Soul Deep: Soul Travelers

By Kari Kilgore

Everything changes.

 

Years of dating leave Branwen underwhelmed. Considering not bothering with the whole routine.

Until she meets John.

Bad experiences leave John bruised and cautious. Determined to wait until later to try again. Much later.

Branwen shatters his resolve.

Now they stand together on the edge of something more. 

One special night promises to change their lives forever.

 

An excerpt from Soul Deep:

A connection beyond heart-deep

On an unusually impulsive thought, John picked up the sleek black phone in the kitchen.

The lovely man he'd talked to about the Burns Night Supper had not only saved John when he was certain there wouldn't be seats for him and Branwen. Mr. Sutherland had insisted they'd gladly make room for a young man so recently arrived straight from Glasgow.

He'd also insisted John should call if he needed anything. 

Anything at all.

Something about Branwen and the way she calmed every part of John without even trying—made him feel like the pieces all fit— left him more than willing to ask for help.

He wasn't about to let their first proper date, a belated birthday dinner for her, and her first Burns Night Supper pass without doing everything he could to make it memorable.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: May 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393465133

Kari Kilgore

Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction. Kari’s first published novel Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. It was also a finalist for the Golden Stake Award at the Vampire Arts Festival in 2018. Recent professional short story sales include three to Fiction River anthology magazine, with the first due out in the September issue. Kari also has two stories in a holiday-themed anthology project with Kristine Kathryn Rusch due out over the holidays in 2019. Kari writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about. Kari’s novels, novellas, and short stories are available at www.spiralpublishing.net, which also publishes books by Frank Kilgore and Jason Adams. For more information about Kari, upcoming publications, her travels and adventures, and random cool things that catch her attention, visit www.karikilgore.com.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Branwen paced around the bedroom in her apartment, alternately trying on clothes and swearing. Turned out that even if she did have any idea of what to wear to a Burns Night Supper, she did not have it in her closet.

The double bed in her tiny bedroom was piled high with just about everything she owned already, which conveniently covered its rumpled and unmade state. Blue jeans and t-shirts. Crepe-like floral blouses her mother was forever buying, probably in hopes that Branwen would eventually dress more like her by sheer repetition.

A blue pantsuit she’d bought herself for a job interview the summer after high school, then promptly outgrew by adding an inch and a whole cup size to her short, slender frame.

Even a few dresses her Welsh grandmother had either mailed all the way to Missouri or tucked into Branwen’s suitcase during visits. Visions in flowery pink and sky blue and even a few hopeful white versions, none of which Branwen had ever worn. She’d only lugged them all the way to college in case she ended up needing a dressy outfit—like she did right now.

Unfortunately all the dresses made her look frumpy and closer to seventy than twenty-one, and made her feel even worse.

Not exactly the best idea for the first proper nighttime date with a guy she liked as much as she liked John Falconer.

She paused in front of the mirror, holding up an incredibly typical little black dress that didn’t look all that bad once she had it on. As long as she was going to a dance club to try to pick someone up, that is. The overly short skirt and scandalously low back was perfect for the rare occasions she let her best friend talk her into that particular social nightmare.

It was decidedly not perfect for going to a formal dinner with the person she’d felt the most comfortable with—and the most turned on by—in all her long and frustrating years of dating.

If she was being honest in her anxious flurry, she was more comfortable with John than with anyone else in her life. That was as scary as it was exciting. What she’d told herself was a noble refusal to get involved with anyone after the disaster of her last relationship withered the second she heard John’s voice and looked into his eyes.

But none of that meant going out in her pick-up-someone-for-the-night dress made any kind of sense.

Not to mention the typical January weather in St. Louis. Even though Branwen had lived her whole live in the Midwest and was used to the brutal winters, going out in a little nothing slip of a dress when it was eight degrees with a wind chill of fifteen below didn’t sound like her idea of a pleasant evening.

And she knew this night meant a lot to John aside from their date, which she privately hoped was as important to him as it was to her.

Gods, was he wandering around his apartment right now too, naked and annoyed and just as anxious about making