Title: YEAR OF THE CAT

Genre: homoerotic romance/historical fantasy/shapeshifter/BDSM/fairy tale

Publisher: Amber Allure/Amber Quill Press

Purchase link: http://www.amberquill.com/AmberAllure/YearCat.html

Sweet-natured Etienne LeFevre must give up his birthright and flee into the snow-covered forest to save himself from the murderous greed of his brutish elder brothers. When Etienne ends up alone and hungry, with a ramshackle cottage his only shelter and a feral cat his only friend, he believes himself doomed to a sad, cold death.

But out of the shadows of the night arrives a visitor who brings comfort. He presents himself as a servant, but the man called “Jacques” spends the long hours instructing Etienne in the cruel delights of a disciplined passion.

Jacques is gone with the morning light, but Etienne thinks he knows the stranger’s secret. Will he tame the beast that lurks within his lover? Or will he find himself a victim of the bitter rage that rules Jacques’ heart?

Based on the classic French fairy tale, “Puss In Boots,” this story explores what happens when the servant becomes the master, and the master lives to serve.

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EXCERPT:

Etienne struggled to find his voice. “I know nothing of passion. I am…untouched.”

Jacques’ lips quirked in a sinister smile. “So sweet, like spun sugar. I fear you’ll rot my very teeth.”

The kiss Jacques pressed upon Etienne’s mouth tasted of salt and iron, and awakened in Etienne a delirious kind of hunger. He found himself clutching at Jacques’ shoulders, tearing at the sleeves of his coat with his sore fingers. When Jacques pulled aside the collar of Etienne’s shirt and licked at the line of flesh he’d revealed, Etienne stifled a moan.

“No, mon petit, let me hear your cries,” Jacques murmured, his words setting a heated buzz against Etienne’s skin. “Let me lap them from the hollow of your throat.”

Etienne fought, at war with his traitorous body. “Monsieur, please, I do not—”

“Hush,” Jacques whispered and caught Etienne’s chin in his hand. The pupils of his eyes had taken on a strange, slitted appearance as he gazed into Etienne’s face. “You’ll only tire yourself, and gain nothing for the effort.”

“But you said you wished to be my servant in all things, monsieur. Yet you would take me without my consent?”

“I would coax your consent from its hiding-place and make it sing out like the bells of Notre Dame on Christmas morning.”

His words sounded like nothing less than the simple truth. Etienne stilled himself against the hard cottage floor, his body not entirely limp with submission.