Until tonight. The skin around Heather’s lips is soft, unlike the
stubble Erik lets grow in, and the night unfolds like an erotic dream,
tapping into an unexplored part of Angie’s body and mind.But Heather’s seduction turns into a nightmare when Angie wakes up tied
to the bed and is told she can’t leave. Alternately seduced and
tormented by her lover-turned-captor, Angie is pulled ever deeper into a
twisted world of pain-for-pleasure and voyeuristic exploits. As the
stakes rise, both women give into a desire for connections neither has
had, and Angie’s struggle to escape becomes a bigger dilemma: Would she
leave if she could?
Winner of the Golden Palm Contest for New Adult Romance, this erotic
thriller dares to explore the darker side of our fantasies and their
sometimes unintended consequences.
I wake from a fitful sleep, stepping through desires that make my body ache, and horrors that shake my core, until I open my eyes to find the last rays of light cascading through the windows. I roll to my side and pull a pillow into me, noticing loose ropes around my wrists.
The whirl of a drill startles me. I look over my shoulder to find her hunched over a workbench. She’s fixing the pieces of wood I snapped in half and screwing the shackles back into place.
I look down at my ankles to find they also have rope around them, with just as much lag. It’s more of a gesture today than a command. I could untie myself easily, but I don’t. Instead I sit up and watch her work, amazed at the vigor with which she’s putting that monster prop back together, beat up as she is.
It’s as if the motions of picking up and straightening out everything that’s been pummeled apart are going to mend whatever has been broken inside. Or maybe the act I witnessed yesterday has become routine and this is part of a customary clean-up.
I feel sorry for her. I know I shouldn’t. I know what she’s capable of regardless of my growing curiosity.
She finishes tidying up her place with such meticulous care, little evidence remains of what’s taken place. Unless you looked at our battle scars. I lean to my side and a dull pain shoots through my torso.
She walks over and sits down next to me. “Angie, I’d like you to get back on the whipping bench,” she says matter-of-factly, as if whatever we were about to do yesterday had been interrupted by nothing more than a phone call.
I don’t respond. So that’s what it’s called. The literal meaning sinks in and that fear and anticipation begin to mix together again into an addictive drug.
“There’s so much I want you to experience.”
It scares me to imagine what that means in her world, yet it makes a part of me feel special too. She wants to take me on a journey. I always thought I’d do that with Erik, but there hadn’t been enough time…and maybe there never will be. Maybe he’s already decided to do that with someone else.
When she asks again, I offer up my hands.
I can tell she’s surprised, because she takes her time drawing all the rope off me, looking at me like she’s expecting me to change my mind. But when I don’t, the tension between us eases.
We walk over to the familiar prop, and she tells me to wait while she gets something. When she returns with that something, I have no idea what it is, except for a bunch of leather straps with buckles and rings.
“It’s a body harness,” she answers my confused expression. “I want you to put it on.”
I imagine the firm leather denting into my plump flesh, old insecurities playing with my mind again, but her fingers are already lifting the tank top off me and pulling down my underwear. I avoid her gaze as she pulls the harness around the front side of my body.
One strap sits above my breasts, another below, and one down the center. When she buckles it tight at my back, I let out a gasp, and when she pulls the last strap between my legs and attaches it at my behind, I feel those sensations again from deep inside. Why does this turn me on so much?
She tells me that something’s missing and then cups each of my breasts for a moment before disappearing again. When she reappears, it’s with two small clamps. She adjusts them around my nipples…just tight enough to make me twinge. A long chain hangs between them, and when she gives it a light tug, a sweet warmth rushes between my thighs.
“What do you think?” she asks with a spark in her eyes.
I blush and bite at my lower lip, not wanting to tell her that it’s making me hot. I like her like this. With a certain naiveté that makes me confident she has no ulterior motives.
She pats the bench, silently prodding me to get on. I swing one leg over so that my body can straddle the large prop, wondering if I’ve lost my mind. This is the type of thing I once heard some girls snickering about in the library. Weird, kinky stuff that old rich men wanted to do with them. Gross, they said. A shopping trip and private jet ride wasn’t nearly enough compensation—as if we were all getting offers like that. Leave it to the prostitutes and porn stars, they added.
They’re wrong, I think as the tips of her fingers run between the leather and my skin, making sure the tension is just right. This has nothing to do with compensation, and everything to do with bravely exploring who you really are. She rubs my wrists and ankles with that same ointment she used on my stomach a few days earlier, and the heavy bonds go back on. These ones don’t have as much lag. She locks them, securing me in place, and then walks into the bathroom. I’m brimming with anticipation of what’s to come.
California to pursue her love of single-engine airplanes. The Need is
her first erotic thriller. The manuscript won the 2013 Florida Romance
Writers Golden Palm Contest for New Adult Romance, and is an adaptation
of a screenplay her husband wrote about a woman struggling to free
herself from her lover’s physical and emotional binds. With a summer
release date of August 25, 2015, buzz about the break-out novel calls it
“one powerful piece of writing…creepy as hell.” S.L. Hannah lives in
Los Angeles, CA with her husband. When she’s not writing fiction, she
continues to solve the aviation problems of the world.
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