Janine Ashbless's Blog, page 131

Excerpt - Being His Bitch

Bound by Lust is out on sale!

Edited by the wonderful wordsmith Shanna Germain, and subtitled "romantic stories of submission and sensuality," this is an anthology of stories where BDSM meets love. Ideal for the reader who wants to move on from Fifty Shades... I'd have thought ;-)

Here's an excerpt from my contribution, Being His Bitch , which is themed about petplay. Rosie and Dev are off for a night out at their kink-club...


To finish off my costume, we had a collar with a dog-tag dangling from it and a chain leash with a leather loop. Engraved on the disc was the legend Naughty Little Bitch. We could’ve got that done discreetly ourselves, using one of those machines you find in pet stores, but Dev made me go into the engraver's shop and order it in person from the man behind the counter. The guy gave me one hell of a look, but didn't ask any questions, and I emerged from the shop with my panties so wet and my legs so wobbly that I could hardly walk straight.

“All done?” Dev asked.

“Yes,” I whispered, leaning my head against his chest.

He knew what that meant. Taking the disc from me with one hand, he put the other on my ass and gave me a squeeze and a pat. “Good girl.” I whimpered and rubbed up against him, but he just chuckled. “Save it for Saturday night.”

By Saturday I was strung out on anticipation and so inflamed with arousal that Dev had to order me to stop touching myself as we drove into the city. I shed my coat in the cloakroom with a feeling of profound relief. Dev clipped the leash to my collar and used it to pull me to him and plant a kiss on my lips, all slippery, possessive tongue, reminding me where my focus lay for the evening. “Ready?”

“Yes.” Already people were checking me out, there in the lobby. I was aware of grins and raised eyebrows and nods. Under my paint I was naked, and shaved as smooth as silk. I looked respectable from a distance but incredibly naughty close-to, and that made my nipples stand out like switches ready to be flicked.

“I love you, Rosie,” he growled. “So fucking much. You're so beautiful.” Then he tugged the chain. “Heel, bitch.”

We ascended the stairs slowly, morphing into character with every step, his pace proud and easy, my obedient place at his side and one step behind. Playing this particular game is, for me, the ultimate in intimacy. Playing it in public for the first time was taking our trust in one another to a whole new level.

We went into the bar first and queued so that Dev could order drinks—bottled beer for him, bottled water for me. As soon as he stopped walking I sank to my knees by his leg, waiting patiently as a good dog should. 

“Hello Dev.” Black leather chaps loomed over me. It was Bill, a Club friend and someone we had played with before, but I didn't try to greet him. I was being a mute animal, after all. “Nice dog you've got there.”

“Thank you.”

“What's her name?”

“Princess.”

“May I stroke her?”

 “Go ahead. She likes having her chest rubbed.” Dev turned away slightly to give his order to the barman, and Bill stooped to scratch me gently behind the ears—my real ears.

I opened my mouth, panting a little and leaning into the caress. It was stuffy down here among the forest of legs. I could smell leather and spilt beer. The front of my admirer's pants were tented by a bulge, but that didn't mean anything in particular: most of the guys here walk round with a semi the whole night, and I can't speak for all the girls, but my pussy is open and juicy and fluttering from the moment we walk in. Bill crouched to caress the smooth cream blaze of my chest, stroking my breasts, and I shut my eyes in pleasure, pushing those orbs up into his hand. I'm a dog. Anybody may stroke me, so long as my master gives permission. Anybody.

"Good girl, Princess,” he murmured. His fingers flicked my bare nipples. “You like that, don't you?”
  
I didn't answer, but as Dev turned back to us, I caught the tips of Bill's fingers with my tongue and licked them, and he laughed.

 
Buy at Amazon US : Amazon UK

Examining Tansy

Today I'm over at

Eyecandy Monday

I have discovered Pinterest.  This was the very frst picture I repinned from someone else's board!

This is bad. It appeals so deeply to the anal streak in me - I am using it as a backup file for my eyecandy. All those pretty faces. All those tattoos. Minotaurs. Book covers soon. Then smartarse wisdom quotes swiped off the Internet. Story inspiration. Places I want to go on holiday ... And they can be organised and filed and refiled and reboxed  until ... Argh!

The only restriction is that Pinterest has a "no nudity" policy (I'm assuming that means no cocks, no pussy), so I'm being slightly more careful about the pics I pop up there.

I'm trying to take it slowly. Otherwise I may very well disappear up my own arse.
 :-)


Visit me here:
http://pinterest.com/janineashbless/

TftD: Truth

Yes.
 So, so often in my life.

Because we all hate having our certainties challenged.
But how else do we grow?

Getting snapped

I was featured (with pic) in the Daily Express national newspaper last week, so I thought I'd show you the process involved. The actual interview took 25 minutes on the phone. The photography took a good 2 hours, on a sunny Sunday.

A small selection of the makeup that Helen, the hair-and-makeup person, brought. She had a full-sized "I'm going away for a month" suitcase full of the stuff. All pics on this post - except the last - by Mr Ashbless, btw.

Paint on, then hair straightened . . .
There is NOTHING spontaneous or candid about newspaper photography. The Express had given Gabriel the photographer a theme: he had to show me trying to do various domestic everyday tasks, but being distracted by my writing. This involved quite a lot of getting the dogs to pose.

 "I am feeding the dogs and proof-reading on my laptop simultaneously. Honestly."
Which in turned involved quite a lot of boiled ham :-)

"Ham, monkey! Give me more ham!" 
This one was "I'm taking the eager and lively dogs for a walk but I have been struck by a naughty idea and must write it down before I forget it!"

"No more ham . . . *sigh.* Let us back in so we can have nice lie down, then."
We tried some "posing with books in the garden" shots:


"I am helping. Have you got ham?"
And then the Cooking Scene, which involved Gabriel wedging himself backward inside the microwave to get the angle right. And me using his Macbook because it was a better colour.


"Excuse me. Do you have any idea how much grief I will get off my friends for pretending to be an Apple user?"
Don't worry - he only smacked his head on the cupboards once. No actual blood.

I had a ball - this was fun and interesting for me. For Gabriel and Helen (who were both a pleasure to work with), it was their job. The paper must have paid them a fair bit to turn out on a Sunday, I'd have thought.

And after all that work, this was the published result, in this article:

 
It just makes me realise how heartbreaking it must be to be a professional photographer. All that training and effort for a 6cm B&W insert. Writers have it easy, after all!

Stories I've stolen

Today I'm over at Sommer Marsden's blog, talking about the poor innocent fairytales I co-opted into
Heh. I am so bad.

Update: 

You can now buy the e-version of Named and Shamed for kindle - but these versions come WITHOUT interior illustrations by John LaChatte, I'm afraid.


The uncensored, illustrated e-version is however available from
and will soon be available via Waterstones.

Eyecandy Monday: Named and Shamed

Today's eyecandy comes with an excerpt from
Context: Tansy has come under a fairy curse. It's a proper, traditional curse: having spent one night of passion with a fairy, she is supposed to pine to death out of unfulfillable desire for him. Hah - Tansy isn't the sort of woman who pines passively for anything. She's going to find satisfaction if it kills her. And she's also not the type to fixate on one guy.

But this is the moment when Tansy first starts to realise that there's something weird going on and she's not quite feeling herself, as it were ...


Hell. I shook myself out of my reverie, confused. What was I doing, fantasising about Vince and Gavin in almost the same breath? I looked down and saw that my hand was pressed hard against my pubic mound, grinding my swollen clit. My body had recovered from last night’s hammering and — obviously over-stimulated — was now ready for more.

I really needed to cum. Again. Okay, another wank, then.

No, I realised with a sickening lurch, as at that moment the bathroom door slammed shut. What I really needed was to get out of the house before I had to face Gail.

Throwing on my T-shirt and skirt and a pair of sandals, I was out of the front door before she emerged from the shower. My plan was to go fetch my impounded car from Croydon, and on a Saturday morning that meant taking the Underground, so I set out walking to the station.

It was just a bit unfortunate that I’d headed off before I had any chance to cool down. Even as I walked, I was uncomfortably aware of the heat and emptiness of my sex, and the way my panties felt as if they were rubbing in all the wrong places. I suppose everyone gets that sensation sometime – the random hard-on, the crazy gotta-frig-now itch. Well, I had it bad that morning. It made nearly every man I passed a sudden source of interest. Furtively I eyed them up — the delivery guy dropping off crates of tinned food at the corner store, the two youths smoking on the bench outside the Tube entrance, the busker at the bottom of the escalator — wondering what they looked like naked, how big their tools were, what they’d feel like fucking me good and hard.

God, every man had a cock. It sounds stupid, but it was like the revelation of a great secret. Every one of them was capable of fucking me. Think of the potential.

My feet felt clumsy, tripping me up. An unfocused excitement made my blood run quickly. I shook my head at myself, bemused and irritated  . . . yet enjoying it too.

Then the next Northern Line train arrived, and things got worse.

It was a Saturday in the middle of summer so of course the ventilation had broken down. And a big chunk of the Underground wasn’t operating because of weekend maintenance work and a breakthrough of aggressive duergar into the Circle Line tunnel, so by the time I got to the middle of town every train, platform and stairwell was packed out. It was sweaty and hot, and inside the carriages we were pressed together, standing room only. I stared into space, pretending not to notice the hot young Spanish student-types I was crammed in against, my breasts bumping softly against the back of the taller one as the train swayed. The stuffy air in here was making me feel a bit dizzy. I hung my weight from the hand-strap overhead, feeling the tick of my pulse in my engorged clit and wishing I could touch it just to get some relief. Wishing I could lick that student’s beautiful neck and feel the stir of his nape hair under my tongue.

That’s when it happened. Someone behind me – unseen and anonymous - cupped my ass briefly with one hand.

Hey, it’s not like it’s the first time I’ve been groped on public transport. Normally I make damn sure I protest and embarrass the hell out of them. But this time, I just stood there. The weight of my own churning appetite seemed to pin me in place. When I didn’t react, the hand took the opportunity for another pass, squeezing the full curve of my bum-cheek a little more boldly.

A hot bubble of arousal burst in my sex, releasing a trickle that flooded my knicker gusset.

Tansy, I admonished myself. You dirty cow. Stop this now. But my body wasn’t listening.

Surreptitiously, moving with the sway of the train, my unseen admirer shifted in a tiny bit closer. It was definitely a man: I could smell his aftershave and his skin, and feel his bulk at my back. But I had no idea what he looked like. I licked my dry lips and blinked at the advert over the door, aware now that my nipples, despite the heat of the day, had hardened to points that were poking the Spanish guy quite insistently. I wondered how he didn’t notice, but he was deep in conversation with his friend. I wondered what was happening to me, that I should respond to this molestation so submissively. It wasn’t like me to be shy or fearful.

But then this wasn’t shyness or fear. It was dirty, thrilling pleasure.

The hand moved, sliding all over my right cheek. The flower-print skirt I was wearing was really quite short and those fingers found the edge easily. I wasn’t wearing tights. Warm fingertips brushed my bare skin. Oh God . . . . that felt good.

Involuntarily, I let out a tiny moan, and the eyes of Spanish guy’s friend flicked to me. I flushed, then switched to gazing at the shadowy pipework flashing past the window. My ass was being bumped now, quite gently, by a hard knot of trouser-clad flesh. Shit, thought I. He has a hard-on.

The train gave a sudden lurch around a curve and everyone staggered a little. The man behind me took the opportunity to grasp my hip and pull my ass into his crotch. I didn’t resist. I could feel his erection fighting against his clothes, pressing against my bum.

A stranger’s rubbing his dick against me. And I’m letting him.


And if you want to find out what sort of trouble Tansy gets into after this (and believe me, it gets wild), you need to read
Download from

Named and Shamed - and Published!

Hot off the press! I received this photo from my publisher Sweetmeats Press, on  Friday, so Named and Shamed has made it into this reality!

Goodness me - isn't it thick?

E-book from Amazon UK

Amuse-Bouche - an excerpt

Vampire anthology The Visitor is available for download NOW!

The sexy allure of the vampire remains as strong and fresh as blood. They’re just too handsome and charming to resist, though a tussle with a prince or daughter of darkness can be deadly. This collection of erotica explores the lusts of the vampire with considerably less restraint than paranormal romance.

Amuse-Bouche - Janine Ashbless
A Girl's Got To Eat - Aishling Morgan
Crystal - Primula Bond
Mist - Noelle Keely
Wolf in the Fold - Monica Belle
Rent - Angela Caperton
A Strigoi in Rome - Morwenna Drake
V-Positive - Theresa Noelle-Roberts
Death by V - Chrissie Bentley


  Amuse-Bouche is a tie-in to my mosaic novel Red Grow the Roses, and features two of the main characters, Amanda and Reynauld. Here's an excerpt - they've picked up a student hitchhiker, Rose, and taken her to a hotel outside Paris, promising her a hot shower and dinner:



She was combing out her wet hair when Amanda walked in

'There,' she said, coming up behind Rose in the mirror. 'That colour suits you better than it does me. I just look so washed-out these days.' Without asking permission she adjusted the straps at Rose's shoulders and smoothed the slip over her waist and hips. 

Rose was both flattered and irritated. She thought she looked better than Amanda too. Of course I do – I'm much younger for a start. And why was the woman resting her hands on her shoulders, like she owned Rose? After that hot shower, Amanda's fingers felt chilly.
 
