Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 88350 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 442(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 295(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88350 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 442(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 295(@300wpm)
Beau, an experienced bondage Master, attends an invitation-only play party at The Enclave compound. His single scene with the feisty masochist, Lia, is beyond intense. When he’s offered the chance to step in where other Doms have failed, Beau is intrigued.
But is Lia really up for another intensive experience like the one she’s so recently failed? She’s got six days to find out.
Publisher’s While the reading experience will be enhanced by reading the books in the No Safeword Series in order, this book can be read as a stand-alone.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter 1
Lia aimed her phone camera at the full-length mirror in her tiny bathroom. Instead of the black leather jacket and ripped jeans she preferred, that evening she wore a blue silk off-the-shoulder evening gown, a string of pearls around her neck. Her hair was still pink, despite her mother’s lamentations that she’d never find the right sort of boy with that hair, not to mention those “disgusting facial piercings and that dreadful tattoo.”
The dreadful tattoo in question was a very tasteful dove on Lia’s upper back, an olive branch in its mouth. If Loretta had known her daughter also had a colorful snake curling around her hip and a BDSM triskelion on her shaven mons, she would have had a heart attack. Or no, not a heart attack. A fainting spell, complete with smelling salts.
Grinning at the thought, Lia snapped a picture and sent it to Lucia in a text message.
I’m trying to pass as a debutante socialite. What do you think?
Almost immediately, Lucia texted a response.
I barely recognize you with clothes on, LOL. You look absolutely gorgeous. Where are you going?
Lia thumbed back:
The Andrew Baird-Cecelia Mansfield wedding at the Biltmore. Only THE event of the season, or so my mom tells me. She’s over the moon because I’m going with a guy who checks all the boxes on her FIND A HUSBAND FOR LIA list, including the right pedigree, career and social prospects.
Lucia replied:
The right man for you prefers black leather and carries a whip. ;)
Lia snorted and sent back a devil emoji.
Setting down her phone, she added a touch of lip gloss and ran her fingers through her spiky pink hair. The tiny diamond still twinkled above her left nostril and gold hoops rimmed the outer perimeter of each ear. She’d removed her eyebrow hoop, not because she was trying to tone down her appearance, but because she was tired of it.
Travis should be there at any moment. She stepped out from behind the partial wall that separated her bedroom from the rest of the studio apartment.
She hadn’t bothered to correct her mother’s assumption that Travis had invited her to this gala affair as his date. If nothing else, it would get Loretta off her back, at least for a while. If Lia had to hear one more time about how she wasn’t getting any younger and all the good men would be snapped up before she turned twenty-five, she thought she would scream.
In fact, Travis and she had never been more than friends, and that only because she’d tutored him in English. Unexpectedly, they’d gotten along well despite moving in totally different social circles at high school. He was a jock who interviewed the cheerleaders when choosing his latest girlfriend. She hung out with the goth and emo kids, when she hung out with anyone at all.
They hadn’t kept in touch at all while she’d been away at college. They’d only reconnected by accident, running into each other at a deli when she’d first returned to Asheville several months back. When he’d asked her if she’d mind tagging along to this wedding thing, she’d been surprised.
“You’d be doing me a favor,” he’d said. Though he hadn’t put it quite so bluntly, he basically wanted a female friend in the guise of a date. That way he’d be free to potentially hook up with women who attracted him but have the safety valve of a plus-one in case one of those women got a little too clingy.
“Some things never change,” Lia had teased. She had agreed primarily out of curiosity. It would be interesting, from an anthropological point of view, to watch the monied Asheville elite strutting and preening in their natural habitat.
Now Lia looked out her window into the parking lot. Just as she saw Travis’s Porsche pulling in, another text came through her phone from Lucia.
I have something I want to discuss with you—something exciting. I have to go into a dungeon session in a minute. I’ll text when I’m free.
To Lucia, she replied:
You’re a tease! Quick, tell me the abbreviated version.
Lucia’s reply came as Travis was making his way to Lia’s door.
Patience, grasshopper.
Patience had never been one of Lia’s virtues, as the Masters in the training program at The Enclave had been quick to point out. With a small growl of frustration, Lia slipped her phone into her beaded evening bag and opened the front door.
Travis was dressed in a tuxedo and velvet slippers stamped with some kind of crest, everything about him screaming entitlement. He looked much the same as he had in high school—boyishly handsome with round blue eyes, sun-streaked blond hair and a ready smile.
He looked her over and flashed a grin. “You clean up pretty good, Duvall.”
She laughed. “You, too, Randolph.”
The wedding was as over the top as Lia had expected. The ceremony was traditional, though mercifully brief. The bride wore a gown that was purported by social media to cost more than the GNP of a small country.