Building
Bonds by Morticia Knight
Pride
Publishing, 2018
Despite
the fact that he builds bondage furniture for a living and secretly
masturbates to kinky gay porn, Kyle is sure he’s not a submissive.
It doesn’t matter how much his slave-boy friend Marshall teases
him, Kyle has no interest in finding out more about the BDSM
lifestyle. Indeed, the notion terrifies him.
Indeed,
after being dumped by his selfish and emotionally abusive partner
Roger, Kyle’s pretty reluctant to get involved with anyone, kinky
or not. He tells himself he’s content to live a quiet, solitary
life, rather than exposing himself to the pain of another
relationship. Then he meets Gavin, part-owner of the soon-to-opened
BDSM club Kiss of Leather.
Kyle’s attraction to the sexy,
self-possessed Dom is immediate and intense, but that just increases
his shyness and embarrassment in Gavin’s presence.
Gavin’s
initial interest in Kyle is strictly professional; the club wants to
engage Kyle as their exclusive carpenter, to design and construct all
their equipment. However, he soon realizes he wants more, that he
wants to dominate the handsome but awkward carpenter. When Kyle
mentions Roger, Gavin assumes that the ex was a former Master. Only
when Gavin offers Kyle a trial six-month contract as his submissive
does Kyle confess to his near-total ignorance of kink.
Kyle
wants Gavin so badly he agrees to become his “boy”, even though
he has little understanding of what that entails. Gavin is happy to
teach him. Gently but firmly, he introduces the younger man to the
physical and emotional joys of submission. By the time the contract
is half over, both men realize their feelings go way beyond sexual
attraction.
I’ve
known Morticia Knight as a fellow author and blog contributor for
years, but for some reason this is the first book of hers I’ve
read. I found it satisfying from an emotional perspective, less so
from a logical or literary one.
Building
Bonds is pure romance, pure fantasy – the soulmate trope
becoming all the more compelling when it involves D/s, which demands
the ultimate in devotion and trust. When I turn the light of reason
on the plot, however, I find it somewhat implausible. Everything
happens too fast. I don’t think a real Dom would push a total
novice the way Gavin pushes Kyle (though everything is thoroughly
based on consent). Furthermore, given how emotionally damaged Kyle
seems to be, I wonder if it’s realistic that he’d be able to open
up to Gavin the way he does.
The
book also felt too short to me. Gavin and Kyle meet, get together,
and fall in love. Nothing much else really happens. I expected some
external conflict, perhaps from Roger’s reappearance, but that
didn’t happen. I also wondered whether Kyle might not freak out
from the emotional demands of his interactions with the Dom and need
some space. Instead, they have a very hot scene involving a violet
wand, end up confessing their love to one another, and that’s it –
the end.
There’s
a reasonable amount of kinky sex in the book, with a well-managed
escalation of intensity. Still, for some reason the story felt a bit
“vanilla” to me. This might be, paradoxically, because of Gavin’s
constant emphasis on Safe, Sane and Consensual. Of course in the real
world, this is probably what one wants, but in erotic fiction one
craves a bit of risk, a bit of danger.
Overall,
I enjoyed Building Bonds – but it left me wanting more. More
story. More conflict. More character depth. Maybe more extreme and
challenging sex.
More.
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