Lust at First Sight

GEMINI HEAT & GOTHIC HEAT - Portia Da Costa

This is just a quickie to say... Wahey, both GEMINI HEAT and GOTHIC HEAT are published in America today! They're the two books that span my fourteen years as a Black Lace author and I'm thrilled to bits that they're available together like this... :)

To celebrate this auspicious day, here are two brief clips, one from each book, each containing the heroine's first impressions of the hero... and in each case, as the title of this post says, it's lust at first sight!

First, from Gemini Heat... Deana turns around and finds exotic Jake de Guile at her side...

'Chatted who up?'

The voice from beside her was soft and light with an insidiously husky catch. Pure sex, filtered through human vocal chords, and Deana knew exactly who it belonged to. Slowly, almost reluctantly, she turned around.

Her moments-only impression hadn't done him justice. She'd formed a sketch in her mind but what stood before her was a masterpiece, a living composition more fine and sensual than anything in this mad bad collection.

'Who were you going to chat up?' her vision in black persisted, but for several seconds all Deana could do was stare at his smiling lips, his large dark eyes; his hands, his body, his crotch. His narrow black eyebrows lifted in enquiry and amusement, and after a century she recovered her voice.

'You,' she said sharply, making a split second decision to be her usual unflinching self. He was raw eroticism on two legs, but she wasn't frightened of him. She wanted him, yes - instantly and unequivocally - but she didn't fear him. Although a small voice inside her said ought to.

'Yes,' she went on as she faced him. Panicking creatively, she said the first thing that came into her head. 'Although "chat up" is purely a figure of speech. You seem to be one of the few people here genuinely interested in the exhibits... so I thought it would be nice to "chat you up" and get your opinions. I'm an artist myself and I wanted to compare... compare my reactions with someone else's,' she paused, flustered, realizing that she was rabbiting on and that he was still smiling his slow, indulgent smile, 'You are interested, aren't you?'

'Of course. It's my specialty.' He accompanied this cryptic utterance with a elegant flip of his fingers. Deana noted the slenderness of his hands and how beautifully kept they were, and suddenly she imagined them slipping knowledgably over her body, seeking out the most sensitive places and stroking her to climax after climax. She could almost see her own shine on his narrow toffee-coloured fingertips.

'Is that a fact?' she answered pertly, feeling the blush rise again, then fall as it had done before, to the place that now yearned for this strange dark man, 'Are you an artist yourself? Do you paint? Or draw?'

'No, sadly I have no talent. I merely observe beauty,' he replied, his eyes roving almost crudely across her body. As his gaze returned to meet hers, Deana met dark, electric-blue fire and was shocked. Not just by the blatant desire there, but by the fact that with his colouring she'd been expecting brown eyes, or grey.

The shape of his eyes was unusual too. In a Caucasian face, they were slanted, oriental, almost catlike. Wide-set and with thick, sooty lashes, they had a slight over-folding of the lids at the inner corners. Mr Mystery here had the east not too far back in his heritage, and his eyes bore the epicanthus to prove it.

His hair was also eastern. Steel-black and straight as water, it was smoothed back closely against his head and caught at the nape of his neck in a ponytail. Its hard, unruffled shine reminded Deana of a seal's coat, but almost instantly, she revised her assessment. Seals were cuddly and playful, and this man just wasn't. He was a shark or a king cobra, hovering to strike or kill, smiling and deadly. Suddenly, she knew she should fear him.

'Me too,' she said, responding belately. He must think I'm a complete ninny, she thought, annoyed by her own inability to impress. 'Why don't we get together?'



And now, in Gothic Heat, Paula has an 'across a crowded room' moment when she spots Rafe Hathaway in a grotty, insalubrious nightclub....

The man by the dance floor was still there, and the sight of him still made her catch her breath and wonder. Now he seemed to look entirely different.

What she’d seen before must have been an hallucination.

Raven Club man didn’t have the aristocratic glamour of ‘Count André’ and he didn’t even have the long, exotic locks. His dark hair was cropped quite short, and it made him look earthy and dangerous. He had the aura of a conscious outsider about him, a rebel, and a bit of stud maybe, but in a raw, maverick way. In contrast the boring but colourful designer outlet finery around him, he was wearing a battered black leather biker jacket, narrow black jeans and some kind of heavy, buckled work boots.

