Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 90075 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 450(@200wpm)___ 360(@250wpm)___ 300(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90075 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 450(@200wpm)___ 360(@250wpm)___ 300(@300wpm)
Damn man and his stupid muscles.
Didn’t he know I favoured petri dishes and microscopes over a human specimen? I hadn’t studied all my life to be a microbiologist and not know about the chemical reaction my body was undergoing. It wasn’t anything more than feminine instincts wanting to mate with a nice example of male flesh.
Nothing more.
Nothing worth getting flustered about.
Focus, Ella.
You’re a scientist. You’re above these biological impulses. You—
Something sodden slapped against my windscreen.
“Ah!” I jumped at the sudden lack of visibility. Fighting the urge to swerve, I flicked on my wipers, trying to dislodge the purple paper.
But then I stiffened, pulled over to the side of the road, and slammed on my brakes.
I didn’t believe in fate. Never had. Never will. But...it seemed as if the world had given up on simple nudges and slapped me around the face with what I needed. My workaholic nature had slowly been crippling beneath the very real, very urgent need to be free. To indulge in the sexy, starving part of me that wanted to live and touch and do wickedly bad things.
There had to be more to life than working in a lab all day, every day. More to life than sleeping alone, eating alone, and ultimately doing absolutely everything...alone.
Gripping my steering wheel, I peered closer, reading the rain-bleeding text.
A scrawling cursive invitation.
An invitation that set my heart winging with a crazy, ridiculous fantasy.
The Spectacle of Secrets invites you to One Dirty Night.
One night where fantasies are indulged, and reality is ignored.
One night where you can be free, be you, be used, abused, worshipped, and adored...
Strictly R18.
Couples encouraged.
Singles implored.
Entry must include a recent medical health certificate and proof of age.
We look forward to you...
coming.
My cheeks ignited into flames at the last line. Whoever was in charge of advertising wasn’t shy. Decorating the edges of the invite were suggestive sketches of couples in all sorts of sexual poses—some bound, some begging, some in the throes of ecstasy.
Seemed the Spectacle of Secrets wasn’t afraid to give explicit information on exactly what went on in that big top.
Wow.
No wonder my skin flared with sinful thoughts when I first saw it. It wasn’t a circus for children; there’d be no lion tamers or pretty woman wrapped in silk—actually, there probably would be pretty women wrapped in silk—but it wouldn’t be the child-friendly variety. More like bondage... with velvet blindfolds, feathers, whips, and—
Ella...don’t—
Images exploded in my head.
My mouth watered at the thought of me bound, spread, and at some stranger’s mercy. Someone who looked like the shirtless guy; someone who did whatever they wanted to me and left me in a puddle of passion.
They’d mark me. Bite me. Make me scream.
Oh my God.
You’re going straight to hell.
Those sorts of fantasies usually only dared haunt me when I had the house to myself and a date with my vibrator. I made a point of keeping that part of myself buried deep down, suffocated under lock and key.
I’d never told another soul who I truly was beneath my prim skirts and pretty blouses. I’d never been tied up during sex. Never been made to crawl or beg. Never indulged in the dark parts of me that—
Well, you definitely won’t be starting now by paying for someone to do it. Jesus.
Whatever went on in that circus, I wanted nothing to do with it.
Are you so sure about that?
I strangled my steering wheel.
Very sure.
Absolutely, totally sure.
My car’s heater coughed, almost as if it laughed at me.
But it’s your birthday...
Gritting my teeth, I flicked my wipers on full speed to get rid of the incriminating flyer. So what? I was another year older. That meant I was another year wiser, not stupider.
I was going home to do what I did every night. Eat something bland, watch something boring, and go to bed. Alone.
I sighed in relief as the invitation tore into pieces under my wiper’s attack and plopped into the gutter. No way did I want my flatmate to see that. If I was a deviant pretending to be a prude, he was a straight-up, no libido puritan. I’d never met someone so aghast at seeing the smallest flash of flesh before.
The first time he’d seen me dash down our shared corridor from the bathroom in just my towel, he’d glowered at me so hard my skin broke out in hives. He’d left a note on the fridge the following morning telling me it was inappropriate to be in such stages of undress when we were colleagues and sharing a home as well as a workplace.
I hadn’t been able to make eye contact with him for a week.
Which was difficult because we worked at the same lab. Luckily, ever since that day, he’d changed his hours. Our shifts sometimes overlapped, but we never spent longer than an hour or two in each other’s company.