RENAE KELLEIGH
NEWS & EVENTS
11.18.14 Teaser Tuesday!
Minutes passed before she at last marshaled the courage to stand. Feeling half numb, she went to lean against the balustrade. For long moments, she didn’t dare drag her eyes away from the sinking sun as it hauled a frayed mantle of shadows over the canyon’s tortuous and deeply gouged ravines. For a brief instant, her fear that he would find his way over to her was matched only by her fear that he wouldn’t.
Then he was there, beside her. She closed her eyes and simply breathed, her shoulders pushed back, small hands gripping the rail.
“How are you this evening, Miss Lowry?”
She turned her face to have a better look at him. “It’s Meg.”
That smile. “Meg.” He gave an approving nod. “Am I standing too close?”
“No?” She frowned in confusion, and he softly chuckled.
“I only meant that I hope your boyfriend won’t worry about your talking to a strange man.”
“Oh. No.” She ironed the wrinkle from her forehead. “We broke up.” Without conscious forethought, she claimed joint ownership of the decision to split. She couldn’t pretend to be the spurned lover while she felt equally as freed as Rick must.
A beat of silence passed before he responded. “I’m sorry.”
She expelled a breath and squared her shoulders, affecting an air of quiet dignity. “Don’t be. I’m not.”
“You’re not sorry?”
“No. It was right that it happened. He’s just…braver than I am.”
Together they gazed silently outward. John placed his hand on the railing beside hers, and Meg felt herself pass through that interim phase between diffidence and self-assurance. Her insecurities melted away, and for reasons unclear, she was able to stand up straighter.
Her newfound confidence seemed to have captured John’s attention. After a moment, she sensed his eyes on her again. “You look at me a lot,” she said carefully, watching intently as a golden eagle tipped its wings, gliding on an eddying draught of air.
“You’re very pretty,” he replied.
She envied his ability to express such an opinion without embarrassment or regret. Her mouth quivered as she suppressed a smile.
- Seventh Wonder, out December 16, 2014
In the instant the sun slipped below the horizon, he turned his face to look at her. Meg closed her eyes, taking a brief moment to compose herself before returning his gaze. When I look at him, she thought, everything will change. She wasn’t sure yet precisely how – only that a part of her felt pressed to hurry, while the other part deigned to prolong this liminal moment for as long as possible.
Now. Now she turned.
Plates shifted. Rivers flowed. Winds blew.
John bent toward her, and she met him in the middle of the space that had previously existed between them. His hand came up to cradle the side of her face. “Meg,” he whispered.
Then he kissed her.
His lips were yielding but firm as they pressed into hers. This kiss: every cleft and crater, every vacant space inside of her felt full of it. Behind all conscious thought, Meg pictured remaining this way for hours, even days. She was loath to break contact, because doing so might feel like a part of her was emptying. So she clung to him. She rested her hand against the side of his neck, where the muscles responsible for the movements of his head flowed into the ones accountable for the set of his shoulders. With her thumb she felt the strength of his jaw, while her fingers sifted through the hair at the nape of his neck.
John made an involuntary noise deep in his throat, somewhere between a groan and a growl. He pulled back from her for only a percentage of a second so he could angle his body toward her. As he kissed her again, he held her head firmly between both of his hands.
- Seventh Wonder, out December 16, 2014
11.25.14 Teaser Tuesday!
“So now that you’ve graduated,” John said after a moment, “what will you do next?”
Meg’s slumped posture bespoke her disappointment at having to relay the truth. “I’m not sure yet,” she replied. “Find a job hopefully – something that will pay me to read all day, if such a thing exists.” She chuckled without humor. “It seems to be the only thing I have any real talent for.” Pursing her lips, she sighed. “Until then, I guess my only option is to go home to my parents’.” Again she bristled at the implications of her statement. She was growing weary of feeling childish.
John’s eyebrows knit together. “Don’t do that.”
She looked up, startled by the rebuke in his voice. “Do what? Go to my parents’?”
He shook his head. “Talk about yourself that way. I may have only met you a few days ago, but I can already tell you’re good at more than reading. You have this…magnetism.” He shook his head. “I’m still trying to figure out what it is exactly. I’d bet everyone you meet falls a little bit in love with you.” He didn’t look as if he was trying to flatter her. Instead, he looked at her as if she were a puzzle he’d yet to solve.
Meg breathed an incredulous laugh. “Hardly—”
She started to protest, but he interrupted her. “Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t so.” His smile was warm but slight. “Trust me on this one, Meg.”
- Seventh Wonder, out December 16, 2014
12.2.14 Teaser Tuesday!
12.9.14 Teaser Tuesday!
Thankfully, it was Meg who answered with a hushed hello.
“I didn’t wake you, did I?” he asked, unable to keep the smile from his face. Hearing her voice lifted an incredible weight from his shoulders, one he hadn’t even realized existed until it very quickly evaporated.
“I hoped it was you,” she replied. “And no, you didn’t wake me. I just got into bed.”
“You’re lying in bed right now?”
“I am, yes.”
Had her voice grown huskier, or was it just his imagination?
"What are you wearing?” he asked. He fought to keep his tone light, even though he felt strangled by the mere thought of her tangled in sheets that undoubtedly smelled as sweet as she did. He couldn’t be certain she still thought of him the way he thought of her.
“My nightgown,” she said.
John swallowed before dropping his voice an octave. “What about underneath your nightgown?” he countered.
“Nothing at all.” This time there was no mistaking the sultriness of her voice.
He shifted uncomfortably, crossing one ankle over the other. Clearing his throat he said, “There are plenty of directions I’d like to take this conversation, but I’d better not.”
“Why not?”
He chuckled as he slid a hand across the top of his head, shaking it in disbelief. “Because I’m not there, and you’re not here. I want to touch you, but I can’t.”
“I can touch myself though.” Her voice was so quiet as to be almost inaudible.
John felt the beginnings of an especially painful ache spreading from the base of his skull and wondered if it was possible for someone to have an aneurysm on the basis of unspent sexual frustration alone. “Yes,” he breathed. “You can.”
“I do sometimes, you know.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. Envisioning her with her nightgown hiked up around her naked hips and her hand between her legs was nearly insufferable. “What do you think about when you touch yourself?” He sounded as if a noose had been tightened around his neck, compressing his windpipe.
“You,” she said without missing a beat. “In my mind, I replay all of the things we’ve done. Sometimes I add more to it.”
Dear God. “Like what?”
He heard her breath catch, and it brought a smile to his lips. “Come on, sweet Meg. You can’t get shy on me now.”
“Well. Instead of telling you, why don’t I just…show you? Next week, I mean.”
A quiet groan escaped him. “You’re killing me, sweetheart. Next week is an entire eternity away.”
- Seventh Wonder, out December 16, 2014