When
there’s a war in Heaven, on which side will you stand?
The Prison of the Angels is the new paranormal erotic romance
by Janine Ashbless, and is the final novel in the Book of the Watchers trilogy.
“I thought I
was a good girl. I thought that no matter what others did for my sake, I could
stay innocent. I thought that as long as I acted out of love, I’d be blameless.
I was wrong,
wasn’t I?”
Janine
Ashbless is back with the third and final instalment of her Book of the
Watchers trilogy, The Prison of the Angels. Unafraid to
tackle the more complex issues surrounding good and evil in mainstream
religion, Janine has created a thought-provoking and immersive trilogy which
sets a new standard for paranormal erotic romance. The first in the series, Cover
Him With Darkness, was released in 2014 by Cleis Press and received
outstanding reviews. It was followed in March 2017 by In Bonds of the Earth,
and finally The Prison of the Angels
on 1st December 2017, both published by Sinful Press.
Blurb:
Milja Petak’s world has fallen apart.
Her lover, the fallen angel Azazel, has cast her aside in rage
and disgust. The other contender for her heart, the Catholic priest Egan
Kansky, was surrendered back into the hands of the shadowy Vatican
organization, Vidimus, after sustaining life-threatening injuries.
She has killed and she has betrayed. She is alone, homeless,
and at the end of her tether - torn apart by guilt and the love she has lost.
But neither Heaven nor its terrifying representatives on Earth
have finished with Milja.
Both her lovers need her in order to further their very
different plans, and both passionately need her, though they may try to
deny it.
Milja is once again forced into a series of choices as she
uncovers the secrets Heaven has been guarding for centuries. But this time it
is not just her heart at stake, or even the fate of a fallen angel.
This time, the choices she makes will change everything.
This time it’s the End of the World.
The Prison of the Angels is the third in the
acclaimed Book of the Watchers trilogy, following on from Cover
Him with Darkness, and In Bonds of the Earth.
Excerpt:
The cold water flashed like white fire
over every inch of my skin. It burnt my eyeballs and my lips and the inside of
my throat, and beyond the white fire was a darkness so immense that it
swallowed me whole.
I fell forever.
Something grabbed my wrist. Something so
hot that it boiled away the darkness, so that there was suddenly light flashing
in my eyes. I felt myself grabbed up bodily and lifted. I felt heat against my
lips, blowing fire into my frozen lungs. I saw the wooden posts of a flight of
steps, and then I pitched forward onto hands and knees in the shallow snow,
choking up pond-water. In front of my blurred vision an inchoate swirl of
darkness poured up the steps onto the lit porch and then disappeared. Unseen,
something slammed against the door, a knock that made the house shake.
I was on the ground beneath the back
porch of John’s house, I realized, shuddering.
Mama.
Oh Mama. The thought seemed to come
from nowhere.
Three times the knock sounded, and on the
third the door burst open—outward, onto the porch—to reveal Egan in the lit
room within; shaven, shirtless, and frozen mid-lunge for what I could only
assume was a weapon of some sort.
He stared.
I tried to cry out.
“Milja?”
Grabbing his pistol he ran out barefoot
onto the porch and looked around for enemies that were not there. Then he
clattered down and pulled me up into his arms. I pressed my face to his neck
and he carried me up the steps and over the threshold—not like a bride, but
like a child he could hold tight against his torso, his wrists locked under my
thighs. His skin blazed against mine. He hefted me into the kitchen and propped
my ass on the table in front of the range.
“What the hell?” he demanded in a low
fierce voice, sweeping locks of sodden hair back from my face. My hat seemed to
have disappeared. “What happened, Milja? What were you doing out there?”
“Ice. I fell in the lake.” My jaw
chattered. It was obvious I was telling the truth—I was soaked from head to
toe, and after clasping me so close he wasn’t much drier himself.
“Feckssake, woman!” he growled. “What the
hell were you thinking of?” He shucked off my coat, which lifted a sodden ton
from my shoulders, then stooped to pull my boots off; ice-water spilt all over
the floor.
