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:
