Guest Author and Giveaway: Megan Hart

Credit: Jain Basil Aliya

Megan Hart is here today to tell us a bit about her new book, Tear You Apart. Remember to stick around because there’s a giveaway at the end.

*****

Sometimes, You Turn Around

“I came in on the train and then took a cab, but that didn’t stop the late March drizzle from destroying everything I’d carefully put together at home earlier this afternoon. My hair hangs sodden against my forehead and cheeks. My clothes cling, damp and heavy and chilled. I stripped off my dark, soaked stockings in the bathroom and wrapped them in paper towels to tuck inside my purse, and my legs feel glaringly pale. Instead of the glass of white wine in my hand, I’m desperate for a cup of coffee, or better yet, a mug of hot chocolate. With whipped cream. I’m desperate for the taste of something sweet.”


A simple thing, really. That craving for something sweet. When Elisabeth turns around at the art gallery show and sees Will for the first time, neither of them have any idea that their lives are about to change.

Most of us don’t. When we look back on our lives, it’s easy to see the people who’ve changed us, but how many of us know at that first moment of meeting? When Elisabeth and Will meet for the first time, the attraction is instant. The results, cataclysmic.

They fall in love.

Well, first it’s lust. But then there’s friendship. Compatibility. Passion. When the love comes, it’s with a rush and a push and the devastating force of a natural disaster. Neither of them can stand against it…but who can stand against love?

We do refer to it as “falling,” after all.

Tear You Apart is not a book for people who crave a romance, though. In fact, readers who expect and demand a traditional romance story may very well hate this book with the fiery passion of a thousand burning stars. This book is not for them, because it’s not a romance.

It is, however, a love story.

Complicated, messy, full of mistakes. Bad choices. Tear You Apart is a book for readers who like to mine the depths of human emotion. It’s for readers who like complex characters whose wrong turns lead them to the right places.

There’s another reason why they call it falling. Falling hurts. Anyone who’s ever been in love has suffered the pain of it as well; sometimes the agony of being in love is the part that stays with us long after everything else has passed or faded.

“He won’t move, so I do. I pull him closer, step by step, until he takes me in his arms. We fit just right, Will and I, and I don’t want to let him go.
 “You’re my kryptonite. I don’t know why.” My words are muffled against his neck. I can’t stop myself from nibbling, just a little, and I can’t stop myself from telling him the truth. “But if you don’t want to talk to me anymore…if you don’t want to see me…”
His arms tighten, just a little, around me. “Are you breaking up with me?”
I look at him. “Are you breaking up with me?”
We both smile at the same time.
“Just don’t ever disappear on me again. If you have to stop talking to me—”
“I don’t want to stop talking to you.”
“Then…don’t. We’ll find a balance.” I say this more confidently than I feel, but it seems the only thing to say.
Then I kiss him, kiss him, kiss him until neither of us can breathe.”

We don’t always know when we meet someone what impact they’ll have on our lives. It hardly ever seems important, at the time. We meet someone and everything changes in that instant, but we don’t always realize it until much later, when we stop to think in amazement, how did I not understand the significance of that moment? Why didn’t I pay attention, so I could remember how this all began? But we hardly ever do.

Sometimes, you just turn around.

*****

Excerpt:

It happens all at once, so smoothly, how he pulls me close to him. He is going to kiss me. I am going to let him.

At the last second, I turn my face. I can’t do it. To feel his mouth on mine would be too much. It’s already all too much. Will smiles and everything inside me melts, liquid, running hot. He pulls me closer. He doesn’t kiss my mouth.

He kisses my neck, not soft or accidental but entirely on purpose. I don’t cringe, and I don’t pull away. I offer myself to him like I was waiting for this all along, and maybe I was but didn’t know it, but the first moment I feel the scratching brush of his stubble on my skin, all I can do is give up to it.

I give up to him.

My fingers thread through the back of his hair, holding his mouth closer to the soft and sensitive skin of my neck as my own lips part on a sigh I can not contain within the jail of my throat. Then my back is against the wall and Will presses against me, but he didn’t push me. I went there on my own. I pulled him against me. His leg eases between mine, his thigh pressing. My heel hooks over his calf. His kiss slides along my throat and jaw, but again when he tries to kiss my mouth, I turn my head. My hands find the hem of his shirt. Don’t do it, I tell myself. Don’t. But I do it anyway, I lift his shirt and let my fingertips find his smooth, hot skin underneath. His back. His stomach. The flat of my hand slides across him, and it’s not enough. It will never be enough.

“I have to go. I really should go.” Murmured between kisses against his throat, the words are insincere. No matter what I should do, what I have to do, I’m not leaving.

Will pauses, his breath hot on my cheek. He doesn’t move away, and oh, God, I can feel his cock, hard through his jeans, the thick ridge of it against my belly. I am undone.

We stay that way for the in-and-out of three or four breaths. My hands are still under his shirt. I blink rapidly, a puddle of silk ribbons in my brain for a couple seconds when my fingertips skid along the small indents of his spine. Crimson silk ribbons, that’s what his skin feels like.

“You should go,” he whispers. “You really should go.”

But I’m not leaving, I’m following a few stumbling steps toward the small alcove beneath the loft and the couch there. Leather, overstuffed, I think it’s black but it might be brown, I can’t focus on the color or the pattern of the pillows. My hands are flat on his chest, and Will lets me push him back onto the couch. Then I’m on top of him, straddling, my dress hiked up around my thighs, and his hands are skimming the edge of the fabric the same way mine did with the bottom of his shirt, and all I can think about is how much I want him to touch me.

Everything is hands and mouth and teeth and lips and tongue. We fumble, and it doesn’t matter. Laughter stutters out of me like rocks skipping on a lake. I bend over him, yank at his belt, freeing him. My hair falls in my face, and he pushes it back so he can get at my neck again. My throat. I can not get enough of him.
I push up his shirt, then pull it off over his head. Smooth, smooth skin. Hot. My fingers curl against his ribs. He has a tattoo, a stylized bird over his heart. My thighs grip his. His erection nudges me, thick and hard, and all I can think about is touching him. My hand strokes. His hips push upward. A groan slips from his throat.

I did that.

I did that to him.

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GIVEAWAY

Megan has kindly offered a signed copy of Tear You Apart to give away to one lucky reader of the blog. For a chance to win just enter the Rafflecopter app below. This giveaway is open internationally. Good luck! a Rafflecopter giveaway