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This Friday Freebies and Discounts round-up is a holy trinity of dark erotica, incredibly sexy lingerie, and high voltage. Definitely a few things to get you through the weekend if you’re not one of the lucky people attending the fabulous Eroticon 2014 in Bristol. (Yes, I’m jealous!)

 

Make Me: Twelve Tales of Dark Desire

Dark Erotica

Image: courtesy of Cari Silverwood and Skye Warren.

It’s no secret that I am a huge (huge) fan of dark erotica, so I cannot shout loudly enough about Make Me, a brilliant collection of popular stories that’s been put together by some of the genre’s stand-out authors. C.J. Roberts, Annabel Joseph, Skye Warren, Cari Silverwood, Claire Thompson … the contributor list for this thing reads like a who’s who of the smut writing world.

You get twelve full-length novels for what you’d roughly pay for a single eBook (£1.85 if you’re in the U.K. or $3.58 if you’re in the U.S.) and the collection is comprised of titles that have already proven to be extremely popular with readers in their own right. Don’t believe me? Check out the ratings for the individual books on Amazon and Goodreads. Basically, you’re getting the good stuff. Non-con, dark smutty heaven.

The catch? This is a March-only deal so you need to download the Make Me collection (purchase links below) before the 31st. Go forth and find your mind’s dark alleyway! Continue reading

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Regular Chintz readers will know that, every now and then, Michael and I review books in tandem. Make Me Yours Evermore, the latest book in Cari Silverwood’s Pierced Hearts series, was one we always planned on tackling together but as our schedules have been a little out of sync recently, we’ve had to do our write-ups separately. If you recall, I was a big fan of this one (although I did want to invest in some brain bleach by the close) but I wasn’t sure what Michael would be thinking by the end of it, given that he had a hard time with Klaus in Bind and Keep MeI mean, let’s be honest, Chris really does make the former seem like a candidate for humanitarian of the year …

*Please note that the below review does contain spoilers pertaining to books one and two in the Pierced Hearts series. You can find our previous reviews for Take Me, Break Me and Bind and Keep Me here and here.

 

MICHAEL’S TAKE

Make Me Yours EvermoreTitle: Make Me Yours Evermore
Author: Cari Silverwood
Publisher: Cari Silverwood
ISBN: 9781311900234

Okay, in Take Me, Break Me, we meet Jodie and Klaus when she comes up with a money-making scheme: Have Klaus hold her captive for a month, film the whole thing, and release it to fame and fortune. In the end, things go a bit awry but they achieve a kind of working balance in their relationship.

Skip ahead a year and we get to Bind and Keep Me. When Jodie attends a wild party and dies, Klaus kills the man responsible. Only Jodie isn’t dead. And rather than either hope the police don’t figure out what happened or even try to explain what happened, Klaus comes up with a unique solution: kidnap the one witness who can expose his secret. And hold her captive for the rest of their lives. Perhaps not the greatest plan ever, but it has worked so far. Mostly.

Which brings us up to Make Me Yours Evermore. One of the mostly wrinkles is that Kat has figured out something weird is going on. We actually met Kat at the end of the TMBM. As a character, she was kind of annoying. The other characters thought so too. She still doesn’t know precisely what is going on, but she is going to find out. Only Chris, Klaus’ business partner, is determined to stop her. Because it turns out that Chris has always had a secret fantasy: To kidnap someone and hold her captive for the rest of their lives. And so to help out Klaus, Chris volunteers to do that to Kat. Continue reading

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Title: Make Me Yours Evermore
Author: Cari Silverwood
Publisher: Cari Silverwood
ISBN: 9781311900234

At one point, Chris, a character in Make Me Yours Evermore, mentions brain bleach. By the end of the book, I was surreptitiously checking supermarket shelves for a bottle of the stuff.

Redemption? Remorse? Morality?

Phtt.

Love?

Wash your mouth out.

This book is about lust, desire, control and corruption. But, above all else, it’s about power. Held absolutely and resolutely over another human being. Consensual? No. But compelling and intoxicating, nonetheless.

Brain Bleach

I can’t recall a single time I’ve ‘enjoyed’ (not to be confused with ‘been impressed by’) a book featuring a core protagonist I was unable to like, empathise with, or warm to. But in this particular case, I did. Continue reading

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Bind and Keep Me - Cari SilverwoodTitle: Bind and Keep Me (Pierced Hearts, Book 2)
Author: Cari Silverwood
Publisher: Cari Silverwood (29 August 2013)
ISBN: 9781301773190
Reviewer(s): Michael & Jane

Two words: still recovering. Bind and Keep Me is non-con BDSM erotica at its absolute best. If you like your tales dark, you’re not going to want to miss this one.

*You can click on any of the stick figure drawings below to make them bigger. Which many of you will likely need to do if your eyesight is as bad as mine and you can’t read the writing!

 

JANE’S TAKE

This book should come with a health warning:

Caution! Jaw may drop to floor and disconnect from face. The author assumes no responsibility for readers who spontaneously combust with arousal and/or spend days wondering whether their moral compass needs resetting as a result of reading (and enjoying) this book.

