Janine Ashbless's Blog, page 86
November 12, 2014
"Uncommonly literary in tone and original in ideas ... a superbly creative story that is just impossible to put down."
The uncommonly literary Ashbless ;-)I'm running late with this blog-tour roundup because Blogger is being an ARSE about uploading - but the title line above comes from the august pages of the Portland Book Review. I'm chuffed to bits! They said:
"Cover Him With Darkness is uncommonly literary in tone and original in ideas. Janine Ashbless brings to the tired paranormal genre an exhilarating world wherein the creatures of Judeo-Christian faith are brought to life and written into contemporary times. This new world, which Milja has lived her entire life without really seeing, is both seductive and horrifying. No longer innocent, Milja will survive her brutal awakening, but the author offers no reassurances for Milja’s future with Azazel, or for the future of humanity. Sexy, dark, and suspenseful, Cover Him With Darkness is a superbly creative story that is just impossible to put down."
PBR also hosted a guest post from me spilling the full story on how Cover Him came to be written.
I've been writing a whole bunch of interviews this week - and I really like it when interviewers ask impertinent and dangerous questions that make me worry I've said too much!
Here's my interview on Ian Smith's blog, for example...There's a gentler interview on Home is where the Wine Is (love that title!)
Reading Between the Wines Book Club (am I spotting a theme here?) hosted a guest post on how I ended up on an emergency research tour in Montenegro.
And Beck and her Kinks is hosting a BOOK GIVEAWAY (with excerpt) - get your name in the hat!
November 10, 2014
Blue Monday
Every Monday I post a naughty excerpt for your entertainment. Between October (when it came out as an e-book) and December (when it comes out in paperback), those excerpts will be from the stories in my new collection Fierce Enchantments.
Story 3: The King in the Wood
Plot: Set just outside Rome in the 1st century A.D: Valeria, a respectable Roman wife, has travelled to the sacred grove at Lake Nemi in order to conceive a child with the help of the gods ... and search for Thoas, an ex-slave of her family...
Then a man stepped up from behind and put his arms about her.
Valeria shrieked, but the sound of her shock was trapped by a callused hand that clamped firmly over her mouth. She tasted wood-smoke and dirt on her tongue and she struggled frantically, but his grip only tightened, pulling her almost off her feet; the torso to which she was clutched was rock-solid, the two bare arms wrapped around her like bands of iron. Her sandalled toes kicking helplessly at the dead leaves. He pulled her head back and to the side, exposing her throat, and then he inhaled the scent of her hair and pressed his lips to her cheek and licked at her neck, his mouth burning.
“Pretty,” he breathed. “A pretty little doe has wandered into my wood.” Valeria moaned in fear as the hand not pinning her head slid up to grope her breast, squeezing hard. “She didn’t know the hunter would be waiting for her, did she? She didn’t know she’d have to run for her life.” His fingers slid under the linen to capture her nipple. “Can you run, little deer? Can you outrun me?” He caught her earlobe in his teeth, savouring the yielding drag of skin. “Meat always tastes better after a chase.”
He let her go quite suddenly, and Valeria caught her breath as she fell forward. Whatever her intentions—speak to him, turn and see for herself—they disappeared as his hand descended on her rump with an almighty crack.
“Run!” he hissed.
She panicked. It was the unexpected pain; she couldn’t think past the pain and the shock that flashed through her blood. She staggered away and began to run, and the gradient of the hillside caught her and pulled her onward, through brambles and under branches, twigs whipping her face and her raised hands, thorns scratching her bare legs. She ran because she couldn’t slow without falling, and because her feet were tripping beneath her and because at her back she could hear his hoarse laughter as he followed. He was close behind her, always. She could hear his tread. He was right on her heels, keeping pace.
She stumbled. A hand caught the back of her stola as she went down and hauled her right off her feet, spinning her onto hands and knees. Seams tore as she wrenched out of his grasp and tried to crawl up the bank, her hands digging into leaf-mould and grass. For a moment she thought she was clear, and then he gripped her ankle and pulled her roughly back down onto him, capturing her in his arms again.
It was over. Valeria had no more strength left to fight; she just gasped for air and sobbed with fear. The King of the Grove wasn’t even out of breath. He pinned her to his shoulder again with a single hand as she sat in his lap—but this time he didn’t cover her mouth, he just held her chin up tight, forcing her head back. She caught glimpses of long dark hair as he stooped over her; it fell in her eyes.
“Hey hey hey,” he murmured: “Hush.”
“Plea—” was all she could splutter.
“Quiet now.” His other hand moved to stroke her breasts as if she were an animal that needed gentling, and she thought of the sacrificial sheep being held for the knife. “I’m not going to hurt you, little deer,” he said, and somehow that promise was more darkly menacing than his previous threats. “I’m just going to …”
The hand slipped from her breasts to her legs. Her short skirt was no barrier. He lifted it aside as he stroked up the inside of her splayed thighs, searching her out. She was wet with sweat about her belly and thighs and groin. His fingers slithered on the shaven silk of her mons veneris, then parted her smooth cleft to delve into the heat within.
Valeria moaned then, and writhed in his grip. He shifted against her, tightening his hold, and she was left in no doubt that he’d enjoyed the chase very much: his erect penis was hard as a wooden rod and shoving painfully into the soft muscle of her rear.
“Oh yes,” he said, almost to himself. His curled fingers invaded her, greedy for her heat and emptiness. He played with her wetness and she heard the noises he made there, like moist kisses. “That’s nice.” He spread two fingers, opening her. “I like that. I like that a lot,” he groaned in her ear. Then he circled her clitoris with his callused fingertips, using her own moisture to smooth the path. There was a lot of wet to use. “And you do too, don’t you?”
She whimpered. She could hardly speak, so tightly was her jaw held, so starved were her lungs after her running. But she could hear, now that he wasn’t whispering. Hear the foreign vowel-shapes.
“Now, little deer, I’m going to …” he said, and humped her forward onto hands and knees so that he could lift her skirt at the back and set his aim, before pulling her back down into his lap—and onto the cock angled there like a spearpoint. She felt its blunt head surge through her outer defences and realised he was far thicker of girth than her husband, and that he was going to demand things of her that she’d never had to give before.
“Thoas,” she gasped.
“What?” He was finding her tight: his focus was on the next thrust as he squeezed her down onto his thighs, impaling her further.
“Thoas!” It was a squeal by now.
He heard her that time.
John Robert Cozens: Lake Nemi,(1788)
For a moment he froze, and then everything changed. He pulled out of her, dropped her forward on the sloping bank and rolled her over onto her back, pinning her there with his hand on her breastbone. As he loomed over her Valeria saw his face for the first time, through her blurring tears.
