Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a sexy excerpt for your entertainment!

This last week I've been writing a witch story, so here's an excerpt from my early story, White as Any Milk, Black as Any Silk, which is about two rival medieval sorcerers battling it out for magical supremacy ... which involves each trying to get the other one to orgasm first!

I hardly had time to notice this and stretch out flat across the expanse of the bed when the door to my chamber opened and Galiena walked in. She was naked but for the ash-drift of her unbound hair and the blue filigree of tattooing on a skin white as moonlight itself. Her eyes were hard, but her mouth twisted in a smile when she saw me.

I was struck dumb and frozen with shock. I could not react even when she reached the side of my bed and looked down upon me.

"Chedzoy's dog," she sneered. Her voice was soft, nonetheless. She reached for the blanket and drew it from the bed in one motion, dropping it at her feet. I think I raised my hands in protest. And my prick moved too, stirring to life under her gaze with a wrench so sharp that it was almost painful. Her glance was not modest; it was cool and appraising, conducting as harsh an examination of my supine form as it had of my character. She raked her glance down my body from head to foot, taking in all from my startled face to my chest with its delta of black hair, down the flat stomach bisected with a line of hair that flared into the thicket of my groin - lingered there while my prick quivered and thickened visibly - and then travelled on down the stretch of my legs right to my toes. I felt self-conscious about every inch but she did not seem displeased. Her smile even relaxed a little. She laid one hand upon my burgeoning member and it leaped under her touch like a hound greeting its mistress.

I groaned out loud and stared helplessly as she slipped her hand about my shaft and caressed it from root to tip.

The smile, still not entirely kindly, suffused her face still further. Still stroking me, she sank down on the edge of the bed, laid one finger on my lips and then explored my face with her free hand; my short beard, the stubble on my cheeks, the soft skin of my throat. I could not have resisted even if she had produced a knife and cut my jugular. Her left hand now cupped and weighed my ballocks, pulled tenderly at my hairs, then slid up and down the rampant length of a prick that was harder than rock and hotter than fever. I felt like the Giant of Cerne Abbas. I dug in my heels and pushing up into her kneading grasp.

She bent over my face. Her lips brushed mine, very softly. Her hand, relentless, worked my long staff. I felt her breath mingling with my own, tasted her warm mouth. I could suddenly move - enough to pass one hand up to the back of her head and pull her against me, our tongues melting together in a warm, hungry, terrifying dance. Her hair was thick and soft under my palm. Joy stabbed through me so sharply that it hurt.

Then she pulled away, ignoring the pressure of my hand, leaving my lips bereft. Her expression was heavy-lidded and grave. She kissed my face and my jaw and my throat, began to work her way down my body with her mouth. My skin was cool so her tongue felt like fire, though it left a cold trail across my flesh. She licked my flat nipples until they hardened to hailstones and I writhed under her touch; she tugged my chest-hair with her teeth; she blazed a trail down my breastbone and belly and licked a tickling, tormenting path around my navel. My right hand was entwined in the abundance of her hair. It fell like a living fountain across my skin, cold and warm all at the same time, soft as nightfall and puissant as moonrise.

The bell in the castle tower began to toll the hour.

---

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Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a naughty excerpt for your entertainment!

This week - for reasons to be revealed later - I have princesses on my mind, so today's snippet is from the short story Captive Audience, which appeared in my first collection, Cruel Enchantment. Princess Flower of Jade has made her magical golems seize and bind Petrus, a handsome thief who unwisely broke into her bedroom. By the third day she is close to breaking him...

She grabbed his head and tilted his face up to look at her, stilling him. "Petrus," she murmured. "Do you love me, my slave?"

Eyes hooding, he pulled away from her -- though his cock stood like an obelisk; a monument to the tyranny of his lust.

She sloughed the silken robe and stood naked in front of him. "You're the first man to see me, Petrus," she told him. "Can you believe that? The first man I have ever touched. The first ever allowed to touch me."

He laughed in disbelief, so she stooped to bite his lips softly. They tasted of honey. He writhed under her, hot and afraid.

"I'm telling the truth." She posed for him, running her hands up her honey-smeared body and lifting her breasts in crushing, clawing fingers. "I am an imperial princess. I have never seen a man's body. Never had a hard, salty prick pushed between my legs. I am protected. Cosseted. Indulged. But nothing relieves my curiosity. I have made do for years with tickling and dreams and frigging. Even Animus -- " she jerked her head derisively at the caryatid "-- cannot do for me what the filthiest street-sweeper can do for the lowest slut in the bakery. He was cast to look like he has a member, but it is a fake, a blob of metal; it cannot rise to the occasion. Do you know how I feel, Petrus? I am burning with inquiry. I want to find out what a man can do. I am sick of ignorance. If I am to be Empress, then I have to know everything. And you are my instrument, Petrus." She giggled, her breasts quivering.

"I will fuck you till you scream, bitch," he promised.

"No." Jade froze, her hand in her midnight hair now, her flushed breasts titled high, her sapphire eyes aglow. "You will not fuck me, you filthy gutter-crawling thief. You common little piece of shit. You will not fuck me. You will beg me to fuck you."

And Petrus could not reply.

Jade grew straight and proud and cool once more. "Let mi show you, Petrus, how I pleasure myself. Would you like to see that? Because I can keep you chained forever, unable to touch yourself. I can make you watch me grind myself into exhaustion, if I like. Would you like to see me play with myself?"

He said nothing , but his eyes burned and his cock surged like a chained dog.

"I like to use a candle." She surveyed the  ranks of fragrant incandescent columns that filled every ledge and surface in the room. "At first it had to be a narrow, smooth taper. But now I like something a little more substantial. Like this."

She chose a waxen pillar and carried it over, still burning, to Petrus. The candle was as thick as his turgid cock and had been moulded with a pattern of flowers, such as would enhance a lady's bedchamber. Since it had only recently been lit, the head was still domed and convex, the wick rising from a little pool of molten wax.

"Would you like to watch me use this?" Jade breathed. "You must be brave." And she tilted the candle over his chest. Hot wax dribbled down on to his nipples, causing him to flinch and shudder -- but he refused to cry out. Jade purred with pleasure and brushed the congealed dribbles from his reddened skin. Then she snuffed out the flame by pressing the wick to the sweat-sheened skin over his navel.

