Rémy de Garoudin, Chevalier de Saint-Cyr, has been a bad, bad boy
It's bad enough for a French aristocrat to have to spend one night a month as a loup garou. It's the Age of Enlightenment, for goodness sake.
When Rémy puts his wife and young son at risk, Shifting outside of his sanctuary/prison, however, he runs into the woods, wracked with shame, guilt — and blood lust.
As the moon sets and he regains his human form — and human regrets — a young witch offers to give him the atonement he urgently seeks.
All it will take is a lash or two... from her wand.
(8,000 word BDSM, paranormal/shifter erotic romance set in eighteenth-century France)
Extract:
“You came seeking punishment,” muses Séléné. “You wished to atone for your sins.”
“Yes,” chokes Rémy.
“I see,” Séléné murmurs, and suddenly Rémy is lowered from his ridiculous vantage above the river to just above the humus-covered forest floor. Lowered, but not released, and instead of dangling by his ankle, he shifts to a prone position, facing the ground.
A witch. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth…’
He nearly passes out at the relief of his circulation returning to something like normal.
Naked flesh whispers down the old willow’s rough bark; naked feet slide along a smooth old root that passes just below Rémy’s head.
“Mademoiselle Bonamant — “
“It seems to me,” she says, interrupting in the mildest possible manner, “that what you are looking for is to be treated as a misbehaving student is treated. If I am to do this, it strikes me that you oughtn’t to call me ‘Mademoiselle Bonamant.’“
“Do — ?” Rémy shakes his still-muzzy head. “Look, Séléné, I — “
“Madame Bonamant.”
“I beg — ?”
“I think it would help you if you called me Madame Bonamant. Monsieur de Garoudin.” She moves again, walking by where he hangs, suspended, and he starts to turn his head, but catches sight of a vast and bright expanse of her skin, glowing pink and white, and lowers his gaze again.
He considers what she said. Part of him would happily deny it — he is no schoolboy, but a grown man. But part of him —
Séléné — Madame Bonamant — cries another word in that unknown, strangely familiar language, and Rémy flinches. But the curse is not aimed at him; something falls to the ground not far from him — something fairly light. “‘O slender as a willow wand,’” she sighs.
“M-Madame — ?”
THWACK. A sharp pain like nothing that Rémy has ever felt slices across his lower back — sharp and hot, but sweet and welcome, like the first taste of brandy, and he cries out.
“Monsieur de Garoudin?” Séléné’s voice still sounds as calm and distant as ever. “Was that enough? Do you feel purged?”
