The Loinfire Club reads.... Covert Conception

Covert Conception, by Delores Fossen

Natalie Sinclair was stunned to discover she'd been drugged -- and impregnated. Even more shocking was the identity of her baby's father: Rick Gravari, her sworn enemy. Now the only way to uncover the truth and reveal the mastermind behind their mysterious one night together was to join forces with the one man who was completely off-limits.

As the peril around them intensified, Natalie realized the dangerous men on their trail were nothing compared to the tender emotions provoked by her baby's father. But could she trust her once formidable foe's determination in his role as hard-nosed defender?

One year is an awfully long time. Enough to read an awfully large number of very bad novels, but the Chronicler had other things to write about. Excuses can take up another post, for the moment, she will again take up the metaphorical pen and tell you of the Loinfire Club's exploits reading this particular book...

Almost Jesus read out the blurbs for the possible books we could read and Pillywiggin mimed out the version for the hard of hearing. Whilst very amusing, this largely visual gag does not translate well to the writeup, so suffice to say it happened.

For various reasons, the conversation derailed to methods to sabotage the Baker's funeral. He has apparently promised his life's fortune to the one who best manages it and even with such meagre incentive, his friends were happy to oblige. The current favourites in terms of plan is to sneak into the funeral home and wrap the deceased in tin foil and rosemary. The Seamstress was then to show up at funeral in a bridal gown with a shotgun, demanding to be married to the deceased.

There are very many books. And there is consequently, much discussion. The news that the blog has come to the attention of Lucinda Betts, author of Moon Shadow and that she even left us a comment.

The Loinfire Club decided upon Irish Moonlight, mostly to inflict pain on the Pillywiggin (it, after all, being her homeland) but the unfortunate volume has apparently disappeared.

The Club was then torn between the Desert King's Pregnant Bride and Covert Conception.

Big L: "I haven't had one with a Desert King in it yet. I feel like I'm missing something."

In the name of Moon Shadow, one of our new members has stuck the label of "Brown Worm" onto one of the bottles. From this he gains the nickname of Ginger Worm and all is well.

Other additions to the Club are the Seamstress, the Frenchman and Boundless Rage (who would have been Impotent Rage but the Pedant is in a forgiving mood.)

Almost Jesus reads (and for some reason, chooses to begin with the author's biography):

Imagine a family tree that includes Texas cowboys, Choctaw and Cherokee Indians, a Louisiana pirate and a Scottish rebel who battled side by side with William Wallace.

The Chronicler: "Then you're thinking of a fictional family tree."

With ancestors like that, it's easy to understand why Texas author and former US Air Force captain Delores Fossen feels as if she's genetically predisposed to writing romances. Along the way to fulfilling her DNA destiny...

Almost Jesus: "Would any of the biologists in the room like to question that?"

...Delores married an air force top gun who just happens to be of Viking descent.

(The Chronicler wonders if this is just a funny way of putting "has an ancestor who came from Scandinavia.")

Pillywiggin explains the concept of standard categories to the uninitiated. The Chronicler attempts to explain the origins of the game on the inimitable Mrs Giggles' romance novel review website (sadly no longer there).

There follows here an anecdote about Almost Jesus' deviant past. Mostly about the time he almost got thrown out of a gay bar.

Almost Jesus reads out the cast of characters, as appearing in the front of the book.

Natalie Sinclair – Someone drugged her and her nemesis, Rick Gravari, so they'd have sex. Now, pregnant with Rick's child, someone wants them both dead and Rick is her only hope. Can they overcome a bitter past and work together tos save their child?

Rick Gravari...

Almost Jesus: "That surname is unusually difficult to pronounce."

Big L: "It was clearly meant to be Ricky Gervais."

The Pillywiggin shudders in horror.

Dr Claude Benjamin – Creator of the Cyrene Project, a plan to produce genetically superior babies.

Ginger Worm: "Does that plot itself count by itself as a Medical Complication?"

Dr Isabella Henderson – She also worked on the Cyrene Project...

Big L: "She's a woman who's not the heroine. We don't care."

...but now vehemently objects to it.

Seamstress: "I assume that to create these babies they have to rape women"

The Baker: "Because if they consent, it taints the DNA."

Almost Jesus: "Because genetically superior people are frequently not attracted to each other. Inconsiderate beings."

Boundless Rage: "If you're working on some sort of genetics project, can't you build some sort of pheromone system into it?"

Troy Jackson – A product of the Cyrene Project, he holds a grudge against Rick and Natalie.

The Balance: "This is not just a genetically modified baby... it's a Cyrene Project genetically modified baby."

Brandon Steven – He has the answers that Rick and Natalie need...

Azrael: "And two first names!"

Almost Jesus expresses his frustration at such first-name abundant people since it throws his name recognition skills.

And then the book begins...

Chapter One.

San Antonio, Texas.

"You're Pregnant, Natalie."

Pillywiggin: "Direct and right to the core."

(Little did she know how incredibly repetitive the book will get after this point.)

Natalie Sinclair blinked, stared at her sister, Kitt and then waited because she was certain that Kitt was about to deliver the punch line of a silly joke....

..."I haven't had sex in over a year," Natalie admitted.

Pillywiggin: "Not a slut!"

Though her sister no doubt already knew that.

Big L: "Due to her many secret security cameras planted throughout the house."

Pulling in her breath, Natalie set her teacup aside, the delicate bone china rattling against the saucer. Some of the Irish blend splashed onto a pair of entwined hand-painted yellow roses.

Pillywiggin cringes: "What is Irish blend? An Irishman has chewed some tealeaves and spit it back out again?"

"Dr. Benjamin did the pregnancy test," Kit continued...

Big L: "What and then gave it to her sister?"

"He called when you were in the meeting with the antique broker and when I pressed him about what was wrong with you, he finally told me...

Almost Jesus: "In flagrant disregard of doctor patient confidentiality."

In fact nothing about Kitt's ultra-solemn expression changed.

Frenchman: "So, sort of like hyper-solemn?"

Azrael: "So solem you can't even see it."

Natalie shook her head. "The test is wrong."

