Very Superstitious

So it's Friday the 13th. An unlucky day? Well, I tried all day yesterday to get this post up, but Blogger was down. I strongly suspect anyone involved in the highly successful movie series considers it very lucky, on the other hand.

So many superstitions about luck. Bad luck can come from broken mirrors, spilled salt, black cats, walking under a ladder or opening an umbrella inside the house. Good luck charms include crossed fingers, four leafed clovers, rabbits' feet (not so lucky for the rabbit) upturned horseshoes and knocking on wood.

I found a collection of interesting tidbits at http://www.corsinet.com/trivia/scary.html. While you're at it, leave a comment below on your favorite superstition, and sometime Sunday, I'll draw one random commenter to win a copy of my new book from Ellora's Cave: Midsummer Dreams.

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Midsummer Dreams

Holiday Hearts #4

By Cindy Spencer Pape

From Ellora’s Cave

Blurb:

Matt Warren has always been the man of Summer’s dreams. He was her childhood imaginary playmate, her teen crush, and the wildly sexy fantasy lover of her adulthood. She’s always known he wasn’t real, but after experiencing his imaginative, passionate touch, no real man has ever measured up. Alone on a beach shortly before her birthday, however, Summer discovers that the Holiday family magic hasn’t left her behind. Matt is real, here on her beach, and her to make Summer his, in every way possible.

Matt has always known that he has a gift as a dreamwalker, and that Summer was out there, and would someday be his, if he didn’t get himself killed first. Now that his career as an Air Force pilot is over, he’s moved to Charleston to find Summer and teach her that their shared erotic dreams are even better in real life, and that their love can last a lifetime.

Excerpt: (ADULT)

Summer Holiday tossed and turned in the middle of a dream that had visited on and off her whole life. She knew she was dreaming, but she didn’t want it to end.

The sand was warm beneath her feet and the surf lapped softly against the shore. No one else was around, just the two of them. The handsome, golden-haired man gazed at her with his midnight-blue eyes. He reached for her and she walked into his arms. He was mostly naked, a pair of cut-off jeans his only covering. She had on a sundress, with a bikini underneath. This part of the dream was the same, had been since she could remember. As she’d gotten older though, it had grown more and more explicit. Now, sometimes the dream carried through until they’d both come, and Summer wanted that tonight. It had been a long week, and she needed some sort of release.

“Summer.” He murmured her name into her hair as he hugged her close. That had been added to the dream sometime in her teen years. They’d shared names and told each other about their lives. Her subconscious had built quite a character for her dream man. He was three years older than her, had parents who were divorced, a married sister, and since her college years, he’d been in the military. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too, Matt.” Matthew Harrison Warren, that’s what she’d named him. Major Matt Warren. Her childhood dream friend who’d grown into her adult dream lover. “It’s been a long time.”

“I was in the hospital for a while,” he told her as he kissed her earlobe, the line of her neck. “I didn’t dream while they had me pumped full of drugs.”

This was her dream, not his. Still, she wasn’t going to waste it asking questions. She wanted him inside her—now. The minute she’d seen him coming down the beach in her dream, she’d grown wet and ready for him. It had been months since her last dream of Matt and years since she’d had a real lover. None of the guys she’d dated had ever measured up to the man of her dreams.

Summer was impatient. She tugged open the buttons of his fly and pushed his jeans down around his ankles. There was a new, angry-red scar on his hip, stitch marks clear through the center of it.

“I have an artificial hip joint now,” he said. “Like an old man. I’m not in the Air Force anymore, of course. I’m working on what to do next.”

When had her dreams decided she needed a lover who wasn’t a fighter pilot? No matter since he only existed in her head. Maybe this was her subconscious reminding her she wasn’t getting any younger. “You’ll find something. You’re a qualified engineer, right?” Before he’d gone off to the Air Force, she’d dreamed he was an aeronautical engineering student.

“That I am, sugar. I’ll find a job, don’t you worry about it.”

She leaned over and kissed the scar. Her cheek rubbed against his thick cock, already fully erect. Of course she wouldn’t worry—or shouldn’t. He was simply a dream. But the scar looked so inflamed and painful, her heart lurched. “Does it hurt too much?”

“Too much to make love to you? Never.” He pulled her sundress over her head and tugged open the ties of her bikini. The sun warmed her nipples but they stayed as hard as if she stood in a snow bank. One by one, Matt dropped kisses on the dark-pink buds. “Every time I see you, you’re even more beautiful than I remember.”

“I’m almost thirty-three,” she reminded him, feeling positively ancient. “Just another few weeks until my birthday. My youngest brother just got married, and my oldest has a two-month-old little girl. My younger sister’s been married for a year, and now they’re talking about having a baby. That leaves just me and Sam as the singles in the family.” Summer was the middle of the five Holiday siblings while Sam was second oldest.

“All the men in Charleston are idiots.” Matt dropped to his knees in the sand, though there was miraculously a blanket underneath them. “I’m coming, Summer. Will you wait for me? I promise I’m on my way.”