Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 61332 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 307(@200wpm)___ 245(@250wpm)___ 204(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61332 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 307(@200wpm)___ 245(@250wpm)___ 204(@300wpm)
My best friend and fellow romance novelist, Vi Lowe, told me I should join some dating websites to look around and get some inspiration for my next book–about a woman who joins a "sugar daddy" site to find someone to fund her plant addiction.
But then I spotted him, my gym crush, aka Gym Daddy, on a dating app for kinksters, and suddenly I'm struggling to identify what's for book research and what's for experiencing for myself.
Maybe I don't need to compartmentalize.
After all, they tell you to stick to writing what you know, right?
And what better way to learn about something until you truly know about that subject than to fully submerse yourself in it?
Plus, I know I said I was a born-again virgin after my divorce and was saving myself for Dream Daddy—aka Sir Jeremy—at Club Alias, but the likelihood of that happening...? Zilch. Nada. None.
Oh, and that guy who rescued me when my last dumpster dive for plant babies went a wee bit awry, who happened to set off all sorts of butterflies in my lady garden? I don't even have the lady-balls to go back to the store and find out Dumpster Daddy's real name, so no chance with him either.
No! I don't have a daddy kink. I just have a thing for older men. Especially those with salt-and-pepper beards, and tattoos, and big, muscly arms and—
Anyway. Let's hope Gym Daddy will find my weird awkwardness "endearing," and I can then seduce him into becoming not only my book muse, but maybe even my real-life Plant Daddy.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
CHAPTER
ONE
SIENNA
The fact that I’m balls-deep in a full, smelly dumpster late on a Friday night, alone, does nothing to stop me from gasping aloud at what I discover at the bottom of it. Not that I don’t immediately regret the deep inhale of God only knows what I’m standing in—but exasperation wins out as top emotion in this particular moment.
“You have got to be freaking kidding me!” I whisper-yell, propping one foot against a broken display for flashlights and the other atop a pile of cracked cedar fence posts.
I wrap one gloved hand around a splintery slat that’s in the middle of a stack of five pallets, then carefully lean down and forward, reaching out with my other green gardening glove covered fingers to pinch just the very edge of the black plastic container I spotted.
“Ow! Fuck… shit!” I hiss as needles stab into my knuckles, but I dare not let go. This is one of the greatest finds I’ve made to date. Lord knows what I’ll be infected with, allowing something at the bottom of a dumpster to pierce my skin, but it’s freaking worth it.
At least that’s what I’ll continue to tell myself until I eventually end up in my bathroom, soaking in a tub of Lysol and peroxide.
My treasure is heavy as hell, and it’s a circus-worthy balancing act to keep from toppling in any one direction as I lift the bounty high enough so I can then stand up straight and let go of the pallet. Wrapping my free arm around the container, careful to avoid any more puncture wounds, I grin when I look closely to find the prize within it completely flawless. It makes me both do a happy dance and pisses me off that something so precious and valuable to me and many others, was just tossed like it was completely worthless.
And as usual, it breaks my heart that I feel more connected to and identify with something deemed “trash” at the bottom of a dumpster than I do with 99.999% of the human population.
“Mama’s got you now, big boy,” I murmur, shaking off the pain in the center of my chest and gently pulling a shredded napkin out of the dangerous spikes. As a wad flutters to the cavernous opening below my spread, locked legs, my eye naturally follows its descent, and I have to catch my balance when my shock sends my head jerking backward enough to make the rest of me bobble in my precarious position. “And you have a twin brother?” I let out the whimper of a proud mother who just witnessed her child do something she believes is extraordinary but is probably just some milestone every kid reaches at some point in their life. “Well, can’t leave him here all by his lonesome, now can we?”
I lift the heavy container high above my head, suddenly wishing I stuck to all the workout classes my friend Astrid made me take with her at our gym, as I prop the black plastic on the top edge of the dumpster and slide it slowly across the metal lip until it’s safely perched. Looking down, I allow my eyes to adjust to the dimness after having looked up toward the streetlight a second ago, and then I spot the second buried chest of gold—doubling down on my best night of dumpster diving yet.
In the past several months, I’ve lost countless hours on the TikTok app, falling down all sorts of rabbit holes during this… early midlife crisis I find myself in at the ripe old age of thirty-four. As an author of filthy BDSM romance novels, this crisis of mine includes, but is definitely not limited to, a going-on-nine-months bout of writer’s block.
So in the last year and a half, not only did I suddenly find myself single after being mostly happily married for eleven years, which meant I was no longer living in a dual, huge income household, but I also haven’t written a single word since my last book release nine months ago.
But hey, the divorce was amicable, so at least there’s that. We don’t have kids, and we basically just divided everything right down the middle and went our separate ways.
My lifestyle itself completely altered, and I’ve been watching my savings account shrink at an alarming rate. Yet the most shocking part of this period in my life, though, is that as my wealth dwindled, so did my list of “friends.” Women who I thought of as my ride-or-die besties, who would be at my fucking funeral after we were old and gray, suddenly wanted nothing to do with me. They befriended each other after I introduced them a long time ago, and at the time, it was amazing, finally having this group of girlfriends to do damn near everything with. I was an auntie to their children, attended every birthday party and weekend get-together, right down to being the emergency contact on school forms and doctor visits.