Big L: "This scene has continued for too long."

Kitt did some head-shaking of her own. "The doctor used your blood and urine samples to repeat it. Not once. But twice. And he repeated it again at my request. All three times, the tests were positive. Based on the physical he gave you and those test results, Dr. Benjamin thinks you're about four weeks pregnant."

Pillywiggin: "I don't care. That's a medical complication, I need a drink."

The Pedant: "It's complicated medicine."

"You remember a couple of months ago I hade surveillance cameras installed throughout the house?"

"Of course, I remember. Some items were missing, and we thought someone on the staff might be stealing from us."

The Chronicler notes this piece of clunky exposition. Of course, I remember, sister, which is why I'm going to tell you about the thing that both you and I remember, just to remind anyone who happens to be listening in...

"I didn't have the cameras removed after the problem was resolved... After I finished my conversation with Dr. Benjamin, I went through the surveillance tapes for the past four weeks."

The Loinfire Club bursts out laughing. Especially given Big L's previous joke about Kitt spying on Natalie with surveillance cameras.

The Chronicler: "Why would you do that?"

Big L: "Well, she had too much time on her hands... and is an obsessive stalker."

Almost Jesus: "That must have been one very long meeting with the antique broker if Kitt can have all those tests done and go through four weeks worth of tapes during it."

"...I found something..."

Oh.

Almost Jesus: "You mean you were watching me all this time?!"

That nearly stopped Natalie's heart.

Pillywiggin: "Medical complication."

The Club drinks.

"Explain something," Natalie insisted.

Almost Jesus: "Well, the internal combustion engine..."

Kitt typed a code on the keyboard, and Natalie instantly recognized the video feed that appeared on the screen. Nearly a month earlier.

Almost Jesus: "But not quite a month, since you're only four weeks pregnant."

The night of her surprise twenty-ninth birthday party.

Almost Jesus: "Was she surprised that she was twenty nine?"

Pillywiggin: "Because it's secretly your 40th birthday!"

She'd arrived back in San Antonio from a week-long antique-buying trip in Ireland...

Pillywiggin twitches: "It's a shit place to buy antiques. I'm starting a new category: abuse of my homeland."

The Balance (referring to the book Irish Moonlight, which mysteriously had vanished): "So this was the second secret Irish option."

The doctor had done some lab tests and given her prescription meds... Only instead of bed, she'd discovered that her mother had assembled three dozen or so of her close and not-so-close friends for a surprise birthday celebration.

"Are you saying this is when the so-called pregnancy happened? ... because, trust me, I would have remembered something as monumental as having sex with one of the guests."

Almost Jesus: "Or with a passing tramp."

Seamstress: "She's not a slut because she remembers when she had sex."

...that some of the night was a complete blur. She blamed the big blur on the prescription meds. Of course, the fatigue from the business trip hadn't helped, either... She'd felt like a zombie throughout the entire party.

The Pedant: "Medical complication."

"Even with Kitt fast-forwarding the event..."

Big L: "Kit's already seen the good bits."

Rick Gravari.

Almost Jesus: "It's really difficult to say."

Big L: "Just call him Gervais."

Rick had a way of monopolizing space as well... wearing jeans and a white shirt, he appeared to be his usual self. Aloof. Surly.

The Frenchman: "Who wears jeans and white shirts to parties?"

Azrael: "Someone who's aloof and surly."

Her mother had no doubt invited him...

The Pedant: "I know what, I'll invite some twats to your party!"

...but he definitely fell into the unwanted guest category.

Ginger Worm: "There's a whole category of unwanted guests?"

Almost Jesus: "Over there, yet another unwanted guest."

Natalie dismissed her surly, jeans-wearing nemesis...

Big L: "Her surly, jeans-wearing nemesis may well have to go down as a quote."

As the guests idled by the front door, she managed to locate herself.

Big L: "Holy Crap! I found myself!"

She definitely wasn't in the throes of having wild sex.

The Pedant: "We're glad she's that observant."

"Something went wrong with the surveillance equipment at this point... I'm not sure what. But that's not the only camera we had in operation that night. The lighting isn't very good, but here's some footage taken from the hall outside your bedroom."

Pillywiggin: "And when that failed, we have hired a small boy to watch you."

The Pedant: "This is just a PowerPoint presentation she's pre-made."

The hall was indeed poorly lit. And empty.

Ginger Worm: "Plot twist! You were impregnated by an empty room!"

"There's no camera in your bedroom so this is all we have," Kitt explained.

Pillywiggin: "That's what she says now."

She latched onto her Texas A&M coffee mug...

The Pedant: "There's some kind of crockery porn moment..."

The Chronicler: "She is an antiques dealer..."

The Baker: "She's speculating, it'll be valuable by the time she's dead."

Seamstress: "I thought she was drinking tea a moment ago."

The Pedant: "No, it was the other one who was drinking tea."

...took a long drink of the heavily scented espresso, and that's when Natalie noticed that her sister's hand was trembling.

Big L: "Maybe you should stop drinking espresso."

The Baker: "It gives her extra time to watch the surveillance footage of her sister."

Natalie couldn't see the faces of the couple, and without audio, she couldn't tell who was approaching her bedroom door...

Almost Jesus: "What an oversight."

She had absolutely no recollection of being in the hallway that night though she was certainly aware it'd happened. After all, she had woken up in bed the following morning.

Almost Jesus: "That would be a good indication."

The Balance: "Dammit! I wanted to teleport!"

Still, hadn't she had a feeling that something was wrong?

Almost Jesus: "I remember all of my intimate feelings from four weeks ago."

There follows a debate about whether or not one would notice feeling different in the morning after a sexual encounter. That Natalie doesn't feel different at all results in speculation that perhaps there wasn't sex and, in fact, only a syringe was involved.

During the course of this conversation, it is revealed that Almost Jesus knows too much about the Pedant's sex life.

Natalie moved to the edge of her seat, closer to the monitor. And she studied every inch of the screen...

Pillywiggin: "Windows task bar... windows task bar... bottom of image..."

