The stakes are high in LOVEGAME, when a movie star with a shattered past meets a man who can either break her or make her whole. USA Today and New York Times bestselling author, Tracy Wolff, returns with a novel full of seduction and desire. Fans of Tiffany Reisz’ The Siren or Lauren Dane’s Laid Bare will fall in love with Ian and Veronica, a true crime novelist and movie star, who steam up the pages in LOVEGAME.
Giveaway:
1 winner will receive a $35 Amazon Giftcard and copies of the Ethan Frost Trilogy by Tracy Wolff
Synopsis:
True Crime novelist Ian Sharpe has spent his career writing about serial killers for very personal reasons. For his latest exposé, he is taking on the sadistic madman known as the Red Ribbon Strangler, and when his research leads him to Hollywood’s most private and provocative actress, he will break every rule to uncover her truth.
The daughter of one of Hollywood’s golden couples, chased by paparazzi and treated as a commodity her entire life, Veronica Romero wields her sex appeal like a weapon. She expects Ian to be as easy to control as every other man she’s ever known. But from the beginning, he refuses to fall into line. Mysterious and cool, challenging and just a little bit dangerous, Ian somehow makes her feel safe—even as he digs into the deepest secrets of her life and pushes her to the breaking point.
As raw ecstasy gives way to agonized truths, their dark obsession exposes secrets that have been buried for far too long. Ian wants to tear down her walls and heal the sensual woman underneath. But if Veronica’s learned anything, it’s that the line between pleasure and pain is a narrow one—and when caught between them the only thing that matters is how you play the game.
Find out more at: Goodreads | Tracy’s Website
Excerpt:
I take picture after picture, with a
vintage champagne glass in my hand or my face buried in a huge bouquet
of dahlias. Toward the end, Marc has the stylist and his assistant wrap
me up in a long string of artificial belladonna since the real stuff can
cause problems if it touches the skin. Then they heap my gloved hands
with a mountain of the poisonous black berries and Marc has me hold my
hands out to the camera in a deadly macabre offering.
Again
and again Marc shoots me like that, taking pictures from every possible
angle. On his knees in front of me, looking up. From a ladder above me,
looking down. Beside me. Behind me. Across the room. Up close. Again
and again he points and clicks. Again and again, I smile and pout and
make every other expression he asks for. I even take his suggestion to
tilt my head back with my mouth open wide and hold one of the berries
between my thumb and index finger as I pretend to be about to drop it
in. As I do, I close my eyes and pretend not to be totally icked out.
When
I open them two minutes and twenty shots later, the first person I see
is Ian. He’s leaning back against one of the mirrored walls and for once
his omnipresent notebook is nowhere to be seen. Instead he’s staring
straight at me, a half-snarl on his normally calm face and his eyes
burning with a mixture of contempt and desire.
It’s
the first time I’ve seen anything but pleasant or puzzled interest from
him and it has the tiny hairs on the back of my neck standing up. Has
ice skating down my spine and a desert taking up residence in my mouth.
Because, in that moment, as our eyes lock and his turn impossibly
darker, impossibly blacker, I don’t know who he sees. Can’t tell who he
wants.
Me or her?
Actress or murderer?
Sentient being or a character he helped create?
It’s
just more fuel to add to the fire of my earlier doubts and in that one
tense and electric moment, it comes to me. What the cover shot should
be.
What I need it to be.
Marc
backs off a little, has his assistant come forward with a trash bag for
me to throw away the last of the berries and the gloves I’ve been
wearing. As she pauses to tie up the bag in front of me, I ask her for a
couple wipes.
She quickly returns
with a box of baby wipes and I smile my thanks even as Marc instructs me
back against the mirror for what he calls “the last series of shots.”
I
do as he instructs, but as he’s fiddling with the lighting, I turn
toward the mirror and swipe the wipe over the right half of my face.
“What are you doing?” my makeup artist squawks as he comes racing across the room at me.
“Trust me, Dalton,” I tell him as I continue to scrub.
“Stop doing that!” he orders as he grabs on to the end of the wipe and actually tries to wrestle it away from me.
“Just wait,” I instruct, refusing to let go no matter how hard he tugs.
“But—”
“What are you up to, Veronica?” Marc asks. He sounds more intrigued than annoyed.
“I’ll show you,” I tell him, pushing gently at Dalton’s hand until he finally lets go with a whimper.
And
then, with the whole room—including Ian—watching me intently, I wipe
the entire half side of my face clean of any and all makeup. I do it
carefully, making sure that the line that runs down the center of my
face is exact so that both sides are completely symmetrical.
When
I’m done, I reach up and take off my right earring and hand it to
Dalton who still looks slightly shell-shocked. Then I step back and
stare at this new reflection of myself in the mirror.
Half
me at my most natural, half her at her most armored, it’s a devastating
look. Made even more so by the elaborate fifties makeup Dalton has me
in—all red lips and thick black liner and long, long lashes.
There
is a difference, I tell myself fiercely as I study myself. I am not
her. I will never be her, no matter what it felt like four months ago.
In
the background I’m aware of Marc cursing softly, of him snapping
picture after picture. I don’t turn around, instead continuing to give
him my back so that he gets both me and my reflection in each shot.
“Turn around,” he breathes after he’s taken at least three dozen pictures.
Reluctantly,
I do as he requests, then follow his impatient gesture for me to move
away from the mirror. I step forward and then the camera starts again,
clicking away to get the shot from this angle as well.
At
that moment, Ian moves and I make the mistake of glancing his way. Our
gazes lock and heat slams through me at the look he’s giving me, has my
eyes widening and my lips parting on a gasp as I struggle to draw air
into lungs that have abruptly forgotten how to work.
“Fuck,” Marc breathes from where he’s narrowing in on my face. “That’s it. That’s the money shot.”
I
drag my eyes away from Ian, but it’s too late. For the first time in a
very, very long time, I feel vulnerable. And I hate every second of it.
About Tracy Wolff:
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author Tracy Wolff collects books, English degrees and lipsticks and has been known to forget where—and sometimes who—she is when immersed in a great novel. At six she wrote her first short story—something with a rainbow and a prince—and at seven she forayed into the wonderful world of girls lit with her first Judy Blume novel. By ten she’d read everything in the young adult and classics sections of her local bookstore, so in desperation her mom started her on romance novels. And from the first page of the first book, Tracy knew she’d found her life-long love. Now an English professor at her local community college, she writes romances that run the gamut from sweet contemporary to erotica, from paranormal to Urban Fantasy and from young adult to new adult.
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