an excerpt

Nightingale

Summary

An earthly balance is at stake. Nothing happens by chance. And fate, here on Earth, will demand its bloody tribute no matter how high the cost…

The thirst for deliverance and absolution are transformed into explosive flames of forbidden passion when a mysteriously charismatic masked man encounters a brilliant and handsome composer. Their lives are intertwined with those of two others, and only the ultimate sacrifice will satisfy the greedy appetite of fate...

Retribution is his only desire...Fabienne Brunetto, a 17th-Century castrato of amazing vocal talent, is brutally attacked by a twisted enemy. But agonizing death is not his destiny. He is saved by Annatoly Constantine, the immortal hand of a brotherhood of fallen angels devoted to protection, balance, and order on Earth. But Fabienne bears the scars of his terrible encounter, and his song has been extinguished forever—at least until a rite of redemption can come to culmination. He must wait two hundred years before his hunger for deliverance can fully be sated.

Wounded and shamed...Annatoly Constantine, whom centuries before was also a man, is the protector of the Gios of Nightingales, a choir of immortal voices created to soothe and heal the world. Annatoly has always been destined to lose what he loves, never able to fully offer himself to a lover. Until Carne Giraint, a gifted composer, appears in his life, making him yearn for something more, something exquisitely forbidden.

A composer marked by the cursed blood of his ancestors...Carne Giraint is a mortal of extraordinary talent, tapped by the brotherhood of angels to accept his destiny as composer to the gios. Carne's greatest passion has never been ignited until he encounters a masked man known to him only as Maître. One night of fiery desire leaves him ravenous for the touch of Maître, a man he cannot forget.

A greedy man willing to give his soul for power and money...Dandrae, a slave to the dark beings who seek to alter the course of Fabienne's and Carne's destinies, is tasked with quashing Carne's mystical gift for composition.

An earthly balance is at stake. Nothing happens by chance. And fate, here on Earth, will demand its bloody tribute no matter how high the cost...

Excerpt

From the Journals of the Viadine...

They Walk the Earth Among Mortal Men...

The Fallen, having descended to earth, vulnerable to all manner of earthly pleasure and sin, were barred forevermore from Heaven. Easily seduced by the beauty of humankind, henceforth they divided, light and dark, order and chaos, lovers and destroyers of mankind. Being now branded as the Phratry, or Brotherhood, of the Fallen—henceforth eternally earthbound, divided and marked as Viadine and Diadune . Thus fashioned from the ashes of desolation a choir of men, offering a measure of serenity and renewal for those who seek order and light—henceforth known as the Gios of the Nightingale—men gifted with the voices of angels, poignant reminder of an existence now lost forever to the Phratry of the Fallen…

-- Rahuael, First Chronicler, Viadine Secretorum

Carne removed the mask and tossed it toward Maître, who deftly caught it, caressed it, and then gently set it aside. Carne stood poised in the firelight, completely vulnerable, his cock thick with arousal, the sheen of pre-come glazing the tip, his balls heavy.

Maître walked to Carne. He circled slowly, minutely inspecting Carne. Carne’s nerves stretched taut as his desire mounted. Would he find Carne lacking? Maître completed his inspection and returned to face Carne. With his gloved hand he cupped Carne’s testicles, weighing them, stroking them.

“Lovely,” he murmured.

He slid his hand up Carne’s erect shaft, brushed over the engorged knob of his prick. “Precious. A set of manly jewels to be prized by any lover. I wonder, have you the fortitude of a well-hung young stallion as well?” The hue of Carne’s cock deepened, the flesh stretched and hardened, his balls already drawing up close to his body at Maître’s handling and obvious appreciation. With his fingers curled around Carne’s erection, Maître drew him forward. Carne could feel the unyielding presence of the mask against his cheek.

“You like being ordered, don’t you? You like men.” His voice was a steamy intimate whisper against Carne’s ear. “My touching you is arousing. How many men have you been with, Geraint? And women? Have you a patron among them?”

There would be no prevarication. This man, in some supernatural way, would peel Carne’s secrets from his soul. And Carne couldn’t stop it from happening, he could do none other than yield himself. “I-I think you know my preference, Maître. I think you know it well enough.”

His mother had thought it was the music tutor who had ruined him. She blamed herself for Carne’s eccentricities. But Carne had known from an early age, when he’d secretly watched the actors changing backstage, when it had been the men who he fantasized about, not the women. He had understood his predilection for men before his mother’s latest lover had seduced him. But he never told her the truth before she died of consumption in the poor house. He never absolved her of her false guilt.

“But the women give you fine jewels, don’t they? Little gifts because you please them so very much. They yearn for you to spend time in their bed, they are eager for you to sleep with them, to show them even more of your secret magic. To ply your command of… instrument in a much more personal and intimate fashion.”

“Yes, but I don’t give them what they want. I’ll sire no bastards. Ever.” He was never going to subject a child to what he had suffered. And since he had no plans to marry, nor a desire to lie with women, he offered them no encouragement to pursue him.

“So maybe they want me more because of it. But the men. They can be even more generous than the women.” Perhaps so generous because they sought to assuage their guilt for wanting him instead of the beautiful actresses for whom he composed his arias to make their voices shine.

“They can also be more brutal. Is that what you like about them?”

Carne didn’t respond right away. It was that, but there was more as well. “Not all of them are brutal,” Carne finally responded.