Almost Fear, Nearly Pleasure

By Valentine Glass

When the planes hit, William--her mother's ex-boyfriend and the man who nearly raised her--swoops in to rescue Heather from her senior year of high school. Her parents are missing in New York City and neither knows what has become of them. He takes her back to his house where his comfort takes an erotic edge. Over hours, what started innocent takes the virginal Heather through a world of pleasure that makes her ache to be William's slut. But can she allow herself this forbidden lust? Can William?

Based on true events.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Valentine Glass
• Release date: Dec 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463219218

Valentine Glass

Valentine Glass is a feminist smut peddler living on the East Coast on the United States. Yes, her name is actually Valentine because she was born in the middle of February and her parents clearly never loved her. When not contributing to the delinquency of adults, she sorts books in basements and takes long strolls where she gets very lost. She can be reached on Twitter @glassvalentine.

Book preview

Based on true events.

It was days after my eighteenth birthday when the towers fell. I was barely a week into my senior year.

My parents were working in New York City. Not in the towers, but close enough that their survival was immediately in question. Their working in the city had always filled me with paranoia. I never wanted to go further south than Westchester if I could help it. New York City was too heady a concept, far too packed with noise and people.

After the announcement of the attacks less than a hundred miles away, I could have driven home with one of my friends. Who could have blamed anyone on 9/11 for skipping out on the rest of classes?

The day was still young when it happened, a day that felt filled with tremendous potential to that point, the weather lovely. A day where this attack could have happened ought to have been torrential rain and ominous thunder, but it was instead a perfect day for a picnic. I wore a new outfit, a maroon baby doll dress that, despite how skinny I tended to be despite exercise, made it seem that I might have been concealing a more feminine figure.

Had I left with my friends, allowing one of them to cloister me in their homes or come to mine, I don't know what the day would have brought me.

I was numb, sitting in the auditorium as the school tried to keep us placated until our terrified parents picked us up. The principal tried to hide his terror under professionalism, which I appreciated, but it was a thin veneer. The administration did not want us to wander away, not knowing what else was out there, what threat. My parents were missing. They could not come to soothe me and tell me that we would survive until the end of the week. New York City, a place I had never loved, a city I thought to be untouchable, had been dealt a heavy blow. I would have done almost anything for someone to comfort me.

Instead of my parents materializing, William came to pick me up. My mother had dated him in college before meeting my father, who stole her away during a weekend. Yet, they remained as close as family. I don't think I would be capable of that generosity with someone who had dumped me, but I haven't given myself many opportunities to find out. At eighteen, I had done approximately as much as my friends were doing at thirteen. Certainly, far less than they were doing by fifteen.

Despite being as old as my parents, William retained a boyish handsomeness and a dress style that was always almost hip: tailored button-down shirts and well-fitting jeans. If I didn't know him so well, if he had not changed my diapers a few times when I was a baby, I might have harbored a schoolgirl crush on him. William would not have passed for a leading man, but he would have slotted in nicely as the character actor whom the heroine dumps in the third act for a persistent rogue. He wore his hair shaggy, framing his long face, his cheekbones high, his skin smooth despite his stubble this day. He had an effortless regality, like someone third from the throne. I asked my mother once why she had chosen my father, less of a charmer or looker, over William. She implied that my dad ate pussy like a champ, information I had yet to scrub from my brain.

The moment I saw William enter the auditorium, I ran to throw my arms around him, unembarrassed as I might otherwise have been by the affection. He would have carried me out of there in his arms if I had let him.

I didn't have