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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.

Amazon (Kindle Unlimited)

 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