I’m thrilled to be here at K.D. Grace’s blog, helping her to celebrate Halloween and the relaunch of her Lakeland Witches trilogy.
When I was a child, I enjoyed All Hallow’s Eve more for the costumes than the candy. I loved becoming someone else – a gypsy, a gargoyle, a princess, a pirate – leaving my shy, awkward, bookish self behind for a few marvelous hours of night-time adventure. In our family, we scorned store-bought attire, sometimes working on our Halloween disguises for weeks before the big night. And on November 1st, as my brother and I tallied our sweet haul, we were already discussing who we’d be next year.
As I reached adulthood, Halloween for me became associated with sex. Okay, I’ll admit that during my twenties, sex colored pretty much everything in my life, but Halloween always seemed a particularly auspicious time for erotic encounters. The costume possibilities expanded to include slinky vamps and cat-women, scantily-attired genies and voluptuous she-demons. Halloween parties partook of some of the abandon of a Carnival masked ball. Leaving your mundane self behind for the night, you could also relinquish your inhibitions. Magic was afoot, kindling shadowy desire and promising fiery consummation.
What’s the essence of All Hallow’s Eve? It’s the night when darkness comes out to play. Each of us has a dark side, no matter how much we might like to pretend we don’t. Halloween calls to that side of our nature, luring it from the depths where we keep it hidden, tempting us to release it and revel in the chaos it might bring.
We externalize the darkness as ghouls and werewolves, specters and vampires. We find them fascinating, thrilling, not recognizing them as mirrors of our own lusts – for violence, for power, for pleasure. On Halloween, though, we’re moved to welcome darkness, at least for a time, to stop acting as though we’re one hundred percent civilized – to let our inner beasts howl.
I’ve played with darkness a bit in my erotic fiction. In my M/M paranormal Necessary Madness, my sorcerer-villain tries to steal my hero’s talent for prescience in a ritual of sex and blood, where he’ll excise his victim’s heart just as they both climax. In Rendezvous, the ghost of a nineteen fifties Lothario haunts the run-down motel room where he used to bring his conquests. Invisible and insubstantial, he still manages to teach the young woman stranded there about the pleasures to be found in pain. In The Eyes of Bast (coming from Totally Bound next March), my heroine Shana finds her own powers trying to save her cat-shifter lover from the vindictive witch who cursed him.
Although my M/M/F vampire ménage Fire in the Blood is set in sunny Jamaica, it has a shadowy tone that seems appropriate for Halloween. One reviewer called it “edgy, dark and smoking hot”. Anyway, I thought I’d share a bit from that tale to whet your appetite for the Halloween revels that will soon be here.
Oh, and if you leave a comment with your email, I’ll enter you in a drawing for a copy of the book.
In the heart of darkness, eternal passion burns.
Maddy and Troy hope that a care-free vacation in tropical Jamaica will re-ignite the passion in their five-year relationship. On a scenic mountain trail, Maddy’s horse bolts and carries her deep into the jungle. Injured and lost, she is saved by a seductive giant of a man whose mere presence kindles unbearable lust. By the time she understands his dark nature, it is far to late for her to escape.
Bitter and alone, Etienne de Rémorcy haunts the forest around the ruined plantation of Fin d’Espoir. He has sworn to never again taste human blood, but when slender, raven-haired Madeleine begs him to take her, he cannot resist.
Troy is hugely relieved when Maddy makes her way back to their hotel after her ordeal in the mountains, but he finds her greatly changed—fiercely passionate in bed, restless and disturbed at other times. The tall, elegant stranger he meets on the beach hold the key to her transformation, and soon has seduced Troy as well. Even Etienne’s most potent magic can’t extinguish the fire in Troy’s and Madeleine’s blood.
Watch the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzVRy4LTQe0
Excerpt
Etienne dragged his belt from the loops of his dungarees. “Give me your hands,” he ordered. Madeleine held them out, palms turned upward in supplication. “I plan to bind you to ensure that you cannot escape me once we have begun. I will give you one more chance. Do you still want this?”
Maddy shivered, imagining herself restrained on the rough bed, powerless and at his mercy. Lust and fear warred in her body. Liquid dripped from her pussy, soaking the satiny robe bunched under her buttocks. She and Troy had played at bondage, silk scarves and velvet blindfolds. This was real.
She sought Etienne’s eyes, seeking reassurance. Fire flickered in the depths of those dark pools. His face was a beautiful mask that offered no solace. He gripped the belt in both hands, twisting as if testing it. “Et bien, Madeleine?”
She wanted it. She could not pretend otherwise. She wanted him, on any terms, wanted whatever he would do to her. Nothing mattered, not his terrifying strength, not his grim warnings, not the feeble image of Troy awaiting her back at the hotel. She reached for the bonds he offered. “Take me,” she whispered.
In an instant, he had slipped the end of the belt through the buckle and caught her wrists in the resulting loop. She felt the leather begin to bite into her skin as he pulled her arms above her head and a further tightness as he secured the other end to the metal bedstead. She tugged at the restraints, verifying the stark fact she could not, in fact, work herself free. Terror and arousal swept through her in alternating waves.
