He Lies Beneath by Marissa Farrar - February Femmes Fatales

So wonderful to be able to welcome such a talented author as Marissa Farrar back to February Femmes Fatales. I'm not the only one to have read the first in her Serenity series ALONE - a powerful vampire paranormal romance - this year. The sequel, BURIED is smouldering away on my Kindle waiting to be read.

I urge readers to visit Marissa's blog to discover her work; I can assure you - you won't be disappointed. He Lies Beneath is proof of that.

HE LIES BENEATH

Image (c) Marissa Farrar

The warmth of his steady breath attracted her. Like smoke, she dissipated and slipped through the open crack of his window. Inside, she reformed in her feminine guise; eyes so large and black, should any man wake to see her, he’d glimpse only holes in her head.

She hovered above this one and smiled with pleasure. Still young, perhaps only in his late twenties, he slept on his back, a white sheet draped across his narrow waist. His well-defined arms rested either side of his head, his lips parted. Long, dark eyelashes lay upon his cheek and stubble shadowed his cut jaw.

“Aaah...” she sighed, her breath frosting the night air. The sight of his naked torso pleased her and a shiver of excitement trembled through her form.

She dipped lower and pressed her cold, pale lips against his. His head twisted slightly, sensing her. She kissed him, insistent and, even in sleep, he responded. Her black, pointed tongue flicked into his mouth, dancing, tracing the inside of his lips and teeth. His lips moved against hers and she tasted the faint hint of mint.

Suspended above him, she moved from his mouth, planting feather-light kisses across his jaw and down his neck. His pulse beat steadily just beneath the delicate skin of his throat. The warm scent of copper filled her nostrils, but it wasn’t blood she was after.

Her lips worked down his body, stopping at the tight buds of his nipples to grate her teeth over the erect, sensitive flesh. Her slick, black tongue laved the peak in lascivious circles.

The beautiful man squirmed beneath her and lower down she felt him begin to rise, tenting the sheet.

Focusing her energy, she willed the offending material away. It slid from his body and dropped to the floor beside the bed. His naked body exposed, she slid her fingers down to circle his expanding girth. She squeezed him tight, eliciting a moan.

The blood-tipped nails of her other hand scratched down his chest and across the ridges of his abdominals, leaving five red lines in their wake. His head thrashed from side to side, his lips moving, muttering in his sleep.

He grew hard beneath her caresses and the response made her smile; a wicked expression. Her long, slim fingers worked his length and he uttered a groan. Moving lower still, she brushed her cheek against his manhood, like a cat nudging an owner’s leg. His skin felt like silk and she marvelled at the combination of hard and soft. Holding him at his base, she brushed her lips against him, sneaking out her tongue to leave a trail of wet saliva along his length.

She took him between her lips, stretching her jaw to accommodate his size. She tasted musk, his scent filling her senses. She swirled her blackened tongue over the head, drinking in the salty droplet she found there.

Closing her lips around him, she bobbed lower. He swelled in her mouth as she moved up and down, keeping a regular pace, her tongue swirling across his smooth skin.

His eyes shot open and in the dim moonlight filtering between the curtains, he caught sight of her. She knew her high cheekbones appeared skeletal, her eyes gaping holes, her skin white. His mouth stretched in a scream, but even as he shrieked, his hips jerked. Hot seed spilled down her throat and she sucked and swallowed, draining him dry. He cried out with both the force of his orgasm and the horror of what he’d woken to. But despite his turmoil, he couldn’t run; her dark magic kept him pinned to the bed.

Overwhelmed, his eyes rolled back in his head and he fell slack against the mattress.

She lifted her head and licked her lips.

In the morning he would only remember a dream of contrasts—of pleasure and pain, of terror and lust. Exhausted, he’d blame the nightmare, and in some ways he’d be right. Though it wouldn’t be the lack of sleep that had affected him but the energy she’d stolen.

Perhaps she would return to this one. She moved up his body and stroked his cheek. He flinched in his sleep. Yes, he pleased her. His restless nights and exhausted days would continue...

_________ The End _________

Bio: Marissa Farrar was born in Devon, England, where she now resides with her husband and two children. She is the author of the dark vampire novels, The Serenity Series, and several stand-alone horror and fantasy books.

If you want to know more about Marissa, please visit her facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/marissa.farrar.author

Book Review: ALONE by Marissa Farrar

Serenity Hathaway has no reason to celebrate life, coasting between cruel indifference at the office and violence at home. The opening pages of Alone plunge us straight into the hell of this young woman's existence, revealing her self-doubt and plummeting despair.

Despite the very real personal demons that have brought her to this lonely time and place Serenity still controls her own will. And when Sebastian Bandores happens upon the young woman on her knees in a dark alleyway, the encounter leaves her with an inner strength she never thought possible.

Serenity can't stop thinking about the beautiful stranger that pulled her out of an emotional gutter, rescuing her from her lowest ebb. Life suddenly has promise; but life can get worse - far worse - and so can death.

Marissa Farrar carries us through this haunting vampire tale as a feather on the wind, dipping and fluctuating between passion and horror. She masters Serenity's strengths and weaknesses, her resilience and distrust as the reluctant heroine struggles to comprehend the otherworldly extremes of vampiric hunger.

The author's principal characters are passionate, loyal and loving - perfect bait for the vicious antagonists of this chilling horror novel where no-one and nowhere is safe.

Well-written with an addictive pace, I loved this book. I can't wait to read the follow-up Buried (Alone). The author has cleverly gifted us with the prologue of the second book as a wicked tease at the end of book one - and it promises darkness. A generous bonus.

4* out of 5, and highly recommended.

