Blog Tour Stop….Return of the Assassin by Donya Lynne

Welcome to my stop on Donya Lynne’s Return of the Assassin Blog Tour.

 I was lucky enough to have Donya stop by for a great guest post and there’s a fantastic tour-wide giveaway happening (enter in the rafflecopter below)

Thanks for stopping by and enjoy!

Book links:

Amazon ~  Barnes & Noble  ~  Smashwords  ~  All Romance eBooks

Donya’s Guest Post:

What a pleasure to be here today. Thank you for a having me so I could introduce your readers to my award-winning All the King’s Men Series (AKM). The fifth book, Return of the Assassin, just came out at the end of October, and tells the story of Malek and Gina, two vampires tormented by their tragic pasts who must find a way to overcome the pain they’ve endured if they are to have a future with one another.

This concept is at the heart of Return of the Assassin, and both my hero and heroine face tough challenges. Malek’s first mate died almost a thousand years ago, but he has refused to accept her death. In doing so, he became a hollow shell of a person, dependable but emotionless. He gets the job done, but, as Micah says, he’s a whitewashed version of himself from what he was before. When he meets Gina, he can no longer avoid dealing with the past, but in so doing, his mind fractures as he tries to reconcile loss with love, especially since Gina split town and left him to deal with his mated male hormones alone. But Gina wants nothing to do with Malek, or so she says. Gina’s first mate was a violent and abusive vampire who stole her innocence, as well as her ability to bear children, and despite the fact that she’s been free of him for almost a century, she still hasn’t fully moved on. She refuses to enter into another relationship with anyone, and vows never to mate again. But after meeting Malek, her world turns upside down and she fears she has only one choice if she wants to get her life back on track: return to Malek.

In the first four books of AKM, the other characters had to go through hell and back to find happiness, so Malek and Gina have to, as well. Otherwise, they won’t learn anything and won’t become who they were meant to be. And isn’t that how it is in real life, too? I’ve always said that nothing worth having in life ever comes easily. The harder you work, and the more pain you go through to achieve your objective, the more you appreciate it once you succeed. Same with Malek and Gina, and by the end of the book, after what they have to go through to find happiness, if they aren’t appreciating each other, then they never will.

 

 

Excerpt from Return of the Assassin

 

Malek took a step toward her. “Gina—”

“I don’t want to hear it.” She spun and took off down the hall as if the kitchen were on fire.

“Gina, wait.” Malek hurried after her. “Please listen to me.”

She twirled and shoved him away. “Get away from me, Malek. After what you did tonight, just stay back.” Who did he think he was to come here still smelling like that skank? The least he could have done was shower. But no, he had to bring her nasty smell here and add insult to injury. “I have to be the stupidest female on the planet,” she said under her breath.

“I’m sorry, Gina. God, I’m so sorry.”

But she wasn’t ready to forgive him. She was still too angry and hurt. “Sorry? Were you sorry when you brought that whore into your house and fucked her under my nose? Huh?” Aggression burst from her like an explosion, and she shoved past him out into the hall again before spinning around to confront him as he charged after her. “You fucked another female in front of me, Malek! Is that how a mated male behaves? Is that the respect a female deserves from her mate?”

Why deny the obvious any longer? They were mates. She knew it. He knew it. It was time to cut through the shit and lay the cards on the table. One way or the other, tonight they would deal with the link that tethered them to one another.

“No, but…”

 She batted him away and fled back into the bedroom. Adrenaline coursed through her. She had to keep moving. If she didn’t, she would give in to the rising arousal he stirred in her belly simply from his proximity, even though he carried the reminder of his infidelity on his skin. “You stink. You smell like her.” Her nose crinkled again as she paced to the other side of the room near the windows and crossed her arms. Then uncrossed them. She couldn’t stand still. Nervous energy flirted with sexual hunger, and war raged within her body to distance herself from him as well as throw him to the bed and take possession of what belonged to her.

He followed and reached for her hands, but she slapped him away. “Don’t touch me. Get away from me, Malek.” Even as she said the words, she wanted nothing more than his hands on her body.

Hurt and misery smeared his expression. “Please Gina, let me explain. I’ve been dying a slow death without you. I just didn’t know—”

She held up her hands, dodged him, and shot back out of the room as he rushed after her. “You? You’ve been dying a slow death? I’ve been miserable for weeks, Malek, and all this time I thought it was because I didn’t want to be mated. When all along it was because…” She fumed as she trailed off, angry at him for stealing her moment of realization from her earlier. When she had finally figured out the source of her anxiety and accepted the reality, ready to take her place by his side, he had abandoned her for another female.

