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Awards and Prizes:
🥇 First Place in Romance/Drama/Erotica in the Dragon’s Eye Awards (2023)
🥇 First Place in Erotica in the Green Exchange Awards (2024)
🥈 Second Place Overall in the Green Exchange Awards (2024)
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© All Rights Reserved. This book is copyrighted by Café Blush. Use of any part of this book without express permission from the author is prohibited.
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PROLOGUE
A mess, bedraggled with bloodshot eyes, Maggie had maybe three hours of sleep. There was no way she could go to work looking like this. Eyeing herself in the bathroom mirror, waiting for the water to warm, she knew she should have been fired months ago. God, I’m lucky Mrs. Bentley assumes I’m terminally ill or something, and that she has the utmost confidence in me being a ‘good girl.’
She smiled darkly, pondering the moniker. Thoughts of her mounting bills, nearly empty refrigerator, and lack of money drifted away as usual nowadays. Recent memories of her newfound naughty side dallied in her mind and her stomach fluttered.
Snapping back to the present, Maggie splashed her face with water, seriously trying to focus on her responsibilities in this world—the real world. But it was getting more difficult to distinguish between her real and fictional lives, and if she were completely honest, the fictional one was much more appealing.
Again, her thoughts wandered as water dripped down her face and she stared at her lips in the mirror’s reflection, remembering last night’s—or was it today’s—sultry adventure with the twins. Her stomach flipped and her pussy twitched just thinking about the erotic story.
It was a keeper for sure. They were keepers, she mused, having already put the erotica on her ‘special bookshelf.’ Grabbing the towel to dry her face, a barely audible moan fumbled in her throat and her mouth watered at the heated memory of their chiseled, warm, and oiled bodies, warming hers from the front and behind—repeatedly.
“No. I need to go to work,” her logical brain commanded her reflection. She wrung the towel in her clenched fists, trying to fight back the urge to succumb to her desires. She had to earn a paycheck so she could continue to afford rent. “Besides, working at the library has its perks. I always have access to new books. Ooh, and I can peruse the sale stash to see what’s been donated last night.”
But as she readied herself to set off for the library, the TV weatherman droned on about the summer heat. Soon, Maggie felt the familiar pull in her gut—the itch that just wouldn’t be satisfied if she didn’t scratch. It called to her like something from the depths of Primordial Earth, just like it had from the beginning. She knew she had an addiction, but how did one go about getting help for an addiction no one would believe could even be real?
She tried to close off its voice, aiming for the front door where her keys lay on the table. Keys—there was only one key she wanted right now, and it wasn’t to her apartment, nor the storage unit she was behind payments on. No, it was attached to the journal that had burned itself into her very soul. She lived and breathed for that key and journal, and the hot, steamy, sex-filled worlds the set unlocked. They had unlocked her.
Blindly, she stopped in the middle of the hall. Then, as if in a trance, messaged Mrs. Bentley. “I’m not feeling well and won’t be able to come in today.”
The power of her need overtook her and she kicked off her shoes, ambling into the sanctuary, her breathing coming in heavy with anticipation. This space had once been her home office, but now, besides being filled with bookcases, it resembled more of an altar; one of bean bag chairs, oversized cushions, and pillows, by which she could revere the written word, escaping into the pages when she so desired.
Unbuttoning her blouse, she let the silky garment slip to the floor, then quickly pushed her leggings down, stepping out of them as her eyes scanned the books on the shelves reserved for her favorites. Having her fill of BDSM with the twins, Maggie plucked Stolen by the Duke from its spot at the end. Historical fiction romance.
“Ah, Duke Pierre.” She moaned his name, unclasping her bra and throwing it aside, as she fondled one breast, purposefully heightening her already turned-on mood. She had visited the duke’s bedchambers countless times and wanted to be primed for him.
Seating herself in the middle of the plush nest on the floor, she picked up the beloved journal waiting there. Maggie opened the duke’s erotic novel to the bookmark on page fifty-two. This was where Pierre had finally gotten Sophie into his bed and made passionate love to her for the first time. More emotional than most, each time Maggie experienced this chapter, she unraveled anew, just like it was the first time. This feeling, that bore itself deep within, was what she’d become addicted to and craved relentlessly, never quite getting her fill—fill of Pierre’s cock between her thighs and on her tongue.
Grasping the journal on her lap, Maggie touched the novel with her other hand and recited the spell she’d memorized months ago—back before her life, her real life, had gone to shit.
“...Fac me una cum scriptoris consilio.”
Blinking to adjust to her new surroundings, she stood, dressed in the thin, nearly translucent linen shift Sophie’s ladies in waiting had dressed her character in in the previous chapter. Maggie felt her straight, shoulder-length hair transform into Sophie’s thick, tumbling black locks, as it fell down her back, to the small of her back. Without looking, she knew the simple cord, tied loosely at the front of her shift, barely hid her now enlarged breasts, as she stood before Duke Pierre Alejandre Morduex.
No matter how many times she reread this scene, she still trembled at his towering presence, hungrily, yet protectively hovering before her. His swoon-worthy words, laced with a French accent, melted her senses. “Sophie, I’ve waited too long for this day. I want to ravish you and worship every inch of your body and soul.”
Easily falling into character as Sophie, Maggie smiled softly, a hint of hunger in her own eyes. But it was no act. She genuinely craved the duke. “My body and soul belong to you, my love.”
Unlacing the cord at her chest in a slow, tantalizing show, her eyes never left his, not until his warm mouth took hers. As if by magic, the top of her shift fell from her shoulders. Like the proud lord he was, Pierre wrapped one confident arm round her waist, pulling her closer, while his large, soft hand found her warm breast. His palm kneaded, warming her insides like the roaring fire in the hearth and wetting her undergarments with needy desire as she moaned wantonly into his kiss.
