Circlet Press: Welcome to Circlet 2.0

Kneel to Me
Edited by Lauren P. Burka

ISBN: 978-1-885865-54-0
Word Count: 44,770
List Price: $6.99

Available from:

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• Scribd (PDF, epaper, read online)

For the next two weeks the title is on sale at up to 20% off from most partner sites, and right here at Circlet.com, so don’t dawdle, download a copy today.

Circlet Press brings you seven erotic stories of dominance and submission that will return you to the moment when a master, mistress, or slave first stepped out of a story and made you theirs.

The submissives, slaves, and bottoms you will meet here are tough and competent. No passive orifices, they are beautifully-realized individuals with the spark that makes them recognizably human. In “KATT,” the slave is a beautiful android who fights to hold on to the precious scrap of her life after a disaster. The servant in “Lord of Misrule” knows that his relationship with his master requires something other than obedience. The slave in “Raiders from the Stars” learns that much more is at stake than his personal gratification. In “Personal Benefits,” the highly-trained contract slave offers the pleasure of perfect obedience to the powerful woman who owns her.

Nor are their tops the well-endowed ciphers who “train” Cindi. They have needs and aspirations. Pleasure may be an important part of their lives, even the most important part of their lives, but they are also seeking love, acceptance and a future for themselves and their slaves in a hard world. The master in “Raiders from the Stars” knows that the safety that humanity takes for granted is rooted in obedience. In “Romans,” the master forges a new sort of domestic tranquility for his new slaves. The bureaucrat of a repressive government in “Exceptional Acts” discovers that pleasure is the most powerful form of rebellion.

Table of Contents:

• The Lord of Misrule byKannan Feng
• KATT by Smotp
• Romans by Joe Nobel
• Raiders from the Stars by Jay Starre
• Exceptional Acts by Argus Marks
• Personal Benefits by Elizabeth Thorne
• Scenes in a Beijing Hotel by Jason Rubis

Excerpt: Read the remainder of this entry »

To Her Specifications
by Elizabeth Coldwell

He carried me here so I could watch the suns come up. He knows that when he has whipped me and fucked me almost to the point of exhaustion, I like nothing better than to lie on this bed and gaze out over the waves, so once he had freed me from my bonds, that was exactly what he did. He’s thoughtful like that, but then he should be. That’s how I made him.
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(Continuing the weekly serial by Cecilia Tan! Need to start at the beginning? Click here.)

Part 32: Jorin

When next I woke, I found Kan lying next to me, propped up on one elbow, as if he had been watching me sleep.

Much like Kenet used to. And will again! I told myself, but at that moment he felt very far away. And who knew if Seroi had somehow changed him by now?

These thoughts must have shown on my face. Kan stroked my hair in sympathy. “You’re not alone anymore,” he said. “You’re a Night Rider now.”

“Kenet is alone,” I said. “His only ally is his childhood guard, but even he cannot keep him safe from the Lord High Mage. I fear for him.” Judging by the light coming through the tent’s canvas, the sun would soon be rising. “Seroi was training him for his coming of age ceremony. I fear he has dark designs on the prince.”

Kan’s eyebrows knitted. “Tell me what you know.”
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Nemesis
by Gayle C. Straun

I stand just a few steps away from the edge of the cliff, my old fear of heights clutching at my heart. Nemesis Valley below is still its deathsome self. Barren, its ancient lifelessness a relic of history—the accomplishment of mankind, laid out in shimmering splendor.

I hear Zoë walking toward me. Without turning my head, I say, “What is the purpose of these illusions?”

“Purpose?” she says. As usual, she is not wearing a mask or cloak but walking nakedly under an equally naked sky. “Why are you always talking about purpose?”
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(Continuing the weekly serial by Cecilia Tan! Need to start at the beginning? Click here.)

Part 31: Kenet

The next day dawned damp and chill, but the fog burned off by midmorning. From the rise where Roichal’s tent was pitched I could see a large portion of the camp. How many men were here? Thousands, certainly. Finding Jorin was going to be quite a task.

Again I felt no urge to eat. After he had breakfasted himself, though, Roichal taught me to shine his boots and how to oil the leather of his armor. There were many buckles to be shined also, and to be kept from rust. He watched over me for a while, and then left me alone with the tent flaps up to let in light to work by. A soldier sat outside, whistling as he repaired something leather with a long needle. He wasn’t obviously a guard, but I wondered if he were there to keep an eye on me.

