'The King's Pleasure' by Kitty Thomas

Received from the Author

From the BLURB:

In the kingdom of Himeros, Abigail is despised for her gypsy heritage. Pushed to the fringes of society, she’s forced to break the law in order to help feed her family. When a castle guard catches her stealing bread, he intends to cut off her hand for the offense.

Niall has just taken the throne and is determined to prove he isn’t a monster like his father. Awakened by the cries of a gypsy, he spares her from the guard’s blade and takes her as his slave instead. When he learns she doesn’t understand the kingdom’s carnal ways, he becomes determined to strip her of all inhibitions until her every desire is in service to the king’s pleasure.

Abigail has just been spared, upon mercy of the King. Caught stealing bread from within the palace walls, punishment should be swift and merciless, an eye for an eye. Abigail’s punishment should be especially severe, since she is part-gypsy. But King Niall has intervened, desperate to show his people he’s not the tyrant his father was.

But Niall has big plans for Abigail. Because he’s not sparing her life for nothing; he intends to make her his slave – the first (and quite possibly only) woman in his harem. With Abigail by his side, Niall intends to mend the discrimination against gypsies and set the kingdom of Himeros on a new, peaceful, course.

‘The King’s Pleasure’ is the new novella from literary erotica author, Kitty Thomas.

The novella is set in an alternate world that is at once like ours, but with a skewed history. There is limited technology, a feudal system and very different outlooks on sexuality. In the kingdom of Himeros to be one of the King’s slaves is a great honour. Women are groomed for the harem from birth. But the new king, Niall, is uneasy with the customs of the harem. The women are robotic and calculating, they play at love and lust like a masterful game of chess, and Niall can’t help but feel more like the pawn than the king.

And then he meets Abigail, in the most unusual of circumstances. True, when Niall first discovers Abigail, stealing from the palace kitchen, he is quick to spare a beggar girl an unnecessarily cruel punishment. But when Niall discovers that she is also part gypsy, an idea forms in his head . . .

When she looked up, her long, raven locks fell away from her face. The king almost took a step back in reaction to the brilliant green of her eyes and the trembling in her full lips. Tears tracked down her face, and he was already lost.

The Himeros elite expect Niall to treat Abigail and the other gypsies the same way as his father, the former King, did. But although Niall is an expert warrior, he has no wish for such unnecessary cruelty in his kingdom. Through Abigail he has found a way to mend the wrongs of the past, and set his kingdom on a peaceful path. But Niall gets more than he bargained for when he starts to feel for Abigail as more than a political ploy. . .

As with all of Kitty Thomas’s erotica novellas, ‘The King’s Pleasure’ is a world unto itself and a succulent little slice of story. There’s so much packed into this little novella; politics, love, romance and a beautifully erotic tale between a king and his ‘slave’ (whose love turns a kingdom on its head). Beautiful, as always, I can’t wait for Thomas’s next novel, ‘The Last Girl’, coming early in 2012.

5/5

Coming in 2012