Still he only flinched.

"Now," she whispered, smoothing the wick down into the soft wax. She rubbed the lumpy shaft against Petrus's own teasingly, but not for long. Just enough for him to feel its rigidity.

There was a single piece of furniture in the the chamber; a carved rosewood bench. She went over to it now and perched on the edge, her thighs spread so that Petrus could get a clear view. Gazing  directly at him, she rubbed the still-warm tip of the candle against her plump pink sex lips, using the unyielding object to probe between them and open herself up. The candle sank rapidly into the hot depths that awaited it. She began to draw it in and out, rubbing the thick ridges of the decorative moulding against her inner folds. The pleasure of the physical sensation was indescribably enhanced, for her, by the sight of Petrus with his whole agonised attention fixed on the inches of thick wax disappearing into, and then reappearing from, her stretched sex. She let herself whimper with excitement. She could see the sweat gleaming all over him, and his cock jerking with frustration. With her free hand she groped at her own right breast, but she could not divide her attention for long. As the stabs of pleasure grew ever more demanding within her, she raised one foot onto the bench and lay back, both hands reach down between her legs to grip the base of the shaft and pump it harder and deeeper into her hot, wet hole. Petrus made a strangled, inarticulate noise.

Then she came, her voice drowning out his.

---

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Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a wicked excerpt for your entertainment!

Since I have been banging on about dragons with regards to In Bonds of the Earth, I thought I should post an excerpt from one of my early short stories, The Dragon's Bride. It's a story I'm pretty sure most editors would not dare touch these days - certainly I was lucky to get it into Black Lace during its more daring early incarnation!

Sheldi has been offered as a maiden sacrifice to a dragon, but when the vast beast snatches her away to his lair, it turns out that he can talk and has an alternative in mind to just eating her...

---

"Oh please," she whispered, forced to admit her pleasure as her hips, without voluntary instruction, pressed her aching mound against his reptilian tongue.

"Not yet," Oromon reprimanded, pulling his whole head back into the gloomy shadows of the roofspace. Sheldi stayed kneeling, her dignity stripped from her, her mind reeling. "Go to the fireplace," he told her. "There is oil there; anoint yourself."

Sheldi rose to her feet and walked unsteadily across to the cold hearth of the hall. She found the oil, golden and nearly odourless, in a barrel. As the dragon watched she poured cupfuls over her breasts and down her legs, rubbing it in with her hands until she was slick and gleaming from shoulders to toes, pressing herself shamelessly between the legs as he rumbled his amusement.

"Now come on," he commanded at last, but she needed no telling. She burned with frustration and curiosity. She wanted to know what a dragon's pizzle looked like. Taking a cupful of the oil with her, she walked across the breadth of the hall to the red wall of Oromon's belly.

From its rigid protective sheath his erection was beginning to protrude, white as fish-skin - shockingly pallid in fact against the dark colours of his scaled body - and glistening with its own moisture . Whether it was her taste and scent or his anticipation, she had begun to arouse him, and this made her flush in turn. Sheldi reached out to touch the pale flesh, feeling it smooth and slick beneath her palm. She poured some of the oil onto its tip and began to stroke it along the length, but more flesh emerged into sight in response to her touch.

"Harder," growled the dragon thickly. "You must be firm."

She obeyed at once, pressing and massaging him with the heels of her hands, causing him to to rumble deep in his throat and twitch his barbed tail. His penis was as thick as her own thigh, and not bulbed at the end like that of a man but tapering to a point, on the underside of which was a moist slit. Sheldi was awestruck. Her oiled hands described lavish caresses down span after span of its turgid length, and the erection jumped beneath her touch.

"Climb up now," Oromon told her.

She scrambled onto the ridged sheath and wrapped her arms around his pizzle to hold on as he rolled carefully onto his back. Sheldi found herself yards above the ground, straddling the dragon's stiff prick, her knees on the hot soft leather of his belly. The hard, slippery pole under her was as long as her own body now and pointed out like a battering ram. Sheldi had a vivid image of how bizarre it must look, this enormous spear rising from between her thighs, and the thought made her wriggle upon her perch. She pushed forward with her hands and rubbed backward with her groin upon the oily surface, working up a rhythm of pressure and motion. Oromon groaned and her head buzzed from the deep tones. Her own open, needy cunt was pressed against the white flesh, hopelessly unable to encompass its girth but yawning and desperate and sliding. Waves of heat passed through her belly; without warning she began to come, frigging herself on the dragon's huge prick, exultant, gasping out her release. The pizzle bucked beneath her, lifting her from her footing - she nearly lost her balance and had to lie forwards and cling to it as the shocking vibrations of her pleasure died away.

She came back to her senses lying face down, draped around the white lance that fitted tightly between her slippery breasts. She looked up the length of it toward Oromon's head, saw the glow of his golden eyes, his teeth bared in tension. No words came from him now; he was caught on the apex of anticipation, wordless and unthinking as any beast, needing her to finish what she had begun. She smiled.
  
Then she began to work her way up the length of that prick to the tip, using her whole oiled and sweat-slick body to rub it, wrestling, using the friction of hands and feet and breasts and thighs and groin. She clung to his member as if it were her lover, grinding and mauling. She felt muscular spasms chase through the taut surface of his belly. She reached the tip and pushed her face into the slit, delving with her tongue as she hugged and writhed.

And the dragon roared and arched and spent in ecstasy, his come gushing from him all over Sheldi, exploding in her face like a bucket of water, drenching her hair and breasts. It was hot and very wet; Sheldi choked as it forced its way into her open throat and she swallowed great mouthfuls.

It tasted of burned sugar, bitter and sweet all at the same time.

---

Buy 'Cruel Enchantment' at Amazon US
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Audiobook available on Audible
and iTunes

Movie muses

Recently on Facebook I joined in posting a list of my twelve favourite movies of all time - specifically, the ones I can happily watch again and again and again.

Here's my list, in release order - along with instances where these movies have influenced my writing.

Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
I could watch the scene where the bronze giant Talos comes to life and chases everyone every day for the rest of my life and never get bored!
Okay, so I've written loads of swords-n-sandals Greek-inspired stories - but in particular The Red Thread in Dark Enchantment is just steeped in the Jason / Medea bad romance.

