Showing posts with label The Ingenue. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Ingenue. Show all posts

Monday, 9 February 2015

Blue Monday

Every Monday I post a naughty excerpt for your entertainment!

"Janine and Dan Savage sitting in a tree, K. I. S. S. ... er no, maybe not..."

Well, given the fabby fabby podcast release of The Ingénue this week gone, what else shall I excerpt for Blue Monday but this ... and if you like it you can listen to the whole story, read by the délicieuse Rose Caraway, for free here




“Take a look.” When she did not obey, he added, “Are you afraid? How can you be afraid of me, Zephine?”

How could she be? Her pride prickled. He was bound, spread-eagled - helpless. He could not be more vulnerable, nor less of a threat to her. Why then, was she feeling like this? 


Clumsily, she pulled aside the flaps of silk. They clung to him a little, as if his skin was damp, and she felt against her hand the impatient nudge of what lay beneath. Then the cloth was gone, and she could see.


He was nothing like a statue from the Louvre. He was flushed dark, hairy - and erect. His phallus stood out at an impossible angle, to what seemed like a monstrous size. It looked like a weapon.
    

“Now touch it.” They was no mistaking the authority in his voice. And Zephine had run dry of protest or questions--of any words at all. She looked once into his eyes and then obeyed, running her fingers down its shaft. It kicked against her as if in irritation and she jumped.
    

“Take it in your hand. How does it feel?”
   

 Her fingers barely circled its girth. “Hot,” she whispered. “Hard.” There was a peculiar satisfaction to its bulk and strength too, though she couldn’t put that into words.
    

“Do you like it?” His voice was a murmur now. “It likes you, Zephine - very much.”
    

She didn’t know if she liked it. She just knew that this made her feel as if nothing else in her life had ever mattered, in comparison. “My aunt will be so angry,” she said, with wonder. To her surprise a surge ran through the flesh in her grasp and it grew even harder.
     

“Yes.” His eyes were darker now, the pupils dilated. “She will beat me.”
     

Zephine’s own eyes, which had been strangely heavy, shot open. “Surely not!”
    

“She will. With a riding crop, or a garden cane, or a leather strap.”
   

“She can’t do that to you!” Doubt crept in then: “Can she?”
    

“She’s done it before, Zephine. She left me covered in broken welts, all across my chest and my thighs and my derrière.”
   

 “What for?” In her shock, Zephine could not help thinking of the flagellation of Christ. In the church at her school the Stations of the Cross were depicted with wax models of startling realism. One in particular--the whipped and bloody body of Christ, kneeling in his agony--always drew her, horrified and fascinated and full of pity. She feared it, but she’d spent hours gazing at it.   She wondered if Piotr would resemble that, if he were to be horse-whipped.  
    

“For her pleasure.”
    

She swallowed. “I will let you go.” Yet her hand did not desert its post gripping his thick meat. He shook his head, just a twitch.
    

“I don’t want you to, Zephine.”
    

“But it will hurt!”
    

“Very much so.”
   

 “Aren’t you frightened?”
   

 “I’m sick with fear.” His lip crooked in a thin smile. “You’re my only comfort, ma chérie. Move your hand, Zephine; move it up and down my cock.” 
    

 “I...I don’t think I should.”
    

“But you must. And if you do, I will tell you what else happens at these parties your aunt throws.”
    

Zephine bit her lip, but her resistance was only momentary. She wanted to know; indeed she felt she had to, now. Her hand began to slide up his shaft, stroking the hot flesh.
    

“Good girl. A little firmer. Oh...yes, that’s right. ” He cleared his throat and blinked, his eyes starting to lose focus. “Tonight...Oh, there’ll be so many people here tonight, Zephine, after you are tucked safe in your virgin bed. People from the highest and most respectable echelons of society; and from the lowest, though the poor must be very beautiful to be invited inside these walls--or prodigiously talented. In the twilight the torches will be lit, musicians will play, and all the food and drink you might ever want will be laid out upon the tables. Our salvers will be the bare bodies of young women and men, their nipples garnished with cream and gold leaf, their open thighs displaying the most delectable of banquets. A bath will be filled with champagne, and in it will lie a young beauty, offering her cup for anyone to drink from. From under the trees, in the dark, will come soft cries of pleasure and sharper gasps of pain.
    

“But do not worry Zephine: on a night such as this the pain is only part of the pleasure. The world is turned upside down in this place and the ancient iron-clad laws of civilisation are dissolved. Men are used as women; women rule as men. The rich bow before the poor, and the great beg indulgences of the lowly. Tonight, were you to mingle with the guests, you might see a bishop on his hands and knees, a bridle about his head and a bit in his mouth, being ridden by a fair whore clad only in spurs, while another jade plunges a huge horsetail plug between his willing cheeks. You might see a general of the army spread-eagled upon the lawn, and a queue of matrons taking it in turn to straddle him and lift their skirts so that they might relieve themselves upon his face. You might, if you were inclined, seek me out here among the roses.”
    

Beneath her hot, tightly corseted dress Zephine was melting, her body dissolving into trembling boneless weakness, her long drawers clinging to her moist skin and growing sodden with the flow of her sex. She felt almost as if she would faint, and it was all she could do to cling to the great solid stake in her hand. “And what ...what will they be doing to you?” she asked.
    

“They will do anything they like."



Prefer to read the print version?
All the Kiss Me Quick podcasts are available as free iTunes downloads
Best Bondage Erotica 2011 at Amazon US : Amazon UK 

Wednesday, 4 February 2015

Podcastaway - it's The Ingenue


Woohoo! It looks like my new album cover, doesn't it?  (Prog-rock, I hope, lol)

Well, that's not quite what it is - but it is the cover pic for the very first Kiss Me Quick podcast of 2015, which includes the whole of my story The Ingenue read out in Rose Caraway's gorgeous sexy voice :-)  She even triumphantly masters the French pronunciation which I would dread to tackle! You can hear it all here, for free! (Just click on the POD button)

Rose is also the editor of The Sexy Librarian's Big Book of Erotica (which contains another of my stories, Three Legs in the Evening), and is the most lovely and incredibly hard-working person. You can get all 11 hours of that book beautifully narrated on Audible (but listen to the podcast first and you'll find out how to do it at bargain rates).
You can access all the KMQ podcasts and their erotic stories here.

The Ingenue is a BDSM story about the corruption of innocence. A man is tied to a cross in the garden of a French villa, but when young Zephine goes to investigate, she finds herself wildly out of her depth. The Ingenue first appeared in Best Bondage Erotica 2011

Friday, 1 July 2011

Reading out loud



So I'm about to drive off down south in preparation for doing a public reading at Sh! in London tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it - I'm nervous, but I haven't got to the rabbit-in-the-headlights-panic stage ... yet.

When I first started writing stories back in 19mumble90, it was with a new group of friends who wrote stories to read out loud to each other. That group is still going, though now I've switched from horror to erotica I admit I don't contribute so often! (They would faint if I tried. Seriously.)

I don't have a great voice, but I don't mind reading out loud ... much. I just concentrate on trying to do the story justice. Don't gabble. Don't drone.  I've filled my copy of the book with little pencil notes, tweaking the text to make it more intelligible to a listening audience. Removing plot details that don't add anything in an out-of-context excerpt. Adding the odd "he said" and "she said" to unattributed dialogue. I owe it to the story.

Which in this case is my Best Bondage Erotica 2011 tale: The Ingénue. Corruption of the innocent! Men in bonds!

Where and When? Here

And  as for how nervous we're all going to be - Justine Elyot (who's going to be reading there too) says it much better than me in her post The Fear :-)


Friday, 21 January 2011

Simply the Best


Yay! - Best Women's Erotica 2011 and Best Bondage Erotica 2011 are both now available east of the Atlantic as well as in the USA. So benighted Brits can check out my sweet threesome story Abigail's Ice Cream, and my fin-de-siecle corruption story The Ingénue (excerpts after the links).

An interesting review of BWE2011 has recently appeared on Amazon US. Rebecca says:

Even though some of these stories did not turn me on, they were all beautifully written, without exception. I have yet to read a collection by editor Violet Blue that fails to impress me in terms of the storytelling and the sex, but this one didn't have much romance. I don't expect to find all that many sweetheart stories in such a wide-ranging collection, but I was disappointed by the utter lack of softness (with one exception - I adored "Abigail's Ice Cream" by Janine Ashbless).

So there you go - I am officially the soppiest, most romantic thing on the block!
Who'd have thunk it?
;-)

Best Women's Erotica 2011 at Amazon UK : Amazon US
Best Bondage Erotica 2011 at Amazon UK : Amazon US

To celebrate being adored (thank you Rebecca!), I have put two new pages of notes about these stories up on my website (Go to the main page and scroll down to the list of short stories). I've also written my master's thesis fairly extensive notes on my Viking story The Grief of the Bond-Maid, for those interested in the background to the story.

Wednesday, 8 December 2010

The Ingénue - excerpt


Best Bondage Erotica 2011 is on sale now!

Edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel, the anthology contains 20 sizzling stories of restraint and BDSM. My contribution is a story called The Ingénue. It's a bit of an oddball for this collection - for a start it's a historical, set in decadent fin-de-siècle France. And the dynamic between the two protagonists is not straightforward. There's a man, who's tied up and helpless on a cross in a rich woman's garden. There's a young woman who is shocked and appalled and excited by this discovery, and who finds in herself an undreamed-of appetite for inflicting pain. But to describe him as submissive and her as dominant...? No, not quite.

Anyway, here's an excerpt:


“Come closer,” he repeated, lowering his voice. “Let me see my inquisitor.”
    

She shuffled forward from cover, reluctantly. His dark half-smile was discomforting. Everything about him made her feel wrong within herself, as if her skin no longer fit.
    

“That’s better.” He did not bother to hide his scrutiny of her, from the pale blue hair ribbon to the matching toes of her satin boots – and all the territory in between. Judging her, no doubt, she thought. Such a well dressed young lady as she was must rouse the particular derision of a political radical. She found herself annoyed at the thought: annoyed that he should be finding her so amusing. Everyone always looked down upon her: the orphaned niece; the naive girl; the pretty, inconsequential young woman. But he had no right, she thought; not tied up as he was, so pathetically helpless, so undignified in his déshabillé. What had he to feel superior about, with his bare feet planted in the rose bed among crumbs of horse-manure?
    

She drew up her chin and met his gaze.
    

“You’re pretty,” he observed. “Small, yet you look strong. Your lovers must be fighting one another for your favor.”
   

Blood flared in her cheeks but she set her jaw. “What are you suggesting, monsieur? I have no suitors yet; I have been most gently raised.”
    

“You must be cruel to them, Zephine.”
    

“What?” she said, forgetting her manners in her surprise.
    

“Cruel. So that they will love you. Spurn them; mock them; hurt them. They will worship you.”
    

“That’s a terrible thing to say!”
    

“It is human nature.” The man drew his upper lip through his teeth. “We love those that beat and break us. Men love the lamia, women love the brute. When you fall in love, little Zephine, it will be with a man who ignores you most of the time, whose eyes turn constantly to other women, and who, when he makes carnal use of you, will do so roughly and with savage appetite, not sparing your tender body as he takes animal possession of it.”
    

His crude words sent a wave of heat through her skin. “You’re quite wrong! I am determined that I will marry a kindly man.”
    

“I don’t doubt it. Yet afterwards you will fall in love with one who will take your tranquil heart and cast it in the flames of Hell. As I said, it is human nature.”
    

“We yearn to be unhappy, you think?” she scoffed.
   

“If you like. Rather, we yearn to be mastered.”
 

Her voice was a little unsteady now. “That’s a strange thing for an anarchist to say, isn’t it? I thought your kind claimed that we all strive to be free?”
    

“Am I an anarchist, then?”
    

“Are you not? You’ve just damned all of civilisation.”
    

 A slight lowering of his eyelids admitted she had a point. “I am a man,” he answered, “who recognises the dark beast within himself. And lest it make me the lickspittle slave of a society whose rotten soul I see only too clearly...I let the beast feed here.”
   

“Here?”
    

“In this garden. At the pleasure of Madame de Villiers.”
    

Zephine could not answer. She stood with her lower lip thrust out, glaring.
    

“Come closer,” he said for the third time, his voice dropping again, soft and dark as soot. “Touch me.”
   

“Why?”
    

“Because you want to.”
    

The anger twisted in her entrails once more. “You presume a great deal.”
   

“Have you ever touched a man’s bare flesh before?” There was a glitter in his eye. “I thought not. So naturally you wish to know what it is like.”
    

She wanted to slap him for his rudeness.
    

