UPDATE! Pam Howell is the winner of The Pulse! Congrats, Pam!
* * * * *
So What Happened To That Other Chick?
Do you ever read a book, and it wraps up nicely and all, but you can’t help but wonder what happened to the heroine’s best friend? The one that kinda stole the show a bit?
That’s what happened to me after I wrote The Pulse, Book 1 in the Pulse Trilogy. I couldn’t stop thinking about Jenna, Emily’s roommate on the Tracks, where they lived together in the FEMA camp set up in Grand Central Terminal, selling their bodies to the soldiers for an extra ration.
Jenna was fun for me, because while Emily was able to accurately look at the horror going on around them in my dystopian, post-apocalyptic New York City, Jenna looked at the exact same situation as one big opportunity. She was an office manager before The Pulse hit— but she came into her own on the Tracks, quite enjoying her myriad of sexual adventures, thankyouverymuch.
So when, in The Escape, Book 2 in the Pulse Trilogy, the wool is pulled from Jenna’s eyes, and the truth closes in around her—that she’s in danger, and better run, fast—everything changes.
I loved having the opportunity to take a woman like Jenna out of her element (because, for her at least, she was very much in her element in the camp) and take everything from her. Put her on the run. Have her chased by the sexy soldier sent to capture her and bring her back to the Tracks.
Because, you know, I like to mess with my heroines. Getting them into trouble is half the fun. And when Jenna can’t manipulate Private Barker and must team up with him instead, well… smexytimes abound 😉
If you haven’t yet read The Pulse, Book 1 in the Pulse Trilogy, I’m gifting a digital copy to one commenter today. And if you haven’t read The Escape, Book 2, yet… take a look, because it just released from Simon & Schuster Pocket Star on Amazon, B&N, iBooks, Amazon UK and wherever ebooks are sold 🙂
Here’s the blurb for The Escape, Book 2 in the Pulse Trilogy:
In Book Two of the erotic dystopian Pulse Trilogy, Jenna escapes New York City only to be tracked down by a soldier who might be her only hope of survival.
Jenna doesn’t know if she believes what Emily and Mason told her—that America is rebuilding and a better life awaits her outside of Manhattan. But with the power grid down and no connection to the outside world, Jenna will die if she stays at Grand Central’s FEMA camp, selling her body to soldiers.
Private Ken Barker is sent to capture Jenna when she escapes—but Jenna knows he’s one of the good guys and tries to seduce him into joining her. Their passionate sex kindles something even stronger than lust between them, and when Barker goes back to Grand Central he sees the horrors there with new eyes.
Now it’s his turn to escape the city, and he knows he must take Jenna with him or she’ll die at the camp. On the road, they’ll start a new life together, hoping against hope that the electricity between them will prove more than just a spark—that together they might finally light up their dark nights.
****And now, an adults-only excerpt you won’t find in the sample pages!
An excerpt from The Escape, Book 2 in the Pulse Trilogy
© 2014 Shoshanna Evers
Published by Simon & Schuster Pocket Star. All Rights Reserved.
Barker couldn’t tear his eyes away from her full breasts, naked and so beautiful. It had been too long. God, how he wanted to wrap her in his arms and forget everything, for just one night.
No. Don’t do it. You can’t do it.
“Put your shirt on, Jenna.” He turned his back to her, confident she wouldn’t escape in the pitch-blackness outside the room, not with the way she’d clung to him earlier.
He waited for her to tease him again, but she didn’t. He heard the sounds of her putting her shirt on. The bed creaked when she sat on it.
“I must really disgust you,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.”
“No,” he said, swallowing hard. “You do not disgust me. Not at all.” He knelt down on the carpet and looked up at her pretty face. “You’re incredibly beautiful, Jenna. I want you, I do. But I refuse to take advantage of you.”
“I’m offering myself to you.”
“Would you have done that back in the day? Before the Pulse?”
“Everything’s different now.”
Barker got up and sat beside her on the bed. “Everything’s different, but I’m not. At least, I’m trying not to be.”
“See?” Jenna wrapped her arms around him, surprising him with the ferocity of her embrace. “You’re a good guy, Barker. You don’t want me to die. Don’t take me back there.”
Her body felt so good pressed against his, so right. Here, unlike the Tracks, they’d have real privacy. A bed. They could lose themselves in each other’s arms and pretend everything was normal, if only for a few hours.
