Star-Crossed Lover (Dreamcatchers #2) by Liv Olteano
Dreamspinner Press
Cover Art: Aaron Anderson
Buy Links: Dreamspinner Press eBook and Paperback | Amazon | Barnes & Noble |
Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words is happy to host Liv Olteano here today on tour for her new release Star-crossed Lover. Liv has a Q & A with Taka, a wonderful excerpt and a giveaway for all to enter. Welcome, Liv.
♡
Q&A with Taka from Star-crossed Lover by Liv Olteano
Interviewer: Is it fair to say that you’re pretty old?
Taka: *glares* No. “Pretty experienced” would be fair.
Interviewer: *clears throat* Right. Of course. Sorry about that. So you’ve been around for a while.
Taka: Since World War II, in fact. Yes.
Interviewer: How do you think the world has changed since then?
Taka: Oh, how hasn’t it changed? I suppose there are the woes of modern life, like speeding up everything – whether it’s suited for speed or not –, avoidance of human contact via social networks, access to unlimited information with lesser and lesser interest in actually getting informed and properly study a topic. You can always find things that are wrong with people and society by and large, in any time and place.
But I like to focus on the positive side. Technology has evolved in a staggering pace. For someone like me, who’s been around during this whole process of development, it’s almost miraculous in fact. Science has made giant leaps. Any kind of progress demands sacrifice.
Interviewer: What’s your favorite part of the world as it is today?
Taka: Oh, that’s an easy answer: technology in all its forms. I love my laptop, smart phone, tablet – all of it. And Ginger. He’s definitely among my top 5 things about the world today. *grins*
Ginger elbows him in the ribs. “So I’m not your no.1 fav? We’ll have words, you and I.”
Interviewer: I hope I’m not creating any tension between you guys!
Taka: Nothing can create tension between us, unless it’s sexual tension.
Interviewer: Well! I think that about wraps it up for us today.
Taka: *chuckles and leaves, taking Ginger by the hand*
Interviewer: “I strongly suspect I’ve just been played to end this earlier than agreed upon.”
Blurb:
A love worth crossing the stars for.
Taka has been a dreamcatcher and part of Team 32 for over six decades, but nobody has tempted him like Ginger—a dancer at club Zee. Too bad dreamcatchers aren’t allowed to have meaningful relationships with regular people. His willpower proves a finite resource, though, when a mission at the club means spending much more time around Ginger.
Ginger’s infatuation with Taka is unwavering. When he proves to have some paranormal skills of his own, he earns himself a place on the team—if he wants it. His decision will change his life—not to mention Taka’s—irrevocably.
But living in the now could prove an issue for a man who has as much history as Taka. Can Ginger’s determination help him make his way into Taka’s heart?
Excerpt
“It was broad daylight when I walked into club Zee, but as soon as I got inside, darkness embraced me.
It was rehearsal time for many of the dancers, and the bar was open. During the day you could go in, have your drinks, and watch some rehearsals—all without an entrance fee. Dancers didn’t wear their flamboyant outfits for rehearsal, though since some of them wore considerably less clothing, one might say it was an even better sight. The single- and two-dancer-wide mini stages sprinkled all through the tall and semidark room were black, and so were the floors. Laser lights glided down the dancers’ bodies at night. During rehearsal they had modest colorful lights moving about now and then. There was something more playful than sensual about the mood during the day, and I liked that better.
