Friday Smut: Divine Torment

by Janine Ashbless


Welcome, gentle readers, to the Friday Smut slot!

On Monday this week we discussed fervent religions. On Wednesday we considered sun, sand and sex in exotic places. Fortuitously, I can continue both themes today with my 2002 novel Divine Torment, which is back in print this month (October 16th in the US). It’s actually the prequel to Burning Bright, so if you’ve read

that, then this is your chance to find out how my two heroes got themselves into such a mess – and why Veraine deals so badly with alcohol, and why Myrna is, er, "differently sane" to everyone else in the world.

If you haven’t read Burning Bright, then please let me introduce you to the original:

Divine Torment is "Like Gladiator, set in a mythical realm," according to the publishers blurb. Yeah: I like that. It’s swords ‘n’ sandals ‘n’ sex, with a big helping of scary religion on top. If you like Spartans you’ll appreciate my Irolian army men – though I wrote this long before "300" came out. Divine Torment is also a heartfelt romance set across a bitter racial divide.

The Plot: In the ancient desert temple-city of Mulhanabin, the Malia Shai awaits her destiny. She is the divine priestess of the terrifying Goddess of the Cruel Earth and millions across the Eternal Empire worship her, believing her to be the goddess Malia incarnate. But Mulhanabin is under threat from the invading Horse-eater horde that approaches across the desert, so the overlords of the Empire send a force of soldiers to occupy the city and hold it against the invaders. The leader of the occupying hosts is the rugged and brooding General Veraine. He and his men are of a different ethnic group to the inhabitants of the sacred city and he has no respect for their ‘primitive’ gods, but against his better judgement he becomes obsessed with the Malia Shai. In turn, though she has been raised to be an empty and completely passionless vessel of divine power, she becomes fascinated with this handsome stranger. Intimate contact between them is forbidden by every law of their two hostile peoples. But she is in the end the only thing he wants – and he will risk everything to have her.

Comment on this post and you’ll be entered into a draw to WIN A COPY of Divine Torment! (Don’t forget to identify yourself somehow in your Comment.) Winner(s) will be announced on Tuesday.

BONUS DRAW: I have a spare copy of the Japanese Version of Divine Torment, so if you can read Japanese – or you know someone who does and would like a smutty present – identify yourself and win!

By the way, the new cover characters look NOTHING like my heroes. Tomorrow I’m posting my Veraine Lookalike picture and he’ll be up all week in the righthand sidebar here on Lust Bites.

Here, then is an excerpt. The scene set-up: Our two protagonists have been circling each other for weeks. Veraine has been the target of a botched assassination attempt and is confined to bed with a shoulder wound, feeling sore and grouchy.

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He woke suddenly and saw the Malia Shai was sitting on the edge of the bed next to him.

‘I didn’t mean to startle you,’ she said.

She sat so close he might have swept his good arm around her. He could smell the incense on her clothes. His stomach tightened with dismay. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I came to bring you this salve.’ She showed him a small pot with a wax seal. ‘It’s made from a desert plant; I thought your doctors might not have any.’ She paused. Her hair was wrapped away from sight again, her eyes calm. He might almost have imagined that fire in them as she had knelt over him on the Citadel wall. ‘Next time your wound is dressed, get them to put this on too.’

‘Were there guards on the door?’ he demanded, but he kept his voice low.

‘Yes. Two. They’re protecting you now.’

‘Oh shit.’

'They let me in. They must think I’m an unlikely assassin.’

There was a hint of humour in her voice, but he shook his head, not listening, and told her, ‘Get out of here.’

She put the pot down on the floor. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘What’s wrong? You’re here alone with me in my bedroom. And you walked past two witnesses to get here!’

‘So?’

He hissed in exasperation. ‘Well, I don’t know what it means among your people when a woman goes into a man’s chamber, but to an Irolian that only has one interpretation.’

She blinked. ‘What does it matter what your guards think?’

