Excerpt Day: Downtime by Tamara Allen
Downtime by Tamara Allen
Release Date: 03/2009
Publisher: Lulu Press (Previously published by Torquere Press, Downtime is now available in both print and e-book at Lulu.com)
Publisher Link: http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/downtime/6233094
Blurb: On assignment in London, FBI Agent Morgan Nash finds himself moments away from a bullet through the heart when the case he’s working goes awry. But fate has other plans, he discovers when he wakes in a world far removed from his own. At work cataloguing ancient manuscripts in the British Museum, Ezra Glacenbie inadvertently creates the magic that pulls Morgan out of the twenty-first century and into the nineteenth. It’s an impromptu vacation which may become permanent when the spellbook goes missing. Further upsetting Morgan’s search for a way back home is the irresistible temptation to investigate the most notorious crime of the nineteenth century. But it’s the unexpected romance blossoming between Morgan and Ezra that becomes the most dangerous complication of all.
Excerpt:
He took my license from the plastic to get a closer look. "Date of birth October twenty-seventh, nineteen hundred and sixty-nine. I still can't quite believe it. Do you know I shall be one hundred and ten years of age when you're born?"
I snorted. "Be sure to look me up."
The smile deepened as he continued. "Height six feet." He eyed me sidelong. "You can't be more than five eleven, dear fellow."
"Five eleven and a half." Near enough to fudge on the license, anyway.
Ezra laughed. "Five eleven and a half, then. Hair brown. Eyes brown." His attention shifted back to my face and his own softened. "Yes, they are. Quite brown."
"You like brown?" I leaned against him, shoulder to shoulder. "I prefer blue, myself."
"Do you? It's very..."
He seemed to lose his train of thought. I saw no sign of the trepidation which had been in his eyes the last time we were so close. "Very what?" I eased off the glasses perched on his nose.
He exhaled none too steadily. "Commonplace."
That deep hazy blue was anything but commonplace. "I think it's my turn to teach you a little dance I know."
"Now?" he said as I pulled him to his feet.
"Don't worry. We won't wake anyone." Lacing my fingers with his, I snaked my other arm around him and eliminated the remaining personal space between us. Two thin nightshirts didn't do a thing to prevent me from judging just how it felt to have every inch of him molded against every inch of me. It was a whole lot better than I'd imagined-and I had imagined it pretty damned thoroughly.
Ezra's imagination had apparently failed him as well. He sounded a little breathless as he asked, "You're sure this is a dance?"
"A slow dance."
"It is that. We're hardly moving."
"Movement is not the goal of the slow dance."
"Yes, the goal is rather evident," he agreed, not objecting as I dipped my head to press a kiss just under his jaw. In what seemed more instinct than conscious decision, he turned his face toward mine and sought my mouth. His kiss now was not the kiss of a terrified groom struggling with a life-altering choice; it was persistent and curious, testing waters he hadn't tested in a long while, if ever.
I had to admit I found it a turn on, being kissed by a guy who wasn't too sure he ought to be kissing me but just couldn't help himself. As much as I wanted to crawl all over him and turn him inside out, I let him take his time. Men I'd dated seldom wanted to spend a lot of time just kissing and that had always been fine with me. But I was enjoying this particular unhurried liplock, maybe because Ezra seemed to be too. He opened eyes that had drifted shut and I saw a hint of hesitation in them. "Morgan..."
"Mmm hmm?"
"What of Reese?"
A gentleman to the end. "Reese pretty much called it quits. Not that I blame him. You don't know what a pain in the ass I can be." As his eyebrows lifted, I conceded with a laugh, "All right, maybe you do. And that's the point."
"You're not completely impossible. But it may be that I find you so attractive, I do not care."