Most of us might not consider this – especially if we’re in the camp that is sick to death of billionaire stories, but billionaires have been with us in their more archetypal forms since the time of telling stories in the cave around the fire.
The truth is that power and control, in all their guises have a facet of raw, primal lust, and few things are more darkly and secretly fascinating than the idea of being forced to give up control and finding that we like it. Being possessed, being under someone else’s thrall, being taken to the realms of ecstasy, whether it’s on Mount Olympus, in Dracula’s dungeon lair or in a penthouse apartment, is a part of that dark fantasy that makes up, not only the mythological seductions, but every vampire story, every monster story, and yes … every billionaire romance.
Why is that? What makes that dark fantasy such a powerful one. Well, I have a theory, and I’ve been toying with it ever since I penned my first PNR story. I think that no matter how appalled we are by the thought, no matter how stubborn and independent we are, we want to know what it’s like to be with and to be taken by a force so much greater than us that we have no control. What’s it like to be bitten and seduced by a vampire? What’s it like to make love to a monster? What’s it like to be seduced by a god? What’s it like to be the object of lust for a billionaire? And ultimately what price are we willing to pay for entrance into Club Billionaire, Club Olympus, Club Undead?
It’s more than lust. It’s more than love. In fact it’s all a little mercenary really. We want, we long for, a chance to take into ourselves all that we’re not. We want to know their secrets. We want those divine, powerful, filthy rich, forbidden lovers to reveal to us their inner workings just as much as they want to possess us. The ultimate question then becomes can we pay the price and survive to tell the tale? Can we achieve our HEA and find some sense of balance in a world to which we are the interloper? Oooh! It’s always so much fun to find out. And what I am discovering as I delve deeper and deeper into Magda/Medusa’s world and that of her Consortium, is that the answer is … complicated. Sometimes the Happy Ever After looks more like “what the f*ck is this then?” Sometimes the true adventure only begins just when the HEA is lost in a constantly changing landscape in which we’re strangers. Sometimes there are far greater things at stake.
Being whisked away into the arms of a demon or a vampire, or even a gorgon also means while there may not be a need to wear a condom, there is quite literally no such thing as safe sex. You never know what will happen if you sleep with the monsters, and once that decision is made, in a world where rules don’t apply, we can’t help but be affected. The question then becomes, will we survive the change?