Time Bandits (1981)
That Agamemnon sequence with Sean Connery? Take a look at my novel Divine Torment. Scorching sun, nasty court politics, guys in short tunics, and a cynic's view of the gods.

The saddest minotaur ever :-(

Aliens (1986)
Directly inspired my SF-gangbang story The Military Mind, in Fierce Enchantments
 

Labyrinth (1986)
There are shades of Jareth the Goblin King in my creepy Dom fey The Brennnan, in Named and Shamed.

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
 
Falling Down (1993)
A masterclass in dramatic escalation, mixed motives and messing with the viewer's empathy.

Jurassic Park (1993)

The Prophecy (1995)
No escaping it, a HUGE influence on Cover Him With Darkness, and its sequels yet to come. I have to stop Uriel channeling Christopher Walken every time he appears! :-D 

Also, Satan

Evita (1996)
The scene with Antionio Banderas dancing joyously in the fountain is 45 seconds of pure sexuality for me - and an interesting contrast with Che's normal surly and angry demeanor that actually taught me something about writing alphas.

Deep Rising (1998)

The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Aragorn. All that repressed anger. SAY NO MORE.

300 (2006)

Oh good grief ... Gerard Butler,  Lena Hedey, balletic ultra-violence, heartbreaking sacrifice, ripped and sweaty warriors in tiny leather pants.... This movie was made for Ashbless the writer ;-)

This poster is on my kitchen wall

BTW, here's a list of twelve seminal movies I've NEVER ACTUALLY SEEN, and which have therefore no influence on my romantic or erotic imagination:

Grease
Dirty Dancing
Sleepless in Seattle
Gone with the Wind
When Harry met Sally
Casablanca
Love Story
The Notebook
Annie Hall 
The Fault in Our Stars
Amelie
Pretty Woman

It might explain some things.

Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a filthy excerpt for your entertainment!

Since I've been deep in some gruesome territory for the last few weeks writing a horror story, I think today I'll get it all out of my system and post an excerpt from my story "Montague's Last Ride". It appeared in my very first story collection, Cruel Enchantment, way WAY before zombie erotica was ever a Thing, and it is really horror-erotica. I even read it out loud at the World Horror Convention some years back. 

Bored, masochistic gentlewoman Cecilia has sort-of-inadvertently tempted family ancestor the rakish Lord Montague back from his grave...

---

Lord Montague stood near the foot of her bed. Cecilia forgot to breathe.

She could see that he had once been more than handsome; he wore the rags of his beauty as he wore the torn trousers and the loose, yellowed linen shirt. His hair was dark and fell to his shoulders like a gleaming shadow, his cheekbones were high, his shoulders broad over a lithe body and narrow hips. But his burial clothes did little to hide the terrible wiry thinness of his limbs, or the discoloured skin stretched tight as parchment over jutting collarbones, or the long narrow hands with their yellowed nails. and  - he had no eyes. Blackened pits gaped at her turning his face into a mask.

For a moment that could not be measured - for both breath and heartbeat seemed to have deserted Cecilia - they faced each other down the length of the bed, both perfectly motionless. Then she opened her mouth and gave a terrible choking gasp. But at that he began to walk round towards her, and the cry she might have uttered died in her throat. A clutch of cold gripped her entire body like a straitjacket and she could not stir from where she knelt. The action of walking transformed Lord Montague from a simple corpse, an object of disgust, to something much worse. The horror of it hit her like glory; he was beyond mere revulsion.

He did not move like a living man - he was too stiff, unused to the motion. His bare feet clicked on the polished floorboards. Cecilia shut her eyes briefly, but opened them when he stopped before her. Her next shuddering breath brought the sweet carrion stink of him to her nostrils. She noted without thought that beneath the stained cravat knotted about his throat, the bruises of his hanging could still be glimpsed, torn and livid.

He inclined his head towards her.

Slowly she reached out with one hand and touched his chest, just where skin and cloth met at the deep neckline of his shirt. He was cold, and his skin slightly damp to the touch., like old leather left out in the rain.  There was no rise and fall to his ribs. Cecilia whimpered deep in her throat and very gently Lord Montague raised one hand to brush and then cup her cheek. She shut her eyes, leaning into the chill of his brittle fingers. Her own hand slid down the front of his shirt, felt the tightness of the abdominal skin and the suggestion of writhing movement beneath it. A dark wave of dizziness threatened to drown her. Struggling above it like a woman fighting a rough sea, she opened her eyes wide, raised her head, and did not flinch even when his face descended upon hers and their lips met.

He stank of death. He tasted of death. Breathing deeply, she found she could not support herself any longer; all the strength seemed to have ebbed from her. She sank helpless down from her kneeling position, back against the pillows, and watched dreamily as his hands traced the outline of her breasts. One by one he undid the the little white bows down the front of her nightdress, exposing her plump breasts. His hands were so cold; her nipples leaped at once under their icy caress and became hard as pebbles. He cupped her in his skeletal grasp and bent to tug one stiff pink nipple lightly in his teeth. She moaned and writhed under the horror and the pleasure. Her hips moved in blind circles. She brushed his dark hair with one hand, felt something wriggle away from her palm, and did not care. His touch was torment.

"Oh God," she whispered as he pulled and rolled her flesh between the leathery bones of his fingers. The coldness within her was giving way to a terrible, melting heat; her sex was all liquid fire and desperate need. When he released her she began to sob.

His hand  went then to her nightdress and the fabric tore like wet paper beneath them. He bared her down the entire length of her body, seemed to contemplate the sight, and then traced that path across her skin with his fingertips, cracked nails scoring pink lines upon her. His touch reached her pubic mound, the rough hair of her secret flesh. Cecilia swallowed her last gasp, froze, and then opened her thighs to him. his fingers slipped into wetness.

Her eyes pleaded. She lifted her arms to her ancient lover.

He stooped to her. The rotted cloth of his trousers ripped under his nails. She felt the cold, hard length of his embrace, the push of his thighs parting hers, the icy length of his slippery member sliding between her hot inner lips. She wrapped her legs around his thrusting hips and groaned aloud with pleasure, clawing at his back. His flesh disintegrated under her nails and she felt the bare bones of his spine against her fingertips, but it did not slow him or give him pause in his terrible quest. The appetite that had brought him back from the grave overmastered everything. Not death, not damnation, not the collapse of his earthly flesh could hold him back.

