From 'In the Cards' ~ a Mid Week Tease ( #erotic #horror )

Welcome to the middle of the week!
Mid Week Tease is an event where authors are spotlighting a few lines or a paragraph or two from their stories. Readers, you get to sample some delicious snippets and be teased, titillated and tantalized into the weekend!

My contribution to MWT this week is from In the Cards, an erotic horror story I'm working on. Figured it'd be the right thing to share with Halloween just around the corner. Enjoy!

* Erotic power. Secrets. Shocking truth. Endings. Discontent.
* Fool.
* “Oh dear Lord. Again?”
* Tanner Stone fidgeted in her chair and stared down at the table. The faint yellowed light of a desk lamp cast a weak glow in the small crimson walled room bordered near the ceiling with frilly gold stenciling. A sweet, sensual aroma from some sandalwood incense filled the stuffy air.
* Fourteen tarot cards with intricate, colorful designs created a brilliant cross and fan pattern on the deep purple cloth covering the table.
* Devil. Tower. Hanged Man.
* In a mix of anxiety and disbelief, she gazed at the cards in no particular order while their meanings played on a continuous loop in her mind. Movement. Structures of lies. Puppet master. Suspicions.
* Three of Swords. Four of Cups. Moon. Death.
* The walls seemed to close in on her. She swiped a shaky hand over her face. Her damp palm moistened her nose and lips. Her gaze flitted from the tarot layout to the wood-bead curtained doorway. The crescent moon and stars design formed by the way the cream and black colored orbs hung didn’t waver. The air conditioning had clicked off while she’d been shuffling the cards, she reminded herself. Her older sister, Ember, was still with her client in her room at the front of the boutique. Their cousin and her best friend, Rochelle, manned the checkout counter. That left her alone in the back of the shop at the end of the dark hallway. No air currents wafted from the vents or from people wandering by. The smoke from her sandalwood incense rose in a steady stream.
* Black shadows played in the room’s corners, clinging, crawling, devouring the accent tables and shelves that displayed her crystals, pictures and other divining tools. The silk scarves she’d hung from the ceiling and attached to the walls to give the space character and make it feel more mystical floated like inky, slithering spirits above her head, ready to sweep down at a moment’s notice to claim her. Enslave her like the Devil card suggested. Cold tingles slipped down her spine, branched out and wrapped her in a chilly embrace.

Come back next week for another look into In the Cards!

. . .Visit these other wonderful authors for more MWT goodness!