**Release Day Blitz ~ Nearly Mended ~ Devon Ashley**

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Nearly Mended is **NOW LIVE**

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Nearly Mended by Devon Ashley

Nearly #2

Release: April 7, 2014

New Adult Romantic Suspense / Dark Realistic Fiction

God help me…Zander isn’t the worst thing out there.

Megan Whitaker desperately wants to forget what the Malone brothers have done to her over the past two years – the haunting images and sensations still plaguing her thoughts and dreams – but she can’t. Charles may be dead, but Zander isn’t. I’ll find you and bring you back to me. She wants to believe she’s safe with Nick in
their secluded new home, but it doesn’t keep her from looking over her shoulder, jumping over unexpected sounds, carrying a concealed weapon or even preparing for the worst. 

Nick Ellis has seen a change in his long, lost love. Battered emotionally and physically, Megan spends her days at self-defense classes and researching things that’ll never allow her to let go of the past. And he feels guilty even asking her to, because he knows that heathen will return, it’s only a matter of time. And when he does, Nick will do anything to save her, even the unthinkable, risking everything he’s fought so hard to get back.

But there is no escaping the world of sex trafficking, nor the band of men who continually aid one another to keep it thriving. And as her nightmares begin to converge with reality, Megan realizes there are far worse people to fear than the one who haunts her dreams.

Recommended for 17+ for mature and disturbing situations, language and sexual content.

Something woke me in the middle of the night. I jumped to a start, throwing myself up in bed, snatching the sheet with a death grip. I gasped as I heard a thump! My chest suddenly felt like a jackhammer was pulverizing its way through bone, my heart beating so fast it was sure to break free. Overheating. Smoking. Heat suffocated my throat as I forced myself to release the breath I’d been holding. Was that a sneaker squeaking on the floor?! As my eyes fearfully fixated on the open door that led to that dark hallway, my hand crawled its way toward Nick. 

Finally finding skin, I whispered, “Nick!” If he knew how often I didn’t sleep at night, then he couldn’t be as heavy of a sleeper as I thought he was. I shook his arm spastically, too afraid to move my eyes from the black abyss, too afraid a shadow would punch through and attack the moment I did. “Nick!” I cried with a little more ferocity. I went so far as to smack his cheek a few times, but nothing. He was dead to the world. 

I gasped again. Dead. 

My fingers fumbled around his neck, and I took in a sigh of relief as I found his pulse. He was alive, but I feared he was useless to me at this point. Drugged perhaps. And I couldn’t help but wonder why I wasn’t in the same state. 

I quietly crawled over him and leaned to open the drawer of his bedside table. When I didn’t find what I was looking for right away, I panicked and yanked the drawer harder, slapping my hand all around on the inside. The gun was gone!

I dropped to the floor as silently as I could, landing on bits of cloth. I grabbed at whatever was beneath me – it felt like my sleep shorts and Nick’s t-shirt – and pulled them on, not giving a crap if they were inside out so long as I wasn’t butt-naked any more. 

I swallowed hard and crawled my way to the door. How I found the courage to peek out, I didn’t know, but my head slowly looked into the hallway. Nothing. All sounds had stopped. Even the normal ones. Like the hooting of the night owl that lived outside, and the chirping of grasshoppers. Silent, as if they held their breath in wait, too. Even the hum of the refrigerator seemed oddly silent. 

Utter. Deafening. Silence.

Unless…

My eyes drifted back into the room. I couldn’t hear that gentle knocking the fan usually made as it spun indefinitely on its axis. Swallowing back the fear, I slid my hands up the wall as I wobbled to my feet. I closed my eyes and thumped my head against the wall – the switch was up. Flicking it up and down did nothing to change its frozen blades. Nick always slept with the fan on. And it was running as we made love that second time tonight. 

The cool wall was soothing against my warm forehead, but it did nothing to ease the terror shaking my legs.

This isn’t happening. There’s a logical explanation, there is. The power went out. That’s all. 

Even though it wasn’t raining. Or windy. Or a rolling blackout.

Fuck.

Refusing to believe it, possible scenarios ran through my mind. Maybe someone crashed into a power line pole somewhere. God, it was awful how much I wanted that to be true right now. That I would risk the life of a stranger if it meant that I was safe. That he hadn’t found me.

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Devon Ashley is a mom, a wife, a lover and a fighter, a coffee addict, a wicked knitster, a Microbiologist, a baker of fine yummy treats, and someone who will fight you to the death for that last Twinkie bag of M&Ms during the zombie-apocalypse. Seriously, her addiction is that important to her. Oh, and she says seriously way too much. Seriously…

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