Tag Archive | BDSM

Cruel to be Kind (Love’s Landscapes) by Kim Dare (5 Stars)

The story had a dark and dangerous vibe to it. Malone is a vampire, and these vampires don’t treat humans very well. However, Malone’s human friend and business partner, Xander, wants Malone as more than just a friend. You could tell from the dialogue that Malone had been taking care of Xander for years. These two were perfect for each other. The ending was pure brilliance!

Link to free download.

This story was written as a part of the M/M Romance Group’s “Love’s Landscapes” event at Goodreads. Group members were asked to write a story prompt inspired by a photo of their choice. Authors of the group selected a photo and prompt that spoke to them and wrote a short story.
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Over the Line (Mastered #3) by Sierra Cartwright (4 Stars)

Can you really protect your heart when you’re already willing to completely trust somebody with your body?

Dom Michael Dayton has already been married and divorced once. He’s going to be much more cautious with his heart next time. He knows what he wants in a future relationship and in the bedroom. Sydney Wallace knows she’s submissive when it comes to sex, but she’s extremely adventurous in everything else life has to offer. She refuses to be controlled by another man like her former master.

Michael is an excellent character with strong communication skills, a powerful body, and an incredibly insightful mind. He always pays attention to every detail about his sub making it his sexiest trait. Sydney was a strong woman physically, and she loved a good outdoor adventure. Unfortunately, after letting her last master completely control her life, she’s very hesitant to get involved in a new relationship and prefers just to play with other dominants. The focus of the story was on breaking down barriers for two people who both had prior bad relationships, and who were very determined to be much more careful the next time around. They both knew what they wanted out of their lives, and neither of them was willing to compromise.

Fortunately, what they both wanted and needed was each other. They discovered this by talking through their issues and desires, with these conversations being instigated by Michael. We definitely got to know the characters well enough through their thoughts and interactions with others, but the majority of their time together was actually spent doing scenes. I would have liked to have seen them spend more time together talking about something other than the scene. There were some brief conversations, but not enough to really buy the concept of them falling in love with each other. However, Michael’s comments and approach to life convinced me that they would get their happy ending, which we’ll hopefully see in a future book in the series.

The sex was pretty heavily laced with moderate pain including heavy flogging, pinching, slapping, and spanking along with bondage and ball-gags. Overall, I enjoyed this extremely erotic story with an incredibly sexy alpha male who knows how to communicate. If you enjoy stories that get you hot and bothered with heavy elements of S&M, this will definitely do the trick.

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Originally reviewed for The Romance Reviews. Complimentary copy provided by author/publisher for an honest review.
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Curious Sustenance by Charley Descoteaux (2 Stars)

He lost weight and then lost his boyfriend. Fortunately, there was a better man around the corner.

Ross Jenson spent the last eight months successfully losing weight. Unfortunately, the day he reached his goal, his boyfriend wanted to celebrate with cake. His best friend and roommate, Janet, takes him to a sex club where he meets Miles Shigihara, an apparent expert in Shibari. The two of them begin a sweet romance while dealing with other life events.

The first half of the story focused on Ross and his relationship with his friend Janet. Ross was a nice guy, and he spent his days trying to bring trans-inclusive health plans to the workplace. Miles owned his own landscaping business creating Zen gardens. Once the two of them meet in the second half, the story focused a little bit more on the romance side and gave us both points of view. The Shibari scenes were very interesting.

Unfortunately, the story was very frustrating to read for the most part. There were too many times that a plot point was started and never finished or clarified. Miles is at risk of losing his house and business, but at first it isn’t clear why it’s happening, which made the entire scene confusing.

In addition to Janet, we also met Ross’ brother Rune. It appeared that Rune and Janet were having a relationship. However, at one point they were upset, but we weren’t told why or what happened. Janet and Rune disappeared after a bit of the story so we never found out the final outcome of that relationship. Leaving these as open items, along with several others, made me feel like I kept missing things which took me out of the story.

If you enjoy Shibari, there are some sexy scenes included in this story.

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Originally reviewed for The Romance Reviews. Complimentary copy provided by author/publisher for an honest review.
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If It Drives (A Market Garden Tale #7) by Aleksandr Voinov & L.A. Witt (5 Stars)

I loved every minute of this story! Being in Cal’s head was amazing and made me really feel like I knew him. He truly wanted to understand how to be a good Dom to James, and it came through with his request to be trained by Nick. I adored seeing Nick and Spencer from If It Flies and If It Fornicates. Nick was pure perfection with his psychoanalysis of the situation and his joy of helping out Cal.

There were several extremely hot scenes with the necessary emotional connection to really make it work. I was glad I wasn’t in James’ head, since he was not in a good spot in his life, and it could have really brought the story down.  We got a glimpse into James’ life, but there was still quite a bit left to explore.

Although the story is complete, I hope to see a sequel. These two are just starting their relationship, and there are so many different things they have yet to explore. I would love to see a story from James’ perspective now that he has somebody to truly take care of him.

I highly recommend this extremely hot step into the Market Garden universe with the engaging Cal.

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Originally reviewed for Swept Away By Romance. Complimentary copy provided by Riptide via NetGalley for an honest review.
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