---

Buy 'Cruel Enchantment' at Amazon US
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Audiobook available on Audible.com
and iTunes

Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a naughty excerpt for your entertainment!

Since I've been all about the statues this last couple of weeks, I've been reminded of my short story Sacrifices, which appeared in my first collection,  Cruel Enchantment. It was the first (but not the last) story that I wrote about Medusa. In this story, as a minor goddess, she is capable of going unseen by mortals when she wishes - and she likes to spy ...

One of my poor victims can be found in a grove of cypresses by the river, not far from the royal palace of their little king, and it is often visited by the womenfolk when they come to do their laundry. I have forgotten his name, or even if he ever told it to me. He is old; his upturned face has worn away a little, blunting his nose and smoothing his hair. He kneels, knees braced apart, hands splayed on his thighs. There is a bare patch of earth about him where the women of the town have walked. His phallus rises straight as a spear, white as the moon. It too has been worn by much touching and anointing. It is slender and smooth; not ugly or massive enough to frighten a virgin, but quite virile enough to bring a flush to her cheeks.

The handmaidens of the royal entourage giggled and sighed and hid their faces in modest hands at the sight of such a shocking thing. Then without exception they came forward to touch him, and to pay their respects. Some were nervous and only stroked his shoulder, some tickled his straining member teasingly. One of the older ones, greatly daring, fondled his hard pouch and kissed his unyielding lips before swaggering away, swinging her hips for the benefit of her companions.

The king's daughter stood watching these flirtations. Her lips were parted and her colour high; she was the only one of the maidens who was not laughing.  I watched her closely. She signalled to her entourage and gave them some order, and reluctantly they all retreated to the edge of the clearing and sat in little groups, their backs to the princess and the statue.

When she was sure that her companions had stopped looking over their shoulders, she leaned forward to the stone image, put her pink lips to his ear and whispered a heartfelt prayer. She wanted a gold-crowned hero, a king's son who would love her and make her his wife - and soon. The sincerity of her plea made my nape prickle. She was ready for bedding, this maiden; her words were only confirmed by the curves of her body showing through the transluscent folds of her peplos. Her eyes smouldered as she stepped back from him and bit her lower lip.

Then she knelt, as many had knelt before her, and laid one hand on his marble shaft. She stroked it cautiously, as if it might come to life under her touch - and I could almost believe it would, if stone were able to be tempted as flesh is. She circled the snake's head with one finger, blushed, and then leaned down and pressed her lips to it in a long, devout kiss. He looked whiter than the snows of Olympus against her living skin. I saw the very tip of her pink tongue lick his alabaster wand.

She sat back then and looked around her, silently daring any of her entourage to have been spying, but they were obediently turned away.  Hesitantly she took from the folds of her peplos a small jar. When she broke the wax seal I smelled a waft of expensive perfume, such as is used after bathing to anoint the skins of great queens. She wished to make an offering. I licked my dry lips. She slipped her fingers into the jar and drew out a scoop of white unguent, then very slowly applied it to the phallus before her. Its scent filled the grove; the handmaidens stirred and whispered. She trailed her fingers up and down the elegant shaft, spreading it from wrinkled balls to smooth prick-end.

As she  gained confidence she used both hands and found a firm, rhythmic grip. I watched entranced as she massaged the erection - gods, it was already so stiff and vertical that it could not have responded in any other way than to erupt in spurts of silver sand, so lifelike was his form and so intimate their pose.

The king's daughter paused, looked down at herself and shifted her posture. Something was causing her discomfort; she wriggled her creamy buttocks as if to accommodate and alien presence. Then, looking about her from beneath her lashes, cheeks burning with shame and some other, more imperative emotion, she rose to her feet, pulled her peplos up around her thighs, straddled the image's hips and - one hand on the back of his neck to balance herself - sank slowly down over his slippery stone member until it touched the doors of her secret underworld.

I had to admire her strength and determination. Unable to drop straight down the entire length of the rod, she had to brace herself on straining thighs and cling to her obdurate partner's neck as she introduced the bulb of his phallus to the wet lips of her virgin hole. Her eyes closed in concentration and her face creased with effort; she did not wish to hurt herself, yet her every instinct was to take the shaft as far as she could within her. She rocked back and forth, letting the cold stone stir the hot hearth of her fires, mingling the chrism with her own juices. Her peplos slipped from her shoulder and one rose-tipped breast slid into view; she did not notice, or care, that it was quivering shamelessly in full sight of the gods and anyone else who might look at her. She did not cry out, but her breath was ragged - and the faces of her handmaidens, who still did not dare look around, were growing pink.

---

 Buy 'Cruel Enchantment' at Amazon US

Buy 'Cruel Enchantment' at Amazon UK

Buy 'Cruel Enchantment' at Google Play

Buy 'Cruel Enchantment' at iTunes

Audiobook available on Audible.com

and iTunes

More Meat

Yay!!! I can announce, somewhat belatedly, that my story More Meat has been accepted for the anthology Who Thrilled Cock Robin, edited by that notorious morris dancer Sallyanne Rogers! 

Folk songs have always been a source of inspiration for me - see in my very first collection the story White as Any Milk: Black as Any Silk (Child Ballad 44); and in Fierce Enchantments At Usher's Well (Child Ballad 79). And of course the whole novel Red Grow the Roses is built chapter by chapter around Green Grow the Rushes Oh

So I was delighted to sub a story to this new anthology. I'm still however trying to work out why the hell I picked a song in which a greyhound gets killed...



Child Ballad 32

Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a rude excerpt for your entertainment.

Today there's an interview with me up at Justine Elyot's blog. Oh dear - she asked some questions that made me say a little more than I should have, perhaps ... 

Since I may have insulted the hell out of every Shifter fan out there, here in recompense is an excerpt from my own medieval werewolf story Renaissance. It appeared in my very first short story collection, Cruel Enchantment.

---

Annette spun in the night; luminous, beautiful. She was a goddess, the idol of countless prayers, her supplicants kneeling in turn to worship her. Her flesh was the recipient of a thousand kisses, a thousand heartfelt groans, a thousand caresses. Oblations were poured out before her and upon her, the scent of their liquid offerings perfuming the temple of her body. She shone. She received them all, turning none away.

