Tour: Trust In Me by Skye Warren (Guest Post/Giveaway)

Please give a warm welcome to author Skye Warren who is joining us on tour for her erotic novel, Trust In Me. 

Are You Afraid of the Dark Erotica?

by Skye Warren

Today I want to talk about why I love dark erotica, but first I better define what I’m talking about. Dark erotica explores taboo sexual themes. The hero might very well be the villain. The heroine will not only face her darkest fears, but walk through them. It’s compelling, disturbing and, well, erotic.

Sometimes it’s also pretty scary, so it’s strange that I like dark erotica, when I can’t even handle scary movies, but reading and writing are totally different. I don’t mean scary like blood and gore, although those can occasionally happen, but more like disturbing. When my critique partners and beta readers tell me that they loved it but they squirmed, I know I hit the mark. Heck, I even squirm while reading it. And to get through the proper editing process, there is a lot of re-reading!

Maybe it’s why we go to haunted houses or watch a scary movie. The adrenaline rushes through our veins, but at the end we get to go home with our families. One thing I always promise in my stories is a happy ending for my hero and heroine. So my readers can put their trust in me (like that play on words? *grins*) that I’m going to put their emotions through the ringer, make them squirm and even suffer a bit, but at the end all will be well. I wanted to share with you guys an exclusive excerpt of one such dark moment for my heroine, Mia:

I struggled to sit up. My breath caught at what I saw. Maybe I had underestimated Leo. He could be a decent replacement for Carlos after all, because I found that though my ankles and wrists were still bound, a knife winked at me from the cracked plastic bench. And between me and that bench was a thick layer of glass. I’d have to walk, or crawl, on broken glass to get free. It was like a macabre fairytale, except instead of a red carpet there was a carpet of glass, and instead of a prince there was a knife. The same principle.

With a wrench in my side, I maneuvered myself to a sitting position and inched my way across the floor in the slowest escape ever. I found that if I slid my butt through the glass, instead of over it, that saved me a lot of glass splinters. Still, there was no avoiding the cuts all over my ankles as I dug in and gained enough leverage to pull my ass along the floor.

Luckily, the pain in my bloodied feet was barely noticeable. Not over the breath-stopping pain in my stomach. I swore if I made it out of there alive, I’d die. There’d been a time that had seemed like a release, like freedom. Maybe it still held a certain allure, but I had unfinished business. Maybe I really was already dead, and I was just a ghost trying to wrap up the loose ends. A bloody, weary ghost whose uncontainable groans of agony tangled with the wind that gently rocked the boat.

Finally I reached the bench and hauled my ass up, wincing at the piercings of glass into my soles. My fingers fumbled for the knife, scraping and sawing until finally my hands were free. By the time I got to work on my ankles, blood had pooled at my feet, slithering under the glass to form a red sequined blanket. It was pretty, I conceded, the glittering blanket of suffering. That might have been the pain meds talking.

I glanced behind me out the porthole and barely made out lights bobbing in the distance. Or maybe the lights were stationary and this boat was the one bobbing. Slipping over my own blood, walking on my own cuts, I hobbled out of the cabin and onto the small deck. The ocean marked me with its spray, salty and thick, as I leaned over the railing. Away from me, dark swirls circled and threatened, but up close to the boat, they lapped disarmingly. Which was the true nature of the sea, the murky monster or the gentle lover? Maybe both, which was almost a scarier thought, because in the end, it didn’t matter. I was lost to them both.

I jumped. Cold water filled my mouth, my nose. Salt burned my feet, my stomach, all over. Like the lashes of a thousand jellyfish, they stung me into paralysis. I gulped water. I breathed it. I sank.

TRUST IN ME by Skye Warren

Can love be found between a whore and a knight in tarnished armor?
Mia longs for the daily torture to end, but one last task keeps her holding on. In a betrayal of the crime lord who pulled her from the gutter, she’ll free the shipment of human cargo, and if she’s lucky, die in the process. The alternative is unfathomable, even to a woman well-versed in erotic torture. But luck abandons her yet again when she meets the security expert in charge of the shipment and finds herself face to face with her childhood crush. The man she once begged for help. The man who failed her.
Tyler Martinez is an undercover FBI agent with one chance to right the wrongs of his past. Thrust deep into the seedy world of human trafficking, he must put aside his guilt over abandoning Mia all those years ago in order to save her now.
Someone’s pulling the strings in this sadistic play on trust, but Tyler and Mia may not live long enough to see the curtain fall. Trust in Me is a story of erotic pain and incipient romance, spiraling ever faster toward betrayal or redemption.

WARNING:

This book contains explicit scenes of dubious consent, graphic violence and sex. It also depicts abuse and captivity situations. Not appropriate for anyone uncomfortable with these situations or anyone under the age of eighteen. This is a work of fiction.

Buyit now!

GIVEAWAY

Skye Warren is giving away a copy of Trust in Me to a commenter from each stop in the blog tour. In addition, every comment along the way enters you in the drawing for a $20 Amazon gift certificate. What do you think about stories that are so dark that they’re hard to read, heartbreaking or violent? Do you have to be in a certain mood to take them on?