TheKingsViper (22 page)
Authors: Janine Ashbless
“The first is to stay here on Venn, where you belong. You’ll
be as safe as you can be here, with your father and your people. And I’ll come
visit you when I can. Not often, but sometimes.”
“What’s the other choice?”
“Well, I’ve rented a house.” He raked his teeth over his
lower lip, hesitating. “It’s not such a good choice, this. It’s an old place,
outside Kingsholme—very unfashionable now, beyond the walls. It’s about two
hours’ ride from the city. I could get there many nights. But…”
“But?”
“It’s a mess. It’s right on the coast, so it gets all the
salt-wind gales. It used to be a manor house, but it’s been abandoned for years
and the tenant farmer has been using the great hall to byre his oxen during
winter. It’s…knee-deep.”
She grinned. “It sounds perfect.”
Severin nodded, his smile a lot more guarded. “There’s
another drawback. You will not be as safe there. I won’t leave you on your own,
of course, but…I have enough enemies that some of them might choose to spare
time and attention for you.”
Eloise brushed his lips with her fingertip. “Severin de
Meynard, you know that I would rather share danger with you than a bed of rose
petals with any other man.”
“Oh I do,” he agreed, with a certain wry fatalism.
He looked so handsome lying there, she thought, that she
could eat him up. That was a plan for later, anyway. Shaking herself, she began
to cast around her on the bed.
“What are you looking for?”
“That bottle of oil.”
“Oh?” He reached behind the bolster and pulled out the
little leather bottle on its thong. “This?” This was already a speculative
light in his eyes.
“Oh yes.”
“What for?”
“You remember what you did to me in Rounay? With the oil?”
“I remember particularly clearly.”
She flashed a grin. “I want you to do it again.”
Severin’s answering grin was of a sort that would have
respectable men locking up their daughters in convents. “Ella, my love—have I
corrupted you, little mouse?”
Rising on hands and knees over him, she stooped to tease his
lips with hers. “Maybe. A little. Corrupt me more.”
Sweeping her in his embrace, he rolled her beneath him.
“Now?” he growled.
“Right now.”
The End
About the Author
Janine Ashbless is a multi-published British author of
erotica and erotic romance. She lives with varying numbers of rescued dogs
(mostly greyhounds) and a longsuffering husband. She was probably lost to the
world of reality at age 13, when she started playing
Dungeons & Dragons
.
It was all downhill from there on, and she was bound to end up as a writer.
Janine likes best to write paranormal- and dark-fantasy-themed
erotica and has a lifelong interest in mythology, folklore and history. She
loves to travel abroad and wishes she could get back into 1920s LARP, if only
she had the spare time.
Visit her at her blog, where she witters on about Victorian
art, Minotaurs and writing dirty.
Janine welcomes comments from readers. You can find her
website and email address on her
author bio page
at
www.ellorascave.com
.
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