed torture. Perfect.

Nowhere near enough. She hooked an ankle around his calf and levered her hips into his, stroking herself against his hardened cock.

Alexei tore his mouth away with effort. “Easy, princess,” he rasped. Bracing his hands on both sides of her shoulders, he lifted his upper body away from hers. The faintest hint of a smile touched the corners of his mouth. “Don’t ruin me for the race. I’m already halfway to the finish.” The faint smile disappeared as he lowered his head and grazed his teeth along the delicate shell of her ear. “I want to be inside you when I come,” he whispered. The tip of his tongue flicked against her earlobe. “I want you to come around me. I need that. Can you give it to me, princess?”

Tori will be giving away a $25.00 Amazon Gift Card to one random commenter during the month of July.  Two additional commenters will receive a basket of swag.  Follow the tour – the more times you comment the better your chances of winning!  Complete tour dates can be found here or below.

Complete Tour Listings:

July 1 - Musings From An Addicted Reader
    Secondary Stop:  Daydreaming
July 2 - Reading Between The Wines
July 3 - Under the Covers
July 4 - Red Hot Books
July 5 - Riverina Romantics
July 6 - The Book Nympho
July 9 - AsianCocoa's Secret Garden
July 10 - Love to Read for Fun
July 11 - Bitten by Paranormal Romance
    Secondary Stop: Denise Grover Swank
July 12 - Seductive Musings
July 13 - Cocktails and Books
    Secondary Stop:  Night Owl Book Reviews
July 16 - Happily Ever After Reads
July 17 - Romantic Crush Junkies
July 18 - Page Flipperz
July 19 - Novel Reflections
July 20 - Immortality and Beyond
July 23 - Ramblings From This Chick
July 24 - Roni Loren
July 25 - The Delighted Reader
    Secondary Stop:  The Jeep Diva

July 26 - Scorching Book Reviews

July 27 - Tyra's Book Addiction

July 30 - Bookin' It Reviews

July 31 - Socrates' Book Reviews