Tease Me Thursday! Excerpt from Dare To Love Forever release date June1!

Welcome to another week of Tease Me Thursday! Here we show you 7 - seven words, seven sentences, or seven paragraphs. Read my snippet and then check out the other authors on the hop!

In celebration of my novel Dare To Love Forever coming out on June 1st from Amber Allure Publishing, I give you a larger preview!

Available June 1st from Amber Allure

Just as Doc was about to shock Carson’s dead heart, his eyes popped open in a wide unseeing gaze, his pupils dilated. Everyone jumped back. Carson’s chest heaved in a breath, and then another. The machines started to beep like crazy, the EEG machine measuring his brain waves spit out paper with colorful, scribbled peaks. His heart rate topped out over two hundred beats per minute. Shit, he was going to have a heart attack.

“Carson? Can you hear me? Carson!” Doc yelled. “Ten milligrams lorazepam, stat!”

The nurse scrambled to a cart and prepped a syringe, then pushed the medication into the IV. Thirty seconds and nothing changed. “Another ten milligrams.”

Lincoln’s fear rose, destroying any attempts to remain calm. He clenched his teeth, as a rush of blood pushed into his head and brought on his panic. “Do something, Doc!”

Doc gave him a sideways glance. “What the fuck do you think I’m doing?”

The door flew open. Max rushed in, eyes wide. “What the hell is going on? Alarms are going off everywhere.”

He looked from Carson to Lincoln and gasped. Lincoln was sure his face displayed pure terror. He tried to say something…anything…to Max, tried to move, but he couldn’t.

As Max rushed toward Lincoln, Carson turned his head, eyes focused and filled with awareness, and fixed on Lincoln. His chest continued to heave and his pants were barely audible over the alarms. A perplexed look crossed his face, his eyebrows furrowed, and then his eyes went wide.

A scream unlike Lincoln had ever heard came from deep within Carson’s chest. Everyone clamped their hands over their ears. The screams continued and Carson’s body started to convulse and buck harder as his eyes closed. His skin turned a scarlet red, mimicking a severe sunburn, and veins in his neck and arms popped out. Machines went haywire and many stopped working altogether.

“Don’t touch him! Get back!” Doc bellowed.

Max grabbed Lincoln and yanked him away from the bed as Carson’s endless screams tormented every cell in Lincoln’s body. An overwhelming need suffused his skin, his muscles, winding its way into his organs. He needed Carson, he needed him and what he had feared, what was against the odds, was happening—the bond was forming except…this reaction was wrong. Something was tearing Carson apart, and Lincoln could only stand back helplessly and watch. Tears stung at Lincoln’s eyes as Max held onto him, a strong arm wrapped around Lincoln’s chest.

“I have to go to him!” Lincoln yelled but he didn’t struggle against Max. “It’s killing him. It’s my fault!”

No one responded. Every wide eye in the room was on the young man on the bed, screaming, and no one could do anything but gawk and wait.

“What the hell is that?” Casey yelled.

Along Carson’s torso and arms, black marks surfaced on his skin. Gasps filled the room as words and symbols formed and solidified like tattoos, covering Carson’s arms and chest.

As quickly as the onslaught had begun, Carson’s body stilled. He was silent, and even though he’d stopped screaming, the phantom noise still rang in Lincoln’s ears.

Carson’s chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm, the redness in his skin faded, his body went slack, and his muscles, that moments ago had been rigid, were relaxed. He appeared to be sleeping. Lincoln couldn’t tear his eyes from the indecipherable words and symbols decorating his skin.

The room was filled with vampires imitating statues. No one spoke for several minutes until the door flew open and Wright and Dennison rushed in.

“What the hell? We were locked out of the building,” Wright said, then stopped short, no doubt seeing Carson. “Oh, my gods.”

Dennison approached the bed. “Well, that’s interesting.”

In his awe, Max dropped his arm from Lincoln, but Lincoln remained where he was. In his mind, Lincoln recalled that Dennison was supposed to be home on suspension, but Lincoln couldn’t have cared less at the moment.

Apparently gaining his senses, Doc rushed to the bed. “Get me some new machines in here. I want a full workup and a CAT scan and an MRI and anything else we’ve fucking got. Yeah, and get me a shaman, cause I have no clue what this shit is!”

That got the nurse and Casey moving.

“What language is that?” Max asked.

Lincoln shook his head, but didn’t answer. Conversations ensued around him, but he blocked them out. He took a step forward, the pull to be near Carson too great to give him a choice. Bonded. He closed his eyes as the implications assaulted him, then he neared the bed. The bonding only occurred when Sanatore vampires shared blood with another vampire, and the actual chances of bonding, a physical and mental coupling, were extremely rare.

He reached out to touch the newly tattooed skin on Carson’s arm. He already knew how the touch would feel but as his fingertips ran over Carson’s skin, the foreign, black writing glowed a fiery red and appeared to hover above Carson’s skin, as if in 3D.

Lincoln snatched his hand back and cradled it to his chest.

“What the fuck did you do?” Dennison asked in an accusatory tone.

Lincoln looked up to the stares of disbelief and suspicion. “I-I just touched him.”

“You’re bonded, aren’t you?” Casey asked with an exasperated sigh.

Max stepped up to Lincoln. “Even if they are, this—” He waved a hand at Carson. “This doesn’t have anything to do with bonding.”

Dennison stepped up to the bed and pointed a finger at Lincoln. “Are you fucking crazy? You bonded with him! A fucking Tabula Rosa. Wasn’t the chaos you caused last time enough? What happens when he rejects you and you lose it—again?”

“I didn’t think that this would happen again,” Lincoln growled, the lie passing his lips easily. He tried to pass Max to get to Dennison. “Doc said it wouldn’t.”

Max pushed back against Lincoln to keep him separated from Dennison.

“I said the odds were astronomically high that it would happen again. Not that it couldn’t. But you’re all missing the important shit here. Bonding is the least of our worries.”

Lincoln knew what they were staring at was some strange ass shit, but he wasn’t going to let Dennison come in here and tell him what he should or shouldn’t have done.

“You’re a fucking idiot!” Dennison yelled.

“Get the fuck out of here! You’re supposed to be on suspension!” Lincoln was going to kill the lieutenant with his bare hands.

Wright grabbed Dennison’s arms and yanked him toward the door. “Let’s go, John, and cool down.” He yanked his arm from her grip and tried to lunge at Lincoln. Wright grabbed him again and held him back.

As Lincoln struggled against Max to get to Dennison, a voice saying Lincoln’s name caught his attention.

“Lincoln? What’s going on?”

Lincoln turned to see Carson staring at him, a mask of fear covering his face.

“Oh, shit,” Lincoln muttered.

The irises of Carson’s eyes were blood red.