Wishes by Stella and Audra Price

TITLE: Wishes
AUTHOR: Stella and Audra Price
PUBLISHER: Phaze Publishing
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 12k)
GENRE: Paranormal erotic romance
COST: $2.00

When Janey Duvall refuses to help demon prince Cassiel hire assassins from her company, he sends in Djinn Nicodemus Marsh to make her more cooperative. She gets three wishes in exchange for sexual servitude to Marsh for the next 100 hundred years, but what does a girl who already has money and power wish for? Marsh has high hopes for the answer to that, especially when he realizes he’s falling for her.

This is one time that I’m thinking, maybe it wasn’t the best idea to read the first book of a series. This story marks the first in this particular ‘verse for the authors, and from what I can tell, it’s the shortest offering. Subsequent titles are longer, which means that just maybe they get to explore the world the Price sisters introduce in this short story in greater detail. If that’s the case, then I probably should have opted to read one of those instead, because the one thing that keeps this story from scoring higher is most likely its length.

The prose is simple and effective, and if there isn’t anything all that unique about it, at least it isn’t bone-jarringly painful, either. The sex is hot, too, at least for this reader. However, I have to admit it hits a kink for me. Janey is submissive to Marsh's rough sexual nature, and he uses coarse language with her, taunting her and the like. That’s not always to readers’ liking. I also liked each of Janey’s different sides, the submissive side that I already mentioned and her stronger personality outside of the relationship.

Where this story didn’t work for me is in any sense of a smooth arc. The initial reason for Marsh's presence in Janey’s life is resolved almost immediately upon their meeting, leaving the entire rest of the story about all the sex they have and the wishes she makes. The conflict is essentially stripped away. The authors attempt to introduce a secondary conflict over halfway through when Janey starts making her wishes, but without really having that much investment in Marsh, I didn’t buy it. He is never much more than a sexual object in this, which, if the romance is to be believed, is not enough. I also had to suspend a lot of disbelief in their initial meeting. He simply walks into her Rome apartment and they almost immediately start fucking. I mean, she literally has two lines of dialogue before she is touching herself in front of him. The next line, he pins her to the wall. It doesn’t mesh at all with the brief introduction we’ve had of Janey, and in fact, given her very strong interaction with Cassiel prior to this scene, I was quite taken aback by her submissiveness to Marsh. I wanted just a little bit more to smooth it over so that I could believe it more, but unfortunately I didn’t get that.

The world the authors introduce is an interesting one, but with the brevity of this story, it never really gets explored. The conflict of the assassins is almost immediately tossed aside for repeated sexual encounters, which is a shame because it sounds like there is a lot of room for exploration. I think for readers interested in this as a series, it might be better off to start with one of the longer later books. They probably won’t miss out on much by not reading this one.

Readability	7/10 – Nothing jarring, nothing difficult, but nothing hugely memorable, either.
Hero	5/10 – I never get a real sense of personality from him, though I’ll admit to responding to his rough sex talk.
Heroine	6/10 – The different sides of her are interesting on their own, but they never mesh well within the context of the story.
Entertainment value	6/10 – The sex hit kink buttons for me, but the initial impetus for the characters meeting is too easily resolved to make this much more than sex scenes strung together.
World building	6/10 – There is some intriguing stuff here in regards to the world these people/creatures reside, but it’s never explored to its best advantage.
TOTAL:	30/50