Title: Master of the Game (Demons of Elysium #3)
Author: Jane Kindred
Genre: Paranormal m/m BDSM erotic romance 18+
Publication Date: August 5, 2014
Publisher: Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
Cover Designer: Kanaxa
Event Organized By: Literati Author Services, Inc. Synopsis
Love is the ultimate game changer…and this time it’s winner take all. Now that his lover is back in his arms, Belphagor is taking his own sweet time to say the words Vasily longs to hear: “You’re my boy.” And savoring the sweet torture of driving the firespirit into a frenzy of unfulfilled need. As the undisputed master of Heaven’s gaming tables, Belphagor never plays unless he’s certain of winning. But this time, political machinations send the game—and Vasily—tumbling to the brink of even his formidable control. Vasily can’t deny enjoying their delightfully edgy play—until the airspirit auctions him off for a night to the one demon with a gift for taking things too far. Seductive Silk, tight-lipped about the end of his relationship with the sweet submissive Phaleg, may also be involved with a new faction threatening the pregnant queen of Heaven. Belphagor couldn’t be less interested in the games angels play, but when angelic and demonic intrigues overlap, he’s drawn in against his will. And forced to break his one inviolable rule: Never gamble what you can’t afford to lose. Warning: Contains more than a mouthful of m/m ménage, with intense D/s situations featuring intricate rope work, balaklavas, and a flurry of snow.Add to Goodreads
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About the Author
Jane Kindred is the author of The House of Arkhangel’sk trilogy, the Demons of Elysium series, and The Devil’s Garden. Born in Billings, Montana, she spent her formative years ruining her eyes reading romance novels in the Tucson sun and watching Star Trek marathons in the dark. She now writes to the sound of San Francisco foghorns while two cats slowly but surely edge her off the side of the bed. You can find Jane on her Twitter account and Facebook page—both of which are aptly named “janekindred"—and on her website, www.janekindred.com.
Connect with the Author: Twitter | Facebook | Blog | Website | Goodreads | Google+ | Pinterest | Tumblr
Giveaway
Diamond Accent Devil Heart with Wings Pendant in Sterling Silver
$25.00 Amazon Gift Card
Entry-Form
My Review:
I have loved this series from the beginning and I am sad. Why? You ask. Well, this is the finale to a great adventure. Very rarely do I find an author that can write M/M erotica. Folks, you don't have to look any further, Jane is that author.
Jane has taken us on a ride through this series. We have had amazing sex. Sex that will cause a reaction to the reader. I am not afraid to admit it. This is one hot series of books.
Enough you say? Too bad! I love Vasily and Beli. They are amazing. The emotions that they go through just to find each other in the end is epic. There were times that I thought that they would not have an HEA.
This book finds the final march to happiness for two couples. Silk and his angel and Beli and Vasily. Of course there is obstacles. Namely the end of the power structure in Heaven. This book takes us on an adventure where we see the plot unravel for the death of a Queen. Each character has a critical role to play. Each decision they make is a fragile notch in their love story.
Secondary, and possibly the most important is closure. We see why Silk is the way he is and how Phaleg copes with the revelation.
Also, the conclusion to the redemption quest Beli is on is given to us.
Be warned, the author holds nothing back in this book. There is fisting, gangbangs, BDSM and cum play. Each scene is one that you will find yourself hiding the page or reading device as you feel guilty reading this pleasure ride.
Great book and I gobbled it up in about two days. I hope that one day Jane revisits these characters as they have surely made me smile.
Rating:
Here is a snippet of the goodness that awaits you!
Excerpt 1
The angel had been avoiding his eyes, but he met them now, and his blue ones—the color of the supernal celestine stone in the signet rings the nobles wore etched with the symbols of their houses—were full of heartache. “You said we were not to see one another again…after. And I accepted that. I understood your reasons. It was wise counsel. But then you summoned me and brought me back into your world, and I came. For you. You must have known I could never refuse you.”
“Phaleg—”
“I don’t regret it. It may not have been wise, my agreeing to be the front man in your enterprises, but I accepted with full knowledge of the risk. The Celestial Silk Road had to be closed. The fletchers needed to be stopped and brought to justice. But it was very difficult seeing you again.”