Her heart slammed against ribs. Her nipples and her clit throbbed with her pulse. Without being told, she spread her damp thighs. An oceany scent rose from her exposed pussy.
He shrugged off his vest and pushed his trousers down over his hips. Naked, he was even more formidable, his ebony thighs corded with muscle, his sculpted chest and flat belly gleaming like black marble. His erect cock sprang from the wiry thicket of his groin, on the same gigantic scale as the rest of his massive body.
The shaft looked thick as her wrist. Veins meandered along its endless dark length like creepers on a tree branch. The cap was dusky pink, taut, polished flesh that glistened with moisture.
Maddy moaned at the mere thought of that cock invading her. Saliva gathered in her mouth. “Etienne…” she pleaded, splaying her legs wider in lewd invitation. “Please…”
“Little harlot! Have you no shame?” Even as he chided her, however, the black giant climbed back onto the bed, positioning himself between her thighs.
She expected ferocity, his power unleashed. She imagined him forcing that awe-inspiring cock deep into her body. Instead, he bent his head and flicked his tongue along the sensitive skin on the inside of her knee.
“Ah…” Pleasure rippled through her, converging on her pussy. He licked again, moving upward, painting her with his cool saliva. She squirmed under his mouth, wanting to feel those thick lips on her aching clit. Gradually, he came closer to her centre, yet still he lingered on her thighs, kissing, nibbling, lapping up the juices that spilled from her hungry, empty sex. She arched up, pushing her pelvis towards him. Without effort, without removing his mouth, he forced her back onto the bed.
He rasped his tongue over the gash she’d received during her wild ride through the forest. Pain sliced into her cocoon of pleasure. The rum had probably disinfected the cut, but her bath had prevented it from clotting. His touch made it throb. When he licked again, the pain intensified.
“Ow! What are you doing?” Etienne ignored her. It felt as though he was probing the wound with his tongue, opening it further. “Wait! Don’t…”
Without warning, there was a hand dabbling in the moist folds at the entrance to her sex. A bolt of pleasure seared her. A finger rocked her clit back and forth, making her shudder and moan. Her lust flooded back, washing away the pain. She felt an odd pulling sensation at the wound site, and her nipples responded, as though he were sucking on those sensitive nubs instead of her thigh. He pushed several fingers deep into her pussy. She clenched around him. Delight rippled out to her extremities as the pull of his mouth intensified. Now she felt the suction in her clit as well as her breasts. Her whole body trembled, balanced on the edge of release.
Etienne plunged what felt like his whole hand into her depths. Something sharp tore into the flesh of her thigh. Her climax hit her, as sudden as a breaking storm, thundering through her, scattering every thought in its wake.
Before she could recover, he was on top of her, his cock nudging against her still-quaking opening, his face inches from hers. His eyes glowed with a fierce, wild light. His lips stretched wide in a grimace of triumph, exposing the pointed teeth of an animal. Blood smeared those lips—her blood. Its rusty scent mingled with his aura of roses. She shuddered, even as her pussy wept tears of new desire.
“Do you still want me, cherie?” he growled. “Now that you know what I am?” He ground his rock-hard erection against the softness at her centre, striking sparks that burned away her fear.
“Yes,” she had time to whisper, before he fastened his gore-stained lips on hers.
About Lisabet
Lisabet Sarai became addicted to words at an early age. She began reading when she was four. She wrote her first story at five years old and her first poem at seven. Since then, she has written plays, tutorials, scholarly articles, marketing brochures, software specifications, self-help books, press releases, a five-hundred page dissertation, and lots of erotica and erotic romance – more than fifty single author titles, plus dozens of short stories in various erotic anthologies, including the Lambda winner Where the Girls Are and the IPPIE Best Erotic Book of 2011, Carnal Machines. Her gay scifi erotic romance Quarantine won a Rainbow Awards 2012 Honorable Mention.
Lisabet has more degrees than anyone would ever need, from prestigious educational institutions who would no doubt be deeply embarrassed by her chosen genre. She has traveled widely and currently lives in Southeast Asia with her indulgent husband and two exceptional felines, where she pursues an alternative career that is completely unrelated to her creative writing.
For more information about Lisabet and her writing, visit her website (http://www.lisabetsarai.com) or her blog Beyond Romance (http://lisabetsarai.blogspot.com). To get updates on her releases, contests and other news, join Lisabet’s List (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lisabets_list).
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GIVEAWAY
It’s almost a joke – the common association between authors and cats. I haven’t done a systematic survey, but I would estimate that at least 75% of the authors I hosts as blog guests mention feline companions in their bios. I’m no exception. I currently have two cats who traveled with us from the United States to southeast Asia ten years ago, and who have settled in quite comfortably.
Deluxe “boxed set” ebook, now available from Books We Love!
Special limited time offer! Get a free copy of my BDSM short story A Case of You, just by admitting you want it. Go here for details:
Destiny hides in the tempest’s heart