Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Shrouded in Illusion by H. D. Thomson Releases This Week


I'm super excited that my third book in my Shrouded Series has just been released this week. To celebrate my release of Shrouded in Illusion, I'm holding a contest for the entire month. By entering you have a chance to win a $25 gift card and 1 of 4 copies available of Shrouded in Darkness, the first in the Shrouded Series.
PLUS all three books in the series are 99 cents each for the entire week.
Below is a snippet of Shrouded in Illusion.
The fear and unease she’d tried to bury resurfaced. Her heartbeat quickened and sweat thickened across her skin, causing her t-shirt to cling tighter against her body. She’d been here before. Skye didn’t have to search her memory. She’d lived, breathed inside these four walls as an orphan.
After passing several doorways, Skye stepped into a room to the right. A floorboard creaked beneath her weight. Broken blinds hindered the sunlight from struggling through a large bay window. A couple of desks, decades old sat like large bull frogs, bulky, brown and weathered. Laughter and tears echoed through the past and into the room, faint but unmistakable memories from Skye’s past.
Other children had lived here and died.
She paused, frowned.
A sound, possibly a footstep, resounded from the hall. She backed up against the wall beside the door. Forcing air in and out of her nose, slowly, quietly, she waited and listened.
Silence.
Cautiously, she re-entered the hall and found it empty, dark and ominous. Moving as quietly as possible, she eased back down the hall from where she’d started. By one doorway, ‘Office’ was stenciled in faded gray across the open door. Sadly even if there were filing cabinets inside, she didn’t think she’d find anything useful inside them. Still...
She slipped inside, past what looked like a waiting room and into an office with three tiers of metal files in the same faded beige as the walls outside. She eased two drawers open and found both empty.
Exactly where would years of records be?
Helplessness gnawed into her stomach. There must be a storage unit somewhere. They couldn’t have all been destroyed, could they?
As the drawer scraped shut, the noise almost masked the rustle of clothing. That and the sigh of someone’s breath alerted her too late. She gasped. A hand roughly clamped over her mouth, locking the breath in her lungs. Before she had a chance to latch onto the drawer handle, the person jerked her backward. Her fingers clutched at air.
Focusing past the panic, she forced her mind on the drawer and stared hard at the cabinet. The drawer flew from the cabinet, rushing past and grazing her shoulder but missing her attacker. Damn it. She couldn’t get to the person behind her without hitting herself.
Trying to bite at the hand across her mouth, she struggled against the steel-like arm around her stomach. A man. His scent of soap and aftershave filled her senses. Skye stiffened in shock.
David whipped her around and pushed her up against the nearest wall, his hand firmly latched over her mouth. The buckle of his belt dug into her stomach. She shivered as the heat of his body scorched through her clothing and into her skin as fear and a sick sense of excitement rushed through her limbs.
“Shhh,” he whispered by her ear, his breath feathering her hair back from her temple. “We’re not alone.”

No comments: