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eBook Category: Romance
eBook Description: One night Mauren dreams of the perfect man, only to wake and find his image perfectly etched on her mind. The next night his spirit suddenly and sweetly visits hers from afar. It is the beginning of a courtship of souls that will bring Mauren to fall impossibly in love with a charming, enigmatic soldier named Kier, stationed hundreds of miles away. But when Kier mysteriously loses contact with her, Mauren is determined to find him, alive or dead. Her quest brings her to solicit the help of the charismatic Master Xiturias, a man of great psychic power. Xiturias swears his assistance, but his growing obsession with Mauren corrupts him. As Mauren falls more and more under the Master's spell, it could mean the end of hope for her and Kier. Souls' Embrace explores the spiritual and erotic journey of a woman torn between sacred devotion to her ideal soulmate and the irresistible allure of a magical sage determined to possess her. Set in a fantastical medieval world, the story plays out as the classic conflict between the bright and dark sides of sexuality. It is a tale packed with adventure, unforgettable characters, intensely sensual sex scenes, and a transcendent love story.

eBook Publisher: New Age Dimensions, Inc./Crystal Prism Reflections Of Love, Published: 2004
Fictionwise Release Date: May 2005

3 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [262 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [304 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [353 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [1.4 MB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [223 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [273 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [241 KB] , hiebook (KML) [621 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [341 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [193 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [273 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [320 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [449 KB]
Words: 69620
Reading time: 198-278 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
ISBN: 1596110171

"4 STARS--Soul's Embrace by Diana Laurence is captivatingly sensual. This book is a mixture of fantasy and sensual romance at its best ... Diana Laurence is a creative author. She manages to ensnare her readers with a fairy tale like romance that is so sensually captivating, that you have no other choice but to continue reading. I look forward to reading more of Ms. Laurence's work."--Dianne Nogueras, eCata Romance.com

Though ne'er again I see thy face,

I know thee by our souls' embrace.

--from The Legend of Jormas and Onna

My brother ... my friend ... my soul's only love.

Mauren did not utter these words aloud, but they rose up from her heart in irresistible salute at the sight of the man ... the complete stranger who had just burst in the cottage doorway. He was dripping from the rain, his long hair in tendrils, his cloak stuck to his shoulders, his boots shiny with water.

Looking around, confused, he spoke: "Surely this is the place!" His glance fell upon her and he froze, only a few strides away, his eyes opening as wide as she felt hers to be.

Mauren, sitting by the fire with embroidery in her lap, forgot all civilized manners, except to rise to her feet. She could conceive no greeting other than the impossible one, to tell him how she loved him; no gesture of welcome other than to run and embrace his rain-sodden body and cover his slippery wet cheeks with kisses. But in truth she did not know him, so she stood immobilized.

The man seemed likewise flummoxed and left the door standing open behind him, the damp coolness of the night blowing across the floor towards her. His mouth hung open as he regarded her in disbelief.

"Is it you?" he asked, his voice husky and hushed.

"Yes," Mauren heard herself say.

Unfettered, soul-bursting joy illuminated the man's face, and he stepped towards her.

She lifted her arms to him...

and he dissolved into the gray light of day.

Mauren awoke in an instant, shocked. There was no cottage, no rainy night. She lay in her own bed, in a tangle of linen and counterpane, her hair across her eyes and her nightdress twisted about her legs. She sat up, hopelessly seeking the fading form of him, but the little room was empty save for a broad beam of sunlight casting from the window to the foot of the bed. He was gone.

And yet...

Indeed, this had been no dream like any she had ever had before. For she recalled the man with astonishing detail that surpassed any memory of actual flesh and blood she had ever possessed. In those brief moments his image was captured in her mind like a perfect portrait, oil on canvas, every color flawlessly true.

Mauren fell back onto the pillow and closed her eyes to examine him.

