Out Now
from the The Wild Rose Press-The Wilder Roses

Playing for Keeps

Pasts are best left behind, hidden deep in your memory—that is where I buried mine. The feel of his hands and mouth on my body, the height of sensuality I reached beneath his touch. I'd fought so hard to forget—how could just the sight of him bring it all back, forcing me to become lost in him?

Again.

Years before I had watched him, craved him—a guitarist in a band riding the wave to stardom—my brother's best friend. On the verge of womanhood, I never dared to reveal how I yearned. Until a cold New Year's Eve when I offered myself as the woman I'd become, bringing to fruition the deepest of wants. As that night turned, so did my life. Devastatingly so.

 I never dreamed I'd become another of his one night stands.

Can pasts be exorcised if they come back to haunt you? And when a notorious playboy who broke your heart offers you his…how do you know if he's playing for keeps?

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Review Snippets

Playing For Keeps  is the second showcase of author Devon Gray’s talents and the verdict is in:  this author can write!  The push-pull relationship between Christian and Emma was enthralling. Their depth and intensity was satisfying and something rarely seen in stories shorter than novel length.

Thoroughly enjoyable was the fast paced plot line that pulls the reader in from the very first chapter and doesn’t let go until the delicious conclusion.  Once I discovered the reason Christian left Emma on that fateful New Year’s Eve, I was disappointed in Christian, but knowing this in retrospect only made their reunion all the more sweet.  I absolutely cannot wait for Ms. Gray’s next project.  Until then, I highly recommend Playing For Keeps. Bella March, Book Reviewer 

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Excerpt

Taken From: "Playing For Keeps "

WARNING: Excerpts may contain material of a sexually explicit nature. If you are under the age of eighteen, kindly exit the web page.

Pasts are best left behind. Especially those with embarrassing, painful mistakes in them. Mistakes made with wild abandon, jumping into the deep end of life, uncaring of the consequences. Taking chances. Unfortunately, those chances don’t always yield the expected results. The desired outcomes. Sometimes, those chances end up torturing our sleep at night, leaving us perpetually cringing at the recollection of our deeds. In a word, they haunt us.

But in time we move on. A lesson is learned. We become able to laugh at ourselves. At what we did. We can shake our heads, remembering when we were so naïve, so ignorant of life. And one day, out of nowhere, the past will come back and bite us in the ass. Just because it can.

“You have got to be kidding me.”

I maneuvered the brim of my baseball cap to shield my face, slithering down in my seat. My eyes tracked his movement behind the bar at Bud & Alley’s, my favorite hangout in the idyllic beach town of Seaside, Florida.

 At least it was.

When in the hell did this happen? I peered at Christian through the dark shades of my glasses, tightly grasping the beer bottle sweating as much as I was. I eased it to my lips, careful to keep my face concealed.

His rich laughter echoed down the bar, wrapping around me, sending my pulse on a rampage. I took a long swallow, studying him. He placed his palms against the copper surface of the bar top, leaning forward to get closer to the female patron who was eyeing him like the last pair of Jimmy Choos at a half-price sale, regaling him with some tale that had to be the funniest damn thing he’d ever heard, if his enthusiastic laughter was any indication. I narrowed my eyes at them, draining the last of my beer.

His khaki shorts and restaurant logo t-shirt were standard issue, but on him they were devastating, hugging every hard plane of muscle he had, accentuating the broadness of his chest, his narrow hips, the long length of his tanned legs. The sinewy flesh of his forearms rippled as he leaned even closer over the bar, saying something that sent his enraptured audience into a fit of giggles. I rolled my eyes.

Tilting my head to the side I looked at the curve of his ass, heat infusing my face as I remembered how I had once slid my inexperienced hands over it, amazed at how his muscles contracted as he drove into me, again and again. I closed my eyes, willing away the memory that had tortured me for months.   Okay, years. Oh, but I’d been naïve back then.

It had been an unseasonably cold December night, the last one of the year, when I had finally mustered the courage to go to Christian. I had loved him forever it seemed. For as long as I could remember being aware of the effect a man could have on my body and heart, it had always been Christian. A man nearly five years my senior and my brother’s best friend. A man who had in all likelihood viewed me as a surrogate kid sister, perhaps even a pest sometimes as I followed the two of them around with stars in my eyes.

I’m not sure what it was that gave me courage to go to him that night, in all the awkward innocence being eighteen brings about. Especially when clumsy overtures by boys my own age had been ignored—I was truly wading in the unfamiliar. But this unchartered territory held promise of everything I had dreamed about as I lay awake at night trying to make sense of my overwhelming need to feel his hands on me.

Anywhere. Everywhere.

I stood outside his door, my heart skipping to its own beat of fear, anticipation and doubt. What I was about to do…the mere thought sent shivers across my skin. But it didn’t stop me. Rapping my knuckles against the entrance of his apartment, I took two steps back, reassuring myself I was not making a mistake. That I could handle this. That he would want me, too. But then the door opened and he stood before me, a look of confusion clouding his emerald eyes.
“Emma? What are you doing here?”