A pair of dark, narrowed eyes scanned the room just as hers had, their hooded lids predatory and jaded-looking. His mouth was rather hard, and thinned a little, as if the club inspired just the same sense of distaste and disappointment in him that it did in her.

Yeah, I know, it’s a dingy old sump, isn’t it? thought Paula. So what the hell are we doing here? We should be elsewhere. Together.

She watched his hands. They moved quickly and edgily, even though his large body was still and poised. First he tapped his fingertips against the smudged railing in time to the music, and then went through the motions of patting his pockets, reaching into them, digging about. Only to be snatched smartly back out again.

Ah hah! A smoker - or an ex smoker - searching for his ciggies. Having done hard time giving up herself, Paula recognised the tell-tales. Maybe the tall, hard-looking, and vaguely biker-ish man wasn’t quite as calm and self assured as he looked? The urge to smoke was a natural reflex when ill at ease.

The large hands appeared again, and suddenly he cracked his knuckles. The sound of it shouldn’t have been audible over the cacophony of the music, but even so it echoed across the room as if they were the only two people in it.

Hands still clasped, the tall stranger looked straight up at Paula.

Connection hit her like a thump in the solar plexus. Lines of force zipped between the two of them, and the man down below cocked his head as if listening to their hum.

A powerful urge to run gripped Paula, but then died again.

Connection hit her like a thump in the solar plexus. Lines of force zipped between the two of them, and the man down below cocked his head as if listening to their hum.

A powerful urge to run gripped Paula, but then died again.

Take him, he’s yours, the voice of Isidora purred beneath her skin. And Paula’s eyes and limbs obeyed it. Holding the tall man’s gaze, she glanced towards the club’s emergency exit, and then, not looking back, she began to walk quickly towards the steps to the lower level.


So... two guys, two naughty books... hope you enjoy both of them equally! Leave a comment for a chance to win a signed copy of a book from my back list.

love

Portia
Still labouring at the Black Lace coal face to bring you sexy and romantic treats!

Ancient and Modern

GEMINI HEAT and GOTHIC HEAT - Portia Da Costa

I'll keep this brief as I had a day on the blog last Friday too. Then I talked about how scary it was to write a sequel ten years on from the original novel... but I don't think that is anywhere near as scary as having my first ever BL reissued on the same day as my most recent one. Eek, it just invites a critical comparison, doesn't it? Is she as good as ever? Or has she lost it and should she be put out to pasture to make way for younger, hipper talents?

Well, I *think* I’ve improved. I’ve learnt a lot in fourteen years, both in terms of writing and life, and with any luck that shows in my stories and my characterisation. Okay, so there was a freshness I had back then that I feel a wistful nostalgia for but fingers crossed, I’ve gained far more with the years than I’ve lost. [I just wish I didn’t have to say the same about my waistline too!]

Will I still be writing in another fourteen years? Gosh, I’d like to hope so... even though I might well be balancing my laptop on my arthritic knees as I sit in my bath chair on the sea front at Eastbourne. Either that or I’ll be scribbling on the back of an envelope as I crouch in a cardboard box under the viaduct because I’ve become a destitute bag lady…

How about you, gentle readers? What have you learnt in the last fourteen years? What do you hope to learn/do in the next fourteen years? Let me know in a comment, and one lucky person will win a copy of both my then and now books!

Love

Portia
Still crazy after all these years...

More about Gemini Heat here

More about Gothic Heat here


Oh, and while we're about it, here's a taste of Gemini Heat... which is about identical twins. Both Deana and Delia fancy Jake de Guile, but Peter, the boy next door, is in love with Deana. When Deana goes out with Jake, it's down to Delia to console Peter...

Confused?

Read on...

'This must seem pretty weird to you,' he went on, pausing to swig down more wine, 'I'm telling you that I'm in love with a woman who looks just like you?'

'Not as weird as you think,' Delia answered taking another sip of her own wine as an unthinkable idea occurred to her.

