Samhain Publishing, $3.50, ISBN 978-1-60504-937-3
Contemporary Erotica, 2010

Don’t quote me on this, but I believe Pas de Deux is French for “wild monkey sex with a hot guy who is hung like the bells on Notre Dame”. Okay, it is a ballet term for a dance of two, consisting of an entrée and adagio and a coda. And yes, I shamelessly copied the whole definition from a dictionary.

But to enjoy this show, you will have to overlook Ms Jayde’s description of Mateo Rivera as a “Latin Kevin Costner“. I know that man made that movie with Whitney Houston, but I’m having a hard time envisioning a Latin version of Kevin Costner. Is that like asking people to envision me as a “Chinese Rihanna”?

Lynnrina Kovaleva hadn’t danced on stage in two years when the story opens due to some injury. Now that she is at the brink of making her grand comeback, she decides that a one-night stand is just what she needs to relax and calm her nervousness. Our hero Mateo happens to be at the right place and looking just right, so it’s time for an entry of a big anaconda in the spirit of the pas de deux. And then, three months later, they meet again. This time, he’s the ex-cop turned bodyguard and she’s not only trying to build her comeback but she could very well be stalked by some creep.

Pas de Deux is nearly a great short story. In this case, the hero has some pretty good characterization for a character in a short story, but the heroine on the other hand gets shortchanged in that department. Also, Lynn’s behavior is all over the place in this story. She could have experienced a life-changing revelation a few paragraphs ago, but in the following paragraph she would be crawling all over Mateo wanting to get laid. Therefore, while Ms Jayde seems to have made some effort to give Mateo some depths, she has Lynn behaving like some sex kitten ready to go at the drop of the hat, regardless of context. Lynn doesn’t come off like human at times. Because of this, this one is a decent read, but it could also have been much better.