They filled her, in every orifice. They soaked her in semen and sex-juices, pouring themselves one after another into and onto her. Her cunt was so filled with jusm that it ran down her thighs and arse in silvery streams and her pubic hair was wringing wet, twisting into little curls. Her mouth grew bruised and slack with accepting their rigid cocks. Her breasts and belly were coated with a sheen of drying semen. One man wrapped her long hair around his penis and jerked off, clotting her scalp with pale droplets.

She came, over and over. she thought she would grow numb or start to hurt, but instead waxed drunk upon pleasure and shuddered into climax after climax.

Gaspard was one of the first to mount her, crushing her buttocks flat against the rough blankets, biting at her lips and moulding her breasts in his greedy hands. He was unsubtle and unimaginative, but he was huge and he rode her as if he wanted to break her. She screamed, clawed and struck at him, took everything he had to give and sobbed in frustration when he left. The Chatelaine silenced her tears by sinking down on her face, smothering her cries. Annette had never tasted a woman before, and drank in her wetness with desperation, her tongue lost amongst formless folds of smooth flesh and wiry hair, almost choking on the sweet, musky juices that flowed as Marguerite bounched and wriggled into ecstacy. And Annette learned the taste of another dozen women before the hour was past.

When they had finished with her, the participants turned to each other for further play, rutting and writhing at the edge of her limited field of view. It seemed to Annette at one point that there were more wolves now than there had been to start with, but she was distracted by a human couple who straddled her head and fucked like dogs an inch from her face. Annette could see the thick root of the man's cock sliding in and out of the impossibly stretched hole of the woman, her juices coating his shaft, his balls hanging down like ripe fruit and brushing her own forehead and nose. She stretched her head up to lick the woman's exposed clitoris, felt her start to spasm, kissed and licked her way from that burning point up along the slithering ridge of the penis and to the wrinkled, tight pouch of the bollocks and back again. The woman climaxed loudly and the man followed in an instant, slamming into her split lips and then withdrawing to let the last jets of his come splatter down on Annette's face. The woman finished by sitting back on Annette, anointing her with a heady mixture of her and her lover's fluids. Annette drank it like wine.

As soon as she was released this time, Michel rolled her onto her front. Someone took her from behind, quick and slippery and panting, his balls slapping audibly against her pussy, and after he had finished another mounted her. Her first thought was that this man had an extraordinarily hairy chest and thighs - and then her second thought was a white streak of incredulity, but Michel held her down hard so that she couldn't wriggle round and look behind her. She buried her face in his thigh, half laughing and half sobbing, and pure shock wrenched another orgasm from her.

It was not enough. She kept climaxing, but each peak left her unsatisfied. Something knotted in her chest, a fist of frustration. If, she thought, if only she could come hard enough...

---

Amazon UK : Amazon US

Blue Monday

Now that the much-loved (by me) Eyecandy Mondays are no more, I will be using Mondays to post a naughty bit from one of my stories, each week. 

And since angels and demons are on my mind this year, I'll kick off with an excerpt from The Temptation of Saint Gregory. Medieval Christian hermit Gregory, alone in his desert cell, is suffering from the determined attentions of a succubus ... but luckily he is sustained by visits from an angel.

"Gregory," she murmured in a voice of silk. He crossed himself and crouched before the altar as if defending it with his life's blood - a martyr out of the old days of persecution. His eyes sought the floor, but he could smell her; a warm, musky scent like that of crimson flowers opening under moonlight.

She was sexuality incarnate, everything that Gregory had forsworn and denied himself. She was an ancient goddess come to earth, but a goddess of night and mystery, not some bright Olympian deity. Her skin was copper, her hair copper made molten and poured over jet, coiling in serpentine ropes across her skin so that it concealed her ripe bare breasts, but only just; enough to hide nearly everything but suggest all, the nipples threatening to peek out from behind their curtain at every moment. The full curve of her hips, the firm rounded lines of her legs - all were visible. She wore nothing but a small kilt of bronze pieces that hung at her groin and clashed like the ringing of tiny cymbals at the gate to her sacred temple; that and the gold snakes that spiralled up her forearms and lower legs, their cunningly moulded coils clasping her limbs and striving ever-inward to her core.

She stepped across the room, moving like a dancer or a lioness. Her breasts swayed and bobbed under their own weight, hinting at dark nipples under the clinging fell of her hair. She trailed one hand across the top of the table, the better to emphasise the curves of her arm and her long fingers tipped with carnelian nails. She was a goddess; she was a harlot. Gregory felt his throat dry up and the blood surge to his loins. It was six years since he had lain upon a woman's flesh; almost four since he had seen a female face at all. The demoness clearly knew her business.

"Get out of here," he said in a low growl. "You  will not get what you want from me." He had tried exorcising her in the name of Christ upon her first visit, but she had merely smiled enigmatically and ignored the command.

"What I want? It is what you want that concerns me. I know exactly what that is, Gregory. And I am here to give you what you need," she added, looking at his lap.

The folds of his rough robe covered any betraying sign; she could not possibly see what struggled beneath, he thought.

"A thousand nights alone, Gregory, and I can smell your frustration on the wind from here to Alexandria. Your lying awake in the dark, unable to sleep, unable to pray, terrified to touch the serpent flesh in your own bed ... The hardness of the pallet beneath you, the serpent trapped between flesh and stone ... The orphaned memories of slave-girls and palace bedrooms that return to haunt you ... Your seed spilt while you are sleeping. Do you think all these things are secret?"

She rocked her hips. The little skirt of metal pieces clinked and shifted, revealing the flame-coloured fleece beneath. In two steps she was standing over him where he knelt.  Gregory shut his eyes as she took his head in her hands and pressed it against her raised thigh, so that his cheek and lips brushed her satiny skin. He did not struggle, but began the recite the Lord's Prayer rapidly under his breath, his lips tickling her soft flesh. The smell of her - perfume and musk, the rich hot scent of wanton woman - slipped down his throat.

"Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil..."

She released his head and he raised his face to heaven, eyes still closed, features tight with concentration. She bent over him, her hair brushing his face first and then his shoulders. She bent lower and the ripe globes of her breasts bumped softly against his brow, and trailed down over cheek and nose. Gregory stopped speaking. Her breasts - soft, firm, alive with sensation - were big enough to encompass the whole of his face. His nose had slipped into the warm cleft between them. he could not breathe without inhaling the sweet smell of her skin.