Download Alone from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

Read more of Marissa Farrar's fiction at:
http://marissa-farrar.blogspot.com/

Introducing the 3rd February Femme Fatale - Marissa Farrar

February Femmes Fatales - February 3rd

Wherever I went across the web seeking horror and darkness for my literary pleasure I kept hearing about Marissa Farrar. News about her first novel Alone - a vampire romance - filtered into my consciousness and I found myself taking more and more notice of her name.

We eventually crossed paths like black cats in the night to share velvet cushions in Red Skies Press extreme vampire anthology Their Dark Masters.

I have enormous respect for Marissa's professionalism and her skilled and cunning writing. In her eerie and disturbing February Femmes Fatales tale Faces she makes us shiver with a ghost story based on true events. I just know you're going to enjoy it.

Faces by Marissa Farrar

“The faces on the wall make me scared...”

This answer has just come from my three-year old daughter as I sit with her on her bed, reading her a Winnie-the-Pooh book that deals with emotions. So far the answers have been what I expected;

‘What makes you happy?’

‘Getting treats.’

‘What makes you sad?

‘Not getting treats.’

But then I asked her, ‘what makes you scared?’ and the last thing I expected was that answer.

“What faces?” I say, my blood running cold. “There aren’t faces on the walls.”

“Yes there are,” she insists. “Some of them are nice, but some of them are mean.”

“Where are they?” I ask her. “When do you see them?

“They’re everywhere,” she says, looking around her. “And I see them all the time.

I huddle my daughter into my arms, as always shocked at how quickly my fat little baby, who had dimple in her dimples, grew into this skinny legged, sharp elbowed child.

A shiver runs through me, certain the room is a few degrees cooler.

“There’s nothing on the walls,” I tell her, reaching out and touching one of the smooth surfaces. “You’re seeing shadows.”

She looks at me as only a three-year old can. With total scepticism.

“They’re not shadows,” she almost laughs, as if I’ve told her a dog is a horse. “They’re people and they’re in the walls.”

“Don’t be silly. People can’t get in the walls.”

I know I’m telling her the truth, but there is still part of me that wonders...what if? What if she is right and I am the one who is wrong?

Suddenly claustrophobia presses on all sides, as if I am surrounded by faces, all peering down at me. For once I find myself wishing my ex-husband were here, and I was not alone in the house.

I lean down and kiss her small head, her fine hair tickling my nose.

“Come on, it’s time to go to sleep,” I tell her, pulling the covers up over her narrow frame. She snuggles down into her pillow and pulls her teddy-bear close to her body.

I reach out to switch off her bedroom lamp, but something moves on the wall, something just out of my peripheral vision. I freeze, my hand held in the same position, my heart pounding in my chest. Slowly I turn my head, cautiously needing to know what caught my attention, and almost laugh out loud. There is the shadow of my arm, grotesquely morphed across my daughter’s bedroom wall, frozen in position.

I wiggle my fingers, reassuring myself, and the shadow waves back.

It was nothing, only my imagination. Fears brought on by a child’s imagination.

I kiss her again and whisper, ‘I love you,’ into her ear.

Already she is halfway into the arms of sleep and I quietly back out of the room, trying to tell myself the flurry of movement across the wall is simply a creation of light and shade.

Downstairs, I sink into the arms of my favourite couch and pick up the well-thumbed paperback I’m currently reading. For a while I am taken into a different world; one of heroes with broad shoulders and dangerous smiles, of heroines with heaving breasts and plucky personalities.

A piercing scream tears me from my reverie. My head snaps up, my body launching from the couch. With blood rushing through my veins, I race up the stairs. Bursting through her bedroom door, the first thing I see is my child, huddled in the middle of the bed, her soft toy clutched to her chest. But then, as I take in her surrounding, my eyes prickle with sharp tears of fear.

Her room is back to front, her pillow at the wrong end of her bed, her book case turned around, her toys piled in the centre of the room.

“Honey?” I say, unsure if I should be terrified or angry. “What did you do to your room?”

“It wasn’t me!” she cries, her face in her hands. “It was the faces.”

“Don’t be silly. Faces can’t move things.”

Then I realise what I’ve said. “And there aren’t any faces. They’re just walls!”

I reach out my hand, intending to hit the wall, show her how solid it is, but her shriek of fear freezes me in my tracks.

“No, Mummy! Don’t hit them. They’re the mean ones and you’ll make them angry.”

I open my mouth to tell her the faces are not real, but movement stops me.

Do I see the walls ripple around me, the swirl of dark and light above my head? I squeeze my eyes shut. This isn’t real; it’s hysteria. I’ve watched a documentary about it before, I’m sure. How one person’s panic can take hold of another?

Yet something darts above me, bleeding into the paintwork, and another swoops down like a black cloak, billowing around us.

I grab my daughter from her bed and she clings to my neck, her legs wrapped around my waist. Staring at the mottled pink strands of her bedroom rug— too terrified to look up— I back out of the room and quickly pull the door shut behind me.

I hurry into my own bedroom and slam the door, blocking her bedroom from my own by the length of the hallway and two closed doors. I climb into bed, my daughter still attached to my body, like a monkey, shivering.

It was nothing, I tell myself. Just a bad case of night terrors.

And yet, as I huddle down beneath the covers, holding my daughter tight against the curve of my body, I am certain I can feel eyes peering down at me. 

Faces in the walls.

________________________________

Bio:

Marissa Farrar
Real life horror... as much as you can bear.

Alone | The Dark Road | Facebook | Twitter | Blog 

Marissa Farrar, born in Devon, England, now resides outside of London with her husband and two children. She has a degree in Zoology, but her true love has always been writing. Marissa writes horror as well as urban fantasy. Alone is her debut novel and her second, The Dark Road, was published in November 2010. She has also had a number of short stories accepted for anthologies.