It was Thoas, but he was almost unrecognisable. Valeria’s heart banged against her breastbone. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been clean-shaven with decently short hair, but now that hair, looking like it hadn’t been combed in weeks, hung down to his shoulders and his face was swarthy with stubble. His skin was weathered dark and lined around his eyes and the corners of his mouth. He was wearing a worn tunic that was splotched and faded to the colour of autumn leaves, and a sword belt that hung diagonally across his chest: the thin fabric of the tunic didn’t disguise the corded muscle that packed his frame. The old vertical scar down his cheek had now been joined by one on his upper lip and a nose that had been broken out of its true alignment. He looked like a barbarian. He looked terrifying. And he looked older—quite considerably older—and it showed most around his eyes, which were undershadowed by patches black as blood-blisters and seemed almost unfocused, the pupils dilated wildly.
He searched her face for a long long time.
“Valeria Prisca Secunda,” he said at last.
She nodded, and reached to touch his chest, like a plea for clemency. Her heart was pounding.
“You’ve changed.”
“Not so much as you,” she whispered. Was this even the man she’d come in search of, or just someone wearing his mask?
He nodded slowly. For the first time a faint smile tried to pull at the corners of his mouth. “Little Valeria, the pretty girl with the crush on me.”
She inhaled sharply and her chest heaved. “You didn’t know that!”
“Didn’t I?” His gazed dropped from her face to her torso. The torn and twisted dress had been rent open when he rolled her, and one of her breasts was bared, her pink nipple pointing at the heavens. He lifted the hand holding her in place and ran it lightly down her body. As Valeria’s gaze followed his she realised that he was kneeling over her spread thighs still, and that his erection, interrupted in its mission, was still standing from under the hem of his tunic, glossy and solid, sticky with her honey. And bigger than she’d remembered: Valeria’s assessment of her own husband’s equipment underwent a sudden terrifying downgrading.
“Are you married?” he asked, as if he’d heard her thoughts. His fingertips brushed the juicy slit he’d so recently assailed, and without being able to help herself she tilted her hips, moving her clitoris under his teasing touch.
“Yes,” she said, trying to catch his wrist in her hand and stop him even as her vulva yielded to his exploration.
“Congratulations, Domina.” His fingers gave her the caress she wanted, not for a moment believing her protesting hand. “And tell your husband from me he’s a lucky man, whoever he is.”
“Quintus Didius Messor,” she whimpered.
"Ah. I remember. So are you childless—or just frustrated? What did you come here for, Valeria?”
Her eyes widened as his fingers stirred her fire, and she caught her lip in her teeth, but the words burst out anyway: “A child.”
“Well,” he said, moving over her and easing between her thighs, his prick nudging into the slippery path of her sex as his fingers bit into her skin. “I can give you that.”
“Thoas!” she sobbed.
“What? Is this not what you were expecting?” His eyes were so glazed he seemed almost blind, but his cock was sure of the way. “Were you hoping for a little conversation, Domina—a little nostalgic reminiscence—before … this?”
Amazon UK (only £ 2.39 on Kindle!) : Amazon US (only $3.84!)
Story 3: The King in the Wood
Plot: Set just outside Rome in the 1st century A.D: Valeria, a respectable Roman wife, has travelled to the sacred grove at Lake Nemi in order to conceive a child with the help of the gods ... and search for Thoas, an ex-slave of her family...
Then a man stepped up from behind and put his arms about her.
Valeria shrieked, but the sound of her shock was trapped by a callused hand that clamped firmly over her mouth. She tasted wood-smoke and dirt on her tongue and she struggled frantically, but his grip only tightened, pulling her almost off her feet; the torso to which she was clutched was rock-solid, the two bare arms wrapped around her like bands of iron. Her sandalled toes kicking helplessly at the dead leaves. He pulled her head back and to the side, exposing her throat, and then he inhaled the scent of her hair and pressed his lips to her cheek and licked at her neck, his mouth burning.
“Pretty,” he breathed. “A pretty little doe has wandered into my wood.” Valeria moaned in fear as the hand not pinning her head slid up to grope her breast, squeezing hard. “She didn’t know the hunter would be waiting for her, did she? She didn’t know she’d have to run for her life.” His fingers slid under the linen to capture her nipple. “Can you run, little deer? Can you outrun me?” He caught her earlobe in his teeth, savouring the yielding drag of skin. “Meat always tastes better after a chase.”
He let her go quite suddenly, and Valeria caught her breath as she fell forward. Whatever her intentions—speak to him, turn and see for herself—they disappeared as his hand descended on her rump with an almighty crack.
“Run!” he hissed.
She panicked. It was the unexpected pain; she couldn’t think past the pain and the shock that flashed through her blood. She staggered away and began to run, and the gradient of the hillside caught her and pulled her onward, through brambles and under branches, twigs whipping her face and her raised hands, thorns scratching her bare legs. She ran because she couldn’t slow without falling, and because her feet were tripping beneath her and because at her back she could hear his hoarse laughter as he followed. He was close behind her, always. She could hear his tread. He was right on her heels, keeping pace.
She stumbled. A hand caught the back of her stola as she went down and hauled her right off her feet, spinning her onto hands and knees. Seams tore as she wrenched out of his grasp and tried to crawl up the bank, her hands digging into leaf-mould and grass. For a moment she thought she was clear, and then he gripped her ankle and pulled her roughly back down onto him, capturing her in his arms again.
It was over. Valeria had no more strength left to fight; she just gasped for air and sobbed with fear. The King of the Grove wasn’t even out of breath. He pinned her to his shoulder again with a single hand as she sat in his lap—but this time he didn’t cover her mouth, he just held her chin up tight, forcing her head back. She caught glimpses of long dark hair as he stooped over her; it fell in her eyes.
“Hey hey hey,” he murmured: “Hush.”
“Plea—” was all she could splutter.
“Quiet now.” His other hand moved to stroke her breasts as if she were an animal that needed gentling, and she thought of the sacrificial sheep being held for the knife. “I’m not going to hurt you, little deer,” he said, and somehow that promise was more darkly menacing than his previous threats. “I’m just going to …”
The hand slipped from her breasts to her legs. Her short skirt was no barrier. He lifted it aside as he stroked up the inside of her splayed thighs, searching her out. She was wet with sweat about her belly and thighs and groin. His fingers slithered on the shaven silk of her mons veneris, then parted her smooth cleft to delve into the heat within.
Valeria moaned then, and writhed in his grip. He shifted against her, tightening his hold, and she was left in no doubt that he’d enjoyed the chase very much: his erect penis was hard as a wooden rod and shoving painfully into the soft muscle of her rear.
“Oh yes,” he said, almost to himself. His curled fingers invaded her, greedy for her heat and emptiness. He played with her wetness and she heard the noises he made there, like moist kisses. “That’s nice.” He spread two fingers, opening her. “I like that. I like that a lot,” he groaned in her ear. Then he circled her clitoris with his callused fingertips, using her own moisture to smooth the path. There was a lot of wet to use. “And you do too, don’t you?”
