Title:  Longing
Author: Jamie K Schmidt
Publisher/Year: Random House 9/2/14
Length: 192
Series: Club Inferno #2

Overview

Reeling from a disastrous love affair, model and budding fashion designer Anya Litton needs a temporary refuge, a place to lick her wounds and plan her next career move. At Club Inferno, where seductively chic men and women indulge their most intimate fantasies, she can mix business with unimaginable pleasure. Anya quickly connects with club Dom Clint Reyes, who unleashes Anya’s deepest longings over nights of burning passion.

Clint is a master at taking submissives to the heights of pleasure in Club Inferno’s opulent private dungeons. But it’s Anya who has Clint begging for more when the woman of his dreams becomes his eager partner in exploring the limits of desire. As their relationship ignites into an erotic contest of wills—and a jealous rival plots against them both—Clint prepares to fight for a future with Anya. In this complicated dance, the wrong move could end it all . . . and taking control means total surrender.

My Thoughts

I’m really enjoying this series and how our author has set up each of the plot lines and character back stories.  I think that there’s something to be said about tryign to find the proper balance in real life and BDSM and that’s something that’s being attempted here.

We first met Anya in the intro to the series, when Mallory was first at Couture and ‘needed a friend’ of sorts.  It’s now time for Anya to get her own story and i think that i’m really pleased that it’s in book 2 instead of further down into the series.  So as the overview hints at, Anya is at Couture not only to get over her last ‘love’ with Cesare – an Italian Count who dumped her because his mother said that she was ‘too common and fat’ to be a countess – and to add insult to injury, not only did Cesare marry the woman that his mamma wanted him to, but he also took Anya’s #1 enemy as a mistress – so things seem to be spiraling out of control there.

So fast forward to Couture – where we see Anya coming into her own – she’s getting further along with her fashion career – designing a line with Colleen (the owner) as well trying to get her own career back in line both for modeling and acting. What makes things even sweeter though is the eye candy at Couture/Club inferno.  She’s got her eye on Clint – who’s one of the doms there and well, this story takes us on the journey of understanding whether it’s a mutual attraction and what will come of it.

The interesting thing here is that Anya is cleraly very vanilla and Clint is not – so whether the 2 will mesh is something to be seen.  The other bit is that Anya has a very bad opinion of herself.  That’s not to say that she doesn’t love her curves, but she’s been beaten down so many times by men, the industry and now her agent (as she’s up for a part that she’s been told that she needs to lose a lot of weight for) – things just seem like they couldn’t be going worse for her.

Throughout this story, we see Anya grow – she’s finding her sexuality again, and Clints forcing her to test her limits.  I think that what i find to be the best about this story is that there’s a really strong bond that’s developed between them.  I’m a sucker for good banter and a connection between characters to make things even more worthwhile when they go well, and that’s what we get here.  the other bit too is that Clint’s not perfect.  He’s got his own struggle to make something of himself as well as trying to get people to see him for more than what he’s putting out there.  That’s what Anya does for him.

And of course, we have the requisite passion, heat and chemistry bursting through the entire story.  There’s so much heat and chemistry here even if Clint is dark and dangerous and Anya is vanilla.  I think that’s one of the hardest things to write into a story, yet if it’s done right – one of the most successful.  The scenes that our author sets up are hot, and really detailed and that’s a great thing to read.  so….i’m off to read book 3 which i’ve gotten as an ARC from Netgalley and for all of you, pick this one up and Enjoy!