Title: Fearless
Series: Black Light, Book 10
Release Date: Friday, November 16, 2018
Cover Reveal: Thursday, November 8, 2018
Cover Design by Eris Adderly
Go Live Price: $2.99 - Will move to $4.99 a week after release
Genre: Contemporary BDSM
Purchase Link: Preorder link not yet available
Blurb:
He was the last thing she thought she needed, but she was everything he wanted.
Abused and alone, Kitty had no idea how far she’d have to flee after she finally got the courage to run. She never would have guessed she’d end up halfway around the world, or in the home — much less the arms — of dominant Australian whip-master, Noah Carver.
He knows she’s damaged, that she needs safety and time to heal, but the way her submission calls to him has Noah thinking more about what could be between them than her history.
The only question now is what she fears more: standing up to her abusive ex-dom, or staying with a man she’s afraid to love?
Teasers:
I’m supposed to protect her, hide her, keep her safe. I was never supposed to see her crawling naked, on hands and knees, before me. I’m not supposed to want her, but I can taste her already and my mouth keeps watering…
Excerpt 1:
Hugging her towel, Kitty crept through the second kitchen archway, edging between the massive dining table and built-in china hutch, to peek out through the half-open drapes into the yard. She saw the radio first, sitting on the white-painted front porch rail, blaring its ‘80s music out into the yard where Noah was standing—no, not standing, dancing—step dancing, in form-fitting jeans, crocodile boots and worn tan hat, and a white t-shirt that fit him in a way that was at once loose and yet a second skin. She could see the ripple of muscle playing across his shoulders and back, bunching and flexing in his biceps as his arms moved to the beat, rising and falling, snapping out the rhythm with each of the whips he held, one in each hand. That was the source of the popping. Not one crack at a time, but two and three snaps to each fluid movement as he turned and stepped, and tapped his way through to the end of that Dire Straits song.
When it was over, the music paused long enough for him to reset himself. Head slightly bowed, he rolled his muscular shoulders, shook the whips out like long snakes in the dust around his feet, and then AC/DC started up. Thunderstruck. His foot started tapping. He found the beat, and then he began all over again. Fluid, graceful, line-dancing motions that he so effortlessly filled with a whole new accompaniment of tempo-keeping cracks from his whips.
She caught her breath, suddenly aware that her stomach was tightening and quivering right along with his punctuating music.
Abruptly retreating from the window, Kitty stood for a moment at the table, hands clutching and tightening and adjusting at her towel, feeling at once hot and flustered and confused and scared, and then stupid because she didn’t know why. Two tiny steps forward could have carried her back to the window for a second peek, but she made herself turn away.
The heavenly aroma of coffee drifted from the kitchen.
She hugged herself, knowing she ought to get dressed, but also knowing there was no way she was going back into her bedroom. Not now, possibly not ever.
She wandered as far as the living room, stopping again between the dark yawning maw of the hallway leading back to spider-infested doom — and the front door, with its multi-paneled glass windows that provided another peak at Noah out in the yard.
A sparkle of gold drew her eye into the living room. There wasn’t a lot of furniture to stumble around or useless decorations, but there were a lot of display boxes hanging on the walls. In each one, attached to a green-felt backcloth, was a coiled brown-plaited whip with a golden plaque the size of a business card. Noah’s name was engraved on each one, with the division of whip cracking that he’d won—most of which read simply ‘Mens’ Champion’—and the year. There were fifteen of them total, and they spanned nine years’ worth of achievements.
Scattered among them and along the fireplace mantel were pictures. Some of Noah at various ages; some of other people. Everybody had whips, and one was a newspaper clipping taken from the local paper in which the headline included both Noah’s name and the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where apparently he and others from the Australian Whipcrackers & Plaiters Association had put on the Opening Ceremony and, as the paper put it, opened the eyes of the world to the competitive sport of Australian whip cracking.
She was looking over his framed collection of Guinness World Record titles when the front door suddenly opened and Noah walked in. How she had missed hearing the music shut off, she didn’t know. It wasn’t as if he were trying to sneak up on her. The heavy tromp of his boots when he crossed the threshold, took one look at her in nothing but a towel, and abruptly stopped, was damn near deafening.
To his credit, he didn’t ogle her. He kept his eyes locked with hers and any hint of discernible expression locked tight behind a mask she could not read. It was probably disapproval. It had to be disapproval, though there wasn’t so much as a single censuring note in the way he finally said, “Rule Number Five, love. Admittedly, I did only specify shoes, but in my defense, I assumed you would know to put your clobbers on and not to go nuddy about.”
Both whips were in his hand, coiled and tied. But every experience she had in regards to whips had taught her how easy it was to make them ready for use again. It would have been so easy, especially with that thought running wild in her head, to be afraid of him. And yet, with his face void of expression, and his tone careful not to be too scolding, he made no move to come at her.
He smelled like sunshine, too, her brain supplied.
Like that should make a difference, she wanted the rest of her to argue, but in some weird way… it did make a difference. It was all she could smell, the sunshine, the dust and leather of his boots, the faint spice of his deodorant or soap, and the warm coffee spreading through the house. It made such a difference that, standing there, staring at him with those whips in his hand, her nipples budded into tight little peaks and a single thump of warm neglect pulsed between her tensing legs. She clutched her towel, tightening her thighs in an effort to kill the sensation, but like ripples on a still pond, that thump spread up through her belly, becoming a series of smaller pulses that she could feel steadily throbbing out through her sex and into her womb.
Excerpt 2:
“The kitchen?” she echoed, a startled pang bursting in the pit of her stomach.
