Buy Now or Read for FREE with Kindle Unlimited!
To be bid on was to be bought as a wife. To the winning bidder his
prize, a maid, a servant, a child-bearer. That would be Poesy Laroche’s life,
she realized, as she walked down the aisle to her future husband. He’d promised
to break her into submission, and she knew his words were true.
In an act of desperation, she takes the reins of her fate and dives
into the woods we don’t speak of. The screams that come at night become only
whispers of stories about the mysterious Lady Venom. Her manor is filled with
snakes and horrors. And when Poesy gets lost within her maze, Lady Venom claims
her as her own mistress, with no hope of escape.
Poesy is locked into a haunted estate where the flowers watch, the
ghosts whisper while the snakes slither, and everyone knows the deadliest of
them all is their Lady that rules them.
But there are secrets to uncover both within the eerie walls and in
the riddles atop Lady’s Venom’s forked tongue as she incites more danger and
pleasure than Poesy ever thought possible.
But will it be enough to
keep Poesy from her fate? Or will the hidden truths prove more fateful than a
serpent’s bite?
Lady Venom is a haunted, spooky, lesbian romance with
lethal women and gothic magic. It’s a twist on both Medusa and Beauty and the
Beast and features femme dom and captive tropes with off the charts spice. This
story is set in The Halloween Boys universe with crossover of lore, but you do
not need to read The Halloween Boys before enjoying Lady Venom Takes a
Mistress.
Excerpt
Copyright 2023 @Kat Blackthorne
Acoustics trembled down the path
to the guillotine as my mother fluffed my outrageous creampuff dress. “I look
like a goose,” I grumbled as she tied a thick pink bow around my neck. My
collar, my leash, my cattle chain.
“You look fit for a lord.” She
preened. “He will be so pleased when he sees you.”
I hated that. I wished to tangle
my hair, blister my skin, and wear dirty potato sacks for all of time so men
like him would never glance at me twice again. Maybe that’s what I should have
done to avoid this union. Maybe I was too cowardly to harm myself. But this
fate was sure and certain death. I knew my impending husband would make good on
his threats of sexing me until I bled and cried for mercy. A fate worse than
any demise I could imagine. My mother and two of the lord’s men helped me onto
a white horse, my skirts billowing over the sides. I rubbed the animal’s ear
softly, wishing I could trade places with the creature but knowing she was this
man’s property the same as I was.
“We are both trapped mares, aren’t
we?” I asked her tenderly as the attendants let go of her reins and she trotted
down the aisle of onlookers to my waiting evil peacock of a future husband.
The whole town had shown to watch
my beheading, I mean wedding. Nosy, bored jerks. Why was no one speaking up
about how wrong this was? How this was no way to live or end one’s life? Why
was I doomed simply for being a woman? The groom looked up at me as the priest
spoke about love and duty. It may as well have been a reading of my final job
description. Leaning in, the lord patted the horse on its snout.
“See, Poesy? All it takes is a few
beatings and fuckings, and you’ll be as helpless and docile as Penny here.”
Penny. Even her name was similar
to mine. And for some reason, imagining her beaten, her white fur marred with
blood at his hands, lit something inside me. Something like rage, a feeling I’d
scarcely allowed myself to truly embody. Trapped, caged animals with nowhere to
go, nowhere safe from the men who hunted and captured us. A crow called from
the forest beyond, pulling my attention. Nowhere to go except…
Buy Now or Read for FREE with Kindle Unlimited!
About Kat Blackthorne
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Reader Group
Goodreads | BookBub | Newsletter | Website
This promotional event is brought to you by Indie Pen PR
No comments:
Post a Comment