A Page with Kage (5)

Here's another Page with Kage issue.

 This is one of my favorite excerpts in the book The Darkest Secret by Gena Showalter. She is a contemporary paranormal romance author with a sense of humor that never fails to crack me up and awesome steamy sensuality in her books. The Darkest Secret is the seventh book in her Lords of the Underworld series. The hero is Amun, but this scene is told from the point of view of Amun's buddy, Strider.


Why I love this page: Because I can picture those three men so perfectly and it gives me the yummy goosebumps! I usually love dialogue best. But this small bit of composition, setting up the scene, is perfect! You can picture what's going vividly with just a few words of the actual scenery. You get a bit of Strider's mood and emotions, which is brilliant because you can also tell he's such a guy's guy by how he describes things, it should be hard to pinpoint what he's feeling from his own point of view, but I think Showalter does it flawlessly. You can also get a feel the relationship between William, Paris, and Strider. Plus the voice...so fun! Strider is probably my favorite Lord just because of his unique voice.

So, without anymore blabbering around from me, here's the great page of the day!

***

THIS IS THE S$%T, Strider thought with a slow grin.

A few hours ago, Lucien had flashed him and William to Paris. The guy, not the city. Though the evening had only just begun, Paris had been well on his way to ambrosia intoxication, already laughing like a loon. So rather than cart him off and start hunting Gilly’s parents to play a little game of slice and dice, as planned, and rather than leaving him behind in such a vulnerable condition, Strider and William had decided to take care of Paris—aka down a little ambrosia themselves—and head out as a unit in the morning.

Brotherly love and all that. The things I do for my friends. Not that Strider was intoxicated. He was the sober one.

He reclined on a delightfully cushioned lounge in the sprawling ranch Paris had rented. In Dallas, Texas, of all places. Promiscuity had decked himself out, too, wearing a Stetson (weird), no shirt (understandable), unfastened jeans (smart) and cowboy boots (weird again). Dude looked ready to rustle cattle or something.

At least the girls Paris had invited to party with him were more sensible. They wore bikinis.

Best of all, as the girls swam in the moon-and-lamplit pool, laughing, playing, Strider was reminded that he’d always preferred females with big boobs and lots of makeup. He was able to forget all about only-a-handful Haidee and how lovely and delicate she’d looked in Amun’s arms. Arms that should have been his. But whatever.

“I call dibs on the topless one,” William said from Strider’s left, throwing back his ambrosia-laced beer. “And the one wearing dental floss.” He’d changed his mind five times in the past ten minutes. As of now, he had dibs on every single female in sight.

“That’s a thong, moron,” Paris slurred from Strider’s right.

***

Oh, if you're curious, here is the reading order for Showalter's Lords of the Underwold Series (These are the primary, full-length stories in the series):

1. The Darkest Night (Featuring Maddox, Keeper of Violence and one of the demon possessed warriors. He is paired with human Ashlyn Darrow.)

2. The Darkest Kiss (featuring Lucien, keeper of Death and Anya the (minor) goddes of Anarchy)

3. The Darkest Pleasure (featuring Reyes, keeper of Pain, and Danika Ford)

4. The Darkest Whisper (featuring Sabin, keeper of Doubt, and Gwen the Harpy)

5. The Darkest Passion (featuring Aeron, keeper of Wrath and Olivia the angel)

6. The Darkest Lie (featuring Gideon, keeper of Lies, and Scarlet, keeper of Nightmares)

7. The Darkest Secret (featuring Amun, keeper of Secrets, and Haidee Alexander)

8. The Darkest Surrender (featuring Strider, keeper of Defeat, Kaia the Harpy)

9. The Darkest Seduction (featuring Paris, keeper of Promiscuity)

COVER LOVE:

And since we're on the Gena Showalter topic, I just gotta show off the cover of one of her coming soon stories: WICKED NIGHTS. WOW. I keep going back just to look at it again and again and again. Don't you love how his wings are clothing her? Okay, fine, it took my awhile to drag my eyes away from him to actually notice wings...and the girl...but still, too cool!

Wicked Nights is the first book in the Angels of the Dark series (a spin off from the Lords of the Underworld). This book features Zacharel, the angel who snows (as one of the Lords called it!). It will release June 26th, and I can't wait for it to get here. Happy Squeal!

Okay, okay, my Gena Showalter fan moment is over now. Have a Happy Friday.