Restraint by Teresa Noelle Roberts
Even if the cover suggests something else, Restraint is a man on man story. So this is not the trouble I found reading it, my trouble was more on the nature of the story, a very deep intake in the BDSM world to its extreme. True, the publisher warned the "innocent" reader, since this short story is part of a collection called "Raw" (and so it's also explained the cover, that is common for all the stories in the collection).
My friends know that BDSM is not my cup of tea. A light BDSM I can read, but as a newbie in the world, I have always said, no blood please and no real pain... So yes, it was difficult for me to read this story since the main focus of it is the "blood sports", Luke, one of the main characters, is into pleasure/pain games brought one with the use of knife. He has always had a fascination with vampires, but more to the aesthetic idea of it than the real meaning of being a vampire. Luke likes to see the blood on white sheets, on pale skin. He has also dreams of having sex with a man who is bleeding to death, and this side of the book left me even more perplexed... I really don't know if I liked Luke so much, I think he is a bit to nut and crazy for my like.
I think the author pushed so much the boundaries for a reason, she wanted to prove that, if these "games" are done by people with a lot of "restraints", then it's possible to enjoy them without danger. She had to describe Luke as a crazy man, to prove that, for real, he isn't. More, she paired him with an innocent looking man, to give a bit the idea of the wolf with the innocent prey, but the innocent was more than willing. It's Evan, the white lamb, who neared Luke and proposed the game. Luke has always behaved in the right way, forcing Evan to face his decision, and being sure that he was 100% willing.
I think that, for a story of less than 20 pages, the author did a good job with the characters and their reason, and there is also space for an unexpected turn, something that reinforces even more the concept that Luke, all in all, is not as dangerous as he wants to appear. But, I still feel to have to warn my friends, if you are not into BDSM things, this one could be a little too far into the world for you.
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