'You and Reynauld,' she said, pouting her lips and looking with satisfaction at her reflection. 'Is he your boyfriend then?'
 
'My employer. And yes. We are lovers.'
 
Ugh. She's got to be at least forty. What does he see in her? And what a snotty way she has of talking, likes she thinks she's the Queen or something. 'Aren't you, like, a bit old for him?'
 
Amanda didn't answer for a moment and Rose, looking at her narrowed eyes, had time to wonder if maybe she'd been a bit rude, before the other woman said softly, 'He's older than he looks.'
 
'Is he French?' Rose decided not to dwell on her possible faux-pas. 'He looks French.'
 
'He's from Baghdad originally, I believe.'

'What, he's an Arab sheikh?' Rose was tickled and a bit alarmed by the prospect of such exoticism and wealth.
 
'Persian, not Arab. And not a sheikh.'
 
'What does he do, then?'
 
Amanda blinked and dropped her gaze. 'He used to work in the City. We're ... currently relocating.'
 
Banker, said Rose to herself: Boring. 'Are we going to eat, then?'
 
'Yes. We're going to eat. Come on through.'
 
Amanda held the door and Rose preceded her into the bedroom. Half-a-dozen steps in, the girl realised that Reynauld was there, sitting on the bed with his hands at his side, waiting for them. Rose stopped dead, shock rippling across her skin. Against the crimson bedspread he looked as dark as a clot of congealed blood. His black shirt was open down the front so she could see his bare chest, and there was a look of patient anticipation on his face.
 
As Amanda's hands descended on her shoulders once more, cold and implacable, Rose felt all the air leave her lungs and her brain solidify into a solid useless mass. She couldn’t stop looking at Reynauld's torso. He had black hair etched across his chest and his flat hard stomach – not at all like her own boyfriend, whose lithe body was smooth like polished wood, or like a girl's. There was nothing remotely feminine about this man, and Rose found herself appalled.
 
'Come here,' he said. His voice was soft and deep, like the voice of darkness itself. But not cool like Amanda's: warm with pleasure instead. His black eyes drank her in, as if he were sucking the light from her. Rose felt the hands at her shoulders push her forward. Her heart was rocketing with dread and with realisation: that this was what it had all been about, that this was what they had been planning since they stopped to give her lift in Calais. And though she felt sick with fear and raw with betrayal, at exactly the same time she knew a flush of wet and terrible heat between her legs, as if this was what she had been waiting for too.
 
'What do you think?' asked Amanda.
 
'Very nice,' he answered, and then dashed any thought that his approval might have been aimed at Rose herself by adding, 'Show me her breasts.'


Want to carry on reading this story? Go to the free sample on the Mischief web-page!

Download from Mischief : Amazon US : Amazon UK

Just visiting

Today I'm being interviewed over at Taryn Blackthorne's blog. This was set up a looooong time ago as part of my publicity for the Heart of Flame release, but it's more about making me go "Eeek! How do I answer that?" and not actually anything about the book. A fun interview - I wish they were all like that!


So, hence the Arabesque gentleman in the illustration here. But there's also a connection to another of my novels entirely. The Visitor is a vampire anthology released by Mischief tomorrow, and my contribution is a story called Amuse-Bouche , which is a tie-in to Red Grow the Roses.



You wouldn't have thought there'd be any common ground between my romantic Arabian Nights tale and my hardcore contemporary vampires, but .... one of the central characters in Roses is boss-vampire Reynauld :

And this is Reynauld, the Good Shepherd, whose authority over the other five is held by dint of careful planning and the minute application of brute force when necessary. He’s not the oldest of them, because that distinction belongs to Roisin, but he’s hardly young even by vampire standards. His name is French but he isn’t, although should he choose to speak the language his grasp of it is perfect, and - just as in English – he has an aristocratic accent. He speaks Spanish too and Portuguese –  Old World style, not American – as well as Arabic, Farsi, Old Syriac, Italian, Latin and Greek, all with equal fluency, along with many others on a less familiar basis. He always did have a facility with languages. He was thirty-four years old and a translator and scribe in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad when he died, in the year 218 after Hijra, which was the year 833 Anno Domini in the Roman reckoning. Both calendars were ones he was quite familiar with, being a man of sublime education.

 His name then was not Reynauld of course; it was Kerim ibn Zarad al-Razi, but he abandoned his Arabic name when he gave up his religion. There is no place in Islam for vampires, whose very sustenance is harram: forbidden.

And he looks a bit like that picture too :-)

There will be an excerpt from Amuse-Bouche later this week. Oh yes. There will be blood.