Somewhere deep inside he was disappointed. He might have been hoping for a blush or a smile or a flash of alarm – anything that acknowledge the possibility of sexual contact between them. It made him brutal. ‘What about the high priest?’ he asked. ‘How long will it take for him to hear? Get out of this room!’

She wasn’t impressed. ‘Don’t be foolish. You’re hurt. And I’m the Malia Shai – I am beyond carnal lusts.’

If he hadn’t been so angry and frustrated he might have shrugged off the unintended slight. Instead he growled, ‘Well, that must be very nice for you, priestess. Congratulations. Unfortunately I’m made of weaker flesh and for my comfort you really should leave.’

‘What do you mean?’

Her breath was sweet; warm and close enough to drive him mad. He fixed her gaze with his own. The last shreds of discretion were falling from him like leaves scorched by the desert sun.

‘Do you really want to know? I’ll explain exactly what I mean, Malia Shai, if you like.’ He kept his voice low, but he spoke with punishing precision. ‘I mean that your presence here now is giving me a most painful hard-on. I mean that I can’t think of you without wanting you, and can’t go a single hour without thinking of you. I look at your lips and I want to see them wrapped around my prick. I want your breasts in my hands and I want your nipples between my teeth. I want to feel you move beneath me as I fuck you from one end of the night to the other. I want to cover you like a stallion covers a mare. I want to hear the noises you make as you come beneath me.’

He tried to swallow, but his throat was dry. ‘When you walk toward me I’m obsessed with your mouth and your breasts; when you walk away I’m overwhelmed with wanting your arse. The turn of your head makes me sweat. I want you to sit on my face and drown me. I want to fill every hole you have. I want to fill you so full of my spend that it runs out of you in rivers, and I want to make you scream and weep and beg me never to stop.

‘Does that clear up any misunderstanding between us?’ he concluded bitterly.

She stared, her face as blank as her goddess mask. ‘That’s … nonsense,’ she whispered.

He grabbed her hand and forced his fingers between hers, spreading it. ‘You don’t believe me?’ He laid her small cool palm on the centre of his chest, feeling his heartbeat hammer up into her bones. He was feverish. He dragged her hand slowly down his bare skin, over the hard breastbone, over the burning slab of his belly, through the first flecks of hair beneath his navel. The pain of his wound was throbbing through his veins and every pulse was making his cock jump and thicken. She wasn’t fighting him, but he could feel the tension in her arm. He forced her hand over the top of his belt, through the folds of linen, round the wall of his upraised thigh and finally, firmly, pressed it onto the thick curve of his cock. Hidden as it was under the tatters of his tunic, it was undeniably erect and struggling for freedom. It heaved under her hand.

All the time he stared into her eyes, searching for any response in those brown depths. She stared back with the fathomless unreadable regard of the desert.

‘Believe me now?’

Then he released her, letting his hand rest heavy on hers. She did not pull away. He felt her fingers beneath his on his prick, and he could have cried out for the torment and the pleasure of that touch.

And finally something broke in her gaze and he watched her face twist with emotion. She withdrew her hand and, standing, backed off across his chamber.

He watched her go in despair. He had unburdened himself of the words imprisoned within him, words he knew he should never have spoken. As the door smacked to he was left with an emptiness in his chest and the feeling that he had broken irrevocably something precious.

Cursing himself, he loosened his clothing and freed his cock, unable to resist its demands any more than he had been able to hold back the acid torrent of words. His balls were clenched with their burden. The hot skin under his grip felt like satin sliding over the wood-hard length beneath. Two firm strokes and his scrotum was knotting like a fist. Pain stabbed his shoulder. He closed his eyes, picturing the Malia Shai’s full lips, the soft ripe curve of them descending toward his swollen prick, the hint of moisture within, the little pink tip of her tongue preparing to lap at him – and with that the cauldron seething within him boiled over, the contents spouting and frothing like scalded cream over his fingers, his thigh, his twitching belly. He plunged headlong into the agony and the delight with a moan of despair.

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xxx
Janine

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