About The Book:
Title: Prisoner
Series: Criminals & Captives #1
Author: Annika Martin & Skye Warren
Genre: New Adult, Romance
Release Date: October 23, 2014
Purchase: Amazon
He seethes with raw power the first time I see him—pure menace and rippling muscles in shackles. He’s dangerous. He’s wild. He’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.So I hide behind my prim glasses and my book like I always do, because I have secrets too. Then he shows up in the prison writing class I have to teach, and he blows me away with his honesty. He tells me secrets in his stories, and it’s getting harder to hide mine. I shiver when he gets too close, with only the cuffs and the bars and the guards holding him back. At night I can’t stop thinking about him in his cell.
But that’s the thing about an animal in a cage—you never know when he’ll bite. He might use you to escape. He might even pull you into a forest and hold a hand over your mouth so you can’t call for the cops. He might make you come so hard, you can’t think.
And you might crave him more than your next breath.
"Sexy, dark and thrilling. I loved every second of it!"
– New York Times bestselling author Katie Reus
Excerpt:
Heavy bars close behind me with a clang. I feel the sound in my bones. A series of mechanical clicks hint at an elaborate security mechanism beneath the black iron plating. I knew this would happen—had anticipated and dreaded it—but my breathing quickens with the knowledge that I am well and truly trapped.
“Can I help you?”
I whirl to face the administrative window where a heavyset woman in a security guard uniform stares at her screen.
“Hi,” I say, pasting on a smile. “My name is Abigail Winslow, and I’m here to—”
“Two forms of identification.”
“Oh, well, I already filled out the paperwork at the front desk. And showed them my IDs.”
“This isn’t the front desk, Ms. Winslow. This is the east-wing desk, and I need to see two forms of identification.”
“Right.” I dig through my bag for my driver’s license and passport.
She accepts them without looking up, then hands me a clipboard with a stack of papers just like the ones I’d already filled out.
I’ve been dreading this day for weeks, wishing I’d been assigned any other project but this one. You’d think I was being sent here for a crime. My professor—the one who’d forced me into this—warned me that prisoners were not always receptive to outsiders. Apparently nobody here is.
I complete each form, arrange the pages neatly on the clipboard, and bring them back up to the window. The guard accepts them and gives back my IDs…still without looking at me.
My hands clench and unclench, clench and unclench while the guard eyes my paperwork.
Seconds pass. Or are they minutes? The damp chill of the place seeps in through my cardigan and leaves me shivering.
Leaning forward, I read the name tag of the guard. “Ms. Breck. Do you know what the next steps are?”
“You can have a seat. I have work to do now, and then I’ll escort you back.”
“Oh, okay.” I glance at the bars I just came through, then the open hallway opposite. “Actually, if you just point me in the direction of the library, I’m sure I can—”
Thunk. The woman’s hand hits the desk. I jump. Her dark eyes are faintly accusing, and I wish we could go back to no eye contact. How did I manage to make an enemy in two minutes?
“Ms. Winslow,” she says, her voice patronizing.
“You can call me Abby,” I whisper.
A slight smile. Not a nice one. “Ms. Winslow, what do you think we do here?”
The question is clearly rhetorical. I press my lips together to keep from making things worse.
“The Kingman Correctional Facility houses over five thousand convicted criminals. My job is to keep it that way. Do we understand each other?”
Heat floods my cheeks. The last thing I want to do is make her job harder. “Right. Of course.” I shamble back, landing hard on the metal folding chair. It wobbles a little before the rubber feet stop my slide.
I understand the woman’s point. She has to keep the prisoners in and everyone else out, and keep people like me safe.
I reach down and pull a book from my bag. I never leave home without one, even when I go to classes or run errands. Even when I was young and my mother used to take me on her rounds.
Especially then
I would hide in the backseat with my nose in the book, pretending I didn’t see the shady people who came to her window when we stopped.
A little green light above the barred doors flashes on and there’s an ominous buzz. Somebody’s coming through, and I doubt it will be a library volunteer. I slide down.
Pretend to be invisible.
It’s no use. I peer over the top edge as a prisoner saunters through the door, and my pulse slams in my throat double time.
He’s flanked by two guards—escorted by them, I guess you’d say. But they seem more like an entourage than anything. Power vibrates around him like a threat.
Read, read, read. Don’t look.
