Pretend for Me

THIS BOOK HAS BEEN UNPUBLISHED! It is being redone as an orc romance loool fun times 😀

Everything in his city has its price, including her survival.

And she only has her body to pay with.

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Dulcet Darkly has struck again, this time with a darkly (ha!) emotional story about a princess who finds herself caged in a lawless city run by the ruthless man who slew her lover. But she is determined survive—to endure all that her captor takes from her—and more.

How it starts:

If it hadn’t snowed, she never would have fallen—off the ladder, into love, or into… all that came after.

Altheira, a princess, can’t sleep in her unstable kingdom and seeks winter-berries from the tree in her palace garden…

Every scuff of boot, every scrape of claw, every whisper of slipper in the corridor startled her awake.
She wasn’t sleeping.
She needed sleep.
And so.
Here she balanced, on a night that froze a grimace to her lips and stiffened her fingers inside her gloves, her scarlet cloak thrown haphazardly over her white gown, her precarious balance on an icy metal ladder, with one gloved hand gripping a rung while her other reached for the winter berries bunched on the branch…

And then…

That was when she slipped.
Fell.
And landed on someone who shouldn’t have been there at all.
“Oof!”
A very male body crumpled under hers, cushioning her fall, and a billowing mist of displaced snow puffed into her face and across her disarray of partly braided hair.
She and he battled their respective ways out of the snowdrift individually, she frantic with fear, and he—
Well, she heard his laughter before the moonshine shone on his smile, which sparkled with melting snow and white teeth.

Aaand my ultimate favorite excerpt:

His tone lowered more, husky, deep, resonating within her. “I’ve always been worthless. You know this.”
“No survivor is worthless,” she snapped back. “Ruthless, yes. But never worthless. And,” roughly, she stepped close, “if you truly thought yourself worthless, you would never have protected that bit of you inside you that you let me touch—that unscarred core you protect.”
He stared at her.
Her tone went husky. “Deny that I touched it.”
“You didn’t just touch it.” He buried his hand in her hair. “You fuckin’ burned it to the ground.”
“Then we are even—phoenix to phoenix, from fire to ash, both reborn again.” Twining his shirt laces around her knuckles, she tugged him down until their breaths entwined.

This is a story that has two endings, One for those who want the honorable man to win the day, and another for those who have a weakness for the dishonorable one [Guess which I prefer? ;-)]

It doesn’t have explicitly described sex scenes, more emotionally implied (not sure how to describe them!), so don’t expect erotica, but it’s definitely not squeaky clean.

Anyway, here is the link to it!

Also, everyone keeps asking about that damn bird on the cover. No, the bird means nothing, unless you want to get all symbolic about it, then knock yourself out.

DAMMIT, THIS POST WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE PUBLISHED YET BUT WHATEVERRR HERE IT IS haha