A Gentleman's Wager

by Madelynne Ellis

A long time ago, back before wi-fi, in the days when I had an office, a friend suggested I write an erotic novel for Black Lace, so I sent off for the guidelines and after having laughed myself silly at them, proceeded to write.

Quite a bit later, after so many rewrites I lost count and several trees worth of shredded paper, A Gentleman's Wager was born. Leastways, I sent it to Black Lace, thoroughly expecting to get a form rejection letter. I mean, they weren't really going to want a Georgian historical set in Yorkshire featuring a bisexual rakehell competing with a woman for the man of her dreams, or were they?

I got a postcard confirming the receipt then nothing...

I got pregnant... time drifted on... I started writing another book set in Saqqara, Egypt. I pretty much forgot about the novel sitting at the bottom of the Black Lace slush pile...

THEN

'Hello, this is Kerri Sharp the editor for Black Lace Books, can I speak to ---.'

Me (currently dripping wet, and clinging to a towel having just got out of the bath): OMG!

KS: I have A Gentleman's Wager in front of me. Is it still available?

Me: Meep! Yes.

KS: I'd like to commission it. How much of it is written?

Me: All of it.

KS: Great. I'll send you a contract.

Now, there may actually have been slightly more of a conversation than that, but I think this gets across the pertinent points, and it's frankly all that I remember, as I thought I was about to have a baby there and then. Naturally, the first thing I did was phone Mr Madelynne and start gushing.

Anyway, a few dramas later, A Gentleman's Wager was indeed published, and it came with a lovely note from Kerri Sharp, which reads: Think this reads really well. Like a lavish BBC costume drama.

Although I actually prefer the description later ascribed to it by a manager of Waterstones book store. "Jane Austen with bumming!'

And so, after years of being out of print, A Gentleman's Wager is being reprinted with a lovely new cover on 7th Feb UK & 1st April US. Just in time for the long awaited sequel (but that's another story ;-))

I'll leave you with a teaser:

[Vaughan] leant close to her as he spoke, so that she could feel the warmth of his breath and watch his mouth descend. He grazed her bottom lip and held it. The taste of him released her memory and she answered his kiss, while her arms moved to pull him closer. She clawed at him urgently, then slipped her hands under his coat as he drew her deep into his kiss. Nobody had ever kissed her the way Vaughan did. He made her lips burn with a heat that washed straight to her cunt.

He grasped her shoulders and thrust her against the blackened oak panelling with enough force to make a thump. She didn’t notice the pain, feeling only a rush of desire and vertigo, like a foretaste of orgasm. His teeth met her neck and nipped the delicate skin, while he loosened her stays enough for him to slide his fingers between fabric and flesh. Her nipples sprang to attention, then stiffened a little more as he teased her.

Bella hooked her thumbs into his waistband and tugged him closer. All her instincts craved penetration. She was ready for him now, but he was holding himself back. To her surprise, he suddenly sank gracefully to his knees. He lifted the hem of her skirt, bunched up the swathes of velvet and hoisted it to her waist. He brushed his cheek against her stockings, pressed a kiss to the skin above her garter then cupped her buttocks. His hands were hot against her cool cheeks, and warmed the soft skin as he pulled her forwards. She felt his tongue on her labia and the desire for penetration grew stronger. He dabbed at her clitoris with the tip of his tongue, teasing but never quite delivering. Even now, he toyed with her.

‘A gentleman should use his tongue fairly in the presence of a lady,’ she said.

He snorted, and pulled back long enough to give her a reproving glance. ‘A lady has two essential attributes: modesty and underwear.’

Bella almost kneed him on the chin. She’d never known a man who could swing her between desire and anger with such ease, and she wasn’t sure she appreciated the ability in him. How dare he! Yet the lapping of his tongue at her sensitive bud sapped the anger from her, taking away all her desire to hurt him.

'Do you like that, my nightingale?’

Bella shook her head, stifling the purrs that rose in her throat. She didn’t want him to know how much she was enjoying this. He didn’t deserve that.

‘You’re a harlot,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I should use you like one. I could throw your skirt over your face, ride you hard against the stone and leave you a crown for you trouble.’

‘Bastard,’ she hissed. ‘Do it then.’

Vaughan laughed and returned to his feet. ‘Maybe I will.’

Bella’s heart skittered over several beats. She whimpered as he began to massage her, fingers moving slickly in her wetness. If he entered her now, he would slide into her all at once. She tugged at the buttons on his waistband, then touched the head of his cock. She needed him now, this instant, inside her.

