The Royal Occult Bureau

                                                🍃🌼🌺 Steamy Paranormal Romance 🌺🌼🍃

I'm really excited to announce that my book, The Royal Occult Bureau, the first book of a new series,

is ready for pre-order. I had a lot of fun writing this novel and doing my usual researches. It ends

with a tiny, teensy cliff hanger, nothing major though. Not a "dead or alive" situation.

Here's the blurb:

London 1887

My name is Asia Quicksilver, and my life has never been a bed of roses. Well, I spent a lot of time in a bed, but not to sleep. As a whore of the luxurious brothel De Luna House, I’ve seen a lot of action in the bedsheets . Not that I’m planning to whore myself forever. Once I set aside enough pounds to move out of London, I’ll start afresh.

My little plan goes out of the window when a handsome and menacing man asks to be my exclusive client. I can’t refuse. The pay is too good.

Except that he doesn’t just want to tell me his name, but he doesn’t want to touch me. He doesn’t undress me. He doesn’t even want to see me naked. It’s the first time I meet a man who pays good money to watch me read a book.

Apparently, he’s interested only in sitting in my bedroom for the whole night. When he claims that an incubus is after me, I don’t believe him. He must be another one of those opium addicts that cram London’s streets.

But after a man with uncanny strength, speed, and charm attacks me, I wonder if my new, dark client is right.   

Link: The Royal Occult Bureau

One

London, November 1887

LADY LUCK MIGHT be a blind goddess, but Lady Misfortune had exceptionally good eyesight. She could pick her victims with extreme precision, and if you were a woman and a whore in a pleasure house in London, Lady Misfortune was often at your side, reminding you just how wretched and miserable your life was.

As if I needed the reminder.

Although perhaps I shouldn’t complain. I’d been working at De Luna House for seven years now, since I was nineteen, and Madame Violet—the abbess—had always been kind to me. Not easily would I find a clean, warm room where to sleep and three hot meals per day. Not to mention a salary that maybe wasn’t honest, but allowed me to buy luxury items.

No, not perfumes or clothes. They were part of my working attire, but books.

Also, Violet let me choose my own clients. If I didn’t like a man’s looks or attitude, I could reject him. Yes, I was always a whore, but I was a whore who had choices. Not many women could say that.

So, I had my books, my selected jockeys, and my freedom. Until that night.

It was Guy Fawkes’s Night.

Remember, remember the fifth of November.

The night when in Great Britain we celebrated Guy Fawkes’s failed attempt at blowing up the parliament with King James and his closest lords inside. The royal guards had discovered Guy’s little plan before he could carry it out. I would’ve handed Guy a lit match and given him an encouraging pat on the shoulder, if you ask me.

I wiped the sweat from my brow after my daily training session—Violet was very strict about having her tarts supple and lean— and my heart gave a lurch at the Madame’s words. It might’ve been the hour Felicity had forced me to spend jumping and squatting to strengthen my leg muscles that made me slow to catch up, but when Violet’s little speech about a new customer sank in, a flare of anger stilled my breath.

“Today is Saturday,” I said between a gulp of air and a puff.

The air of the room in the basement we used as a gymnasium was stuffy, and the smell of wood polish mingled with that of humidity.

“And?” Violet cocked a dark brow.

At almost fifty, she still looked stunning with a slender, willowy body and auburn hair that seemed to stubbornly refuse to grey. Her temperament also refused to sweeten despite the fact she’d been a whore herself and knew what it meant.

“Saturday is Mr Sorrow’s day,” I said, tossing my hair over my shoulder.

I didn’t know Mr Sorrow’s real name. Only a handful of my clients revealed their names, but Mr Sorrow was one of my favourite jockeys. Young, handsome, and filthy rich, he paid me a fair sum to stay with me the whole night. Nights that I spent listening to him blathering and whinging about his unhappy married life. All I had to do was sit and nod in the right places and look pretty until he performed his masculine deed with me. He never lasted long. Two minutes tops. Honestly, once I had a hiccup that lasted longer. Whining was his idea of foreplay, and the more I let him whine, the quicker he’d perform.

I couldn’t ask for more. Besides, he often brought me perfumes, bottles of scented oil, and books. I treasured books above everything else. I had to thank Mr Sorrow—and Violet—if I could easily converse about geography, history, and literature like any well-bred lady. Mostly. Our Madame loved to tutor the girls. She said that well-educated tarts were an investment for the house.

Saturday was a pretty relaxing evening after all. I didn’t want to be obliged to spend the night with a client I didn’t know.

Violet pressed a logbook against her chest. It was the one that contained De Luna House’s schedule and I guessed some dirty little secrets about our clients.

“I rescheduled Mr Sorrow with Celestia,” she informed me in an icy tone. “You have the whole night for this new client.”

My mouth hung open. Since Violet took me, half-starving and half-diseased, from the streets of Whitechapel, she had never, ever ordered me to be with a client.

It was the only freedom I had.

Most of the times, a whore’s job was disgusting enough without having to deal with stinky, slobbering swine and violent men—that was what she always said when we thanked her for letting us choose our jockeys.

I couldn’t deny the frisson of cold fear travelling through my heated body and cooling it down. Spending a night with a client I’d never met without seeing him first pushed my pulse in a frenzy. What if he was one of those who liked to hit a tart? Or simply too revolting to be stared at? What if he wanted to whip me?

Sometimes it wasn’t a matter of money. I’d met all sorts of men in the streets and been beaten within an inch of my life once by a man who wouldn’t hear ‘no’ from a prostitute.

I swallowed the knot of fear. “Who is he? And why have you accepted to give him to me without telling me first?”

I was probably being too harsh with Violet. She wouldn’t risk my safety. Not after she’d taken care of me. Many people wouldn’t see how a madame who ran one of the classiest bordellos in London could ever take care of her whores.

But being a jobless woman without a family meant dying a brutal death in the dirty streets of London. Having a safe room in De Luna House was better than spending the nights in dark alleys, among drunk men and rats, begging for a few shillings. At least in De Luna House, I had coal for my stove and the clientèle was a selected one. It didn’t mean that we couldn’t meet nasty bastards. A refined suit and an Eton’s accent didn’t make a good heart.

“Who is he?” I asked again.

Violet flustered, her lips trembling. Lord, she was frightened. Not a good sign.

“This gentleman asked specifically for a girl with grey eyes. You’re the only grey-eyed woman here. He offered thrice the normal fare for the privilege of being with you,” she said, fiddling with the logbook. “Please, Asia, be reasonable.”