The person walking beside her had his arm looped around her waist... It was definitely a man.

Almost Jesus: "That would help to explain the pregnancy."

A whole turkey-baster problem is brought up again by the Balance.

When she reached the door, she staggered forward and her arm rammed into the wall.

Pillywiggin: "It's almost stop-motion..."

Sweet heaven, she acted drunk.

Almost Jesus: "Sweet heaven! She's acting drunk in her own birthday party."

But she knew for a fact that she'd consumed no alcohol that night.

The Pedant: "Well, I suppose she was on meds."

Big L: "But surprise party. Thrown by her mother."

Almost Jesus: "If I was shattered and attending a surprise party thrown by my mother which my nemesis gatecrashed... I'd definitely want a drink."

The only thing she'd had to drink was a glass of sparkling fruit juice that someone on the catering staff had gotten for her after she arrived home.

Seamstress: "It sounds like a plot point?"

Almost Jesus: "Sparkling fruit juice. Well known for hiding rohypnol."

Kitt froze the image. Not that Natalie needed a second look to know who he was.

Boundless Rage: "She's clearing been fapping to this if she's got this frame perfect."

The man taking her into her bedroom was the one person on earth she considered her enemy. Rick Gravari.

Almost Jesus: "A note for life. If there is only one person on life you hate, is it really that difficult to tell your mother not to invite him to your birthday party?"

Seamstress: "Well, clearly she's one of these experiments, genetically programmed to fuck this other guy. Part of the Arian supremacy program."

To be continued...

The Loinfire Club reads... Tempt Me with Darkness

Tempt me with Darkness, by Shayla Black

He’s an immortal knight hungering for satisfaction. . . .

As soon as Marrok sees Olivia Gray, he’s sure they met in eons past. He’s felt her soft, gentle curves writhing in pleasure beneath his own powerful body. . . Morganna! For centuries, towering Marrok, once the mightiest of King Arthur’s warriors, has endured a terrible curse the witch cast upon him when he spurned the witch.

She’s a modern woman about to discover ancient magic. . . .

Olivia shares a mystical—and irresistible—connection with brooding Marrok. Soon after the sexy warrior appears in her erotic dreams, he abducts her, demanding she uncurse him. Their intense passion is more powerful—and intimate—than either of them has ever known. Olivia may be the key to unlocking the diary that will break Morganna’s hold on his life. But in the wrong hands, the book also holds the power to destroy magickind. As they search for answers, a ruthless wizard returned from exile is building an army of evil. When he discovers Marrok and Olivia have the diary, only their love—with the help of a powerful group of magical Brethren—can save them.

After the Pillywiggen refreshes our memories with a grand declaiming of the rules of the drinking game and BoneGeek is reading:

PRESENT DAY
ENGLAND
BESIDE THE LUSH BANKS of a pond, a woman beckoned, familiar.
The Chronicler: "A pond is not sexy. Really."
Cathed: "Ponds make me think of ducks and I don't think there's an unsexier animal than a duck."
There follows a discussion about which is the unsexiest animal: ducks, slugs or frogs.

Yet Marrok of Cadbury had never seen her face in his life.
The Loinfire Club: "Cadbury?! "
The Anthropologist: "Did they just looked for something English? It ends in bury, so it must be quaint and English."
(The Chronicler wonders if this woman googles names before using them. Even if Black lives in a cardboard box in Texas surely she knows that naming her hero after the world's largest confectionery manufacturer is a mistake?)

 A cityscape towered in the background. None of that held his gaze rapt. Her bare-to-the-skin nakedness...
Cathed: "To the skin? What other kind of nakedness can you have?"
The Anthropologist: "Bare-to-the-cardigan nakedness?"
The Pedant: "Oh, those sexy bare-to-the-ligaments nakedness."

The woman’s sable hair swept over one pale shoulder, curling under the swell of a generous breast topped by a berry nipple
Cathed: "So, we've got the Cadbury guy and a berry nipple... this sounds like a desert."

...and framing a birthmark he knew well.
She no longer possessed the platinum tresses into which he’d once thrust his hands.
Azrael: "It sounds like he's torn out all her hair out accidentally..."

Her new face was delicate—higher cheekbones, pert nose, pillowy mouth...
Azrael poses with a pillow to demonstrate. He flips it around for the "unhappy" face. It's probably funnier if you were there.

Acid hatred mixed with clawing desire. He tried to look away, but his gaze caressed her small waist, her curved hips, the moist flesh between her thighs glistening...
Cathed: "Get in there, gaze!"

Morganna bewitched him more now than she had on their wind-drenched night of shared pleasure an eon ago.
The Chronicler: "Wind does not drench. You need moisture for that."

The strawberry mark low between her breasts brought back memories of pale moonlight surrounding them as he’d succumbed to temptation and tupped her senseless.
The Anthropologist: "Tupped? We'll need a category for Ye Olde Englishe."
There followed a brief description of the etymology of the word "tupped", its relation to goats and if could be used sexily in earnest.

For that mistake, he’d paid dearly.
With the last fifteen centuries.
The Pedant: "Everyone goes to sleep after sex."

Mist swirled around her like the mystical fog of legend, as if caressing her.
Luca: "Fog is legendary, now."
Pillywiggin: "What she means is, mist swirled like mist."
Azrael: "No, what she means is, mist swirled like cheap cinematic mist made of dry ice."

Though she was deadly, Morganna in this new form captivated him. Today, society had clinical terms for his obsession.
The Anthropologist: "He has some sort of medical problem.... I'd like to call it Evil."
Then followed a discussion about M. Scott Peck's  proposal to add Evil to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

 To yield would only mean further torture. But his body betrayed him, inching closer, his cock swelling painfully. Cursing, he closed his eyes.
The Anthropologist: "They do that a lot in these books. No one has reliable bodies, ever... wait, inching? Like a caterpillar?"
Bonegeek: "I was thinking that too."
Azrael pictured it more like an earthworm, but agreed that the caterpillars move in a more "inching" manner.

Perhaps due to an overdose of House-watching in the household, there occurred here something of a differential on Marrock's condition.
The Anthropologist: "I think he's got some kind of dissociative disorder."

