Flatiron Buildings…They’re Just Pretty, In The End

The Fuller Building in New York used to be the third most well-known building in the city.  After 9-11, it became the second most well-known building and, suddenly, one of the most at-risk icons in the city after the Empire State Building.  But most people don’t know the building by it’s proper name.  They know it by its shape:  The Flatiron Building.

It’s a cool looking building, and hogs prime real estate in downtown New York.  There are a number of publishers who keep offices in the Flatiron building, including MacMillan/St. Martin’s Press, who publish reams of romances.

Whoever gets the corner office, really does have a helluva corner!  The apex of the Fuller Building is only six feet wide on the inside.

The Fuller Building was built in 1902 and when it was first built, it was one of the highest buildings in the city.  It was considered a “ground breaking” design, and set off a rash of similar designs.  Wikipedia lists twenty-three other “flatiron” buildings around the world, including one in my home town, Edmonton, Alberta — The Gibson Block, built in 1913.

Certainly the Fuller Building in New York is one of the most watched and highest security buildings in the world.  It was this factor that made it almost irresistable for me to use it as the location for my world-class thieves to break into at the end of Blood Knot.  Besides, the Fuller Building just looks interesting. It has class.

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After thirty-five novels with various publishers, under various pen names, and after nearly ten years with Ellora’s Cave primarily writing in romantic suspense and paranormal romance, I have finally taken a deep breath and self-published Blood Knot, an erotic urban fantasy romance (MMF, Contemporary, Vampires, Paranormal), and my 36th novel overall.  It was released on March 9, 2011 and is available at Amazon and Smashwords for $2.99 in all the common e-book formats, and will soon be available in print.

I’ve won a number of awards, including Australia’s Emma Darcy Award (the equivalent of the Golden Heart) and was most recently nominated for the CAPA’s Best Erotic Paranormal and Favourite Author categories.  You can find out more about me and my books here.

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Winter, a professional thief who can manipulate others’ biologies by touch, accidentally “healed” her former partner””and former vampire””Sebastian, whom she secretly loves. Her healing created a symbiotic pairing between them that neither of them wants.

Nathanial, a sexy thousand-year-old vampire and Sebastian’s ex-lover, talks Sebastian and Winter into stealing evidence that will expose all vampires to the world. But Nathanial is a puppet-master who doesn’t believe in falling in love with humans, leaving Winter unsure of his real feelings for her once he seduces her, or how he feels about Sebastian, the former vampire-now-human whose life he has turned upside down once more.

But the evidence they steal is hot property.  The future of all vampires is on the line and others will stop at nothing to get it, leaving Sebastian, Winter and Nathanial with no allies but each other.  They must trust each other to survive.  Only…can they?

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An Excerpt From: BLOOD KNOT
Copyright © TRACY COOPER-POSEY, 2011
All Rights Reserved.

[For readers who are following my blog tour, these excerpts are consecutive — each excerpt follows the last one.  Check on my blog for details of previous excerpts, and subscribe to my blog to learn about future blog tour posts and the excerpts that go with them. http://tracycooperposey.com]

Winter gripped his wrist and pressed her lips against the wound she knew she would find there. With the slightest of hesitations, knowing full well what she was doing, she made herself draw blood into her mouth.

The flood of hot liquid was like a mouthful of the most delicious mulled wine, made with a gourmet bouquet of herbs and spices. She moaned, forgetting what it was she was drinking. She sucked, drawing more and more into her mouth, feeding greedily.

“I said enough, Winter!” Sebastian tore his wrist away from her mouth. His tone implied it wasn’t the first time he had spoken.

Appalled, Winter let go of Sebastian’s wrist and rolled away, curling into a tight ball and hiding her face.

She felt the bed move then heard the sound of running water in the bathroom. Then, even worse, the sound of tape being torn off a roll. Sebastian was staunching the wound on his wrist.

The his hands tugged at her shoulders. “Look at me,” he said.

Because his tone was gentle enough, Winter let her arm drop so that she could peer at him with one eye.

Sebastian eased himself onto the other side of the bed so that his face was level with hers. “You’re not embarrassed, are you?”

“More like sickened.”

“Honestly, Winter? That’s how you really feel?” He brushed her hair off her face as if he were trying to see it properly to judge for himself. The white gauze on his wrist was very white in the low light filtering through the curtains. It had to be late afternoon for the light to be so dim.

“Or is the sick feeling something you think you should feel so your intellect is trying to make you feel that way?” Sebastian ask her.

Winter considered that for a moment.

“You’re no longer ill,” Sebastian pointed out. “You look”¦well, marvelous,” he admitted. “Glowing. Just like one of us after we’ve fed.”

She jumped a little and he rested his hand on her shoulder. “It’s alright,” he told her. “I don’t think this means you’re becoming a vampire, Winter. If you were it would have happened already.”

Winter let out a shaky breath and closed her eyes. The fear she hadn’t been aware of holding evaporated. “Mother Mary above!”

Sebastian laughed, a soft low sound. “Now you feel better, hmmm?”

“Yes!” She opened her eyes again. “You’re right. I just thought I should feel wrong about it. And it is disgusting. But so is sex, if you just look at the basic mechanics.” She picked up his wrist, the one with the gauze and tape, and stroked the flesh just outside the tape. “It’s the everything else about sex that makes it so great.”

“What are you doing?”

“Can’t you tell?”

“My wrist is tingling.”

“Mmm”¦” She picked at the edges of the tape, then ripped it away. The wound underneath was a fine pink line, healed over.

She stroked it with her fingertip, healing it further, until the line blended in with the rest of his flesh, leaving no sign of the wound at all.

Sebastian turned his wrist to different angles, examining it. “I used to be able to heal myself faster than that,” he said clinically, although Winter could tell that he was pleased.

“I could have done it faster,” she admitted. “But it would have hurt rather than just tingled. And I wanted to show off.”

“Why hurt?”

“You’re human now, Sebastian. What I did was speed up your metabolism in that one little area so the wound healed naturally dozens of times faster than the rest of your body aged. The tingling was the area where the metabolism differences met. The bigger the differences, the more discomfort you feel. When you healed yourself as a vampire, I suspect there were supernatural powers involved, so there was no discomfort at all.”

“No discomfort, no.” He lifted her chin. “And why show off?”

She tried to smile. “You’re the only person on this planet that knows what I can do.”

He blinked. “No one else knows?”

She shook her head.

He sat up. “Well, that explains it a little bit.”

“Explains what?”

“Nothing. Well, something for later, anyway. You need rest.”

But she didn’t need rest at all. She stretched out on the bed. She felt marvelous. Glowing, like Sebastian said. And sexy. Heated. Feral, almost. She rested her hand on Sebastian’s back. “You’re not going to rush off, are you?” she asked.

He grew still. Just his head turned to look at her. Through her touch, she could feel the spike and leap of his heart. The flood of adrenaline. Excitement, she guessed. Hope, perhaps. But his face was like marble. “Lonely, Winter? Run out of blind dates and studs? You?”

The need to have him inside her, to be consumed by sex, was beating at her, a tattoo in her brain, threatening to steal her concentration. Through her hand on his back, she pushed some of it into Sebastian, just to give herself a chance to think.

He gasped and shuddered. “Winter”¦” And she watched his pupils dilate. He turned to her in a movement almost too quick to follow, reminding her that not so long ago he had been a vampire. His lips and his body pressed against hers and Winter sighed. He was as perfect as she had always imagined. Hot and hard and eager.