Sinister
Seductions
A
Crushing Hearts Black Butterfly Anthology
Edited
by Roxanne Rhoads
Delightfully dark tales of paranormal desires and
sinister seductions grace the pages of this CHBB anthology filled with short
stories and poetry from: Raven Corinn Carluk,
Amanda Browning, Ann Gimpel, Roxanne Rhoads, Adam Clark, Lisa Goldman ,
Nathan Squiers, Selena D. Jenkins, DJ Shaw, Livia Olteano, Joseph J. Langan,
and S.J. Thomas
Werewolves, vampires, demons and more will take you
on a journey of forbidden seduction luring you into lairs of devilish delights
and sinister depravity.
Indulge yourself in darkness.
Table of Contents:
A Sinister Seduction
Intro Poem
By Amanda Browning
Dragon’s Den
by Raven Corinn Carluk
Wolf Bytes
By Ann Gimpel, Ph.D.
Underneath the Fangs
By Roxanne Rhoads
Drain the Blood
A Poem
By Adam Clark
Detonating
the Bomb
By Lisa Goldman
A Howl at the Moon
By Nathan Squiers
A Magikal Match
By Selena D. Jenkins
Devilish
Delights and Rancid Offerings
By DJ
Shaw
Drained
A Poem
By Roxanne
Rhoads
Mistress
by Livia Olteano
Sin With Me
By Amanda Browning
Persephone
By
Joseph J. Langan
Forbidden
Taste
By S.J. Thomas
Midnight Mistress
A Poem
By Roxanne Rhoads
This book was a dark fantasy with edgy wanderings into shadowed places. Poetry and stories abound in this collection that will have you up nights reading. Sinfully sexy and some just sinister, this aught to make you smile and love just a little of the dark side.
4/5
Guest Post:
Weres and Other Shifters
What is it about shifters? Why do good books about
them fly off the shelves (or e-shelves as the case may be)?
They’re an intriguing corner of paranormal fantasy.
I think they hold universal appeal because which one of us hasn’t wished they
could be something else, at least for a little while. And that something else
usually has magical powers: invisibility, incredible speed, the ability to
grant wishes, to name but a few.
Aletha, the protagonist in Wolf Bytes (my story in
the Sinister Seductions Anthology) is a hit woman who’s also a werewolf. Well,
actually, she’s a lycan. They’re sort of like werewolves, but they can shift
whenever they want to, as opposed to being tied to the full moon, or nighttime.
She’s overwhelmingly competent as a human: good with firearms, knows martial
arts, and meets the world on her own terms, making it do her bidding.
That’s pretty much a requirement for heroes these
days. They need to be larger than life; able to take on all comers and prevail.
We all like to win, which is why we’re drawn to protagonists who do. There’s a
still, small voice within that says to us, “They could do it. If they could, so
can I. Never mind their second nature is a wolf/bear/unicorn.”
I blogged a while back about heroes. And how fickle
the public is about both offering and withdrawing hero status. Well, shifters
aren’t any different in that regard. They hold some of their own in high
regard. Others not so much. Most of the well-known shifter series describe
discrete castes. Usually, the more power you have, the more respect you
command. (Big surprise. Garden variety humans are the same way.)
Circling back to Aletha, who’s trying to hide her shifter
status from her employer. She has nerves of steel and kills on command without
so much as a second thought. She prefers killing in wolf form, though. I tried
to ask her about why that was and got a sort of garbled answer that came down
to it being more satisfying to sink your incisors into yielding flesh than to
point a nice, sterile gun from twenty paces and fire it. Guess wolves like it
up close and personal.
There’s lots about Aletha that’s easy to relate to.
She’s strong with a take no prisoners
attitude. And given what she does for a living, she feels the need to be
extremely careful. She’s killed enough people that she’s never sure who might
be lying in wait to dust her. She’s lonely, though. Her dual nature makes it
tough to go on casual dates. Besides, sometimes in the heat of passion, she has
a problem: her wolf side pushes to the fore and she partially transforms. Sort
of tough to explain that to the hottie she picked up in the bar.
Speaking of, ahem, hotties and shifter sex— From an
author’s perspective (or at least from mine since it’s challenging to speak for
anyone else), one of the fun parts of having shifters as characters in
paranormal romance with erotic overtones is figuring out what sex would feel like
if you were other than human. In one story I wrote, the shifters were whales
who’d assumed human form so they could try to save the oceans from heavy metal
contamination. One of the plusses (about the only one, actually) that the
whales found about their human bodies was sex. Turns out whale sex was mostly
haunting love songs with very occasional couplings. Whale pregnancies last
fourteen to twenty-two months and there’s not much fiddling around when the
female can’t get pregnant. Sorry, off on a tangent there. Happens a lot,
actually.
Writing the lycan story was intriguing. It’s the fourth
one I’ve written if you count the two with wargs as protags. I’m drawn to
wolf-human shifters, maybe because of my lifelong love affair with large dogs
and wolf hybrids. I’ve actually spent enough time training dogs I understand
how they think, which means I can write about them and make it feel real.
Wrapping things up here, shifters
represent ancient patterns of personality that are part of our shared human heritage.
