“Men play harder than women, they play more intensely, they can take more, and they don’t require long periods of coddling afterwards.”—K.C. Wells
Author: K.C. Wells
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Pages/Word Count: 220 Pages
Rating: 5 Stars
Blurb: Recently returned to the UK after living in the States since he was eleven, Andrew Barrett is determined to keep busy and make a new life for himself. He works full time as a copywriter and strips at a club on Canal Street on weekends. But it still leaves him too much time to think. Then he finds the BDSM club, Collars & Cuffs, where at twenty-nine, he is their youngest Dom. Young doesn’t mean inexperienced, however. All this activity keeps him focused with no time to dwell on the past. But the past has a way of intruding on the present.
It’s been four long years since Gareth Michaels last set foot inside Collars & Cuffs. But when he finally summons his courage and steps back into his former world, he finds the man who drove him away is still a member, and what’s more, he wants Gareth back. Two men in pain need the freedom they find in each other, but it takes another man’s horrific plans to make them see it.
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Review: A Dance with Domination is the fourth in K.C. Wells’s amazingly successful Collars and Cuffs series, so named for the BDSM club that is the focal point of all the books in the series. This one brings us a new romance and lets us catch up with old favorites to see how they’re doing. Some of them are doing really well and making strides toward recovery, thank you K.C.!
Andrew Barrett was born in the U.K. but spent most of his life in the U.S. He has returned to England to work. He has the most unique job pairing I think I have ever heard of. I’m sure someone out there will come up with one just as unique. Let us know in the comments if you know someone who has a funnier job combo than daytime copywriter/night time pole dancing stripper! I know! If anyone can pull it off it’s K.C. Wells. Andrew is also a Dom and heads to Collars and Cuffs to check it out.
Gareth Michaels’s last experience with a Dom was horrific. It was more abuse than Domination and more total control than love. He discovers that his membership to the club hasn’t lapsed, even though he hasn’t paid his dues in over four years. The club’s owners felt badly about the way his tenure there ended, so they kept him an active member. He, too, decides to check it out again. He is terrified to see that the man responsible for his living nightmare is still a member there.
While Gareth works hard to overcome the torment of his past, Andrew earns his trust. They are both looking for the same thing: a loving, committed D/s relationship like they see their friends involved in. When Gareth finds a memento of Andrew’s past, he feels like Andrew is involved with him for all the wrong reasons. As with all of Ms. Wells’s books, there’s a little mystery mixed in with her kink. The ghost from Gareth’s past really wants him back. At any cost. A confluence of events comes to an eventful head leading to…
Both Gareth and Andrew have what the other needs. In A Dance with Domination, K.C. Wells again weaves an interesting plot around two characters I definitely wanted to know more about and I was really pulling for. She writes hot man-on-man sex, better than any straight woman should be able to. I wonder if her internet service is tax deductible because she uses it to watch so much gay porn for “research”. Whatever she’s watching, she is able to recreate it to steamy perfection on the page.
The angst and mystery are just enough. They don’t take away from characters, one of which is the club itself, they add to it like a perfectly seasoned sauce. What would be a meh story in a different writer’s hands is shaped and crafted until it is just perfect. As is what I expect from a K.C. Wells novel. This is a highly recommended beach read. Five Beach Balls!
You can buy A Dance with Domination (Collars and Cuffs: Book Four) here:
Crap :) I just 1 clinked instead of wishlist, sure hope these can be read as stand alone… one too many vodkas and a really good review!