Read Online Holly and Her Naughty eReader by Julianne Spencer - Free Book Online

and
delicate they tickled me with their proximity, he removed my boots, my
stockings, and my bodice. He pulled the tie out of my hair and let my long,
soft locks fall over my shoulders.
    “Come with me,” he whispered in
my ear.
    I followed him across the room,
past the swing and the trampoline and to the hot tub. Like a gentleman helping
a lady out of a carriage, he took my hand and guided me up the stairs and into
the steaming water, where we lay back together against the cushioned wall, his
arms wrapped around my naked body.
    I couldn’t decide if I liked the
explosive sex or the soothing, tender after-sex the best. It’s interesting how
that debate is the one that compels me as a reader now. Is it better to be
whipped, or caressed?
    As I lay in Christoph’s arms,
the warm water lifting away any cares I had, my mind went clear, and I had a
realization about the sort of literature I was presently enjoying. A few years
back, an author would give us a love triangle, and we would declare which team
we were on, and it was fun and we made T-shirts and chatted on the Internet and
everybody re-read their favorite scenes where the girl had two boys making a
play at her.
    E.L. James, who no doubt was
deep into her own teams as well (I’m thinking she was Team Edward, don’t you?),
took us back to a simpler time in our romance literature. With Christian Grey,
she returned us to a single uber-hot, royally fucked up love interest, and the
conflict isn’t about choosing one among many, it’s about rescuing the one you
chose from his own demons.
    It’s a classic story. Boy meets
girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy’s own psychosis keeps them apart. Girl
fixes him and everyone lives happily ever after. E.L. James was able to revive
this old story with the addition of nipple clamps and vibrating butt plugs. And
when she did that, she unleashed a tsunami of 99 cent eBooks where all manner
of fucked up men with sex toys needed to be rescued.
    Somewhere amdist the heaps of
latex and leather, there was bound to be a gem or two. I think I found one in His Golden Shackles . Christoph Green
might have been derivative of Christian Grey on the surface, but underneath, he
was a confused, angry, child, with complicated motivations for every action,
and an intense sorrow behind his eyes.
    As he held me there in the hot
tub, with our naked bodies pressed together and our eyes closed, I wondered
what it would take to bring out the real Christoph. I wondered how many
sessions of magical ecstasy it would take in his Den of Decadence before he
would open himself up to me, and let me rescue him from his troubles.
    Four magical sex sessions later,
I pulled myself free from the Kindle so I could attend a lunch date I had
planned with Michelle. We met at Hyder Park. Still afraid to take my eyes off
the Kindle, I brought it with me and kept it in my purse. Michelle brought a
picnic basket with fruit, chips, sodas, and sandwiches. She also brought her
two children, Veronica and Owen.
    “How are you?” Michelle said in
a sing-song voice as she gave me a hug. “What have you been up to since the
reunion?”
    Visiting faraway worlds, learning martial arts, and having the best sex
of my life , I thought.
    “I’ve just been catching up and
seeing the old haunts,” I said. “You know how it goes.”
    “Oh, I bet that’s so much fun.
Do things seem different?”
    “No, most everything is how I
remembered it,” I said.
    “I’ve never been away for more
than a week,” Michelle said. “I’m jealous of you, getting to see it all again
with fresh eyes.”
    We sat at a picnic table and ate
while the children played hide and seek in the park. I told Michelle about my
students, about Dallas, and about Derek.
    “What an asshole,” she said. “To
think that someone would have a catch like you and just throw it away like
that. Men are such idiots.”
    “It’s for the best,” I said.
“Looking back, I can see that things hadn’t been working with