Marrok opened his eyes as a fresh rush of desire slammed him.
The Anthropologist: "Again, like a battering ram? Or a line of invisible American Football players pummelling him repeatedly throughout the conversation?"

Want was a luxury; this woman he needed. The feeling was as new as a baby’s first breath…and as welcome as the plague.
Azrael: "A good bit of juxtaposition again. Neither are things you really want to think about when it comes to sex."

(The Chronicler later wonders if anyone could possibly compare anything – let alone sex – with the utter devastation of the Black Death if they had actually lived through it. After all, this man is fifteen hundred years old. Or maybe he's just completely sociopathic.)

 And likely illusory, merely one of Morganna’s tricks.
Cathed: "She's really good at that illusory breath play."

...then she waved her hand. Suddenly, she clutched to her naked breasts the ornate red book he knew meant the difference between his life and death...

The Anthropologist: "Oh no! She's a communist!"

Nay!
Bonegeek: "Nay has a line all to itself."
The Anthropologist: "Like an Ye Olde Version of the Darth Vader thing."
Cathed: "Doth not want!" 

Marrok launched himself at her. They fell to the ground in a tangle of breaths, arms, and legs.
Cathed (mishearing): "Entangling breasts, it can happen.

Her plea spiked his fevered lust.
The Anthropologist: "Medical complication."

He ached to sink deep into her.
The Anthropologist: "Medical complication."

But he had to resist this fatal woman.
The Chronicler: "Not sure that one counts."
The Anthropologist: "She has malaria."
Bonegeek: "Or plague. On her breath. That would make her fatal."

He was on fire for her. A heartbeat from explosion.
The Anthropologist: "Like that episode on House."
("A guy takes his heart rate, and the number he comes up with makes him either about to die or bad at math. They wait a bit, and since the guy doesn't die, House concludes that he sucks at math; he writes the patient a prescription for StickyBear Math Town." from Television without Pity)

As she wriggled under him, lightning chased across his skin.
Bonegeek: "The caterpillar metaphors haven't gone away yet..."
Pillywiggin (showing us all her picture): "We have the cock-a-pillar."
Cathed: "But what does it turn into afterwards?"
The Pedant is reminded of something creepy in Pan's Labyrinth.

Later, he’d remember all the reasons he could not.
Cathed: "I'll remember those later."
Pillywiggin: "Maybe he needs a mnemonic."
The Anthropologist: "Oh, yes, yes, she's actually a man.... how could I possibly forget!"
Cathed: "Maybe I should write it on my hand."
Pillywiggin has drawn the Fucker-fly, the next stage of the cock-a-piller.
The Anthropologist: "Is that what people mean when they say butterfly kisses?"

Marrok dropped his hands to her thighs and pried them wider.
The Chronicler: "As though she was resisting... how rape-like."
The Loinfire Club also makes a series of unoiled hinge noises.

“If you tempt me thus, you will take what I give you. All I give you.”
The Anthropologist: "I don't think that's how it works under the British legal system."

From one instant to the next, his clothes melted away and he poised himself at her entrance.
Pillywiggin: "What? His clothes melted?!"
The Pedant: "Well, he shouldn't have worn candyfloss then, should he?"

With a wave of her pale hand, Morganna unlocked the volume. The cover fell open, revealing a hint of its pages, as she faded away.
The Anthropologist: "Is it wrong that the book is described in more flirtatious terms than the woman?"

“Give it to me!”
He shouted at fog. She—and the book—were gone.
Again, she’d used her power against him. Desire sizzled deep but he was, as ever, cursed.
The Anthropologist: "Damn you, Mao!"

“I am the key.” Her soft entreaty swept through the wind. “Find me.”
Marrok dragged himself to his feet, suppressing a primal scream. He must hunt her. That cityscape behind the pond he recognized as London.
The Anthropologist (who is quite familiar with the city): "Oh, is this set in London then?"

Around him, something rattled. Marrok sat up with a startled gasp, his bed rumpled, eyes wide.
The Anthropologist: "Eyes wide... he's been eating flumps."
The Pedant: "He's been chomping down on Santa's North Pole..."

(The Pedant had bought some flump-knock-offs – essentially long thin marshmallows – that were called "Santa's North Poles." The innuendo was, of course, not missed and it became a theme for the rest of the evening. As Cathed was eating one, the Anthropologist remarked that her pupils were dilating, much to our alarm.)

Panting, he scanned his surroundings. Bare walls, carved bed. A sword beside his hand. Glock under his pillow.
Azrael: "A glock?!"
The Anthropologist: "Is that like a flump only more so?"

There is some discussion about whether or not the author means a gun, but then, the first things American gamers (or at least, in White Wolf setting documents) are told about England as a setting is that we have much, much stricter gun control over here.

His cottage, not a mist-draped clearing. No Morganna.
The Chronicler: "That'd be a very expensive cottage in London. That said, he could be a cotter and therefore his dwelling – no matter what it looked like – would be a cottage. But I'm quite sure the back of the book says he's a knight."

The book! Marrok whipped his gaze around. On his bedside table rested the leather-bound tome. The vehicle of his never-ending torment, the key to his freedom, was still here and still locked.
It had been but a dream.
Or perhaps a message? Though it had been centuries, Morganna had once enjoyed reaching from her exile to taunt him in sleep.
The Chronicler is utterly sick of modern portrayals of Morgan le Fay as a slutty evil woman and rants about it loudly. It's not even the evil that gets on her nerves, it's the combination of slutty, evil, beautiful and sex-centric plans. There will, no doubt, be a post itemizing her hatred in greater detail in the future.

Shadow and torment her he would...
Azrael: "Sounds almost Yoda-like."

A sharp rap against the cottage’s front window startled Marrok
Cathed: "Why is our Alpha Male hero who sleeps with swords and guns being startled by loud noises?"
The Anthropologist: "He just had a freaky dream about his cock turning into a caterpillar, cut him some slack."

