Summer Shout Outs - 9 August: Jake Malden

Today’s Shout out is for Jake Malden a highly talented writer from UK.

Jake Malden is a freelance journalist and writer based in London. He has been experimenting with erotica both on the page and off for some years and has several titles available on Smashwords, the most recent of which is 'Gabrielle and the Devil'.

Blurb:

Gabrielle D'Angelo is troubled-by an apocalyptic dream in which she resists sexual submission to the Devil himself. Her friend Pandora reads it as a need for Gabrielle to abandon her puritan morals, if only for a night. At a decadent Halloween costume-party she encounters a sexy horned seducer. Is his presence a set-up by Pandora? Or is Gabrielle about to be ensnared by someone truly infernal?

Excerpt:

Gabrielle gasped and let out an almost hysterical laugh. Towering above her at some inches over six feet, the breadth of his chest substantially outsizing that of her svelte torso, was a demon. A demon dressed in an immaculately tailored tuxedo, it had to be said, with a scarlet cummerbund wrapped around his tight middle and a matching bowtie. His tar-black hair was slicked away from granite-etched facial features and penetrating blue eyes. And he was red. Deep red from forehead to neck and possibly beyond. Whatever body paint or food dye he had used, it was damned effective. And how the Hell did those curling, eight-inch horns stay attached to his forehead?

Gabrielle put a hand to her startled mouth before, then grasped for words. “Ehhh―haven’t we met before?” She was trying not to giggle as she said it. For a moment she almost believed they had.

“What, you mean before I was cast from celestial bliss into the fiery depths?” he asked nonchalantly. “Or maybe it was a more combative setting.”

Gabrielle blinked, startled. She could almost hear the choral theme from The Omen swelling up around them. Then it occurred to her. Pandora―the tale-telling minx. This is a set-up! Not only had her best friend arranged this encounter in advance, she’d spilled the details of that oh-so-private dream confession to a complete stranger. That’s what she’d been acting so weird about all those weeks. Had this guy been told everything? Gabrielle’s face burned at the thought and at the accompanying sense of betrayal. She made to swing heel and walk, but the costume-demon’s gaze held her. He seemed so calm, so debonair. So completely focused on her. Perhaps she owed him the benefit of the doubt, whoever he was. Pandora she could deal with later.

“Well seeing as we haven’t reached the End of Days, that particular combat’s still to happen,” she answered reservedly. “And don’t make any presumptions about the result.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said with no hint of irony. He whisked two glasses of punch off a passing tray and had one in her hand before she’d considered accepting. His impressive size was matched with an agility that surprised her. “Go on, have another.”

Another? So he’d been watching her since her arrival had he? She felt toyed with and manipulated. And undeniably flattered. She was having heart palpitations and there was a churning in her lower belly, but the ability to flee his imposing presence had seemingly abandoned her. So she stood her ground and bantered.

“Sounds like you’re tempting me,” she said, the glass hovering shy of her lips. “I’m not Eve you know.”

“That doesn’t stop me imagining you in her costume.”

Gabrielle mastered the twin urges to laugh and to reach up and slap him. “I’m a Seraphim,” she said with assumed dignity. “And I got to watch while you were kicked out the gates of Heaven, so show some respect.” She met his level stare and drank, to emphasize the point.

“Well maybe that’s why I’m here,” he said genially. “Maybe I’m hoping you can help me find a way back into the Almighty’s good graces.”

“Not going to happen, buster,” she said, adopting a light-hearted air at odds with her inner tremors. “You’re as damned as damned can be, that’s what the Book says. More likely you’d try to drag me down―which isn’t going to happen.”

“No?” The candlelight flickered and blazed in his eyes, startling her. “That’s a very stern theology you’re clinging to. If we’re light and darkness, then shouldn’t I vanish at your very appearance? Yet here we are, having a perfectly pleasant conversation.” He was standing casually even as he loomed over her, one arm crossing his stomach, so that the other elbow rested on it as he sipped his drink. Size apart, there was nothing to intimidate her physically, yet inwardly she quailed. She felt so slight in front of him. “You should try being a little more…Eastern in your thinking,” he was telling her coolly. “We’re not polar opposites, we’re yin and yang. Naturally drawn to each other.” The eyes in his relaxed face burned into her with a soul-searing intensity.

***************

That’s a book I have to get J

Here’s the buy link

Smashwords