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A "murk bath" is earlier described as like black tea, with a few tealeaves in the water.

The heroine, Jinny, has nicknamed the alien who abducted her from Earth, "Tigger". She does not know that he is Tarrant-Arragon, the "Black King" of the Tigron Empire,

She is betrothed to JJ (arranged marriage), but hasn't seen JJ since she was 5. JJ is the "White King" in exile as a mercenary fighting for the cowardly "An'Koori" people.

****

Sometimes his thoughts were normal. Sometimes, they weren’t.

To calm her nerves, she tried to focus on the familiar but something was different about the subtly lit bedroom. She was trying to analyse what it was when she saw that Tigger was taking her to the bathroom.

She supposed it was a good idea to go, before...but she’d have preferred a less direct approach to sexual hygiene.

“Tigger, it might be romantic to...” She closed her eyes in shyness. “Perhaps, we could bathe each oth—”

Fully clothed, not even breaking stride to kick off his high boots, he plunged into the murk-bath with her.

“My God!” she spluttered, as soon as they surfaced and she could draw breath. “Do males of your species routinely half-drown your females during sex?”

It was a feeble attempt to make light of how much he’d frightened her. Shocked silly, her eyes adjusted faster than her mind. Below them, his robes drifted out in the slow, sinister diamond of a Manta Ray shark, casting shadows upwards, and effervescing tiny air bubbles like black sequins.

“I never knew the bath had underwater floodlights!” she added distractedly before she caught her train of thought. “Look here, Tigger, I’m not at all sure about this—”

“I know,” Tigger said breathing hard and stroking her throat with trembling fingers, “You’re afraid of what I’m going to do.”

“No. Yes. Well, you might have warned me. I agreed to let you have sex any way you want, but I need preparation—”

“I know you do.” He unsheathed a carnal grin. Under murk-water, the fingertips of his left hand traced lines of fire over her belly and her insides shivered. Then he dipped his fingers into the opening of her coat-dress and tugged. “Lots and lots.”

“That’s not what I meant.” She didn’t know how to ask what an An’Koori did when his moment came. “Tigger, don’t you think this is dangerous? You may be in your element, but I—”

“I’m going to give you a very thorough seeing to. But first...ahhh, I come first.” His thumb circled a button at her waist and she felt the caress as though he’d stroked her between her legs. “Well? Your dress is ruined anyway. Shall I ruin it some more? A lot more?”

“I don’t—”

“Don’t talk. Kiss me.”

He angled her face up to his, and Djinni had the oddest impression that she’d been ordered to do the sexual equivalent of rubbing noses with a tiger. However, she’d promised to do what he wanted, so she took his darkly-stubbled jaw between her hands. Shyly, she bent forward, and touched her lips to his.

Absorbed in the tequila taste and softly parched textures of his lips, she hardly noticed what he was doing, until wicked fingers circled her areolae through her wet clothes. Sparkling sensations zigzagged through her.

She was so surprised, she looked down. He did too. Their foreheads brushed, and it seemed doubly indecent for them both to watch his long-fingered, masculine hands fondling her bosom.

“Oh, little mate. Oh, yes!” he sighed, as the top half of her chest turned slowly pink with embarrassment.
His hands kneaded and stroked her, and she was too shocked to look away. Never had she felt anything like it. Never had she imagined...this. As though under conjurer’s hands, her reinforced bodice buttons gave way. The front of her dress opened like a black peony, spilling forth inner petals of lacy petticoat and a white profusion of bra and bosom.

“Ahhh.” He pushed his spread fingers inside her clothes and took her breasts in his hands. “Firm but so soft. Beautifully heavy. You fill my hands. You’re wonderful. Gorgeous!”

It didn’t seem right. It wasn’t, of course. She was in over her head. She hadn’t wanted or expected to feel the way she did. It was a complication. A disaster in the making.

“Tigger, this isn’t right,” she pleaded, conscience-stricken. “Something strange is happening to me. Can we stop for a moment?”

“No, we can’t!” He sank lower in the water and put his open mouth on her. His tongue flicked over her like liquid fire, hot through the wet cotton and lace, and above it, and under it. One of his hands curved under her bottom from behind, with his spread fingertips pressed up into the soft gusset of her panties.

“Ahhh,” Tigger groaned again, crushing her against him. All of a sudden, he surged up in the murk-water.
If this was “it”, he’d got their positioning wrong, unless he expected her ovaries to be under her kneecaps, Djinni thought. She was wondering what she was supposed to do, when a jolt ran through him. The length of him juddered against her. There was a vibration and a shiver in the water which seemed to last and last.

Had he just done what she thought he’d done?

He had!

J-J’s scornful epithet “Quivering An’Koori” took on new meaning when Tigger trembled and jerked in the water. There was no further doubt in her mind that Tigger was An’Koori. It almost made sense that people from a poldered water-world mated in water.

He subsided and lay on his back in the water, which now glittered and fizzed like champagne in black beer. Black and silvery waves radiated out, shimmering in the dark and suddenly peaceful room. Their thick slow slosh was a heavy caress.