Belphagor rose and came close to the table. “I’m sorry. I’m a selfish demon. I thought perhaps I could keep you near without doing you harm so long as there was no intimacy between us. But I saw how cut off you were from what you needed and desired, and I thought perhaps Silk could give that to you. I made a mistake.”
“No.” Phaleg gave him a sad smile. “Nyet, ser. It wasn’t a mistake. It’s not your fault things didn’t work out between us. But I thought it meant…” The charming blush had risen once more in his cheeks. “I thought you wanted him to use me.”
“You went to him to please me?” He’d never wanted that. Damn, he’d screwed this up.
“No. No, not that exactly.” The blush deepened, and Phaleg looked down at the table with the bashfulness of a young ingénue. “Though I would. If you told me to let anyone use me, demon or angel, because it pleased you…I would. But I desired Silk. He’s—he’s beautiful and complicated. And a bit cruel. Like you. I couldn’t help but desire him. It’s just that I thought it was your way of telling me you…released me.”
Belphagor reached his hand across the table, and Phaleg took it, his own trembling. “It was, sweet boy. I had to release you. You deserve to be free. To love and be loved by someone who desires to make you suffer because you desire to be made to suffer by him. Someone who will cherish that suffering and that hunger for it. Someone who needs to use you just as desperately as you need to be used by him. You deserve what Vasily and I have, and I can’t give it to you.”
“And yet you speak of a bond.”
“Of course there’s a bond.” He closed his fingers tightly around Phaleg’s hand until the angel made a soft, involuntary sound of pain.
“Heaven help me,” the angel moaned, the very words he’d uttered in his desperation while Belphagor had sundered him. He knew if he ordered the angel to, right here and now, Phaleg would strip and climb onto the table to be used and degraded in whatever fashion Belphagor took a fancy to, regardless of the fear of discovery. He was sorely tempted. But even he wasn’t that much of a bastard.
He loosened his grip. “There will always be a bond,” he said in a gentler tone. “But I will do my best never to abuse it.”
Phaleg nodded as Belphagor released his hand, his throat working for a moment as if he couldn’t get any air through it. “Then you’ll help me?” he managed at last.
“Of course I’ll help. All you had to do was ask.” He tried to remember exactly what Phaleg had asked him. His imagined violation of the angel had given him a rather distracting erection. “You said you want me to stop the principality from signing the Liberation Decree.”
“I don’t want you to, but someone must, or this next attempt upon the principality’s life will succeed. Heaven isn’t ready for liberation, as much as it pains me to admit. It’s not the right time. And the only way Helison will see that is if he understands the extent of demonic sedition going on right under his nose.”
“Even if it implicates Silk.”
Phaleg paled. “That isn’t what I want. But if he’s plotting against my principality…Belphagor…I cannot ignore it.” And there was the difference between them. Belphagor hadn’t given a fig whether the beautiful Russian prince he’d spied upon had been plotting against the tsar.
Excerpt 2
Belphagor’s reputation had taken another hit, but Vasily had come out of the previous evening’s adventure with exactly what Belphagor had hoped to secure: the indignation—on Vasily’s behalf—of both fellow workers and patrons of the Stone Horse. He left Vasily to his own devices, lunching with rent boys to gain their ear, while Belphagor took Silk aside on the pretext of discussing business.
Silk ushered him to his private parlor and closed the sliding doors onto the outer room, turning about with a look of professional interest and nothing more. “What can I do for you, Belphagor?” It was as polite and cool a reception as Silk had ever given him.
“I came to apologize.”
This took Silk aback, his hands dropping from the door handles behind him.
“I put you on the spot last night, and it wasn’t fair. I didn’t really care for the spectacle you were making of Vasily, but I did say you could do as you pleased with him, and it was up to him to use his safe word if he wasn’t comfortable—although I ought to have established that between the three of us as well. So for my awkward handling of the situation and my inappropriate reaction, I apologize.”
Silk’s hands slipped into the pockets of his tailored suit. “Thank you.” The velvety gray eyes observed him for a moment. “Can I ask you something?” Belphagor inclined his head. “About Phaleg. I… Did he tell you what I did?”
