Split and Lust Bites out today!

Kristina Lloyd

'My story starts last autumn. I want to set it down because I understand now that I’ll never be able to leave this place. And I want you to remember me as a good person.'

So begins Split, my neo-Gothic tale of bondage and submission set in a puppet museum on the Yorkshire moors. And today it’s out in the UK along with Lust Bites, the hot volume of vampire erotica from me, Portia Da Costa and Mathilde Madden. (Sorry Yanks, you have to wait till January.)

Split tells the story of Kate, a woman who flees London and her boyfriend to take a job in a weird little village called Heddlestone. She doesn’t tell her boyfriend she’s leaving. Drawn by a strange compulsion, she simply vanishes. I am Kate Carter, five foot nothing, freckled and fair, pear-shaped but sprightly, a librarian on the run.

Kate lodges in the attic of Jake, the strange, beautiful puppeteer whose surreal, doll-filled house adjoins the museum. When Kate first meets Jake, she’s smitten.

He was too tall for his suit so he was all wrists and ankles, a man almost as gangly as his puppets. I know I’m a romantic fool, but my stomach really did flip. His hat was of battered brown leather, dark curls peeping beneath the brim, and his pale skin was dotted with a couple of moles. His nose was narrow, a little misshapen, and his cheekbones enviable, his face having a refined feminine bone structure, although his neck was strong. He reminded me of a deer, full of wild nervous grace, his stone-grey eyes at once timid and serene.

Jake’s social awkwardness is belied by a dark, sexual confidence and when he and Kate get together it seems as if, surrounded by puppets and isolated from the world, they’re in a realm where anything might happen. But Kate also desires Eddie, Jake’s brother, a thickly-muscled bruiser who’s smug, arrogant, contemptuous and crude. Although she dislikes him, Kate recognises some warped part of her finds him horribly thrilling. Soon she’s involved in a second dark relationship, and all the while she's haunted by a gathering sense that there's something very wrong about Heddlestone.

There’s a cold intimacy to this place and the brothers have drawn me closer to its dark, disturbed heart. They had me from the start, Jake with his beauty and that clever careful mind, Eddie with his arrogance that gets me right in the groin. Even now, I don’t know who I prefer. I’m split between them, relishing both but trusting neither. Lust has taken me to some strange places but none stranger than this.

Split is released today along with Lust Bites. This makes me very happy!

*
Something else which makes me very happy is being the first author in Love Honey’s newly-launched erotic online book club. Love Honey are running a huge promotion on my second, ever-so-slightly-controversial book, Asking for Trouble, and you can buy it over there for a ridiculous 99p. Yes, I'm dirt cheap! The book club looks fantastic. You can read an interview with me, join an Asking for Trouble discussion forum, and there are even questions for you to ponder. I confess, I’m nervous. Some people love Asking for Trouble, some people hate it. If you don’t already own it, now’s your chance. I doubt I will ever be 99p again. That’s so cheap, you may as well buy a vibrator while you’re there.

To celebrate all this happiness, I’m giving away a copy of Split and Lust Bites on my blog. Come on over to my place and add a comment. I am very friendly, so friendly that I'll say Lusties can play too.

The Vampire's Heart

by Kristina Lloyd
This week sees the UK release of Lust Bites, the first in a new line of novella volumes from Black Lace. Lust Bites might sound as if it’s a book revealing the sordid truth about members of this blog but it’s not. We’re holding out for lots more money on that one. Lust Bites is all about vampires: three sexy tales of love, lust and blood. Next year, the novella line continues with more volumes of paranormal erotica, many penned by members of Lust Bites. That's Lust Bites, the blog. Are you still with me?

My novella, The Vampire’s Heart, is, quite thrillingly, the first story in the first collection. Here’s a little bit about it.

The Vampire’s Heart

The action takes place in the Arctic. The permanent dark of winter is passing and the sun’s about to rise for the first time that year. You couldn’t escape the stories of this place. Sometimes, it was a mythical land where ancient explorers sailed through peppermint green seas, mistaking icebergs for giant swans and narwhals for aquatic unicorns. Over the centuries, reports had come back of ghostly mountains, mock suns and nights lit with curtains of coloured phosphorescence. Sometimes, it was a frozen desert, tempting men onto foolish, heroic quests. Their stories hung in the emptiness, tales of survival and loss; of horror and madness; of people on the borderline between life and death. And, of course, there were many untold stories too, stories with no one left to tell them.

Billy is a butch, modern vampire. His hair is clipped into a blond mohawk, and he’s broad chested and lighty-tanned, a punkish military figure in khakis, tight T-shirt and scuffed army boots. He’s hot, hard, mean and angry. Centuries ago, he accidentally killed the woman he loved and now she’s returned to earth, reborn as Esther. Fearing his lust could destroy her again, Billy has exiled himself to the Arctic with his two vampire lovers.