“Are you hungry?” he asked. “I have food, in my bag. Water.”
“Yes.” Her voice sounded so small, like a child.
He pulled his bag on the bed and opened it. “I have a sleeping bag. We’ll use that as a blanket, okay? On the bed.”
Jenna smiled. “That sounds lovely. I haven’t slept on a proper bed in a long time.”
Barker smiled back. “I have two weeks of rations, because they didn’t know how long it would take for me to find you. We can eat until we’re full, if we want.”
“I don’t even remember what that feels like,” Jenna laughed.
He handed her two thick pieces of bread, and several strips of dried meat. It was chewy, but it did the trick.
They ate in uneasy silence. What would happen when they were done eating, and it was time to go to sleep?
He wasn’t sure how long he’d be able to resist her.
“Barker?” she asked, swallowing some water. “Do you miss your girlfriend? Is that why you don’t want to be with me?”
“I can’t even remember what she looks like anymore. Whenever I try to picture her face, it’s not quite right. So I don’t try anymore.”
“Why did you give me your ration that time?”
Barker shrugged. “Because I wanted to go to sleep that night, knowing you were sleeping too. Not—not being abused by one of the assholes who call themselves soldiers.”
“Sometimes I like it, though. A lot of times. Does that bother you? That I might like being a whore?”
Her long, unkempt blonde hair fell into her eyes, and he resisted the urge to touch her, to smooth it in place for her.
“I guess it’s better that way. Better than being like some of those other women. The ones who show up for morning rations with bruises. But don’t ever call yourself a whore again.”
His anger simmered within him. Fuck. He wished he could shoot the Colonel himself and take over, make everyone toe the fucking line and get their shit together.
Whoa. Where did that come from?
Something about this entire situation, being with Jenna, seeing her fear about being killed—it made him see everything he thought he knew about the camp in a different light.
Could he really trust the Colonel?
“Thank you for dinner, Barker.”
“I’m glad I got an opportunity to feed you,” he said.
“Let’s go to bed,” she whispered. “But . . . I sleep naked. Just thought I should warn you.”
Barker laughed, his mood considerably brightened now that his belly was full, and they were safe for the night. Alone. In a bedroom, with a bed.
And with a beautiful woman who was throwing herself at him.
“Fuck it,” he said, and set his rifle down on the dresser top.
He noticed her eyes follow his movements, but she quickly looked back at him, and grinned.
“Well, hello there. Glad we’re finally on the same page.”
She started to pull her own top off again, but Barker pulled her in close, and stripped it off for her, running his hands along her curves. Her hips flared out despite the lack of any extra meat on her, and he held her ass through her pants, his cock hardening.
“Fuck yeah, soldier,” she murmured against his lips. “Let’s do this.”
The Escape, Book 2 in the Pulse Trilogy: Amazon, B&N, iBooks, Amazon UK
and THE PULSE, Book 1 in the Pulse Trilogy: Amazon, B&N, iBooks, Kobo, Amazon UK
Leave a comment to win a copy of The Pulse!
About Shoshanna Evers
Critically-acclaimed author Shoshanna Evers has written dozens of sexy stories including Amazon Erotica Bestsellers Overheated, and Enslaved, Book 1 in the Enslaved Trilogy, as well as the post-apocalyptic dystopian Pulse Trilogy from Simon & Schuster Pocket Star. Her work has been featured in Best Bondage Erotica 2012 and Best Bondage Erotica 2013, the Penguin/Berkley Heat anthology Agony/Ecstasy, and numerous erotic BDSM novellas including Chastity Belt and Punishing the Art Thief from Ellora’s Cave Publishing.
The non-fiction anthology Shoshanna Evers edited and contributed to, How To Write Hot Sex: Tips from Multi-Published Erotic Romance Authors, is a #1 Bestseller in the Authorship, Erotica Writing Reference, and Romance Writing categories on Amazon.
Reviewers have called Shoshanna’s writing “fast paced, intense, and sexual…every naughty fantasy come to life for the reader” with stories where “the plot is fresh and the pacing excellent, the emotions…real and poignant.”
Shoshanna used to work as a syndicated advice columnist and a registered nurse, but now she’s a full-time smut writer and a home-schooling mom. She lives with her family and two big dogs in Northern Idaho.
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