Avon Red Impulse | October 13, 2015 | Romantic Suspense
Bendediction, book 2
In the next sexy and suspenseful Benediction novel, an investigative reporter and an ex-soldier witness a murder outside of an exclusive sex club and while on the run, uncover a deadly conspiracy that begins with mobsters and corrupt FBI agents... and ends on Capitol Hill.
A woman who refuses to be tied down...
Investigative reporter Rachel Dawson is always looking for her next big story. While working on a feature about BDSM, she lands a one-night, no-holds-barred pass into the exclusive sex club, Benediction. Rachel doesn't have a deviant bone in her body—or so she thought—until the infuriating, ex-soldier Logan Bradford convinces her to try rope bondage under his capable hands. But a steamy night turns deadly when Rachel and Logan witness a gruesome murder.
A Dom who's determined to bind her to him...
Framed for a crime they didn't commit and hunted by corrupt FBI agents, they flee. As Rachel and Logan search for evidence to clear their names, the attraction they've been fighting ignites into fiery passion. Love is the last thing Rachel wants, but night by night, as Logan binds her body, he unravels the knots around her heart. And when they uncover a shocking political conspiracy, Rachel will stop at nothing to reveal the truth…and it just might kill her.
{ about shelly bell } .
A sucker for a happy ending, Shelly Bell writes sensual romance often with a bit of kink and action-filled erotic thrillers with high-emotional stakes for her alpha heroes and kick-ass heroines.
She began writing upon the insistence of her husband who dragged her to the store and bought her a laptop. When she’s not working her day job, taking care of her family, or writing, you’ll find her reading the latest smutty romance.
She currently writes for Avon Red Impulse, Loose Id, and Soul Mate Publishing.
{ excerpt } .
Puffing on his Cuban cigar, the Senator reclined in his chair, a tumbler of scotch on the rocks in front of him. He stared down the two men sitting on the other side of his desk, daring them to repeat the words that had just been uttered.Sweating profusely, FBI Agent Seymour Fink tugged on his tie, his Adam’s apple bobbing above the buttoned collar of his shirt.
For a moment, the Senator considered retrieving his gun from his desk drawer and shooting the agent in the head, but he couldn’t risk getting blood or splatters of brain matter on his tuxedo. After all, he had an important dinner to attend in an hour and didn’t want to disappoint his wife.
He downed the rest of his drink and then shook the ice in the glass the way he’d like to shake the mobster who was fucking with him. “Tell me what you’re going to do to fix the problem,” he said calmly, unwilling to allow this minor bump in the road to waylay his plans.
There were only a few problems in the world money couldn’t solve, and this was not one of them. His men were loyal to him because he paid them to be loyal. They believed in his cause because he paid them to believe in his cause. The whole goddamned US of A was manipulated by money, making it possible for great men like him to become even wealthier.
But he was different because unlike most men, he cared more for this country than he did money.
“Do, sir?” Using the sleeve of his suit jacket, Agent Fink wiped the sweat from his brow, cigar smoke circling around his head like a boa constrictor. “I’m not certain we should do—”
“You listen to me, you little prick. There is nothing that will stand in my way.” The Senator hurled his tumbler against the wall above the fireplace, shattering the glass into a million tiny pieces. “Do you understand me? I’ve got your balls in a vise underneath my blade, so let’s try this again. What are you going to do to fix the problem?”
These agents had been instrumental in helping him to get the charges against Anthony Rinaldi dropped in exchange for the mobster’s valuable foreign contacts. A few months ago, the FBI had arrested Rinaldi for the extortion and kidnapping of Danielle Walker and, in the process, had discovered the bodies of thirteen young women buried on his property. But thanks to Agent Richard Evans and Fink, vital evidence had disappeared from the FBI’s possession, helping the judge in the case, a man all too easy to blackmail due to his expensive cocaine habit, to render his decision in dropping the charges. In exchange, Rinaldi had brokered a deal with a Congo mafia leader, and an item found exclusively in the Congo region was about to arrive in the United States. Now that the ship had sailed and all the components were successfully in place, Rinaldi’s usefulness had come to an end.
Seymour swallowed convulsively. “No one was supposed to get hurt.”
“Don’t pull that bullshit now. You knew when I approached you that lives would be lost for the greater good,” the Senator said. He handed off his cigar and nodded to the other agent, a bruiser of a man whom he’d chosen not only for his twenty years of service to this country but for his lack of empathy. Agent Richard Evans understood the risks involved in his job, the three bullets he’d taken in the chest a testament to that fact.
Evans pinched the fat cigar between his fingers and, in a flash, locked his partner’s head under his arm, pinning Fink’s hands to the table and singeing the top of one with the foot of the cigar. Fink screamed, his smaller body thrashing wildly as he fruitlessly tried to escape from his partner and the pain he was inflicting.
The acrid scent of burnt flesh overpowered the cigar’s sweet one, a smell he would forever more attribute to power.
By the time Evans released him, Fink’s skin had turned pasty white, his shirt completely drenched from his sweat. He breathed heavily, nodding. “Consider the problem solved, sir. By this time tomorrow night, Rinaldi will be dead.”
The Senator leaned back in his chair and smiled.
God bless the USA.
{ guest post : typical writing day of shelly bell } .
Even if it’s only a few hundred words, I write seven days a week. Because I’m also in-house legal counsel of a metal recycling company and have two school-aged kids, my schedule changes from day to day. I’m constantly juggling book deadlines, my kids, my day job, email, marketing, social media, and more. I wish I had a set schedule, but if I did, I’d have to limit my writing to the hours between 9pm and 6:30am since my first responsibility is to my family and my second to my day job. Even on the weekends it’s difficult finding time to write because my kids want all my attention. I’m hoping one day I’ll be able to make writing my sole career, but until then, I take advantage of any free hours that I do have.
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