The prisoner is half a foot taller than the guards, but he seems to tower over them by more than that. Maybe it’s his broad shoulders or just something about the way he stands, or his imperiously high cheekbones. The dark stubble across his cheeks looks so rough and unforgiving I can feel it against my palm; it contrasts wildly with the plushness of his lips. His short brown hair is mussed. There’s one scar through his eyebrow that somehow adds to his perfection.
The little group approaches the window. I can barely breathe.
“ID number 85359,” one of the guards says, and I understand that he’s referring to the prisoner. That’s who he is. Not John Smith or William Brown or whatever his name is. He’s been reduced to a number. The woman at the desk runs through a series of questions. It’s a procedure for checking him out of solitary.
The prisoner faces sideways, spine straight, the corner of his mouth tilted up as if he’s slightly amused. Then it clicks, what else is so different about him: no visible tattoos. Tough guys like this, they’re always inked up—it’s a kind of armor, a kind of fuck you. This guy has none of it, though he’s far from pristine; white scars mar the rough skin of his hands and especially his forearms, a latticework of pain and violence, a flag proclaiming the kind of underworld he came from.
The feel of brutality that hangs about him is compelling and…somehow beautiful.
I drink him in from behind my book—it’s my mask, my protective shield. But then the strangest thing happens: he cocks his head. It’s just a slight shift, but I feel his attention on me deep in my belly. I’ve been discovered. Caught by searchlights. Exposed.
My heart beats frantically.
I want him to look away. He fills up too much space. It’s as if he breathes enough oxygen for twelve men, leaving no air for me at all. Maybe if we were in the library and he needed help finding a book or looking something up, then I wouldn’t mind the weight of his gaze.
No. Not even there. He’s too much.
Two sets of bars on the gate. Handcuffs. Two guards.
What do they think he would do if there were only one set of bars, one guard?
My blood races as the guards draw him away from the window and toward the inner door, toward where I sit. His heat pierces the chill around me as he nears. His deep brown eyes never once meet mine, but I have the sense of him looming over me as he passes, like a tree with a massive canopy. He continues on, two hundred pounds of masculine danger wrapped in all that beauty.
Even in chains, he seems vibrant, wild and free, a force of nature—it makes me feel like I’m the one in prison. Safe. Small. Carefully locked down.
How would it feel to be that free?
“Ms. Winslow. Ms. Winslow.”
I jump, surprised to hear that the woman has been calling my name. “I’m sorry,” I say as a strange sensation tickles the back of my neck.
The woman stands and begins pulling on her jacket. “I’ll take you to the library now.”
“Oh, that’s great.”
That shivery sensation gets stronger. Against my better judgment, I look down the hallway where the guards and the prisoner are walking off as one—a column of orange flanked by two thinner, shorter posts.
The prisoner glances over his shoulder. His mocking brown gaze searches me out, pins me with a subtle threat. Though it isn’t his eyes that scare me. It’s his lips—those beautiful, generous lips forming words that make my blood race.
Ms. Winslow.
No sound comes out, but I feel as though he’s whispered my name right into my ear. Then he turns and strolls off.
“Can I help you?”
I whirl to face the administrative window where a heavyset woman in a security guard uniform stares at her screen.
“Hi,” I say, pasting on a smile. “My name is Abigail Winslow, and I’m here to—”
“Two forms of identification.”
“Oh, well, I already filled out the paperwork at the front desk. And showed them my IDs.”
“This isn’t the front desk, Ms. Winslow. This is the east-wing desk, and I need to see two forms of identification.”
“Right.” I dig through my bag for my driver’s license and passport.
She accepts them without looking up, then hands me a clipboard with a stack of papers just like the ones I’d already filled out.
I’ve been dreading this day for weeks, wishing I’d been assigned any other project but this one. You’d think I was being sent here for a crime. My professor—the one who’d forced me into this—warned me that prisoners were not always receptive to outsiders. Apparently nobody here is.
I complete each form, arrange the pages neatly on the clipboard, and bring them back up to the window. The guard accepts them and gives back my IDs…still without looking at me.
My hands clench and unclench, clench and unclench while the guard eyes my paperwork.
Seconds pass. Or are they minutes? The damp chill of the place seeps in through my cardigan and leaves me shivering.
Leaning forward, I read the name tag of the guard. “Ms. Breck. Do you know what the next steps are?”
“You can have a seat. I have work to do now, and then I’ll escort you back.”