She whimpered. She could hardly speak, so tightly was her jaw held, so starved were her lungs after her running. But she could hear, now that he wasn’t whispering. Hear the foreign vowel-shapes.
“Now, little deer, I’m going to …” he said, and humped her forward onto hands and knees so that he could lift her skirt at the back and set his aim, before pulling her back down into his lap—and onto the cock angled there like a spearpoint. She felt its blunt head surge through her outer defences and realised he was far thicker of girth than her husband, and that he was going to demand things of her that she’d never had to give before.
“Thoas,” she gasped.
“What?” He was finding her tight: his focus was on the next thrust as he squeezed her down onto his thighs, impaling her further.
“Thoas!” It was a squeal by now.
He heard her that time.
John Robert Cozens: Lake Nemi,(1788)For a moment he froze, and then everything changed. He pulled out of her, dropped her forward on the sloping bank and rolled her over onto her back, pinning her there with his hand on her breastbone. As he loomed over her Valeria saw his face for the first time, through her blurring tears.
It was Thoas, but he was almost unrecognisable. Valeria’s heart banged against her breastbone. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been clean-shaven with decently short hair, but now that hair, looking like it hadn’t been combed in weeks, hung down to his shoulders and his face was swarthy with stubble. His skin was weathered dark and lined around his eyes and the corners of his mouth. He was wearing a worn tunic that was splotched and faded to the colour of autumn leaves, and a sword belt that hung diagonally across his chest: the thin fabric of the tunic didn’t disguise the corded muscle that packed his frame. The old vertical scar down his cheek had now been joined by one on his upper lip and a nose that had been broken out of its true alignment. He looked like a barbarian. He looked terrifying. And he looked older—quite considerably older—and it showed most around his eyes, which were undershadowed by patches black as blood-blisters and seemed almost unfocused, the pupils dilated wildly.
He searched her face for a long long time.
“Valeria Prisca Secunda,” he said at last.
She nodded, and reached to touch his chest, like a plea for clemency. Her heart was pounding.
“You’ve changed.”
“Not so much as you,” she whispered. Was this even the man she’d come in search of, or just someone wearing his mask?
He nodded slowly. For the first time a faint smile tried to pull at the corners of his mouth. “Little Valeria, the pretty girl with the crush on me.”
She inhaled sharply and her chest heaved. “You didn’t know that!”
“Didn’t I?” His gazed dropped from her face to her torso. The torn and twisted dress had been rent open when he rolled her, and one of her breasts was bared, her pink nipple pointing at the heavens. He lifted the hand holding her in place and ran it lightly down her body. As Valeria’s gaze followed his she realised that he was kneeling over her spread thighs still, and that his erection, interrupted in its mission, was still standing from under the hem of his tunic, glossy and solid, sticky with her honey. And bigger than she’d remembered: Valeria’s assessment of her own husband’s equipment underwent a sudden terrifying downgrading.
“Are you married?” he asked, as if he’d heard her thoughts. His fingertips brushed the juicy slit he’d so recently assailed, and without being able to help herself she tilted her hips, moving her clitoris under his teasing touch.
“Yes,” she said, trying to catch his wrist in her hand and stop him even as her vulva yielded to his exploration.
“Congratulations, Domina.” His fingers gave her the caress she wanted, not for a moment believing her protesting hand. “And tell your husband from me he’s a lucky man, whoever he is.”
“Quintus Didius Messor,” she whimpered.
"Ah. I remember. So are you childless—or just frustrated? What did you come here for, Valeria?”
Her eyes widened as his fingers stirred her fire, and she caught her lip in her teeth, but the words burst out anyway: “A child.”
“Well,” he said, moving over her and easing between her thighs, his prick nudging into the slippery path of her sex as his fingers bit into her skin. “I can give you that.”
“Thoas!” she sobbed.
“What? Is this not what you were expecting?” His eyes were so glazed he seemed almost blind, but his cock was sure of the way. “Were you hoping for a little conversation, Domina—a little nostalgic reminiscence—before … this?”
Amazon UK (only £ 2.39 on Kindle!) : Amazon US (only $3.84!)
November 7, 2014
Two-day Eventing
Just to plug a couple of events I'm going to in the next week ...
The third Dirty Sexy Words erotica slam is on at the Bad Apple pub in Croydon on Tuesday Night - KD Grace, LC Wilkinson, Zak Jane Keir, Jillian Boyd and one mystery guest, as well as myself, are in the line-up so far. Entry is FREE and open to all!
Smut Manchester is a one-day get-together on Saturday 15th, with workshops and readings and the infamous Erotic Tombola ... :-) More details here, including a promo code for a discount on the £10 ticket. Again, all welcome!
Hope to see y'all soon!
The third Dirty Sexy Words erotica slam is on at the Bad Apple pub in Croydon on Tuesday Night - KD Grace, LC Wilkinson, Zak Jane Keir, Jillian Boyd and one mystery guest, as well as myself, are in the line-up so far. Entry is FREE and open to all!
Smut Manchester is a one-day get-together on Saturday 15th, with workshops and readings and the infamous Erotic Tombola ... :-) More details here, including a promo code for a discount on the £10 ticket. Again, all welcome!
Hope to see y'all soon!
November 5, 2014
Phenology - October
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness - John Keats: To Autumn
Yes, October is the month that we start getting morning mists again. Leaves begin to fall in earnest: autumn is undeniably here.
So too falls the ripened beech mast, which in medieval times was a vital source of food for the pigs that would be slaughtered in November and keep the populace alive through winter. No one does anything with beech-mast these days.
And of course this is the season for collecting conkers!
Every year on the second Sunday in October, the World Conker Championships is held in Northamptonshire, but the sport actually goes back before the introduction of horse chestnuts to England (around the 1600s), when it used to be played with hazel nuts and snail shells.
The glossy colour of a fresh conker is one of my favourite things in the worldOther things start to appear mysteriously in October - spiders are suddenly all over the place:
Including inside the house!
And so are the fruiting bodies of many fungi:
Shaggy ink cap - edible
Common ink cap - poisonous IF TAKEN WITH ALCOHOL
I was was delighted when I learned that genetically speaking, mushrooms are closer to humans than they are to plants!
Talking of plants, it's time for them to put on their autumnal bling:
Actually, this year October has been extraordinarily mild - we had record-breaking high temperatures on Hallowe'en! What that means, perversely, is that the autumnal colouration has been a little drab. For widespread fierce colours you need sunny days followed by cold still nights.
But some plants still try their best:
The unseasonably warm weather means that there are still wasps around. In fact Mr Ashbless got stung by one!
The wasps are glutting themselves on the ivy flowers - something I'd never noticed until this year
Yes, October is the month that we start getting morning mists again. Leaves begin to fall in earnest: autumn is undeniably here.
So too falls the ripened beech mast, which in medieval times was a vital source of food for the pigs that would be slaughtered in November and keep the populace alive through winter. No one does anything with beech-mast these days.
And of course this is the season for collecting conkers!
