EXCERPT: “Conquest #1-3”

“Conquest #1-3” by Steam Bijou

Blurb:

Ten Delicious Episodes

Brie Baggio thinks she’s ready… for marriage, kids, the whole shebang. She’s pushing forty, and even though she’s the Senior Anti-Aging Ambassador at Los Angeles’s hottest med spa, Botox can’t paralyze that nagging feeling that it’s now or never. But when she witnesses a wild act of public sex, Brie tears her marriage plans apart and composes a sexual bucket list of scenarios she wants to experience before she settles down. She has life yet to live, lessons to learn, and someone to find—herself—along the way.

Sexy, smart, chock full of pop culture, Conquest is the it-series of the year. Help Brie cross each item off her list.

1. An Older Man

2. A Younger Man

3. A Teacher

4. Her Boss

5. A Woman

6. A Stranger

7. A Threesome

8. In Public

9. Make a Sex Tape

10. Dominate a Man Until He Cries

Ready for some steam? Start the adventure today.

EXCERPT

The women hang in Shavasana, shrouded in poppy-colored yoga hammocks and suspended above the gleam of the studio’s wooden floor. A stranger wandering in might think he had happened upon a room of human-butterfly hybrids in advanced stage of chrysalis, but this is Tuesday night aerial yoga at The Center and Brie is trying her best to breathe, release, renew, rejuvenate, relax here inside her nylon pod.

To say he took it hard would be an understatement. It was a scene of grotesquery not to be forgotten, complete with nasal mucous cascading down to his shirt as he blubbered, and a phone call to his mother—live, on camera, we’re talking Facetime—during which she demanded to speak to Brie, who was forced to exit the clearing to avoid such theater, where she bumped into the jungle lovers, who had heard the cries of the almost-fiancé and, mistaking them for signs of injury or illness, came to see if they could help. The woman patted the pained one’s back as her still-shirtless companion stared at Brie in confusion, and Brie wasn’t sure if she should thank him, ask him for his number, or leap from the nearest cliff.

Gretchen emerges from her hammock first, making eye contact with Brie and bending her wrist to pantomime her desire for a drink. Out comes Peyton next, who taps Bernadette on the feet to wake her. Bern always falls asleep in corpse pose; she’s permanently relaxed. Brie pulls her knees to her chest to enclose herself completely inside the pod, her world a brief oasis of orange until Gretchen says, “Come on, Buddha,” and tilts Brie’s pod so the slick of her Lululemons sends her sliding to the floor. It’s not that she doesn’t want to tell them. It’s just exhausting, all the questions that will come. Her mom is going to shit a hyena.

“Did he do it?” asks the girl who teaches the Pound class coming up next. It doesn’t help that Brie knows everybody here. She’s the Senior Anti-Aging Ambassador at The Center, where women rush in droves at first sign of decreased skin elasticity, lip fullness, eyelash thickness, muscle tone, metabolism, belly flatness, youthful glow, and general confidence in their outward appearance. Botox®, Juvederm®, SmartLipo®, Latisse®, non-surgical nose jobs. Lasers, acids, chemical peels, global thermonuclear war on cellulite. This is Star Wars for women, and it is serious fucking business.

“No,” says Brie, not ready to give up the goose.

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**About author, Steam Bijou:

Steam Bijou is the alter ego of author Jaime Boust, whose work ranges from literotica to anonymously submitted business plans to her favorite failing local retailers. Her fiction includes Book Club, Conquest by her alter ego Steam Bijou, and the forthcoming serial Night Life–a series about a thirty-something mother who, disillusioned by the monotony of motherhood, starts a high-end prostitution ring. The similarities between Ms. Boust and her anti-heroine are startling, minus the prostitution.

Jaime received her formal education at the University of California at San Diego and her informal education on the streets of London, the hills of San Francisco, the sewers of Paris, and the suburban wilds of Oakland. These days you’ll find her dodging traffic in Los Angeles with her husband and two kids. Many things have been said of her: idea machine, portmanteau enthusiast, cutthroat croquet player, national champion cheerleader, world’s spiciest cook. Believe them all.

**Contact Steam: Website Facebook Twitter

**Find the books: Conquest: Episodes 1-3 Conquest: Episodes 4-6 Book Club iBooks Nook Google Play

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