Vaughan stepped back and Bella’s eyes snapped open in surprise. ‘Vaughan,’ she sighed. He turned his back on her and she watched in disbelief as he strode to the door. ‘My lord?’ In the doorway he stopped and glanced over his shoulder from beneath his dark eyelashes. Bella reached out a hand, desire for him still coursing through her veins. He shook his head, watched her expression change from ecstasy to anguish, then blew her a kiss and left.

Alone and a hair’s breadth from orgasm, Bella slumped to the floor, devastated. She couldn’t believe he’d walked out on her. Blinking back tears of shame, she reached down with one trembling hand to give herself the relief he had denied her.

Madelynne Ellis
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PS. Add a comment for the chance to win a copy.

Split: an excerpt

Kristina Lloyd

My third novel, Split (aka Wuthering Heights with bondage) is released in 13 days time in the UK. Here's a sexy excerpt from chapter one. To set the scene: Kate and her boyfriend, on holiday in the Yorkshire moors, find themselves in a weird little village called Heddlestone whose only attraction is a puppet museum. One night, they stumble upon an odd scene unfolding inside Heddlestone’s Working Men’s Club. A woman in ghoulish make-up and a shabby ballerina costume, stands alone in the middle of the room, her raised arms tethered to a rope. She’s soon joined by two men. Kate and her boyfriend (‘you’ in the scene below) stand outside in the dark, watching through the window.

*
I wanted to be that woman. I was scared for her and yet I ached to be in her place, two strong horny men prowling around me. Her powerlessness was horribly appealing. She was entirely in their hands and they were randy and reckless. God, what luxury.

‘Do you think she’s okay?’ you asked.

A small moth fluttered at the window before settling there, its cottony wings mottled with silver-grey, camouflaged against the dirty glass.

'I’d say so, yeah,’ I replied, and I cupped a hand to your crotch, thrilled to find you hard within your jeans.

The bearded courtier walked away, out of view again, and the first guy, the bruiser, took up his position, standing before the woman. He fluffed up her skirts in a gauzy snowstorm, reaching beneath them. With his feet apart, his arm hidden beneath her nets, he began to work her, just a slight movement of his elbow to betray what he
was doing, his tattooed band flexing on his beefy arm. Only when one of them moved could we see her face. For a while she was expressionless, just a black-eyed, rosy-cheeked mask of madness, then her mouth was open, her neck taut, her breasts jutting. We watched her panting silently, her body writhing, her arms tugging on the rope.

She seemed to climax in a frenzy of pulling and gasping and immediately the man untied her. His mean expression faded and he kneaded her upper arms, the two of them talking normally as she rolled her shoulders and rubbed her wrists. The courtier came into view again, and he was dragging across the lino an old gymnast’s vaulting bar, the suede of its padded beam worn and patchy.

I hadn’t seen one since school days and the mere sight of it was enough to make my stomach churn in anxiety. I associated it with public humiliation. I hated games, especially gymnastics. I was always too chunky, too soft and fleshy to go hurtling about as if my body were light as a feather.

Together, the men moved the vault into the centre. Without a word, the woman leant over it, her upper body lying along its length, her sheepskin boots just touching the ground. She wriggled for comfort as the bruiser untied her red sash and wound it around her body and the beam, knotting it so she was bound to the apparatus.

The woman was calm, lying there with her cheek pressed to the bar, her panda eyes two holes in her panstick face. The man walked around, appraising her from different angles. My heart was thumping. He had such a cool arrogant manner, such a swagger in his attitude. His face was impassive and he showed no emotion either when, with a couple of sharp tugs, he pulled down the woman’s skirts, tossing them aside. Her pale buttocks were bared, and he looked at them as he fiddled with his zip.

His jeans crumpled around his knees and he shuffled closer, penetrating her with a quick jab. He fucked her with a light, casual manner, one hand pressing on her back as he gazed blankly ahead. It was like seeing an animal fuck, his pumping so regular and functional. Every now and then, he glanced down, perhaps to check if she was still breathing. She seemed so unimportant to him he might have been masturbating alone.

I couldn’t take my eyes off his thighs. They were immense and glorious, full of curves and muscle, sheathed in fine hair.

Next to me, you said, ‘Ah, c’mon, fuck.’ In a hurry, I began undoing your fly and you undid your belt, moving into position behind me, stones scuffing up around us. We might have looked over our shoulders to check we were alone. I don’t recall. In London, we’d have been scanning for CCTV, wondering if grainy footage of us was going to end up in some murky corner of the internet. But not in Heddlestone. There’s nothing like that here. There’s no need. Everybody watches everybody else.
Do you think we were alone that night? I doubt it. Someone, somewhere would have been watching, night-vision binoculars trained on us, two unknown figures fucking in a ghostly, green-tinged world.