Belphagor took a seat on the divan and set his legs apart with his hands on his knees—a habit from the world of Man meant to display the tattoos on his fingers and the backs of his hands in an implied threat, though they had little meaning in Heaven. “Major Phaleg is an angel of the utmost discretion. He told me only that things hadn’t worked out between the two of you. But it seems fairly clear to me that you hurt him in some way, and I believe I warned you that you’d answer to me if any harm came to him as a result of your association.”
“I drew blood.” Silk wrapped his arms around himself as he blurted the words. “He never told me to stop, just let me beat on him until I drew blood. And it made me angry.”
“Injuring Phaleg made you angry at him.”
“Because he was just going to lie there and take it like I was some kind of monster—like I wanted that!”
“And did you?”
The gray eyes flashed with fury and Silk stepped forward in challenge, but stopped, his expression conflicted. “I…did.” Silk’s face went pale. “I wanted to keep going. Heaven help me,” he murmured, reminiscent of Phaleg. “Why would I want that?”
Belphagor considered, drawing on memories he hadn’t touched in decades. They were memories he wasn’t proud of. “Revenge?”
“Revenge?” Silk looked ill.
“Against someone other than Phaleg. Someone Phaleg reminds you of, perhaps, or whom your encounters with Phaleg remind you of. When I was a young demon in the world of Man, I had some experiences I don’t like to think about. I’ve never told Vasily, nor will I tell him, so you’ll keep this between us.” His tone allowed for no disagreement.
“But when I had the opportunity to treat others with the same brutality, I didn’t think twice. I lashed out, trying to punish the ones who had made me downcast, trying to take my revenge on men who were no longer there. Where I was—the Russian gulag, they called it, the Zona—violence and brutality were the only languages anyone understood. It took me a long time to unlearn that language. And longer than that—much longer—to learn that my desire to cause a demon pain in the act of mutual pleasure didn’t make me what I’d been taught to be in the Zona. And it didn’t make me the boy who’d suffered without consent at the hands of others taking their own misplaced revenge.”
Silk sank onto the cushions of the chair perpendicular to the divan while Belphagor spoke. His head hung forward, the carefully oiled hair falling over his face. “I didn’t want to do that to Phaleg. I didn’t want him to make me that demon. That’s why I sent him away.”
“So he doesn’t know what he’s done to anger you.”
Silk shook his head, defeated. “I mocked him and treated him scornfully. If you wish to thrash me for it, you’re well within your rights.”
“Silk.” He reached out and laid a hand on the young demon’s knee. “I have no desire to punish you for making a mistake. You’re certainly doing that quite well on your own. I think Phaleg is confused, though, and he ought to hear from you that he did nothing wrong.”
“If I tell him he did nothing wrong, I’ll have to tell him I did.”
“Shouldn’t you?”
Silk looked up, his eyes bitter. “He’ll hate me. Probably hates me already.”
“I doubt that. But even if he does, he deserves to know he wasn’t to blame. Give him the opportunity to forgive you. And in the future, you might try negotiating in advance and using a safe word when you find an angel or a demon who takes such total pleasure in sexual torment. They are rare individuals, to be treasured.”
“You seem to know a great deal about sexual torment.”
Belphagor grinned from one side of his mouth. “I’ve made a lifetime of studying it, my dear boy. Practice makes perfect.”
My Review:
I have loved this series from the beginning and I am sad. Why? You ask. Well, this is the finale to a great adventure. Very rarely do I find an author that can write M/M erotica. Folks, you don't have to look any further, Jane is that author.
Jane has taken us on a ride through this series. We have had amazing sex. Sex that will cause a reaction to the reader. I am not afraid to admit it. This is one hot series of books.
Enough you say? Too bad! I love Vasily and Beli. They are amazing. The emotions that they go through just to find each other in the end is epic. There were times that I thought that they would not have an HEA.
This book finds the final march to happiness for two couples. Silk and his angel and Beli and Vasily. Of course there is obstacles. Namely the end of the power structure in Heaven. This book takes us on an adventure where we see the plot unravel for the death of a Queen. Each character has a critical role to play. Each decision they make is a fragile notch in their love story.
Secondary, and possibly the most important is closure. We see why Silk is the way he is and how Phaleg copes with the revelation.
Also, the conclusion to the redemption quest Beli is on is given to us.