That’s why they’re easy to relate to and why we like to read stories featuring
them. That’s actually a whole other topic: archetypes. But as they say, another
blog for another day.
What are your favorite shifters?
Why them and not another form? If you could be any shifter, who would it be and
why?
That is an interesting question...I still have a fascination with werewolves and some pretty sexy story ideas in the works for one too...
Thanks for being on the blog today and Congrats on the super sinister book!
About the Editor and Author:
Story strumpet, tome
loving tart, eccentric night owl...these words describe book publicist and
erotic romance author Roxanne Rhoads.
When not fulfilling
one the many roles being a wife and mother of three require, Roxanne's world
revolves around words...reading them, writing them, editing them, and talking
about them. In addition to writing her own stories she loves to read, promote
and review what others write.
Roxanne is the owner
of Bewitching Book Tours and operates Fang-tastic Books, a book blog dedicated
to paranormal and urban fantasy books.
When not reading,
writing, or promoting Roxanne loves to hang out with her family, craft, garden
and search for unique vintage finds.
Visit her online
Author blog www.roxannesrealm.blogspot.com
Book Blog www.fang-tasticbooks.blogspot.com
Bewitching Book Tours
www.bewitchingbooktours.blogspot.com,
Facebook
Twitter @RoxanneRhoads
Excerpt from Dragon’s
Den
by Raven Corinn
Carluk
The Dragon’s Den was a
contemptible nest of scruff and depravity, but it was where my bounty had led
me. One little demoness was going to earn me a load of cash, so I wasn’t going
to let the sex club scare me off. As one of the top bounty hunters in three
dimensions, I had certainly been in worse places, and would be again.
Staring at the white marble
facade wasn’t going to get me paid. Checking my weapons, I strode past the
bouncer. His gaze was heavy on my breasts, but the big orc said nothing. The
Dragon’s Den resided at a nexus of dimensions, they saw weirder things than a
mixed-blood bounty hunter like me. I bumped into him as I passed, giving him a
bribe; the rest of the bouncers would now leave me alone to do what I needed.
Stepping past the ornate double
doors, I realized I was over-dressed for the place. The servers wore harnesses
of latex, barely enough synthetic fabric to be called an uniform. Some patrons
wore outfits so tight as to leave nothing to the imagination, and others wore
nothing at all. Everything was meant to tantalize and taunt, to appeal to
sexuality and hunger.
I looked downright prudish in my
wyvern leather armor and battle harness. The sapphire and onyx scales normally
looked exotic, tight enough to reveal my figure and not get in the way in a
battle, leaving only my pale hands and face exposed. Amongst this pool of
deviants, not even the eight knives sheathed around my body were anything
special.
Touching my blue hair trapped in
its topknot, I wished I’d hunted in this club before; it was nice to not stand
out.
Not that the freakiest of freaks
would stand out here. Magic and technology combined in an unique atmosphere.
Music blared and lights flashed while faeries sparkled and elves summoned
colorful illusions. More than a dozen races were present, most of them
revealing large portions of their anatomy.
Even though I stood in the middle
of the entryway, no one said anything to me. Not surprising; most denizens of
the crossworlds knew Brygny was a fearsome bounty hunter, and that I wasn’t
above a little collateral damage to get my way. I’d yet to meet anyone who
didn’t tremble slightly at my name.
Not bad for a genetic hybrid.
Instead of being scoffed at and shunned, I used my mixed abilities to carve a
name in the multiverse. I was one of those rare cases of mutation where I
wasn’t just a bundle of flaws. And with no one people to call my own, no one
got special treatment from me.
Of course, with everyone so lost
in hedonism, I’d have to play especially rough if someone got in my way.
The demoness I hunted was here,
on one of the top floors. Three stories of depraved sex and violence between me
and her. Sniffing deep the drug-laden air, I told myself I’d be able to handle
it. As much as the blood and lust enticed me, it would take more than this weak
crowd to draw me from my job.
I mounted the stairs, letting my
senses roam through the Den-goers. I had the hunting abilities of dragon, vampire,
weretiger, and a few other species, meaning I could quickly sort through
potential prey in a heartbeat. With three decades of collecting bounties under
my belt, labeling enemy and non-combatant and potential antagonist was a
subconscious job now.
The majority of this group was
too intoxicated to be any form of threat. Even the demons and orcs were deep in
their addled fantasies, so far gone they wouldn’t know if I attacked them. So
long as no one pulled me into one of their little games, I should have no
problems getting in and out with my target.
I ascended to the first story,
and the club revealed its true nature. The ground floor was all dancing and
getting to know one another. This floor was candle-lit booths and diners, with
a mingling crowd exploring their bodies. Sex and drugs and decadence were only
a front for dark dealings, though. Assassins were given orders, slaves were
traded, loot was sold to people who asked no questions.
Not that any of it was out in the
open. None of the patrons flaunted what they did, or tried to call attention to
themselves. A casual observer would only see club-goers watching the displays
of flesh and talking to each other. Even the body guards looked like just other
deviants.
But I wasn’t a casual observer. I
sensed who was high, who was hungry, who was angry, who was desirous, who was
armed. The currents in the air brought me tastes of the emotive cloud, let me
know who was watching me. Not many had eyes for me on this level, and I moved
quickly through them.
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