Roichal and Marksin came in at midday and Roichal gave me some bread and meat, but still I could not bring myself to eat it. They looked at me curiously and gave me plenty of fresh water. Roichal himself checked me for signs of fever, but I seemed well, just not hungry.

“He’ll eat when he’s ready to,” Marksin said. “Just like a stray cat.”

That made the general chuckle and pat my head affectionately, which felt better than it had any right to.
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Jean Roberta teaches English in a Canadian prairie university and writes in various genres. Her erotic stories have appeared in over 70 anthologies, including two erotic fantasy anthologies from Circlet Press (Best Fantastic Erotica and Like a Sword), the annual Best Lesbian Erotica series from Cleis Press, in two anthologies in the “Coming Together” series of erotic stories donated to raise funds for good causes (Coming Together: With Pride and Coming Together: Into the Light) and in To Love and To Cherish, an anthology of lesbian love stories published by Love You Divine to raise funds for U.S. Marriage Equality. Obsession, Jean’s single-author collection of diverse erotic stories, was released in print in May 2009.

(Continuing the weekly serial by Cecilia Tan! Need to start at the beginning? Click here.)

Part 30: Jorin

When I came to, I was still bound, but this time my hands were in front of me and I was not blindfolded. I was lying on a blanket that smelled of horse and I appeared to be in a small tent.

My head felt like metalsmiths with hammers were shaping it from the inside and my mouth was as dry as if they had gagged me with cloth. I winced as someone pulled aside the flap of the tent and the brightness felt like needles in my eyes.

“Ah, poor thing. Here you go.”

Kan. He knelt by my head and I heard the sound of a flask being unscrewed. He tipped my mouth upward and poured a mouthful of something intensely bitter onto my tongue, but I swallowed it. He let go and already the pain had eased slightly. “I told you you’d feel like this. The tingle-tingle bush in full bloom? I’m not sure if you were lucky or unlucky there, my friend.”

“Kan,” I tried to say but it just came out a croak.

“One thing at a time,” he said, putting a finger to my lips to quiet me. He gave me water next, then went back out of the tent. I did not hear his footsteps, but when he came back in, I had the impression he had circled the tent. “All right. Quietly now. I say lucky because if you’d been awake like the other soldiers you probably would have ended with an arrow in your back. And if you hadn’t been hallucinating and talking aloud, I wouldn’t have realized who you were before I slit your throat, either, Jorin Weltskin.”

He knew who I was! Read the remainder of this entry »

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Up for Grabs has been reviewed by Emily at Good Reads:

The possibilities are endless when you combine science fiction and sexual ambiguity, the ability to choose your own gender or not have to pick just one. The five stories in this anthology each take a very different approach, but each invariably plays with the restrictive limits that society places on gender. Here nothing is as simple as female or male, or being stuck with the gender you’re born with when you know with every cell in your body that it’s the wrong gender. These stories provide a more fluid approach to gender identity and sexual awareness that is sometimes serious and touching and at other times playful and over the top.

(Continuing the weekly serial by Cecilia Tan! Need to start at the beginning? Click here.)

Part 29: Kenet

We passed a check point of some kind around dawn, the guards bantering with Jort before letting us pass, and the wagon rolled on and on. I wondered why I didn’t feel hungry at all, but my stomach was in such knots from fear and worry I couldn’t have eaten anything now even if my hands had been free and a banquet were in front of me.

I had plenty of time to try to free myself from the chains if it could be done. It could not. If they were truly delivering me to General Roichal, I might find myself headed straight back to Seroi and my father if he were to recognize me. I tried to remember when the last time he had banqueted at the royal table had been. Ten years ago? When he had been made commander of the whole army. I was fairly sure he had not returned since, and even then, I don’t know that he ever got much of a look at me. I remembered him as a broad-shouldered man, with his hair in need of cutting and a perpetual frown creasing his brow.

We changed horses again at midday and no one opened the back of the wagon to find me there. A few miles later, Jort made me drink some water but I was still not hungry. I finally slept fitfully through the heat of the afternoon, and then woke as the wagon went through another check point. The sun was setting as we came into a camp, a circle of tents visible all around in the fading light. I could hear many voices.

And then suddenly the back of the wagon was flung open and Jort was standing there grinning, gesturing at me. “Here you are.”

The man standing next to him was in some sort of uniform, but not like a soldier’s. He had an apron on as well. A cook? He wore a disdainful expression. “This? This is what our king sends to boost morale? Whiskey instead of grain? And what the hell are we supposed to do with a whoreslave?”
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