Genre:   Contemporary Romance

He wanted nothing at all…

Until he found she had everything to give…

Sunder lead singer and guitarist Sebastian Stone has everything—fans, fame, and fortune. He also has a heart full of bitterness and a reputation for a short-fused temper. But an outward reputation rarely reveals the true man inside. Facing assault charges after trying to protect his younger brother, Sebastian is sent to Savannah, Georgia to lie low until the dust settles in L.A.

Shea Bentley is beautiful, kind, and hiding from the very lifestyle Sebastian has always embraced.

When the mysterious, tattooed stranger begins hanging out at the bar where she works, Shea is quick to recognize he is nothing but trouble, but she’s helpless to the way her body lights up every time his intense gray eyes tangle with hers.

They both soon find themselves drowning in a sea of desire and passion that won’t let them up for air.

Sebastian knows firsthand secrets never die, and he’s not the only one who’s hiding them.

Loving someone always comes with a price. But will it be Shea’s past that costs them everything?

I froze when I felt the presence behind me. The song slowly blinked out, the last note lingering in the dense air, before I slowly looked over my shoulder to find Shea. Thoughtful eyes met mine in all their warmth—covering me, pulling me in, dragging me under.

“You play,” she said, a statement rather than a question.

“A little,” I said with a shrug.

She scoffed. “I would hardly classify that as a little.” She shuffled toward me, barefoot, and still wearing that robe. “You have a beautiful voice,” she whispered, and again it took on that reverent tone, like she was recognizing something inside me I didn’t see.

She ran her fingers up the back of my neck and into my hair, and I lifted my head to it and tried not to moan like a girl when she pressed her hot mouth to my Adam’s apple, kissing me there like the temptress she was.

“Such a beautiful, beautiful voice for a beautiful, beautiful man.” The words vibrated against my throat.

“Shea.” My response was hoarse, uttered toward the ceiling as she kissed up and down my throat. With her daughter’s innocent face running like a reel through my mind, I searched inside myself for some kind of resolve. For courage. For a speck of integrity. “I should go. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t have stayed. Shouldn’t have come back.”

Never should have come in the first place.

“You’re exactly where I want you to be,” she coaxed against my skin.

“Shea.” It was a plea for one of us to find reason.

“Please,” she whispered, hands sinking into my shoulders.

Weak.

Weak.

Weak.

That’s what she made me.

Groaning, I gave, because she already had me, and I swiveled a fraction, grabbed her by the hips, and pulled her onto my lap. She was quick to straddle me, a smile taking over her face as I palmed her ass, all those waves of shiny soft hair falling down around us.

“It’s hardly fair, you know,” she said.

“What’s not fair?”

“You…looking the way you do. Then you turn around and have a voice like that? Singing and playing that way?” She pulled back with a grin. “Tell me you don’t play guitar. You know what they say, a man with a guitar automatically becomes ten times sexier than any other guy in the room.”

I curbed a snort.

Didn’t I know it.

And that was exactly the shit I’d come to hate.

“Pair that with this face and this body…” she continued, purely playful.

Any other girl started talking like that and I’d have tossed her from my lap.

Instead, I kneaded my fingers deeper into the flesh of her ass, rocking her into my cock that was at the ready and begging for more.

Shivers rolled through her. “…and I would say you’re irresistible, Sebastian Stone.”

“Is that all you want me for…my body?” I teased, running my hands up her back, eliciting a pleasured whimper from her.

Fingertips played across my chest, and her expression turned vulnerable, that storm collecting speed. “Yeah. I do want this body.” Those fingers fluttered up to my jaw. “And I want this face.”

Eyes not leaving mine, she slowly leaned down and kissed me over my heart. “Most of all, I want this,” she murmured, hiding nothing, laying herself bare.

 

 

 

 

A Stone in the Sea by A.L. Jackson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

*ARC Given to Blog for Honest Review*

4 “I don’t have time for distractions.” “Butterfly” “You see me” “Dark. Light. Heavy. Soft.” Kisses

Wow…what an amazing, emotional storm of a book! Good gravy…this had everything I could have asked for and then some…fantastic, tie-me-up-in-knots angst…incredible passion and chemistry…a gorgeous broken rock star and a heartbreakingly beautiful girl…plus so many feels it almost made my heart explode. I couldn’t get enough of Baz and Shea – finished this book in less than 24 hours and all it did was leave me begging for more!

Sebastian Stone…oh Baz…my torn and twisted rock star. He’s a tortured soul…plagued by demons from his past and he’s got the weight of the world on his shoulders. He’s a fantastic mixture of intensity…darkness…with a side of brooding emo artist…and it worked for me in all the right ways. I mean, Baz is, at his core, a musician…guitar, piano, singer…writes songs – he doesn’t have to try very hard to be sexy…but it’s in all the ways he doesn’t try that made me love him more. He’s very self-deprecating…can never see the good part of himself…but he’s got a huge heart and an enormous capacity to love and care for the people that mean the most of him. He keeps very few people close…he’s been burned enough times to know who to let in but I don’t think he knew what he was getting into when he met Shea.

‘But that didn’t change the fact she made me feel different when I was with her, like maybe not every single thing in this world was bad. As if this girl saw me for who I really was and she actually liked him.
She’d asked me what I wanted from her. The problem was I had no clue. All I knew was it was more. That I wanted more of her dark and her light and her heavy and her soft. I wanted more of her sweet breaths and more of her pounding heart.
I wanted more of her kisses
Fuck.
I wanted more of her kisses.’

