Welcome to Friday Fantasy here at Sassy Vixen Publishing. This week we are part of another fun book tour with Sensuous Promotions. Siren author Serena Fairfax has a new interractial erotic contemporary romance titled Alchemy. Continue reading to find out more and make sure you enter the contest! ~The Vixen
* WATCH FOR CONTEST BELOW *
Blurb
Set against sun-drenched Lake Garda, church mouse Tamsin Heriot, an English rose, pairs off with privileged Luca Leopoldo di Monte Valli, who’s half Italian, half Somali. But Luca isn’t what he seems… Orphaned at seven when his childhood in Mogadishu is brutally destroyed, Luca is left emotionally broken. Ragged and starving he seeks refuge in Italy where kindly aristocrats adopt him.
Ever since she was fifteen, Tamsin has had a crush on Luca and the summer before she goes to university, she’s determined to lose her virginity to him.
It’s eight years before their paths reconverge. Tamsin, still lusting after Luca, receives devastating news that triggers her return to the dilapidated family casa, and fate steps in when an unexpected bond develops between her and Luca’s widowed, adoptive mother. But a strange inheritance alters what started as a dalliance. There’s no shortcut to love, and with everything to lose, the relationship between two wounded people, Luca and Tamsin, is pushed to the breaking point.
Excerpt PG rated
I am eighteen, going on nineteen and have
never been fucked. Tamsin
morosely hummed her thoughts to the tune of Liesl and Rolf’s duet in “The Sound
of Music” as she gazed at her reflection in the lopsided, oval bedroom mirror
that scorching August day. The interior walls of La Casa della Fontana sloped,
the floors listed, so straightening the mirror, in the crooked little house of
the nursery rhyme, was routine. This grandly named, spectacularly moldering
house in a picturesque village on Lake Garda had been snapped up by her
bohemian parents, Patrick and Eve Heriot, on the back of a legacy from a crusty
uncle, and it was from here that, for the past twenty-five years, they ran
year-round painting and creative writing courses.
Tamsin’s first year at university beckoned
in six weeks’ time. Below bold brows, large, gold-flecked hazel eyes set in a
plump, milk-fresh face stared back at her and she sucked in her cheeks. She
peeled off her nightie (courtesy of a thrift shop, her wardrobe mainstay) and
sighed. Her luscious boobs owed nothing to silicone implants but her tummy was
majestically rounded and there was no avoiding it. She was a dumpling who
couldn’t afford liposuction.
Her spirits boosted as she brushed her
hair. Licorice-dark, thick and glossy, it tumbled to her shoulders in loose
curls. He would surely throw her down and lose himself in it. And
those deep dimples when she smiled, which she’d almost forgotten how to.
The three graces—her trio of close
girlfriends, all lissome and nubile with antelope legs, all clones of the
hottest models—had been fucked, or so they bragged. Fucked by their brothers’
buddies, fucked by their fathers’ buddies, fucked by studs in one-night stands.
Fucked against library shelves groaning with texts on particle physics, fucked
in the swimming pool, fucked knee-deep in mud at Glastonbury, fucked on the
hallowed green grass of Glyndebourne to the shrill vocals of Brünhilde wrapping
up the immolation scene. There was no doubt they’d fucked and she claimed
likewise, although disbelief was palpable and vociferously voiced when, with
narrowed eyes, they compared notes. Well, this summer she’d get fucked, by hook
or by crook. Her summer of love. The summer Cinderella would go to the ball.
She refused to go down in history as the only virgin fresher.
She had a plan. A plan that
had simmered gently all night after she’d masturbated whilst poring over
“Bonking For Tyros” and munched her way through two bags of
prawn-flavored potato crisps. A plan she would implement at once.
A party of five couples was expected that
evening on a week’s course. Patrick and Eve with Tamsin’s brother Gareth, six
years older than her would, as usual, meet and greet them at the Milan airport,
herd them onto a minivan and, after two hours, speed proportionate to vehicle’s
decrepitude, puttering down the autostrada, decant them at the casa.
Nine-year-old Ruby, Patrick and Eve’s last hurrah, was vacationing in style in
Ibiza, with her best friend Isla, at the hip, minimalist beach house owned by
Isla’s family.
It was ten a.m. and Tamsin heard a rumble
of bickering voices as the Heriots left. The minivan was temperamental, so
plenty of time was allowed for mishaps. Tamsin was delegated to stay behind to
lay the well-scrubbed, rough-hewn communal refectory table, to ensure the
pre-cooked meal was properly defrosted and heated up and the wine was
chambray-ing. That was an affectation of Gareth’s, since the Heriots could
afford, and served, what could only be politely categorized as easy drinking.
She glanced down at the plan, although
she’d no need to as she’d memorized it by heart.
Change bed linen and sprinkle lavender
water.
Flash the flesh.
Buy condoms and new knickers.
Rehearse Luca pretext.
Ah Luca! Ever since she was fifteen, she’d
had a crush on him. Her head swarmed with fantasies of the scion of Il Principe
Salvatore Leopoldo di Monte Valla and Principessa Catarina. He, godlike, was
sole heir to the noble title and extensive agricultural land holdings, to the
sumptuous Leopoldo palazzo in Milan where masterpieces in oils by Titian,
Raphael, Caravaggio and El Greco hung in proximity to canvases by
Impressionists, Cubists and Fauvists. Comprising one of the most fabulous
private art collections in the world, it was on loan to the Italian government.
And few dynastic families in Italy possessed the twenty-four carat pedigree of
the Leopoldos, who counted among their ancestors the Chief Treasurer to the
Emperor Barbarossa, a Pope, a composer, two saints and Renaissance Ambassadors.
Yes! Tamsin swiftly executed items one and two, painted her finger
and toenails a shimmering Chinese red, slapped a flash of azure on her eyelids
and whirled down to make breakfast. Contemplating the third homemade roll with
lashings of salty butter and gooseberry jam coursing through her arteries, she
hesitated.
About Serena
I
spent my childhood in India, qualified as a Lawyer in England and joined a
large London firm.
Romance
is hardwired into my DNA so my novels include a strong romantic theme. However,
I broke out of the romance bubble with one (you’ll see which one when you visit
the Books page), which is a quirky departure in style and content.
Fast
forward to a sabbatical from the day job when I traded in bricks and mortar for
a houseboat which, for a hardened land lubber like me, turned out to be a big
adventure.
Apart
from writing and reading (all kinds of books), a few of my favourite things are
collecting old masks, singing (in the rain) and exploring off the beaten track.
I'm
a member of the Romantic Novelists Association, which is a very supportive
organisation. My golden retriever, Inspector Morse, who can't wait to unleash
his own Facebook page, and I divide our time between London and rural Kent.
(Charles Dickens said: Kent, sir. Everybody knows Kent. Apples, cherries, hops
and women).
Connect with Serena
* CONTEST *
Leave
a comment below (with email address) and your name will be thrown into the hat
to win an eCopy of this hot new release!
Winner will be chosen on
June 16th
