Blind Speed Dating #33

Title: HELIACAL RISING

Genre: YA paranormal romance

Word Count: 75,000

Query:

It starts with a girl.  A beautiful girl who falls in love with a star. 

Trouble doesn't find seventeen-year-old, Tee Sutton, she seeks it out.  When a night of drinking on school property goes awry, the last place she expects to end up is Montana.  Forced to leave Detroit and attend an outdoor camp as punishment, Tee prays the summer will go by fast.  And then she meets Keme. 

He's not supposed to fall in love.  It's against the rules.  And it's dangerous.  But when an accident threatens Tee's life, Keme can't help but intervene.  Saving her means exposing a secret the Blackfeet tribe has fought for hundreds of years to protect.  A secret people would kill for.  Now, healing her once might just mean killing her later.

Tossed into an ancient game of hide and seek, where the players are immortal and the loser ends up dead, Tee finds she’s deeper in trouble than ever before, fighting for her life and a love she’s desperate to keep. 

HELIACAL RISING fuses the Blackfeet legend of the Star Bride with the classic Greek myth of Castor and Pollux to create a mystical story of a young girl discovering what makes her come alive.

First 250:

In the dark, his lips are hard to see as they move toward mine.  It’s always cloudy here.  Even at night.  When I was younger, it didn’t bother me.  Kids can play in the rain.  Now, it’s just depressing. 

His lips look like a full moon.  Round and pouted, dimpled around the edges.  Lips that are rumored to have kissed Meredith Salinger in the bathroom after she barfed at Winter Formal.  Ignore that thought. 

He just licked them.  Are my hands shaking? It’s not like this is my first time kissing a boy, but it’s warm, really warm.  Too warm for spring.  It makes my breath short.

Bottles clink around us.  His foot hits one, sending it rolling off the roof.  Don’t look down.  He might get distracted.  It smashes on the ground and shatters into pieces. 

“This has been cool,” Tim says, brushing my hair behind my ear.  His fingertips are wet and smell like beer.  Ignore that, too.

“Yea,” I say.  A door creeks.  Or maybe it’s the roof buckling under our weight.  I can’t focus with his mouth so close to mine. 

He’s breathing heavy.  In.  Out.  In.  Out.  Probably from the cigarettes.  My grandma died of lung cancer.  She sounded like Jabba the Hut every time she inhaled.  Whatever, cigarettes are sexy.  And taste good. 

“Maybe we can do this again,” he says. 

I nod in the dark, but before I can say anything, his lips touch mine.  They’re soft, coated in Chapstick for optimum moistness.  Butterflies flutter in my stomach, little wings tickling my insides, and I try not to giggle.