Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 419(@200wpm)___ 335(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
I pour myself a shot of whiskey from the bottle I bought for “special occasions” and set the glass next to the book.
Tomorrow, I will read it cover to cover.
Tonight, I let myself imagine that I am still in the cabin, that the story could still end any way I want.
I devour the book in one sitting.
It starts innocently enough: I curl up on my unmade bed, the brown paper bag discarded on the carpet, my laptop already powered off and face-down on the pillow beside me. The lamplight is cheap and yellow and bathes everything in a light flicker. I wear a hoodie and flannel pants, feet digging into the threadbare quilt Simone gifted me when I moved in. On the nightstand is a mug of cold, bitter coffee, half a bagel with a bite taken out, and a stick of cherry ChapStick, which I use every few chapters as if it’s going to keep my lips from dissolving into nothing.
I tell myself it’s just research, that I’m reading the book as an anthropologist, a scientist, a writer dissecting the enemy’s tactics. I even grab a highlighter, pink, and a sticky note pad to mark anything particularly galling. But by page ten my hands are shaking so hard I nearly highlight my own damn thumb.
I come upon the billionaire-secretary role-play scene. Talon doesn’t call her “Kitten” or “Kitty Kat” in the novel, he uses “Angel,” which is both transparent and somehow more humiliating. I scan the paragraphs, the phrases like “barely legal” and “her innocence was a dare, not a defense.” I remember every moment—how he backed me up against the kitchen counter, how his hands felt on my ass, the exact second he realized I was a virgin and the way his cock got so hard it actually hurt him. He wrote that detail in, too, except in the book, the male lead is even crueler, teasing the heroine about her lack of experience, making her beg for it in ways I never did.
Next comes the BDSM club scene. In the real world, it was just the two of us in his cabin, snowed in, the windows sweating from the heat of the wood stove and our bodies. In the book, there’s a whole crowd, other doms and subs watching, and the heroine is strapped to a Saint Andrew’s cross, her wrists bound with blue silk, her eyes covered with a velvet blindfold. He writes her whimpering, moaning, coming so hard she blacks out. The scene with the ass-licking is there, word-for-word, except he makes it dirtier, more taboo, the man calling her a “slut” and “Daddy’s little anal princess” in print. My cheeks go hot, then cold. I run my palm over the line, as if I can erase it.
I keep reading, devouring the book in animal gulps. The hours melt. There’s a knock at my door—probably my neighbor wanting to bum a cigarette—but I don’t move. The world outside my blanket fort ceases to exist.
Every chapter is a mirror: the glimmer of the moon at night, the long hike to the Hermit’s hut, the bowl of soup on the porch. I see my own hands in the way he writes her, see my laugh, my clumsy retorts, my crooked teeth. He even gets my scars right: the white nick above my knee, the faded cigarette burn on my thumb. It’s all there, more real than I ever felt in real life.
Then comes the stepfather-stepdaughter roleplay, where Talon claimed my innocence. In the book, it’s the most intense chapter yet. The heroine begs him to fuck her, says “Please, Daddy, claim me, make me yours,” and he does—on a fur rug, with a fire in the hearth roaring in the background. I want to hate it, but I can’t. I read the scene twice, then three times, and with every pass I feel the ache growing in my gut, a need so old and deep that I’m almost panting Talon’s name in desperation.
By three a.m., I am exhausted, starving, and emotionally raw. My eyes burn, but I can’t stop. I finish the last fifty pages in a fever. The ending is not what I expect.
In the book, after the big betrayal, the girl leaves. She cries, she curses him, she even threatens to out him on social media. But then, on the last page, he shows up in her apartment. He brings her a bouquet of blue irises, and he begs for forgiveness. He tells her, “I was lost until you let me ruin you, Angel. Please let me ruin you again.” He says he’ll never write another book if she doesn’t come back.
She says yes, obviously, because it’s a fucking romance novel and it needs a happily ever after. But the way Talon writes it, the apology is more than words. It’s body language, it’s longing, it’s the terrible, lonely ache of wanting someone so bad you’d rewrite the past just to change the future. The last paragraph is about them slow-dancing in her living room, the world outside blurring into a white-out, just the two of them, forever.