“Oh, okay.” I glance at the bars I just came through, then the open hallway opposite. “Actually, if you just point me in the direction of the library, I’m sure I can—”
Thunk. The woman’s hand hits the desk. I jump. Her dark eyes are faintly accusing, and I wish we could go back to no eye contact. How did I manage to make an enemy in two minutes?
“Ms. Winslow,” she says, her voice patronizing.
“You can call me Abby,” I whisper.
A slight smile. Not a nice one. “Ms. Winslow, what do you think we do here?”
The question is clearly rhetorical. I press my lips together to keep from making things worse.
“The Kingman Correctional Facility houses over five thousand convicted criminals. My job is to keep it that way. Do we understand each other?”
Heat floods my cheeks. The last thing I want to do is make her job harder. “Right. Of course.” I shamble back, landing hard on the metal folding chair. It wobbles a little before the rubber feet stop my slide.
I understand the woman’s point. She has to keep the prisoners in and everyone else out, and keep people like me safe.
I reach down and pull a book from my bag. I never leave home without one, even when I go to classes or run errands. Even when I was young and my mother used to take me on her rounds.
Especially then
I would hide in the backseat with my nose in the book, pretending I didn’t see the shady people who came to her window when we stopped.
A little green light above the barred doors flashes on and there’s an ominous buzz. Somebody’s coming through, and I doubt it will be a library volunteer. I slide down.
Pretend to be invisible.
It’s no use. I peer over the top edge as a prisoner saunters through the door, and my pulse slams in my throat double time.
He’s flanked by two guards—escorted by them, I guess you’d say. But they seem more like an entourage than anything. Power vibrates around him like a threat.
Read, read, read. Don’t look.
The prisoner is half a foot taller than the guards, but he seems to tower over them by more than that. Maybe it’s his broad shoulders or just something about the way he stands, or his imperiously high cheekbones. The dark stubble across his cheeks looks so rough and unforgiving I can feel it against my palm; it contrasts wildly with the plushness of his lips. His short brown hair is mussed. There’s one scar through his eyebrow that somehow adds to his perfection.
The little group approaches the window. I can barely breathe.
“ID number 85359,” one of the guards says, and I understand that he’s referring to the prisoner. That’s who he is. Not John Smith or William Brown or whatever his name is. He’s been reduced to a number. The woman at the desk runs through a series of questions. It’s a procedure for checking him out of solitary.
The prisoner faces sideways, spine straight, the corner of his mouth tilted up as if he’s slightly amused. Then it clicks, what else is so different about him: no visible tattoos. Tough guys like this, they’re always inked up—it’s a kind of armor, a kind of fuck you. This guy has none of it, though he’s far from pristine; white scars mar the rough skin of his hands and especially his forearms, a latticework of pain and violence, a flag proclaiming the kind of underworld he came from.
The feel of brutality that hangs about him is compelling and…somehow beautiful.
I drink him in from behind my book—it’s my mask, my protective shield. But then the strangest thing happens: he cocks his head. It’s just a slight shift, but I feel his attention on me deep in my belly. I’ve been discovered. Caught by searchlights. Exposed.
My heart beats frantically.
I want him to look away. He fills up too much space. It’s as if he breathes enough oxygen for twelve men, leaving no air for me at all. Maybe if we were in the library and he needed help finding a book or looking something up, then I wouldn’t mind the weight of his gaze.
No. Not even there. He’s too much.
Two sets of bars on the gate. Handcuffs. Two guards.
What do they think he would do if there were only one set of bars, one guard?
My blood races as the guards draw him away from the window and toward the inner door, toward where I sit. His heat pierces the chill around me as he nears. His deep brown eyes never once meet mine, but I have the sense of him looming over me as he passes, like a tree with a massive canopy. He continues on, two hundred pounds of masculine danger wrapped in all that beauty.
Even in chains, he seems vibrant, wild and free, a force of nature—it makes me feel like I’m the one in prison. Safe. Small. Carefully locked down.
How would it feel to be that free?
“Ms. Winslow. Ms. Winslow.”
I jump, surprised to hear that the woman has been calling my name. “I’m sorry,” I say as a strange sensation tickles the back of my neck.
The woman stands and begins pulling on her jacket. “I’ll take you to the library now.”
“Oh, that’s great.”
That shivery sensation gets stronger. Against my better judgment, I look down the hallway where the guards and the prisoner are walking off as one—a column of orange flanked by two thinner, shorter posts.
