Welcome Catherine Lievens to Sunday Spotlight! She's here to share a bit from her new release Like Smoke (Vikings, Book 1)
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Smoke can infiltrate even the best closed-off room, just like love.
Trygve is used to being on his own. His wife rejected him when he became a draugr around the year 800, and he hasn’t trusted anyone but his best friend, Thorvald, since then. He lives and works alone, and he has no intentions on changing that. Then he meets Isaac. Isaac’s life has been rotten—he was kicked out by his parents when he was sixteen, he was kidnapped from the streets at twenty, and he spent the last eight years chained to a wall and being abused. So when a tall blond man, appears out of thin air and kills the man who’s been torturing Isaac for so long, he begs for death—or to be taken away. Trygve knows he should dump Isaac in a hospital and go back to his solitary life, but Isaac needs help, and for some reason, he seems to trust Trygve, so Trygve lets him stay with him. Neither of them expects their unlikely friendship will become more, and they take things slowly, for both their sakes. But someone is after Isaac, and Trygve knows he will do anything to protect the first person he’s loved in more than a thousand years. Even if that means killing people he’s not being paid to kill.
Excerpt:
The door opened just as Tryg finished shifting. He reached for his gun and got it out just as a man walked out of what Tryg realized was the bathroom. Tryg didn’t notice much else about the place, though, because his attention was all on the man.
He shouldn’t have been there. Everything Tryg had found had indicated Galveston lived alone. The only other people in the house should have been the cook and the guards. So who was this man, and why was he naked and chained to the wall?
He was pretty—gorgeous, even. His dark hair was probably brown when it wasn’t damp, and it was already starting to curl again. His skin was too pale, but rather than making him look sickly, it made him appear ethereal. He was thin, though not excessively so, but Tryg could see scars on his skin, scars that shouldn’t have been there. There were cuts down the inside of his forearms, the most obvious ones being the ones that slashed his wrists right in the middle.
Then there was the chain. It ended hooked on the collar the man wore—a dog collar, or at least Tryg thought so. The man’s skin still looked damp and glistened in the light, and it was reddened around and under the collar. His eyes were wide and his face pale, and his gaze was fixed on the gun Tryg was holding.
Tryg put it away. It was obvious this man wasn’t a danger for him, but that didn’t mean everything was okay. Now that someone knew he was there, he had to leave and come back later. There was no way out of it. This man, whoever he was, might be about to raise the alarm, and Tryg couldn’t let that happen. He didn’t want to hurt this man, though. He hadn’t done anything to him, and while Tryg had no idea what he was doing there, he could take a guess, and he didn’t think he’d be too far off.
The man opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Tryg heard voices coming closer. In his surprise at finding someone in the bedroom, Tryg hadn’t realized Galveston was home. He and the man looked at each other. Tryg didn’t know if the man was going to give him away, but at this point, he wasn’t going anywhere. He was there, and so was Galveston. He’d be sorry if he had to kill someone else, too, but if it was needed, then it would happen. He’d only leave this house with Galveston dead. He couldn’t be in sight when Galveston walked in, though, so he moved toward the door, planning to shift into smoke and hide behind it when Galveston came in.
A small hand grabbed Tryg’s wrist. He almost snatched it away, but he managed to curb that instinct and turned to look down at the man. There was fear in his dark eyes, and he clung to Tryg’s arm. “Please. Take me with you. Please.”
“I can’t—”
“Please. I’ll do whatever you want me to do. Anything. But you have to take me away.”
Tryg understood where the man was coming from, but it wasn’t something he could do. He was about to say that when the door handle turned. Tryg and the man stared at each other for a second, then Tryg had to shift into his smoke form.
The man’s eyes went even wider—Tryg hadn’t thought that was possible—and he took a step back just as the door opened.
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