Djinni adjusted her bodice, and floated beside him. Her ear against his chest was filled with the muffled traffic roar of his heart, but gradually she recognized another rumble.
Tigger was purring. Which told Djinni that not only had he spent himself against her, but he’d done it on purpose.

“Tigger?” she whispered. But how does a nice girl ask her satisfied lover if sex was over for both of them?

“Yes, my love?” At her shoulder, his hand stirred. Long fingers slid over her much-ruffled bra, found a loose thread, and tugged. With a silken caress, her underwear unravelled.

“I was just thinking...” She thought quickly. “Oh, my Stars, Tigger, when I told you about frogs trying to mate with fish, I never dreamed...”

“That you’d lose your virginity in an amphibian mating?” he completed her thought. “You came close. At the time, you didn’t understand my remark about frottage. Now you do.”

Strictly speaking, she hadn’t lost her virginity, but if a quivering An’Koori didn’t know the difference and was happy with frottage, was she morally obliged to tell him what he was missing? She didn’t want to invite that sort of trouble.

Or did she? What they’d just done wasn’t any sort of “dry run” to prepare her for sex with an over-sized, over-sexed Great Djinn like J-J. Nor was it the anti-climax she’d wanted, since Tigger seemed to be delighted with his performance.

“You’re very quiet, little one. I haven’t disgusted you, yet, have I?”

“Oh, no!” she protested, although she was shocked. “How could your behaviour be disgusting, if you’re doing what’s natural and normal for you? Something is bothering me. I can’t put my finger on what it is, and I’m frustrated about that.”

“Are you?” he drawled, lightly fingering her. “About that?”

“Tigger, about last night,” she began, thinking that if the An’Koori mated in water, which they obviously did, something about his sexuality didn’t make sense.

“Ye-e-es?” There was a world of alien sensuality in the way he watched her through narrowed predatory eyes. When he looked at her like that, her mouth went dry, and a frisson of guilty excitement ricocheted through her insides.

The honourable daredevil part of her wanted to ask whether she’d misunderstood his previous night’s attempt to force himself on her. When she’d sucker-punched him, she’d been sure he’d been about to have sex in the normal way.

Had his sexual aggression merely been a bungled power-play? The cautious martial artist in her didn’t want to inquire. Either way, she’d be asking for trouble.

“Nothing.” She shook her head. “I’m just confused. I need to sort out my feelings.”

For a breathtaking moment, she thought he wasn’t going to let her off the hook. His nostrils flared. Then he exhaled hard.

“I’ll sort your feelings out for you,” he said at last, with deep-voiced, casual arrogance. “You love me. Admit it.”

“I’ll do no such thing.” This topic was almost as dangerous as analysing his sexual preferences. “How do you expect me to love you, when I can’t trust you? Tigger, you can’t even tell the truth about bath water...you told me this murk-bath was to help me adjust to your gravity. When I look back at your misbehaviour whenever I was around water, I could kick myself for not guessing that this bath was for mating.”

Tigger choked and began to quiver. At it again, Djinni thought. What a pig!

“You once accused me of sending mixed signals. What about you?” She glared, saw that he was shaking with silent mirth and splashed him. “How dare you laugh at a time like this? What about those things you said about wanting to spread my legs and bury your ‘choice weapon’ deep inside me when all you wanted to do was make love like a spawning fish?”

Spawning fish? Tarrant-Arragon stopped laughing. What the sunblazes had his little mate convinced herself he was? Not a Great Djinn, that was for sure.
Yet, on some repressed level she knew exactly who he was. She must have known last night. She’d cried out his name! Had she forgotten? Or did she not trust her insights?

A thousand worlds’ tribute for your thoughts, Tarrant-Arragon mused, silently courting disaster.
Was it possible she knew who he was and loved him, despite all the vicious propaganda she believed about him? An entrancing supposition. That she’d just denied it, didn’t worry him. She was a very poor liar.

He turned his head on the water and smiled at her.

“I love you. You know that, don’t you?”
He watched her changing expressions and recognized all the signs that she was desperate to change the subject.

“Human love-making must seem intriguingly unnatural to you,” she blurted out, and Tarrant-Arragon couldn’t decide whether she sounded wistful or patronizing.

“Very,” he agreed. It was a stretch, but he thought he understood her. She was so afraid of the amorous unknown that she wanted to think that making love with him would be something less than having sex.

Why disabuse her of the notion? He was much too experienced to forfeit a strategic advantage in bed. And yet his heart had leapt when she’d started to ask, “About last night—?” If she hadn’t backed down, he might have told her the whole truth. If only he could convince her that she loved him.

Heavy murk-water tugged at his boots. He kicked free, and congratulated himself. The murk-bath had been an inspiration for taking the violent edge off his passion. Off-camera. Moreover, the dense waters had dampened Djinni’s fertile fragrance.