I also rarely had the time to stop by during the night, considering my “working hours” as a dreamcatcher. Hunting spaga—our enemies—was a nighttime job, since they attacked people in their sleep to steal away their life force and induce nightmares in the process. Our fierce spirit guide Asibikaashi—the Spider Woman and Spirit Mother we lovingly called Aashi for short—asked we be ready to go out on mission from about ten in the evening to close to sunup. Having a curfew after more than six decades of service might have seemed embarrassing, but since I was a long-lived man that looked barely a day older than forty, I kept my ego in check. Some embarrassments you got used to. Like living with my teammates: Claw, our team leader and the oldest dreamcatcher I knew personally; Drew, the annoying one of our two new team members and the muscle of our team; and Drew’s mate and strangely all-around nice guy, Angelo. We were Team 32, operating in the Queen Anne area of Seattle. Regular people couldn’t know about us, or it would make them likelier targets for the spaga. Hanging around people made them likelier targets too. It was best for everyone for us to keep as much distance as we could. But visiting club Zee was a habit I couldn’t shake. In my mind, I made up for it by casting spider magic–fueled protections on the club and people here. As I knew pretty well after all my years of dreamcatcher service, there was no such thing as a perfect shield or protection against the spaga. The reason they chose sleepers as targets was that they were more vulnerable then, but there was no such thing as impenetrable security regardless of circumstances.
Club Zee was pretty popular during the day, and more so at night. Though at night there was pulsing, throbbing, bang-your-brains-out music, during the day the DJ played a different kind of tune. The soft notes of a rock ballad poured out from the speakers, giving the dancers who were practicing a sort of languorousness to their movements. The slower pace made every muscle of their bodies stand out as they moved.
My gaze sought him out before I could stop it. He was never hard to spot. His russet hair, coupled with the soft glow of the spotlight aimed at him, made the sweat on his body look like honey dripping down the corded sinew. For some inexplicable reason, he whipped his head around as if my stare had poked him in the ribs. His gaze shot to mine over the floor, locating me with laser-like precision despite the light and dark effects in the club. I could see the corner of his lips tilting up slowly. It was a lazy, provocative grin that spoke of satisfaction at the attention I couldn’t stop giving him each time I stopped by. He tilted his chin ever so slightly upward and moved his hips with the kind of smoothness that only a serpent should possess. No creature with bones in their body should be able to wiggle like that. This guy would be the death of me, I was pretty sure.
It took a considerable conscious effort to look at anything but him. A fan of self-discipline, I put in that effort and looked away.
I could sense Ginger’s gaze following me as I moved across the floor. I felt it like sticky, warm fingers constantly rubbing over my skin. No matter how long he’d practice from this point on, I knew his gaze would be aimed at me. His focus was a missile that ignited my awareness and arousal, even from this far away. My loins throbbed almost painfully.
If I were a poet or a bard, I might write poems and songs about all the things that simply laying eyes on him did to me. But though I appreciated poetry and music, Ginger’s effect on me had to be kept a secret—from him, first and foremost. In the little hours of morning, after a mission was done but before sleep would take over, I could lie in my bed and contemplate at leisure the sea of desire for and thoughts of him that I nearly drowned in every day; I could examine how that sea eroded away my will to not have him, and how my longing for him grew deeper and more tormenting with each grain of sand lost. Wave after wave of fantasies tormented me. Dreams of what could be but wouldn’t almost pulled me under. If anything, seeing him helped me keep my head on straight—while I was in his presence, that was. As soon as I was without it, I felt adrift in dark waters, shaken by cruel and relentless storms. ”
Want to read more from Chapter 1? Check out the book on the Dreamspinner Press site (Link: https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/books/star-crossed-lover-by-liv-olteano-9740-b ) and hit the Read an Excerpt button right beneath the cover xD
About Liv Olteano:
Liv Olteano is a voracious reader, music lover, and coffee addict extraordinaire. And occasional geek. Okay, more than occasional.
She believes stories are the best kind of magic there is. And life would be horrible without magic. Her hobbies include losing herself in the minds and souls of characters, giving up countless nights of sleep to get to know said characters, and trying to introduce them to the world. Sometimes they appreciate her efforts. The process would probably go quicker if they’d bring her a cup of coffee now and then when stopping by. Characters—what can you do, right?
Liv has a penchant for quirky stories and is a reverent lover of diversity. She can be found loitering around the Internet at odd hours and being generally awkward and goofy at all times.
Links:
https://twitter.com/LiviaOlteano
https://www.facebook.com/LiviaOlteano
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6952513.Liv_Olteano
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/zZ7T9
Giveaway
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