Heat from his bare palm seared her like a brand – #MFRWHooks #Steampunk #Feminist

Last week for MFRW Book Hooks, I shared part of the opening chapter from Book 1 of the Toymakers Guild series. Today I’ve got a bit from the first chapter of Book 2. Gillian has come a long way ... but in The Journeyman’s Trial, she will face new challenges.

Blurb

If she builds it, will they come?

Technically brilliant and thoroughly wanton, Gillian Smith has found her vocation: designing innovative erotic devices for the Toymakers Guild. Lust is a lubricant to creativity at Randerley Hall. But what happens when two Toymakers fall in love?

If you like intelligent, lusty women and kinky steam punk sex toys, pick up a copy of The Journeyman’s Trial.

The Hook

“Can you follow Rafe’s equations?”

Journeyman engineer Gillian Smith looked up from the plans spread out upon the Master Toymaker’s table. Chemistry had never been her speciality, but she knew from very personal experience how the clever battery worked. While she was still an apprentice, she’d helped test an erotic stimulation device powered by the technology. “I believe I grasp the essentials, sir. The temperature differential between distal versus proximal parts of the body provides the energy to power the reaction.”

“Exactly. The voltage we can generate is limited, but sufficient for applications that use current oscillations directly, with no moving parts. But what do you think about incorporating a set of amplifying coils, here?”

The Master leaned over her, indicating some detail in the circuit diagram. His distinctive scent of ink and leather almost made her swoon. He was close enough that his ragged hair brushed her cheek, but he made no move to touch her. It was a struggle for her to focus on the ingenious design and ignore the clamouring of her senses.

When she’d been summoned to attend the Master in his tower chambers and begin her training as a journeyman in the Toymakers Guild, Gillian Smith had been prepared for almost anything. Her initial interview with him, effectively an initiation, had included bondage and buggery. Amelia, the Governing Director of the Guild, had hinted that his tutelage might involve corporal discipline. Everything Gillian knew about Master Edward (which did not amount to a great deal – indeed she did not even know his surname) suggested he was a man of intense passions and perverse appetites. The gallery of prurient images lining the main staircase of Randerley Hall showed him taking lewd possession of his harem of beauties in every way imaginable. She had suspected he’d subject her to comparably intensive trials of the flesh. Sexual receptivity was, after all, a primary qualification for membership in the Guild.

Gillian had been ready for spankings, clamps, dildos, restraints – whatever the Master saw fit to impose upon her as part of her Guild education. She’d expected to be pushed to her limits.

She had not expected to be disappointed. However, after two weeks of training, meeting with the Master on alternate afternoons, she was forced to admit to herself that she’d erred in her evaluation. Her sessions with the Master were cognitively but not carnally challenging, stimulating intellectually but not physically.

She forced her attention back to his question. “To be honest, I’m concerned that would make the device too bulky. However, a capacitor series at this point would allow energy storage at moments when the toy was inactive, raising the effective charge level without a significant increase in size.”

He allowed his hand to rest for a moment on her shoulder. The heat from his bare palm seared her like a brand. “You may be right. I’ll discuss this with Rafe.”

He sat back and gazed at her, and her pulse climbed. She’d become accustomed to the asymmetric mask he wore to hide his fire-ravaged visage, but her sensitivity to his dizzying aura of power only increased each time she climbed the spiral stairs to his lair.

Buy Links

Kinky Literature – https://www.kinkyliterature.com/book/618-the-journeymans-trial-the-toymakers-guild-book-2/

Amazon US – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MQV4Y86

Amazon UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09MQV4Y86

Smashwords – https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1118032

Barnes and Noble - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-journeymans-trial-lisabet-sarai/1140567579?ean=2940165096259

Kobo – https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-journeyman-s-trial-the-toymakers-guild-book-2

Add on Goodreads – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59740783-the-journeyman-s-trial

Be sure to visit the other authors participating in today’s Book Hooks hop!

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