With the slow, simple rationality of the far from sober, she saw an elegant solution to the sexual dilemmas of both herself and Peter.

'Do you want to make love to her?' she asked bluntly, feeling fire building low in her belly. She could see pictures in her head. Pictures of Deana, her legs wide open, being possessed by dark, ruthless Jake... But no, it wasn't Deana! It was herself. Delia. Her face! Her body! If she closed her eyes she could slip herself into that scene, live it, make it happen. All she needed was a hard, male penis to melt around.

And if she could make an illusion for the man who provided the penis?

Draining her glass yet again, she rose to her feet and walked across the room with infinite care. Pulling off her own tee-shirt, she dropped down onto the sofa next to Peter, and cupped her bare breasts in her hands, offering them to him as if they were a pair of sun-ripened fruits.

'Make love to me, Peter,' she said, her voice faint as she flicked her nipples to make them stiffen and grow hard for him.

'Delia... I don't...'

'It's "Dee",' she corrected him, 'Dee Ferraro. I play games, remember?' The wine made her powerful and she reached for his narrow hand with its square, neatly-trimmed nails and placed it on the peachy-soft slope of her breast.

'Just for tonight, Pete... Please?' It seemed strangely apt to be pleading. She would've grovelled to De Guile, wouldn't she?

'But I know the difference,' replied Peter, his voice cracking. He was protesting but his hand was already moulding her flesh and enjoying it.

'For comfort then... If you can't pretend.'

'Oh Dee,' he sighed, moving in on her, even though she'd no idea whether it was for comfort... or for fantasy's sake after all.

For a moment, she drew back within herself, and looked at the real man with her, not the sex-fiend who'd hijacked her body this morning. Peter wasn't Jake; he wasn't dark, or mysterious, or an insatiable creature of wealth and power. But his smooth, pale body was hard and wiry - and far from unpleasant on the eye.

His thin arms were strong as they pulled her to him and crushed her in a shockingly tight grip. Her nipples and his were pressed against each other, and as his mouth met hers, he moaned into it, shimmying his body against her as if his small brown teats felt all the pleasure that her larger rosy-red ones did.

And his tongue was bold too. Probing and tasting as their wine-scented saliva mingled in a way that pre‑shadowed a far greater blending.

'You're so good to me, Dee,' he murmured, then sucked hard on her tongue as if it were a lollipop, a nipple or a clitoris. Delia moaned, her hips lifting and beating against him with a life that was all of their own. There was a pressure and a heat down there now, a pulsating, tingling discomfort that wasn't really a discomfort at all. The mouth between her legs seemed to whimper and beg and cry out. She was hungry. Hungry for maleness. For flesh. For filling. Perversely, she knew still that Jake de Guile was the one she really wanted in there, but Peter was the man who was here. The man with the available penis. A penis that was hard against her body and pressing towards her sex like a unseeing missile homing in on its target and oblivious to the several layers cloth in its path.

Return to GothicWorld...

GOTHIC HEAT by Portia Da Costa

Ten years ago, I wrote a paranormal erotic romance called Gothic Blue. It did quite well and a lot of people said that they really, really liked it... and one or two said they'd love to read a sequel. At the time, I felt that I'd wrapped up the story pretty well, and I couldn't quite see how I could return to the setting and the characters, so I moved on and wrote other books and forgot about the sequel notion altogether...

Then, last year, when our Black Lace editor was urging us to give him some paranormal ideas, I very whimsically suggested that it might be fun to do a Gothic Blue sequel, not really sure he'd take me seriously, mainly because I wasn't all that serious about it myself... but lo and behold, shortly after, there were contracts and delivery dates and whatnot, and I was committed to it!

Luckily, there were a few loose ends in Gothic Blue, and one of them was a character called Paula. She had a serious brush with the evil sorceress Isidora Katori, that turned out to have pretty far reaching consequences... and Gothic Heat became the story of those consequences.

In the clip below, Paula is visiting her new friend and lover Rafe at the therapy centre where he works. But unbeknownst to Rafe, Paula has a little problem that she's not yet had chance to tell him about... the possessing spirit of the wicked seductress, Isidora.

