Lord and Master by H.C. Brown 
ASIN B0075IB0EK
Story Rating: 2 out of 5 paddles
Sting Factor (kink): 4 out of 5
When Reynold returns three years later, his lust for David is undiminished. But Lord David has gotten himself into a very nasty
situation. He ran up some gambling debts, which were bought up by a brute named Hale. To keep his father from finding out about his foolishness, David has had to agree to be Hale’s sex slave for ten years. Hale is the kind of master who delights in inflicting pain and humiliation without regard as to whether or not the submissive gets any pleasure from it.
David is in many ways a broken man. He desperately wants to get out from under Hale’s thumb, but he doesn’t think he can ever again find pleasure in the kind of scenes he once played out with Reynold. David still seems to love Lord Reynold, but he also fears him, and most importantly, he doesn’t trust the man any longer.
Reynold is nonetheless determined to get David away from Hale and try to win back his trust. With Lord John’s help, he hatches plans to eliminate Hale and marry David’s sister. The marriage will not only give him the cover of respectability, it will also give him a reason nobody would question to have David close to him. That was one of the reasons he left in the first place; there was no connection between them that would justify the amount of time David spent with Reynold.
Everything goes more or less according to plan, which is one of the issues I had with the story. Nothing really stands in the way of our heroes’ plans. The idea of marrying David’s sister Lady Sarah is suggested almost flippantly by Lord John, but Reynold takes it up immediately. Not only does the girl’s father readily agree to let the rakish lord marry his daughter, he insists that Reynold take David under his wing as mentor.
As for the kink, there’s a fair bit of it, although it’s concentrated in the first few chapters. One of the hottest scenes is the prologue, which takes place before Reynold and David first break. In it, we have Reynold disciplining David for one of his public outbursts. The young lord is tied and caned for his indiscretion. The story then picks up three years later with Reynold’s return to England. He hasn’t had many opportunities to enjoy the company of another man, so the rather slutty Lord John relieves his tension.
We get a few glimpses of what David endures from Hale and his friends, but it isn’t very titillating. After the first few chapters, there’s not much except kissing and groping until the end. We do get a lot of descriptions of what everyone is wearing, including their scents, and the author seems to be one of those with a real hair fetish. No scene is complete without a description of how the hair is done, whether it’s tied or powdered, what color silk is used for the tie, and so on. Like the plot where nothing really gets in the way of our lovers, it all gets a little tiresome after a while. Yes, we understand Lord David has long blond hair, we got that from
the first dozen times you spent a whole paragraph on it.
This is one of those books where some rather good sex is let down by rather weak story-telling. The writing isn’t bad, although there are patches with some rather odd comma placements, it just lacks much drama and focuses too much on irrelevant little details.
Reviewed by Michael Joseph
[...] This review originally appeared in a slightly different form at BDSM Book Reviews. [...]