Liquid Silver Books, $3.99, ISBN 978-1-59578-833-7
Contemporary Erotica, 2011
Penthouse Heat is one of those stories that are supposed to be sexy, but I actually find it as erotic as a dip in a tub full of rotten fish. I mean, we have Celeste Wilde, a grieving widow who has barely moved into an expensive penthouse in the oh-so-elite Prestige Towers when her neighbor, Ken Strong, shows up at her door asking to borrow some condoms for his upcoming date. Seeing that her box of condoms is unopened, he proceeds to ask her some pretty intrusive questions about her love life, or the lack of it. He then proceeds to tell her that he’d like to see her naked and massage her all over.
And when she agrees to drop by his place but still plays hard to get, he thinks:
Her reluctance was what drew him to her most of all. It was possible, of course, that this was simply one very calculated setup. Maybe Celeste was just as bad as all the rest of the women who threw themselves at him. Maybe all she wanted was his money. Was that what her game was? Was she willing to suck his dick to get a credit card in her name? Was she just like the women who hung around the stadium or the lobby hoping they would catch his eye? He shook his head.
You know, if Ken hadn’t so cheap, whipping it all over the place and asking women to go down on him, maybe he’d meet some nice women for a change. No, that can’t be. It’s all those women’s fault, of course! They are whores! All he wants is a nice woman to love! And then, without any rhyme or reason, all of a sudden Ken wants Celeste to be wife!
The behavior of the main characters, especially the hero, is just too bizarre for me. They say and do things that feel more at home in a really bad soap opera than anything else, and I have no idea how they jump from awkward flirtation to the hero wondering whether she gives head for the Washington to him wanting to marry her. This book is written in English, but it could have written in Klingon for all I can understand of the motivations of these characters.
