Charles Monnet( 1732-1808), engraved by d'AmbrunIt's already time for another Excerpt Monday, that magical day every month where a bunch of writers share our excerpts. Please check out the link above to learn more, or scroll to the bottom of my excerpt to find a list of links for participating authors.
This month I'm returning to my work in process, Cry Surrender--an erotic medieval tale--picking up almost where I left off last month.
Set up:
Those of you who visited then remember the introduction to this story wherein a a convent girl becomes fascinated with a masked knight who comes to the nunnery to steal a virgin. She volunteers to go with him, and this excerpt picks up a little later. They're on the road away from the nunnery, sharing his horse. The knight is about to be surprised.
***
Only the thin linen of my chemise stood between my skin and his wandering hand. I told myself he only stroked me to comfort me. Or perhaps to know more of the goods he’d just obtained. Soon he’d “use my body for his ease” but as ignorant as I was, I was fairly confident he could not do that whilst riding a horse.
He opened the ribbons at my throat, stretching my chemise wide enough to tug it down my shoulders. I kept my hands fisted in the horse’s mane, more terrified of falling than being fondled. Cold breezes circulated under his cloak and chilled my bare skin.
I hunched forward, trying to avoid his hands, but they closed over my breasts anyway. The serpent skin of his mail chafed my flesh. I bit my lip as he cupped my breasts and tested their weight like fruit. But when his big thumbs began to circle my nipples, heating them with hellfire, I yelped.
“Silence,” he hissed, his hand tightening on my left breast in warning. I knew he must feel my heart thudding beneath his hand. I envisioned how the interlocking circles of his mail would leave round, red bites on my skin. Agnes always said that it took no more than a whisper to mark me. I realized I wanted to be marked by his armor. I wanted to bear the traces of its passage over my body.
He pressed my spine to his chest. No longer hunched, I could protect nothing from him, and I could no longer reach the horse’s mane. Balanced precariously between his thighs, I had no choice but to be still, and trust he’d keep me safe.
His warm, bare fingertips traced the lines of my breast and throat, touching me gently sometimes, and cruelly at others. He was teasing me, I realized, making me expect one thing, and then deliver another. I never expected he’d touch me like this. Anges never touched me with such wicked precision. I closed my eyes, my unease fading under wave after wave of sensation.
For the last twelve-month Agnes and I had been creeping to one another’s cot, or keeping each other warm during night vigil together in the chapel. We were of the age when the devil’s fires burned in us almost continually. Me more so than Agnes, who was naturally good.
Our confessor, Father Marcus explained to us that the desire we felt was sent by Satan to distract us from our holy work. It was he who showed us how to quench those fires in one another, so that we might find wholesome relief, and return to our duties.
Usually Agnes and I would quench the fires by simply tucking our hands beneath one another’s skirts, but I enjoyed those rare, luxurious occasions when I could bare my breasts to Agnes’s clever mouth and hands.
Sometimes Father Marcus allowed us to exorcise our demons during private confession with him. Those were the best times. Agnes and I would strip to the skin. Our confessor watched us comfort one another. Sometimes he offered advice. Other times he’d read scripture aloud, his sonorous voice a steady counterpoint to our panting and soft cries.
Our sessions, he explained, were an expression of lust, and of course lust was a sin. But like a sword, it could be turned to either good or ill. He taught us how to tame lust and make it an instrument for good. We used lust to please the Lord.
He showed us how skilled touching brought the clean Light of God into our bodies. Instead of being tormented by desire, and ending pettish and discontent and open to temptation, he taught us the path to love.
We learned how to invoke the loving light of God. His joy would fill us to the brim, and beyond. It filled us until we screamed His Name in joy. For a few precious, suspended moments, we became one with Him. We knew what it is to be held in his embrace, nameless, perfect and loved.
I did not expect the Angel to know of such things. How could he, when he’d turned his face from the Lord?
He ran his hand up my throat and over my face. I turned my face into his neck, sampled the stinging metal of his collar of mail with my tongue.
I tried to keep my eyes closed and focus on the vision of Christ I carried in my heart. But the Angel’s ministrations did not soothe as Agnes’s had. When he took my nipple between his fingers and tugged outward, I gasped and jerked forward in the saddle. A rush of pleasant heat spread outward from my breasts, flowing deep and settling between my legs, where it waited to blossom.
He rolled and thrummed that same aching nipple until I moaned aloud, caught between pleasure in pain. This time he did not chastise me for it. Instead, he lifted my shift so that he might cup his steely hand over my mound. The lip of the saddle blocked his hand. I wiggled forward, tilting my hips to make way for him. His index finger, so much thicker and stronger than Agnes’s, slid deep into my folds. I knew I was wet. Back and forth it slid, moving easily. Caught in the first stages of rapture, I clutched his knees for I knew not what else to grasp. Thus braced, I bent my knees and opened my legs, inviting his fingers deep inside.
He withdrew his hand as if burnt. “You’re no virgin.”
His voice was quiet, yet implacably cold. I imagined myself in a ditch, my throat cut. “But…but I am, my lord.”
He called for a halt and dismounted, dragging me from the horse and pulling me along off the trail, into the trees. At the bottom of steep slope, he spun me around and slammed my back against a tree trunk.
“You lying bitch. Tell me why I shouldn’t slit your throat right here. Tell my why I should not burn the Abbey to the ground.”
