Cleopatra's Perfume~Jina Bacarr's in the Manor!

Please welcome fellow Spice author, Jina Bacarr to the manor today! Today, Gina's given us an excerpt, which is really a prequel scene about the heroine's life before the book begins. But it sets the tone perfectly for Cleo! What really draws me to this book is the time-just before the outbreak of war, and the ultra cool cities the book has in it, Cairo, Berlin, London, SO suave and uber cool during that era.
The blurb is below, and and the excerpt follows. Let's give a warm and supportive manor welcome to Jina Bacarr!

Europe 1939
The world may be teetering on the brink of war, but that's no reason for the privileged classes to deny themselves the satisfaction of their deepest lusts. In exotic and exclusive clubs, they pursue the delights of the flesh with little thought to the world crumbling around them.

Eve Marlowe has everything she needs to lead the most decadent of lives: money, nobility, nerve…and an insatiable appetite for sexual adventure. She also has a singular treasure: a fragrance of ancient origin said to have been prepared for the Queen of Kings herself. Seductive, irresistible, even mystical—it is the scent of pure sensuality.

The power of this elixir is such that it sweeps Lady Marlowe into a game much more dangerous than those she played in the darkened rooms of kinky bars. As the Nazis devour Europe and North Africa, she embarks on a fevered journey, with sizzling stops in Cairo, London, Berlin—each city filled with new perils and pleasures for one anointed with pure lust.

Episode 1: Eve meets a monocled gentleman with a secret fetish.
April 10, 2009 by Jina Bacarr

The Berlin Sex Diary of Lady Eve Marlowe contains adult subject matter and is intended for readers 18+ only


23 February 1928

Berlin

I was a naughty girl tonight, dear diary. I wiggled my buttocks like a minette* when I met this interesting gentleman wearing a monocle.

Then I let him spank me.

My nipples tighten as I jot down my thoughts for my own pleasure for no one must ever see the contents of this journal. Only then can I focus candidly on the sexual meanderings of this cabaret dancer down on her luck.

So down and out I earned my sustenance on this night by bending over and allowing the monocled gentleman to spank my bare arse with a long wooden paddle until my buttock cheeks turned scarlet. I inhaled my own sweet scent mixing with my perfume smelling of carnations and cedar, the intoxicating odor unlocking a door I never knew existed, as if I had embarked on a glittering adventure and there was no turning back.

You don’t look like a Joy Girl.

My name is Eve and all you have to know is that I entered Berlin on a passport that says I’m of legal age. I have no desire to expose my true identity should a curious lover find my diary hidden among my lacy underwear and try to blackmail me. I will tell you that I have powder-white blond hair and men often remark that I have a good figure.

I’m not vain about my body, but I struggle to keep the seams on my black stockings straight and I revel in the applause from the audience when I dance. I am also the sentimental girl who sends postcards to her mother back home in New York, knowing she rips them up without reading them.

I am alone here in Berlin with no one to depend upon, dear diary, but I will survive. I am passionate about this. Obsessed. I hold in abeyance my secret self, letting it out only when I must, as I did tonight when the monocled gentleman struck my buttocks over and over again with the paddle, its dark enchantment holding me prisoner.

What choice did I have?

I have no job. The girlie show I came to Berlin with folded after two weeks when the manager’s wife shot him. She caught him fucking the lead act (a sister duo from Morocco) and ran off with the payroll. The story filled the newspaper columns for days.

Lustmord, the Germans call it. Lust murder.

Alone, jobless, I discovered that Berlin in the winter is dreary and cold, the sky gray overhead, clouds hanging low over the city making everything look bleak and sexless. But not at night when beckoning tiny white lights mysteriously appear, tempting me. It is a city of sin awash in an underworld of pleasure.

My foray into this erotic world began when Herr ______ asked me to join him at his table in a small café near the Hotel Eden where I had tried to find work. I noticed an exceptionally tall man in a black Fedora and cloak observing us, gloating like a god looking down at a pagan rite, living, breathing, watching the players perform. His presence made me tingle with an ecstasy I’d never experienced before, as if inviting me into his sinfully rich, private world.

Who was he?

The paleness of his skin belied the fiery dynamic of his persona, his broad shoulders, square jaw. He wore his long black hair tied back, the poetic lift of his dark brow giving him the air of a romantic cavalier. But it was his eyes that held me. Black pools of perpetual movement that lured me into their swirling depths. I could not escape the fatality of his stare, a look that was eternal. It was as if he could read my mind, knowing I was hungry and out of work. I swear he nodded to the monocled gentleman before the older man approached me.


Why didn’t he approach me himself?

Stroking my arm in an intimate manner, the monocled gentleman bought me a glass of hot, spicy glüwein to keep out the cold, then he said in a raspy voice, “You’re too pretty to work as a kitchen maid, Fräulein. I have a better job for you.”

What could I do? I hadn’t eaten in two days, so I nodded and went with him to his hotel. I was disappointed the tall man in the black Fedora and cloak didn’t follow us. I couldn’t explain why, but his presence induced a need in me that left me breathless, made my nerves bristle, my blood run hot.

I kept up my courage, imagining I was entering a scenario without rules, without soft caresses, without illusions, but not without guilt. The gentleman assured me he wasn’t interested in a sexual coupling, but I didn’t know he had a paddling in mind until he removed all his clothes except for his bowtie, socks and garters. And his monocle.

Curious, I took off my knickers and bent over the royal blue silk brocade chair. The silk was cool to my touch, expensive, luxurious, like everything else in the fancy room. When I heard the whoosh of the spanking paddle slicing through the air, I took a deep breath and lifted my buttocks in anticipation…to be continued.


Next time: Eve discovers the joys of paddling from the Berlin intellectual with the monocle.
* minette: French word used here to describe a girl active in BDSM.