Works in Progress

Deannna Ashford

Our smuts slots have brought you, dear readers, excerpts from our latest novels just before or around about the dates of their release and judging by your comments you appear to like these tasty tit-bits. However we writers don’t want to think that we laze around in our beds half the morning drinking coffee and eating chocolates, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Although we must admit that on occasions we ladies do indulge ourselves a little. Nevertheless, we write because that is what we really want to do. As the writers among you will know writing is a compulsion that takes one over at times.

We therefore decided that you might enjoy occasional little peeps at our work in progress and consequently this new post was born. From now on at fairly regular intervals we will be whetting your appetites with short excerpts from our work in progress - whether it be our next book, a novella or a short story.

To start this off this month’s offering consists of excerpts from the work in progress of Janine Ashbless and Portia Da Costa and the two extracts couldn’t be more different.

We start off with The House of Dust, by Janine, which is going to appear along with novellas by Portia and Olivia in Black Lace’s “Magic& Desire" collection in 2008.

Setting the scene - This story is set in ancient Mesapotamia. The main character is Ishara, priestess of the love/sex/fertility goddess Inanna and ritual wife of the king. When the story starts the king is dying - poisoned by his brother. Ishara eventually descends into the Land of the Dead to try to bring her lover back. The excerpt here is a flashback to happier times.

There on the balcony Tamuz found me in prayer, my hands raised to the heavens. Softly he dismissed the company and came up behind me. I faltered in my words as he slipped his hands about my upper body, cupping my breasts as he pressed up against me.

‘Don’t stop,’ he murmured, kissing my neck. Such informality was permitted during the time of the Great Marriage, so I carried on praying while he rolled my nipples to points of exquisite frustration between his fingers and bit softly at my ears, tugging at the clusters of golden balls strung from my pierced lobes. I made it to the last verse in a stumbling rush, my spine arched so as to press my shoulders and my buttocks back against the hard wall of his body. I could feel little bolts of lightning chasing across my breasts and down to the wellspring of my sex, as if great Enlil himself were playing with my nipples. When Tamuz laid a firm hand upon my navel and slid it down to cup my pubic mound I gasped out loud. I wanted so much for him to set me face down over that low wall and root me there high above the flat roofs of Uruk, now touched with faintest pink from the approaching sunrise, so that I might encompass the whole of my realm with my eyes as he filled me, so that Utu the shining sun might blind me with his glory as I was made incandescent from behind and within. But Tamuz turned me instead and sat me upon the edge of the wall, lifting my skirts over my knees to reveal my smooth thighs and sliding his hands up their inner surfaces, all the way to the mound of my delta. I put my arms around his neck and drew him closer, my legs encompassing his. Gently, with the tips of his fingers, he stroked my purse until he broke the fragile seal of flesh and let the moisture within seep out.

‘Daughter of the Moon,’ he whispered, his eyes shining; ‘we’ve hardly met and yet I have wounded you sorely.’

‘You did,’ I breathed. ‘The pain is unbearable. My whole body cries out.’

‘Forgive me. I thought you might be healed by now.’ He circled the pomegranate-pip of my clitoris expertly, making me shudder. I dug my nails into his skin.

‘This is a wound that can’t be healed. You hurt me too deeply and now I must live with it forever.’

‘Can I make reparation?’

‘You might, if you are brave.’

His fingers were slippery now to the root, moving slickly in and upon my sex, stirring me beyond endurance. ‘And how shall I do that?’

‘You must staunch the wound,’ I said, parting the layers of his long kilt to reveal the length of his prick, the skin already taut and glistening; ‘with the weapon that made it.’ I took hold, and Tamuz’s expression made it clear I had his undivided attention. ‘It’s an ancient magic,’ I confided, my eyes wide and serious. ‘Only by wounding me again can you ease me of my pain.’

‘Then,’ he said, his voice hoarse, ‘I see you’re skilled in the magical art.’

My hand was working his copper to harder bronze. ‘Oh yes, my King.’

‘And it is my duty to help you.’ With infinite care, both of us breathing shallow and quick, he nudged into me, sheathing perhaps two-thirds of his length. The wall held me at just the right height for him.

