Ames‘ review of Carnal Ecstasy by Lissa Matthews
When good girls go bad, very, very bad…
The minute Carrie meets tattooed, bad-boy bartender Dallon, her decision is made. He’s the one, her ticket to freedom and a new, independent life. She’s tired of dictates and zero dates and following the path laid out before her by her well-meaning-but-completely-out-of touch-with-her-reality religious parents.
Dallon sees the buttoned-up, full-of-curves woman outside the grocery store and feels the flames of hell licking at his heels. When she asks him for directions to the large, nearby university where she’s starting work, his gut-twisting lust for her doesn’t diminish, but those flames start to singe his tough-as-nails hide.
With Dallon’s promise of not sleeping with anyone associated with the university his father is the dean of about to go up in smoke, Carrie takes the first exit off the Heavenly Highway straight onto Sin Street. She wants Dallon to teach her all the things a good girl should never know, and she won’t take Hell no for an answer.
I very much wanted to like this novella, and there were some good parts, but it left me feeling kind of dirty. Like a pool cue touched by who knows how many people and not washed before it’s inserted into a body cavity dirty. Maybe it’s just me, but that seems unsanitary.
Anyway, Dallon sees a woman talking on a cell-phone in the grocery store parking lot. His first thought? Of her on her knees, pleasuring him. Niiiice. Then he somehow magically senses how innocent she is and he wants to make her naughty. All she wants are directions to her new place of work (she’s new in town and got lost). He gives her directions to the university and also to his bar, where he’s part owner and bartender.
Carrie shows up in his bar, before closing, and tells him she quit her job. And that she wants him. Score for Dallon. He didn’t want to want Carrie because she would be working at the university, where his super religious father is the dean. Carrie quit because she wants freedom, freedom from the life her parents planned for her. You see, Carrie too has super religious parents and they set the job up for her – but she’s sick of living under their thumb and she wants to be a naughty girl.
Dallon is the perfect man to debauch her. And he does. With a beer bottle…and a pool cue.
Dallon finds himself falling for this sweet, innocent angel. But the feelings she engenders in him are dangerous – he doesn’t want the entanglement, he’s used to one night stands. (This feeling of his, his commitment phobia is never explained, btw.) Also, these two don’t use condoms after the first time they have sex. What are the chances little Carrie is on the pill? I guess Dallon isn’t too worried about commitment after all then, is he? One then has to wonder, how safe is he if he’s so willing to go without?
The one good thing about this short story? It’s told from Dallon’s point of view. So we were spared Carrie’s religious upbringing angst.
Carnal Ecstasy gets 1 out of 5 from me.
I’m going to go wash my hands.
You can read more from ames at Thrifty Reader.
This book is available from Ellora’s Cave. You can buy it here in e-format.
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