He hadn’t had a visitor in a decade, and preferred it that way. Guests were both unexpected and unwelcome.
The Anthropologist: "In the middle of London, bloody hell!"
The Chronicler: "What? No door-to-door salesmen? No junk mail? Where does he live?"

As he slid around the corner, his heart raced with the anticipation of impending battle. [...] If someone had come to take the book from him, he would greet them with bloodshed.
Azrael: "Not the shedding of their blood, just bloodshed."
Cathed: "Maybe it's like Love Shack, but better."

Marrok crept forward, crouched for attack. The shadow disappeared.
The Chronicler: "I'm sure he's supposed to be all hardcore, but he only comes across as paranoid right now."

Heaving an annoyed sigh, Marrok yanked the door open to find a nightmare nearly as bad as the one that had awakened him. Golden hair spiked above sleek brows and wicked blue eyes. A glittery Hollywood smile...
The Anthropologist: "I'm still not convinced this man isn't batting for the flump team."

“If today is your day to conduct beheadings, count me out.” Bram flashed the million-dollar smile that had seduced magickind into seeing things his way for four hundred years.
Bonegeek attempts some sort of accent for this voice and there are many humorous attempts that the written medium simply cannot reproduce. We discovered in due course that the motherland of humanity is Pakistan due to it being where all accents drift to in the end. Bonegeek finally settled on a Welsh accent for this character, which gives him rather likable, laid back air which rather endears him to the Loinfire Club. That and Bram is only a letter off from Brad, the name of the Loinfire Club's favourite accountant non-hero. 

The Chronicler feels that the date of four hundred years ago may be significant and wonders if Bram was involved the Reformation. The Anthropologist is less optimistic and condemns it as simply a number Black picked out of thin air. 

Bram would not go away until he spilled his secret, though Marrok cared little what the wizard had to say. He must find Morganna in her new guise, then force, coerce, or beg her into unlocking that accursed book and setting him free.
Cathed: "So rape, rape again and ask nicely."

Marrok stared at his rumpled chinos.
The Anthropologist: "He wears chinos?!"
Bonegeek: "Sexy sexy old man chinos."

“Did you come all this way to be my mum?”
“If you need one…” Bram shrugged, mischief lurking in his eyes.
There is something about flump being the new euphemism of choice.

“To talk to you,” Bram said through the door. “You know that only something gravely important could bring me to the Creepified Forest.”
The Anthropologist makes a face at the stupidity of the name.
The Chronicler is reminded of the Creeping Brain for no good reason.

“All right, then. I am the only living being who knows of your immortality and still speaks to you.”
The Anthropologist: "Is that meant to be in a Gollum voice? Smeagols wills speaks to you..."

Marrok grunted and reached for his toothbrush. “I am not interested. I must hunt.”
“The local market too civilized for your Dark Ages upbringing?”
Azrael: "I'm going hunting with my toothbrush! I'm bored of hunting with this whole knives and guns thing!" 

Though the wizard loved to antagonize him, Marrok knew the darling of magickind would not visit without cause.
Pillywiggin: "Stop using the word magickind! It offends me!"
Bonegeek: "You don't have to say it." 
The Anthropologist: "I'm wondering if the darling of magickind is some kind of special title. Maybe elected."
Azrael: "No, more likely it's something that magazines would name every few years."

 Vision. Being in the same room with anything or anyone magical was enough to give him hives. Having Bram around was like a permanent case of leprosy.
The Anthropologist: "As opposed to those impermanent cases of leprosy that people get all the time."
Bonegeek: "I was out last night and my finger fell right off. Just a touch of leprosy."
The Chronicler again wonders at the flippant use of these diseases that in the middle ages was really rather serious.

The Loinfire Club reads... The Darkest Kiss

The Darkest Kiss, by Gena Showalter

She has tempted many men… but never found her equal.

Until now.

Though she has lived for centuries, Anya, goddess of anarchy, has never known pleasure. Until Lucien, the incarnation of death—a warrior eternally doomed to take souls to the hereafter. He draws her like no other. And Anya will risk anything to have him.

But when the merciless Lord of the Underworld is ordered by the gods to claim Anya herself, their uncontrollable attraction becomes an anguished pursuit. Now they must defeat the unconquerable forces that control them, before their thirst for one another demands a sacrifice of love beyond imagining...

Preamble and Dedications

Cathed has been re-reading Cupid's Melody this morning, apparently.

The Anthropologist: "You have to remind yourself how bad these things are. Or else it'll be like grade inflation, but not. We'll forget how bad and wrong the old ones are and the judgment would be skewed... it's like Connie Mason's lactation fetish. It's weeks before I think of that these days."

This week (at the Anthropologist's urging) we are reading is Gena Showalter's The Darkest Kiss.

(The Anthropologist has recently found F.A.T.A.L. and if that becomes the theme of this week's meeting... well, the point is, there were many digressions about it and anything she says is merely a rehash of the horrors of the actual review. If you, dear reader, feel like poking your eyes out with a spork, this is a valid alternative.)

The Balance decides to start by reading the (unusually long) dedication...

To Kresley Cole. You would let me wear your skin if at all possible—and I won't mention what you’d let me do to your eyeballs...

Pillywiggin: "What?! Eyeballs?"

To Marjorie Liu. Because you spank on and there's nothing cooler!

The Anthropologist: "Mental image I didn't need!"

(The Chronicler notes that Majorie Liu is also a paranormal romance novel writer.)

To Jill Monroe. You are a sister of my heart— hearter? sisart?—and even though you stole my gnome, I can't imagine a life without you. For realsies.

The Anthropologist: "WHAT?!"

Pillywiggin: "I don't think book dedications is a good idea."

The Chronicler: "I don't think book dedications this length is a good idea."

Art director Kathleen Oudit and designer Juliana Kolesova—I owe you big-time! The lips on this cover…Shiver! And you didn't blink twice when I mentioned one brown eye and one blue eye.

The Anthropologist: "Because they don't expect that, romance novel cover artists, mismatched eyes."

