Today we have a release day launch for L.G. Kelso's Fierce!! I am so excited about this book and so happy to share it with you! Read below for the book info, an exclusive excerpt and a fun giveaway!!
Tori's MMA career was taking off, until she beat the wrong man. Her training partner, nursing a bruised ego, snapped—shattering her trust and confidence.
Three years later, Tori’s keeping her fists to herself as she struggles to put herself through college. But when a group of gangbangers hassle her at work, old habits kick in and her fists fly. Max Estrada, a frequent diner customer, steps in and gets them out of hot water, but Tori is still fired... days before tuition is due.
With no other option, she’s forced to take a desk job at her old pounding grounds, where her demons still haunt the cage and the temptation to go glove-to-glove with familiar pro-fighter, Max Estrada, is too much. The sexy Colombian draws her back into the world of MMA and revives her dreams of becoming a professional face-puncher—until Will, her old partner and current Middleweight Champion, struts back into the gym. The secret they share is an unexpected liability to his career, and he's determined to keep her silent.
With her life on the ropes, Tori will have to face the past for a shot at winning back her future, or carry the weight of a loss even greater than before.
My hand trailed down his arm, and his pulse jumped under the warm skin on his wrist. His wrist slipped out from under my fingers, and his hand clamped around mine.
When had he moved closer? I looked up. His face was only inches away.
"And the scar on your eyebrow?" I asked. I reached up, and ran my fingertip over the jagged skin partially hidden in his eyebrow.
"A fight."
"The one by your ear?" I touched that one, too. He leaned into my hand.
"A fight." His voice grew quieter.
"The one on your chest?" Even though he had a shirt on, I knew he had a scar there. I pressed my hand against his chest. His heart rate sped up, and feeling it under my flat palm relaxed me.
"Trying to jump a fence when I was little."
"Before your ninja skills?" I said.
"Before my ninja skills."
His gaze felt heavy. I titled my head back, and our eyes locked. His pupils constricted; his chest raised quicker and quicker. My hand fisted his shirt. I wanted so badly to reach out and kiss him.
"And you? This one?" His hand brushed against my hair; his fingers trailed the scar at my temple.
My skin tingled under his touch, and warm arrows shot down my cheek, down my throat. When had it gotten so hot in here?
His question registered in my muddled brain. Between that and wanting to kiss him, I did the only thing I could think of. I threw a double jab, putting distance between us, followed by a cross with my fight hand.
He slipped the cross, and this time sent one of his own back. I slipped it, went in for a hook, but he moved. Still in close. As I grabbed his neck and yanked him forward, I sent out a right Thai knee, angling my hips open, landing my knee rib level. He grabbed my thigh, and wrapped his arm underneath it.
I tightened my arms, and prepared for punches or to be dropped to the mat. Instead, he yanked me forward, and my stomach, bare from where my tank top had rolled up, hit his. I dropped my arms, surprised. He stared at me; we were so close now. He no longer held my thigh. His arm wrapped around my back, his palm against the area above my butt, and I pressed my body tighter against him.
I felt the movement before he hooked his foot around my ankle and yanked. I was already off balance, but I didn't even try to stay up. I fell, him on top of me, one arm around my back and the other hand cradling my head.
At first, the movement confused me. He knocked me down all the time and never seemed overly concerned about my head.
With my back on the mat, his fingers touched my hair and trailed down my cheek, my jaw, my neck. Hot skin pressed against my abs. Leather and sweat mixed with Max engulfed me.
With one hand resting on my neck, he kissed me.
The old me and my old dreams were fermented in the bloodstains, and as I had feared, the good memories had been overwhelmed by only the bad, and those nightmares still haunted this space."
Fierce by L.G. Kelso is a
story of struggle, of trying to face the fears that one has from a failure and
rise above them in order to succeed in what matters the most, happiness.
Tori is a female MMA fighter, who had one bad fight where she was
severely injured and promised her parents that she would walk away from the one
passion that she had and take the safe road in both college and love.
Tori spends her days working at a diner, until she is fired that is, and
going to school for business, something that seems to bore her. Until one
night when a drunk customer gets to handsy and Tori defends herself and her
co-worker by punching the guy out, causing her boss to let her go. The
search for a new job in order to pay the bills leads her to her old MMA gym,
the one that her Uncle Jeff owns and that is when her struggle of whether or
not to return to the life of a MMA fighter truly begins.
Max is a sexy but
mysterious customer at the diner, who comes in for pie, sometimes with a book,
sometimes without but always with a friendly disposition. Although Tori
has some steamy thoughts about the hottie, she knows she will never see him
again when she is fired, that is until she takes the secretarial job at her
uncle's gym, where he trains. She also discovers that Max is a librarian
at her school, something she believes is a contradiction to his MMA fighting
personality.
Tori begins training
with the fighters at her Uncle's gym regularly but refuses to get into the
ring, and especially alone because she is unable to shake the fear that her
former friend Will, also a renowned MMA fighter put in her head, later causing
her to freeze and lose her last injury induced fight. Max continually
tries to break through the tough exterior that Tori puts up, but she refuses to
let him in on her deepest secret, what Will did to her, that is until she
breaks down and commits to her first fight since she tore her ACL, and Will
returns to her gym when Jeff unexpectedly leaves for a family emergency.
With the guys at the
gym rallying around her, confident that she can take the fight, Tori works hard
to train but with Will in the gym, making offhanded comments and his trainer,
who is anti-woman in MMA, it seems that Tori faces her fears even more now then
she did before. Trying to shut out Will's attempts to rattle her, Tori
focuses as much as she can, but without truly letting go of the past she will
never truly be able to move on.
While Max and Tori
become closer and closer, working toward a relationship (or so the reader
continues to hope), the fight also looms on the horizon. The title fight
between Max and Will, a fight that scares Tori is the same night as her return
to the ring. It is there where the drama begins and with each page
turned, I wondered if she would be able to over-come her fears, if she would be
able to stand up to Will and if she would be able to return to her true passion
in life. And I was far from disappointed. Although the end of the
book was not gift-wrapped, it was a happy ending all the same and I would
highly recommend this book to others, it was a 3.5 read for me. The fact
that it was not your typical MMA fighter book drew me in and keep me intrigued
until the very last sentence.
L.G. Kelso writes speculative and contemporary novels. Having grown up watching Xena and Hercules with her grandmother, L.G. inherited her passion for the fantastical, mythological and paranormal. She writes fantasy genre mash-ups that have empowered heroines, complicated heroes, and, of course, magic. Her contemporary works are NA sports romance novels that focus on people in love with combat sports and sometimes each other. L.G. is involved in combat sports and she strives to bring an authentic view of the always breathtaking, often times crazy, and sometimes painful world of MMA into her novels. L.G writes in various categories, but her passion in New Adult, and has been long before New adult was acknowledged. This interest led her and a group of other New Adult fanatics to create NA Alley: Bridging the Gap between YA and Adult Fiction.
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