Today I am so pleased to welcome Sita Bethel to Joyfully Jay. Sita has come to share an exclusive excerpt from her latest release, Cold Like Snow. She has also brought along a great giveaway. Please join me in giving her a big welcome!

Excerpt

“Well? Doesn’t this look better than an empty house?” A week later, the house looked like René had always lived there. He sat on his bed with his legs folded beneath him and the board in front of him.

Are you trying to make it look like a haunted house?

René shrugged. “That’s just my style. If I wasn’t this way, I wouldn’t get along with you jerks so much.”

You’re so mouthy.

René rested his chin in his hand as he transcribed their responses. He leaned against Bastion’s shoulder. When he draped over their bodies, he was a bird catching an invisible wind current and gliding through the air, and it thrilled him. However, part of him always feared falling through them.

“There’s something I should tell you.” René swallowed, licking his lips twice. He was still working up the nerve to confess his secret to his roommates.

Instead of listening, Bastion tickled him. One of their favorite games, their petting and tickling always ended in wrestling, and René couldn’t remember his last warm shower. Bastion pushed him into Marcus’s lap and leaned on top of him, slipping his fingers under René’s shirt to tickle his bare ribs.

René wiggled in between them. It aggravated his frazzled, aroused nerves, but he couldn’t help squirming when their fingers dug in his sides, and their cool, stormy presence pressed against him from both directions. He slapped at their hands, but his protests were playful, and he didn’t try hard to get out of the entanglement.

Although they were ghosts, their breaths tickled René’s neck and face. He shivered from the chill and wondered if the act of breathing was a mental reflex one couldn’t quit, even after death. He imagined how it felt blowing from their mouths—warm by their perception, his breath cold instead. They both breathed hard, and René thought it was unfair. His every expression and repressed moan was exposed to them, but theirs veiled to him. They could be enjoying the moment as much as he was, and he wouldn’t know. They could be moaning in anticipation with hooded eyelids as they surrounded his body, and he wouldn’t know.

René’s eyes rounded at the thought. The bastards were seducing him, and he was so preoccupied with staying respectful that he’d passed himself off as a tease. The entire time he’d let them pet and paw at him, but always retreated before they could push further. René looked down at himself. With his legs spread wide and his shirt bunched half up his chest, he couldn’t fathom how he’d been naive enough not to understand what had progressed since that first morning of delicate touches.

But now it was a different game entirely. A smile raised his lips as René resisted the urge to laugh. He tossed his head back, letting his hair tickle his shoulders and Marcus’s face. He pretended to fight harder, pushing back and bucking forward. Marcus restrained one of René’s arms to keep him still, so René kicked out with his legs— not enough to hit Bastion in front of him, but enough to position their groins closer together.

René continued to restrain the moans threatening to push through his lips but permitted a few grunts to sneak past his clenched teeth. His added resistance was met with more aggressive pursuit from his companions. Their mouths drew closer to him. Their forms seemed more solid than usual, and both of them were stiff as he pressed himself back and forth between them, feigning a need for escape.

He wanted to beg, to plead for their cold mouths to meet his and their icy fingers to travel lower than his ribs, but there was too much fun to be had with the game they’d been playing to ruin it for a quick orgasm. He wanted them to break first. He wanted to drive them so crazy that they took him in a fit of need. René rolled off of the bed to untangle himself from his soon-to-be lovers. He laughed as if the entire experience had been another afternoon roughhousing with the guys.

“Okay.” René pushed himself on his hands and knees, chest heaving from hard breaths. “I’m cold.” It was his go-to excuse when he became too turned on and didn’t want to embarrass himself. He peeked up at them, this time knowing they were as frustrated as him, and he reveled in the knowledge.

The Ouija board lifted off of the bed and slammed on the tiled floor, planchette moving to the No.

“Sorry.” René stood up. “I have to get ready soon. My friend May is taking me to the Dive.” He paused on his way out the door. “She doesn’t have as much love for the occult as I do, so please, please, behave tonight. Don’t touch her. She’ll scream and I don’t want to deal with the headache of explaining a haunted house to her.”

The board slid closer to him again. Why should we behave?

René sighed, then said, “Oh, Bastion, play nice. Look, I know you guys get bored stuck in this house all the time, so if you don’t scare my friend, I’ll think of something entertaining for us to do after she leaves.”


Blurb

When René moves into his new home, he didn’t expect it to come with roommates. Two handsome roommates, to be precise. Too bad they’re ghosts.

The fact that they’re dead doesn’t stop them from running their fingers through René’s hair or tackling him onto the bed. It’s not long before things escalate and René finds himself with two ghost lovers that treat him better than any living partner ever has.

However, they can’t eat, can’t go far from the house where they died, and their fingers feel like icicles against René’s skin. The longer René is with them, the more he can sense them, but nothing can reduce the chill of their bodies against his. Still, it might be worth the hypothermia.


Bio

Sita Bethel obtained a B.A. in Creative Writing at Arkansas Tech University; however, she learned how to write fiction on sites such as Archive Of Our Own and fanfiction.net. She keeps coloring books near her computer for when she’s “writing,” and owns an awful lot of dice for someone who’s never played a tabletop RPG. Sita Bethel currently lives in Arkansas, teaches Zumba Fitness and Salsaton classes at a local gym, and hopes to someday own a fortress of solitude staffed with incompetent henchmen.


Giveaway

Sita has brought a $10 NineStar Press gift card to give away to one lucky reader on her tour. Just follow the Rafflecopter below to enter. 

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