Desire and Delirium — Catherine Johnson

Desire and Delirium: A collection of erotic short stories - retold fairy tales - familiar, but not as you know them. The stories included are based on Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and Little Red Riding Hood.

**~** After Midnight **~**

Sure, everyone knows the story of what happened to me before I married the Prince. They know all about my evil stepmother and my shallow-as-a-puddle stepsisters. They know all about my mysterious, wish-granting guardian. They know all about the balls, the gowns, and the crystal slippers.

What they don't know is what happened afterwards...

**~** Beauty Within **~**

Their tale is as old as time...

Beauty is a dutiful and loving daughter. Circumstances beyond her control twisted and turned everything, until she barely knew which way was up. Her commitment to her family is her only certainty, and taking care of them has become her life.

Adam had a settled life, an advantageous one, but his own selfish actions destroyed it. He has had to learn to live with the consequences of that fateful decision.

Capricious fate brings them together, giving them an opportunity to change their destinies.

But are they brave enough to grasp that chance?

**~** Strange Safety **~**

In the original fairy tale, Goldilocks was an obnoxious little girl - not so in this short story. In this retelling, she is a woman seeking safety, shelter, food. She finds a seemingly abandoned house in the woods and has no choice but to trust in the goodwill of the owners when they return.

In the original fairy tale, the three bears are a family, and so they are in this story, although they are a band of brothers bound by circumstances thicker than blood. When they find a strange woman has made herself at home in their house, there's only one thing to do...

**~** Cry Wolf **~**

Cherry's life is thrown into turmoil when she visits her grandmother and ends up at the centre of a brutal whirlwind of violence, the kind that only ever existed in her nightmares. Afraid and unsure of who she can trust, Cherry is simply trying to pull the pieces back together so that she can reclaim herself.

As she's wandering, lost from her path, she comes across Chris Hunter.

He sees the strong woman that she's forgotten how to be. He holds her, and helps her to remember what she wants from her life.

But her knight in worn denim and scuffed work boots isn't everything he appears to be.