She drew back enough to drag the weight of each rounded breast from side to side across his face, and the stiff point of each puckered nipple across his mouth.  "Am I not what you desire above all else?" she murmured.

The Temptation of Saint Gregory appears in my very first short story collection, Cruel Enchantment, from way back in 2000. It was an early attempt to write a tale with a protagonist whose point of view I deeply disagreed with. I was going to draw out at length the deeper themes of self-deception and attitudes to carnality, but to be honest I think it all boils down to "Don't judge a book by its cover." 
:-D
Poor old Gregory. He gets everything that's coming to him ...

Amazon UK : Amazon US

Le Petit Mort

I've just subbed a paranormal erotic story - it's a vampire tale, sort of - that verges on horror. Because it was intended for an erotica collection I worked quite hard to keep it sexy rather than scary. Well, too scary, anyway. Let's hope the editor sees it that way!

So I've been thinking about Erotica v. Horror. Two separate genres, though clearly there is a potential overlap as there is between all forms of genre fiction. I actually started out my career writing horror, then switched to erotica (thus, incidentally, working my way down the literary pecking order. Some big name horror writers do write smut, or have done in the past. But they like to keep that a secret).

The two genres actually have a lot in common, I believe:

• The plot structure is often similar for both genres. They both work really well (best, many might say) as short stories. In both Horror and Erotica the ideal is to end at the dramatic (or literal) climax, with no cooling off period. In longer fiction the aim is to create an ascending ladder of excitement in the reader's mind, based on set-piece scenes interspersed with tension-ratcheting lulls.

• The author above all aims to evoke a visceral reaction - whether fear or arousal. The best horror or erotica stories bypass the rational brain and go straight to the body. They make the heart race (in both cases) and they make the skin crawl or the genitals swell. These are primaeval responses designed to cope with crisis real-life stimuli, and to be able to evoke these reactions by the written word alone takes a surprising amount of skill. You are wresting control from the reader - and that thrill is exactly what fans like.

• Because this is a stimulus-response reaction, even the most keen readers in both genres can become jaded. This may lead authors toward a dangerous trap of making the stimulus stronger (MORE BLOOD AND GUTS! / BIGGER ORGIES! HUGE STRAP-ONS!), but this is not a game the writer can win in the long run. Far better, in my opinion, to sneak up on the reader with something they hadn't anticipated, and reveal to them the depths of their vulnerability. If you can convince readers of the devastating allure of a hole in a woollen stocking (like in The Piano) or the terror inherent in a closed door (like in The Monkey's Paw), then you are doing it right as a writer.

• Both genres are subversive. They aim to convince you to suspend your faith in the laws of society, in the normal tropes of interaction between people, and to accept - temporarily - that there might be other, often more powerful and dangerous, possibilities. They both say "What if the world didn't work the way people tell you it does?" Both genres draw their power from overturning social consensus and restrictions.

If you are interested in reading examples of my erotica that I'd class as horror too, try:
Lord Montague's Last Ride in Cruel Enchantment
Cold Hands, Warm Heart in Dark Enchantment
At Usher's Well in Fierce Enchantments
and Red Grow the Roses.

COVER REVEAL! - Fierce Enchantments

This is it! The official cover for the third published collection of my erotic short stories, due out in Autumn from Sweetmeats Press!

I love it - dark, sexy, fantastical, and uncompromising. Perfect for the contents!

Here's Sweetmeats' "coming in 2014" catalogue :-) I keep going back and smiling at this page. I've got a story included in their forthcoming Drenched anthology too, by the way.

As to the title ... I wanted, of course, a reference to my previous two collections, Cruel Enchantment and Dark Enchantment. It's my signature dish, as it were. We went temporarily up to These Fierce Enchantments because we thought it'd be less confusing for prospective purchasers - but Sweetmeats' new American distributor (we have a US distributor! Yay!) asked for it to go back down to the simpler version. Publishing is a complex business, with many people having their say... and now you know.
:-)

I am so excited about this!

Blurred Lines

My newest (waiting for publication) collection of short stories, Wild Enchantments, has undergone a name-change. It's also had the table-of-contents changed, because I dropped one story and substituted another.

I wrote The Sorcerer's Apprentice because I fancied doing something from the point of view of character I didn't like. I wanted to write a narrator possessed of a swathe of attitudes that I do not personally share, just for the fun and the challenge of it. I wanted to make him horrible, and at the end of the story I would turn the tables on him and smirk as he went down in flames. This is really common in the horror genre ... not so much in erotica. I've done it before (say, The Temptation of St Gregory in my first collection), but this time I wanted to push it bit further.

Possibly too far.

I think The Sorcerer's Apprentice is a hot, dirty story. But I felt less than 100% proud of it on, for want of a better phrase, an ethical level. Sure, it's supposed to be ironic. But I don't want to turn into Robin "I've always respected women" Thicke.

So I took it out and wrote another story which fits the same themes (Male-dominant BDSM) without being quite so negative.

Maybe I'm getting old. *sigh*

Anyway, here's an excerpt to show y'all how it opens. To be clear (and these aren't spoilers): the narrator is not meant to sympathetic and the girl in the cage is a sex demon in disguise, not a human being at all, and is completely happy with everything done to her. This story will probably not see the light unless someone puts out a call for revenge-fantasy erotica or something.

*****

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Mr Deverick kept a woman in the guest suite. In a cage.

Heh. I felt a bit weird about that, the first time I saw her. The mirrored wall slid back and behind it was a dark, windowless room. As Deverick stepped over the threshold the lights came on, and there were the bars beyond him, running floor-to-ceiling. The room was featureless except for the cage, and the cage was empty except for the girl. She was kneeling on the bare floor in a kowtowing position, her face to the hardwood inlay, her long blonde hair fallen over her hands. I could see a lot of bare skin, the colour of clover honey.
The room smelled faintly of pussy.

I thought: Fuck, is this a test? He hadn’t warned me. And I’m pretty sure some of the bugshit-crazy stuff he gets me to do is just to test me out.

This made me nervous, and I couldn’t help making a snorting noise. Like a laugh, only not really, because this wasn’t funny or anything. It was a bit creepy.

