Excerpt Monday: Glass Magic

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This month I return to Romantic Fantasy with an excerpt from GLASS MAGIC. Do you like mischievous faeries? Bet you haven’t met many like Red. This little fellow began my career with Freya’s Bower, so he’s kind of special to me.

GLASS MAGIC
by Debbie Mumford

Excerpt from Ghost in the Glass:

Red swirled to the edge of his prison and peered through layers of bubble wrap and packing peanuts. Hands thrust the protective materials away and grasped the wrapped glass. Red recoiled in shock as his penitentiary jarred out of its dark womb into the diffused light of day. He blinked and squinted; the light grew brighter as the cushioning layers fell away.

“Don’t drop that!” The tone of command assaulted Red’s ears. He’d led a very sheltered life for the past couple of centuries. “The boss paid an arm and a leg for those panes of glass. You ask me, he’s nuts. Who needs ancient crap when we manufacture the very best right here in the good old US of A?”

Red didn’t understand all of the man’s words, but he ruffled at being referred to as ‘ancient crap.’ He took careful aim and pushed his spell through the miring stasis of the imprisoning glass.

The overbearing speaker sneezed, sneezed again, and continued sneezing with emphatic regularity. Red’s pane of glass settled partway back into the soft darkness of packing peanuts, forgotten while his unpackers rushed to the aid of his first American victim.

* * *

Maureen McBride watched with satisfaction as the workers set the panes of antique glass in the window openings between Mark Davidson’s new sunroom and great room. She’d given her buyer in Dublin specific instructions about what she wanted, and he’d come through for her. The two-foot square panes had cost her a significant portion of her
decorating budget, but the effect was exactly as she’d hoped. The green-tinged, slightly rippled glass mellowed the sunroom’s brilliance and gave the great room an ethereal quality which she intended to emphasize with paint and décor. This room would be fit for a queen, and Maureen fully intended to rule from it. She’d make Mark Davidson a fine
wife; he just didn’t know it yet.

“Be careful with that,” she snapped when the dark-haired man’s grasp faltered momentarily. “Those panes are irreplaceable. I’m incredibly lucky to have come up with four that match, as it is.”

“Sorry, Ms. McBride,” came the man’s unexpectedly rich baritone, “I must’ve pinched a nerve. I got a shock when I touched this one.”

Maureen sniffed and turned away. “I don’t care if it electrocutes you; just don’t drop it.”

* * *

Inside the pane of glass under discussion, Red peered at the figure across the room. A mortal female, and haughty; she reminded him unpleasantly of the Summer Queen. He ground his teeth and his blood boiled at the reminder of that humorless bitch. His temples throbbed with a centuries-old ache for revenge.

He settled to the bottom of the glass, despair washing over him. The Summer Queen existed far beyond his reach, safe from his small magicks.

But this mortal woman wasn’t.

Red’s spirits lifted, and he pressed his nose against his glass prison and stared hungrily across the room. Yes! The snooty female stood mere feet from him, making notes with a black stylus on a small tablet. Oh, she would do nicely. Tall for a female, she possessed delectable curves and flaming red hair. The hair settled his malicious intent. She wore it pulled back in a severe knot, but escaping tendrils confirmed his impression of long, riotous curls. The perfect scapegoat.

Now, he needed a man. He flowed to the right edge of his prison and inspected the fingers carefully pushing his glass into place. This one had felt Red’s flame when his unprotected flesh touched the surface of Red’s prison. He sniffed. Ah, of course, Celtic blood — and a connection already established. Red rolled across his glass in a series of exuberant somersaults, glad to be alive for the first time in ages.

* * *

The day’s work complete, Sean Flynn’s crew raced to pick up their tools and scatter to their individual lives. Most of the guys had homes to retreat to. Not Sean. Sure, he had an apartment, but home meant family, and Sean had no one in the Denver area.

He breathed a sigh of relief as he stepped away from the final piece of glass. No problems with the installation, but that unexplained shock when he grabbed the last piece worried him. He glanced at his hands — strong, capable, not a tremor to be seen. He considered extending a careful tendril of thought into the room, but noticed the redheaded
interior designer walking toward him and thought better of it. Quickly, he knelt to gather his tools.

“Well,” she said, running a finger across the still supple seal of the first window frame, “these frames look good. You seem to have mounted them without incident.”

He ducked his head further, a roguish grin tugging at his lips. Her personality sucked, but still, he could happily mount her frame.

Facial features under control, he stood. “Yes, ma’am. Everything’s looking good. You’ll have to excuse me, it’s Friday. I need to get…”

Her questing finger reached the fourth and final pane of glass and a surge of lust raged through Sean’s mind. God, those fingers! He needed those fingers to massage the erection that throbbed to life beneath his zipper. He throttled a hammer in his own fingers and forced himself to focus on the solidity of its wooden shaft.

She moved away from the glass, and the red haze faded, leaving Sean bewildered by the unexpected rush. He tried to pass it off as imaginary, but the painful hard-on shouted reality. The ocean roar left his ears, and he realized the job site was too quiet. His crew had disappeared. He and the McBride witch were alone in the nearly completed mansion.