You lifted up my skirt and I shimmied down my tights. The air on my skin was cool and thrilling, and the exposure made me loosen. I felt earthy and lewd, and I could picture my buttocks, plump pale moons surrounded by dark rumpled fabric. Urgent and hard, you drove into my wetness, clasping me around the waist as you thrust. My arse cheeks jiggled as your hips bumped up against their flesh. The stone crunched beneath our feet.

Flakes of paint, I noticed, had chipped off the window frame and the corners were furred with black mould. Beyond the glass, the bearded guy was grinning at the woman, thrusting out his pelvis and rubbing his crotch with comic lewdness. Then he unbuttoned, wanking close to her face before he stripped completely. In one swift movement, he straddled the vault, edging forward until his erection was by her head.

The women raised her mouth for him, her body jolting from the impact of the hulk pumping her at the other end. Eagerly, she swallowed his cock and I could see the bulge in her cheek as she sucked up and down. He wound her blonde hair around a fist, exchanging a few words with the other guy who was still ramming her with detached regularity, his arse cheeks hollowing above those giant thighs.

You and I weren’t so cool. Your finger was on my clit, tapping as we fucked. Where I braced myself, the stone was cold and rough beneath my palms. We got into a good rhythm, me slamming back as you shoved high and hard. The air snagged in my throat as I panted, ‘I’m coming, I’m coming. Just keep me there. Just ...’ I could feel that soft, gorgeous easiness in my hips and thighs, waves of it carrying me closer. And at the same time, voices from the village road. ‘There, yes,’ I urged, desperate to come and not be interrupted. ‘There, there.’

You nuzzled past my hair, your breath warm on the back of my neck, teeth scraping, half-kissing, half-biting as you fucked and frigged me to climax. Indoors, the bearded guy closed his eyes, head tipped back, mouth parting slackly. He might have been coming, I don’t know. But his small moment of surrender nudged me past my limit and I hit orgasm, gasping quietly. There was no time for you.

*
To read more about Split, about me and my other dirty books, visit my brand new site. I'm having a blogwarming today and you're all welcome! Bring a puppet.

Split is published 8th November (UK) and 1 Jan (US). It's only £3.90 on Amazon right now. The price will shoot up when it's published so pre-order and bag a bargain!

Win, win, win! Top prize is my filth in triplicate, ie the novels: Darker Than Love, Asking for Trouble and Split. Two runners-up win Split. Just add a comment. Results on Sunday.

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The image at the top of this post is one of Beth Robinson's creepily beautiful creations. Check out Beth's website for more strange dolls and if you're in London this autumn, see more of Beth's work at the Strychnin Gallery. Strychnin's grand opening is tonight!

It's pronounced 'Mmm'

Let's talk about two guys kissing – and more (more guys, more than kissing, add a girl to the mix, oh yeah).

Whether it's a guy/guy scene or an m/f/m ménage - I'm happy if I get to see/read about two guys touching each other. And the best news for me is the more I look around me the more I see that it isn’t just me. This lovely stuff is starting to pop up everywhere.

Great books for lovers of this sort of smut are Peep Show by Mathilde Madden (ahem) my first BL book which I wrote about a women who spies on gay men because that was my own hobby at the time a hot idea, A Gentleman's Wager and Dark Designs both by Madelynne Ellis and, of course, the grandmummy of m/f/m Menage by Emma Holly.

And finally, because it seems wrong to talk and talk and talk about guy/guy fun without giving you some – here is a little snip from Peep Show. From the scene where our voyeuristic heroine stumbles on something to watch in the men's changing rooms at a fashionable gentleman's outfitters. This is probably the scene most people seem to mention to me from that book.

Two blond men: entwined in blissful pursuit and blissfully unaware of me. One is half standing/half leaning, propped against the warm, honey-beige painted wall with open mouth and open fly. The other is pressed up hard against him, with a hand snaking into his partner’s trousers, as he crushes their mouths together – fast and hot and slow and cool. Their long denim covered thighs are pressed together, the more dominant man bearing down on his submitting counterpart, forcing him harder and harder against the wall behind them, and parting his compliant legs with one hard limb. It’s a very, very pretty kiss, and I watch it for a long while, as their mouths melt and slide around on each other like strawberry ice cream on a blistering hot day.

So hands up who likes m/m and m/f/m. That's it both hands where I can see 'em. Recc me some books (not just BL and Cheek), tell me what you really want to read - hey, maybe someone will get inspired and slip that dream-scene into an upcoming book!

Tilly aka Mathilde Madden