The Billionaire Submissive by Joely Sue Burkhart
Erotic Contemporary
Released: June 17, 2014
Samhain

Reviewed by Mandi

This book has a really strong start but I had some problems with it after a while ( (pretty sure I’ve said that in 1,000 reviews). When the author sent me the review request, I couldn’t help but be intrigued with a billionaire submissive hero. Donovan Morgan may be wealthy beyond all imagination, but he isn’t pleased sexually. He craves to be dominated, but hates going to clubs, where he could be recognized or just plain embarrassed in public. So as any wealthy person does, he hires a private investigator to seek out a woman named Mistress L, a name he heard spoken at a club he frequented. SHe is elusive, and no one has seen her at the clubs recently. That is because Mistress L aka Lily, has her own confidential client base that keeps her quite busy.

A stain glass artist by day, Lily charges high prices to give those that crave submission their satisfaction at night. She is professional, with a very strict contract that includes complete confidentiality and no sexual contact. But she is one of the best, and highly sought out. Donovan decides to be sneaky and approach her to do a stain glass window in his building, so he can evaluate her and decide if she is the right dominant for him. But from his first glance, he wants her. Lily is much more distant. Donovan comes off as a bratty rich guy who thinks he can get whatever he wants with money, but that is not how Lily works. But, Lily is attracted to him, something that doesn’t happen to her often with clients. So she guardedly agrees to work with him

When we first meet Donovan, we get to learn about who he is and why he wants to find a dominant.

“He wasn’t the kind of submissive who would whine and beg and crawl to his Mistress’s feet and kiss her toes. No. Donovan Morgan wasn’t going down without a fight. The difficulty was finding a Mistress who’d relish the fight as much as him. Someone who was strong enough mentally to bend him to her will, even when he hated every minute of it. Even if he swore he was never coming back. Never giving her what she wanted. She had to be strong enough to make him want to bed his pride to her will. He had to want to surrender.

Lily Harrison might just be strong enough to make me beg.

And I totally believed that Lily is that strong. He goes on further to say he “wants to be conquered” by her. This really made me sit up and take notice. Donovan needs to submit, but with a fight. A big fight. And Lily, when we meet her is so professional and doesn’t take any of his bullshit whiny attitude. I loved that about her. He would growl and froth at the mouth, and she would just sit there and let him act like a fool. The build up to when they finally make their ‘relationship’ happen is very intense and fun. I also liked the fact that Lily isn’t normally attracted to her clients, yet she is to Donovan, so she doesn’t set up the normal client contract/relationship. She realizes she wants more from Donovan than she allows her normal clients to give her. The boundaries they set up are a little more fuzzy, but realistic.

But then we get to the actual D/s part and the relationship stuff and it fizzled. Instead of this huge battle for submission, we get a little battle for submission. I felt let down in their first scene. I never felt Donovan truly had to be conquered. He submits pretty easily. Maybe it’s because he had never had such an experienced Dom and she knew just what to do. But I felt like we were building up to this battle, and I couldn’t wait for Donovan to be slowly brought to his knees, but instead he goes down quite quick.

Their romance plays out okay in the second half of the book, but nothing as memorable as the set-up in this one.

Rating: C+

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