About Blind Desire
by I.D. Locke
127 pages / 66200 words
ISBN: 978-1-60370-722-0, 1-60370-722-0
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc
A chance encounter in an alleyway has Ryzel, an incubus, chasing after Quinlin, the Gifted human who almost interrupted his most recent meal. Quinlin’s prickly attitude doesn’t stop Ryzel from trying to find him because a Gifted human such as Quinlin is the richest possible food source for an incubus. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Ryzel also finds Quinlin beautiful.
Quinlin is frustrated and annoyed that he can’t get Ryzel out of his mind after only one stolen kiss. A second encounter with Ryzel in a bar leads Quinlin to make the life-altering decision to sleep with the object of his obsession to purge Ryzel from his mind once and for all. One night of pleasure reveals details neither intended to tell the other about themselves. The wheels of destiny are set into motion.
Review
Alexa Snow, author of Clear Cut and Back Cut, writes:
The world being more infused with magic than is readily apparent, Quinlin is gifted with a capital G. When he meets Ryzel, a strange and beautiful man whose kiss does things to Quin he's never experienced before, he knows that something unusual is happening. Will it be too unusual for Quin to handle when the truth comes out? And will Ryzel, whose sexual skills are spectacular beyond belief, find himself in his first real relationship? Together, the two seem fated to be one...
This story starts in the middle of a scene, something that only works when the author is good enough to pull it off -- fortunately, Locke is just that good (or better). There's an awful lot more to Quin and Ryzel than meets the eye initially, and each time a new detail is revealed the reader is drawn deeper and deeper into the characters' lives. It's far from a simple story, but it's written so well that reading it is almost effortless, one scene flowing into the next.
A number of fascinating and extremely unique characters populate the world of Locke's story, a world drawn with care and word-painted pictures that are extraordinarily real at the same time they're completely fantastical. The plot and the characters are what's most important here, not the sex, but the sex scenes are gorgeous just the same -- hot and not without conflict, which just makes them that much steamier. An excellent story all around.
Sample
My hips jerked one last time, shoving the man I was fucking against the rough brick of the wall. He gave a high-pitched moan of ecstasy, his body shuddering with release. I held myself still, pressing into him and drinking deeply of his sexual energy at the peak of his orgasm. His aura started to fade to the point of no return far before I was ready to stop. I sighed and reluctantly ended my feeding, nowhere near satisfied. The last thing I needed or wanted in my hunting grounds was a corpse reeking of unexplained cause of death.
I slipped from my meal, straightened both our clothes, and was about to back away from him when I felt the hard press of something between my shoulder blades. My mind thought gun barrel until a cold burn from the metal worked its way through my clothes and told me something made of wrought iron was being ground into my back. A gun I could have brushed off without a thought. Wrought iron was a whole new ball game.
"Release your victim," said a soft voice from behind me, and I received another sharp jab to my back.
I muttered under my breath at my carelessness. I hadn't sensed anyone around when I'd impulsively seduced my current meal outside the club. Just the fact that I'd let my hunger get the better of me and risked a feeding in a semi-public area made me want to kick myself. I was getting stupid, sloppy, and complacent in my old age.
I was jabbed in the back again and clenched my teeth against the cold burn being pressed into me. I'd literally been caught with my pants down and assaulted with a wrought iron weapon. I hadn't been surprised like this in centuries. That the person behind me happened to be holding something made of one of the few things on the planet that could actually hurt me, couldn't be a coincidence.
"Release. Your. Victim," the man behind me said with growing impatience in his voice. He ground the whatever it was against my back to emphasize his point.
I took my hands off my latest meal and held them up in the universal sign of "no weapons." The man I'd fed from crumpled to his knees without my support, and I knew a satisfied smile would be stamped on his face. You couldn't enjoy an incubus feeding and go away unhappy and unsatisfied.
If you survived the feeding.
I slowly turned to face the person who'd managed to sneak up on me and, for the briefest of seconds, wondered if I'd been found by one of the angels that sometimes wandered the Earth looking for other beings of their caliber to fight. Either that, or I was still feeling a little buzzed from my all-too-short feeding and my perceptions were skewed.
He was my height, maybe a smidge less. I probably outweighed him by a good twenty pounds. Not that he was skinny. More like lean. The crappy light in the alley would have made things like his eye color or hair color a mystery to humans, but I had no such difficulty. I had no trouble making out the lovely ginger shade of his hair on the top layers and a dark auburn on the bottom layers. His hair hung just past his shoulders, and I had the most insane urge to bury my nose in it and inhale what I knew was going to be a spicy-sweet scent.
His eyes caught me and held me transfixed. I couldn't remember ever seeing eyes so pale a green. Something in the way he was looking at me seemed a little off, but I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was. I doubted he'd been able to see my true form for the handful of seconds it'd been visible in the shadowy alley while I fed, but something wasn't right about his gaze. He jabbed me in the chest with the end of a cane, and I once again felt the cold burn of iron through my clothes.
"That's rather rude," I said, grabbing the end of the cane and pushing it away from my chest. Only years of practice kept me from flinching when wrought iron touched the bare skin of my hand.
The stranger opened his mouth and was about to say something, but stopped when my most recent meal groaned and pushed himself to his feet. He ran a shaky hand through his short hair and squinted at me. Confusion was in his eyes. He had no memory of our little encounter. No true victims of an incubus remembered their tryst with one of us unless we wanted them to. Generally, we'd stopped wanting them to during the Middle Ages. Too much bad press.