But the noise made her raise her head and sit back, and then it became creepy and hot—both at the same time. She was wearing a little pair of baby-pink panties and a T-shirt in the same colour, except that the shirt had been hacked off way too short, covering her nipples but showing a whole load of under-boob. She had big tits, see. And the bit about covering her nips wasn’t even true either, because the room was cold and I could see them poking through the thin cloth like light switches. Those trashy clothes made her look more fuckable than if she’d been naked, I swear. And as her eyes lit on Deverick in front of her, her expression went from sad and pouty to a hopeful little smile, all eager to please.

My cock did 0-60 in less time than it took my hand to reach up and pull nervously at my tie.

‘What’s on your mind, Dylan?’ my employer asked me. ‘Something funny?’

I cleared my throat, knowing that if he glanced in the vicinity of my crotch he wouldn’t have to ask. That girl was just prime T&A. Big tits, teeny little waist, wide hips flaring out below. Hair long and blonde and sleek, streaked with ashy highlights. Big wide don’t-hurt-me-daddy eyes that looked green even from this distance. And a mouth like …

I told my inner art critic to shut the hell up. ‘I was just wondering if they’re real, Mr Deverick,’ I said, trying to sound all cool, and totally failing. ‘Her tits, like.’

He lifted an eyebrow. Flicking a finger at the girl he spoke a few words in a language I didn’t recognise, and though he didn’t raise his voice it was clearly an instruction of some sort. Moving with a dancer’s grace she rose to her feet and came forward to the bars, allowing me to add Incredible Long Legs to my inventory of her assets.

The steel struts were placed far enough apart to allow an arm through—or, it turned out, a breast. She pulled up her T-shirt (WH-ZANGG!! went my heart, or at least my cock) and thrust herself forward so that a bar was nestled right in the valley of her cleavage, and her award-winning golden globes stuck through on either side. Her nipples stared at me.

‘Have a feel,’ said Deverick with a polite gesture.

Say what you like about my boss—and people do say some nasty shit about him, though only when they think he’s out of earshot—Michael Deverick knows a thing or two about perks for loyal employees. Some days, when he has so many women scrabbling all over him that even he doesn’t want them all, he lobs one to me. Today’s particular perks were … perky, to the max. In fact it was hard to believe that tits so majestic hadn’t been sculpted by some surgeon: heavy but without the slightest hint of droop, perfectly balanced, with provocative rosy nipples.

I moved in close. The girl looked up at me through her long lashes, either bashful or plain old nervous, and glanced at Deverick as if for reassurance. At the periphery of my vision I saw him nod.

She smelled like sex in a rose garden.

I cupped those boobies with a feeling of genuine awe. In this cool room, she positively radiated heat. I squeezed slowly, questing—in vain—for the over-firm bulge of silicon implants. I pressed them together round the bar and thumbed her nipples and rubbed her skin. I pulled and twisted and bounced those fabulous beach-balls, and to my surprise I felt her respond: a flush crept up her throat and her eyes darkened as her pupils dilated. Then she moaned, very softly: perhaps too softly for Mr Deverick to hear. It was like a secret between us.

My cock was like a fucking totem pole by this point. You could have held a war dance around it.

‘What do you think?’ he asked me. ‘Are they real, then?’ I could hear the smile in his voice.

‘Oh yeah.’ I gave her nips another tug and saw her eyelids flutter. I knew I should stop, having done the task requested of me, but my hands had a will of their own and my hard-on was voting with them. ‘They’re real alright. Is she Russian? I mean, I know you’ve got a line in luxury imports…’

He laughed softly. ‘No, not Russian.’

‘That language?’

‘Enochian,’ he said, and as I turned to look at him he winked.

Big Bad Wolf

Marjorie Miller: Queen of the Night (1931)

Today I'm moonlighting (heh!) over at Jennifer Denys' blog where she is asking various authors about the lure of the werewolf theme. I haven't actually written all that much on the subject (and I now consider it too well-trampled a path to go anywhere near) but one of my very first short stories was Renaissance, which was a historical fantasy all about a troubled young medieval woman sent on pilgrimage, to pray for a cure for her undiagnosed affliction.

Here's an excerpt. Annette has reached the isolated shrine of St Veronique, where she meets a peasant girl...

---

"What are you praying for then, lady?' Claudette enquired teasingly.

'I'm ill,' Annette said with caution. 'I'm praying for healing.'

Claudette bit her lip, her eyes huge with secrets. 'Oh, I'm sure you'll find it,' she said. 'St Veronique is very kind.'

Annette gave a token smile, wondering if the Chatelaine Marguerite's aristocratic hands had ever cupped Claudette's big brown breasts. She did not doubt that Gaspard had hauled her into the hayloft and parted those rounded thighs, many times. How could he resist, after all? She looked away down the valley, her mental picture of Gaspard rooting blindly up Claudette's wanton passage kindling a warmth in her that her husband had never evoked in three years of marriage.  Her voice sounded strange as she asked, 'What does the picture on the altar mean?'

'Hmm? That is the saint herself,' Claudette said, rolling a black olive over her lower lip and biting it neatly. 'Have you not heard the legend? When she fled from the wicked lord who wanted to ravish her, the wolves of the hills came to her assistance and fed her.'

'No. I hadn't heard that.'

'So you don't know about the Miracle of the Wolves?' asked Claudette, her eyes glinting. 'No? Sometimes all the wolves come down off the hills and into the chapel to pray to St Veronique. Nobody knows when they will choose to come. It might be tonight. It might be when you are here.'

Annette stared at her and then at the chapel. There was no door to the doorway. 'You are fooling with me!' she said quickly.

Claudette pursed her lips wickedly. 'Are you afraid of the wolves, pilgrim?' she asked, then burst into a throaty chuckle. 'Don't worry, lady -  they are good Christian beasts, come to pray for their souls. They wouldn't eat a pilgrim; not a pure, pious lady like yourself.' She wriggled with delight at the thought, and Annette shook her head in disbelief.

''If I were you,' Claudette confided, getting up on her knees and leaning toward Annette so that her breath was warm on her cheek, 'I would not worry about anything while I was in the chapel, so long as I knew my heart was pure.' As she finished those words she stretched forward just enough to allow her red lips to brush Annette's cheek, and then silently drew those lips in a feathery stroke over to her earlobe, which she took gently between her teeth.

