Thanks for having me over,
Tabitha. It’s always a pleasure to be at yours. As you know, I’m busy promoting
my latest Grace Marshall novel, The Exhibition, which is the third
novel in the Executive Decisions Trilogy.
Stacie Emerson and Harris Walker are the stars of the show with frequent
appearances by their friends, Dee and Ellis, and Kendra and Garrett. I’ll
introduce you properly to Stacie and Harris in the excerpts, but for this post,
I want to introduce you to two members of the supporting cast, Bubo virginianus
and Puma concolor. These two are better known as the great horned owl and the
mountain lion or cougar.

Harris Walker is a wildlife
photographer and, in The Exhibition, we first encounter
him up a tree in the wee hours of the morning photographing a family of great
horned owls. Now, you might think, ‘oh how cute! He photographs birdies!’ But
great horned owls are the bad asses of the owl world. Here’s a peek at what
happens when Stacie calls Harris at an inopportune moment:

Owl
Encounter:

Gradually the pins and needles
subsided in his leg. He blinked his watering eyes and kept shooting. Just a few
more. He just wanted a few more shots. He leaned out precariously onto the
branch wrapping his legs around its girth and securing his position with his
feet, ankles turned, soles of his hiking boots pressing hard into the wood. He
was just focusing in for a close-up of the largest brancher, who was doing its
best to swallow the huge piece of skunk when, into the silence, his Blackberry
rang, and both the adult owls were instantly hyper-vigilant. Shit! Had he
really forgotten to turn the stupid thing off? He never forgot. Ever!

           

Hanging on for dear life with his
legs, he contorted himself to reach it in his pocket before he realised the
offending device was still in his backpack, which he’d left at the bottom of
the tree, and it was a damn good thing he had. The owls’ necks swivelled
Exorcist-style and those wild yellow eyes honed in immediately on the bag,
instead of him. The female rose up silently, the tips of her wing feathers
nearly slapping Harris in the face before both she and the male attacked his
backpack, talons first, with a terrifying force. He figured the female, who was
the larger of the two, weighed in somewhere around five pounds. That might not
sound like much but it was five pounds of super-charged predator on wings that
spanned well over a meter, and most of that weight was muscle, sharp beak and
talons – talons strong enough to sever the spinal cord of its pray and
definitely strong enough to do severe damage to a human, even one the size of
Harris. As the devise kept mindlessly ringing they kept attacking. And it
wasn’t difficult to see that the backpack was losing the battle. They continued
to shred it even after the device went silent. Harris stayed very still,
holding his breath, goose flesh rising on his neck. Jesus! It could have been
him. Whatever had possessed him to leave the phone in his backpack could very
well have saved his bacon. Great horned owls were known for being aggressive,
especially close to their nest or their young. He held tight and watched the
destruction below. And when the backpack was truly and properly destroyed, and
the owls seemed to consider it no longer a threat, they decided to find a more
peaceful place to finish their snack.

Once they’d flown, Harris waited
a full five minutes before he moved, straining to hear owl sounds or see the
returning flutter of wings. When there was neither, he eased his aching body
down the tree and surveyed the pathetic remains of his backpack, which was not
only well-shredded but liberally dotted in owl poop.

*****

The next member of the supporting
cast I’d like you to meet is the mountain lion or cougar. I grew up in the
Rocky Mountains and spent a good bit of my time outside in the woods. So
elusive are these fabulous cats that never once did I catch a hint of even the
tip of the tail of this ghost of the mountains. Mountain lions can leap as high
as fifteen feet and as far as forty.  They can be up to five and a half feet long
from the end of their nose to the tip of their tail. They’re the largest wild
cat in North America. Unlike other big cats, they can’t properly roar, but the
sound they do make is terrifying. Here’s what happens when Harris take Stacie
to meet a couple of mountain lions.

Mountain
Lion Encounter:

‘My cat has several daybeds up
here,’ Harris said. ‘Doug knows her haunts pretty well by now. You won’t see
any footprints though, cougars are light footed, and this canyon is mostly
rock. It was nearly two years ago I took the photos, and mountain lions breed
only every other year, so if Doug’s right, then we might see the male too. The
pair’ll stay together anywhere from three to ten days while mating. Otherwise,
they’re solitary, except for females with kittens.’

They’d been walking at a steady
ascent for nearly an hour when they heard the first scream. Stacie gasped and
let out a little yelp. She was nearly on top of Harris when the second scream
erupted and echoed through the canyon. ‘That’s the male?’ She whispered, the
beat of her pulse metering her voice.

Harris shook his head, slipping a
hand in Stacie’s to give it a reassuring squeeze. ‘That’s the female calling
the male. She’s ready to mate. Terrifying sound, isn’t it?’

The sun was just staining the sky
pink when they topped the rise that overlooked an outcropping of rocks opposite
them on the other side of a narrow canyon. And there on a ledge were the two
mountain lions. Harris could feel the tensing of Stacie’s body in the
excitement he knew she felt because he felt it too. From the looks of the
situation the female had been calling for a mate, and the male, who crouched on
the outcropping just above her, had just arrived. Harris breathed deeply and
slowly to steady his hands as he aimed the camera. He was so engrossed in the
cats that it took him a second to realize Stacie had her own camera, and he
couldn’t help feeling a swell of pride at just how calm she was, already
shooting next to him. But then he reminded himself she’d grown up in the
Russian wilderness. Beneath the big city venire, she was made of stern stuff.
He leaned close to her. ‘This is my cat alright. See the little notch in her
left ear, some old injury.’ His voice was less than a whisper, but she nodded
that she understood.