He was tall, but then to little Mauren all men were, and so she concluded he was truly only average height. Nevertheless his figure was an imposing one. Why? Ah, yes, it was the torso, the shoulders. He was so broad in the shoulder, it struck her as pure power. His shirt had clung to him and she saw now that he was muscular both from some physical vocation and a natural propensity. His biceps were full, his hands strong-looking as well. And his thighs in their rain-streaked leggings were thick and firm. Lovely, lovely form ... all the male's finest assets were displayed in it, not in the impossible perfection sometimes captured by sculptors, but with enough human imperfection, enough individual uniqueness, to demonstrate their worth all the better.

And his face ... she could not tell if it too were godlike, she could not be objective. For it seemed if her gaze were a question, this face was the truest answer.

His eyes were blue, that pure blue of a perfectly clear summer sky, on a rare day when air from the north came down and chased the humidity away. They were beautiful eyes, and not even so much due to their color. More it was their aspect: they were wide as well as wide-set, with lids that were both delicate and heavy ... heavy in that when he blinked slowly they could make one feel soft and sleepy, yet delicate with fine wrinkles at the folds. Expressive brows ... a broad bridge of nose ... and yes, a most interesting nose, especially in profile when the graceful sweep of the nostrils could be admired.

The desire to touch him rose hard in Mauren's throat. The skin at her fingertips and over her palms yearned to know their equivalents in his own hands. His flesh fascinated her. In the dream she had seen how the blood tinged his cheeks from the exertion of his journey and the excitement of the moment. How desperately she longed to lay her fingers there, to feel the heat of his blood just beneath the skin.

She knew him so intimately, in this fine detail of his flesh and his blood, but likewise in the sum of his being, his carriage and manner. He stood erect, bearing his wide shoulders with practiced assurance. He placed his trim feet in their tall boots with an air of readiness. There was no awkwardness, no uncertainty in his movements. In short, he bore himself as a man who was brave, experienced, self-assured.

However, something in his face belied all this. Mauren saw in it a strange isolation, not so much loneliness as self-imposed exile, a mistrustful independence. She admired this and pitied it at the same time. As his eyes met hers she had recognized in them sudden astonishment, youthful wonder that drove out this guardedness for an instant. His closed face had opened, and to her it felt like the rarest of invitations, a spontaneous beckoning that seemed to surprise even him.

I would come to you, yes, yes, her spirit answered. Why did you leave me? What must I do to bring you back?

Her delighted contemplation of the man dissolved into tears then. What good was it that he was such an angel when his visit had been so brief? How could this encounter bring her anything but pain when now she knew so clearly what a wonder was not hers to possess?

I know now my heart's desire, Mauren lamented, and he is a dream that mocks me because I cannot forget him.

A dream he had been, and dreams must be put aside in the bright light of day. So Mauren rose and resumed her life, the ordinary life of a young woman who lived in a clean little cottage on the Artisan Street in the lively city of Stratton, making a fair living as a tailor for the Court. She conducted her morning routine as was normal for a morn in May: putting on her work clothes, brushing her auburn hair, breakfasting on a bit of bread and cheese, opening the windows and door to the waking noises of the town.

The weather that day was lovely, unseasonably warm, clear with a barely stirring breeze. Ironically the sky was the pale blue color of the strange man's eyes. Mauren, unsettled as she was, could not bear to work inside. So she took her tooling equipment out onto her wood-planked porch, settled onto the bench, and resumed the finishing touches to a leather equestrian vest commissioned by a member of the Court. Her experienced hands could practically work on their own, which was well, for her distraction carried on throughout the day.

He was so fair. His skin had the texture and luminescence of fine porcelain, were it somehow made organic and flushed through with rosy warmth. He could be called neither pale nor ruddy, for he glowed with too much health for the former and yet was too delicate of color for the latter. Mauren could see that his emotions could be read easily in his flesh: that the tips of his ears would redden with embarrassment ... pale pink would dust his cheeks when he was excited ... and when he was aroused, surely the crimson of his mouth would deepen. His complexion had so little color of its own that nothing concealed the raw flush of life in the man's limbs, the plain emotion in his blood.