However, even if it were possible to stay in the murk-bath for the next five days and nights, he’d no intention of consummating his marriage anywhere but in bed.

“Very,” he repeated huskily, and slid his hand under her dress. So far, so good. She parted her legs. It was the first time she’d welcomed his hand there. It might be the last.

This first-and-last he’d remember for the rest of his life—her first lover, his last virgin. He’d take his time and savour every nanosecond. Standing between her legs, dazzled by desire, he inserted a finger inside her panties, and held his breath.

She didn’t object.

A few months ago, a group of my friends started a group on GoodReads called A.W.A.Y. (authors without a yacht) because we are appalled by some of the fibs that some of the worst e-book "pirates" tell, and get away with.

For instance, one pirate was selling collections of over 12,000 different authors' e-books by email. She had all 34 novels by one author, and sold the entire collection for about $9.00 a time. (To dozens of people who assumed she was a legitimate bookseller and paid the publishers.)

When challenged, this pirate's excuse was that she'd downloaded all the books she was selling from a pirate site, and because they were on a "public" site, she thought the books were in the Public Domain.

Do you think that a novel becomes "public domain" on the day it goes on sale in bookstores or on Kindle?

Come ask questions, rant if you like. Find out where the legal sources are for ebooks, and who is legitimately giving away free reads.

Right now, as long as my private budget lasts, I'm paying for an advert on Goodreads to draw readers' attention to the A.W.A.Y. group.

If you know about the group, please don't click on my advert.

Click this, instead
http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/3...

Conversely, if you are one of my author friends and have a piracy success/horror story or warning or news event or blog of your own on the topic that you'd like to share (without revealing names of pirate sites), this would be a good time to add it to the group.

We have topics on fair use, DMCA, DRM, copyright, sharing, where to find the best legal price, where to find legal free reads, ebook publishers we recommend, and much, much more.

http://www.goodreads.com/videos/show/...

Given that there is a link in an earlier blog to hear me reading my own version of Mating Net, I cannot honestly imagine why anyone would want to listen to just the prologue, even if there are some photo illustrations.

However, it's here.

I think voice talent Scott Merrill does a great job. What do you think?

Read sample chapters by Linnea Sinclair, Susan Kearney, Rowena Cherry, Susan Grant, Deborah Macgillivray, Jade Lee, Catherine Spangler, Charlee Compo, Nina Bangs, Joy Nash, C.L. Wilson, Robin T Popp, Dawn Thompson, and many more.

It's free, it's convenient, no more point-to-points around the internet "researching" what to try next.

http://www.freado.com/book/4645/The-Best-of-Futuristic,-Fantasy,-and-ParaNormal-Authors-#1

For best results:
Click on the link.
Wait for the yellow loading bar to fill.
Scroll to the far right to "Read Now"
A double page will open (like a book) with the cover on the right.
Use the toolbar on your desktop to Zoom,
Zoom In or Zoom Text only.

Use the start triangle on the webpage to begin reading.

http://www.freado.com/book/4647/The-Best-of-Futuristic,-Fantasy,-and-ParaNormal-Authors-#2

Please feel free to forward, to share, to upload the links, to use the Share This function on the Book Buzzr site as long as you share each sampler in their entirity.

Mating Net is a prequel for my god-Princes of Tigron series Forced Mate, Insufficient Mating Material, and Knight's Fork.

Set 70 years before the flurry of marriages and murders described in this trilogy, Mating Net shows how the ambitious young Princess Helispeta split a royal family and started a war. Last Thursday, I drove 40 miles each way to a video recording studio and read every word --all 15,000 of them-- of Mating Net in front of a camera.

If you would like to hear me read this somewhat risque short story to you, please check whether or not these links work. Please be aware, this is not a sweet story.

Part One:
http://lsc.audioacrobat.com/download/5469a230-094f-0354-5d6b-db5b4e884715.mp3

I had to stop for a glass of water before reading the more controversial sex scene.

Part Two:
http://lsc.audioacrobat.com/download/e07f641f-cbd7-d71e-db0d-63a1c3d2bd2e.mp3


Mating Net can be purchased as an e-book at newconceptspublishing.com

The first 15 pages of Mating Net can be read free
Sampler

I should very much appreciate votes for the cover art, title, and the blurb on the contest page, here:
Award-5-Stars

If the tinyurl does not work, here's the longer url

http://www.wakeupcelebrityauthor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&catid=14:general-fiction&id=22:insufficient-mating-material

IWOFA group sampler


There's a sample chapter of Insufficient Mating Material and also one of Knight's Fork on Book Buzzr.

I found it a bit confusing at first. Ignore the "Buy" button. No idea what that is for! I clicked on Explore, Book, then used the single arrow in the upper right corner, which was much easier than trying to snag the dog eared corner of the page!

Rowena Cherry

Radio talkshow host Don McCauley cracked up more than once while interviewing me. Even if the Knight's Fork interview isn't playing, you can click on the text in the cats eye green grid, and it will play.

TheAuthorsShow