Sleep Tight: an excerpt

Today is the day that the Fairy Tale Lust anthology is officially released into the wild. So I thought I'd bring you an excerpt from my contribution, Sleep Tight. It's a simple little story: the narrator has been hired to clear a path through hugely overgrown brambles, to allow lawyers access to a long-abandoned house. It's a hot day. When he finally reaches the front door, he finds it open. Inside, where nobody should be - where nobody could be - he finds a woman sleeping...

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Stoned, I think. Or drunk. She’d have heard me otherwise. Grasping the curve of her shoulder more firmly, I give her a little shake. ‘You okay?’

She doesn’t answer. All that happens is that her breathing deepens audibly, and the lace catches on my callused hand and shreds as I lift it. The lace is actually rotten: the threads fall almost into dust. I blink stupidly. Then I reach over to take her by both shoulders and I shake her harder, lifting her an inch from her bed. She falls back upon the dark velvet coverlet with a sigh, and as I withdraw I somehow manage to snag the garment across her breast and tear it open; it offers no more resistance than cobweb. 

Fuck, I think witlessly. And I see that where the fabric has pulled and torn across the sweet pale curve of her right breast, her nipple has responded to the stimulus. As I watch, it hardens visibly, rising like a pale pink bud from its areola. I watch as my fingers steal back to brush that swelling mound and it stiffens to dimples.

My head is spinning. This is all like a dream. It can’t be real. There can’t be a young woman asleep in a house that’s been locked up for ten years. She can’t be impossible to wake. I can’t be watching my fingertips touch her - softly, so softly - so that the cushion of her breast is topped by a flushed pearl. I can’t be hearing a gentle moan in her throat.

For a moment I think she’s woken, and I withdraw my hand an inch. She arches a little as if in pursuit of my touch, her breasts rising. Then she relaxes with a ghostly whimper of loss.
    
It’s like a dream, or a story. An old, familiar story. I moisten my dry lips, knowing what I need to do. Gently I sit on the bed – it’s actually a horsehair couch and almost unyielding - and I lean forward to kiss her. She has full, provocative lips for such otherwise delicate features. They feel cool under mine.
    
But all she does is smile in her sleep, faintly.
    
A second time I bend to kiss her, and this time I cup both her breasts, feeling their soft mounds yield beneath my hot hands. She’s as cool as earth and as velvety as a flower petal and she tastes of rosewater. I tug at her nipples until they’re both stiff like beads. I hear her whimper.
   
 Then I sit back. Nothing has changed: her eyes are still shut, their dark lashes etched on her pale cheeks. I’m awash with confusion and shame and arousal. Under my jeans my cock is kicking angrily at its confines, swollen with selfish need. Her pale breasts shine through the shreds of her garment like moons rising through cloud. Without letting myself think I run a fingertip down the length of her body, tearing a furrow through the old grey lace. If it’s so fragile, a part of my mind asks, how did she put it on? - but I ignore the question. She’s just too much of a temptation. I reach the slight swell of her pubic mound and slid my fingers under and through the lace, cupping her.

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Buy at Amazon US : Pre-order from Amazon UK (out July 22nd)

There is a mini-interview with me up on the Fairy Tale Lust blog - featuring a photo of me as a demon! Plus there's a COMPETITION everyone can enter to win books and chocolate! Now that's what I call a happy ending!