Our heroine is a mature, capable, once divorced wife and mother who loves her current husband more than anything in the world. When he tells her he’d like her to be his Mistress with a capital M and he her slave, she’s a bit nonplussed. Freaked out is more like it, but she pulls up her big girl panties and gives it a go. Anything to keep her husband happy and make him smile.

Our hero is also a once divorced husband and father who is comfortable enough with his body, his wife, and his life to finally articulate his needs. It isn’t easy to tell your sweetie that getting trussed up and taking it in the backend is what turns you on, but he does. And his Mistress and wife, bless her heart, rises to the occasion (um, so do other parts).

But what happens when the Domme really doesn’t want to be the Domme? Or said Domme gets burn-out? Who does she turn to? And can she meet both her own and her husband’s needs without freaking out herself or turning into something she loathes and fears?

I read Domme by Default out loud to my spouse on a particularly long car ride. This story captured both his and my attention. Told in alternating first person views of heroine and hero, the reader is introduced to the inner workings of a long-married couple striving to meet each other’s needs in the bedroom and in life. It rings so true it’s painful in spots to read. That all the characters are presented as basically normal human beings is a nice change in a genre dominated by caricatures. All I can say is: well written, well-edited, well-played, Tymber Dalton.