SINS Excerpt #2: A REAL CLIFF HANGER!

“Blazes!” Edenstorm gaped at the black storm that rolled in like dense smoke, flashing lightning and driving a waist high wave straight at them.

God, what had he done? How was he going to get her out of here? She was right; the cave would trap them and drown them. But the cliffs around the cave were unscalable. They could climb a few feet, but no more. The only route to the top was across sand that had already been flooded.

But the water would recede with the wave.

“Up the cliff,” he said. He grabbed her waist and shoved her up the rock face.

“We can’t climb that,” she protested.

He hauled himself after her, seconds before the next wave slammed against the rock, dousing them with the spray.

“When it recedes, jump down and run for that rockfall.”

“They’re not stable. We can’t get up there, either.”

“It’s the only place we’ve got. Maybe we can get up high enough for now.” He waited as the wave lost power and receded until it was shallow enough to jump into it.

“Go!”

He leaped down, but she hesitated. He grabbed her waist and lifted her down. “Come on! There’s no time to waste!”

She ran through the shallow water near the base of the scarp. He ran behind her, his eyes on the next wave coming in like a cliff of water. They had to reach the rocks before it hit or the sand would disappear beneath their feet, and they’d be helpless against the undertow.

“Run!” he shouted, as if his voice could make her run faster.

They splashed their way, each step slowed more as the water deepened, pushed inland by the oncoming giant wave. Only a few more feet to the rock slope. To seaward, the wall of water rolled toward them. He hoisted her into the air and thrust her up onto the rockfall. She climbed like a spider and wedged herself between two boulders. Behind her, he gripped crevices in the rock and started climbing.

The wave smashed against him, tall as his face, washing him away and banging him against the rock like a mere twig in a wind storm. One hand clung to a precarious hold, but the other was torn free of the rock and dangled uselessly. His footing vanished, tossing his legs with the surge. The rucksack hung like a boulder on his back, pulling him down toward the violent sea. He swung himself around as the wave receded and found a grip for his feet as he climbed higher, but a second surge rolled over him, submerging and whirling him, tossing him like jetsam in a storm. His last grip on solid rock washed free.

An odd calm descended on him as his doom rose up to meet him from beneath the waves. He’d always known his end would come to him in a fight, but he would not give in to it until his last chance was taken from him.

He’d done his best, she would make it… He would wash away to sea with the receding wave… It was the end and he had done his best…

Dangling by one arm, his legs driven in the force, first landward then seaward, he couldn’t breathe beneath the wave, but he had done his best… Had done his best, would be at peace with it… She would be safe…

Release Day! Sins of the Heart and Excerpt

SINS OF THE HEART
Award-winning Historical Adventure Romance
by
Delle Jacobs

5 Ribbons! Romance Junkies
Samhain Publishing ~~ ISBN: 978-1-60504-035-6
Available in electronic and trade paperback editions

Find out more about this and other Delle Jacobs books at
http://dellejacobs.com

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*****

The Cornish Coast at sunrise: Two ladies, one spyglass- Two naked men dashing into the surf. One, icy-eyed Lord Edenstorm, is the man Lady Juliette hoped would never find her.

She has what he wants- the names of the gold-smuggling traitors. He doesn't know if she tells him, she dies. If she doesn't tell, she dies. If she pretends to give him what he wants, she just might stay alive.

But what happens if deception gives way to love? Is it possible to forgive the Sins of the Heart?

EXCERPT 1
The sea was yellow gold as the sun dropped toward the horizon, a quiet plane of precious metal that melted into silvered sand, and as far as the eye could see, changed from gilded sea to brilliant amber sky. All the world was silver and gold.
The horses paced across the wet sand, their steps muffled, disturbing the metallic sheen that settled back to serenity in the little rounded puddles they left behind. Only the quiet huffing of the horses’ breath and the faint screech of gulls far out from the shore broke the silence.
She had long ago loosened her bonnet and let it fall behind her, to feel the delicate breeze in her hair as they rode. Beside her rode the man with silver eyes and golden hair, his face dark in the shadow, as silent as the quiet water. It had been his idea to ride along the shore, taking advantage of the long beach created when the tide ebbed. But low tide was a curious thing that made one believe in the forever of an instant. She had come along, appeasing him because…Was it because she must keep him occupied, to keep him from making discoveries about the people she loved?
Oddly, though. She had come to expect, almost to want his companionship. Never knowing when he would turn the quiet of the moment into some strange demand that ruined all that was beautiful. Or if he would not. Perhaps today was one of those times when he would remain silent, or trade the silence for small, beautiful words.
He was, in so many ways, a strange man. He did not court her. But he shared beautiful things with her, often in silence, as if he accepted or believed they saw them the same way. She wondered if they did. Did he see and feel the colors with the sort of passion that invaded her?
They reached the headland that separated this beach from the next, and he pulled ahead. Here, their ride must come to an end.
“Don’t go there,” she said, and reached for the bridle on his bay.
“Is that a cave?” His head inclined in the direction of the sharply jagged cove tucked between two cliffs.
“It’s called Colliver’s Cove. They say it was used by Robert Colliver, but they also say Robert Colliver left Looe in his youth and never returned. Both could not be true. They also tell tales of men who drowned because a high sea came up and caught them inside. When the tide comes in, the cavern floods.”
Edenstorm leaned forward in his saddle. He planted a fist on his hip and narrowed his eyes as he studied the small, dark opening that marked the top of the cave.
“Don’t go in there,” she said again. “There are many ways to be killed on the Cornish Coast. That is one of them.”
His ghostly silver eyes studied her for a moment, then he dismounted. He held his hands up to her and she slid down, his hands catching around her waist. They turned back to the beach they had just left.
He stopped, scanning the distant horizon where the sun dropped lower in the sky and began to tinge the gold with pink.
“If you painted, how would you paint this?”
“Rapidly. Soon the sun will go down and we will never see it quite this way again.” She swept her hand in an arc along the horizon. “It is not simply golden, anywhere. It is only the way the many colors work together that makes it so.” She pointed to a distant promontory. “Look over there. Even the rock in the distance is bathed in gold, yet none of it is truly the color it seems.”
He stood there, his eyes intense and hazy, darkening to smoky pewter. She was aware of the scent that was his, so close and mingling with the salt of the sea and flesh of horse, with leather and brawn.
“I could never paint,” he said, his voice as soft as fine doeskin. “But I could never forget this. If I could paint, I'd paint you, bathed in gold, just as you are right now. The color of your hair gleams like tiny strands of golden light.”
He took one of her curls into his fingers, then slipped a hand into her hair. A tangle of longing twisted and turned in his eyes. “I’d want to capture the light shining in your hair and playing across your face, the softness of your lips.”
“How do you know they’re soft?” she whispered.
“I just do.” The pad of his thumb crossed over her lower lip. “Yes, soft.”
She gasped as his lips touched hers, but not from fear or outrage, but because she had not known her own longing. Had not known the feel of his arms circling her and pulling her close to his body where she could feel all his firmness as if she flowed into it, his kiss deepening and stroking in ways that set her afire inside. Her heart raced with the pounding of an unexplainable wildness within her, the heat she had not understood that had been building from the moment she had first seen him on the beach.