Mauren shook herself from the grip of the vivid image. It shocked her how she could conjure him up like this, far better than those she knew and held congress with every day in the real world. She raised her eyes from her work to focus on the passersby, real people coming and going. Much traffic traveled by her house; in fact, that very road eventually became the highway that crossed the Stratton River and led to Royal City, only some twenty miles away. So there was never any lack of interesting commerce passing by Mauren Tess's cottage: lenders calling in debts, tourists looking for treasures, tradesmen hawking everything from embroidery thread to raw cedar logs. Likewise traffic traveled by headed to and from Court: foreign visitors, pilgrims, soldiers. Nevertheless, today Mauren saw nothing of the business passing before her eyes, nor the work passing in leather under her tools. All she saw was more details of that face and form.

His mouth was undeniably lovely. His lips were not too thin or too full, but there was a slight petulance in the lower one, just enough to make it seem sensuous. She hadn't seen him smile but something told her his smile would be beautiful. He had a well-proportioned chin, a strong jaw line. These were set off by a short beard, which on that occasion had not been as neat as it might have been, for his whiskers appeared unattended for several days. The beard was wonderfully handsome though, and Mauren wondered if his lips would have seemed quite so desirable without such a setting.

How hungry she was to press her lips to his and feel them blushing warm. Thoughtlessly she lifted her small hand from the leather in her lap and touched her fingers to her mouth, imagining it. She could imagine his kiss far too well. As if she actually had known it...

Mauren shook herself again. This was not good. It was bad enough to let a dream distract one so from reality, but even worse when thinking of it was so painful. For painful it was, to burn so for a man one could never have, worse than any jealousy or unrequited love she had ever known. It was worse because he wasn't real, and yet he was, he was so very real! Was there not reality in the very perfection of the details she knew?

His beard was coppery blond, but his hair was more ashen. It had been dark just then with the rainwater, but she could tell its true color would be gold. I would see him dressed in dove gray, she thought. Soft dove gray would set off his hair, complement the ash blond and the pink in his complexion. But she wanted also to see him dry, see how much curl there was in his long hair, which had dripped about his ears and the back of his sturdy neck. She wanted to see its true color, lay her hands on the softness.

Abruptly Mauren got to her feet, dropping her leatherwork on the bench, and strode back and forth across the porch. She had to get a grip on herself! It was madness to dwell upon it so, to torture herself by pondering every sweetness large and small about the man. She must be rational, make sense out of it somehow.

At that moment a cart passed by, a cart she often saw going up Artisan Street with supplies for the pastry cooks of the Court. Today it carried sacks of flour, jars of honey, and bags of raisins. She had always fancied the horse that pulled this cart, a cream colored filly with long-lashed eyes. She knew this horse, and the driver that took the cart to Court every few days--there was logic to it, a comfortable regularity.

Likewise Mauren knew that the man bore a small white scar on his right temple. His cloak was torn at the bottom edge, just an inch or so. The tip of the index finger on his right hand was stained a light brown. Something had caused the scar, something had caught at the edge of his cloak, and the stain would come off with a good scrubbing. He was too real for cause and effect not to have made him everything he was. Of that Mauren felt chillingly certain.

It was then that her reason arrived at one sure conclusion: the dream had been some kind of magic. But whether it was of good or ill she could not be so sure. Mauren decided she must attend Compline at the Cathedral that evening, to be sure her soul was in order.

Settling down again to her work, she laughed at herself. Clearly her soul was not in order. It was in abject agitation. In all her twenty-eight years she had never experienced anything outside the realm of normal life. She had wanted to, certainly. Never a day went by that she didn't wish for adventure, yearn for something beyond the occasional little escapade involving a visit to a new district, a colorful character making a ruckus in the neighborhood, or too much drinking with her more rambunctious acquaintances. As for courtships, a couple had come and gone, neither interesting enough to qualify as adventure, but perhaps her standards were too high. Mauren's life, like anyone else's, was not without its little dramas, but what she had always wished for was magic, mystery, the unexplainable.

And she certainly had gotten her wish now. The effect was not what she expected, for the problem with magic was that it was completely unpredictable. Perhaps now her life would never be the same, but more likely, it would return to its normal course and for the rest of her life she would never know what had happened in that one brief dream.

Perhaps. Or perhaps not. But all day long she waited for nightfall, to return to her bed and see if anything more would transpire.