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Blog Tour Excerpt and Giveaway: Heart Recaptured by Tillie Cole

Heart Recaptured
Hades Hangmen #2
Tillie Cole
Release date: 14th December 2014

BLURB
Even salvation can be delivered through the love of the damned…
Beauty can be a curse.
Faith can be a cage.
Only love can set you free.

A few long weeks after being reluctantly ripped from the comforting embrace of her sacred prophet’s religious commune—the only life she has ever known—a terrified Delilah is thrust into a world enveloped by evil and swimming in sin. 

Steadfastly devout in her faith, and retaining the deep belief that her soul is innately tarnished as a branded ‘Cursed woman of Eve,’ Delilah is determined to find her way home to her people in The Order and away from the corrupt and damned outlaw motorcycle club—The Hades Hangmen—who hold her at their secluded compound for her protection—a 'protection' she strongly resents. 

Delilah yearns to return home, convinced that only amongst her own people, and under the holy guidance of the Lord’s revealed prophet, can her Satan-spawned soul be truly saved. Conditioned her entire life to believe she is a witch... a life-long temptress… the devil’s whore... Delilah increasingly resents her beautiful face, her shapely body and her sensuous effect on men. But when a man of the motorcycle club—a deeply sinful yet stunningly beautiful man—is charged with her care, Delilah begins to see that this dangerous and moralless sinner from the 'outside' may offer her something she did not know could truly exist: unconditional love.

Kyler ‘Ky’ Willis loves his life: a daily abundance of brotherhood, liquor, the freedom of the open-road and—best of all—his pick of hot women. Raised a biker brat and now VP of the most notorious MC in the States, Ky has no shortage of club sluts warming his bed; a situation he takes full advantage of… until a certain blonde enters his life… a gorgeous pilgrim-blonde he can’t get out of his head… a pilgrim-blonde he and his club recently-rescued from some backward religious cult… and a pilgrim-blonde he’s been ordered to keep the hell away from and his whorish hands off.

When yet another in a lengthy line of drunken blunders forces Ky to reluctantly take charge of the pilgrim-blonde’s care, he realizes that there could be more to this woman than just supermodel looks and a stacked set of tits. He begins to see that she could be the woman who could do the impossible—tame his wild ways and capture his reluctant heart.

But the unyielding bonds of Lilah’s past are strong, her ‘people’ determined and, with a new Prophet in charge and hell bent on revenge, they are mightily reluctant to let her go...


EXCERPT
“What do you think they did on their ‘run’? Something bad?” Maddie asked and pointed at Hush and Cowboy.
“I have no idea,” I answered. “But Hush and Cowboy are good men. They are always so nice to me.” 
“Are…are Hush and Cowboy nice to you because they want you carnally? Do you tempt them?” Maddie asked. 
My stomach fell at the thought.
I cast my gaze upon them sitting on that bench, now talking quietly, and said, “I desperately hope not. They seem sincere. It would devastate me if I discovered I had lured them in.” I did not know what it was, but I honestly did not think they viewed me in such a way. I preferred to believe they liked talking to me, for me, not my looks.
“Is…?” Maddie dropped her head and stared wistfully at the exit to our room. “Is it possible for a man to like or… want us and it not be due to our beauty?”
Answering Maddie’s rather out-of-character question, I replied, “I do not know, sister. Mae seems to think so.” I watched her green eyes soften with relief… excitement, perhaps? And I added, “Is there a reason for your question?”
Maddie sighed and rubbed at our tattooed wrists, the tattoos forced upon us as children: Revelation 21:8, the mark of our people. 
“No reason. I just… It is just that someday… Well, it would be lovely to think that a certain… man, a protective and strong man that I trust, may help me know what it is to love. What it is to feel safe… with him, because of him and maybe… maybe…”
“What, sister?” I asked, edging closer to hold her hand. 
Her big round eyes blinked furiously, trying to chase away tears. Then she whispered, “Maybe I could make him feel safe too.”
I had no words. Instead, I squeezed her hand in support. I wished strongly for that future for my broken, damaged Maddie… and the man that had made her consider such things.
“Lilah?” 
“Yes?”
“Does Ky make you feel that way? The way you both look at one another… It is… it is…” She smiled. “Beautiful.”
“Beautiful?” I echoed, Maddie’s words swooping to steal my breath away.
“Since he began to teach you, he has changed. I watch people closely, sister, from my place by the window. I know I am like a shadow, never doing much but gazing to the world outside while I hide away in here like a scared child. But I am not ready to venture outside yet. And until that day, I watch, and I learn how to behave to survive outside of The Order’s strict rules. And sister, I have watched Ky very closely.”
I swallowed, waiting for more information. My heart beat a heady rhythm in anticipation.
“When we first came here, he was happy, seemed to enjoy women and his life, but his smile did not reach his eyes.”
“Go on,” I prompted, leaning in closer.
Maddie ran her hands through the ends of her long black hair and continued. “But now, when he smiles at you, his eyes smile too.”
“They do?”
Maddie’s lips curled in happiness. “He no longer looks at other women, though they lustfully look at him. He watches only you. Sees only you. Smiles at only you… I think, for him, you are the brightest star in his sky, blotting out those who have come before.”
My heart wanted to burst with the warmth those words inspired within me. Maddie’s soft hand suddenly laid on mine and the simple gesture of comfort from my sister almost made me cry. “It is beautiful,” she affirmed, sincerely.

ABOUT TILLIE

Amazon & USA Today Best Selling Author, Tillie Cole, is a Northern girl through and through. She originates from a place called Teesside on that little but awesomely sunny (okay I exaggerate) Isle called Great Britain. She was brought up surrounded by her English rose mother -- a farmer's daughter, her crazy Scottish father, a savagely sarcastic sister and a multitude of rescue animals and horses. 

Being a scary blend of Scottish and English, Tillie embraces both cultures; her English heritage through her love of HP sauce and freshly made Yorkshire Puddings, and her Scottish which is mostly demonstrated by her frighteningly foul-mouthed episodes of pure rage and her much loved dirty jokes.

Having been born and raised as a Teesside Smoggie, Tillie, at age nineteen, moved forty miles north to the 'Toon', Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, where she attended Newcastle University and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts honours degree in Religious Studies. She returned two years later to complete a Post-Graduate Certificate in Teaching High School Social Studies. Tillie, regards Newcastle to be a home from home and enjoyed the Newcastle Geordie way of life for seven 'proper mint' and 'lush' years.

One summers day, after finishing reading her thousandth book on her much loved and treasured Kindle, Tillie turned to her husband and declared, "D'you know, I have a great idea for a story. I could write a book." Several months later, after repeating the same tired line at the close of another completed story, she was scolded by her husband to shut up talking about writing a novel and "just bloody do it!" For the first time in eleven years, Tillie actually took his advice (he is still trying to get over the shock) and immediately set off on a crazy journey, delving deep into her fertile imagination. 

Tillie, ever since, has written from the heart. She combines her passion for anything camp and glittery with her love of humour and dark brooding men (most often muscled and tattooed – they’re her weakness!). She also has a serious side (believe it or not!) and loves to immerse herself in the complex study of World Religions, History and Cultural Studies and creates fantasy stories that enable her to thread serious issues and topics into her writing -- yep, there's more to this girl than profanity and sparkles!

After six years of teaching high school Social Studies and following her Professional Rugby Player husband around Europe, they have finally given up their nomadic way of life and settled in Calgary, Alberta where Tillie spends most of her days (and many a late night) lost in a writing euphoria or pursuing a dazzling career as a barrel-racing, tasselled-chap wearing, Stetson-sporting cowgirl... Ye-haw!

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