Lovecraftian Romance Promo

Greetings! I'm back after almost 48 hours of no electricity, entailing no heat and no running water either. I'm happy to announce that I've just sold a story to Ellora's Cave for a multi-author June release project called Naughty Nuptials. My contribution is a lighthearted Lovecraftian romance, if you can imagine such a thing. What would it be like to be engaged to the spawn of an eldritch entity from beyond the stars? So here's an unedited excerpt from the opening scene of "In the Tentacles of Love":

The setting sun cast elongated shadows toward the house that loomed over them. Weathered to gray-brown by over a century of salt air, it had a wraparound porch and two stories plus a gabled attic. The front yard consisted of sand and coarse patches of grass. One of the gable windows, Lauren noticed, was boarded up. She stepped out of the car and grasped Blake's hand. “You're sure you want to spend our honeymoon here?” His family's vacation home looked ready to crumble at any second like the House of Usher.
“Not a matter of what I want. I have to be here on the solstice. Family tradition.” He reeled her into his arms and ran his hands over her back. “I wanted you to get an advance look at the place, at least.”
*Thank goodness for small blessings, I guess.* This solstice thing must have some connection to the obscure pagan religion his folks practiced. He'd been vague on the subject, but since he'd agreed to get married in her parents' church so her mother wouldn't succumb to a massive heart attack from sheer outrage, she was okay with it. On the whole, Blake's family seemed nice. Even Uncle Dexter from Innsmouth, who bore an unsettling facial resemblance to a fish, and Aunt Lavinia from Dunwich, a pale, white-haired woman who'd wanted the wedding performed at a prehistoric stone circle in rural Massachusetts. Well, all except Cousin Stella from Boston, who looked normal enough but had kept sidling up to Lauren during the engagement party, muttering about “strange eons” and asking whether she really planned to go through with the marriage.
Lauren hooked her arms around Blake's waist. “Going to carry me over the threshold?”
“Maybe we should save that for the wedding night.” His gray-blue eyes clouded over. “I've got something to show you. After that, if you want to call everything off, I won't blame you.”
She tilted her head back to scan his face. “Yeah, right. With the wedding a week away, a nonreturnable deposit on the caterer, and my dress fitted and paid for? Sure, I'll give serious thought to dropping the whole idea.”
He smiled, but in a sickly, halfhearted way. He wasn't kidding!
“What are you raving about?” She switched her hands from his waist to his shoulders, half tempted to shake him. “If you want to back out, just say so. Don't put it on me.”
“No!” He hugged her so tightly she had to gasp for breath. “Losing you is the last thing I want. But after you see—well, it'll be your choice.”
Releasing her, he led her up the gravel driveway to the porch. Its floorboards creaked underfoot. Waves crashed on the rocky shore directly behind the house. “Let me guess,” she said. “You brought me here to warn me we're spending our wedding night in the House of Frankenstein.”
“Hang on, it's not that bad inside.” He unlocked the door and flung it open with a flourish.
She sniffed the air. A little stale, but not musty or mildewed as she'd feared. The foyer light, a lamp in an old-fashioned sconce on the paneled wall, showed a worn but clean and waxed dark hardwood floor. No visible dust. Okay, maybe a honeymoon in a Victorian beach house on a New England coast miles from anywhere except a couple of farms wouldn't be a disaster after all. At least the sea air made the place almost cool for June, and they'd have plenty of privacy.
-end of excerpt-