Everybody Loves A Hero: Guest Blogging with Tracy Wolff

First off, I’m excited to be blogging here at Romance Junkies today.  It’s one of my favorite sites to visit and it’s great fun to be on this side of the blog for a change.

 I’ve been reading romance novels since I was in the fifth grade.  My mother handed me a couple after an unsuccessful visit to the bookstore, where I couldn’t find a book because I’d already read everything in the Young Adult and classics sections of the store.  From the first page of the first book (Jude Deveraux’s Velvet Angel) I was hooked.  Hooked by the fabulous story, incredible clothes, terrible dungeon, plucky heroine, and, of course, the sexy as all get out hero, Miles Montgomery.  Seriously, there was nothing about this man not to love.  He was tall, sexy, handsome, loyal, intelligent, cunning, adored by women from age 1 to 99 and a hell of a good fighter, to boot.  Needless to say, he made my 11 year old heart go pitter patter.  And then some.

Anyway, I’ve been reading romances for 22 years now—and I’m not a one sub-genre kind of girl.  I read just about everything—romantic comedy, category, erotic romance, romantic suspense, contemporary, paranormals, historicals, YA—if it’s a romance, I’ll give it a shot.  My TBR pile numbers in the high hundreds.  Now, the sub-genres of romance are  very different—in tone, temperament, style, heroine, and any number of other things.  I enjoy the differences, I really do.  But for me, the one constant in romance novels is the hero.  And let me tell you, I love me a good hero.  

Maybe because Miles Montgomery, a truly fabulous hero, was my first example of the romance novel hero, I always strive to create a hero that is as fabulous and yummy and all around amazing as he was.  So when I sat down to write this blog post, I thought I’d give you a thumbnail sketch of my newest hero and let you be the judge.  But I’ll warn you, I write seriously alpha heroines, so my heroes need to be pretty kick-ass themselves. 

Cole Adams, the hero of my brand new erotic suspense, Tie Me Down, is a tall, dark and gorgeous documentary maker on the trail of his sister’s murderer.  Desperate to solve the cold case, he turns to Genevieve Deveraux, one of the few honest
New Orleans homicide detectives around, to help him.  Sparks fly as the two search for his sister’s murderer—and face down a psychotic serial killer—and Cole, who relishes being in control in and out of the bedroom, finds himself seriously turned on by Genevieve’s strength and determination.  Though his relationships are always a little dark, even Cole is shocked by the intensity of his need for Genevieve and the lengths he will go to to get inside her body and her head.

Her independence and need for control bring out a side of him that he’s never known existed—one that is dark and dangerous and determined to bend her to his will.  And though he is shocked by his need to dominate her– to be everything to her—he is unable to walk away from the wild, often frightening, pleasure he feels when he’s with her.  The sexual gratification he brings Genevieve may be her obsession, but every day he’s with her drives him closer to a primal edge he’s never suspected.

And if Cole sounds like your kind of hero, here’s a little excerpt to whet your appetite for the book:

“I’m sorry I jumped down your throat this afternoon.” She said the words quickly, as if they tasted bad.

            “I thought that was my line.”

            She shrugged. “Maybe both of ours?”

He nodded. “Okay.”

“So go ahead and say it.” She watched him expectantly.

            “I’m sorry I was an ass this afternoon?”

            “You’re not supposed to say it like it’s a question.”

            He grinned because he couldn’t help himself. Then reached for her hand and tugged. “Come on in.” He dragged her through the living room and down the hallway to the kitchen. “You want a drink?” He nodded to the bottle of tequila on the counter.

            She glanced at the discarded lime peels. “It looks like you’ve been drinking enough of that for both of us.”

            “Not even close.” Then, because he couldn’t keep his hands to himself for one second longer, he pulled her into his arms. “I’m glad you came.”

            “Me too.”

            He rested his chin on the top of her head for a minute and just breathed in the sweet honey scent of her.

She shoved against his chest, pushed him away. And for a brief moment he felt bereft, though for the life of him he couldn’t figure out why.

            Striving for control, needing to keep his hands busy with something other than her, he reached into the bar cabinet and pulled out a shot glass. “You ever tried Patrón?”

            She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not a big tequila drinker.”

            “This isn’t any ordinary tequila.” He poured a shot, handed it to her. But stopped her when she started to sip.

            “If you’re going to do a shot, you’ve got to do it right.”

Genevieve lifted one cool brow, licked her full lower lip and nearly had him coming in his fucking jeans. “I didn’t realize there was a wrong way to do this.”

            “Sweetheart, there’s a wrong way to do everything.” And then he was putting his hands on her waist and lifting her up so that her sweet ass was on the center island, her legs just a little bit open.

            Stepping between them before she could change her mind, he slipped yet another god-awful suit jacket off her shoulders—he was seriously going to have to do something about her wardrobe. Maybe if he ripped it all off her . . .

Licking a trail from the hollow of her throat to her breastbone, he savored the taste of her.

            “Mmm, salty.”

            She blushed, then leaned back on her hands so that her breasts were thrust forward. “It’s a hundred degrees in the shade. Hard not to sweat.”

            It took all his self-control to take things slowly when all he really wanted to do was to eat her alive.

“I wasn’t complaining,” he murmured as he trailed his tongue over the curve of first one breast and then the other. Then he slammed back the shot of tequila and finished it off by biting into a lime slice.

            Her mouth was slightly open, her eyes wide as she stared at his lips. “That’s the right way to do a tequila shot?”

            He loved her voice, the syrupy sweetness was a turn-on even without the hard-ass tone she deliberately injected into it. With the hard-ass tone, it was irresistible. “It’s the best way.”

            “I bet.”

            He poured another shot. Handed it to her. “Here. You try.”

            He shrugged out of his T-shirt and nearly smiled as she did the same. Would have, if his first look at her body hadn’t brought him all the way to the edge. She was still covered in little bruises, the love bites he’d given her the last time they’d been together. It was hard to imagine that he’d done that to her, had marked her as he’d marked no other woman. Had claimed her as he’d never had the desire to do before.

            Maybe he was a Neanderthal, because looking at her covered in his marks— seeing her proudly wearing the evidence of his desire for her—turned him so hard and fast his vision blurred.

Shit, how he wanted this woman. Was dangerously close to becoming obsessed with her.

Her sexy pink tongue darted out, swiped across her top lip and then her bottom one, as if she couldn’t quite decide where to lick. And every thought he had or might have had got lost in the wild need pumping through him.

Groaning, he tangled a hand in her hair and urged her closer. “Come on, sweetheart,” he whispered. “Taste me.”

So tell me, what kind of hero do you like to read about?  Leave a comment and be entered to win a copy of my first erotic suspense, Full Exposure.