Rafe gripped the oil bottle tightly, fighting for breath. He experienced a disorientating sense of doubling that made him giddy, and for a second, he seemed to see two women on the couch. It was like a drug trip, as if someone had loaded his massage oil with peyote and he’d absorbed it through his skin. Paula’s dark hair looked silkier, longer and lusher; and her eyes were slanted and imperious, assessing him as if he were sexual meat for her delectation. Her body was simply sublime, full of breast and sumptuous of hip. Her serviceable black knickers were gone, discarded on the floor to reveal the perfect, fragrant triangle of her bush. She held out her hand to him like a queen, and he walked towards her.

‘Mmmm…’ Taking the bottle of oil from him, she pulled the stopper and sniffed deeply, smiling to herself. Then, in a sudden violent gesture, she hurled the thing across the room, laughing as the oil arced from it, flying like a pale yellow ribbon. ‘A pretty scent,’ She adjusted herself on the table, slithering around until she was perched on the edge, ‘but artificial, my Rafe, too artificial.’ Parting her legs, she offered him something that was both natural and beyond nature instead.

Rafe gasped, dragging in both oxygen and the odour of Paula’s genitals. The room was filled with lavender, but it seemed to come from a distance, and through a filter. Only the essence of woman had real truth, and real meaning.

Staggering slightly, he fell to his knees and pressed his face between her thighs, aware of great well of tightly focused heat, emanating not from her sex but the white curve of her belly. He tried to lift his head and search for a visible mark or glow, and for a moment he imagined he saw a slight, raised pattern on her skin. But before he could get a closer look she pressed down hard on the top of his head, forcing him to pleasure her.

She was hot, fragrant, and intoxicatingly delicious. A million impressions crowded his senses, both ordinary and unusual. The taste of Paula was like power itself, infinitely greater than his own puny gifts. Supping at her earthy juices, his mind seemed to expand and a rainbow of twenty thousand colours exploded in his head.

‘Yes! Yes! That’s marvellous. More of that!’ she goaded him as he flicked his tongue over her. Swift, deft hands dug into his scalp, cramming his face against the juncture of her thighs. Rafe felt as if he were drowning, drowning so fast and hard that he’d probably expire just at the moment of her extreme pleasure. His cock was a rod of agony that seemed to belong to another man.

Harder and harder he licked, covering every bit of her sex, licking her clit and her lips, and sipping at her entrance. She writhed against him, sultry and serpentine, groaning and shouting, praising him with a string of lurid profanities, language even fouler and more extreme than even he’d ever comfortably used himself. Her heels bashed against his back and his entire head felt as if it were on fire. His eyes were shut but somehow he seemed to see a burning, setting sun, searing his vision and extinguishing his self control.

When he sucked hard on her clit, she howled like a banshee. But instead of falling back and surrendering herself to orgasm and pleasure, she surged off the massage bench and knocked him backwards, so he sprawled on the wooden floor and slid in the spilt oil. As he lay there with the wind knocked out of him, dimly away of shards of glass digging into his shoulders and back, she climbed astride him, and knelt over his pelvis, her dark triangle hovering tauntingly over his loins.

‘So, sex-god, do you have a condom in you pocket?’ she jeered. Then without waiting for an answer, she inclined over him, feeling around and under him into the pocket of his yoga pants. Her fingers felt hot through the thin cloth, and with deadly accuracy, they secured and prised out the contraceptive he’d might have used if he’d been able to bring himself to fuck Barbara Butcher what seemed like a century ago.

In a swift sharp yank that had him bouncing and swinging up to slap his belly, she dragged down his trousers and handling him ruthlessly, she rolled the latex jacket onto him.

Then with no further ado, she sat down hard, taking every bit of him into her with one voracious lunge.

It was like plunging into the heart of a black star, burning hot, yet at the same time utterly dark. He’d never felt anything quite like it, not even with this same woman, last night in the alley.

GOTHIC HEAT is published on the 3rd April in the UK and on the 27th May in the US and is available from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

Happy reading!

Portia Da Costa
Fourteen long years at the Black Lace coal face

PS. Leave a comment for a chance to win a copy of Gothic Heat.

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