The prisoner glances over his shoulder. His mocking brown gaze searches me out, pins me with a subtle threat. Though it isn’t his eyes that scare me. It’s his lips—those beautiful, generous lips forming words that make my blood race.
Ms. Winslow.
No sound comes out, but I feel as though he’s whispered my name right into my ear. Then he turns and strolls off.
About The Authors:
Annika: I’m a NYT bestselling author living a stone’s throw away from the Mississippi with my awesome husband and two cats in a home full of plants, sunshine and books. I'm heavy into writing love stories about criminals--some of them are dirty and fun (my Kinky bank robbers!) others are dark and intense (Prisoner!)I also write gritty romantic suspense as the RITA-award winning author Carolyn Crane.
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads
Annika Guest Post:
Four reasons why I will never stop sending my characters to hotels.
I just had this crazy realization today: almost all of my heroes and heroines in books by both my pen names have really intense scenes in hotels or motels. (Except my urban fantasy, but hey, the hero is trapped in a Mongolian Restaurant a lot of the time.)
Sometimes when I realize I’m doing something a ton (like…er using the term “ragged breath”) I try to stop it. I don’t want to be a repetitive writer. But I don’t want to stop setting scenes in hotels and motels. I Love Them!!
Why are hotel/motel scenes awesome in books?
Hotels and motels rooms are blank slates.
Think about it—when you take a date to your home, all your stuff is there: books, chairs, pets. That picture of Aunt Mildred. The cookies you baked last week. A home is full of baggage, but a hotel is blank, and in a way, the whole world is shut out. The mood can be anything, and the focus is totally on the characters and how they are with each other.
A hotel room: characters confined with each other and a bed.
I love a hotel scene because it’s usually just the hero, heroine kind of trapped together with a bed. It creates instant tension and excitement. Even when one goes off to take a shower, the other hears it (and is usually thinking about them naked in there—did you ever notice that?)
A hotel room bed is almost like another character that you can’t ignore. In a car, there’s never the issue of sex in the air like there is in a hotel room. Because…hero, heroine, bed. (Unless you’re reading my kinky bank robbers books, then it’s three heroes and the heroine drinking champagne closed up in a luxury suite with a hot tub and a bed, but…same idea.)
Hotels: a time out where the characters have to face each other.
My characters are usually in danger or up to something, but when they get to a hotel or motel, it’s downtime, and the attention goes off everything in the world but each other. I think PRISONER has the most intense motel scene; Skye and I really got into it—it’s where Grayson, our dark and troubled escaped convict, takes Abby, his college girl hostage, to this motel after a long, tense day of being on the run. It's the first time they’ve been alone and not on the move. Grayson has these dark plans for Abby, but there is this powerful psychological back and forth between them, and they each give something up and get closer in a sort of twisted way.
Hotels and motels: the edge of the forbidden.
Of course, hotels and especially motels have a kind of seedy, dirty edge. There’s the fact that people go to them to have sex a lot, but it’s not just about sex, but it is where people go to be anonymous or escape something. Also, the sort of everyday demands of life aren’t there—there are no dishes or bills or anything. Dirty no demands of usual life.
Its where people go to not be known, or to be somebody else.
How about you? Do you like seeing characters wind up in hotels? Or would you rather see them sent home?
I just had this crazy realization today: almost all of my heroes and heroines in books by both my pen names have really intense scenes in hotels or motels. (Except my urban fantasy, but hey, the hero is trapped in a Mongolian Restaurant a lot of the time.)
Sometimes when I realize I’m doing something a ton (like…er using the term “ragged breath”) I try to stop it. I don’t want to be a repetitive writer. But I don’t want to stop setting scenes in hotels and motels. I Love Them!!
Why are hotel/motel scenes awesome in books?
Hotels and motels rooms are blank slates.
Think about it—when you take a date to your home, all your stuff is there: books, chairs, pets. That picture of Aunt Mildred. The cookies you baked last week. A home is full of baggage, but a hotel is blank, and in a way, the whole world is shut out. The mood can be anything, and the focus is totally on the characters and how they are with each other.
A hotel room: characters confined with each other and a bed.
I love a hotel scene because it’s usually just the hero, heroine kind of trapped together with a bed. It creates instant tension and excitement. Even when one goes off to take a shower, the other hears it (and is usually thinking about them naked in there—did you ever notice that?)