*****

If I were giving out the Grace
Marshall Oscars for best supporting actor, I’d never be able to choose between
these two magnificent creatures. They bring out the very best in Stacie and
Harris and make them forget their problems and their differences. In so many
ways, they are a major part of what drives the plot of The Exhibition, and I’m
very pleased to have this chance to introduce them.  Oh and another thing about mountain lions …
they’re great matchmakers.

Blurb:

Successful NYC gallery owner,
Stacie Emerson, is ex-fiancée to one Thorne brother and ex-wife to the other.
Though the three have made peace, Ellison Thorne’s friend, wildlife
photographer, Harris Walker, still doesn’t like her. When Stacie convinces
Harris to exhibit his work for the opening of her new gallery she never
intended to include him in her other more hazardous plans. But when those plans
draw the attention of dangerous business tycoon, Terrance Jamison, Harris comes
to her aid. In the shadow of a threat only Stacie understands, can she dare let
Harris into her life and make room for love?

Excerpt:

‘It doesn’t matter what you
believe.’ Her reply was cool, distant. ‘What matters is that I’ll pay my debts.
I promise that I will. Then all of this’ll be over with.’

She stood to put her pack back
on, and he came to his feet and caught her by the shoulder, not wanting it to
end like this, not wanting her to leave until they were good again. When she
tried to push him away, he pressed her between his body and the stone of the
cliff face. ‘You can’t just shut us all out, Stacie.’

‘I never wanted you involved in
the first place. I never wanted any of you involved but you couldn’t leave it
alone,’ she jerked back against him but there was no place to go. ‘You couldn’t
just let it go.’

He moved in closer until his body
pressed up against hers, holding her tightly against the stone. ‘No, I
couldn’t, and I can’t and neither can anyone else who cares about you and
neither would you if the situation were reversed. So whether you like it or
not, I’m here to stay. We’ve already discussed this, so get used to it.’ He
punctuated his point with a harsh kiss that couldn’t have been very pleasant
for her, but then he was angry, worried, scared for her. Instead of shoving at
him as he’d expected her to do, she curled a hard fist in his hair and ravaged
his mouth with every bit as much ferocity as he had given her, pulling him
still closer, rubbing her body against his, making him instantly and startlingly
erect.

She snaked a hand down between
them and savaged his fly until he feared for what lay beneath, until her
fingers wriggled and dug their way into his walking trousers to possess his
cock with a tight grip as though it were a weapon, one she were about to use to
do serious damage.

He fumbled to return the favour,
with her ripping at her own fly to make room for him, to guide his fingers down
over her mons. Her eyes locked his in a devastating gaze that felt as though
she could see right through him. ‘I need you to touch me there.’ Her voice was
a breathless whisper. ‘Where I’m wet, where I’m open, where I’m always, always
hungry for you.’ Her breath caught; her eyelids fluttered and she sucked her
bottom lip as he found her cleft, wet and open as she’d promised. ‘You can’t
tell me you don’t want to be like those cats.’ She guided his hand still
further and manipulated it until first two, then three fingers pressed up into
her. ‘You can’t tell me that when I present myself to you all hot and ready and
begging for it, you don’t want to service my need. You can’t tell me you don’t
want to get a little primal with that cock of yours.’ She gave him a hard
squeeze and drove her hand up and down his length, thumbing the already
abundant pre-cum over and around the tip until he gritted his teeth and held
his breath while his hips bucked hard against her efforts.

He scissored her deep with three
fingers and raked the silky slickness of her up and over her clitoris, and the
sounds from the back of her throat easily resembled the sounds the female
cougar made when the male mounted her. They wildly, madly fucked each other’s
hands. The wind had risen and even on the clear morning, the chill left no
doubt about lingering for more than the quickest of releases. Then she shifted,
pressed her back hard against the stone and rested both of her hands on his
shoulders. Before he could protest the removal of her fingers from his cock,
she wrapped her legs around his waist, her still clothed crotch rubbing tight
and insanely hot against his exposed cock as she began to rock and gyrate, and
it was all happening way too fast.

‘Stacie I –’

‘Shut up, Harris,’ she spoke
between chattering teeth. ‘I need to come, and so do you. You can fuck me
properly when we get back to the SUV. It’s too damn cold to linger.’ With each
sentence she ground against him, baring down with the extra leverage the cliff
at her back afforded and, almost before the words were out of her mouth, she
convulsed. Her spine stiffened and her shivers had nothing to do with the cold.
Harris could stand no more. He felt the eruption deep in his groin. It might
have been embarrassing had the circumstances been different, but as he tried to
cover himself, tried to hide the results of Stacie’s hard ride, she shoved his
hand away, pushed him back and practically fell into the space between them
positioning herself so that she caught his release, all of it in her mouth.
What could he say to that? What could he do but hold her there, helplessly
grunting the weight of his need into the back of her throat. It was an act as
intimate and as primal as the cougars mating on the rocks minutes ago. And sex,
any kind of sex, with Stacie Emerson was worlds apart from any other sexual
experiences he’d ever had. As she stood and wiped her mouth on the back of her
hand, the look of hunger in her eyes, the promise of more sex to come in the
SUV before the trip home couldn’t help but lighten the mood. As they
straightened and tucked and donned their packs, he wondered if that was maybe
why she did it. Whatever her reason, it definitely worked for him in ways he
was still trying to get his head around. 

Buy The Exhibition Here:

About
K D Grace/ Grace Marshall:

Fantastic stuff – thanks Kd – if you’ve never read any of Grace Marshall or Kd Grace’s books – wow – lucky you to have such a treat in store! One of my favourite authors who brings sensuality and sexuality together beautifully. Thanks for coming over! x x x