Be warned, the author holds nothing back in this book. There is fisting, gangbangs, BDSM and cum play. Each scene is one that you will find yourself hiding the page or reading device as you feel guilty reading this pleasure ride.
Great book and I gobbled it up in about two days. I hope that one day Jane revisits these characters as they have surely made me smile.
Rating:
Here is a snippet of the goodness that awaits you!
Excerpt 1
The angel had been avoiding his eyes, but he met them now, and his blue ones—the color of the supernal celestine stone in the signet rings the nobles wore etched with the symbols of their houses—were full of heartache. “You said we were not to see one another again…after. And I accepted that. I understood your reasons. It was wise counsel. But then you summoned me and brought me back into your world, and I came. For you. You must have known I could never refuse you.”
“Phaleg—”
“I don’t regret it. It may not have been wise, my agreeing to be the front man in your enterprises, but I accepted with full knowledge of the risk. The Celestial Silk Road had to be closed. The fletchers needed to be stopped and brought to justice. But it was very difficult seeing you again.”
Belphagor rose and came close to the table. “I’m sorry. I’m a selfish demon. I thought perhaps I could keep you near without doing you harm so long as there was no intimacy between us. But I saw how cut off you were from what you needed and desired, and I thought perhaps Silk could give that to you. I made a mistake.”
“No.” Phaleg gave him a sad smile. “Nyet, ser. It wasn’t a mistake. It’s not your fault things didn’t work out between us. But I thought it meant…” The charming blush had risen once more in his cheeks. “I thought you wanted him to use me.”
“You went to him to please me?” He’d never wanted that. Damn, he’d screwed this up.
“No. No, not that exactly.” The blush deepened, and Phaleg looked down at the table with the bashfulness of a young ingénue. “Though I would. If you told me to let anyone use me, demon or angel, because it pleased you…I would. But I desired Silk. He’s—he’s beautiful and complicated. And a bit cruel. Like you. I couldn’t help but desire him. It’s just that I thought it was your way of telling me you…released me.”
Belphagor reached his hand across the table, and Phaleg took it, his own trembling. “It was, sweet boy. I had to release you. You deserve to be free. To love and be loved by someone who desires to make you suffer because you desire to be made to suffer by him. Someone who will cherish that suffering and that hunger for it. Someone who needs to use you just as desperately as you need to be used by him. You deserve what Vasily and I have, and I can’t give it to you.”
“And yet you speak of a bond.”
“Of course there’s a bond.” He closed his fingers tightly around Phaleg’s hand until the angel made a soft, involuntary sound of pain.
“Heaven help me,” the angel moaned, the very words he’d uttered in his desperation while Belphagor had sundered him. He knew if he ordered the angel to, right here and now, Phaleg would strip and climb onto the table to be used and degraded in whatever fashion Belphagor took a fancy to, regardless of the fear of discovery. He was sorely tempted. But even he wasn’t that much of a bastard.
He loosened his grip. “There will always be a bond,” he said in a gentler tone. “But I will do my best never to abuse it.”
Phaleg nodded as Belphagor released his hand, his throat working for a moment as if he couldn’t get any air through it. “Then you’ll help me?” he managed at last.
“Of course I’ll help. All you had to do was ask.” He tried to remember exactly what Phaleg had asked him. His imagined violation of the angel had given him a rather distracting erection. “You said you want me to stop the principality from signing the Liberation Decree.”
“I don’t want you to, but someone must, or this next attempt upon the principality’s life will succeed. Heaven isn’t ready for liberation, as much as it pains me to admit. It’s not the right time. And the only way Helison will see that is if he understands the extent of demonic sedition going on right under his nose.”
“Even if it implicates Silk.”
Phaleg paled. “That isn’t what I want. But if he’s plotting against my principality…Belphagor…I cannot ignore it.” And there was the difference between them. Belphagor hadn’t given a fig whether the beautiful Russian prince he’d spied upon had been plotting against the tsar.
Excerpt 2
Belphagor’s reputation had taken another hit, but Vasily had come out of the previous evening’s adventure with exactly what Belphagor had hoped to secure: the indignation—on Vasily’s behalf—of both fellow workers and patrons of the Stone Horse. He left Vasily to his own devices, lunching with rent boys to gain their ear, while Belphagor took Silk aside on the pretext of discussing business.
