Hello everyone.

I am in the last stages of edits and pulling together a cover for my newest book titled Maintenance Night. This is a short novella (just over 14K words) that follows a night in the life of Troy and Lacey. The couple are happily living a D/s marriage, and the book depicts one aspect of their relationship called “Maintenance Night.” The book was supposed to have been released yesterday, but at this point it’s looking more likely to be in the Aug 27-29 time frame.

Please have a look at the excerpt below, and feel free to let me know what you think (even if you hate it).  I will post the cover as well, as soon as it’s finalized.

EXCERPT 

“Maintenance Night” by Trent Evans

‘There will be a new punishment tonight. Be a good girl, and make sure you’re ready when I get home. You have a hard night ahead of you.

 Love, Troy’

Lacey let the note flutter to the floor in front of the fireplace. She leaned on the gray stone of the hearth for a moment, shaking her head. It was Friday.

Apparently, he was serious about Fridays.

She looked at her phone. 5:40 PM.

“Shit.” She hurried down the hallway, knowing she had ten minutes – fifteen minutes tops, if he was late.

But he was never late on Maintenance Night.

Her buttocks twitched. That it would be a long, agonizing night for them was certain.

She jumped in the shower, squealing as her shaking hands turned the hot water up too high. She scrubbed herself scrupulously, knowing there was no part of her body her husband didn’t regard as his. And there would be hell to pay if he found any part of her not squeaky clean.

She cursed the lunchtime jog she’d taken that day at the office. For once, she was keeping to her exercise routine, and it was starting to pay off. She thought she needed to lose ten pounds, even though Troy kept after her about needing to gain ten more pounds. It was just her luck that lithe, athletic Lacey would fall in love with and marry a man like Troy Stanton, who was more interested in the curves of Christina Hendricks from Mad Men than he was the slenderness of a Jennifer Aniston.

Lacey was fairly certain she would end someone just to get the body of either one of those famous women. But the truth was, she was somewhere between those two extremes. Sure, she used to have the sleek lines of Aniston in college, but in the past couple of years, she’d gotten a little bigger. A more pronounced roundness perhaps, a larger butt for certain. Troy referred to it as her “filling out” for him – as if she was gaining weight on purpose. But oddly enough he loved it, loved her new body. She was ashamed of it, was disgusted with herself for it.

Not Troy.

“Dammit Lace,” she said, stumbling out of the shower. “Stop daydreaming!”

She looked down, frowning at the deep tan of the floor tiles. Water was everywhere. There wasn’t time to clean it up. She looked at the clock on the counter.

“Shit!”

Running into their bedroom, she attacked her dripping length of long black hair with a towel. She purposely averted her gaze from the shadowed corner of the room directly opposite their massive bed. She’d be there soon enough.

She zipped the skirt, struggling with the zipper at the top. The patterned, black skirt was breathlessly tight, just as he liked. The Dior stockings were the worst part, for she had to take her time with them. A tear or run would be disastrous. Her delicate hands shook as she rifled through her tops, looking for the one she knew he demanded for Maintenance Nights.

“There you are.” She snatched the ridiculously small tank from the drawer and dashed out to the living room.

The rumble of an engine grew loud outside.

He was home.

She hastily tucked the white tank top into her skirt as the garage door raised and lowered, the cutting out of the motor and the sudden silence snapping her to attention.

Her husband was built like a linebacker, but it was his unsettlingly intense gaze that first caught her eye back in college. He had the kind of rough-around-the-edges dark looks that would have any woman panting, yet for some reason he’d fixated on her.

Just the same way he fixated on her now as he walked through the door.

“Hi honey!” She perked up her smile, seeing him whistling. Troy whistling was usually a good sign.

He didn’t answer her though, and his gaze locked with hers.

Wrong. She was in trouble.

Maintenance Night meant she would be spanked; that was as sure as the sunrise. However, if he was unhappy with his wife for some other reason, he’d happily add on extra ‘tariffs’ as he liked to call them. Sometimes it would be some penance in the corner with her naked bottom on display. Other times it might mean her doing a stint in the Frame, her vulnerable flesh dancing to the tune of the thuddy leather flogger he favored for beating her breasts – though thankfully he saved that particular torment for grievous offenses.

“Afternoon Lace,” he said, flipping through the mail, his hip against the bar that separated their kitchen from the living room. She felt small, her hands clasped behind her back as she stood, alone, in the middle of the expansive great room.

“How was work?” She moved to pick up the laptop case he’d set on the bar, but he grabbed her hand.

“Back in position,” he said, giving her fingers a quick squeeze.

“Sorry, I–”

“Just do it, Lacey. You’re already in enough trouble. Don’t make it worse.”

Lacey’s gaze slanted downward, and she retreated back to her spot. She licked her lips, willing herself to manufacture some saliva as her heartbeat pounded in her ears.

They’d agreed to this. They’d talked about it – a lot. At first Troy hadn’t been sure. She’d convinced him just to try it once. See what he thought. His first time spanking her was almost comical; she’d actually giggled at the tickle that she called that “inaugural spanking”.

That seemed like a thousand years ago.

He walked around her. It was the usual inspection: a smoothing of a skirt hem, a tuck of her unruly dark hair behind her ear.

She yelped as his hand swatted her ass. “Stand up straight. You’re slouching.”

Lacey snapped to ramrod attention.

“More, girl,” he said, standing to the side, just beyond her peripheral vision. “Stick those tits out.”

Straining to obey, she blushed at the way the position arched her back, sticking out her ass and essentially presenting her breasts to her husband.

“That’s better.” He returned to stand before her, looking down upon her from his great height.

Lacey knew better than to be fooled by his pleased tone at her obedience. This was just the beginning.

“You know what day this is, don’t you?”

Her eyebrow quirked upward. “Friday?”

“Sir,” he growled, not quite suppressing an amused curve of his lips.

“Friday, Sir.”

“Yes, that’s right.” He moved around her again, and stood close behind her. The movement of his lips brushed the edge of her ear. “And what happens on Fridays?”

The whispered words washed over her, and she shivered as the coiling began deep in her belly. “Spanking.”

“Maintenance, Lacey.” He clasped the nape of her neck in his big hand, his finger gently stroking under her chin. ”You need maintenance.”

When she was struggling, crying, pleading as she lay over the steel hard slabs of his muscular thighs, she wasn’t sure she’d characterize herself as ‘needing’ it. But when a girl’s ass is on fire, the tears streaming down her face, she isn’t exactly thinking straight.

She dreaded this part. It was…participation. Agreement.

“Yes Sir. I need to be spanked.”

“Go on.” His hand tightened.

“Because – because, I’ve disobeyed you.”

But I haven’t!

It didn’t matter, of course. Maintenance spankings were instituted in their marriage because Troy felt they were useful for correcting his wife for any minor misdeeds she may have committed during the week, and as a way to reinforce the power dynamics of their relationship.

Troy released her nape, his hands moving down and across the upper swells of her breasts. She wished she’d been allowed a bra to make them seem perkier, but he was more interested in easy access to her breasts than he was her vanity.

“Do you have anything to tell me?” His fingers deftly eased over the hard points of her nipples, the tips blatantly displayed under the snug tank top.

“I . . .I forgot to tell you when my period ended.”

In one of the most shocking orders she’d ever received from her husband, he’d decreed that she was to inform him when she started and ended her period. She’d had no idea why at the time, but the first time she called him at work with those embarrassing two words “I started”, she understood why.

His whispered “Good girl” had made her both shudder and sigh. It was mortifying, but his making her inform him was just another subtle aspect of his control, a sliver of her independence taken away.

He shook his head, his fingers catching each of her nipples in a firm clench. The thin fabric of her top offered scant protection.

“When.”

She craned her head back at him. “I’m not – sure.”

“Try again.” His fingers squeezed and she gasped in pain.

“Two . . . maybe three days ago.” She wasn’t really sure, but she feared her hesitation might look like deception.

His fingers tightened further, her nipples screaming. She bit her lower lip, stifling her yell. “What did we agree you would do Lacey?”

Oh God, don’t make me say it.

“Troy, please. Can’t we just—”

“Say it Lacey,” he said, steel creeping into his voice.

She swallowed, the humiliation almost too much to bear. “I’m to tell you when my menstrual period begins and when it ends.”

“And if you don’t?”

“I – If I don’t, I’ll be punished.”

He lightly slapped both of her breasts, and walked around her, shaking his head in mock concern. She felt like a mouse in a cat’s jaws as he crossed his arms over his massive chest, his dark gaze boring into her – relentless, demanding. “Did you think it would just be taken care of on Maintenance Night?”

“No! I wouldn’t–”

“Be quiet.” He waved a hand in front of her. “The time for explaining is done. This’ll be extra.”

Her eyes went wide. “Troy!”

His hand grasped her throat and she caught her breath. He stepped closer, speaking into the hair above her temple. “Be quiet Lacey.”

She dropped her eyes, nodding miserably.

“Good. At least you can still follow some directions.”

She tried to suppress the trembling she knew he could feel through her body. Extra meant more pain, more humiliation, and more disapproval from her husband.

Lacey hated his disapproval, but she detested the humiliation of calling to inform him her pussy had stopped seeping blood.

Now, as she stood there, his hand around her neck like a living collar, she knew how stupid she’d been.

Maintenance spankings were bad enough – and now she’d gone and made it worse.

He leaned in close, his dark, piercing gaze freezing her in place. “You asked for this. You need this. So why do you still disobey me?”

She couldn’t bear to look, her gaze sliding away. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

“Look at me Lacey.”

Her gaze reluctantly met his, and her breath caught at the possessive lust in his eyes, a look that had her pussy moistening even as she shivered with dread.

“You like it, don’t you?”

She looked down once more, the blush on her face burning bright.

He pressed his lips to her forehead, the cool smell of his cologne washing over her. “Then we’ll get you plenty of what you like, little girl.”

Troy was still a moment, his hand squeezing her neck uncomfortably before he stepped away, saying, “Come into the living room, Lacey.”

Copyright © 2012, Trent Evans