“My lord, tell me how I’ve displeased you. I swear I’ve never known a man.”
“Are you a liar or a half-wit? You spread your legs and moan as prettily as any practiced whore.”
“I—I was welcoming the Light.”
“You were doing what?”
“You wanted to share the Light with me, did you not? Cleanse me? Why else would you touch me so?”
His hand closed around my throat. “Speak sense!”
“I do not mean to displease you. I did not lie!”
He made a frustrated sound, a low growl and jammed his free hand between my legs, scraping my inner thighs with his gauntlets. “Who else has touched you thus?”
“J-Agnes.”
“Agnes. Another nun? You’re toying with your sisters?” Abruptly, he let go of my throat.
“I’m not a nun, sir. And we’re only doing what we’re told.”
“Pox blasted holy orders. And they’d call me corrupt.” He took hold of my chin. “Who told you to dally with your sisters? Who?”
“Father Marcus.”
“You told me you’d never seen a man.”
“Father Marcus isn’t a man. He’s our confessor.”
The Angel snorted. “And this man-not-man, this eunuch, your holy confessor, taught you the ways of perversion. What else did he teach you?”
“Music, scripture—“
“Did he put his hands on you?” He shouted in my face. The contrast between his voice and his smiling mask terrified me. I cringed, sliding down the tree. “Did he fuck you?”
“Fuck?” I crossed my arms over my head, expecting a blow. “I don’t know that word.”
“Did he mount you? Did he put his cock between your legs?”
I guessed he meant pizzle when he said cock. Men did that when copulating with women. I knew that much. That was what I expected he meant to do with me. “No. Never.”
“Did he put any part of himself between your so-called virgin thighs.”
“Only the flail.”
He laughed like a madman. “Only the flail? Only a damned flail?”
“The soft end was for penance, but the hard end he used to teach us joy.”
“I was raised in the heart of vice, little nun, and yet you manage to shock me.” He turned away.
“I know my faults well enough, my lord. But Father Marcus did not corrupt us, he only showed us how to defeat the devil within.”
Once again he pressed close, crushing me against the tree.
“Tell me…tell me how little nuns defeat the devil.” He palmed my breast. “Tell me what he taught you.”
***
Excerpt Monday Organizers:
Mel/Alexia Reed, Urban Fantasy (R)
and
Bria Quinlan, Rom Com (PG)
Joining us this week:
AJ O'Donovan, Poetry (PG13)
Stephanie Draven, Paranormal Romance (PG 13)
Heather S.Ingemar, Dark Fantasy/Poetry (PG13)
Babette James, Fantasy Romance (PG 13)
Cynthia Justlin, Romantic Suspense (PG 13)
Kaige, Historical Romance (PG 13)
Julia Knight, Fantasy Romance (PG13)
Ansha Kotyk, Middle Grade Adventure (PG13)
AdelleLaudan, Contemporary Romance (PG 13)
Jeannie Lin, Historical Romance (PG 13)
RF Long, YA Paranormal (PG13)
Caitlynn Lowe, Epic Fantasy (PG13)
Shawntelle Madison, Paranormal Romance (PG 13)
Crista McHugh, Contemporary Erotic Romance (PG 13)
Bria Quinlan, Rom Com (PG)
Leigh Royals, Historical Romance (PG 13)
Megan S., Paranormal (PG13)
Dara Sorensen, Historical Paranormal (PG 13)
Bethanne Strasser, Historical Romance (PG13)
Melissa Aires, Futuristic Romance (R)
Melissa Blue, Contemporary Romance (R)
Jax Cassidy, Contemporary (R), Furturistic Sci-Fi (R)
Maya Doyle, Parnormal Romance (R)
Ginny Glass, Paranormal (R)
Amber Green, Romantic Suspense (R)
Cate Hart, Paranormal YA (R), Erotic Romance (R)
Ali Katz, Erotic Paranormal Romance (R)
Aislinn Kerry, Fantasy (R)
Inez Kelly, Fantasy Romance (R)
Cherrie Lynn, Contemporary Erotic Romance (R)
Rebecca Savage, Romantic Suspense (R)
Fae Sutherland, Contemporary Erotic Romance (R)
Stephanie Adkins, Paranormal Erotic Romance (NC 17)
Ella Drake, Erotic Contemporary (NC17)
Dawn Montgomery, Erotic Paranormal Romance (NC17) , Erotic Romance (NC 17)
Kim Knox, Erotic Paranormal Romance (NC17)
Emily Ryan-Davis, Historical Western Romance (NC17)
Kirsten Saell, Erotic Fantasy Romance (NC 17)
Jeanne St. James, Contemporary Romance (NC 17)
9 comments:
ooh ... great excerpt! And I LOVE that title!! :) Happy Monday!
Wicked and naughty! Great excerpt. Definitely makes me want to find out what that knight is up to!
WHOA. I'm definitely awake now! ;)
As a Catholic girl, all my heresy sensors were tingling and I wanted to close my eyes. But I didn't :P Very well written.
What? That can't be all! Where's the rest?
Wow, very risque! I love how she totally throws him off balance. Scorching!
Awesome.
Evie, you continue to impress me. I LOVE your writing.
*jaw drop*
Seconding what every other person has said (esp Cherrie and Emily). I definitely read that snippet twice. Really, great job!
Also, sidenote, I really like your blog :)
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