“See you next week, Ms. McBride,” he mumbled as he placed the hammer in his tool box, picked it up, and strode to the door.

“Next week? Won’t your crew be working tomorrow?”

“Sure,” he said turning to glance at the irritating woman. Man! Where did an obnoxious broad like her get off having a body like that? Even the mannish business suit couldn’t hide her curves, and those legs! His erection surged against his jeans, and he glanced longingly at the door. “I just figured you’d have better things to do with your weekend than hang around a construction site.”

“Oh,” she said, “of course.”

She moved toward him, and his world came unglued.

The door slammed shut, Sean lost his grip on his tool box, and the floor bucked, throwing Maureen into his arms.

“Get your hands off of me,” she cried, slapping him so hard his eyes watered. “How dare you grab me like, like…” she spluttered to a stop.

Sean backed away, stumbled over his forgotten tool box and landed hard on his butt on the floor’s plywood subsurface.

Maureen McBride loomed above him, green eyes flashing, red hair pulling free of its tightly bound knot. “I’ll report this,” she said, the words barely escaping through clenched jaws. “Sexual harassment is a crime in this state.”

Sean jumped to his feet and closed the distance between them. “I didn’t do anything except keep you from falling.” He noted with pleasure that she had to look up to meet his eyes. “It’s not my fault you’re so starved for physical attention that you intentionally stumble into men’s arms.”

Her face flushed scarlet, and she opened luscious red lips to scorch him with a rebuttal.

The floor heaved again. They fell into each other’s arms, and Sean’s tongue dove into her open mouth.

He wanted to struggle, wanted to get the hell away from this aggravating female, but the molten silk of her mouth tasted of honey… and her tongue! It twisted coyly away from his and then pushed daringly past his teeth into his mouth. Oh, the soft, sensual pleasure of that dance of tongues.

Soft. Sensual. His hands finally reported their location to his brain, and he groaned into her mouth. His senses rapidly overloading, he moved his hands down her back and filled them with the ripe, firm, fullness of her buttocks. His erection leapt and demanded a closer inspection of the cleft pressed so tantalizingly near.

And then it ended, as quickly as it had begun.

She pulled away from his clutching fingers and backed up until she hit the far wall. Cold air shocked his senses, and he longed for her velvet warmth; all of it. No impeding cloth. Just skin caressing skin, and more. Oh, so much more!

“What’s going on?” she asked her voice husky and raw. “I, I hardly know you.”

I can remedy that, he thought.

Aloud, he said, “I don’t know. I may be nuts, but I swear the floor jumped.” He stared at the dusty surface, anything to keep his eyes away from those enchanting, swollen lips.

“Is Denver prone to earthquakes?”

She laughed, a nervous, throaty sound. “Not hardly. Aren’t you from around here?”

He moved toward the door, careful not to get too close to her. The ludicrous thought baffled him, but she’d become a negative gravity well, whenever they got close… Better to keep his distance.

“I’m from Illinois. Just moved out here a couple of months ago. You a native?”

She shook her head and the last clips holding her hair gave way. His jaw dropped as the mass of shining red curls tumbled free of their restraint. The negative gravity pulled at his hands, and he fought to keep them at his sides. Damn, that hair would feel good sliding through his fingers, brushing across his bare chest, winding around…

Enough! He turned to the door and forced his hand to reach for the knob.

“I wasn’t born here, but I grew up in Longmont, went to college in Boulder.” She laughed again, but this time the strained quality had evaporated. The sound danced through his mind. “I guess you could call me a native. What’s wrong?”

Sean turned the knob. Nothing happened. He thumped the door near the knob and tried again. The knob turned, he felt the bolt shift, but the door remained immovable.

“The door won’t open.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said, coming toward him.

He moved back and leaned against the wall. His body yearned to eliminate the space between them, but he willed himself to avoid her negative gravity effect.

She turned the knob and pulled against it. The door refused to budge. He watched her glance around the frame and smiled to himself. Maureen McBride knew the construction business.

“It doesn’t look out of true,” she murmured, her brow furrowed. “I don’t see any reason for it to bind.”

She turned her gaze on him, and Sean’s breath caught. Consequences be damned, he’d gladly drown in those sparkling green depths.

He shook his head to clear his mind and said, “No, the door’s set properly, and the knob is working. Something else is at work here.”

“What? You think the house is haunted?” She snorted, and Sean knew he’d lost it. Even that unfeminine sound enticed him.

“This is brand new construction, remember? No ghosts here.”

Sean felt a shift in the room’s energy and held up his hand to silence her. He stilled his mind, consciously walled his physical urges away, and reached out with that unique ability he’d hidden from everyone but his mother.

“Never be ashamed of your heritage, boyo,” she’d counseled, “but don’t advertise it either.”

He closed his eyes and followed the subtle power shift back to its source. Of course!

He opened his eyes and grinned at Maureen. “You’ve nailed it, Maureen,” he said with a laugh. “We’re dealing with a ghost, but not the kind you’re thinking of!”

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Title: GLASS MAGIC
Genre: Paranormal/Fantasy
Book Length: Bites
Price: $1.99

Available Here!

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