We are beyond excited to share a very DARK and SEXY sneak peek at FEAR OF HEIGHTS (HEIGHTSBOUND #2) by Mara White! Her debut novel HEIGHTS OF DESIRE was one of our top reads of 2013. Plus we have a SIGNED paperback to give away!

**WARNING** Contains SPOILERS and content that may be triggering for rape sensitive readers!! Read at your own risk, please!

Heights of Desire Synopsis:

A woman who has everything meets a man who can offer her nothing but trouble. They bring each other to a height of desire neither thought possible, but is it enough to overcome the differences that tear them apart?
Kate Champion, a forty-two-year-old, married mother of two, leads an enviable upper class life of luxury. Her comfortable path takes an unexpected detour after a chance encounter at a neighborhood playground.
Jaylee Inoa is a twenty-two-year-old, second generation New York Dominican with close ties to the Heights and the gangs that run them.
Her life of privilege is no match for the code of the streets he navigates with ease. When a crime of the heart leads to a crime in the flesh, how far will she go to redeem him? Can she risk all in her life that is golden for the love of her golden-eyed man?

Excerpt from Fear of Heights (Heightsbound #2)

I shouldn’t have come here.
A sob escapes me and I fall to my knees. The young man swoops in and grabs me gruffly, lifting me like a package over his shoulder. He’s likely determined not to lose this fragile fuck that is quickly deteriorating over unforeseen events.
“Let me go! I don’t want you!” I mumble and then scream. He kicks open a door and tosses me onto a bed, my body bounces and jerks in weak protest.
“I don’t want you at all. I feel like I want to die. Maybe you should kill me,” I suggest, completely swallowed by my own misery.
“Shut the fuck up. I remember you. I know what you need,” he answers, stripping down.
I pull my knees to my chest and look away out the window toward the fire escape. The sky is gray. The pigeons are nesting. I’m not sure I can go through with this. I don’t really know sex without love. I’ve fought to get back so many times now. It makes no sense to be seeking out places from which I can never return. Dark, dark places. Slow, slow burn.
“Hey,” he calls gently.
And I reluctantly turn my head to look at him. He’s naked and magnificent, his hard cock gripped ruthlessly in hand. I do want his hands on me. I especially want his mouth. But I don’t know how to ask for it and I am so incredibly ashamed. I roll onto my stomach and groan.
He reaches down and grabs me roughly underneath the armpits and drags me up his body until I’m kneeling on the bed – his stunning erection heated against my cheek. I press my body into his in desperation and he guides my mouth to exactly where he wants it to go.
I can lose myself in this. I can easily forget. His hands are rough and wildly tug in my hair. He pulls and yanks my head as he takes my mouth both fast and hard. I shouldn’t like it, but I do. Something about the harshness and urgency speaks to the depths of me – it communicates with my own raw, emotional state. I suck and lave and take him as deeply as I can, trying to syphon some drop of my own pleasure from his pleasure.
This is reckless abandon. I suddenly and profoundly understand what that means.
He pulls me up along his body and smashes his mouth into mine. It’s hot and foreign to me – this kissing a stranger. I kiss him back with a longing that borders on pathology. I seek in the depths of this kiss some remote and ephemeral connection to Jaylee. A thin, silver thread, a water memory, a minute splice of DNA. Anything and everything that it could possibly mean or have meant to have this man bare witness to mine and Jaylee’s love – for him to have shared in it in some sort of twisted way. If what he retains is no more than a momentary snapshot I’ll take it. I’ll take absolutely anything at this point.
He pulls my hair back and bites into the tender flesh of my neck, right below my ear. His hands find the clasp of my jeans and he undoes them and pushes them down to my knees. His hands then capture my ass possessively and his breath comes hot and heavy on my neck.
“Get on your stomach and stick your ass in the air,” he says.
I do as I’m told.
He doesn’t even bother with my breasts and that’s fine with me because I’m not here for romance, I am here in hopelessness. I’m here in a furious desperation to rid myself of this hateful and maniacal need.
“You look fucking hot like that. I can’t blame Inoa for getting hooked when I see you like that.”
I flip around, almost falling because my knees are tethered together with my jeans. I sit up quickly and slam the base of my palm straight into his chin.
