Title: Courageous Lovers
Series: Cidade Cinza Book One
Author: Elis Angelico
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Release Date: March 15, 2020
The flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long...
In the years since her divorce, artist Lucilia Barboa is living as she wants…free. No husband, no kids, and no interest in having either. After completely losing her identity when she was married, Luci is too scared to try love again. Sex however…she has nothing against casual sex. Just not with her tall, gorgeous, tattooed neighbor.
Rafa Costa has watched Luci avoid him for weeks. When he finally gets the chance to talk to her, he is blown away by the instant chemistry a single touch ignites. Even more so when she offers to spend time with him. Just sex though. On that, she won’t compromise. That should suit Rafa fine since he’s convinced true love is a once-in-a-lifetime chance, and he lost his years ago. But Luci quickly becomes as important as the air he breathes.
Embarking on an affair that burns fast and hot, Rafa and Luci race headlong into disaster. When fears and ghosts from their past collide with their present, they have to decide if they are strong enough to risk everything for love or if single is the ultimate happiness.
Luci nodded and exhaled. “I used to think marriage was the ultimate prize and that I’d won the lottery with mine. My ex was attractive, successful, and smart. My family loved him. And he chose me.”
She was facing towards me but not making eye contact. My heart thundered in my ears, my fists clenched.
“For a while, that was enough, but I couldn’t escape that there wasn’t room to grow or change in our relationship. I did my best, but it got to the point that I couldn’t continue on the path he’d chosen for us, for me.”
She rose her eyes and they shone with the force of her memories.
“You don’t want to go through that again,” I said.
“Failure doesn’t scare me. I have no regrets about the marriage or the divorce. Relationships begin and end. It’s the cycle of life.”
If anyone else had said it, I would’ve taken offense. The cycle of life wasn’t always so natural, but she was sincere, without being righteous. She had no idea how fantastic she was.
“But loving someone means compromise. There’s no clear measure of how much is too much. That’s what terrifies me.”
I reached out and took her hand. She gave me a small smile.
“It took something horrible for me to figure out the point at which I would lose the essence of who I was. If that hadn’t happened, I’d still be married to him, with a life of my making but not of my will,” she said.
“You’re afraid of losing yourself?” I asked.
“Exactly.”
I didn’t know what to say. I’d never experienced her struggle. I wasn’t going to be able to convince Luci that her concern was unwarranted. It was. She’d lived it.
I rubbed my hands over my running pants, smooth and worn bare in some places and stiff with paint in others.
“I get it,” I said.
She was facing towards me but not making eye contact. My heart thundered in my ears, my fists clenched.
“For a while, that was enough, but I couldn’t escape that there wasn’t room to grow or change in our relationship. I did my best, but it got to the point that I couldn’t continue on the path he’d chosen for us, for me.”
She rose her eyes and they shone with the force of her memories.
“You don’t want to go through that again,” I said.
“Failure doesn’t scare me. I have no regrets about the marriage or the divorce. Relationships begin and end. It’s the cycle of life.”
If anyone else had said it, I would’ve taken offense. The cycle of life wasn’t always so natural, but she was sincere, without being righteous. She had no idea how fantastic she was.
“But loving someone means compromise. There’s no clear measure of how much is too much. That’s what terrifies me.”
I reached out and took her hand. She gave me a small smile.
“It took something horrible for me to figure out the point at which I would lose the essence of who I was. If that hadn’t happened, I’d still be married to him, with a life of my making but not of my will,” she said.
“You’re afraid of losing yourself?” I asked.
“Exactly.”
I didn’t know what to say. I’d never experienced her struggle. I wasn’t going to be able to convince Luci that her concern was unwarranted. It was. She’d lived it.
I rubbed my hands over my running pants, smooth and worn bare in some places and stiff with paint in others.
“I get it,” I said.
Elis Angelico is a Brazilian American who writes shameless romances for women who love sex and believe in love.
She taught middle schoolers in Southern California, completed half a masters in library science in D.C., mentored teenagers in Boston, and managed a job training program for homeless adults in São Paulo before devoting herself full-time to orgasms.
Her books are emotionally complex and explore the many ways that love is essential to enduring trauma, injustice, and pain. Her OCD (the diagnosed kind, not the tongue and cheek "I'm so organized" variety), father’s death by suicide, bisexuality and divorce are but a few of the life experiences that inform her writing.
She lives in São Paulo with her daughter and her soul mate and knows her way around a spray can.
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