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HER DARK SOUL

Is my first full length erotic romance fantasy.  You never know, it may even get into print.  I have everything crossed. 🙂

A man trapped by magic, an enigmatic guardian, and a virgin who will bind them all…

Ordered to secure a precious box from the priests of Fausta, Marek isn’t told a virgin ward is part of the deal. Ash’s innocence and need drive him to touch her, taste her, to take the twisted power in her flesh and energize his own. But hidden players force Marek into doing something unthinkable.

Lucas’ soul has been trapped for four hundred years. His new master demands he invade Ash’s dreams and take her virginity. If he does, the treasure she guards will open. He’s happy to obey. However, he finds her guarded by a man unlike any he’s known in his long life.

Ash should deny the fire in her blood, remember who and what she is, but something inside her finds both men irresistible. As their lives intertwine, they’re driven to find pleasure, using their unique blend of sex and magic to fight an enemy who would consume them all.

And here’s a short excerpt.  You can read another, longer excerpt here.  You can buy it here

Her Dark Soul
(c)2010 Kim Knox

Marek stopped. He released her hand and white, stinking light shrouded his fist. He pressed his knuckles against a set of heavy, blue-painted doors. There was a dull thunk and the doors swung inwards. The light died around his fingers and he took her arm. “Inside.”

Her stomach knotted and not from the harsh bite of hunger. She stared along the corridor into the dimly lit atrium. This was her life now, in this house, with this stranger.

“Don’t worry, Ashsara.”

She had to ask. “Was my name on the scroll? Does the emperor know who I am?”

“Yes.”

Marek pushed her up onto the wide doorstep and then into the shadowy coolness of the hall. He pushed the door closed behind him. The heavy thud made her heart jump. Marek stood behind her, almost pressing his body into hers, and eased back the heavy hood of her cloak.

Ash sucked in a sharp breath and all the memory of him, of his taste, of the curl of his fingers against her most intimate flesh, rushed her. His lips found her ear. Ash shivered and she fought down the quick, hot rise of need in her veins. She closed her eyes. Her wild attraction made no sense. Was it simply her time in the temple making her susceptible to the first hard male body she met? Her fingers curled into fists, her nails digging into her palm. Dwelling on Marek’s beauty? No, not a wise thought.

“Sweet as you taste, I think I can resist you.” He paused and his breath heated her skin, the pulse low in her belly seeming to fill all her senses. “Well, almost.” He smiled against the shell of her ear and her heart squeezed. “I have need of you now.”

Marek skimmed down her shoulder until he took her hand again, his warm, callused fingers pressing into her palm. He tugged her forward and she stumbled after him, her heart beating too hard.

The walls of the corridor were a blur and Marek skirted the atrium pool, leading her into a small room. He pushed her back until her calves hit a low bunk. “Sit.”

She obeyed him. The warm darkness pressed against her and she tried to stare through it, listen for movement, her body expecting Marek’s touch, fearing it, craving it. She gasped at the sudden arc of burning white light. It illuminated him as he stood beside an oil lamp hanging low on the smooth wall. Darkness swept around them again before another spark dipped into the glass bowl. Soft light filled the room, casting brown shadow into the corners.

The first pull and stretch of the leather strap and buckle on his tunic knotted her hands in her lap. Another followed and another. It was the loudest sound in the room, rising above her pounding heart, short breaths and the crack and hiss of the wick in the lamp. Marek shrugged off the tunic and dropped it over a wooden chair tucked against the wall. He tugged at his loose, linen undershirt and pulled it over his head.

Ash pressed her thighs together, but it did nothing to ease the hard pulse of her flesh. The golden light caressed his hard-muscled torso and her mouth dried. The need to run her mouth over him in quick kisses, to trace and tease her tongue along the silver scars criss-crossing his skin filled her, and her awakened imagination ran wild.

Marek tilted his head and ran his fingers down his chest. “I can feel your need building.” His eyes narrowed. “It’s powerful, wild. Yes, I can see why the priests made you a ward for this box.”

She wanted to look away from him, see where he’d placed the box he’d hugged to his body—and hers—since leaving the temple, but she couldn’t. She could only stare at his mouth, her own lips burning, eager to find him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Is that a part of your power? This ignorance?” He took a step closer and the need to snap at him for his insult died on her tongue. Marek stroked her jaw, his thumb pressing against her bottom lip. He traced its edge. He was a dark shadow looming over her and it quickened her pulse. “Then I must be careful with you.”

“Marek…”

She almost groaned his name and Ash didn’t know whether she was asking him to stop or for him to…what? Her imagination failed her. She knew nothing of men, had only caught brief glimpses of slaves, as the eunuchs kept a careful eye on all of their wards.

Marek tilted her chin up and he bent, dipping his mouth down to hers. His lips hovered, the tiny distance he kept between them driving need and frustration in a wild rush through her body.

“What would you like me to do, Ashsara?” His voice soft, deep and so very…male…fluttered her eyes shut. His hot breath teased her parched lips. “Kiss you? Or would you like my mouth on your body? On your breasts? Between your thighs?”

A gasp escaped her at the thought of Marek’s hot mouth kissing her in such an intimate place.

“Ah yes, that’s what you want.” His smiling words brushed his lips against hers. “I’d kiss you, let my tongue tease over your flesh, curl and bury itself deep inside you. Oh and then I’d fuck you so slowly. So thoroughly.”

His words burned through her, stirring the hot beat of her blood. Already the powerful surge that he had brought to her in the atrium of the temple rode fast through her body. Her breathing came hard and she fought the wild wave that would burst out against him and leave her boneless and still aching.

“Imagine me there.”

She bit out a silent curse against him, because she could see him between her bare, parted thighs, the slow movement of his dark head, his callused hands gripping her pale skin.

“Feel me there.” And both of his hands lifted the heavy material of her cloak. He skimmed his fingertips along her thin shift and then his palms rested hot against her legs. His thumbs pressed into soft skin and with a hard grin, he parted her thighs.

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