The Opposite of Love

“The Opposite of Love” by Dahlia Salvatore

Blurb:

What do you do when fate doesn’t offer you a happily ever after?

Everyone must choose his or her own path.

I chose to play pretend.

I lived every day with guilt, frustration, and dissatisfaction. Despite the fact that we loved each other, my husband didn’t want me. Counselors and doctors had no answers for us. For a long time, I longed for something I couldn’t have. For love, I sacrificed pleasure. I struggled against desires … until I got stuck in a cabin during a raging blizzard with Luc Partridge.

And I simply couldn’t ignore the truth anymore…

EXCERPT

CHAPTER FOUR

If you’ve made it this far without scoffing, putting down the book, and browser window to write an ugly review of my memoir, I applaud you. Like I said, I’m not perfect. I made a choice, to play pretend, to allow Luc Partridge to soil my chastity. But damn was it good. I wish you could know how good it was. Luckily for you readers, you probably don’t know the pain of a sexless marriage. Or maybe you do, but your morality is stored in some proverbial, unscalable, tungsten-carbide fortress.

I’m happy there are women out there who have the ability to resist the urge. I am. Honestly. I know it’s hard to tell by reading the words on the page, but I’m not being facetious.

But, as you can plainly see, I couldn’t resist. I was weak. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my husband. It was that I hadn’t been able to find a suitable replacement for sex. To this day, I still believe there isn’t one. You can drink all the wine and eat all the chocolate and pasta in the world, but nothing beats being physically loved by another person. And that’s part of my personal truth.

That’s what this book is about, my personal truth, my life, and my mistakes.

You have yours and I have mine. There’s not a single one of you who hasn’t made mistakes. Even if they taste different in your mouth when you chew them, or present themselves in a different shade of wrong than mine do… they are still mistakes.

I love people for their errors and imperfections, and even if you don’t love me for mine, you certainly shouldn’t hate me for them.

You see, taking a lover for myself was the first real selfish thing I’d ever done. I’d always been self-sacrificing, had always taken the burden of the work for every problem on myself. I had given Dan every day of my life since our relationship began, and hadn’t received what I thought was my equal due: to be loved as a woman should, as a soul inside a body that needed passion.

Luc was all passion, which is something I will elaborate on as my story continues.

Where was I before? Ah, yes, the owner’s cabin.

If we fast-forward to the end of the trip, we find ourselves looking down on a diminished blizzard. The snow had cleared and the sky had turned a pale shade of blue. I was sore, but that renewal I’d expected had definitely come. I hoped it was there to stay.

**Find “The Opposite of Love”: Amazon Barnes & Noble Goodreads

* * * * *

**About author Dahlia Salvatore: Dahlia is a thirty-two-year-old female author living in Seattle, Washington with her husband. She comes from Coos Bay, Oregon and moved to Seattle six years ago. She loves the west coast and doesn’t see herself anywhere else.

Her influences include contemporary writers J.K. Rowling, Mary Balogh, Christina Dodd, Stephanie Laurens, Laurell K. Hamilton, Anne Rice, Stephen King, and many many others.

**Contact Dahlia: Website Facebook Twitter

* * * * *

**GIVEAWAY**

Click HERE to enter the Rafflecopter giveaway!

* * * * *