Every year on the second Sunday in October, the World Conker Championships is held in Northamptonshire, but the sport actually goes back before the introduction of horse chestnuts to England (around the 1600s), when it used to be played with hazel nuts and snail shells.
The glossy colour of a fresh conker is one of my favourite things in the worldOther things start to appear mysteriously in October - spiders are suddenly all over the place:
Including inside the house!
And so are the fruiting bodies of many fungi:
Shaggy ink cap - edible
Common ink cap - poisonous IF TAKEN WITH ALCOHOLI was was delighted when I learned that genetically speaking, mushrooms are closer to humans than they are to plants!
Talking of plants, it's time for them to put on their autumnal bling:
Actually, this year October has been extraordinarily mild - we had record-breaking high temperatures on Hallowe'en! What that means, perversely, is that the autumnal colouration has been a little drab. For widespread fierce colours you need sunny days followed by cold still nights. 
But some plants still try their best:
The unseasonably warm weather means that there are still wasps around. In fact Mr Ashbless got stung by one!
The wasps are glutting themselves on the ivy flowers - something I'd never noticed until this yearNovember 3, 2014
Blue Monday
Every Monday I post a naughty excerpt for your entertainment. Between October (when it came out as an e-book) and December (when it comes out in paperback), those excerpts will be from the stories in my new collection Fierce Enchantments.
Story 2: Bolt Hole. A tale set during a zombie apocalypse - and Zita is trapped in an over-heated shipping container with a stranger...
“Water?” he asks, then holds the bottle out toward her and scoots it right down the length of the chamber, almost to her toes.
She would do anything for water—not to drink, but to pour over herself. Clean, cool, running water. She’s cooking inside her leathers, like one of those old fish-in-a-bag dinners. But she doesn’t answer him. Words seem too heavy to raise to her lips. Panic is rising in her breast, like steam, as she tries to breathe deeper but finds she can only pant. There doesn’t seem to be any oxygen in the metallic air. The room in front of her swells and billows and shrinks again. She catches her glove in her teeth and rips it off, then fumbles at the zip of her headgear. I’m going to faint, she thinks. If I don’t get this off I’ll suffocate.
The mask comes off with a foul wet dragging. She shaved her own head, weeks ago, but the hair has grown back somewhat. She can feel the air licking at that wet fur—an overwhelming relief. But still not enough. She tugs the zip that bares her throat then, bending, she snatches up the canteen from the floor. That motion almost undoes her. She can feel the blood running the wrong way in her veins, and she almost loses her balance. It’s only her desire for the water that keeps her from pitching forward dizzily.
Yanking the stopper out with her teeth, she tips the liquid over her forehead and catches it with open lips as it sluices over her face. It’s tepid and metallic and it feels wonderful. Running down her chin and throat, some finds its way under her clothes into the secret valley between her breasts. Blinking stinging, sweat-tainted drops from her eyes, she glares at the man, daring him to have moved while she wasn’t looking.
Maybe he has, just a little. She sucks defiantly from the neck of the bottle.
“What’re you doing out here on your own?” he asks.
“I wasn’t alone,” she rasps.
“Huh.” He grimaces. “Nor was I.”
The water down her cleavage just feels like more sweat now. She can’t bear it. She’s got to lean back against the metal just to stay upright. Discarding the spade against the wall beside her, she wrenches off her other glove, then pulls down the zipper of her suit from collar to navel. The vest-top beneath is absolutely sodden with sweat, and plastered to her torso. She sees the pale flash of the man’s widening eyes, and she knows her chest is heaving as she pants for breath, but it doesn’t seem important. All she wants is to get out of these leathers.
She wriggles out of her bags and belts, frantic to shed the weight, and has to force herself not to fling down her most precious cargo. The front zipper of her biker all-in-one goes all the way down to her crotch, making it easier to peel off the arms and shoulders and drop the top half of the suit to hang from her hips. That helps. She sets her shoulders back against the corrugated metal, praying for cool, but it’s warmer than she is. She can see the man staring. His torso is completely bare, and she envies that. She can feel the moisture flooding between her burning thighs. Her mind is a churning whirl.
She wants to be naked. She wants to be cold. She wants water and a breeze.
He’s gone very still. Outside, the living dead moan with frustration.
The trousers of her suit have zips up the outside of the shins, allowing them to be put on and taken off over boots. One leg at a time, she lifts her feet and looses the vents. Then she pushes the leathers down over her thighs and kicks them away.
She’s not wearing anything but panties beneath. Panties and boots, and above that the tight, clinging vest. Even those last pieces of clothing disgust her. She wants to weep with frustration. Her singlet is like a second skin, and stained with wear. She pulls it away from her stomach, desperate for the tiniest breeze on her flesh, stretching her throat as she tilts her head back.
When she glances down again, he’s definitely moved. He’s still on hands and knees, but he’s that tiny bit closer to her. She tries to focus her eyes, and registers the lift of one hand: a placating gesture, an apology for his entirely involuntary shift in her direction. His eyes are wide and his lips a little parted.
“S’okay,” he mutters, not blinking. “Don’t be scared. Nothing to be scared of.”
She wants to laugh, but she’s forgotten how. For the last two years there has never once been nothing to be scared of. Periods of calm or stultifying boredom, yes—many of those. But never freedom from fear. Not a single waking hour when the dread and the loss weren’t there like a choking lump under her breastbone. Fear is the omnipresent guest at the feast, the mother of every decision she makes. It’s the air she breathes. In a world where corpses move and speak and eat, fear is the one thing left that distinguishes the living from the dead.
She looks into the deep darkness of his eyes, searching for the fear. And it’s there, that sharp and bitter edge. But it’s only a glint. It’s been almost driven out by something else, just as primal. He can’t stop looking at her. At her tight and filthy clothing. At what’s hidden beneath. Each heave of her chest seems to draw him in.
She blinks hard, like a drunk trying to sober up, wanting to make sense of his questions and his haggard soldier’s face and his muscled body. He looks strong. Bleakly handsome, perhaps—it’s so hard to tell these days. She wants to know how she feels about him, but she’s no longer capable of judgement.
He’s shifting toward her, on toes and fingertips. Keeping slow and down on the floor, so as not to spook her. “It’s a bit warm, isn’t it? This box.” The inanity of his words is not as important as the low, husky tone. He’s got a voice that reminds her of some movie star’s, though she can’t think whose—she can’t remember anything that far back right now—but it’s oddly familiar because of that, and not unpleasant.
He licks his parched lips.
She wants more water. She wants the aching to stop—the ache that that seems to lie not in her muscles but under every inch of her skin, in her belly, right down between her legs. All she wants … is to stop feeling awful.
“Yes.” Looking into his eyes, she takes the sodden vest and lifts it to bare her breasts.
Oh God, that feels good.
