If you buy my gothic novella Bound in Skin you'll find The Grief of the Bond-Maid included as a bonus story. It's more about the magical quest and less about the relationship than most of my romances, but it's still NAUGHTY, I promise ... 😈
"You came to my house of your own will, alone. Don't you think you've left it a little late to decide that I am not to be trusted?"
Two stories of magic, shape-shifting and passionate romance with historical settings.
Bound in Skin: When her father dies, Cassandra Otley travels alone to the mountainous heart of Europe, to take up his position cataloguing the library of a reclusive nobleman with a dire reputation. Cassandra has learned rather more from books than a proper young Victiorian lady ought - yet some things have to be encountered in the flesh to be believed.
The Grief of the Bond-Maid: When the Viking wizard Vegtamr begins a necromantic ritual to sieze the power of the Runes, his slave-girl Sjofn takes the terrifying decision to thwart him. She recruits two handsome Norse strangers to help her in this desperate shamanic quest across the Nine Worlds. But Thorkell and Bjarni have their own secrets...
Sjofn stamped her feet, chilled by the journey and by what she’d seen. Casting about, she looked for the spirits of her two companions, but they were nowhere near the fire. The circle of her footfalls widened to a spiral.
‘Where are you going, Sjofn?’
‘I’ll just check they’re safe,’ she muttered, walking away uphill, toward the trees, and letting Kot follow at a distance. She found them not far into the dense shadow of the firs, standing face-to-face — and in a moment the curiosity to which she’d not dared admit met with all the answers it had been looking for. Bjarni had his back to one of the trunks. Both men had loosened their clothes, and each was holding the other’s erect cock in his hand and caressing it from root to crown.
Sjofn felt the blood flare up to burn in her cheeks.
They were almost the same height, she noticed; Thorkell perhaps a couple of inches taller. It meant they met easily mouth-to-mouth, sharing breath that was coming shorter and shallower to both of them; sometimes kissing but then drawing apart, only to kiss and bite softly once more. Red and dark stubbles rasped together. Scarred lips touched with both hunger and tenderness. Their eyes were hooded, unfocused; as if there was no world beyond their embrace, as if there was nothing but the other man in all the night, and that man known by touch and taste as much as by sight. Sjofn stared. Their hands moved with familiar sureness, and with a firmness that — to her — looked punishing. Two cock-heads nudged together, two thick shafts were enfolded together by weapon-hardened fingers. There was no speech; just a mutual urging of the flesh that became increasingly fervent, knuckles blurring as they stoked the flames.
Recalling Vegtamr’s cold and perfunctory impositions upon her, something in Sjofn rose up in rebellion. Was this how it should really be — this melting confusion of skin and breath and intent?
Then Bjarni’s head thunked back against the tree’s bark, his hips shifting as his legs grew taut with strain, his eyes watching Thorkell’s face from under half-lowered lids. His throat worked but he grunted only once as his sea-spume burst between the other man fingers. His own tugging grew ragged, then suddenly imperious. Thorkell’s brow knotted into a frown and his eyes screwed shut. He jerked his head as if in immense effort, as his own seed gushed out in response and overflowed Bjarni’s grasp.
‘Yes,’ he whispered.
For a while they clung together, gasping a little. Their hands mingled the semen, lazy now, rubbing that spend into their hot and swollen flesh.
Sjofn walked away, her legs shaking and her heart pounding hard. She walked back to the fire and sat down, brooding into the darkness. When Kot came up and nuzzled under her hand she pushed him away.
‘Why are you angry?’ he asked.
‘I’m not.’
‘Oh no: of course you aren’t,’ he huffed. ‘You’re just…?’
‘Unsettled,’ she complained. ‘I know that a witch must be all things: tree and stone, bird and beast, male and female. We’re shapeshifters. But those two are warriors. It’s unmanly.’
‘From what I saw, they were both very much male,’ Kot said, with the nearest approximation a spirit might make to a smirk. ‘Didn’t you think so?’
‘I don’t want to think about it.’
‘Sjofn … You’re jealous.’
All buy-links for Bound in Skin are HERE
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