Hump Day Hook is a weekly blog hop where writers are invited to hook readers with just a few paragraphs from a work in progress or published work. Visit their site by clicking on the button below for a list of other participating writers and share the love! Today’s Hook comes yet again from The Last Hour of Gann, continuing Sunday’s Sneak Peek and continuing on Saturday’s Weekend Writer Warrior! Feel free to catch up with some back-posts and if you like what you read, why not enter my Gann Giveaway? As soon as the book is ready for publication, I will draw two names from the old hat and send them a free ecopy of the book! Just remember that, like all my books, it contains graphic violence and strong sexual content, so you must tell me each and every time you enter! Thanks for reading and enjoy the hop!

She retreated one step, but only one. Her hands clasped, trembling, at one another. “Have I offended you, sir?”

She had not. Nor had she gone to any great effort to please him. Indeed, she had done little to make any impression on him whatsoever. She hadn’t even told him her name.

Nor should she, in all honesty. She was not a friend to him, only one of the many women who came to the temple after being turned away by their husbands for want of children. They haunted the halls of the temples in every city, veiled shadows in the shape of women, offering themselves in solemn rituals in the hopes that Sheul’s sons would heal their wombs. She did not come to him for pleasure and he should not expect to find any in taking her.

She was neither young nor beautiful, but Meoraq had been compelled to have her all the same when he had passed her in the hall, returning from his first judgment in this city. As Sheulek, he had the right to any woman he was given to desire, but it was this one who lit the spark in him that night and every other night that she came to him. The marks of many Sheulek before him scarred her from neck to mid-arm, but she had not burned for Meoraq and his own did not stand among them.