 

Jane's Jaw

Leave your sanity at the door because there is absolutely no way that Bind and Keep Me can be put into either the Safe, Sane and Consensual (SSC) or Risk Aware Consensual Kink (RACK) buckets. There is unsafe play in spades. There is insane play by the truckload. There is non-consent to the power of a hundred overlaid with the veneer of incredibly dubious consent. There is risk with a capital ‘R’. And there is kink. Oh, man is there kink. Continue reading

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Escape from ParadiseDanger! Disaster! Call the BBC! Escape from Paradise has resulted in – Shock! Horror! – diverging opinions. Yes, friends, Michael and I had hugely different reactions to this one and, believe me, that doesn’t happen very often. We’re talking wild extremes: for him, this was a 4/5 star read; for me, it was a DNF (Did Not Finish). Where, pray tell, did we part company?

MICHAEL’S TAKE

I guess it was sort of inevitable if we did this long enough.

A lot of people are comparing this to Captive in the Dark. I can see why. And I can certainly make the case for comparing them. A young woman is kidnapped. Mexico. International human trafficking. An anti-hero with a troubled past. But there comes a point when this has to sink or swim on its own merits. That is where Jane and I disagree. Continue reading

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Take Me, Break MeTitle: Take Me, Break Me
Author: Cari Silverwood
Publisher: Wolf Charm Press (04 March 2013)
ISBN: 9781301060573
Reviewer(s): Michael and Jane

Yep. As requested, Michael and I are back once again as a book-reviewing double act. Are we less ranty than last time? I think so. But I still ended up drawing stick figures. Couldn’t seem to stop myself. He, meanwhile, took the high road and included intelligent and insightful quotes. (I think its clear which of us is Batman and which of us is Robin in this instance …)

 

JANE’S TAKE …

Before I say anything else, I just want to make it clear that I liked this book. The story was interesting, the characters likeable, and the sex hot. (Very, very hot in fact.) But it disturbed me. And I felt bad for enjoying it at times. Continue reading

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Board Resolution - Joey W. HillTitle: Board Resolution (Knights of the Boardroom
Author: Joey W. Hill
Publisher: Ellora’s Cave (20 January 2010)
ISBN: 9781419925771
Reviewer: Michael

What do you call a tale where a woman shows up for a business meeting only to be assaulted, manhandled, stripped naked, rendered immobile by being bound to a specially designed piece of furniture, blindfolded, gagged and forced to submit to her captor and, possibly, his stalwart management team?

Aw, you guessed it – it’s a love story.

Geoffrey Tennyson wasn’t one of those men who felt sorry for himself because he had a daughter and not a son. He just played the hand life dealt – and spent every moment from the day she was born until the day he died instilling in her his own version of the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition. There simply wouldn’t be a situation that would come up in any business negotiation that Savannah wouldn’t be prepared for.

But then Matthew Kensington enters the equation. Continue reading

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Title: Willing Victim
Author: Cara McKenna
Publisher: Ellora’s Cave (06 August 2010)
ISBN: 9781419928482

If you have a penchant for non-con (non-consent) role-play, a man with a dirty mouth, and rough-and-ready sex, you’re going to love this one. Willing Victim is all about indulging those slightly darker and more aggressive fantasies that many of us have but are often afraid to admit to.

First thing’s first. If you’re at all sensitive to reading about rape – in either a real or imagined capacity – then this is definitely not the book for you. (Note my over-zealous use of bold and italics here.) Per Willing Victim’s Reader Advisory warning:

 

‘Although all sex acts are 100-percent consensual, Willing Victim contains role-playing scenarios that may upset some readers who are sensitive about rape, even in a simulated capacity.’

 

Still here? Good. Then on with the review …

Laurel’s not really sure what she’s doing with her life. Despite being a qualified engineer, she’s simply drifting from one day to the next, making ends meet by waitressing. Then one day, quite by chance, she meets Flynn, a native Bostonian who works construction. There’s just something about this hulk of a man that draws Laurel and she finds herself doing something completely out of character: asking him out. Initially, he refuses her offer, but Laurel refuses to take ‘no’ for an answer and, eventually, Flynn capitulates – after a fashion: Continue reading

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Image: Ivje, Godvisna (own work)

So, the days are getting colder and the chill is starting to set in. Need to warm up quickly? I have just the thing …

Frostbite is an erotic short story I penned a few weeks ago following a fabulous (sedate!) walk in the English countryside: A woman, walking by herself on a desolate, frosty footpath, is taken by surprise when a man steps from the trees in front of her. They’re alone, it’s bitterly cold, and night is falling. It sounds like the beginning of a nightmare – but is it?

I really enjoyed writing Frostbite and it seems now’s the time to post it, given that winter’s bearing down on us with a vengeance.

If I get the time – and provided they’re popular enough – I’ll try and write more of these ‘five minute’ shorts going forwards.

IMPORTANT: Please note that this story is a work of fiction and contains explicit sexual content and elements of dubious consent. If such material offends you or you are under the age of 18, please don’t read any further. Continue reading