Beau Ashford has again found himself the victim of bullying. Surprising, considering he's an established teacher now. His pretty face and weak demeanor has made him the target of every aggressive glare that turns his way, this time his own privileged students.
Darien Castello—strong, confident and son of a billionaire senator—is willing to protect his pretty teach, but for a price. Either he gets paid $500 a week for his protection services, or he's going to help make Beau regret starting his new science position in the wealthy university. If Beau can't afford it all, Darien is happy to take it out in trade. $450 worth of his teacher's body.
What starts as a bizarre protection scam quickly spirals into something else as Darien awakens dark, confusing desires in his once straight-laced teacher. Can Beau find a way to free himself from the strange obsession taking him, or will he be bullied into something that could lose him his job and life as he knows it?
18+ This serial contains explicit m/m sexual content, graphic language, violence, and themes of bondage, discipline, and some humiliation. Each episode is over 10,000 words long and should be read in order to be enjoyed fully.
It was really good surprisingly. I never though the weak but beautiful teacher thing would work out but here it is. It was so short though. Like barely 15 pages😭.
It's genuinely so sad, that the CONSTANT repetitio, of the words "the boy, the man, the blond, the brunette" makes it virtually unreadable. Because everything else is good!
But she has this pathological need to use these qualifiers, every single time someone speaks or makes an action, like just simply moving in some way. (Which both obviously happen ALL THE TIME.)
It is honestly rage-inducing, because it completely destroys an otherwise good erotic story, and makes it unpalatable.
And it deeply saddens me, because I would really love this author, and would probably read everything they've ever written, if she could just stop this horrid repetition that makes my eyes bleed, because other than that, she writes really great erotica!
So yeah, this one’s got the dubcon setup: teacher, student, power imbalance, coercion with a side of humiliation. It’s fast, filthy, and doesn’t pretend to be anything else. Plot? Barely. Character depth? Not really. But if you’re here for the chaos and kink, it delivers in a very “don’t think too hard” kind of way.
Done! And all I have to say is: It's… OK? If you're just after something smutty (actually more of porny, since it's dubcon), then this is a satisfying non-emotional read, I suppose. It shows a teacher getting harassed and sexually assaulted and humiliated in front of an audience in a public place, and his rather shamelessly expedited descent into depravity. It's like a sped-up quickie (yes, redundancy intended) that's trying to have a plot, and while the plot would have actually been great if the characters were given more proper development, clearly, the characters are not the prime focus of this book. This book doesn't care about making you like the characters, it just needs 2 people to do the nasty as quickly, as anti-climactically, and as nonsensically as possible, and hey. Sometimes, that's the kind of stress release we need, right? Just like a quickie (aka PWP), haha.
The storyteller side of me didn't enjoy this as much though, because I'm very character-orientated, and in order for me to believe a story's events, I first need to be convinced of the characters' motivations and drives, aspirations, etc. Their "human aspects" to make them real instead of puppets on strings. If that's what you want with your filthy smut (or porn), well, you won't get that here. There was a feeble attempt to humanise Darien at the beginning, but it was shallow and hurried. Like, it was placed there, just for the sake of some semblance of characterisation. Then the succeeding parts are all from Beau's POV, and it's not to explore or deepen our understanding of his character, it's just so readers can get a first-row-seat POV of the smutty (porny) action (and try to convince us that he's all aboard even if he doesn't admit it. At first). Then of course, there are the other elements that were blatantly ignored for the sake of insta-porn – those parts that really test the boundaries of a reader's suspension of disbelief (i.e. the school Beau is working at doesn't seem to have any other occupants other than whoever the author needs to be present at the scene, so despite all the trashing, the violent beating, the ra—smut (porn), not a single soul ever appears to check what the flying F is going on. It's… weird. Though I get it; being realistic is not as important as what the author needs to happen, which is… yeah, you get it by now, haha). Basically, the characters are just a necessity to fulfil the porn (which is a common theme in stories purely for the sake of eroticism). (Not decided yet if I want to read the second book. Maybe? If I find myself in the mood for a quickie, hehe.)
__
At 70% and almost done, but I couldn't help noticing: WHY SO MANY RUN-ON SENTENCES? Like, they get plentier and plentier as the story progresses. Then there're the inconsistencies, like: US spellings and UK spellings combined? Was this book not copyedited? If so, how could the copy editor have missed all that? Such egregious errors really take away a huge chunk from the credibility of the writing. Also, semicolons would really have helped in tidying up all those clauses with different subjects that were carelessly crammed into one sentence. Yikes. Again, a good copy editor would have easily caught those. If this book had been properly copyedited (as any respectable book should be) and those slipshod sentences polished up? I would have given this book at least 4 stars, maybe even 5 (though I don't know how it ends yet so, we'll see). For now, reading on…