(Also, the cover is really freaky. The more you stare at it, the more weird it seems. For a start, that man's arm is now forever fixed in that position as any movement will distort his butterfly tattoo. Secondly, his head is far, far too small for his torso and his pecks glow... the Anthropologist thinks he has a birth defect which means he looks as though his head is photo-shopped on.)

HE WAS KNOWN AS THE Dark One. 

Cathed: "As they are."

Malach ha-Maet. Yama. Azreal....

Cathed (pointing): "He's Azrael! But he's Azrael!"

The Balance: "Different spelling. It's spelt Az-real."

Azrael: "That's okay, then."

Long ago he had opened dimOuniak, a powerful box made from the bones of a goddess...

Cathed: "As you do."

... unleashing a horde of demons upon the earth.

Pillywiggin: "You make it sound so casual."

Cathed: "Like trying to open a restaurant."

The Anthropologist: "And what, he couldn't hire any good waitresses because of they just kept falling in love with him?"

Pillywiggin: "He could always hire lesbians and old people."

The Anthropologist: "Around this man, lesbians aren't lesbians for long..."

As punishment, he and the warriors who aided him were forced to house those demons inside themselves, melding light and darkness, order and chaos...

Pillywiggin: "So, a mobile, sentient prison is better than a non-mobile, non-sentient one."

(The Balance: "Yes, the best way of preventing these demons from escaping is by putting them inside sentient prisons who don't want them to have them inside them.")

Because he was the one to open the box, he had been given the demon of Death. A fair exchange, he supposed, for his action had nearly caused the demise of the world...

Cathed: "God! If I'd known that I wouldn't have done it!"

Now he was charged with the responsibility of collecting human souls and escorting them to their final resting place. Even if he opposed the idea.

Azrael: "He opposes the idea of death in general?"

He did not like taking innocents from their families, found no joy in delivering the wicked to their damnation...

The Anthropologist: "Taking innocents from families... remember what that means normally in these books..."

Pillywiggin: "Death... Death of rats... Death of hymens..."

Azrael: "Skeleton with artfully lodged scythe."

Resistance, he’d soon learned, brought something far worse than death to his door. Resistance brought an agony so complete, so inexorable, even the gods trembled at the thought.

Cathed: "Oh dear."

The Chronicler: "Exactly why are the gods contemplating his punishment with anything other than glee?"

Did his obedience mean he was gentle? Caring? Nurturing? No. Oh, no. He could not afford softer emotion. Love, compassion and mercy were enemies to his plight.

Anger, though? Rage? Those he sometimes embraced.

Azrael: "Both anger and rage."

Woe to anyone who pushed him too far, for man would become fully demon. A beast. A sinister entity who would not hesitate to curl his fingers around a human heart and squeeze...

Loinfire Club laughs.

The Anthropologist (referring to the new Halloween toy): "We have to get the heart!"

Squeeze so tightly that human would lose his breath and beg for the sweet kiss of eternal sleep only he could offer...

The Loinfire Club each squeeze the "Throbbing Heart" in turn.

With that thought, the Prologue ends and the first chapter begins...

The Darkest Kiss, part two...

Chapter One...

ANYA, GODDESS OF ANARCHY, daughter of Lawlessness, and dealer of disorder,

Pillywiggin: "Tell, not show!"

All of the dancers were human females, beautiful and nearly naked, chosen specifically by the Lords of the Underworld to provide the night's entertainment. Both vertical and horizontal...

The Anthropologist: "If they're sitting down, it's not really vertical or horizontal... it's a sort of Z shape."

Wisps of smoke cast a dream-fog around them, and pinpricks of starlight rained from the swirling strobe...

The Anthropologist: "It's a Vampire From Twilight mooning everyone!"

From the corner of her eye, she caught a scintillating glimpse of a taut immortal ass...

The Anthropologist: "No ass should ever scintillate!"

Cathed: "Maybe that's why you'd want one... they're walking mirrorballs!"

The Lords of the Underworld were delectable immortal warriors who were possessed by the demon spirits that had once resided inside Pandora's box. 

Pillywiggin: "We know."

And now, with a few rounds of hard liquor and even harder sex, they were saying goodbye to Budapest, the city they'd called home for hundreds of years.

Cathed: "Budapest?! It's living in Stockton!"

Anya wanted in on the action. With one warrior in particular.

There are some debates over which one it is she sees.

Cathed: "Darkest and Most Seductive one, obviously."

The Anthropologist: "No, it can't be. She says 'each more dangerously seductive than the last' and this isn't the last book in the series..."

"Part," she whispered, fighting her intrinsic compulsion to shout "Fire" instead and watch as the humans raced away in a panic, screaming hysterically...

Pillywiggin: "What? Ah... I see. She's trying to get them to move."

Let the good times roll.

Pillywiggin: "Is that all she can come up with? How about shouting 'Smallpox'?"

The Chronicler: "What's holding her back from shouting 'Fire'?"

An erratic pulse of rock music that matched the erratic beat of her heart blasted from the speakers, making it impossible for anyone to hear her.

The Balance: "Medical complication..."

Cathed: "But she is a goddess of anarchy."

Pillywiggin: "I don't wanna pump blood! Shut up! Stop stressing on me! I want to hear my own music."

Heated breath caught in her lungs, and she shivered.

Pillywiggin: "Why is she shivering if she has something warm near her? Or is she that anarchic?"

Lucien. Deliciously scarred...

Pillywiggin: "Delicious... So he's scarred with licorrice?"

Azrael: "Or with the Cadbury's signature."

The Anthropologist: "It's like TT's fake blood. The people making the phys-reps ended up coming up with a concoction that tastes of chocolate..."

...irresistibly stoic and possessed by the spirit of Death.

The Anthropologist: "Back me up on this, Cathed. Didn't the stoics have a thing about celibacy? It doesn't seem to end well."

Cathed: "I really don't think stoic is that attractive."

Pillywiggin: "He has a face like the London Underground map!"

Right now he sat at a table in back, expression blank...

Cathed: "Wow. Hot."

"—she was right. I checked the satellite photos on Torin's computer. Those temples are rising from the sea."

Pillywiggin: "Get back in the sea where you belong!"

