by Sara Brookes
She dropped her newly minted avatar in the center of a pixelated cobblestone street. She used the arrow keys on her keyboard to steer toward a signpost at an intersection. Three arrows directed the flow of vehicular and pedestrian traffic. To her left was the club. To her right, a city center bustling with activity.
“Interesting,” she said, tapping her fingers again the desk again. “Wasn’t expecting there to be anything beyond the club in here.”
“How about we split up?” Steve offered, “You can check out the town and I’ll take a look at club.”
Maddy glanced through the coding before asking, “Can we do that?”
“You’re not the only one with skills, Zane.” A second later a duplicate of her Trixy avatar appeared on the screen. “Simple enough to drop a loop into the code to trick the program into allowing us two av’s of the same character. Go forth and explore. Let me know what you find.”
She watched Steve guide the dupe of her sim toward the club building before she headed to the right. As she drew closer, she noticed mixed-use buildings that housed a variety of businesses. Strange for a fetish club website. She wandered around for a time, making small talk with the other simulated people through simple chat bubbles. She wasn’t looking for anything in particular in this secondary world, just somewhere to settle into comfortably and put her observation skills to work. Steve hadn’t said anything for a few minutes, so she assumed he was busy exploring the club. Or getting his mind blown.
She approached a pair of sims who were obviously not inhibited by the public setting. The female avatar sat on an ornate park bench, her legs spread. A man kneeled between her thighs, his face buried deep as he worshipped her. Just as Maddy passed, the woman grabbed the man’s head and gave off a high, keening wail according to the little chat bubble that appeared over the sim’s head. Of course simulated public sex would be allowed in an explicit virtual theme park.
When she noticed a yellow blinking light at the corner of her screen, she remembered her old computer game’s need to be fed at regular intervals. “You getting the same notification, Steve?”
“Yeah, I see it. I was just going to ask you about it. Health depletion, maybe?”
“I think so. Give me a second.” She steered her sim to a frozen yogurt cart to purchase a small tub. She clicked “eat” and her sim gobbled up the sweet confection in record time. The yellow dot changed to a red heart, her sim content with her life not hanging in the balance.
“Well, isn’t that clever? Think we’re good to go now.” Easy to see how hours upon hours could be lost inside with members dropping a few cool bills in a short span of time. It was more than just a way to interact sexually with the club and other members. They could also have entire lives. Families. Jobs, for fuck’s sake, as she thought about the sim that had sold her the treat. “Looks like there are two settings. A single payment system for an allotted amount of time and another game mode like this. Either way, someone is going to make a fortune when this program clears beta testing.”
“No shit,” Steve responded.
“How are you making out?”
“This place is unreal, Maddy. Never seen anything like it.”
“Not offending your virgin sensibilities, is it?” She hadn’t thought of it before, but perhaps it would have been better for her to explore the club aspect of the sim instead of Steve.
“Very funny. I’m a grown boy who can handle—holy fucksticks. These two guys are in a wrestling ring doing some seriously impressive MMA moves. This is better than watching Conor McGregor in the cage...or maybe not.”
“Okay?” Maddy asked, concerned Steve had gotten in over his head.
“Guy just came out of the crowd, grabbed the other guy’s dick and started blowing him. They both took the first guy down. Time for me to move along.”
Maddy giggled at the panic-tinged words from her friend. “Sure you don’t want to switch?”
“No. Things can’t get much worse than that. Let you know if I find anything else worth discussing.”
She wanted to point out Steve was going to probably run into a lot he’d have questions about, but she left him alone for the time being. Instead, she angled toward a theater and decided to go inside to see what kind of moviegoers this place catered to. It wouldn’t be hard to guess, given the atmosphere, but she wondered if the movies would be computer-generated as well. As she slipped through a pair of swinging doors, she found a darkened theater with most of the seats filled.
Up on the oversized screen, the images weren’t simulated as she’d thought. Instead, it appeared to be a live feed from inside the real club. It was an odd mix of life and computer-generated simulator she found fascinating. Surprisingly, the video quality was remarkable. The decor of the room on the screen was impeccable and lush. The theater around her, though truly just an artful arrangement of pixels, had the same attention to detail.
A sign this place wasn’t just some run-of-the-mill porn site managed by a bunch of sweaty, kinky people looking to make some money. This was how these people lived. They breathed bondage and domination.
Small conversation bubbles appeared over the heads of several members. Though they appeared interested in the video playing on the screen, the hot ticket for the night would be a session starring Kochran Duke himself. If the accolades were to be believed, Kochran wasn’t just the owner of the club, but an active participant. The Hardcore King of Noble House had quite a reputation, and a number of fans judging by the chatter taking place among the theater patrons. Evidently, he was the best at what he did. The only person she knew who was that good at what he did was a comic book character, and she seriously doubted Kochran had an adamantium-coated skeleton or looked like Hugh Jackman.
While she didn’t consider herself a prude by any means, that was a lot of naked flesh parading around as entertainment for the audience while they waited for the featured scene to begin. They’d taken a page straight out of Rocky Horror—the avatars on the stage acted out whatever was occurring on the screen. Right down to the orgy. Thighs and shoulders and breasts and butts and cocks all came together in a pile of sinfully decadent human flesh. Loud moans and groans accompanied the sounds of flesh slapping together.
Outside of the sim, her body temperature rose. She was alone in her house, Steve couldn’t see her, but that didn’t stop her cheeks from heating as she watched the people writhing on both screens. She shivered. Goose bumps crawled up her arms, collected at the base of her neck, shot down her spine and punched her in the gut. She’d gone from world-class hacker to wanton sex goddess in two seconds flat.