In the living room, she paced and swatted him away as he reached for her again, and then hurried back to the bedroom. When she spun back toward the door, he blocked the exit. She was trapped.

“Gina—”

“Just shut up, Malek!” Under the bitch’s scent, he smelled delicious. So inviting. “Males are nothing but trouble. Especially you! You’re the worst kind of trouble I don’t need!” But she did need him. And with every second that ticked by, her resolve to push him away cracked a little more. The side of her that had bound itself to him bullied its way through, pushing aside restraint and anger to feed her desire and make her too weak to hold back much longer.

He continued toward her with cautious steps, one arm slightly raised, his palm facing her, as if he were trying to capture a feral cat and didn’t want to spook it. “I’m sorry, Gina. Please let me make this better.” Anguish etched the lines of his face, and suffering roiled in the depths of his eyes. Malek was clearly in agony over what he’d done to her.

“Malek, don’t. Just don’t.” She was faltering. He was here. Her mate was here. And no matter what he had done, the desire to go to him was more powerful than her anger. They were like polar atoms, one positive, one negative, drawn to each other to connect and form a brand new molecule. Something neither could do alone.

“Please, Gina…” Guilt wafted from him as he slowly closed the distance between them.

But she no longer had the strength to flee. Furthermore, she didn’t want to. As much as she hated what he had done to her, and as much as she wanted to stay angry at him, she wanted to be with him more.

“Gina…” He took one last step toward her, and his warmth spread around her.

The two of them stood in silence for what felt like a long time, but he didn’t try to touch her. It was almost as if he didn’t want to break the fragile moment they had found together. One where she had to fit herself into a new reality she had fought for decades and only just now considered trying on for size again. But Malek fit like a pair of favorite jeans. Had she doubted he would? After all, he was the other half of her, the greener grass on the other side of the fence, the brighter light without the rose-colored glasses to taint or cloud his image. Malek was everything that she needed to be complete. He was perfect, beautiful, and majestic.

“Look at me, Gina.” With the tips of his fingers under her chin, he lifted her face.

Her fury was tapped out, depleted by expulsion, as well as by his presence. The mating bond was already doing its job, making them better individuals by fusing them into one. As she looked into his magical, dark brown eyes, her fears and pain evaporated, and she could almost feel his doing the same.

“I need you,” he said.

 

Return of the Assassin Synopsis:

All the King’s Men – Book 5

3rd place winner – RWA Heart of the West contest

“If you’ve been waiting for the next Black Dagger Brotherhood, this is it…” -GraveTells Review

Assassin Gina Carano doesn’t have time for love. In fact, the last thing she wants is a mate. But Gina can’t stop thinking about Malek, the handsome AKM enforcer she met in Chicago. And now she’s beginning to fear Malek’s memory is the reason for her crippling panic attacks, which have assaulted her relentlessly since she left him.

Malek has never dealt with the centuries-old death of his first mate, but now that he’s formed a new mating link to Gina, he has no choice. Stuck between the agony of mourning and the despair of being without Gina, his mind fractures as he attempts to reconcile the two halves of himself.

When Gina botches a hit on two vicious vampires in Miami, she reluctantly flees back to Chicago, where Malek must choose between the past and the future before he loses Gina forever.

Warning: This book contains explicit sexual content, sensitive subject matter, references to non-traditional/alternative lifestyles, and profanity.

 

Giveaway:

Two Grand Prizes will be given away at the end of the tour, drawing to be held on Christmas Day (Merry Christmas!).

Grand Prize #1: Coach bag and a $50 Amazon gift card

Grand Prize #2: The newest version of the Kindle Paper White, leather cover (winner’s choice of color), and an AKM blanket

a Rafflecopter giveaway

About the author:

Donya Lynne is the author of the award winning All the King’s Men Series. Making her home in a wooded suburb north of Indianapolis with her husband, Donya has lived in Indiana most of her life and knew at a young age that she was destined to be a writer. She started writing poetry in grade school and won her first short story contest in fourth grade. In junior high, she began writing romantic stories for her friends, and by her sophomore year, they had dubbed her Most Likely to Become a Romance Novelist. In 2012, she made that dream come true by publishing her first two novels and two novellas. She has several more stories planned for the AKM Series, as well as two sister series that are in development.

 Author Links

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