I thought this was a better overall book than the first one in the series. The first was closer to a traditional romantic suspense book with a little extra kink thrown in, except MB totally dropped the “suspense” plot down a flight of stairs and it ruined the overall book. This one is just a straight up erotica. There’s very little going on in the story besides the sex fantasy master/slave relationship between the main characters, and while that did get to be a little repetitive, at least I wasn’t left frustrated by massive plot holes like in book 1.
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Serena runs her own business giving people their non-sexual fantasies. Want to be chef of a 5 star restaurant for a day? She can make that happen. Pretend to be a Las Vegas “whale” and be treated like a high roller? Serena is the one to call. She loves her job and the challenge of helping people get what they want most….for a short time. And that’s left Serena thinking about wanting to have her own fantasy fulfilled. Except hers IS of a sexual nature. Lucky for her, though, she’s BFFs with Faith from the first book. And faith is BFFs with Damon, the owner of the BDSM club Faith visited in the last book. So Faith gives Serena Damon’s number and they meet.
Serena tries to play it coy at first by saying that she’s got a client who is interested in entering into a master/slave scenario. Damon says he can arrange that kind of “play acting” and asks her to email him a list of what the client envisions for this game. When Damon gets the email it’s a 3 page description of a woman being auctioned off to the highest bidder. Damon is very affected by the picture that’s being drawn and when he gets to the end and realizes that there is no client, he vows that he’ll personally see to Serena’s fantasies. No other man will touch her.
There’s a scene with Damon and Micah discussing the arrangement and Micah, who also knows Serena, warns Damon not to get his hopes up. That Serena is just too strong and dominant of a woman to be happy as a submissive on a permanent basis. And he knows that that’s what Damon really wants. To find the right woman to be his submissive for life. Damon shrugs off this warning, saying that he’s given up hope of ever finding that perfect woman and he might as well enjoy things with Serena for as long as she’s willing to participate.
The middle 90% of the book is just one sex scene after another. There really isn’t anything else happening in the story. Damon arranges for the auction scene to happen, just as Serena had described in her email, and she loves it. They do various other things in public and private. He has her walk around naked at all times and feeds her by hand, etc. The usual things that you see in MB erotica books. Strangely, though, there are times when Serena tries to take care of Damon, rather than him always taking care of her, and he seems to enjoy that. It seemed weird when Damon was so adamant about being the absolute dominant in his eventual relationship. He also took Serena home to see his mother, after only about 3 days of them “seeing each other” if you can call it that.
This fantasy relationship was supposed to last for a full month. The first week Serena took off work so she could be with Damon 24/7 but after that she had to go back to the office during the day and was supposed to go back to Damon’s house at night. Except the first day she’s back in her “real life” she starts having second thoughts about continuing with the fantasy. Once she’s away from Damon, it feels a little crazy that she wants to be owned by another person. She considers calling the whole thing off and doesn’t go back to his house after work. Instead she sits thinking with her phone off. Damon is frantic that something might have happened to her.
Earlier in the book when Faith and Serena were discussing the whole Dom/Sub thing, Faith had said that her boyfriend, Gray, had once told her that being a submissive is a sign of strength in a woman. That it takes a truly strong woman to give control of herself to someone else. While Serena is having this crisis of confidence, she calls Faith and asks if she really believes that being a submissive is a sign of strength. Faith says that she does. Serena finally drives to Damon’s place after that. He’s livid when she arrives because he’d been worried sick about her and demands to know why she didn’t call to let him know she was all right. Serena retorts that she doesn’t owe him any explanations. That he was only the boss of her in the bedroom. He’s still angry and promises to “punish” her later. Then he tells her to go upstairs and put on the clothes he’s laid out because they have guests.
Serena goes upstairs and sees an exquisite gown on the bed but then, bizarrely, decides to go down to greet their guests stark naked instead. I didn’t really believe this. Serena had just spent hours angsting over whether she even wanted to continue with this fantasy when she didn’t believe it was the “real her” and she worried that liking it made her weak. She’d also shown signs earlier in the book of being uncomfortable with people watching her unless she was completely swept up in the throes of passion. So I didn’t believe she’d really do this just to try to stick it to Damon. And what is she even trying to “stick it” to Damon for, exactly? Being worried about her when she was hours late coming home and wouldn’t answer his calls? Yeah, what an @sshole, right?