“Fuck!” he bellows, reeling back and gripping his chin defensively. His gaze on me intensifies. He likes the fight. His erection swells more, his desire heightened by my reaction. Then he’s on me like lightening and I’m flailing with my arms hitting at the air just as much as they’re hitting him. He crushes me down onto the mattress and pins both of my arms at my sides, my face merely centimeters from his.
“¡Shit, Diablo, Mami! ¿Quieres o no?”
“Don’t talk about him. Don’t even say his name!” I scream.
I’m crying and choking and sobbing, all the while still bucking against his body and trying to wrestle free from his weight.
“Dime que tu no quiere’ y te suelto!” he says.
But I can’t tell him no, because the truth is that I do want him. I need him. And despite trying to throw him off, my hips are shamelessly grinding against his pelvis and I’m soaked with my own contemptible desire. Drowning in my own ghastly need. I relax my body just for an instant and he lays his mouth on mine. I respond all too eagerly to his kiss. I take his tongue and thrust mine just as deeply into his hungry mouth. I hate him and I want him and I hate myself for wanting him. I will destroy his body with mine.
I angrily tear away my own clothing, frantically wanting him inside me. I long to feel something – anything. I want him to fuck away the pain. Perhaps I can find some sad solace in the pure physical functioning of my own stupid body. I guide him inside me senselessly with one hand as I try to sustain him at a bit of distance with the other. His chest feels solid and comforting under the palm of my hand.
He’s big and deep and he wastes no time in crushing my hips into an anxious rhythm. I keep my hand positioned firmly on his strong chest as if the gesture could equate to some symbolic distance between us. An inch of space that represents a great emotional divide. I squeeze my eyes shut and allow his need to become my sole, and minute point of focus in my universe so saturated with loss. I’ll just allow myself to feel his body connected with my body and nothing else.
“You got a thing for younger, Dominican guys?” he asks breathlessly, breaking my concentration and my momentary escape.
“Don’t talk!” I scream banging my fists into his face, his neck, his shoulders, any spot I can reach. I try to wriggle my hips away from his, but his weight is crushing. Grounding.
He answers by yanking my arms above my head and kissing me fervently. I wish I didn’t want his kiss but it magically stops my thoughts from racing – the endless barrage of rumination – the regret – the pain – the philosophical bleed. I kiss him back with passion because I know intuitively that some aspect of sex is purifying, renewing. And this is all that I seek in the contact of his flesh.
His hip bones slam into mine, as he is thin and fit and offers not much in the way of padding. His mouth too smashes against mine in a violent union, his stubble tears into the soft and tender skin on my face. All of my soft flesh is ravaged by this man – my mouth, my breasts, and most of all, my sex.
“Did you want me that day?” he asks heatedly.
And again he removes me from my meditation, demanding consciousness and communication – neither of which have I any use for. I only yearn to be devoured, to be fucked into submission and silence and possibly all the way to redemption.
“You wanted me in your mouth. You wanted to fuck us both, didn’t you?”
I answer him by rearing back and pulling away. I shove him down by the shoulders so that he lays prostrate and I take him in my mouth tasting my own desire that has him now completely saturated. There’s the evidence. Proof of my weakness, my imperfection, my undeniable greed.
I suck him with abandon in attempt to satisfy his wish for it to have been him in my mouth that day. In this contact I search for an answer to my own demise.
If it’s so bad, then why do we all want it? And what, if anything, do we receive from restraint?
“Come in my mouth,” I mutter around his swollen cock. He surprises me by pushing me away and quickly flipping me over. I oblige because I’ll oblige him anything. Whatever he wants he can take from me. I surrender completely, my body, my spirit, all of what’s left of me.
“I want to come in your pussy,” he says, grabbing my hips mercilessly and slamming into me from behind.
And I’ll let him come inside me.
Why?
Because I’m empty. I’m actively inviting ruin. I am taking this to the very extreme.

– Mara White
Fear of Heights 2014

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About the Author

I’m a reader, a writer, and a lover of all things romantic. I’m also a coffee, hot sauce, ink, telenovela, and Bikram Yoga enthusiast. I live in New York City with my husband and two children, and I spend a lot of time on the playground.

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