So, I picked up Salt Kiss by Sierra Simone because somewhere along the line, someone made a show out of it that I kept getting ads for in Facebook Reels. (Based on what's in the reels, the show deviates from the book a few places. I'm also not paying for the app to watch the show.)
We start meeting Mark Trevena and his twin sister at their younger sister's wedding to a military man. We get the impression the siblings are hip deep in shady practices, and then we switch to our narrating character, Tristan Thomas. Tristan is a 30 year old virgin, recently discharged from the Army, following some hinted around at events playing bodyguard for an unpopular foreign leader. Mark hires him to be his bodyguard at Lyonesse, an exclusive high end kinky sex club on the Potomac in DC. We learn Mark is former CIA and the memberships at Lyonesse are paid for with information, more than money.
We get to go through Tristan's shock at seeing kinky sex on the reg, and eventually, he admits that he wants to be Mark's submissive, which in turn leads into smut.
Eventually, during an "open house", Lyonesse gets invaded, Mark gets stabbed. Which means Mark has Tristan go to Ireland to pick up Mark's heretofore unknown female fiance and ride a yacht with her from Ireland to Manhattan. After a few chapters of Tristan whining about not feeling right submitting to Mark when he's engaged, Isolde and Tristan board the boat, and Tristan learns all about kinky hetero sex.
In the end, they arrive in Manhattan and it's suggested there were cameras on the boat, so Mark is aware of what his sub and his fiancee were doing once they passed the Azores, leaving us a cliffhanger for the next book.
Based on the information I could find, the trilogy is a modern take on the 13th century Tristan and Isolde, which, after digging through several folklore sites, has several different versions, from chaste forbidden love to King Mark killing Tristan for sleeping with Isolde after accidentally taking a love potion. So, I can't really complain about taking the basic story and making a modern version, even though the medieval versions skipped King Mark tying Knight Tristan to a table and dripping hot wax on his privates. Further investigation shows where the legend got wrapped into Arthurian Legend, which is where Lyonesse comes from, basically an English version of Atlantis.
I mean, it's readable, and honestly tame compared to some Erotica I've read on occasion. If you like MMF erotic lit, give it a go. Just understand most men aren't blessed with the refraction time men in erotic seem to have.
