"Dear Friend, I am offering you the chance of a lifetime. You can live out your ultimate fantasy within one week of receiving this gift, provided you pass it on. All that is required from you is this: you must use the scarf during a sexual encounter in the next seven days."
A chain letter as the plot for an erotica novel? It sounds silly, but for the women in Jenesi Ash's Chain Reaction, fucking on a deadline empowers them to make those fantasies happen.
The novel is a series of loosely related vignettes, as the women pass the scarf to each other in the anonymous letter which frees each one to enjoy a series of sensual adventures.
Although the first story is skippable, featuring Amber and Lucas, generic high-powered corporate execs secretly coupling in the office, it's worth hanging in for the rest - the next, about Amber's assistant, the "good girl" Sienna and her bad-boy, kinky goth boyfriend David, grows increasingly hotter. David takes advantage of the seven days by tantalizing Sienna with increasingly hotter bondage, fucking and sensation play, and draws her out of her shell, as their secret relationship shifts to a public one. The story is realistic about Sierra's misgivings at exploring her fetishes -- what would everyone think of her if they knew she was kinky? -- and she gradually opens up to being true to her desires and deeper feelings for David. Awww.
The scarf travels to a wild hairdresser who is obsessed with sex toys and learns to connect with her husband instead by tying him up with the scarf (until he takes control, that is); and then the scarf goes to a lonely, insecure singleton with an hourglass figure who is secretly watched by her personal trainer crush and blossoms under his attention once she learns he saw her jerking off. Narrated breathlessly by the sexy women who pass the scarf among themselves, most of the stories feature male tops, with a few scenes of women temporarily in charge.
The kink content in Chain Reaction is mild, ranging from naughty toys to sensation play, although David does get into ordering Amber around and putting her in some pretty good bondage. This isn't a D/s novel; it's more "kinky" as in "sexy." The purple scarf definitely gets around, though -- it's worth reading to find out the various ways it's used. I just hope someone tossed it in the shared washing machine.
Sasha White and Saskia Walker's Kink includes a duo of stories with more serious BDSM content. "Sex, Lies and Bondage Tape" by Saskia Walker stars yet another hot personal trainer – Kelly, who falls in love with Tommy, the bodyguard to a rock star; they pursue each other through London in a game of "kiss-chase", purposefully omitting personal information, and only meeting for ferocious sex and BDSM scenes. The plot is good in this book, the sex starts off painfully trite, but heats up once Kelly decides to take revenge on Tommy for walking out on their one-night-stand by dominating him for a decadent weekend in a ritzy hotel. "You are here for my pleasure. I'm going to do to you everything you did to me, but with style," she promises him, and the scene is indeed very classy – she drapes herself in vintage lingerie, then ties him up with bondage tape, eases a butt plug in him and whips his ass while stroking his cock; she then lowers herself onto his face to have her own orgasm. Later she collars him and hand-feeds him a dinner of asparagus (what, no golden showers?) and champagne before more debauchery. Plenty more brutally delicious male-dominant fucking proceeds later in the story. Switching: the best of both worlds, when it comes to Saskia Walker's story, which is creative, well-written, amusing, and filled with explosively hot sex.
Sultry redhead Bethany Mack, the lonely housewife in Sasha White's "Watch Me," is ogled so much by men frozen mid-action that the story verges on Jayne Mansfield style camp, but it's all in good fun -- she discovers her exhibitionist streak when her husband is too busy to notice her. She thrills over the pleasures of going pantyless and teasing a series of ogling and appreciative men, in the process becoming more aroused herself.
The story halts in its hot exhibitionism once Bethany's husband comes home during her inevitable topless sunbathing and fucks her while the telephone operator next door is watching; at that point the husband (until then a faceless advertising exec) becomes a generic fantasy male dominant and transforms their relationship into a D/s one, which she happily immediately enters into, with no knowledge of BDSM, no questions asked. I found this hard to believe, as it felt like another story was tacked onto this one to include some "kink" content. The D/s plot was disappointingly cookie cutter, and Bethany appeared to have lost her naughty enthusiasm for flirting with other men and enjoying her body for its possibilities of tease-and-denial - instead she's not allowed to do that anymore, and instead obeys her husband at all times, including lots of obligatory blowjobs and forced jerking off, at the end deciding that they will limit D/s time so that they can have more regular conversation. I would have liked to see her husband realize he's secretly into cuckolding scenes instead – now that would have made a wild second half of the story, but perhaps too kinky for Kink.