“Ah,” he says. Just that one syllable, a low vibration his chest. But it’s a noise that sounds like profound relief. And for a long moment he just looks. She can feel the tickle of sweat-droplets running down her breastbone. They’re beading around her dark nipples and slipping in arcs down the overhang of her breasts. Her whole body weeps salt tears. Like him, she’s bruised and scarred and underweight.
Like him, she’s alive.
Still on his knees, he closes the gap between them. She flinches at the last moment, afraid that his skin will be hot to the touch and only add to her torment—but in fact his hands on her hips feel cool. That’s all he touches her with. Fingertips, and mouth. He brushes his lips to her belly and his tongue sweeps the skin, tasting her salt.
She utters a keening sob. It is the noise of the end of the world. It’s been two weeks since she last saw a living being. Two weeks without human contact, without the press of Ben’s body against hers, without comfort or pleasure or release.
“Ohhh,” he groans into her stomach. She can smell the scent of his sweat, mingling with her own.
Then he hooks his thumbs in her panties and pulls them down over her thighs. She squirms—she doesn’t want him to go there, she isn’t clean, she can smell her own musk—but he doesn’t care if she’s been weeks in her leathers. He stoops to plunge his face to the juncture of her thighs, inhaling her greedily, lifting one of her legs to grant him access to her split and pushing her up on tiptoes in his eagerness. Then, almost perversely procrastinating, he laps the inside of her upper thighs with long teasing strokes, first one then the other. It makes her whimper more. Finally his mouth, hot and wet, closes over her clit and she bangs her head back against the metal, seeing stars.
He eats her.
He’s like a zombie, she thinks, half-terrified by the analogy and grabbing for purchase on the corrugated wall, on his head, anywhere that will help. There’s the same inexorable appetite, the same obsession. Hunger is everything, and he eats without fear. She can hear her own gasping cries and the rising moans of the dead massed outside, on the other side of the wall. He lifts her up on his hands and wraps her legs over his shoulders, burrowing into her sex. His tongue lashes her clit and slithers into her deep wet furrow. Each motion of his tongue burns across her nerves. He’s eating me. He’s eating me, she cries in her head.
She always knew she was going to die like this: being devoured.
Amazon UK (only £ 2.39 on Kindle!) : Amazon US (only $3.84!)
Story 2: Bolt Hole. A tale set during a zombie apocalypse - and Zita is trapped in an over-heated shipping container with a stranger...
“Water?” he asks, then holds the bottle out toward her and scoots it right down the length of the chamber, almost to her toes.
She would do anything for water—not to drink, but to pour over herself. Clean, cool, running water. She’s cooking inside her leathers, like one of those old fish-in-a-bag dinners. But she doesn’t answer him. Words seem too heavy to raise to her lips. Panic is rising in her breast, like steam, as she tries to breathe deeper but finds she can only pant. There doesn’t seem to be any oxygen in the metallic air. The room in front of her swells and billows and shrinks again. She catches her glove in her teeth and rips it off, then fumbles at the zip of her headgear. I’m going to faint, she thinks. If I don’t get this off I’ll suffocate.
The mask comes off with a foul wet dragging. She shaved her own head, weeks ago, but the hair has grown back somewhat. She can feel the air licking at that wet fur—an overwhelming relief. But still not enough. She tugs the zip that bares her throat then, bending, she snatches up the canteen from the floor. That motion almost undoes her. She can feel the blood running the wrong way in her veins, and she almost loses her balance. It’s only her desire for the water that keeps her from pitching forward dizzily.
Yanking the stopper out with her teeth, she tips the liquid over her forehead and catches it with open lips as it sluices over her face. It’s tepid and metallic and it feels wonderful. Running down her chin and throat, some finds its way under her clothes into the secret valley between her breasts. Blinking stinging, sweat-tainted drops from her eyes, she glares at the man, daring him to have moved while she wasn’t looking.
Maybe he has, just a little. She sucks defiantly from the neck of the bottle.
“What’re you doing out here on your own?” he asks.
“I wasn’t alone,” she rasps.
“Huh.” He grimaces. “Nor was I.”
The water down her cleavage just feels like more sweat now. She can’t bear it. She’s got to lean back against the metal just to stay upright. Discarding the spade against the wall beside her, she wrenches off her other glove, then pulls down the zipper of her suit from collar to navel. The vest-top beneath is absolutely sodden with sweat, and plastered to her torso. She sees the pale flash of the man’s widening eyes, and she knows her chest is heaving as she pants for breath, but it doesn’t seem important. All she wants is to get out of these leathers.
She wriggles out of her bags and belts, frantic to shed the weight, and has to force herself not to fling down her most precious cargo. The front zipper of her biker all-in-one goes all the way down to her crotch, making it easier to peel off the arms and shoulders and drop the top half of the suit to hang from her hips. That helps. She sets her shoulders back against the corrugated metal, praying for cool, but it’s warmer than she is. She can see the man staring. His torso is completely bare, and she envies that. She can feel the moisture flooding between her burning thighs. Her mind is a churning whirl.
She wants to be naked. She wants to be cold. She wants water and a breeze.
He’s gone very still. Outside, the living dead moan with frustration.
The trousers of her suit have zips up the outside of the shins, allowing them to be put on and taken off over boots. One leg at a time, she lifts her feet and looses the vents. Then she pushes the leathers down over her thighs and kicks them away.
She’s not wearing anything but panties beneath. Panties and boots, and above that the tight, clinging vest. Even those last pieces of clothing disgust her. She wants to weep with frustration. Her singlet is like a second skin, and stained with wear. She pulls it away from her stomach, desperate for the tiniest breeze on her flesh, stretching her throat as she tilts her head back.
When she glances down again, he’s definitely moved. He’s still on hands and knees, but he’s that tiny bit closer to her. She tries to focus her eyes, and registers the lift of one hand: a placating gesture, an apology for his entirely involuntary shift in her direction. His eyes are wide and his lips a little parted.
“S’okay,” he mutters, not blinking. “Don’t be scared. Nothing to be scared of.”
She wants to laugh, but she’s forgotten how. For the last two years there has never once been nothing to be scared of. Periods of calm or stultifying boredom, yes—many of those. But never freedom from fear. Not a single waking hour when the dread and the loss weren’t there like a choking lump under her breastbone. Fear is the omnipresent guest at the feast, the mother of every decision she makes. It’s the air she breathes. In a world where corpses move and speak and eat, fear is the one thing left that distinguishes the living from the dead.
She looks into the deep darkness of his eyes, searching for the fear. And it’s there, that sharp and bitter edge. But it’s only a glint. It’s been almost driven out by something else, just as primal. He can’t stop looking at her. At her tight and filthy clothing. At what’s hidden beneath. Each heave of her chest seems to draw him in.
She blinks hard, like a drunk trying to sober up, wanting to make sense of his questions and his haggard soldier’s face and his muscled body. He looks strong. Bleakly handsome, perhaps—it’s so hard to tell these days. She wants to know how she feels about him, but she’s no longer capable of judgement.
