Every Monday I post a sexy excerpt for your entertainment, and we kick off the year with one from blog favourite Samantha McLeod, who has a new short story collection out - Legends and Lovers:
A passionate one night stand sparks a struggle between two worlds. A young Irish priest meets his match in the spirited woman he’s sent to tame. And the Norse trickster Loki finds more than he bargained for when he partners with Thor to retrieve the Thunderer’s lost hammer.
Sensual and poetic, this spellbinding collection of erotic stories from Samantha Mac-Leod transports you to a world where gods walk among mortals, the long-dead return to embrace the living, and the fires of passion burn bright enough to transform even the immortals.
(This excerpt is from The New Priest of Dunquin)
It was an especially beautiful day in early June, the Wednesday when everything changed. I’d rushed through my chores, digging potatoes from the field with frantic energy and sweeping out the henhouse like a dervish. When I arrived on the steps of the church, nearly breathless but pausing to smooth my hair, I found John had packed a lunch for us to share.
“I thought we could walk the cliffs,” he said. “Seems a shame to be indoors to-day.”
So we walked, although we might as well have been walking in a circle around the church for all I noticed. The cliffs of the Dingle Penninsula, those famous black, jagged rocks topped with emerald that draw tourists by the thousands, were no more than a passing distraction from the lines and curves of John’s face.
We stopped for lunch in a little hollow, tucked away from the wind and out of sight. After sharing his homemade bread and a chunk of hard farmhouse cheese, John lay back in the grass to stare at the sky. After a moment’s consideration, I joined him, placing my head in the crook of his arm. It seemed only natural.
“What’s it like, then?” I asked.
The warmth of the early summer sun rolled over both of us as the breakers crashed against the rocks far below.
“Hmmmm?”
“Heaven. God. All that. Surely you know?”
He laughed softly, his beautiful laugh that filled the hollow places in my heart and made me feel that this was, without doubt, the most perfect of all possible worlds.
His hand moved idly through my hair as he answered, and my skin prickled with heat. “They say it’s eternal bliss, in heaven,” he answered. “There’s no time, no sense of urgency or regret. It’s just...joy.”
“That’s how I feel with you,” I said.
Looking back, it’s impossible to say who moved first. Perhaps he leaned to me; perhaps I stretched to reach him. I would prefer to think we both moved, our lips meeting for the first time to fill the space between us, sparked into motion by the unspoken, urgent needs of both our bodies.
Either way, he kissed me, and my heart opened like a flower greeting the distant sun. Heat flashed through me as the world shrank, reduced to the single point in space where our lips met. I closed my eyes, melting against his chest.
John pulled back. “I’m—I’m sorry,” he stammered.
I did not give him the chance to finish his sentence. I wrapped my hand around his neck, pulling his lips back to mine. He came willingly. His mouth opened for me, allowing my tongue to explore him. My hands sought his body, pushing his sweater over his chest, running my fingers along the warm, hard lines of his abdomen, the body that had filled my dreams for months.
I hesitated at his waistband, my fingers trembling. I’d followed the delicate rasp of hair against my palm, leading down, as our lips pressed against each other. Finally, half stunned by my own desperate boldness, I let my fingers dip below his pants to where his hair thickened and grow coarser.
He moaned into my mouth, and I became shameless. I wanted to feel all of him, the length of his body against mine. I pushed myself up from the grass and wrapped my legs around his waist, my skirts pooling over his thighs. I could feel him, the hard, hot length of him under his pants, and my body burned in response, pressing closer to him, heat from the core of me soaking into his pants, coating him. His breath came in hot gasps against my lips, and my hips churned into his, feeling him pulse in response, the fire inside me wanting to get closer and closer. Oh, he felt so good beneath my thighs, my John—
Then the pleasure crested, and I thought I was dying. Red heat exploded across my vision as every muscle in my body tensed, every nerve fired. I cried out, my mind swept away. Beneath me, John’s hard body shuddered and he gasped as his hands gripped my thighs hard enough to leave bruises.
I collapsed on top of his chest, panting into the hollow of his neck. He smelled so good, clean and warm, with a lingering hint of thick, holy incense. But his neck tensed against my kisses, and he sat up, pushing me off.
“Shannon…” he began, his voice trembling.
He stood, and I saw the dark, wet patch on the front of his pants. I blushed, thinking it had all come from me. John shook his head, ran his fingers through the waves of his sand-colored hair, and turned away from me. He began walking in a rushed sort of stumble toward the huddled stone buildings of Dunquin, almost as though he were drunk.
“John!” I called.
He did not stop. I came to my feet, my legs trembling, my heart throbbing in my chest. He did not look back, my John.
And so I ran to him.
“John,” I panted, closing the distance between us.
I grabbed his arm, forcing him to spin and meet my eyes. His face churned with emotions I could scarcely recognize, and his dark blue eyes burned. His lips trembled, but no words escaped.
“John, it was heaven,” I whispered. “It was just like heaven.”
Buy Legends and Lovers at:
Amazon US
Amazon UK
Everywhere else
Born and raised in Colorado, Samantha MacLeod has lived in every time zone in the US, and London. She has a bachelor’s degree from Colby College and an M.A. from the University of Chicago; yes, the U. of C. really is where fun comes to die.
Samantha lives with her husband and two small children in the woods of southern Maine. When she’s not shoveling snow or writing steamy sex scenes, Samantha can be found teaching college composition and philosophy to undergraduates who have no idea she leads a double life as an erotica author.
Samantha’s Blog
Tumblr
Amazon Author Page
BookBub
Well, that little excerpt was pretty hot. I see that she has a set of her Loki books at a very nice price for sale. I'm going to put this in my TBR list.
ReplyDeleteAnything by Samantha MacLeod is well worth reading - go for it!
ReplyDelete