Pat Powers

This collection of five erotically supercharged short stories features strong plots, strong characters, and strong sexual bondage themes.

 Fans of the Star Wars movies will enjoy "Slave Gaia" about a beautiful princess captured by a sluglike alien gangster. Powers displays a thorough knowledge of SF fandoms by having "Princess Gaia's" metal bikini become a device which binds, gags and sexually torments Princess Gaia at Jiggi the Hunn's will, because it's made of "memory metal" a futuristic substance that can change shape and move via programming. And true to tradition, Powers' Princess Gaia is no pushover -- she uses the mental training she received as a princess to outwit and outlast her cruel master.

"The Wrangler" is a modern film noir, the story of a caper gone wrong and the effect it has on the lives of the participants. It's set in a near future United States in which kidnapping the children of the wealthy has become commonplace. When the Man spots Christine Willock, daughter of a bioengineering multimillionaire, at a liquor store, he calls up the Driver, who handles the getaway car, the Agent, a specialist in mayhem, the Cleaner, a sort of anti-forensics expert and the Wrangler, who keeps their victim properly bound gagged and hooded.

When one of the crew betrays the others, the dark noir crime story takes charge. Powers doesn't stint on the sexual power of Willock's situation, or on the narrative drive of his story -- he combines both to produce a highly erotic story that reads like film noir as everyone struggles to survive in a web of deceit and death.

"The Mmmphing in Cell 49" is a psychological horror story. Its protagonist is Mrs. Krautmeyer, a psychiatrist at a women's prison. But as the prison population grew and Supermax prisons for unruly inmates became increasingly expensive, a new, less expensive method of handling unruly prisoners is devised -- Total Restraint.

Under Total Restraint policies, unruly prisoners are subject to an increasingly strict regimen of enforced nudity and bondage for increasingly long periods of time if their behavior does not improve. And they are also constantly raped by opportunistic guards and prisoners while in Total Restraint.

In this situation, Krautmeyer's job is transformed into a desperate attempt to keep those prisoners subject to Total Restraint penalties sane. Powers combines familiar women in prison bondage fantasies with an unfamiliar domain -- the cautionary tale -- to produce something entirely new.

In "Doin' Time In The Blue Shadows" cost-saving measures create a nightmarish situation. In this case, women's prisons have decided to decrease costs through a work-release program that involves prisoners being chained in a room where male visitors are able to have their way with them ... for a fee. And since the prisoners are potentially violent, they must be bound and gagged at all times.

The protagonist of this story is a prisoner participating in that program, a former soccer mom. Her desperate desire to return to her family leads her to "volunteer" for the program -- all she has to do is let anyone with a few dollars to spare make a slex slave of her.

Finally, "Enslaved" is the lightest piece of the series, the story of a traveling businessman who passes the time on trips as an airport lounge Lothario. He hooks up with an airport lounge babe and she takes him to her home, and introduces her to her slave, a beautiful young submissive. But there's a secret to their relationship, an O. Henry style twist.

Five of the most intense, erotic short stories you'll ever read bring an erotic twist to genre fiction in the PowersPack collection. In "Slave Gaia" a beautiful Slavegirl Gaia must find a way to endure the torments of Jawa the Hunn, the kinky alien gangster who is her master. In "The Wrangler," a kidnaping victim's life depends on her captor's professionalism to stay alive. In "The Mmphing In Cell 49" a prison psychiatrist must maintain the sanity of prisoners who are gagged, hooded and bound for ... economic reasons. In "Doin' Time In The Blue Shadows" a soccer mom finds herself a legal sex slave thanks to her husband's indiscretion and a new kind of prison work program. And in "Enslaved," a casual pickup leads to a threesome with two lesbians whose relationship isn't as it seems. Powers' combination of strong plots, strong characters and intense erotic scenes make for truly absorbing stories.