"One is in Greece and one is in Rome, and if they continue to rise at such a swift rate, they'll be high enough to explore sometime tomorrow."

Pillywiggin: "What? Out of the River Tiber? I didn't think there's that much space in it..."

The Balance: "It says the sea in the book..."

Pillywiggin: "But Rome doesn't have a sea."

Cathed, the classicist, affirms this. As does Wikipedia.

No one else would—or could—see them. She had made sure of that with a sweet little thing called chaos, her strongest source of power, hiding the temples with storms to keep humans away, while at the same time feeding the Lords enough information to draw them the hell out of Buda...

Cathed: "Buddah?!"

The Balance: "Budapest in short."

The Anthropologist: "I was thinking about trying to drag hell out of Buddah..."

Pillywiggin: "It's why he's so fat. He's got hell inside him."

"Perhaps the new gods are responsible. Most days I am sure they hate us and long to destroy us, simply for being half-demon."

The Balance: "I think that's a very good reason to hate them."

Lucien's expression remained blank. 

The Anthropologist: "Is he still being irresistibly stoic?  Man with hammer... does not matter..."

"If we're lucky, we'll find that damned box while we're there."

Azrael: "Damn that box! It killed my family!"

Anya ran her tongue over her teeth. Damned box, aka dimOuniak, aka Pandora's box.

Pillywiggin: "How many times have they explained the same box?!"

Cathed: "We get it."

The Anthropologist: "It's a book written for people with short time memory loss."

Boring? Ha! Anya had never met anyone who excited her more.

Cathed: "She is really, really excited by boring people."

The Anthropologist: "Has anyone read that book I wrote about accounting?"

Cathed swoons.

Azrael: "Is that some sort of dullness fetish?"

The Balance: "So the goddess of anarchy has a dullness fetish."

The Anthropologist: "That makes a certain amount of sense. Like that neat freak bureaucrat who wants to screw Fry..."

Cringe when they saw his scars, sure. But none of them wanted anything to do with him—and that saved their lives.

The Anthropologist: "Maybe they're allergic to liquorice."

"Notice me," Anya commanded softly. A moment passed. He didn't obey. Several humans glanced in her direction, heeding her demand, but Lucien's gaze latched on to the empty flask in front of him and remained, becoming a wee bit wistful. Much to her consternation, immortals were immune to her commands. [...]

"Bastards," she muttered. Any restrictions they could place on her, they did. "Anything to screw with lowly Anarchy."

Azrael: "She's the goddess of anarchy! You'd think her spells would summon a pineapple or something in front of him... That would totally attract his attention."

There are various theories about what boring and prosaic thoughts about the flasks is flashing through his mind:

Cathed: "Hmmm... maybe I spent too much on this at the flea market. Maybe I shouldn't have impulse-bought it... oh, but it wasn't really on impulse, but maybe it would be cheaper from a second hand shop...etcetcetc..."

Anya hadn’t been favored during her days on Mount Olympus.

The goddesses had never liked her because they assumed she was a replica of her "whore of a mother" and would jump their husbands.

Cathed: "Eris isn't a whore! She never got invited to any of the orgies!"

(At this point, we're under the impression that Anya's mother is a goddess of discord and we've assumed that she's a canonical goddess - thus Eris.)

The guys had wanted her, though. Well, until she'd killed their precious Captain of the Guard and they'd deemed her too feral [...]

The little shit had tried to rape her. If he had left her alone, she would have left him alone. But noooo.

The Balance: "It has four Os. And it's in italics."

Pillywiggin looks pained.

Cathed: "Noooo!"

Pillywiggin: "How many Os?"

Cathed: "Four."

The Anthropologist: "And in a strange font. A font of pain."

She didn't regret cutting the black heart out of his chest, didn't regret placing said heart on a pike in front of Aphrodite's temple. Not even a tiny bit.

(The Chronicler is wondering if this is meant to be a sacrifice to Aphrodite or otherwise...)

Choice. The word rang inside her mind, bringing her back to the present. What the hell would it take to convince Lucien to choose her?

Cathed: "She likes freedom of choice but she likes mindraping mortals?"

Pillywiggin: "Well, she is anarchy. She doesn't have to make sense."

She stomped her foot.

The Chronicler: "That's just pathetic."

For weeks she'd cloaked herself in invisibility, following Lucien, watching, studying...

The Chronicler: "And you're surprised he doesn't notice you?! You're invisible!"

Cathed (droning on): "Oh, maybe I should have checked on Ebay first..."

The Anthropologist: "Ebay might be a bit too exciting for this man... In fact, the internet is too interesting for this man."

Cathed: "Maybe I should check the stock market, just to see how it's doing."

The Balance: "No, the stock markets are fluctuating a bit too much. It would be too exciting."

And yes, lusting. He'd had no idea she lurked nearby, even as she willed him to do all sorts of naughty things: strip, pleasure himself…smile.

Cathed: "That would be spoiling the stoic façade... he could still strip stoically, though"

The Chronicler: "He's like St Benedict incarnate!"

Pillywiggin: "That man really hated laughing."

There is some speculation about high level stoics and their possible ability to be able to have sex without their expression changing. There is miming and giggling.

But she’d wanted to see his beautifully flawed face light in humor just as much as she’d wanted to see his naked body glisten with arousal.

Azrael: "He might be cheating and recently had botox."

Had he granted even that benign request, though? No!

Cathed: "And meanwhile, he's just sitting there counting the coasters..."

A part of her wished she'd never seen him, that she hadn't allowed Cronus, the new king of the gods, to intrigue her with stories about the Lords a few months ago. Maybe I'm the idiot...

The Anthropologist: "Why does it have to be a zero sum game? Maybe they're both idiots!"

Cronus had just escaped Tartarus, a prison for immortals and a place she knew intimately. He'd imprisoned Zeus and his cohorts there, as well as Anya's parents. When Anya returned for them, Cronus had been waiting for her. He had demanded Anya's greatest treasure. She'd declined—duh—so he'd tried to scare her. Give me what I want or I'll send the Lords of the Underworld after you. They are demon-possessed, as blood-hungry as starving animals, and they will not hesitate to peel the lovely flesh from your bones. Blah, blah, blah. Whatever.

