Character Confessions/ Backstory: Additional Scene
Caio in the Moments Before Seeing Sarah Again for the "First" Time.
Caio waited patiently as the boy beneath him struggled. He rolled and twisted, trying to break Caio's grip on him, as he grasped at the wire around his neck. This part of the job was always distasteful. In many ways it was boring, simply waiting for the blood supply to the brain to be blocked for long enough to cause unconsciousness, which didn't usually take more than a couple of minutes. The distasteful part was that the person would not only struggle, they would also often piss and shit themselves in a spectacular fashion. His nose told him that this moment had come and gone for his current victim, who had stopped struggling. It would still take another two minutes for death to come. Some people seemed to think that the moment of death was somehow transformative, something imbibed with some sort of magical or etheric sort of significance. This hadn't been his experience. Instead, most of what he saw was panic, followed by frenzy and finally a simple ceasing of body functions. The spirits of these people, upon discovering the death of their bodies, behaved much the same as they would have if they were still alive. The fearful ones remained fearful. The angry ones ranted and raved. The manipulative sorts would try to negotiate with him, as if he had any control over anything by that point. By the time someone came to take them to the upper winds, they were usually so wound up that they might not even be able to see the carrier, let alone converse with them.
As he waited, Caio looked around the room. The décor in the apartment was both expensive and tacky. The adults in the family had probably bought this place because it was the most expensive property in an average income neighborhood, so that they could feel superior to their neighbors. They had also thought it a good idea to hang individual portraits of themselves in both the living room and the foyer, as if their appearances or their actions warranted such celebration. Caio had been hired to kill the spoiled and coddled son of these parents. He didn't know why. He didn't ask questions like that, but he had seen this sort of family often enough in his travels to know that there were probably a multitude of reasons to want this kid dead.
The expensive oriental rug beneath the boy's body was now staining brown.
Suddenly, the boy stood up from his body. He took a few steps away from his physical form before crinkling his nose in distaste. A wind came up inside the apartment. It started as a breeze but quickly became a gust and then a gale, and yet nothing in the apartment moved. A rattling sound, like a train coming down the tracks, filled the air around them. In the middle of the room, a creature appeared and held it's hand out toward the boy.
Caio turned away, both the give them privacy and to keep from being addressed. It was best if the ghost didn't know he could see them. He walked to the window and glanced at the basketball court that separated the more expensive properties from the more modest ones in the neighborhood. A few boys were playing basketball there.
Suddenly, he noticed movement on the sidewalk at top left-hand corner of the court. It was a woman, probably in her forties, carrying plastic bags, probably full of groceries. Even thought she was young she was walking gingerly, with her head down, as if something was hurting her.
Something in his stomach knotted. He pressed his nose up against the glass. When the woman looked up, he saw her face as if it were right in front of him, instead of yards away. He knew she had pale skin and freckles that spread across her nose and cheeks. He knew that when she smiled, her teeth would be strong, white, and straight.
"It's her," his half dead heart screamed, as his legs gave out and dropped him unceremoniously to the floor.
Limerent Series
Book One
LS Delorme
Genre: Paranormal, Romantic, Thriller
Publisher: Limerent Publishing
Date of Publication: Feb 11, 2023
ISBN: 979-8-9874880-1-3 Paperback
ISBN: 979-8-9874880-1-0 ebook
ASIN: BOBSGR1VB7
Number of pages: 294
Word Count: 114030
Cover Artist: Brittany Wilson
Book Description:
Sarah Baker is a paralegal in a law firm in modern-day Brooklyn. Her life is bouncing between her abusive lawyer boyfriend, the voices she hears in her head and her soul sucking work at the law firm. On a New York spring day, she meets Caio as he plays basketball on a street court. He is alluring, intriguing and young. Yet that’s the least of his mystery, for Caio was beaten, thrown into a hole and left to die. In 1905.
Sarah tries to understand this enigmatic stranger while juggling the dubious ethics of her law firm and the ghosts in her head. As she struggles with loss, grief, love, beauty and lawyers, she will need to summon the strength to break all of society’s rules, save several lives and step into a new and potentially magical life.
Caio is the opening book of a new series of supernatural romantic thrillers that will pull on your heart (strings), challenge your perceptions and lead you on a singular journey of discovery and revelation.
How can you be as smart as you are and have no backbone,
girl? or You’re not pretty enough to be able to expect a man to take care of
you, so you better find an administrative job so you can support yourself, or
Self-consciousness is just another form of vanity. It’s just you thinking about
yourself too much.
That simply scratched the surface of what Sarah heard on a
daily basis growing up. On the positive side, she could take criticism with the
best of them. She had also learned to channel her sensitivity into an awareness
of people’s motivations that coworkers called “uncanny.” On the negative side,
when her parents died, she had absorbed their voices into those that already
spoke inside her head, and now they were the loudest ones.
It was her heightened awareness that told her that something
was not quite right with the Davies case. She wasn’t sure what, and she would
need to be careful about how she researched, but it tickled her curiosity.
Sarah was lost in these thoughts as she left the grocery
store and made her way home, past the park and toward the basketball courts.
When she realized where she was, her heart started to race a little bit at the
thought of seeing the boy she had seen last week.
There were some boys playing on the court. She
scanned them for someone in grungy clothes, but from a distance, they all
looked like they were wearing appropriate attire.
Sarah’s heart sank a little.
Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. Although she wasn’t
exactly sure what she was chiding herself about, it was nice when the voice
doing the talking was her own.
As she got closer, she saw the tall, red-haired boy miss a
shot and retake the ball. He was one of the regulars. When the red-haired boy
landed, he jostled one of the other boys near him. That boy staggered, regained
his footing, and in the process deftly stole the ball. When she saw his face,
Sarah actually heard herself gasp. The boy who had been pushed, the one who now
had the basketball, was the boy she had seen before. She hadn’t noticed him
because his appearance was quite different. His shoulder-length dark hair had
been cut. He had on a red-and-black striped shirt that didn’t look expensive,
but did look brand new, as did the matching shorts. His sneakers were black
with pristine white soles. And right at the moment, he was dribbling the ball
down the court—straight at her.
Sarah froze. She was standing on the sidewalk behind the
basket on the other side of the chain-link fence. She felt like her feet had
grown roots as she watched him set up, jump, and make the basket. He came down
right in front of her. As he landed, before turning to run back down the court,
he stopped and caught her eye. His eyes widened ever so slightly, and he
smiled.
For a moment, he
looked directly in her eyes and she felt a strange dizzy feeling in seeing him
and being seen by him. No one in her life ever seemed to actually see her. No
one ever had.
Lexy has lived an eclectic life. As a 'navy brat', she grew up in various US states until her father retired to North Carolina when she was 14. As an adult, she has continued this "tumbleweed" life, having since lived in 3 countries, 9 US states, and 21 cities around the world. She has been a musician, scientist and attorney, and was one of the first employees at 23andMe. But, through all this change, her love of writing has been the one constant whether it be songs, scientific writing, legal briefs, travel blogs or fiction. Writing the Limerent Series allows her to combine all of this to help her create new worlds. Lexy lives in Paris with her husband and two very cool sons.
Caio is book one of 8 in the upcoming Limerent Series
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