ARC Review: Telling Tales by Charlotte Stein

   

TELLING TALES has become one of my favorites of Charlotte Stein. This book should come with a warning, but there are no words adequate enough to describe the level of hotness that this book has. You’ll have to experience it yourself! ~ Under the Covers

When in a reading slump, there are a few select authors I keep going back to again and again to cleanse my palette and rejuvenate my reading experience. Charlotte Stein is one of those very few authors who always get my back into my reading groove. After starting five different books and not being able to reach the 15% on any of them, I knew what the problem was.

I needed something filthy.

As some of you may know, Charlotte Stein is the Queen of Filth. That lady knows just how to fall into complete shameless debauchery and I discovered that with TELLING TALES, Stein is just not ashamed of getting dirty.

The premise of this story is interesting. A group of four friends since college reunite when their professor leaves a mansion for them in his will. For Allie, it’s a chance to see Wade again, her long-time friend and crush. Also coming along is Kitty. I found that she was aptly named because she is quite the sex kitten. And then there is Cameron, the shy, but curious best friend who turned out to be my favourite of the bunch!

When I first started reading this book, I immediately thought of Mary Shelley, Byron and Keats. It has the feel to it, but of course this is a far more erotic version of that experience. The storytelling is a large part of this book and I found that I absolutely LOVED this aspect of the book. Stein was really able to dig deep into her character’s psyche with those written stories, giving readers a chance to anticipate what will be happening next. Of course when Stein actually mentioned that it was mirroring the Shelley/Byron/Keats angle, it made me smile in delight.

Readers can expect a myriad of sexual experiences in this book. Everything from anal, to voyeurism to toys and to M/M, this book covers a whole lot in a short amount of time. I found myself totally engrossed in this storyline, flipping the pages until the very end. While the ending does wrap up very quickly, there is a sense of satisfaction about Allie’s choice when she does decide, even if you don’t actually read it.

TELLING TALES has become one of my favorites of Charlotte Stein. This book should come with a warning, but there are no words adequate enough to describe the level of hotness that this book has. You’ll have to experience it yourself!

*ARC provided by publisher

Excerpt:

I think about Wade. I think about the hotter stories I wrote in his honor but never actually read aloud to any of the Candy Club, about the great and terrible land of Hamin–Ra, where the Queen rules over her harem of sweat–glossed men and my imagination gallops and thunders and tells me the most wicked things.

In the story, there’s always a line of men. A huge long line of them, one after the other, and none of them can look at the Queen but all of them feel the urge to. All of them are naked and some of them squirm, pricks stiff and backs too straight, trembling with the effort of being so perfectly obedient.

But none of them want her really, she knows. They want the idea of her, they want her crown. They want to stand at her side and rule Hamin–Ra, and so she teases each one with a finger on their cocks or a raised eyebrow, and passes them by.
Until she gets to the One. He doesn’t have to pretend, or feign desire. He stands there so seemingly insensible of her presence, with something smoldering and burning beneath eyes so quiet and still. And when she runs her hand over the heavy length of his slumbering cock, he seems to despise the thrill of desire that charges through his body.

Though I’ve no idea why. I’ve no idea why this one story turns me on so much, either, or what’s so compelling about his resistance. It hurts, that Wade so indifferently rejected me. Why do I give this one man Wade’s face and have him turn away from my Queen, even in so silly a fantasy?

But I do and he does and my clit thrums beneath the busy slide of my finger, all of me eager to hear the rest, the best parts, the scenarios I’ve replayed over and over in my head. Like the ones where the Queen tests him by tying him to a bedpost, then makes him watch as some other man licks and licks at her creaming sex.

Or maybe one of them—-some big burly guard with grasping hands and a stone–like face—-fucks her and fucks her in ways my resisting hero knows are wrong. He knows she’ll never come on her back like that, with her legs in the air and the guard’s little prick shoving in and out of her cunt.

How he longs to please her, my best hero. How he wants to fight the ropes around his hands and get at her with his stiff, swollen cock. He’s in agony—-I know he’s in agony—-but worse than that, I truly understand the fantasy for the first time ever. My cheeks burn with shame and I fuck two fingers inside myself, knowing that I’m this ridiculous creature who wants someone to want me that badly, and oh there’s nothing I can do about it.

I try to slow everything down, to just feather those strokes over my bursting clit, but it’s like striking a match. It’s like rubbing my face against the coarse grain of someone’s stubble, even though I can barely recall what that feels like. In my head the hero doesn’t care about my shame or what the subtext of this fantasy is. He just tears his way out of the bonds that restrained him suddenly, full of all the fury and lust I’ve never seen on a man’s face in real life.

And then he does all of the disgusting, perverted, insane things I’ve always secretly wanted. He fucks her face with his steely cock, hand too tight in her hair and body rippling with that delicious tension. Or maybe I go worse and weirder than that, and have him force her to fuck his face, cunt pushed so tight against his mouth that he can’t breathe or move or do anything but moan.

Oh yeah, yeah. I like that one. I like it when he gets her on her front and fucks her ass, oil running over her thighs and her hands twisted up behind her back. I like it when he makes her suck the guard’s cock as he takes her, or maybe, God, maybe he sucks the guard’s cock as he takes her.

It doesn’t matter. It all amounts to the same thing—-me moaning aloud in an empty apartment, my head full of all the stories I never dared to tell, and then God, God, Wade’s face flashes up behind my eyes and I’m coming, I’m coming, and I’m making so much fucking noise it’s almost enough to drown out the phone.

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[about-author author=”Charlotte Stein”]