“After all,” he added, jerking his wrists to demonstrate his constraint; “it’s not as if I can hurt you.”



Buy at Amazon US : Pre-order at Amazon UK (out January)
And it gets a great review over at Erotica Revealed!

Wednesday, 1 December 2010

Hey Santa!


Well! Violet Blue has published her annual list of the Year's Top Hot Sex Books, and in the fiction anthology list I've got stories in the first three books she recommends!

In Fairy Tale Lust you can find Sleep Tight. Amazon US : Amazon UK : Kindle
In Best Women's Erotica 2011 you can find Abigail's Ice Cream. Amazon US : Amazon UK : Kindle
In Best Bondage Erotica 2011 you can find The Ingénue . Amazon US : Amazon UK

(And I'll tell you all about The Ingénue next week!)



In the meantime, Coffee Time Romance has given Cast the Cards a 4-cups rating ("outstanding great read") and says of the book ( which includes my story The Grief of the Bond-Maid): "This book is like a night of amazing love making. The seduction is slow and sweet. The climax is toe-curling. Then, you slide into the after-glow. Emotions run the gamut, and the reader is left emotionally spent but wholly satisfied."


Phew!  Thank you CTR!

Amazon US : Amazon UK : Kindle

Monday, 22 November 2010

Eyecandy Monday - and Cleis Press special offer!


Have you noticed how many books Cleis Press have been announcing lately? They've upped their production to 48 titles for 2011. More books! More lovely dirty stories!

To celebrate this they've announced a 20% discount on all books bought through their Cleis website and Viva Editions (non-smut). Click here for details - you need to enter a code when ordering. This offer is good through 31st December, which means you can buy pressies for friends - or spend your Xmas money from Auntie Edna in a way she would not approve of, heh heh.

Buying direct from the publisher, btw, means a lot more money going to them than if you buy through, say, Amazon instead. And more money for Cleis means more erotica anthologies in future for me to sub to!
:-)

And just in case you are some sort of wealthy Ashbless completist, my stories appear in the following Cleis collections:

"I" is for Indecent
Playing With Fire: taboo erotica
Frenzy: 60 stories of sudden sex
Best Women's Erotica 2009
Sweet Love: erotic fantasies for couples
Fairy Tale Lust
Best Women's Erotica 2011
Best Bondage Erotica 2011
Carnal Machines: steampunk erotica  (pre-order only)

Wednesday, 8 September 2010

Best Bondage Erotica lineup


Rachel Kramer Bussel has released details of the official author lineup for Best Bondage Erotica 2011. In which I am included ...(?) among whom I am to be found...(?) Um ... Oh look: there I am!


The Long Way Home  - Elizabeth Coldwell
His Little Apprentice - Jacqueline Applebee
Foreign Exchange - Evan Mora
The Ingénue  - Janine Ashbless
Reasoning - Tenille Brown
Subdue - Dusty Horn
Relative Anonymity - Emerald
Closeted - Emily Bingham
Vegas Treat - Rachel Kramer Bussel
The Cartographer - Angela Caperton
The Apiary  - Megan Butcher
Wired - Lisabet Sarai
How the Little Mermaid Got Her Tail Back - Andrea Dale
The Lady or the Tiger - Bill Kte’pi
Sealed for Freshness - Jennifer Peters
Stocks and Bonds - Rita Winchester
Helen Lay Bound - Suzanne V. Slate
The Rainmaker - Elizabeth Daniels
Do You See What I Feel? - Teresa Noelle Roberts
Truss Issues - Lux Zakari

You can read the full foreword - "The Joy of Restraint" here

Pre-order from Amazon US : Pre-order from Amazon UK

Friday, 25 June 2010

Sale! - The Ingénue


They're coming thick and fast - just the way I like 'em! Short story sales, that is  ;-)

I've just signed the contract for my short story The Ingénue, which is to appear in Best Bondage Erotica 2011, edited by cupcake goddess Rachel Kramer Bussel and out in December this year. Yip yip yipeee!!

I don't write huge amounts of bondage erotica, as I've confessed before - it's not that I don't like it, it's just I find the vocabulary difficult. But I saw this panel in an Oglaf strip:


And I was, um .... inspired.

I know Emerald is also between the covers with me in this anthology, but I don't know the rest of the lineup yet. Anyone?