Cathed: "So he threatened her... wait... the author actually wrote 'blah, blah, blah... oh'."

She'd ended up seeking out the warriors on her own. She'd thought to defeat them and laugh in Cronus’s face, a sort of look-what-I-did-to-your-big-scary-demons kind of thing.

Pillywiggin (rolling her eyes): "Fascinating."

One glance at Lucien, though, and she’d become instantly obsessed.

The Chronicler notes that that can't possibly be healthy.

She'd forgotten her reasons for being there...

The Chronicler: "That happens a lot with heroines..."

It was just that contradictions tantalized her, and Lucien had so very many. He was scarred but not broken, kind but unbending. 

Azrael: "Kindness and bendiness are not synonymous."

The Chronicler: "Neither is scarred and broken, for that mater."

He was a calm, by-the-book immortal, not blood-hungry as Cronus had claimed.

Pillywiggin: "Flangey, but dull."

He was possessed by an evil spirit, yet he never deviated from his own personal code of honor. He dealt with death every day, every night, yet he fought to live. 

The Anthropologist: "If you're immortal, you don't have to work very hard to stay alive."

As if that wasn't enough to prick her interest, his flowery fragrance filled her with decadent, wicked thoughts every time she neared him...

Azrael: "Wait, flowery fragrance?"

The Anthropologist: "Must be really inconvenient to find flowery fragrances irresistible. What if she gets sprayed with perfume in department store... an impromptu orgy?"

Azrael: "She must really freak out people in when walking in parks."

Why? Any other man who smelled like roses would have made her laugh. With Lucien, her mouth watered for a taste of him...

Cathed: "He's so hot in his grey socks."

(The Chronicler: "At least the author is acknowledging roses is a stupid scent for a man... but it's still stupid.")

her skin prickled with white-hot awareness...

The Balance: "Heat. Skin comment. And Medical Complication!"

Pillywiggin: "Three in one combo!"

Gods, he was sexy. He had the freakiest eyes she’d ever seen. 

Cathed: "Freaky good or freaky bad?"

Pillywiggin: "Like a Cyclops?"
The Anthropologist: "Freaky is not a good word either."

One was blue, the other brown, and both swirled with the essence of man and demon...

Cathed: "I've seen creepier eyes."

Pillywiggin: "Like David Bowie, but less interesting."

The Anthropologist: "except he has a fruit pastel stuck to his face."

And his scars… All she could think of, dream about, crave, was licking them.

The Anthropologist: "It's because it's made of liquorice."

Cathed: "Why can't you just talk to him?"

Possessed by Promiscuity, Paris was blessed with pale, almost glittery skin....

Cathed: "It's a sparkly TWILIGHT VAMPIRE!"

...electric-blue eyes, and a face the angels probably sang hallelujahs over, but he wasn't Lucien and he did nothing for her.

Cathed: "Angels sing praise of demonic faces?"

The Chronicler: "She's mixing mythologies. Or simply copy-and-pasting an oft-used descriptor."

She might deal in petty disorder, but she never uttered a threat she didn't plan to see through. To do so smacked of weakness, and Anya had vowed long ago never to show a single hint of weakness...

The Anthropologist: "But drooling and shivering in the middle of the dance floor doesn't count..."

Azrael: "That's not weakness. It's drug abuse."

Paris's laughter intensified and managed to snag Lucien's attention. Lucien's gaze lifted, first landing on Paris...

The Balance: "Lucien's gay."

then locking on Anya. Her knees almost buckled. Oh, sweet heaven. Paris was forgotten as she fought to breathe

Pillywiggin: "Too many gaze!"

Azrael: "He's been deliberately not looking at her to kill her under an avalanche of his gaze."

Did she imagine the fire that suddenly sparked in Lucien's mismatched eyes? Did she imagine the way his nostrils flared in awareness?

The Anthropologist: "You're just pretending he's noticing you. You're just deluding yourself over his cold."

... Licking her lips, never removing her gaze from him, she eased into a sensual bump and grind and made her way toward his table...

Azrael: "Wait. She's bumping and grinding whilst walking?"

The Anthropologist: "She's walking quite slowly then, since at any given time, about 40% of her is moving in the opposite direction."

Azrael: "She could be bumping and grinding the furniture."

Up close, he was six-feet-six of muscle and danger. 

Azrael: "He's made of steak, tied together with police tape."

Pure temptation.

Pillywiggin: "Steak is very tempting."

The Balance: "And she's an anarchist, so she can't help but cross police tape."

There was a brief diversion in which the interesting quote is...

Pillywiggin: "I can't think of anything more dull than a clairvoyance conference."

"We meet at last, Flowers."

Cathed: "She really is the goddess of anarchy. She's going for the gay accountant."

She ground her left hipbone against the hard juncture between his legs, turning erotically and presenting him with a view of her back

The Anthropologist: "Juncture is not an erotic word."

Azrael: "Neither his hipbone."

Her ice-blue corset was held together by nothing more than thin ribbons...

The Anthropologist: "That implies it's not very tightly cinched. Which would render the corset pointless."

...and she knew her skirt hung so low on her waist that it failed to cover the bands of her thong. Oopsie.

Cathed: "And there I was thinking she's written her number in binary."

Azrael: "Appeal to the sodomite!"

Men, mortal or otherwise, usually melted when they caught a glimpse of something they shouldn't.

The Balance: "...like Cthulhu."

The Anthropologist: "It's not really a glimpse. She's just been showing off her thong all night because she's not capable of dressing herself."

...body as she raised her hands over her head then leisurely ran them through the thick mass of her snow-white hair...

The Anthropologist: "Mass is also not a sexy word."

Her nipples hardened.

Pillywiggin: "Pebbling!"

The Anthropologist: "Is she masturbating on the dance floor? Not that people would be shocked with all the fucking, but...."

"Why did you summon me, woman?" His voice was low, yet as disciplined as the warrior himself.

Pillywiggin: "Boring, then."