Simeon is an old school vamp. A pallid lanky creature with bony features and long black hair, he had that air of Transylvanian nobility that Billy really went for. The two men had been together centuries (though it was a bit on-off) and, having no reflections, were more familiar with each other’s faces than their own. ‘I don’t know where you end and I begin,’ Simeon used to say in the nineteenth century when they were tragically in love, as was the fashion.

Suzanne, Simeon’s cousin, is flighty, frivolous, beautiful and cruel. The three vampires live at Hope’s End, a high-tech dome hidden from view. To the untrained eye, Hope’s End, was nothing but a blip on the landscape, a hump of snow in a waste of ice. A Cold War relic modelled on igloo curves, it had fallen into the hands of the vampire community when one or two significant maps had been redrawn, and one or two significant people had been killed, easy things to achieve when there are vampires in high places. Mortals might be surprised by the number of monsters at the Pentagon.

They share their home with their pet cat, Renfield, a masturbating Arctic vampire pedigree and, since food is scarce, they survive primarily on a synthetic blood substitute, Blud. Billy, repulsed by his vampire-self and desperate to keep Esther safe from his hunger, hasn’t tasted human blood for over two decades. The urge to feed is still strong. Sometimes Simeon went to the coast and returned with tales of polar bears and all the blubber he had to bite through. But Billy knew he fed on the Inuit. He could see the flush in his cheeks and it made him so hot. When Simeon had tasted mortals, Billy wanted to fuck his brains out.

Esther works for a holiday company, White Sky Adventures, and is trekking in the Arctic with a team of five other mortals. The closer they get to Hope’s End, the more Billy’s lust intensifies. Simeon and Suzanne, jealous of Billy’s obsession for Esther, are eager to see the back of her. Weary of drinking Blud, they have no qualms about the prospect of dispatching the entire team. Billy must protect Esther from his lovers but it’s hellishly difficult when her physical presence threatens to destroy his willpower and turn him into the insatiable vampire he truly is.

A Sexy Snip of Hot Gay Vampire Loving:

Billy slammed Simeon’s body to the wall once more. His erection was thickening and he pressed it against Simeon’s butt.

‘It’s not even the same woman,’ accused Simeon. ‘It was centuries ago. Ever heard the phrase time to move on?’

‘It’s the same soul,’ breathed Billy.

‘And that gets you hard, does it?’

Billy grasped a handful of Simeon’s hair, pulling his head back so his throat arched. His Adam’s apple made a voluptuous jut in that long stubble-flecked neck, a sight that flooded Billy with memories. ‘Oh, if you were mortal.’

‘And what?’ challenged Simeon in a stretched, reedy voice. ‘You’d do what you did to her? Love me to death? Or what you did to me? Make me a vampire, possess me and make me yours?’

Billy tugged Simeon’s head back still further, his grip tightening on his hair.

‘You don’t give a person room to breathe,’ wheezed Simeon. ‘That’s not love, that’s suffocation.’

Billy jerked Simeon away from the wall, clasping arm and hair to frogmarch him across the room. He forced him over the pool table, pressing his head onto the turquoise baize. The white ball span away and bounced off the side cushion.

‘You’re jealous,’ murmured Billy. He tugged Simeon’s flies open, pushing down his clothes to bare his pale slender ass, wisps of dark hair fringing his crack. Simeon’s erection bounced free and Billy leaned over him, wrapping his fingers around that big sturdy shaft. He wanked him gently. ‘Jealous,’ mocked Billy, his lips behind Simeon’s ear.

Simeon lay still, breathing hard and saying nothing as Billy’s fist shunted along his cock, and Billy’s crotch dug into his buttocks. After a while, in a tender mannered voice, Simeon whispered, ‘Yes. I’m jealous. What of it?’

A surge of respect and lust nearly knocked Billy for six. Hurriedly, he unzipped and let his pants drop to his knees. ‘Get your top off,’ he said in a quiet command and Simeon obliged. He groaned as Billy rubbed saliva into the puckered bud of his asshole, and worked his fingers in to open him up. Billy pumped his fingers, gazing at the shifting sinew of Simeon’s back, at the wings of his shoulder blades and the way candleflame and shadow rippled over his ivory skin.

It was a perfect back. Billy withdrew and clasped his own cock, blood-hard in his fist. He loved Simeon like this: submissive after a row, horny, sluttish and spread. He spat onto his fingers, moistening himself before pushing at Simeon’s ring with his fat, flushed glans.

‘You fucker,’ said Billy tenderly. Slowly, he eased forward, meeting the circlet of muscle, forcing himself past its resistance as Simeon exulted and cursed, fingernails clawing the turquoise cloth. Both vampires groaned deeply as Billy slid his meat into the snug silky depths of his lover’s ass.

Billy held his breath, his hand against the small of Simeon’s back, relishing the hot squeeze around his swollen cock.

‘Oh, man,’ groaned Simeon. ‘You complete me.’

*Lust Bites is published on 8th November in the UK and on January 1st in the US, the very same day that my third novel, Split - aka Wuthering Heights with bondage - is released. If you want to win a copy of Lust Bites and Split, just add a comment to this post and you're in with a chance.