He’s shifting toward her, on toes and fingertips. Keeping slow and down on the floor, so as not to spook her. “It’s a bit warm, isn’t it? This box.” The inanity of his words is not as important as the low, husky tone. He’s got a voice that reminds her of some movie star’s, though she can’t think whose—she can’t remember anything that far back right now—but it’s oddly familiar because of that, and not unpleasant.
He licks his parched lips.
She wants more water. She wants the aching to stop—the ache that that seems to lie not in her muscles but under every inch of her skin, in her belly, right down between her legs. All she wants … is to stop feeling awful.
“Yes.” Looking into his eyes, she takes the sodden vest and lifts it to bare her breasts.
Oh God, that feels good.
“Ah,” he says. Just that one syllable, a low vibration his chest. But it’s a noise that sounds like profound relief. And for a long moment he just looks. She can feel the tickle of sweat-droplets running down her breastbone. They’re beading around her dark nipples and slipping in arcs down the overhang of her breasts. Her whole body weeps salt tears. Like him, she’s bruised and scarred and underweight.
Like him, she’s alive.
Still on his knees, he closes the gap between them. She flinches at the last moment, afraid that his skin will be hot to the touch and only add to her torment—but in fact his hands on her hips feel cool. That’s all he touches her with. Fingertips, and mouth. He brushes his lips to her belly and his tongue sweeps the skin, tasting her salt.
She utters a keening sob. It is the noise of the end of the world. It’s been two weeks since she last saw a living being. Two weeks without human contact, without the press of Ben’s body against hers, without comfort or pleasure or release.
“Ohhh,” he groans into her stomach. She can smell the scent of his sweat, mingling with her own.
Then he hooks his thumbs in her panties and pulls them down over her thighs. She squirms—she doesn’t want him to go there, she isn’t clean, she can smell her own musk—but he doesn’t care if she’s been weeks in her leathers. He stoops to plunge his face to the juncture of her thighs, inhaling her greedily, lifting one of her legs to grant him access to her split and pushing her up on tiptoes in his eagerness. Then, almost perversely procrastinating, he laps the inside of her upper thighs with long teasing strokes, first one then the other. It makes her whimper more. Finally his mouth, hot and wet, closes over her clit and she bangs her head back against the metal, seeing stars.
He eats her.
He’s like a zombie, she thinks, half-terrified by the analogy and grabbing for purchase on the corrugated wall, on his head, anywhere that will help. There’s the same inexorable appetite, the same obsession. Hunger is everything, and he eats without fear. She can hear her own gasping cries and the rising moans of the dead massed outside, on the other side of the wall. He lifts her up on his hands and wraps her legs over his shoulders, burrowing into her sex. His tongue lashes her clit and slithers into her deep wet furrow. Each motion of his tongue burns across her nerves. He’s eating me. He’s eating me, she cries in her head.
She always knew she was going to die like this: being devoured.
Amazon UK (only £ 2.39 on Kindle!) : Amazon US (only $3.84!)
November 2, 2014
"The next part of the trilogy can’t come out fast enough"
Perfect reading for the comfy sofa!It's been a week of really nice reviews for
Cover Him with Darkness
. I'm starting to believe it's not a bad book! (Though of course all reviewers see things differently. I'm intrigued and amused that some describe Azazel as evil incarnate, and some see him as childlike). The title quote comes from Quixotic Orchid's enthusiastic review (with bonus interview):
This is probably one of the longest blogs I’ve ever posted. But after reading Cover Him With Darkness, there’s so much I want to say and so much left unsaid because my mind is blown and I can’t find the words. The pages I just finished are that awesome. I LOVED this book! It had no clichéd good, oops-it-was-an-accident/misunderstanding fallen angel who fell in love with an earthly good girl and had to choose if he wanted to go back to heaven or find “heaven on earth.” Ashbless’s originality is such a relief.Bitches 'n' Prose (who are also hosting a giveaway that's STILL OPEN, and piece by me on my own religious background) said:
" I positively loved Cover Him with Darkness ... There's a lot of lust in this book, yes, but there's also quite a bit of action and suspense that left me wanting to read more. I finished this book in a manner of hours simply because I didn't want to put it down. The pacing is excellent, and there's hardly a dull moment. *****"
A similar reading-time was recorded in this review from the Jeep Diva:
"When I started reading Cover Him with Darkness I expected it would be something that would take me a few days to read only because I usually read in bits and pieces. Instead I finished in a few hours. Not because this was a short book but because once I started, I couldn’t stop. I was too intrigued with who/what/why, I just had to know NOW what was going to happen."
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Engraving of Corti's Lucifer "It’s a provocative book and through most of it, in true gothic fashion, I’m not certain what will be the end result. In some ways, even though I was reading a romance, I felt refreshed by that.That's the verdict of Jane from Dear Author, who really engaged with the controversial religious themes when reading, and followed through when she interviewed me.
It was sexy but not in the overt, hammer over the head way. The sex scenes all said something about her, about him, and about the plot. I found some of the prose to be quite beautiful."
Well, if I'm going to be provocative, why not go all the way? I didn't hold back during the impertinent interview at Sallyanne Rogers' blog!
And if you haven't bought the book yet (WHY NOT, EH?) here are also excerpts at Binding Addiction and Cherry Mischievous ;-)
October 31, 2014
Spooky Hallowe'en reading
I thought, since it's Hallowe'en, that I'd list some of my all-time-favourite supernatural spook tales. These are absolute classics, so if you haven't read them yet, this is a good way to catch up! Oh, and all the authors are dead, so I don't feel bad linking to Project Gutenberg or whatever.
Pictures are (mostly) of Japanese ghost art - just because I love the Edo period style and find the subjects deliciously creepy. Happy Hallowe'en!
1) The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar (Edgar Allan Poe). Come on, I had to start with a Poe, because he's really the first great horror writer whose work still stands up on its own merits today. Many of his stories centre on protagonists who are emotionally overwrought, to say the least, but this little tale is a stone-cold recounting of a scientific experiment with horrible results.
2) The Statement of Randolph Carter (H. P. Lovecraft). Perhaps my favourite horror author of all, and this is his tale that most nearly approaches a ghost story ... perhaps. His style is idiosyncratic (nay, notorious) so the best approach is not to resist but to suspend disbelief and let it sweep you along - the cumulative effect of all that hyperbole is a dizzying existential vertigo.
3) Wailing Well (M.R. James). James is THE Edwardian master of the English ghost story, conjuring a world of stuffy bachelor academics who are plunged into the most dreadful hauntings. Practically everything he wrote is a little masterpiece of the genre, but I've picked Wailing Well (I almost picked The Mezzotint, or Rats) because it starts off as a humorous boarding-school skit and then sucker-punches you with terror. This story messed me up for years.