I tried to strip off my gloves but my
fingers weren’t capable of gripping anything.
“Come here, come here,” he said softly
from where he knelt at my feet, grabbing my wrists and peeling away the useless
gloves. He pressed my hands on either side of his warm neck, holding them
there. They must have felt like ice-blocks to him, but he didn’t wince.
He looked like a knight kneeling before
his queen, I thought. I could feel his pulse.
“I’ll go get towels, Milja. Are you going
to be okay a sec?”
I nodded, though he probably couldn’t see
it through the shuddering. He rose and hurried off, leaving me with the radiant
warmth of the stove. I thought I should probably get the rest of my clothes
off, but even after I struggled with my fly zipper my jeans seemed determined
to cling to my bum-cheeks.
I heard the back door bang shut and I
flinched.
Azazel?
Had he been gathering himself to come get
Egan? Was he the one who had saved me from the black waters? Where was he now?
Egan came back in carrying armfuls of
towels. “Alright?”
“I’m okay,” I told him, smiling through
my shudders. He was still shirtless, and I could see the faint Ethiopian scars
on his arm and chest.
He wrapped my hands one at a time in a
towel, chaffed them dry, and then set them deliberately against the hard, hot
wall of his torso.
Oh
God.
Then he slipped all the buttons on my
thick flannel shirt—the one I’d chosen this morning precisely because it wasn’t
provocative or distracting—and he only slowed when he realized I was wearing
just a bra-top underneath. My nipples stood in shamefully hard points under the
stretch cotton. I tried to wriggle out of the long tartan sleeves of my shirt
on my own, to spare his blushes, but everything clung like a freezing cold
second skin and he had to help.
The shallow slash on my forearm wasn’t
bleeding anymore, but each brush of his fingers felt like hot coals.
My wet garment made a slap as it struck
the floor.
He draped a towel around my shoulders and
another over my head. He started rubbing the water from my face and hair and
scalp, his movements precise and gentle. For long moments I was buried in a
soft darkness. I reached out, blind, to put my hands back on his bare ribs. I
could feel his heart pounding beneath them, like a beast pacing a cage.
I have no idea when it all changed for
him. When his grueling self-denial simply fell apart, like a garment worn and
washed until the fabric was weakened beyond all use. All I knew was that he
dropped the towel off my damp head, cupped my face in both his hands
and—absolutely without warning—kissed me.
The Prison of the Angels is available to
buy from all major online retailers including:
Author
bio:
Janine
Ashbless is a writer of fantasy erotica and steamy romantic adventure. She
likes to write about magic and myth and mystery, dangerous power dynamics,
borderline terror, and the not-quite-human.
Buyer
beware! If you like dark romance and a hard-won Happily Ever After, try
"Cover Him with Darkness," "Heart of Flame," or "The
King's Viper." If you prefer challenging erotica, go for "Red Grow
the Roses" or "Named and Shamed" instead. All her other books
lie somewhere on the spectrum between.
Janine
has been seeing her books in print ever since 2000. She's also had numerous
short stories published by Black Lace, Nexus, Cleis Press, Ravenous Romance,
Harlequin Spice, Storm Moon, Xcite, Mischief Books, and Ellora's Cave among
others. She is co-editor of the nerd erotica anthology 'Geek Love'.
Born
in Wales, Janine now lives in the North of England with her husband and two
rescued greyhounds. She has worked as a cleaner, library assistant, computer
programmer, local government tree officer, and - for five years of muddy feet
and shouting - as a full-time costumed Viking. Janine loves goatee beards,
ancient ruins, minotaurs, trees, mummies, having her cake and eating it, and
holidaying in countries with really bad public sewerage.
Her
work has been described as:
"Hardcore
and literate" (Madeline Moore) and "Vivid and tempestuous and
dangerous, and bursting with sacrifice, death and love." (Portia Da Costa)
Author
Links:
Janine
Ashbless website: http://www.janineashbless.com/
Janine
Ashbless on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/janineashbless
Sinful
Press website: https://www.sinfulpress.co.uk
Release
blitz organized by Writer
Marketing Services.
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