‘Don’t let me fall,’ I whispered.

His arm tightened about my waist. ‘Never.’

* * *

The second excerpt is from Gothic Heat with is a sequel to Portia Da Costa’s popular novel Gothic Blue.

Setting the scene - Possessed by the discarnate spirit of the evil sorceress, Isidora, Paula Beckett has come to remote Sedgewick Priory with her lover Rafe Hathaway, in search of her friends, Belinda and Jonathan, who may be able to help find a solution to her predicament.

‘I thought this was a priory?’ Rafe rubbed rain out of his eyes, and peered at the structure, ‘It looks more like a baronial castle than a religious institution… Love the kitsch Gothic style…’ He pointed towards the dark, elaborate building that seemed to sit and sneer at them from amongst seven circles of hellishly overgrown formal garden. ‘Shit, it’s even got a Rapunzel tower!’

‘It doesn’t look as if it wants visitors, does it?’ Paula followed Rafe’s pointing fingertip to the peculiar tower, perched atop one corner of the rambling, black windowed priory. She’d never seen a less welcoming place in her life, and a tumbling festering structure that might have been a chapel, set to one side, didn’t help matters. Flickers from the lightning seemed to suggest blue wraiths drifting in and out of its broken down stones.

‘It doesn’t look as if anyone’s been here in centuries.’ Rafe blinked more water out of his eyes as it began to teem even more ferociously from the sky, ‘Are you sure your friends are here?’

‘No, not exactly sure… But I can’t think of anywhere else… They’ve disappeared from their workplace and their flat… and I can’t raise them on their mobiles…’

Indeed, it was just a hunch that Belinda and Jonathan had come back here. That, and an inkling she suspected she was getting from Isidora.

Within the chill from her sodden clothing, a deeper, older chill gripped her innards, making her sway.

Is this all a trick, you bitch? she demanded silently of her ‘guest’. Is there something here you want?

A lightning bolt crashed somewhere right over her head, and she shrieked with fear, tripping as eldritch laughter filled her head.

But instead of hitting the sharp, wet gravel, Paula experienced a moment of total disorientation as she seemed to fly up into the air. Grabbing wildly for purchase, she realised that Rafe had whisked her up off her feet and was holding her cradled in his arms, leather jacket and all.

‘I’m all right! Put me down!’ She wriggled, but his gentle hold didn’t yield.

‘No you’re not. You’ve hardly been sleeping and you’re worn out.’ Adjusting his grip on her, Rafe started off down the path that led to the house, carrying her effortlessly, ‘We need to get in there…’ He nodded towards the dark, unprepossessing building, with its glaring blank windows that glittered blackly. ‘Even if it is a ruin, at least it’ll give us some shelter until this lot dies down.’

‘I’m not sure… I’ve got a bad feeling about this place.’ God, how clichéd did that sound? Like something out of a low budget horror movie, complete with stock footage haunted mansion. ‘What… what if there’s something even worse than Isidora in there?’ Her arms tightened around Rafe’s neck as black, formless fears floated through her imagination, and she imagined that low voice saying, there isn’t anything worse than me, you little ninny.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll protect you from the ghosts and ghoulies.’ Rafe sounded almost cheerful, as if being half drowned by a rainstorm amused him rather than pissed him off. ‘I’m a big guy… I can handle myself.’

‘Oh, I’m sure everything will be just fine,’ Paula shot back at him.

Inside though, she felt a slow, honeyed thrill. There was something primal about being carried in a big man’s arms, and the heat of Rafe’s body was both reassuring and exciting. He was strong, she had no doubt about it, and her desire, which had been dowsed by the relentless rain, came storming back. A swift, raw scenario unfolded behind her eyes as her body rocked to the rhythm of his long stride. She saw him kicking down the door of the crumbling Priory, laying her down right there in the entrance hall or whatever… then ripping off her jeans and her panties and thrusting straight into her.

Well that's all for now but don't worry there will be a couple of tasty excerpts from two more ladies of Lust Bites in a few weeks.


Deanna