Out Now – The Prison of the
Angels, the final Book of the Watchers by Janine Ashbless (@sinfulpress)
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:
