Submit to Desire by Tiffany Reisz

Submit to Desire (2012) (novella)
Tiffany Reisz
Grade: A
Genre: erotica
Sex scenes: scorching
Source: own, eBook only

Charlotte Brand first catches the eye of Kingsley Edge, King of the New York Underground, when she’s breathing fire and very, very drunk. The next thing she knows, Kingsley is taking her home after she passed out and presents Charlie with a lucrative business opportunity. Kingsley has a client who is looking for a female who will submit to his absolute sexual dominance. Charlie’s experience only extends to vanilla, but she’s inexplicably aroused by the prospect of having someone else make all the decisions and agrees to spend a month with King, in ‘training’.

Charlie would never have dreamed that she would become one of Kingsley Edge’s harem, nor that she would enjoy it so much. This rich client of Kingsley’s has a predilection for acting out rape fantasies, and Charlie might be scared every time, but isn’t so repelled that she needs to use her safeword. As King extends her sexual repertoire far beyond her vanilla roots, Charlie finds herself submitting to these desires that he awakens within her, and treasuring her time with him that is slowly drawing to an end …

I love Kingsley when I don’t hate his hatred for Nora. Even though I love Nora, there was no mention of her in this book and so the only option was to love Kingsley. King is awesome to watch as a Dominant and completely in his element – a complete contrast to some scenes we saw in The Prince. His mixed and turbulent history is one of the things that intrigues me about him and there were a couple of questions that arose here that fed that curiosity nicely until we next see him.

This was a sweet story. Not to everyone’s tastes, granted, as bdsm never is, but if that’s what you like, then Tiffany Reisz is undoubtedly one of the best. If you’re familiar with her work already and need a fix between each Original Sinners novel, then this is a good bet. Again, because of the rape-scenes, not for the faint-hearted, so steer clear if you don’t do rape-scenes.

This takes place considerably pre-The Siren as there’s no sign of King’s Haitian secretary, Juliette, who has featured throughout the other books. King and Juliette’s story is one for another day, but I’m intrigued as to what has now become of Charlie. Kingsley has sex with a lot of people, but it’s clear that Charlie does mean something to him, and I don’t think he would discard of someone he cares for so easily. I think I would have remembered if she were mentioned in any of the Original Sinners novels – which I don’t – and I haven’t come across her in any of the other short stories or freebies on Ms Reisz’s website. I’d like to see more of her, especially considering Kingsley spent so much time pain-stakingly inducting her into the world of kink.

Ms Reisz has completely turned around my historical derision of novellas/short stories. This was definitely worth the money and as I have already mentioned, fed my need for new Tiffany Reisz material while I’ve been waiting for The Mistress. Kingsley is one of my favourite characters, however much I’ve moaned about him in other reviews; like Nora, he’s unbelievably complex and not at all the person he appears on the surface. The Prince gave us a mind-blowing insight into his teenage years at school, but The Siren and The Angel have only really revealed him in the present, from Nora’s perspective. Submit to Desire allowed us to see Kingsley undiluted, without all those complicated threads to his relationship with Nora and Søren and that was fantastic. Now we need his story with Juliette to complete the picture.

Image courtesy of Fantastic Fiction