“For a start.” He took the last bite of his breakfast before pushing his plate aside in favor of nursing his coffee mug. He watched her, that incredibly relaxed and super personable smile on his face. The one that said he was nothing but trustworthy and would never hurt anyone, including her. She trembled, knowing better than to believe it.
And yet, where was the threat? She rubbed her hands against her hips. There was a trap waiting for her somewhere, but she couldn’t see it. What she could see was how unbearable it would be if she didn’t have something to do with her time. Like at Hadlee and Garreth’s house, where they’d all but jumped to assure her she didn’t have to help them every time she tried. As if she were too fragile to cook a meal or wash a load of clothes, or sweep a damn floor. After that first week, she couldn’t even lose herself in her job; Ethen had stolen that from her too. He’d left her with nothing to do but stand in front of a window all day, staring out… sometimes at him.
She shuddered.
“I can do that,” she finally agreed.
“Good.” His smile widened, even as he hid it behind another sip of his coffee. “Finish your breakfast, please, and we’ll move on to the next issue.”
She still had half an egg left and a lot of shredded toast on her plate. Shifting in her seat, she picked up her fork and tried to sop up loose breadcrumbs with her egg. “What other issue?”
“Rule Number Eight,” he said, taking another swig of coffee before lowering his cup to the table. His fingers remained hooked in the handle. He looked so relaxed, so calm, and yet the bomb he dropped was brutal enough to shake her. “In this house, submissives are allowed neither to discipline themselves, nor to pleasure themselves.”
He’d seen. Somehow last night, without her hearing him or knowing it, he’d seen her doing… oh God! Kitty shoved back from the table, vaulting up from her chair before she knew she was going to move.
“Sit down,” Noah ordered, the quiet thunder of his suddenly steely voice as sharp as the crack of his whip had been earlier. That sharpness snapped beneath her panic and the submissive in her reacted. As fast as she’d shot to her feet, Kitty was back in her chair.
“You’re not my submissive,” he said, that note of steel that had so completely bound her to his will melting once more into softness. “Sadly, right now you’re not anybody’s submissive and I think that might be a huge part of the problem.”
Now, here it came. The seedy order thinly disguised as an offer. A choice that wasn’t really one at all. Jesus, how stupid could she be?
He tipped his head, the corners of his mouth curling even as his eyes narrowed. “Do you think I’m going to offer you my dominance?”
Something on her face must have given away the direction her wildly churning thoughts had shot in. Despite that curl, he wasn’t smiling anymore. Although he hadn’t moved, he didn’t look quite as relaxed either.
“Aren’t you?” She locked her hands in her lap to quell their shaking, but it didn’t work.
“There is no way for me to do that right now without violating your consent.”
Tiny shivers danced through her, up the backs of her legs, across the flesh of her belly and her back, all the way up into her breasts. Her nipples peaked, at instant odds with nearly all the rest of her, including her mouth. “Why would you want to do that?”
She could have bit her own tongue off. Why would she say that? Why that of all things? Not, what makes you think I would give you consent? Or even, what makes you think I would welcome that? She didn’t know Noah. She wasn’t comfortable around him. He scared her, but then everything scared her. So really, that hardly ranked as an argument.
“I don’t believe you are in the right place mentally for me to do that,” he said bluntly. “I’m not comfortable at this point in entering into anything binding, not even as simple play partners. But that is what you need. Isn’t it?”
Her shivers grew shivers.
His thumb lightly tapped the table as he studied her. “It’s the reason you crawled into bed last night, clinging to my old strap, and cried yourself to sleep.”
Her heart fluttered, the vibrations of which she felt echoed all the way down through her stomach and in between her thighs. She squeezed her legs together. Hidden in her lap, her hands became fists. She fought to keep her breathing even and her expression properly masked, but inside, all she could think was: What else? Had he seen her touch herself? Had he seen her being Kitty-girl? Oh God, had he seen that?
“It’s the reason you crawled through the house in the middle of the night,” he said, sinking both her stomach and her arousal and, for a fraction of a second, making it impossible for her to breathe. “I think you washed the dishes I said could wait, because you couldn’t bear the thought of them sitting in the sink. What else can’t you bear, love?”
She couldn’t hold his unwavering stare and yet, she couldn’t make herself look away.
“Do you even know?” he wondered out loud.
Her chest felt so tight, it was strangling her heart. Her stomach was a nest of serpentine knots all flexing and tightening, and yet her nipples felt hard, swollen, aching to be touched. Pinched. Rolled, between the thumb and fingers he rested on the table when he could just as easily have reached out and caught her. Hurting her the way bad Kittys deserved to be hurt… needed to be hurt.
Her shallow breaths shook. Her pussy heated and throbbed. Unable to stop herself from asking, instead of a question, it came out a plea: “Do you know?”
He tipped his head, a single nod that made the shivers inside her go wild.
“What?” She was almost afraid of the answer.
“I know how to give you exactly what you need, and I will,” he promised. “But if you want it, you’re going to have to do one thing first.”
She struggled to swallow. “What?”
“You’re going to have to ask.”
Author Bio and Contact Info:
Maren Smith:
Fortunate enough to live with my Daddy Dom, I am a Little, coffee whore, pain slut, administrator at two of my local BDSM dungeons, resident of the wilds of freakin' Kansas (still don't know how I ended up here) and submissive to the love of my life. An International and USA Bestselling Author, I have penned more than 150 novels, novellas and short stories, and am the author of the Masters of the Castle series.
I also write under the names of Denise Hall, Darla Phelps, and Penny Alley.
Follow me on Twitter: @authmarensmith
Friend me on Instagram: maren_smith
Other titles by Maren Smith
Newest Releases:
The Red Petticoat Saloon Series:
Masters of the Castle Series:
Corbin’s Bend:
A Few Other Titles:
