The Bliss House Series is a few degrees hotter than Nora and several shades less kinky than Christian Grey. These stories are racy romance that is sexy, steamy hot, and deliciously sweet.
Heiress of Bliss House, with her aunt’s passing, Els is hoping she will be able to stop working as a high-end escort to pay the bills and get back to being a full-time law student.
Enter Jackson Markham, bold and brave in everything but love. Burned and spurned in the past, he has a strict “no girlfriends” policy. He is solely focused on passing the California Bar Exam.
When Els approaches him offering pay and housing to act as her bodyguard, he warily agrees. No matter what, he is determined to stick to his “no women” policy and to keep his heart safe.
Up until now nothing has mattered more to Els than Bliss House and completing her law degree. Suddenly she finds that she wants a man of her own. Not just any man, this man, Jackson. Not willing to keep her past a secret, she is afraid he’ll leave the minute he finds out what she was doing to pay her aunt’s medical bills.
The Bliss House Series is a few degrees hotter than Nora and several shades less kinky than Christian Grey. These stories are racy romance that is sexy, steamy hot, and deliciously sweet.
Heiress of Bliss House, with her aunt’s passing, Els is hoping she will be able to stop working as a high-end escort to pay the bills and get back to being a full-time law student.
Enter Jackson Markham, bold and brave in everything but love. Burned and spurned in the past, he has a strict “no girlfriends” policy. He is solely focused on passing the California Bar Exam.
When Els approaches him offering pay and housing to act as her bodyguard, he warily agrees. No matter what, he is determined to stick to his “no women” policy and to keep his heart safe.
Up until now nothing has mattered more to Els than Bliss House and completing her law degree. Suddenly she finds that she wants a man of her own. Not just any man, this man, Jackson. Not willing to keep her past a secret, she is afraid he’ll leave the minute he finds out what she was doing to pay her aunt’s medical bills.
ELS
I can’t believe I’m sneaking into my own place. But I am just too tired to spar with the housekeeper who seems to lie in wait every time I return to the building, day or night. I have repeatedly told her to talk with me during office hours or at staff meetings, but the old witch seems to derive a sadistic joy from ambushing me with complaints in the middle of the night when I come home, or when I’m hurrying off to class.
I dig in my purse for my keys before walking around the side of the building. I only have to make the three flights of stairs before I can put away my four-inch heels for the week. I swear I won't even look at them until I pack next Friday. If I weren't wearing silk stockings, I'd take them off this very minute.
One of the street lights on this side of the building seems to be out. Adding it to my mental to-do list, I feel a shiver of premonition run down my back. Looking around, I grope in my bag for the pepper spray.
Something slams into my back. I crash to my knees—so much for sparing the stockings. My mind scrambles to process what's happening. I am shoved hard again and my face hits the pavement. I see sparks. Pushing to my knees I shake my head and try to get up. I am wrenched around by my shoulder and a hard punch lands in my face. As I roll back there is another punch. I duck, but the fist hits my face just where it had hit the pavement. The sparks turn to stars. Falling back, I feel a kick to the ribs. I try to curl up to protect myself. Another kick.
Where is that spray? My hand continues its frantic search for the pepper spray in my purse and I curl to protect my stomach. Another kick lands on my breast. I cry out. Make noise—you’re supposed to make noise. I can't get enough air to make noise. My groping fingers find the cylinder of spray. He is on top of me, his rough hands tearing at my dress. I struggle to push away from him. I feel more skin scrape from my shoulder. He hits my face again, then my breast. He tears at my panties.
I lunge up with the spray and press the nozzle, covering my own nose with my other arm. Oh god—that arm hurts bad. He scrambles back. His pants are open and I see his dick hanging out, tiny and limp. I start laughing hysterically, still trying to hit him with the pepper spray. He lurches back. My mind is crazed, skittering wildly from thought to thought. The spray must have hit his face. Or maybe his little tiny dick. No, I am not that good of a shot. He pulls away from me. Still laughing hysterically, I scramble to my feet and run, back around the side of the building, down the garage ramp to my car. It is just as dark for him and I know the way.
I glance back and see a light following behind me. I click the key fob and jump into the car. He is at the door trying to get in. I punch it into reverse and, skidding around, take off out of the underground, toward the lights.