Annette held very still.

---

Kindle US : Kindle UK
Also available in paperback.

You can also read all about my Victorian gothic werewolf erotic romance novella Bound in Skin (including a naughty excerpt) in this archive post at Lust Bites.

Prick up your ears

 

Protect your ears, people ... there's smut out there!  

Last week I was asked to provide a couple of snippets from Red Grow the Roses for recording by a voice actor. I'll let you know if they ever go up on Youtube as intended ... although to be frank there is nothing more embarrassing for me, as an author, than listening to someone else read my work out loud. I don't know why that is, but I just grit my teeth and cringe!

In the meantime, I recently discovered that there are several audio recordings already available from Audible that include my wicked words:

Cruel Enchantment  - my first short story collection
(sample listener review: "I was distubed by the images this author painted. Therapy might help.")

Alison's Wonderland (ed. Alison Tyler) - includes Gold, On Snow

Frenzy (ed. Alison Tyler) - includes Pirate Treasure 

Sweet Love (ed. Violet Blue) - includes Jump or Fall?

Best Women's Erotica 2011 (ed. Violet Blue) - includes Abigail's Ice Cream

The Handsome Prince (ed. Neil Plakcy) - includes Reckless

Happy listening!

iSmut!

Hey - did you know, I'm available on iTunes? To be precise, if you go to www.apple.com/itunes/ and type in Cruel Enchantment, the whole unabridged collection of filthy short stories comes up as an audiobook download in the right hand column. For £8.95 you can hear every one of my crazed words read out (it lasts almost 9 hours!) by Gracie Lockhart who has, as a friend said, "a delicious RP accent." I do hope she had throat sweets to hand!

I only found this out because Richard sent me the most fabulous e-mail:

I’ve just listened to Cruel Enchantment on Itunes audiobooks – it was just dazzlingly brilliant. I loved every story and was completely spellbound. This is by far the best erotic fiction I have come across. The narrator was excellent. It’s rare to find intelligent erotic literature that is expertly descriptive and evokes the imagination through appropriate and often surprising similes. Your stories are a journey, not just an obvious and predictable destination.

Cruel Enchantment is also available as an audio download for $7.49 from Audible


Huge thanks to Richard, and I'm only sorry there aren't more of my works available in this medium. Though I have to tell you guys that I can't really recommend listening to erotica whilst, say, driving ... Well, let's just say - it wouldn't improve my driving standards.
;-)

Tough Love

I want to riff off a post of Danielle's today - not just because he paid me a huge compliment, but because it really got me thinking. Danielle was talking about his fear of romance (fictional and otherwise) and one of the things he said - Danielle's blogging style always makes me feel like I've walked into a cloud of butterflies! - was:


i recognise the things what others think is romantic..but i m not always sure what people conect to the word...for me romantic is going and hunt a huge animal and lay it in front of my sweethearts door..there..look..i killed it just for you..its still warm!

And anyway, my personal reaction to that thing that epitomises romance for him is that it's something that I wouldn't find remotely romantic. (Not just because I'm a vegetarian!) I've never really got the gift-giving and receiving part of romance, which I know most people do get. I mean, I like gifts as much as the next person, but even a hugely expensive pressie like a diamond doesn't strike me as more romantic than a kiss. Hey, I'm a cheap date.

Nor am I impressed by carefully arranged surprise trysts in perfect locations with violinists hiding around the corner ready to spring out as he suddenly drops to his knees to propose. (Public marriage proposals on TV actually strike me as uber-manipulative and creepy.) The Big Gesture does not touch my heart.

Yet I do write erotic romance. And what defines that romance for me?

Pain.

It's a theme that runs through practically every erotic romance story I write: true love is characterised by a willingness to suffer and die for the beloved. Blame my Christian upbringing, I guess. If you're someone in one of my straight erotica stories, it might be a bit scary but you can be usually be guaranteed to have a fine old time. But, oh boy, you don't want to be a lead in my romantic fiction, because there you will be in for a whole world of pain.

My very first romantic story, White as any Milk: Black as any Silk features a wizard who falls for a hostile witch, and she puts him through hell:

Then the wave recedes at last, with a terrible hissing undertow that threatens to drag me into utter blackness. I am left broken in its wake. I can't see. My eyes are full of blood.

In Divine Torment Veraine gets captured, tied up, kicked in the nuts, bitten, threatened with castration and torture, left to die of thirst on a clifftop. Oh, and he loses his job ...
In Burning Bright Veraine is smashed over the head so hard it induces months of hallucinations, put through a horrible fever, starved, assaulted by ghosts, captured and tied up, raped (but only in the first draft before it got censored...) then made to fight for his life against a superhuman opponent. Myrna is enslaved, pierced, tattooed all over, nearly drowned, and lives in constant danger of being slaughtered out of hand.
In Wildwood Ash surrenders to his worst enemy and has his blood drained for a magical ritual.
In The House of Dust the broken-hearted Ishara has to open a gate into the Land of the Dead to retrieve her lover: she's there subjected to all sorts of rough sex and humiliation.
In Bear Skin Hazel is punished for betraying Arailt by being exiled, then having to run a gauntlet of sexual challenges to get him back.
In Bound in Skin Cassandra is left penniless in central Europe, has to beg for shelter and a job from a shit-scary nobleman, then gets shot in the stomach and finally transformed into a werewolf.
In Heart of Flame the two romantic leads get variously drowned, fatally wounded (yep), tied up and threatened, nearly eaten by ghouls, betrayed, beaten up and buried in an avalanche.

Life is tough for a romantic hero or heroine of mine. And what's more none of them gets the person they really want till the HEA right at the end of the book!

Oh yeah ... did I mention the sexual frustration theme too? Very romantic.
Okay, I might be a bit worried now.

Which is all to say that at the moment I'm currently writing an erotic romance novella. I'm having a wonderful time: it is safe to say that my characters are not. Starvation, exhaustion, a shipwreck, icy rivers, torn feet, attempted rape, imprisonment, torture, massive sexual self-denial and heartbreak - See how they suffer for my pleasure!

Now that's love.

Violet is my favourite colour

Squeeee!!
Check out what Violet Blue has to say about me on her blog today!  With a great big picture!

Me? I'm nearly speechless. I just keep making squeaky noises.