Book: Power Play: Resistance

I don’t understand Jonathan’s move from zero (meeting Bran at the bar) to 200 (spending $8K on a suit, cooking him dinner and cuffing him to the bed the next night), why he’s so enamored of Bran that he’s pushing so far, so fast.  I got the fast face-fuck in the alley the night they meet - people do that all the time, but the rest?  Not so much.

I did not find either of the men to be in-character as they were described.  Jonathan is not sadistic, or was not portrayed to be, despite the fact that he said he was more than once - he struggles internally too much to be someone who enjoys giving pain.

This story was not romantic or sexy or sensuous or erotic or even educational about the S&M lifestyle.  I just kept hoping there was something there, and it never showed up.  If this is truly an example of a TPE, I want no part of that.  At all.

Bran is too Alpha to really be a sub - he struggles too much internally to enjoy submitting to someone else, and he does not enjoy the pain.  His body responds, no doubt, and he says he’s having some of the best sex of his life, but seriously, except when he's actually orgasming, he's not enjoying any of it.  Three million dolllars is not worth the kind of mind-fuck Jonathan’s putting him through.

Jonathan punished Bran more than once for using his safeword.  It’s only OK to use it if Jonathan thinks Bran is actually at his limit.  I get the concept of not using the safeword willy-nilly, but there were at least two times that Bran's internal dialogue told me he was at his limit, and Jonathan ignored it and kept going.  What's the point of even having a safe-word?

Basically, at the end of this book, I’m left wondering why Jonathan wants to Top someone he can't respect, why Bran can’t tell Jonathan and his three million to fuck off, and why either of them are even doing this.  Except for the first time in the alley, none of the sex was hot - I didn’t get the feeling Bran was willingly engaged at any time, just his body.

If my mind is elsewhere during sex, as in “not there at all” there is something wrong, and the person with me should notice and do something about it.  I’m not talking about the pain/pleasure of subspace, but the mind going away because what’s happening to the body is unacceptable.

Aside from all that, the book was well-written and I found few errors of the technical kind.  Any BDSM errors are in my own mind, because my personal experience with the lifestyle is minimal.