4) The Monkey's Paw (W.W. Jacobs). If you polled every ghost-story lover in the world for their favourite, this story would feature in the top three, I reckon. Its power hinges on what you don't see, and that is the most terrifying thing of all. The Gaslight Project, btw, is a treasure-trove of old texts and I may be lost in there for months.
5) The Upper Berth (F. Marion Crawford). Again, it's the sudden juxtaposition of complacent middle-class comfort with the chaos and foulness of death that offers the glimpse into the abyss.
6) The White People (Arthur Machen). Not a ghost story, and in fact the Horror is uncategorizable and utterly unique (an extraordinary achievement within the genre!), but I couldn't leave it out because I just adore it. This story of a precocious girl-child who delves into ancient mysteries is unsettling because it only hints and suggests at the mental and physical corruption she is so gleefully undergoing. Chilling stuff. This might be the hardest to read of Machen's wonderful supernatural tales, but it's the most rewarding, I think.
7) A Woman Seldom Found (William Sansom). Short and shocking! And a rare (and successful) attempt to mix sex with scares.
8) Thurnley Abbey (Percival Landon). Well this kept me awake a few nights, I can tell you! It brings fear right into the place you want it least - the sanctuary of your own warm bed. "I remember still how my sweat-dripping pyjamas clung to me..." Also memorable for the way the protagonist doesn't maintain a stiff upper lip or faint decorously, as protagonists in ghost stories are supposed to: he wigs-out and completely loses his temper in a passion of hysterical rage.
9) The Entrance (Gerald Durrell). Yes, the zoo guy! The last hurrah, perhaps, of the ghost-story trope of cosy upper-middle-class gentlemen in peril, before it all got overtaken by urban squalor and social realism. This story managed to induce in me a decades-long nervousness of mirrors. I'm over it now. Honest.
At least by daylight.
Well, that lot should keep you going! Have a spooky and shiversome Hallowe'en!
October 29, 2014
Frog in my throat
On Monday I posted an excerpt from Too Much of Water . It's the classic Frog Prince fairy-story: girl has golden ball, girl loses golden ball in the water, frog prince promises to get golden ball back in exchange for spending the night in her bed...
Of course, I gave it an Ashbless twist or two. There's nothing sexy about frogs, so I made him a water spirit, which instantly gave it a Russian setting. (And then that turned out, upon doing some research, to fit in with the reign of Ivan the Terrible, and in fact I pinned my heroine Zorya/Anna down to his fifth wife, not that it matters to anyone but me.)
Russian folklore is incredibly specific about the kinds of spirits that hang out around people. There's a house spirit, a yard-spirit, a barn-spirit, a bathhouse-spirit (oh yes) ... and the dangerous spirit of the millpond is the Vodyanoi.
This is what they usually look like:
Vodyanoy by Ivan Bilibin, 1934That's not sexy either! Fortunately they are shapeshifters that can take human form and my vodyanoi is very much more based on these illustrations by John Bauer (1882-1918) of the Swedish fairytale Agneta and the Sea King:
The story-writing process started, as all my stories do, with a visual image: the vodyanoi rising slowly and menacingly out of the water:
First the green water bulged, and then it broke around the peaks of his dark head and his pale shoulders. He lifted his face from the pool and smiled, showing her his outstretched hands cupped about the golden orb. Then he waded out of the pool, each step revealing more of his body. She feared at first that he would be naked, but there seemed to be something heavy wrapped about his lower half. As he mounted the bank, streaming water, she saw that it was a leathern sheet, secured by a knot of thong and all slick with water and algae, hanging low from his hips and so long that it brushed the tops of his feet. With every step his left leg flashed pale through the gap in the wrapped hide.And I thought I'd kick the collection off with a story that has a very uneasy ending indeed...
Fierce Enchantments at Amazon UK (only £ 2.39 on Kindle!) : Amazon US (only $3.84!)
October 27, 2014
Blue Monday
Every Monday I post a naughty excerpt for your entertainment.
This is the start of a very special Blue Monday series! Between now (because it's out in e-format) and December (when it hits the stands as a paperback) I will be running excerpts from the ten short stories in Fierce Enchantments, my brand-new collection published by Sweetmeats.
We start with the opening fairytale Too Much of Water, which - as my foreword states - "is based on Ivan the Terrible, Russian folklore and the fairy-story The Frog Prince, told in the coldest voice I could muster."
He put his hand on her head and pulled away the sheer white veil that covered her hair. “Well, you owe me now.” His hand brushed the stiff head-dress from off her scalp; the strings of pearls that had hung from it and framed her face fell suddenly apart. Pearls pattered and bounced upon the floor like hailstones. “My mercy is limited, as I’m sure you understand.”
Zorya shivered, as he drew his finger down the tiny buttons that closed the front of her thickly embroidered robe. The loops broke and the dress split open, revealing the low-cut lawn shift beneath. “What will you do?”
“Guess.”
“Will you drown me?”
His smile was cruel. “What do you think?” He took the front of her shift in both hands and it rotted at his touch like cloth that had been immersed in a pond for years, falling apart to grey shreds and then to nothing. The great weight of her robe fell from her as the warp and weft disintegrated; Zorya took a sharp breath and could not help looking down. Only the golden threads embroidered into the fabric were left, quite uncorroded; a fragile net that lay now against her goose-fleshed skin. The Vodyanoi chuckled. Then he stooped to kiss her throat, and his long wet hair hung upon the orbs of her breasts and clung to her puckering nipples, dragging at her when he raised his head. Zorya stifled a gasp.
“Please … What good will I be to you dead?” she asked.
“Oh, I think you will look very fair, down among the pebbles and the rippling half-light.” His tongue lapped at her ear, his voice low and husky as his fingers explored her exposed breasts, playing amid the softness with the tightening halos of her pinkly-pale nipples. “Your hair will wave with the long weed, and minnows will chase around your pretty bones, and your soul will shine in the palace of my green dreams.”
Zorya was unable to stop herself arching her spine, lifting herself to his hands.
“Just think how peaceful it will be,” he murmured. “And how beautiful.”
“But,” she said, reaching down to the gap in his skirt and sliding her hand beneath the slimy leather, “while I’m alive, I can do this.” She found his member. Substantial in girth and length, it was already all but erect, only the weight of his garment keeping it from standing—and though it was cold when she first grasped it, beneath the skin a warmth burned. She ran her fingers up its rippled length, and it jerked in response.
“Ah,” said he.
Frog Prince by P J Lynch
Zorya raised her gaze to look him in the face. She read appetite there and a kind of twisted grudging fascination, and wondered if he could read the emotion in her own face. Wordlessly she sank to her knees and kissed his pale skin, the bruised flesh of his torso. She pulled at the wet thonging that held up his strange garment and it slopped to the floor in heavy folds.
