I had meant to post this to my Wix Website first, but the Interwebs is so slow today that I will put it here instead. Here's Muse's official excerpt. It's sensual and bittersweet, I hope, like the rest of the story.
London, 1884.
An artist lives to create. When Nathaniel’s urge to paint died, so did his will to live.
Until the night he meets Gabrielle.
Gabrielle may be just a poor prostitute,
but she has the beauty of a Pre Raphaelite stunner, and the otherworldly
aura of a fallen angel. She also has a secret. Gabrielle is Gabriel,
and when Gabriel’s dark past comes knocking and Gabrielle must abandon
her new career as an artist’s model, Nathaniel’s whole world comes
crashing down again.
Better to die than living without her love, and the breath-taking creative drive she brought him.
But it’s dead easy to die for a woman. Any
fool can die for a woman. To live for her, that takes altogether more
courage, doggedness and imagination.
COMING SOON from Evernight Publishing
... a book with my soul in it...
❤️💔❤️
Official Excerpt:
I am not sure how to touch
Nathaniel. I want him to kiss me again, I want him to hold me, I want him to
look at me that way he does in his studio, when he watches every line of my
body and sees a woman. And at the same time, I wish he would see me for what I
am, all that I am, once and for all, so I don’t have to hide anymore.
So I shed my jacket, and the blouse
underneath. I shiver a little in the cold when my arms are bared, and he runs
his warm palms on my goosebumps, soothing them.
Then I stand to unbutton my skirts
and petticoat, and untie my bustle, and I let it all swish down around my
knees, and I stand here naked, in my small chemise, and stockings and corset,
and my boots.
I am still silk-skinned and woman
shaped.
Except
for that one thing.
I steal a glance at his face—I can
hardly bear to look at his eyes, standing here so naked—thinking he will wince, or frown. Or scream, what do you
know. You can never tell, with a sensitive artistic temperament.
But he does none of these things.
Instead he goes to his knees on the
floor, like a man about to propose in some play, and with a sort of mute
reverence he strokes my thighs and my buttocks, and the back of my knees,
through the stockings. When he lays a kiss and then his forehead on the hard of
my hip, where the bone pokes sharply under my skin, I put my hands on his crazy
hair, and hold him there, and with the barest, lightest touch of his fingertips
he caresses the front of my corset, on my belly, and then down, down.
And to my acute embarrassment, the
damn thing shivers to his touch,
stiffening, rising.
Well. He has certainly seen me,
now. He really has.
He is not screaming.
I pull him to his feet and I step
out of my puddled skirts, and gently I undress him. Jacket and shirt and
trousers and drawers, socks, everything.
He is as tall as I am, which I had
never noticed, because he always stands with his head bent and his shoulders
slumped. He’s not muscular, but there is no fat on him either. He has
well-built bones under his lumpy clothes—he badly needs a good tailor—and he
would be rather handsome if he held himself straight, with his chin up, and
didn’t look so much at odds with himself. He’s pale, but not as pale as I am,
and there is just the merest spray of hair on his chest.
I caress his skin all over as I
undress him, and he looks transfixed, as if it had never occurred to him that
it takes two to dance this dance. Perhaps he thought I’d make him spend the
night on his knees adoring me.
The heat of his skin is like a deep
current, and it draws me to him.
We stand here mute, the only sounds
the drumming of the rain and the swish of falling clothes, and gently kissing
lips.
When I push him to lie on the bed,
I have a moment of dread that he might want to do that to me. I cannot have it. I will not be taken that way
ever again.
I’ll make my living giving blowjobs
for the rest of my days, I guess.
But I am not afraid of him. I do not believe he’d be capable of
hurting a fly, let alone me.
“So, do you fancy that blowjob,
finally?” I whisper in his ear, smiling, but he holds me close, too close for
me to slide down along his body.
“I love you,” he whispers, his lips
on my ear, so that words are made into a caress, “I love you, I love you.”
“Hush,” I whisper back, bearing
down on him, grinding my cock on his. “Don’t say such things. It cannot be. It
can’t.”
“This night, this once, please, let
me say it. I love you, I love you, I love you.” His body rises to meet mine,
and I feel those tears spilling now, with joy, and grief, and pity. Pity for him,
for me, for both of us, lost in this narrow garret under the drumming rain,
orphans in this storm, desperately naked in this terrible iron city.
“Only this once, then,” I whisper.
“Tomorrow, you must forget.”
And before he can answer or kiss me
again, I slip out of his arms, and down, along his chest and belly, so he
cannot see me cry.
I have pleasured so many men this
way, but never one I loved, and maybe it’s the same thing, and yet it’s
something altogether different. He’s all silk and warmth and heaving life and
fire pulsing, and his flesh matters
to mine, so that my whole body loves his.
“You—don’t—have—to do this,” he
whispers at first, but then he surrenders finally, and lets the pleasure take
him.
I told him, the first time we met,
that I’d do him for free. Who would have guessed, then, that I would end up
doing him for love?
And I don’t know if he’s a
virgin—but he is indeed quick. His cock grows even tauter on my tongue, and he
breathes in short, hard gasps a few times. When his body arches and heaves and
his hand fumbles at my cheek, I hold him, and hold him, and hold him… He comes
with a broken moan, hotly. I swallow it all.
On the street I never do. But here,
now, with him, I could not bring myself to spit.
You can also read the beginning of the first chapter here.
