"Three little words. I was sold."
Those words set the tone of the entire story and I was immediately invested, eager to learn all that had led Tess to her despair and the kind of fight she would have to endure in order to pull herself free.
While on holiday in Mexico with her boyfriend Brax, Tess Snow, a young Australian university student, found herself thrown in a nightmare filled with violence, humiliation and the loss of free will. On a scooter excursion through the seaside streets of Cancun, Brax and Tess stumble upon an old, dilapidated cafe. Desperate for a reprieve from the heat and a drink to soothe his thirst, Brax is insistent the stop is essential before continuing on their journey. Hesitantly, Tess follows him inside where they order drinks from a suspicious looking woman. As they're waiting for their sodas, Tess is gripped with an unwelcoming feeling of dread. Unable to explain her mind's eerie thoughts, she slowly scans around the seedy establishment and catches the woman being manhandled by an angry male. Brax, completely unaware of the tension emanating from Tess, excuses himself to go to the restroom- after taking a sip of his coke, which had just been placed in front of him by the woman behind the counter. Protesting his decision, Tess tried to reason with him to wait and pleaded for a quick departure. Still unfazed by any hint of danger walks out of sight, leaving his young girlfriend alone in the cafe. As Tess continues to take in her surroundings, her terrorizing thoughts slowly come to life as the door is suddenly blocked by three men. Instincts taking over, she tries to escape, screaming for Brax and impressively fights her would-be captors. Outnumbered and outmatched, Tess is soon knocked out, gaining consciousness in a large vehicle hands bound and in the company of other frightened young women.
Over the next several days, Tess constantly battles her jailers, her abusers; her spirit- she formulates escape plans only to acquiesce to the brutal fists of the men imprisoning her. As if she were an animal on a farm, Tess is branded with a tattoo of a barcode on her wrist and implanted with a tracking device behind her ear. A warning is given, she can either adapt to her new life and be sold to a master who will cherish her or continue to fight and end up beaten and broken with death as her only refuge. Tess vows that a harsh reckoning will befall all her captors, keeping the fire burning in her soul.
"One day, you will suffer as your victims suffer. One day, Karma will come and bite your ass."Suddenly, Tess is whisked away after being informed that she has been sold. She is again rendered unconscious and wakes up hooded, bound by her wrists and ears popping from a descending aircraft. Hurriedly, she is thrust into the arms of another male who Tess deduces will be the one to deliver her to her new owner. Her hood is removed and she sees the initials "QM" on the side of a private jet. As her new guards try to load her into the plane, she runs barefoot in a desperate attempt to flee her new life. Aching and bruised from the beatings she received while in Mexico, Tess is unable to resist when she is forcibly tackled and heaved into the jet. Once again, she finds herself without power or any means of escape.
Filled with anger and resistance, Tess refuses to bow down or submit to her new reality or her new "master." Q Mercer was unlike the brutish and heinous men who tormented her in Mexico He was unlike her docile and handsome Brax. In Q, Tess saw a man with power and a carefully hidden vulnerability. He had good looks and a well built physique. Q held cruelty in his eyes yet possessed the ability to look at her with guilt, regret and pain. He was a man of extreme contradictions and Tess had an immediate and unwanted attraction to him. In a large manor in France, Tess Snow realized her greatest battle did not take place in her unfulfilled years in Australia, nor did it occur in her time spent with sadistic men in Mexico. No, the greatest battle of her life and her spirit would be taking place in a French manor with a man who threatened to break her down in order to own her mind, body and soul.
The rest of the story is a constant push and pull between Q and Tess. There always seems to be a deep rooted internal struggle inside Q Mercer which tears at Tess, twisting her already complicated myriad of emotions. There's a few important points which lead the pair down paths they seem to be conflicted to travel through. Will they be able to overcome the pain that cloaks them in darkness or will they search a way to shatter the restraints of their psyche and find comfort and solace with one another.
Tears of Tess delves into the grueling battle of opposing desires for both our heroine and our antihero. It was fascinating to go through the constant tearing of Q and Tess's inner selves. Their needs ran so parallel yet they often found themselves on opposite ends of the battlefield. One moment, they would share a closeness and a bond so strong and impenetrable and the next, there would be a great divide that clawed at their already frayed spirits.
Tess struggled with the sense that for the first time in her life, she felt as if she belonged somewhere to someone. She had a place where she felt free though still bound by the invisible chains of Q's ownership. How could she feel so comforted by a man who held her captive?
Q struggled with demons from a past he longed to forget and a dark hunger he found difficult to bury. A task which became impossible as soon as Tess Snow walked through the doors of his manor. There was a closely guarded secret which Q kept hidden from Tess which would shed light into how he became the man he is today.
Pepper Winters did a phenomenal job of writing two characters with so much depth and complex emotion that I know I'll find myself thinking about them long after I type the last word into my review.I Tears of Tess isn't so much a dark read as it is a look into the shadowed world we sometimes place ourselves in. It pushed me to examine certain aspects of my own life I may have closed off in order to conform to the will and expectations of our society entails. For the added benefit of debating a good moral dilemma on top of a story with great heroes and sensual scenes, I gave this first book in the Monsters in the Dark Series four stars and I would highly recommend this for all to read.
***I received this ARC in exchange for an honest review.***
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