What she did then not even the whores of Kiev will do. Such a thing is reserved for a husband alone, for the intimacy of the marriage bond. She took his pale length, already oozing at the slitted tip with eager moisture, into her hot mouth. The Vodyanoi groaned at that just like a real man. She used tongue and lips to explore his girth and his strange contours and then worked him deep into her throat, sucking warmth into that chill staff. It gave her satisfaction in unexpected places to suck him like this, and she felt her own sex flutter as her fingertips weighed the heavy pouch of his stones, finding water still dripping from the black ringlets of hair at his groin.
Shifting his weight forward, he leaned into her. His legs were tense, almost as hard as the iron of his pike. His hips jerked as her head rose and fell in supplication, and he pressed his cock so far to the back of her throat that she gagged and tears welled in her eyes.
I could choke here, she thought, snatching her breath in the backstroke. It wasn’t a new idea though—her husband had similarly used her. The Tsar was an older man and would sometimes take so long that she’d weep for the ache in her jaw—but that wasn’t to be the case this time. She felt the Vodyanoi’s rhythm grow fiercer, then become a stutter, and suddenly her mouth was awash with his slippery flood. Instantly—so copious was the flow—her fear of choking became a fear of drowning, and she jerked her head back with a gasp. His cock shuddered upon her tongue as the liquid, as cold and clear as mill water, overflowed her mouth and ran down over her chin.
He tasted of nothing at all: just like water.
Amazon UK (only £ 2.39 on Kindle!) : Amazon US (only $3.84!)
This is the start of a very special Blue Monday series! Between now (because it's out in e-format) and December (when it hits the stands as a paperback) I will be running excerpts from the ten short stories in Fierce Enchantments, my brand-new collection published by Sweetmeats.
We start with the opening fairytale Too Much of Water, which - as my foreword states - "is based on Ivan the Terrible, Russian folklore and the fairy-story The Frog Prince, told in the coldest voice I could muster."
He put his hand on her head and pulled away the sheer white veil that covered her hair. “Well, you owe me now.” His hand brushed the stiff head-dress from off her scalp; the strings of pearls that had hung from it and framed her face fell suddenly apart. Pearls pattered and bounced upon the floor like hailstones. “My mercy is limited, as I’m sure you understand.”
Zorya shivered, as he drew his finger down the tiny buttons that closed the front of her thickly embroidered robe. The loops broke and the dress split open, revealing the low-cut lawn shift beneath. “What will you do?”
“Guess.”
“Will you drown me?”
His smile was cruel. “What do you think?” He took the front of her shift in both hands and it rotted at his touch like cloth that had been immersed in a pond for years, falling apart to grey shreds and then to nothing. The great weight of her robe fell from her as the warp and weft disintegrated; Zorya took a sharp breath and could not help looking down. Only the golden threads embroidered into the fabric were left, quite uncorroded; a fragile net that lay now against her goose-fleshed skin. The Vodyanoi chuckled. Then he stooped to kiss her throat, and his long wet hair hung upon the orbs of her breasts and clung to her puckering nipples, dragging at her when he raised his head. Zorya stifled a gasp.
“Please … What good will I be to you dead?” she asked.
“Oh, I think you will look very fair, down among the pebbles and the rippling half-light.” His tongue lapped at her ear, his voice low and husky as his fingers explored her exposed breasts, playing amid the softness with the tightening halos of her pinkly-pale nipples. “Your hair will wave with the long weed, and minnows will chase around your pretty bones, and your soul will shine in the palace of my green dreams.”
Zorya was unable to stop herself arching her spine, lifting herself to his hands.
“Just think how peaceful it will be,” he murmured. “And how beautiful.”
“But,” she said, reaching down to the gap in his skirt and sliding her hand beneath the slimy leather, “while I’m alive, I can do this.” She found his member. Substantial in girth and length, it was already all but erect, only the weight of his garment keeping it from standing—and though it was cold when she first grasped it, beneath the skin a warmth burned. She ran her fingers up its rippled length, and it jerked in response.
“Ah,” said he.
Frog Prince by P J LynchZorya raised her gaze to look him in the face. She read appetite there and a kind of twisted grudging fascination, and wondered if he could read the emotion in her own face. Wordlessly she sank to her knees and kissed his pale skin, the bruised flesh of his torso. She pulled at the wet thonging that held up his strange garment and it slopped to the floor in heavy folds.
What she did then not even the whores of Kiev will do. Such a thing is reserved for a husband alone, for the intimacy of the marriage bond. She took his pale length, already oozing at the slitted tip with eager moisture, into her hot mouth. The Vodyanoi groaned at that just like a real man. She used tongue and lips to explore his girth and his strange contours and then worked him deep into her throat, sucking warmth into that chill staff. It gave her satisfaction in unexpected places to suck him like this, and she felt her own sex flutter as her fingertips weighed the heavy pouch of his stones, finding water still dripping from the black ringlets of hair at his groin.
Shifting his weight forward, he leaned into her. His legs were tense, almost as hard as the iron of his pike. His hips jerked as her head rose and fell in supplication, and he pressed his cock so far to the back of her throat that she gagged and tears welled in her eyes.
I could choke here, she thought, snatching her breath in the backstroke. It wasn’t a new idea though—her husband had similarly used her. The Tsar was an older man and would sometimes take so long that she’d weep for the ache in her jaw—but that wasn’t to be the case this time. She felt the Vodyanoi’s rhythm grow fiercer, then become a stutter, and suddenly her mouth was awash with his slippery flood. Instantly—so copious was the flow—her fear of choking became a fear of drowning, and she jerked her head back with a gasp. His cock shuddered upon her tongue as the liquid, as cold and clear as mill water, overflowed her mouth and ran down over her chin.
He tasted of nothing at all: just like water.
Amazon UK (only £ 2.39 on Kindle!) : Amazon US (only $3.84!)
October 26, 2014
"Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, only much better written and with much more sexiness involved"
I am so doing the Happy Dance!
That incredible quote in the title comes from a review of Cover Him with Darkness over at Clitical.
Thank you so much, guys! I can honestly say it's the review line I've been hoping for from the moment I typed "The End." It's almost exactly what I was aiming to write :-D
The review also adds:
"This is a roller coaster of a story, and one that will have you routing for the very different and strong characters that choose to fight either good or evil, and there are times when it’s hard to tell whose side anyone is on. Is the Fallen Angel really a demon? Is he a threat to mankind as the church would have everyone believe?Clitical are hosting a giveaway of the paperback too. But I'll let you into a secret and tell you that that your odds of winning a copy are much better at Live and Let Love. Hurry - only a few days left!
The story is also a visual treat thanks to Ms Ashbless’s carefully constructed words. At times the reader will find themselves in rural Yugoslavia, at others Boston, and there is even a visit to The Burning Man. I’ve always wanted to visit the Burning Man and thanks to this story I feel like I almost have. The imagery was so clear in my head as I read, and this was true for all of the scenes in the book."
There have been other blog posts in the Cleis tour too:
An excerpt over at Slave NanoA (different) excerpt at Natasja's Book BlogAnd a quickie at Jennifer Denys