A hotel room bed is almost like another character that you can’t ignore. In a car, there’s never the issue of sex in the air like there is in a hotel room. Because…hero, heroine, bed. (Unless you’re reading my kinky bank robbers books, then it’s three heroes and the heroine drinking champagne closed up in a luxury suite with a hot tub and a bed, but…same idea.)
Hotels: a time out where the characters have to face each other.
My characters are usually in danger or up to something, but when they get to a hotel or motel, it’s downtime, and the attention goes off everything in the world but each other. I think PRISONER has the most intense motel scene; Skye and I really got into it—it’s where Grayson, our dark and troubled escaped convict, takes Abby, his college girl hostage, to this motel after a long, tense day of being on the run. It's the first time they’ve been alone and not on the move. Grayson has these dark plans for Abby, but there is this powerful psychological back and forth between them, and they each give something up and get closer in a sort of twisted way.
Hotels and motels: the edge of the forbidden.
Of course, hotels and especially motels have a kind of seedy, dirty edge. There’s the fact that people go to them to have sex a lot, but it’s not just about sex, but it is where people go to be anonymous or escape something. Also, the sort of everyday demands of life aren’t there—there are no dishes or bills or anything. Dirty no demands of usual life.
Its where people go to not be known, or to be somebody else.
How about you? Do you like seeing characters wind up in hotels? Or would you rather see them sent home?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Skye Guest Post:
Why I Write Dark Romance
Thanks so much for having me! I’m Skye Warren, New York Times bestselling author of dark romance. I’m excited to share my new release, Prisoner, which is a book I co-wrote with my friend and bestselling author Annika Martin.
I think one of the joys of reading, thinking back even to childhood, was the sense that anything could happen. Wardrobes opened to new lands and golden tickets opened the gate to magical chocolate factories.
When I got a little older (but probably not old enough) I started reading Anne Rice. Ooo boy, let me tell you. The Witching Hour is as dark and as taboo as it gets. There’s ménage and incest and all kinds of wild times. And these were books sitting on a nice, bright shelf in the bookstore that my parents bought for me—totally not knowing what was inside!
So I really didn’t have a sense that there were boundaries in books. That was something I learned later, as an adult.
And it’s something I try to unlearn, in a way.
I try to push my own boundaries with each new book. I try to stretch myself. Because that’s a huge part of the fun of writing. And even though this is my career, I want to have fun. Plus, it produces better books. The books I wrote with my hands flying over the keyboard, the ones I questioned before I published them if they were even acceptable for public viewing, are consistently my bestsellers. My readers want me to push the envelope.
Thanks so much for having me! I’m Skye Warren, New York Times bestselling author of dark romance. I’m excited to share my new release, Prisoner, which is a book I co-wrote with my friend and bestselling author Annika Martin.
I think one of the joys of reading, thinking back even to childhood, was the sense that anything could happen. Wardrobes opened to new lands and golden tickets opened the gate to magical chocolate factories.
When I got a little older (but probably not old enough) I started reading Anne Rice. Ooo boy, let me tell you. The Witching Hour is as dark and as taboo as it gets. There’s ménage and incest and all kinds of wild times. And these were books sitting on a nice, bright shelf in the bookstore that my parents bought for me—totally not knowing what was inside!
So I really didn’t have a sense that there were boundaries in books. That was something I learned later, as an adult.
And it’s something I try to unlearn, in a way.
I try to push my own boundaries with each new book. I try to stretch myself. Because that’s a huge part of the fun of writing. And even though this is my career, I want to have fun. Plus, it produces better books. The books I wrote with my hands flying over the keyboard, the ones I questioned before I published them if they were even acceptable for public viewing, are consistently my bestsellers. My readers want me to push the envelope.
When Annika and I first discussed co-writing we both knew it would be dark and sexy. Well, that’s what we both already wrote, but we came up with a new style working together. There’s something seriously sexy about prison… strong men, powerful men, cunning men contained by something as primitive as metal bars. Something sexy about defying the laws of society and getting caught, but maintaining an air of danger.
Some days, I don’t even see how this stuff is considered that dark—or dangerous. After all, there are demons and werewolves in books and no one bats an eye. Is it that strange to read about a person finding love? Even if that person does happen to be a prison inmate… Real criminals find love (and hot sex) every day. But then I remember that that’s what makes these stories scary. They hit close to home. They make us squirm. And that’s why I love them.
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