Friday 18 May 2012

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!

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