Where to? Not the police—not in my line of work, that's for sure. I keep driving. My hands are shaking badly. I haven't driven like this since I was a sophomore in high school and my youngest brother, who was into drag racing, was teaching me to drive. I need to go to ground and get help. The club. Christian has been after me to hire a night clerk/bouncer-type person and I have been considering a fellow law student. He works nights at a club just off campus. I circle around and park at the club. It should close soon and I can catch him then.
I look down at myself under the parking lot lights. I’m a mess. I wipe my face with one of the handy-wipes that live in the car door. Ouch. That stings. I need to get help before the adrenaline wears off. With my good hand I rip off what is left of the torn stockings and panties hanging from my knee. I try to apply handy-wipe first aid to my bleeding knee. I pull my old soft hoody from the seat next to me and get it on my good arm. It’s long enough to cover me where my dress is torn. My left side is not good; there is a loose, scary feeling there. I push to open the car door further. White-hot pain flares through me.
When I come to I’m leaning on the steering wheel. I have no idea how long I was out. I carefully get my feet out of the car. My high heels go back on my bare feet. I stand, close the door and wrapping the hoody close, I make my way to the club entrance. Without looking up, the man at the door says, “We’re closing.”
“I’m here to meet Markham.”
“Markham's not here, lady. He had the early shift.”
“I need to find him then.” The man’s eyes shift from my legs to my face, and he startles a bit.
“He usually studies at the Jolly Tiger when he gets off early. Don't say who told you.”
As I turn to leave I look out the window, scanning for danger. Women learn quickly. Two men are peering into my car in the parking lot. I jerk back.
“Is there a back door I can use?” I ask the doorman. He gestures to the left. He is ushering the clientele out for the night but looks at me and asks if I want him to call 911.
I shake my head no—a mistake. Dizzy.
I find myself walking through a kitchen. The back door leads to a sidewalk past the dumpsters and then between a couple of big old houses. My purse and phone are in the car.
I sigh and step out of my heels, and begin the trek to the diner. It’s only a block or two.
It seems like twenty.
They say that if you follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while. It's just waiting for you and the life that you ought to be living will become the one that you are actually living. That sums up what The House of Bliss Book One by Lora D. Roland is in a nut shell.
We first meet Els after she has inherited Bliss House from her aunt. Els is the kind of woman that sports high heel shoes, rides in limos, and has a certain tabloid notoriety. Then we discover that she paid for her aunt's medical bills (such a good niece) by being a high end escort. But she is in school to be a law student (I see, we use money of ill repute to fund a way of life that may be based one day on a good reputation, hmm). From the very beginning of the book the author tantalizes us with a mystery and an attack on our protagonist. Who by the way, despite being shoved to the payment; punched in the face; and kicked in the ribs, manages to escape her attacker by using pepper spray. All this while rocking a dress and high heels.
Determined not to let the attack keep her down she immediately looks up a fellow classmate, one Jackson Markham, and asks him to be her bodyguard. Since he moonlights as a bouncer in a night club and is an ex-Marine this is right up his alley. Plus the two have history because in addition to running at the same track, they also had a brief hookup a few years ago (but we won't talk about that).
The one thing that stood out to me the more I read this book is the many layers to Els. She's a law student by day and able to talk shop with the best of them, but she makes her living as a 'lady of the evening'. Despite all of this she manages a household with an accountant, a lawyer, a bodyguard, and hires Katharine, a former waitress, to run the B&B that she wants to have in her home. And she does all of this while recuperating from a tear in her spleen, her both broken and cracked ribs, and an assortment of other wounds suffered complements of her mysterious attacker.
When you think about the profession of the protagonist it of course conjures up a whole host of unsavory impressions. Which is why I love the sophistication that Roland endows her main character with. She gives Els a brain for starters (always sexy in a woman). Instead of just worrying about whether her nail polish matches her outfits, as most heiresses are known to do, Els is busy planning a co-housing association and a complete living community. Even the way Jackson and Els fall in love is so timeless and classy. The most fun of all comes from the multiple points-of-view from which the book is written. I always want to be in the know as far as what a character is thinking and feeling. Plus you get to feel like you know a secret that the characters in the book don't.
I really enjoyed reading The House of Bliss Book One by Lora D. Roland and I give it 5 out of 5 stars for the refreshing and uplifting take on a woman that others may look down their noses at. Warning this book contains explicit content.
Arson, romance, and shootings, oh my. There's more to the House of Bliss then meets the eye.
Roland provides her readers with a tantalizing preview into the first chapter of Book Two in the Bliss House Series titled More Bliss. Stay tuned....