Shea Bentley…my sweet, strong Shea Bear…I have a deep-rooted love for this girl. I love her personality…her strength…her beauty…she’s very calm and unassuming, she kind of flies under the radar. I know that’s a really random thing to say but…overall, I enjoyed Shea…she’s easy to connect with but I always felt like there was more to her….and it’s not until the very end that it kind of all clicks into place and makes sense. And for the record…I was right. She’s determined and focused…kind and genuine…plus she’s a good old country girl through and through. Shea…surprised me…a lot. I’ll be honest, Shea had me fooled…I knew she had secrets…and I thought I figured them all out but I was so wrong. But I think that made me love her even more.

‘When I found him sitting there that first time, I thought I’d known better than to go looking for his brand of heartbreak. But Sebastian had revealed in me everything I’d been missing, stamped out my loneliness and inserted himself in its place. He made me believe in something I’d given up hope on a long time ago because I’d never found it to be real, never believing giving myself to someone wholly was worth the risk.
Now I knew better.
Now I knew it was worth everything.’

I love the build of Baz and Shea…it was slow…steady…gradual. There was always this simmering passion…unending chemistry between the two of them, but it wasn’t rushed or forced…it just came in, like it was the most natural thing in the world. The chemistry between the two of them is the stuff I live for…the smoldering, the desire, their connection is fierce and hot and I couldn’t get enough. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve read Ms. Jackson’s books before and they’re steamy but holy hell on wheels…Baz and Shea are fucking hot. Like five-alarm-fire hot…and I loved every second of it. Once again, it was all part of that build so watching emotions continue to mount, I was itching for that bursting point…and once they let go…I was in heaven. I cannot get over how much I loved the balance between these two characters…it was effortlessly perfect. She was the calm to his intensity…the quite to his noise…the light to his dark…they’re like the epitome of ying and yang and the peace that they brought each other brought joy to my heart.

‘I swallowed around it and rolled to lie on my side. Like she was drawn, she did the same, and in that second, the world felt small, like the two of us were side-by-side. Like she was right here with me, and those slender arms were wrapped around me. And there was no sound, nothing vocalized, but I could hear her whisper those same words that terrified me.
I love you.
But she was saying it with her care, with her concern for me. Because she saw me.
The real me. The girl didn’t give a fuck who the world thought I was or the way other people saw me. I’d been so fearful of her knowing, of it changing what we were…how we were.
But no.
Shea reached in to touch beneath it.’

I know to expect excellence when it comes to A.L. Jackson…she’s just one of the authors that I can count on to give me everything I need…a complete journey with two beautiful characters and all the intense emotions that I crave. We go back and forth between Baz and Shea’s POV’s…it’s never repetitive…they may share thoughts and feelings about a situation that has happened in the previous chapter, but there is no re-hashing past events. I love dual POV so it totally worked for me…but for whatever reason I feel like I had a stronger connection with Baz than Shea…and that’s not usually the norm. Baz just overall is a stronger more powerful presence…and there’s nothing wrong with that…it’s not that he overpowers Shea…I already said I loved their balance…he’s just a very deep, solid character and I enjoyed that about him. I had two teeny tiny pet peeves that happened throughout the book…one, was the way Baz talked sometimes irk’d me…and it’s going to sound really dumb, but when he would say something, he’d drop the “I”…so he would say “Don’t wanna hurt you.” instead of “I don’t wanna hurt you.” I can handle this on rare occasion, but towards the last 30% of the book it started to bother me…for whatever reason I found it forced and it made him sound uneducated…and he’s not a dumb guy. The other thing was the word repetition…this was another thing I didn’t really catch on to until the end of the book…I liked it, at certain points, but the problem is…both Baz and Shea did it. Interchangeably. Two characters don’t think alike and I get trying to tie them together, but it made their POV’s sound too similar and they need to have individual tones.

‘I set my hand on her cheek, words strained as my eyes darted over every inch of her face, memorizing this moment. “I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with you.”
A small gasp escaped from between those full lips, and a gentle smile tweaked just one side of my mouth as I tilted my head, shifting so I could brush my fingertips along the butterflies taking flight on her hip, my voice growing softer with the power of this admission. “I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with her.”
Tears streamed ceaselessly from the corners of Shea’s eyes, gliding down the side of her face and into her hair as she stared up at me.
“Yes, you were,” she said.
Wind pummeled at the outside walls, its power matching the devotion I felt inside. I took her hand and pressed it over my pounding heart.
“You told me you wanted this more than anything, Shea. I’m giving it to you. All of it. Every piece of me… it belongs to you. I have so much shit in my life, and I always thought that was all I was ever going to have. That this life was a trade-off for the band making it, retribution for all the crimes I committed on the road to getting us here. But you changed all that. You gave me hope. Something good to hang onto, and I’m not ever going to let it go.”’

There are so many ways to possibly spoil this plot…things that individually I wouldn’t normally consider spoilers but when the entire story comes together, it’s a crucial detail that could take away from the moment…which I don’t wanna do. I do have to say that overall…I did not see anything coming and that was pretty awesome. Even the stuff I thought I figured out…just…no, I didn’t. At all. Which made the ending even more jaw dropping and as things clicked into place it was like I couldn’t process the facts quickly enough and while it was tearing me up, I was still loving every second. I knew something big was coming but I was not prepared for that. At all…wow…my heart was in my throat and I’m dying! Great cliffhanger…I am so excited to see where A.L. takes Baz and Shea next because…there are still so many things that need to be addressed and I’m itching to see what happens.

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