Tara Fuller

INBETWEEN (Kissed by Death #1): Coming Soon!                                                               

Release Date: August 7th, 2012

Genre: Young Adult/ Paranormal Romance

Publisher: Entangled Publishing

Since the car crash that took her father’s life three years ago, Emma’s life has been a freaky—and unending—lesson in caution. Surviving countless “accidents” has taken priority over being a normal seventeen-year-old, so Emma spends her days taking pictures of life instead of living it. Falling in love with a boy was never part of the plan. Falling for a reaper who makes her chest ache and her head spin? Not an option.

It’s not easy being dead—especially for a reaper who is in love with a girl fate has put on his hit list not once, but twice. Finn’s fellow reapers give him hell about spending time with Emma, but Finn couldn’t let her die before, and he’s not about to let her die now. He will protect the girl he loves from the evil soul hell bent on stealing her body, even if it means sacrificing the only thing he has left…his soul.

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Special Excerpt from INBETWEEN:

Finn

I reached out my hand to her. “Dance with me.”

Emma just looked uncertainly at my outstretched fingers and chewed on her lip. “But if you touch me you’ll…”

“Then we won’t touch.” I pulled my hand back and smiled when she stood. “Just dance.”

Emma pulled her hands out of her sleeves and stared at her feet, looking lost. I stepped in closer. So close I could see my shimmer reaching out towards her skin, like metal to a magnet. I never needed to breathe, but now, in this moment, I couldn’t stop my lungs from pumping.

We moved together wordlessly. A step to the right. A smooth glide to the left. I wanted to do like I’d seen Pop do, tip her back and make her laugh like a girl in love. I didn’t. Instead, I settled for leaning in as close as I could, letting my cold, unnatural breaths coat her neck. She shivered.

“Hey, at least it won’t hurt if I step on your foot,” I said.

Emma chuckled and reached her hands up as if she meant to place them on my shoulders, then stopped herself and dropped them back down to her sides.

“I never know what to do with my hands,” she said.

“Well.” I leaned back and held up my hand. “If we were doing this for real, you’d put your left one here.”

She hesitantly raised her hand and placed it in front of mine so that our palms nearly touched.

“And in a very desirable world, mine would go right… here.” I placed my hand near her waist and she shivered, accidentally arching into my touch. My fingers scattered into a thousand iridescent particles, swimming around her like silver smoke. She gasped as I pulled my hand back and watched my fingers take shape again. I wiggled them at her and grinned.

Emma laughed. “Wow.”

I shrugged and kept moving. In the background, Billie Holiday crooned The Very Thought of You and somehow managed to put exactly how I was feeling into words.

“The mere idea of you. The longing here for you. You’ll never know, how slow the moments go, till I’m near to you,” I sang softly into Emma’s hair. Billie sounded way better of course, but the words felt too right not to say out loud.

“You’ve done this before,” Emma said. “I can tell.”

“What?”

“Danced with a girl.” She ran her palms experimentally over my chest, her skin just a breath away. I ached for her to close that space, but she never did.

I tried, unsuccessfully, to steady my voice. “Just once,” I said. “School dance.”

Emma smiled and did a little twirl. “What was her name?”

I couldn’t think. I didn’t want to think about anything that didn’t begin and end with Emma.

“Can’t remember,” I mumbled just as the flash of a girl in pink satin swaying nervously in my arms shook me. I smiled. “She wore a pink dress. I remember that. And I was so nervous, I thought I might throw up.”

“Did you love her?”  she asked quietly. We stopped moving. Silence swallowed us. Then the crackling hiss of the record sounded and a new tune began.

“No,” I said. “No, I didn’t love her.”

“Have you…” Emma took a step back and tucked her hair behind her ear. She wouldn’t look at me. “Have you ever loved anyone…like that?”

I may not have been able to say the words, but I couldn’t stop myself from moving towards her. Emma looked up at me, the question still lingering in her eyes. With one last spark of resolve, I went corporal. Caged her in with my arms and pressed my fingers into her back.

“Finn?”

Emma trembled. But I didn’t think she was afraid. No, this was something else. I breathed her in, clutching her to me, dizzy from all of this contact. Our chests pressed together, and I couldn’t stop wondering what it would feel like for our mouths to touch.

I had to know.