Mentor Release Date

It's official: Mentor (An Impossible Novella) has a release date!  Get it April 2, 2014!  Check out Mentor's Goodreads page for more info :).

Mentor (An Impossible Novella) Excerpt

Curious about Mentor (Impossible #2.5)?  Well, it is certainly my darkest work yet, and it may not be loved by everyone who has enjoyed the Impossible series so far.  Unlike my other stories, Mentor is NOT a romance.  But when trapped in the dark, the blacker shades of lust can be confused for love.

Mentor is about the man we briefly met in Knight and know only as "The Mentor."  It is set in his past, telling the story of his relationship with the first woman he ever abducted.

To give you a taste, here is the Prologue.  This is from The Mentor's point of view, but the majority of the book is from Kathleen's POV.

Prologue
The Mentor

April 20, 1978

I slinked further into the shadows, concealing myself in the darker shades of the night.  My hands trembled as I waited for my victim.  The tremor came not from apprehension or hesitancy, but from anticipation.  Soon the darkness within me would be released, the pressure siphoned off.  She would take my darkness.  I would impart it to her, inflict it upon her.

I would be able to breathe again.

Seeking to still my shaking, I immersed myself in the memory of the first and only time the enigmatic pressure within me had been released.

Screams.  Blood.  Death.

Power.  Freedom.  Absolution.

I realized now that I hadn’t really been alive before that.  The dulling film of perpetual apathy that coated my psyche had dissipated as the light left my father’s eyes, his lifeblood spilling over my hands.  The world became sharp, my senses impossibly heightened.  It was the closest thing to human emotion I had ever experienced.  The pleasure that flooded me was the nearest approximation I could imagine to what normal people called joy.

But now the memory of that hyper-awareness – that sensation of being alive – tormented me as much as it pleased me.

No sooner had I disposed of my father’s body than the sensation began to fade, and the dim monotony of my detached existence began to seep back into me.  Now that I was aware of it, the dimness built, gathering slowly into darkness.  My darkness.

It coiled within me, slithering through my veins and rendering my very pulse sluggish.  It would overcome me, would consume me from the inside out, if it didn’t find release.

Killing again wasn’t an option.  I might not have a formal education, but I wasn’t stupid.  I wasn’t going to leave a trail of bodies behind and risk being caught.

If I kept her with me, she could take my darkness regularly.  I would allow it to consume her rather than me.  I would break her, train her to like it.  Otherwise my darkness would devour her completely, and I would have to find a new toy.  I couldn’t risk drawing attention to myself by taking more than one woman.

Kathleen Marie White wasn’t special to me in any way.  No one was special to me.  I had chosen her because she was convenient and she suited my needs.

Like me, she practically lived at the Hesburgh Libraries at the University of Notre Dame.  She had come here to study for the last four years, and even though I was a few years younger than she, I had been frequenting this place for much longer than that.  I wasn’t a student, but I had always found solace at the library.

The desire to avoid my father, coupled with my disinterest in mundane human interactions, made it an ideal place for me to hide out.  People couldn’t speak here.  The pointless tedium of social pretentiousness was muffled within those walls.

As always, she was the last to leave the library on a Saturday night.  The light of the streetlamp near the entrance caught the reddish facets of her dark hair, crowning her head with a crimson halo for the space of a moment.

My mind conjured up images of how I might draw that crimson shade from her body in other ways.  Something unfamiliar stirred low in my gut in response, and my pulse jumped past its normal tempo.

Interesting.

I had intended to use sexual torment against her.  Sex held little appeal for me; it would simply be a means to an end.  But in that moment, I understood its allure.  When used as a weapon, sex might be pleasurable.  The sudden stiffening of my cock told me as much.

I clenched my fingers into hard fists, willing their increased trembling to stop.

Control.

Control yourself.  Control the darkness.

Soon, I would control her, and the darkness would never rule me again.  I would be alive.  More than that, I would revel in the heady power I had experienced as my father’s life slipped away under my hands.  She would give that to me daily.

She turned from locking the library doors, and I caught sight of her face.  It was lovelier than I had realized.  She wasn’t perfect by conventional standards, but the hint of a contented smile that played around the corners of her mouth gave off a sense of innocence that was undeniably appealing.  Her deep green eyes were large, only further lending to that vision of purity.

When I had watched her over the last four years, her beauty had been obscured by unconscious nervous habits.  Usually, a small furrow persisted between her brows as she bent over a book, and her full lips were thinned while she chewed at a pencil.

I had chosen her for that very reason.  Drive and determination were evident in every line of her body as she studied furiously every day.  She thought she could shape her own destiny if she just worked hard enough.

But her fate was no longer hers to govern.  What she surely considered her greatest assets – her tenacity and intellect – were the very qualities which would lead to her ruination at my hands. 

There would have been no satisfaction in breaking a weak woman.  Kathleen Marie White was exactly what I needed.

No, it was more than that.  More than need.

Want.

I wanted something.  The realization was jarring, the sensation utterly new.  My lips curled upward in a semblance of a smile, and my hand was rock steady as I reached into my pocket to retrieve the ether-soaked rag.

I would take what I wanted.

***

Well, that's all for now.  I am so excited to share this story with y'all!  Expected release date in early April.

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