This just backfires on Serena, of course, because then she has to stand in a room full of fully-clothed people and just be naked all night. She’s embarrassed and Damon says that she’s only shaming herself by acting this way. It hadn’t been HIS intention to put her on display like this. He’d picked out a beautiful dress for her to wear and stand beside him. Now she’s made it clear that she’s a disobedient slave, which requires punishment. Serena accepts this and is whipped in front of everyone, while receiving no pleasure of her own, and then she has to spend the night kneeling on the floor next to Damon’s chair instead of sitting at the table with everyone else. She knows she can put an end to it all at any time, but doesn’t. She also knows that she’s got a second punishment coming, this one for worrying Damon, and she’s curious what it’ll be. At the end of the night, Damon just puts her in bed and leaves again. Not sleeping next to her for the first time. Which Serena tells us is the worst punishment of all.
The next day Serena goes to work and is still unsure what she wants. She thinks she’s fallen in love with Damon but is afraid of losing her sense of self. It worries her that when she’s with him, all she wants to do is please him. Then she gets some bad news. One of the clients she’d helped with her job was a little girl with a terminal illness. She’d wanted to be the princess of her own cruise ship and Serena had made it happen, even covering a large portion of the cost herself because the parents couldn’t afford it and she couldn’t bear to let the little girl down. But now she’s just learned that the little girl has passed away. Her parents wanted Serena to know that making their daughter’s dream come true was the happiest moment of her short life and they’re grateful she was able to have that before the end.
Serena pretends to be unaffected by the news when her assistant tells her, but inside she’s crumbling. On some level, Serena had believed that by giving the girl her dream, that it would work some kind of magic and she’d keep living. But now that she sees the girl died anyway, all she can think is that what she’s doing is actually cruel. That by making people’s dreams come true for a short time, all she’s really doing is giving them a glimpse of what they can never have. Just like she’s doing by pursuing this fantasy with Damon. She knows that he wants to find that forever woman and she believes she can’t be that person, so she’s just twisting the knife the longer she’s with him. So she drives to Damon’s house and tells him that they’re through. She doesn’t explain about the little girl, just that she’s done playing the role. Damon tries to get her to stay. He even confesses that he loves her, but she still leaves.
A week later Serena has barely eaten or slept. She’s a wreck and she didn’t go to the little girl’s funeral, which prompted her assistant to call her “heartless.” But she goes to the gravesite on her own and cries, apologizing that she couldn’t work a miracle for the girl. The girl’s mother finds her there and tells her that she’s wrong. She did give the girl a miracle. Her short life had been one filled with pain. Endless doctor’s visits and hospital rooms. Pills and needles. She’d had very little to smile about. But what Serena had done had given the girl her smile back. It was the happiest she’d ever been in her life and her parents would treasure that memory forever.
Then Faith and their other friend, Julie, kidnap Serena and take her to Damon’s beach house. Serena doesn’t realize it belongs to Damon at the time, though. The women bully Serena into eating, sleeping and taking a shower, then leave so Damon can come in. He and Serena talk and she explains what she’s feeling and that she loves him and doesn’t want to hurt him by not being everything he wants. That she’s been playing a role for him all this time, and it’s not the real her. Damon says that he thinks it is the real her, but she’s just afraid to admit it. And that they don’t have to put any labels on their relationship. They don’t have to be “master and slave” they can just be “Damon and Serena.” She ultimately agrees and HEA.
Overall it was decently done. I thought we could have stood to have a little more background on the little girl, if she was going to be the impetus for the Black Moment at the end. She was mentioned in a throw-away conversation at the beginning when Damon and Serena first met, but we never actually MET the girl. We never saw Serena interacting with her and developing these apparently really strong feelings she had for the girl. So it ended up feeling a little unfounded. As was the whole “this isn’t really me” stuff that Serena kept coming back to. She never actually told us WHY she didn’t believe it was her or why she had this fantasy to begin with if it wasn’t “her.” It came across like Serena just didn’t know what she wanted, rather than that she had legitimate concerns stemming from deep-seated personal beliefs.
And I was surprised by how forgiving and accommodating Damon was at the end. The whole book people had been worried that Damon would get hurt because they knew Serena didn’t want anything permanent. And then he declares his love and she throws it back in his face. I’d expect him to be hurt by that, but he seemed fine with it. And he was still the one who pursued her at the end and convinced her to give them a shot.
(hide spoiler)]Overall it was a decent erotica that mostly hangs together. There isn’t much plot outside the sex, though, so adjust your expectations accordingly.
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