Silk ushered him to his private parlor and closed the sliding doors onto the outer room, turning about with a look of professional interest and nothing more. “What can I do for you, Belphagor?” It was as polite and cool a reception as Silk had ever given him.
“I came to apologize.”
This took Silk aback, his hands dropping from the door handles behind him.
“I put you on the spot last night, and it wasn’t fair. I didn’t really care for the spectacle you were making of Vasily, but I did say you could do as you pleased with him, and it was up to him to use his safe word if he wasn’t comfortable—although I ought to have established that between the three of us as well. So for my awkward handling of the situation and my inappropriate reaction, I apologize.”
Silk’s hands slipped into the pockets of his tailored suit. “Thank you.” The velvety gray eyes observed him for a moment. “Can I ask you something?” Belphagor inclined his head. “About Phaleg. I… Did he tell you what I did?”
Belphagor took a seat on the divan and set his legs apart with his hands on his knees—a habit from the world of Man meant to display the tattoos on his fingers and the backs of his hands in an implied threat, though they had little meaning in Heaven. “Major Phaleg is an angel of the utmost discretion. He told me only that things hadn’t worked out between the two of you. But it seems fairly clear to me that you hurt him in some way, and I believe I warned you that you’d answer to me if any harm came to him as a result of your association.”
“I drew blood.” Silk wrapped his arms around himself as he blurted the words. “He never told me to stop, just let me beat on him until I drew blood. And it made me angry.”
“Injuring Phaleg made you angry at him.”
“Because he was just going to lie there and take it like I was some kind of monster—like I wanted that!”
“And did you?”
The gray eyes flashed with fury and Silk stepped forward in challenge, but stopped, his expression conflicted. “I…did.” Silk’s face went pale. “I wanted to keep going. Heaven help me,” he murmured, reminiscent of Phaleg. “Why would I want that?”
Belphagor considered, drawing on memories he hadn’t touched in decades. They were memories he wasn’t proud of. “Revenge?”
“Revenge?” Silk looked ill.
“Against someone other than Phaleg. Someone Phaleg reminds you of, perhaps, or whom your encounters with Phaleg remind you of. When I was a young demon in the world of Man, I had some experiences I don’t like to think about. I’ve never told Vasily, nor will I tell him, so you’ll keep this between us.” His tone allowed for no disagreement.
“But when I had the opportunity to treat others with the same brutality, I didn’t think twice. I lashed out, trying to punish the ones who had made me downcast, trying to take my revenge on men who were no longer there. Where I was—the Russian gulag, they called it, the Zona—violence and brutality were the only languages anyone understood. It took me a long time to unlearn that language. And longer than that—much longer—to learn that my desire to cause a demon pain in the act of mutual pleasure didn’t make me what I’d been taught to be in the Zona. And it didn’t make me the boy who’d suffered without consent at the hands of others taking their own misplaced revenge.”
Silk sank onto the cushions of the chair perpendicular to the divan while Belphagor spoke. His head hung forward, the carefully oiled hair falling over his face. “I didn’t want to do that to Phaleg. I didn’t want him to make me that demon. That’s why I sent him away.”
“So he doesn’t know what he’s done to anger you.”
Silk shook his head, defeated. “I mocked him and treated him scornfully. If you wish to thrash me for it, you’re well within your rights.”
“Silk.” He reached out and laid a hand on the young demon’s knee. “I have no desire to punish you for making a mistake. You’re certainly doing that quite well on your own. I think Phaleg is confused, though, and he ought to hear from you that he did nothing wrong.”
“If I tell him he did nothing wrong, I’ll have to tell him I did.”
“Shouldn’t you?”
Silk looked up, his eyes bitter. “He’ll hate me. Probably hates me already.”
“I doubt that. But even if he does, he deserves to know he wasn’t to blame. Give him the opportunity to forgive you. And in the future, you might try negotiating in advance and using a safe word when you find an angel or a demon who takes such total pleasure in sexual torment. They are rare individuals, to be treasured.”
“You seem to know a great deal about sexual torment.”
Belphagor grinned from one side of his mouth. “I’ve made a lifetime of studying it, my dear boy. Practice makes perfect.”
Until Next Time,
J
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