Excerpt Alert!

It's Friday again! Today’s excerpt is from my February Amber Quill release, KEN’JA, which is part of the Starlight Serenade, Vol. II AmberPax™ Collection. I chose this scene for the symbolism.

4 CUPS! KEN’JA is an enchanting tale that captivates from the first page to the last….Bernadette Gardner gives her characters great emotional contact and leaves the reader chanting for more. Do not miss this one. –Cherokee, Coffee Time Romance


4 ½ Kisses! KEN’JA …is action-packed and sexy. A fantastic afternoon read! – Loribelle Hunt, Romance Divas



* * *

KEN’JA

Another night together. The thought sent a stab of uncustomary panic through him. Could he make it through another night with her lying in his arms before the Ken'Ja turned him into a beast? More than a year had passed since he'd taken any of the herb his people used to control their cursed mating cycle.

"Let's keep moving upstream. The water looks deeper. It will attract larger animals and more fish. We'll find a place to camp and collect some items I can use to make a spear."

She shrugged, then craned her neck to look into the trees. Tige's eyes crept toward the torn neckline of her uniform and the pale, supple skin of her partially exposed breast. She pushed a lock of curly brown hair away from her face and he hungrily followed her movement.

"That sounds like a great plan, but I was thinking we could pick some of those first." She pointed upward to where bunches of small, red-skinned fruits hung from bowed branches.

His fevered senses hadn't noticed them before and he berated himself for missing something so obvious.

"They look like apples," she said.

He gave her a quizzical glance. He wasn't familiar with that word.

"The Terraformer Corps seeded a lot of worlds with plants and animals from Earth in the early days before the Alliance...to prepare for future colonization. Then the Ketomir came."

Tige nodded and glanced at the fruit. "They'll be difficult to reach."

"Hmm." She rose and walked in a tight circle beneath one laden branch. "Lift me."
The fever spiked at the thought of touching her.

She raised one gently arching brow at him. "Come on, I'm lighter than I look."

He crossed to where she stood and placed his hands on her waist. The feel of her soft curves beneath his hands set his hearts pounding.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I'm preparing to lift you."

"Not like that. Get down on one knee and put your hands together like this." She laced her fingers together in a loose weave. Skeptical, he obeyed and found himself looking up the curve of her thigh as she placed her foot in his hands. "Now, boost me up. I'll grab that branch and jump down."

The intoxicating scent of her damp skin teased him unmercifully as she rested her hands on the tense muscles of his shoulders. He wanted to tell her to run as she had last night, to get as far away from him as possible before he hurt her, before he lost his mind to the Thalian curse. The biological urge to mate would consume him and drive him mad until he sated it--or died.

He bit the inside of his cheek and obeyed her command to give her a boost. She flung herself upward and grabbed the lowest hanging branch. Then, with a practiced movement, she sailed back to the ground, the branch clutched in her hand.

He watched with feral appreciation and a Warrior's pride as she stripped the handful of fruit from the branch and let go. The green limb rebounded upward, scattering an indignant flock of birds.

With a seductive grin, she offered him two of the four fruits she'd picked. "They're small, but they're definitely apples. Try one."

* * *

To find out more about Ken’Ja go to:
http://www.amberquill.com/Kenja.html