Today, I'm helping to celebrate the release
of Memphis by Ginger Scott.
It's a contemporary, new adult, romance and you can check out an excerpt, teasers and book info, below!
😄
Blurb:
My mom always said it was just something about the way he
moved.
The same swagger Archie Valentine wore in the ring when he
took his opponents down followed him like a halo everywhere he went. But make
no mistake about it—he was no angel. He was like a drug. My mother was his
addict.
I never understood it…how love could make you blind and
convince you to drink the poison. Not until I met Memphis Delaney.
At first, it was the familiar form. He’s a fighter, built
like a god from the past, the kind of man the universe doesn’t make anymore.
His eyes hide a story, and every time I’m in his presence I want to keep
reading him until I get to the end. And then…there’s the way he moves. His
boxing is violent but beautiful, and his body is a seductive weapon. When he’s
in the ring, he wears the stare of a man committed to the battle until his very
last breath.
He could end me; turn me into her. Too much of him will
leave me as a shadow, and I’ve lost so much of myself already.
But I have discipline. It came the hard way. Lessons
learned, scars left behind, and trust stripped away from life.
I will breathe his air, but I won’t fall for a man like
him. The only boxer who’s ever going to break my heart is the one who gave me
my name.
Excerpt:
I turn so our feet are squared and glance at his home that
I think he probably knows I went through while he was gone. Somehow the money
he paid for it seems not enough and too much all at once. My gaze shifts back
to his, and he steps forward until the toe of his left shoe rests against the
right side of mine.
“That’s a nice story, Memphis. I’m glad you found the bike,
but I’m not sure what that has to do with me,” I say, my breath catching as his
fingertips trace along my jaw, his touch so faint I find myself leaning my head
to encourage his palm to rest along my cheek more boldly.
He brings his other hand up with more confidence, and I’m
caught. The other option I had, to walk away, is gone. I never really wanted
it, though.
Memphis dips his chin, hunching slightly to bring his eyes
in line with mine. We’re so close that I can feel the tickle of his breath
against my lips, and they tingle at the familiar. Each experience with him
weaves itself into my heart in this way that terrifies me. This is how people
lose themselves.
But I let it in—each breath, each sound, the smells and
words. His story. I am surviving on the very being of him, and I think I have
been for a while now.
“I was eighteen when I tracked down that bike. I knew it
was mine...”
“I don’t belong to you, Memphis,” I cut in, my heart
pounding.
His mouth forms a crooked smile. He holds my eyes hostage
in silence for few long seconds. “Maybe it works the other way,” he says, his
eyes moving over my face with a softness that feels intimate and vulnerable.
His forehead falls forward until it rests gently on my own, and I let go of the
grip I have on myself, exchanging it for fistfuls of his T-shirt. My knuckles
run along his chest as I gather the material and close my eyes, his muscles
hard from discipline.
“I can’t watch you get hurt. I can’t...”
His hand moves to my chin, and he lifts it until our eyes
meet. Suddenly, breathing just got a lot harder to do.
“I won’t lose, Liv. I work too hard, and I study too much,
and I will never be in a ring I’m not supposed to be in,” he says, and I
breathe out what sounds like a laugh but feels like hurt.
“My fifty-year-old uncle kicked your ass in some display of
alpha-male, teacher-student bullshit. I couldn’t watch that...how am I supposed
to watch you step in with some guy who really wants to kill you? How am I
supposed to kiss you knowing that your lips might never be the same after a
fight. How...”
Memphis’s mouth takes mine before I can protest anymore,
nothing like our stolen moment from earlier. His hands cup my face and his
mouth moves possessively over my bottom lip, sucking it in and letting it slide
loose through a graze of his teeth. He turns my head with a gentle nudge and
kisses me deeper, and his hands fall from my face in long, possessive drags
down my shoulders to my waist, stopping with his thumbs just above my hips and
his fingers splayed out around my sides.
My hands roam up his chest and neck until my thumbs run
along the roughness of his chin, and my touch seems to somehow make him
hungrier.
“My god.” He breathes the words against my lips, restraint
giving way…
About The Author:
Ginger Scott is an Amazon-bestselling and Goodreads Choice
Award-nominated author of several young and new adult romances, including
Waiting on the Sidelines, Going Long, Blindness, How We Deal With Gravity, This
Is Falling, You and Everything After, The Girl I Was Before, Wild Reckless,
Wicked Restless, In Your Dreams, The Hard Count, Hold My Breath, A Boy Like You
and A Girl Like Me.
A sucker for a good romance, Ginger’s other passion is
sports, and she often blends the two in her stories. (She’s also a sucker for a
hot quarterback, catcher, pitcher, point guard…the list goes on.) Ginger has
been writing and editing for newspapers, magazines and blogs for more than 15
years. She has told the stories of Olympians, politicians, actors, scientists,
cowboys, criminals and towns. For more on her and her work, visit her website
at http://www.littlemisswrite.com.
When she's not writing, the odds are high that she's
somewhere near a baseball diamond, either watching her son field pop flies like
Bryce Harper or cheering on her favorite baseball team, the Arizona
Diamondbacks. Ginger lives in Arizona and is married to her college sweetheart
whom she met at ASU (fork 'em, Devils).
Oooh. Nice excerpt. Never heard of this author before but I'm sold.
ReplyDeleteShe writes the best stories. :)
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