The Naughty List came out over two years ago.
Two years!
I know, how crazy is that? Honestly, it breaks my brain a little bit to think about it, in fact I triple-checked to make sure that I was right.
Wow.
Anyway, ’tis the season so over the next few days I’m going to share some excerpts from the stories in The Naughty List with you. I hope you enjoy them 🙂
A Christmas Maggie
Tiffany Reisz
All Daniel wanted for Christmas was to spoil his new girlfriend Anya, make love under the tree, and ignore all his old heartaches. But the ghosts of Christmas past aren’t so easily forgotten especially when Maggie, his late wife, shows up to remind him why the past should stay in the past and why his Christmases future could be the best of his life if he can finally let himself live and love in this Christmas present.
Excerpt:
Daniel sat forward in the chair, suddenly more awake than he’d ever been in his entire life. In front of him kneeling on the floor by his feet with her chin on his knee was Maggie, his wife who had been dead and buried for years.
“What?” he asked again, his heart pounding wildly in his chest. “What are you doing here?”
She gave him a wicked blue-eyed smile, her chestnut hair falling in waves around her oval face. She didn’t look a day over thirty-five, younger than he’d ever seen her. In fact she looked breathtaking—so young, so beautiful, so untouched by the pain and suffering the cancer had inflicted on her, the cancer that had killed his beautiful wife.
“Merry Christmas, Daniel.”
Daniel didn’t bother asking any more questions. How Maggie got there . . . why she was there . . . he couldn’t care less. He came out of the chair, dragged her to her feet, and held her more tightly in his arms than he’d ever held anyone in his life. He didn’t know what to do—hold her for eternity or drag or to the ground and make love to her for the rest of his life. It had to be a dream after all. Didn’t it?
While he decided, he kept his arms around her, pulling her even harder against him.
“Good thing I’m dead,” Maggie gasped in his ear. “Or you might kill me.”
Daniel laughed through tears as he buried his face into her hair and inhaled. Vanilla . . . Maggie’s hair always smelt faintly of vanilla.
“Don’t say that. Don’t say you’re dead. I know I’m dreaming so at least let it be a good dream,” Daniel whispered, pulling her even closer, so close he could feel her heart beating against his chest. He loved that feeling–heart to heart. After sex he would stay inside her a few moments just to relish that sensation as long as possible.
Maggie reached up and pinched him viciously hard on his arm. Flinching, Daniel laughed and pulled back to look at her face.
“You’re not dreaming, Daniel.” Maggie grinned at him.
Tiffany Reisz is the author of the highly acclaimed series The Original Sinners. Her first novel, The Siren, won the RT Book Reviews Editor’s Choice Award for Best Erotic Romance of 2012. Slightly shameless, Tiffany dropped out of a conservative Southern seminary in order to pursue a career as a writer. This move, while possibly putting her eternal salvation in peril, has worked out better than she anticipated. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky with her husband, author Andrew Shaffer, and two cats.