Now she understood why Noble House was considered one of the premier fetish sites on the internet.
Don’t miss Switch It Up by Sara Brookes.
Available now wherever Carina Press ebooks are sold.
www.CarinaPress.com
Copyright © 2018 by Shree Finch
Also available from Sara Brookes
Ragged Edge, a Body Masters novel
Dalton is no stranger to hitting rock bottom. He’s worked hard to turn his life around. Now he has a quiet life, a successful business and a no-strings-attached arrangement for sex with Kincade. Everything is just as it should be. Then a late-night rendezvous is interrupted by a sexy newcomer, and Dalton realizes something is missing.
Caught up in the intense passion the men share, Erin finds herself fighting her desire to run or to get between these two hard bodies. She’s convinced her attraction is wrong. However, a little persuasion from both Dalton and Cade convinces her she belongs with and between them.
Erin’s surrender becomes Dalton’s reawakening. A BDSM master, Dalton is in his element wielding command, and soon the threesome fill their nights with mind-blowing pleasure. But when a piece of Dalton’s past resurfaces, it threatens the very foundation he’s built and could put him back at the bottom.
To purchase and
read this and other books by Sara Brookes, please visit Sara’s website at sarabrookes.com.
Copyright © 2010 by Sara Brookes
Also available from Sara Brookes and Carina Press
Noble House Kink series
Get Off Easy
Switch It Up
Also available from Sara Brookes
Ragged Edge
Edge of Need
Taking Over Me
Rock Your Soul
Break Me In
Glad You Came
Riding Irish
Branded Irish
Craving Irish
Twisted Irish
Dirty Irish
Chasing Sin
Hard as Stone
Starlight Bound
Shift of Command
About the Author
A native Virginian, Sara sold her first romance novel in 2009. Since that fateful day, she’s published books in various sub-genres of romance, been generously honored with several awards, and saved the world from evil chocolate chip cookies.
She has won the PRISM Award from the RWA’s Fantasy, Futuristic and Paranormal chapter for Best Futuristic Romance, and the HOLT Medallion award from RWA’s Virginia Romance Writers chapter for Best Erotic Romance. She was also selected as a finalist for an RT Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best Erotic Romance.
Though she may insist otherwise, Sara loves the places her mind conjures and has always been fascinated by the strange, the unusual, the twisted and the lost (tortured heroes are her personal favorite). She is an action movie junkie, addicted to coffee and has been known to stay up until the wee hours of the morning playing RPG video games. Despite all this geekiness, she is a romantic at heart and is always a sucker for an excellent love story.
You can find Sara on the web at www.sarabrookes.com, on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/Sara_Brookes, on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/brookesofbooks, her street team group at www.Facebook.com/groups/brookesbooktique and via her new release notification newsletter http://eepurl.com/mbG31.
At Noble House, fantasy has no limits.
Want more from author Sara Brookes?
Catch up on the rest of the Noble House Kink series!
GET OFF EASY (Noble House Kink, book one)
SWITCH IT UP (Noble House Kink, book two)
Grab your copies now!
Connect with us for info on our new releases, access to exclusive offers and much more!
Visit CarinaPress.com
Other ways to keep in touch:
Facebook.com/CarinaPress
Twitter.com/CarinaPress
CarinaPress.com/newsletter
Introducing the Carina Press Romance Promise!
The Carina Press team all have one thing in common: we are romance readers with a longtime love of the genre. And we know what readers are looking for in a romance: a guarantee of a happily-ever-after (HEA) or happy-for-now (HFN). With that in mind, we’re initiating the Carina Press Romance Promise. When you see a book tagged with these words in our cover copy/book description, we’re making you, the reader, a very important promise:
This book contains a romance central to the plot and ends in an HEA or HFN.
Simple, right? But so important, we know!
Look for the Carina Press Romance Promise and one-click with confidence that we understand what’s at the heart of the romance genre!
Look for this line in Carina Press book descriptions:
One-click with confidence. This title is part of the Carina Press Romance Promise: all the romance you’re looking for with an HEA/HFN. It’s a promise!
Find out more at CarinaPress.com/RomancePromise.
Find out more at CarinaPress.com.
We think you have a good book in you!
Do you write in the below genres? Harlequin’s Carina Press wants to see your manuscript.
• Contemporary Romance
• Romantic Suspense
• Historical Romance
• Paranormal Romance
• Mystery
• Erotic Romance
• LGBT
• Science Fiction & Fantasy Romance
Submit today!
All manuscripts receive a thorough evaluation by a Carina Press editor and a decision within 12–16 weeks. What do you have to lose?
To learn more about our submission guidelines, visit us at CarinaPress.com/WriteForUs.
Don’t miss out!
Sign up for our editorial newsletter and stay in the loop on the latest submission calls and editorial news:
Bit.ly/CPEditorialNewsletter
Get the latest on Carina Press by joining our eNewsletter!
Don’t miss out, sign up today!
CarinaPress.com/newsletter
Sign up and get Carina Press offers and coupons delivered straight to your inbox!
Plus, as an eNewsletter subscriber, you’ll get the inside scoop on everything Carina Press and be the first to know about our newest releases!
Visit CarinaPress.com
Other ways to keep in touch:
Facebook.com/CarinaPress
Twitter.com/CarinaPress
ISBN-13: 9781488030765
In the Rough
Copyright © 2018 by Shree Finch
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 22 Adelaide St. West, 40th Floor, Toronto, Ontario M5H 4E3, Canada.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and in other countries.
www.CarinaPress.com