Hello Liv and thank you for inviting me over to your blog today to chat about my latest release, Spirit.
The story has several inspirations, including the plight of homeless young people who we see on the streets of all our major cities, anywhere in the world. I often wonder what their stories are, and I suspect many of them are pretty dire. Spirit charts the journey made by one courageous young woman, and the help she receives from an unlikely benefactor.
The story is also a celebration of the fabulous sporting event which took over the whole of Yorkshire in July 2014. Le Grand Départ is the opening stages of the Tour de France, a massive global occasion. But I don’t think any of us realised just how massive it would be until the carnival rode into town. Roads were closed, transport non-existent – apart from the two-wheeled sort. Over two million visitors descended from all over the world. Ice cream sellers did a year’s trade in just two days! It was a weekend to remember, and I had no choice but to set one of my books against that backdrop.
Here’s the blurb…
When Matthew Logan offers a homeless young woman a bed for a few nights, he expects the girl to eat, sleep, recover from the flu, and then move on. Instead, in no time at all eighteen-year-old Beth Harte has captured his affections completely. Though Matt wants only to protect her and has no intention of sleeping with her, Beth has other ideas, and she proves to be very persuasive.
But after Beth is attacked by a friend of Matt’s and subsequently learns for the first time that Matt is an experienced dominant, she is unable to separate the man she is growing to care about from her hateful memories of previous exploitation. Confused and frightened, she runs away.
Almost six years pass before Matt sees Beth again, and in that time his vulnerable little waif has reinvented herself as an artist. Now she has a stunning proposition for him and his environmental engineering company: to collaborate on a project fusing art and science to promote one of the most prestigious sporting events in the world. But when Matt demands to know what went wrong before, she tells him the truth, both about her childhood and about his friend’s actions.
Matt is determined to make Beth’s abusers pay for their crimes, but he’s also not about to let her run away from him again. Can Beth bring herself to trust Matt despite her fears and give him the chance to love her and show her the pleasures of being his submissive, or will the wounds of her past keep her from trusting anyone ever again?
Publisher’s Note: Spirit is an erotic romance novel that includes spankings, sexual scenes, anal play, BDSM content, and more. If such material offends you, please don’t buy this book.
And of course a sexy excerpt, to whet your appetite:
Without warning he withdraws his hands and I’m alone. Abandoned. I turn my head to see him crouching a couple of feet away, picking up an object from the floor. It’s a bullet vibrator.
“What are you going to do with that?” On a stupid questions scale of one to ten, that must score about twenty seven. Matt certainly thinks so as he grins at me, his leer quite wicked.
“In the future, when you’re a little more confident – in yourself and in me – I’ll probably blindfold you and let you try to guess what I’m using. For now though, since you’ve seen it and you’ve asked, this is going inside your sweet cunt. It’s small, you’ll have to squeeze to hold on to it. I’ll be stroking your clit, and we both know how much you love that, but if you drop our little toy I’ll stop. So, how’s that for incentive?”
“I think it should be very persuasive, Sir.”
“I thought it might. And if you treat our toy with the respect it deserves, I’ll let you come. Then I’ll put it in your arse, and we do it all again.”
“I… oh.”
“Did I hear a Sir?”
“Sir. Sorry. Will it hurt? In my arse, I mean. You said you wouldn’t hurt me?”
“What I actually said was I wouldn’t harm you. But no, it’s small, you’ll be able to accept it easily. With plenty of lube, and I’ll take as much time as you need.”
He has straightened again as he was speaking to me, and now he’s standing right behind me, his palm again caressing my buttocks. He shoves the bullet into the front pocket of his jeans, then uses both hands to part my globes.
“Such a pretty arse. But a little tight for what I have in mind. Maybe I should help you to loosen up a little….”
I gasp as he presses the tip of his finger against the pucker of muscle, applying just enough pressure to make his presence felt but without penetrating me. Yet.
“Some lube, I think.”
The oil is cool as he trickles it down the crack between my buttocks, and I gasp some more as he catches the stream with his finger and works it around my untried anus.
“Oh God, I don’t think I can do this.”
“You don’t need to do anything, Beth. Just relax, if you can, and don’t fight me. If you need me to stop, really need me to stop, just say ‘red’ and I will. I promise.”
“Oh, oooh.” I let out a long moan as his finger slips into my arse, helped on its way by the slick lube.
“Beth, did you hear what I said? What’s your safe word?”
“Red. It’s red.”
“Okay. And do you need to use it now?”
“No, I don’t think so. I, I’m fine. I think.”
“Your colour for being fine is green. And yellow is for if you’re struggling, close to your limit. Or in your words, yellow is for when you’re having a wobble. So, what colour are you now, Beth?”
“Yellow. I’m yellow.”
“Am I hurting you?” He withdraws his finger and slides it back, just an inch or so I think though it’s hard to be sure. The intrusion feels really strange, intimate, humiliating, yet beautifully wicked. My clit’s throbbing, aching to be touched, and if he does make contact there I know I’ll detonate in a moment.
“No, not hurting. Oh God, I need you to rub my clit. Make me come. Please, Matt. Sir.”
“Soon, Beth. First I want you to look after my little toy for me, remember?”
“Yes, anything. Just, I need…” He presses his finger deeper into my arse, at the same time using his other hand to insert two or maybe three fingers into my pussy. I clamp my inner muscles around them, gyrating my hips in a desperate attempt to get him to stroke my clit. It doesn’t work, obviously, and within moments he withdraws them again.
You can grab a copy of Spirit from wherever you like to buy your ebooks
Spirit Buy Links:
More about Ashe Barker:
I’ve been writing seriously for about two years but I’ve been an avid reader for as long as I can remember, erotic and other genres. I love reading historical and contemporary romances in all pairings – the hotter the better. But now I have a good excuse for my guilty pleasure – research.
My stories are often set in the north of England where I live but I draw inspiration from all over. An incident here, a chance remark there, a bizarre event or quirky character, any of these can spark a story idea. But ultimately my tales of love, challenge, resilience and compassion are the conjurings of my own lurid and smutty imagination.
On the rare occasions I’m not writing my time is divided between my role as resident taxi driver for my teenage daughter, and caring for a menagerie of dogs, rabbits, tortoises. And most recently a very grumpy cockatiel. I’m a rural parish councillor too.
My other titles are many and varied, and include the ‘Black Combe’ trilogies, The Dark Side, Sure Mastery, The Hardest Word and A Richness of Swallows, all set in the atmospheric moorland of West Yorkshire or Cumbria and with a strong BDSM theme. My stand alone novels are The Three Rs, Chameleon, Red Skye at Night, and Faith but this list grows all the time. The Widow Is Mine is a full length medieval erotic romance which I wrote for The Conquered Brides collection. I’ve also written several short stories, including Re-Awakening, a raunchy pirate tale, Right of Salvage, and a MM story, Bodywork, which was included in the Amazon best-selling collection Brit Boys on Boys. You can find all my stories on my author page on Amazon.
I have a pile of story ideas still to work through, and keep thinking of new ones at the most unlikely moments, so you can expect to see a lot more from me.
I love to hear from readers. You can find me on my blog, and I’m on Facebook, and Twitter too. And more recently on Tsu.
