Come to Me Quietly(152)

I wound a single finger through a lock of her inky hair. A bond. It felt like home.

It was time I built another one.



Dear Reader,



Thank you so much for reading Come to Me Quietly.

Come to Me Quietly has been such an amazing journey for me as an author. It’s typical of what I write in that it’s an emotional, love-filled journey of two people with a past coming together. But Jared is unlike any character I’ve ever written before. He is passionate. Angry. Self-destructive.

Jared wasn’t originally supposed to be a character in Come to Me Quietly. He was the lead in a paranormal romance I began writing more than three years ago. But as I started writing that story, there was just something about Jared that stuck out to me. He was different. Special. And he just kept screaming at me that he belonged in a different story from the one that I had initially planned for him.

So that paranormal romance was shelved, and I began to plot out the story Jared wanted to be in. I so clearly saw this broken man who had so much love and passion buried beneath the pain he held inside him. I saw his burden and shame. I saw his eyes and I saw his anger.

And I saw this young woman, Aleena Moore, who was the only one deep enough to touch it.

Their story became Come to Me Quietly.

Through the process of writing this story, I absolutely fell in love with both of these characters. Jared and Aleena have had such a profound effect on me as a person and an author. They grew and became a permanent part of my heart and mind.

I’m absolutely thrilled that the story of their lives will be continued in my next novel, Come to Me Softly, because their story has really only just begun.

In Come to Me Softly, Jared and Aly will be able to explore their passion freely for the first time because their love is no longer a secret.

I’ve already seen what it will be like for them, waking up together each day… .

Aly stood at the kitchen counter, pouring a glass of orange juice. Locks of nearly black hair were all ratted and a mess, her bedhead about the cutest f*cking thing I’d ever seen. Of course, the girl was wearing those shorts, exposing the length of those long legs that drove me out of my mind.

Shit.

One glimpse of her, and my body was already begging.

After I’d had her all night.

I inched up behind her and pressed myself flat to her back. I grasped the counter, her sweet little body pinned. My nose dove through the waves that spilled over her shoulders to the sweet spot just below her ear. I inhaled the delicious coconut and the good and the girl. “Fucking gorgeous,” I whispered, because she really f*cking was.

I could almost feel her blush, the heat rising from her skin as she bit at her bottom lip to suppress her grin.

That thing that felt like joy lit in my chest, reminding me that I really f*cking was happy.

“Ahh… are you kidding me?” The obnoxious voice that could only belong to Christopher broke through our moment. “Do I really have to wake up to this bullshit every morning? That is my little sister, you know.” It was all tease, but I didn’t miss the lingering remnant of his distrust.

I just pulled my girl closer and tossed him a smirk. Fucker deserved it. “Get used to it, man, ’cause I’m not going anywhere.”



But even though I know that in the next book, Jared will have returned to Aly, I also know he still has his demons and still keeps them locked up tight. It is Aly who holds the key. She’s the one who makes him feel, the one who makes him realize he has to face his past if he’s to live a normal life. Face his family, really face himself. But that past is one filled with shame and regret.