Hopeless
P.
Rose
"What's a safe call?"
Hope Pendleton isn't ready for the answer. Her best friend, Callie, is into
kink … serious kink; the kind that hurts. Hope is young and liberal, so she's
cool with it … sort of. It's all just a game, right?
When Callie doesn't come home after a play date, the game gets real. Hope
learns Callie's last known play partner is wanted for racketeering and human
trafficking, and she faces a desperate dash against time to find her friend.
She follows Callie's trail, moving blindly into a world of sexual fantasy and
deviance, of chains and floggers, pain and pleasure.
The game becomes a nightmare, and before long, Hope's own life is on the line.
Can she survive to save her friend?
Or will she suffer the same fate?
Graphic and explicit sexual scenes, including BDSM. Not intended for anyone
under the age of 18. All characters are over the age of 18.
Excerpt:
This is not happening.
This is not happening.
This is not happening.
I mouthed the words silently, my lips barely
moving, one word for each step I took, one for each breath. The hallway was
institutional, harshly lit and silent, except for the slight squeak of my sneakers
and the solid, measured steps of the man beside me. He was wearing boots. Not
cowboy boots…motorcycle boots, with harness straps. They were black, slightly
creased, but shiny and clean. His gray dress slacks covered most of them, but
I'd been looking down, staring at my own feet and his, as we walked down the
long hallway.
This is not happening.
We were in the basement of the building, just
like they show on television. The silence echoed around me, pressing in on me,
threatening to take the air from my lungs. I glanced up once, to see how much
further we had to go, and the fluorescent light fixture above me spun in my
peripheral vision. I breathed in and out, and then again, concentrating on the
simple act as if my life depended on it.
This is not happening.
We stopped in the middle of the hallway, in front
of a long window, and he tapped lightly on the glass. I paid attention to my
breathing, and I stared at my shoes, noticing the scuff of reddish mud on my
left sneaker. I heard a noise on the other side of the glass, and my eyes shot
up of their own accord. My heartbeat accelerated and my breathing quickened,
the fluorescents hazy in my eyes from the sudden tears blurring my vision.
I was relieved we weren't going inside the room…ashamed
of my sense of relief, but relieved anyway. There was a gurney on the other
side of the window, close enough I could have reached through the glass and
touched the motionless form of the woman under the green hospital sheet. I felt
myself shaking violently, and the bile in my stomach soured, threatening to
rise. I felt the man waiting for me, and I didn’t know why. Finally, I nodded
once, sharply, lying to tell him I was ready.
Inside the room, the morgue attendant in surgical
scrubs carefully folded the sheet down off the woman's face, uncovering her to
below her neck. His movements were precise but respectful, and he smoothed the
sheet neatly before stepping away from her. She was beautiful…or she had been.
She had short, curly red hair, smooth features, full, bloodless blue lips…and
she was so very pale.
I didn't realize I was holding my breath. I heard
the man's voice from far away, gentle, but insistent. "Miss Pendleton? Is
this your friend?"
The tears spilled over, and the window swam in
front of me. My knees turned to gelatin, and the man with the gray suit and the
motorcycle boots caught me, as the institutional tile floor suddenly came up to
meet my face.
About the Author:
Patricia Rose was born a bookworm and has never outgrown it. Her love of stories started with The Bobbsey Twins when she was five and continues today with the best offerings of science fiction, urban fantasy, and paranormal romance. An avid animal lover, she shares her home with her husband, Kevin, the wife of her heart, Ellen, three dogs, four cats, and a tarantula.
Technophobic to a fault, Patricia relies heavily on her friends in the Indie writing community to help her with anything more complex than Microsoft Word, this despite her husband's urgings to put down the stone knives and chisels and join the digital age! Patricia's first novel, Iron Mike, is a dystopian science fiction tale and is available on all Amazon forums. Both Hopeless and Iron Mike are available as audiobooks through www.audible.com.
FB page: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorPatriciaRose/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/patricia731rose
