Hard Limits, Soft Hands
MM Contemporary Romance
by Jace Wilder
Free via BookFunnel
Pairing: MM
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno
Tropes: Escort/Client, Age Gap, Praise Kink, Touch Starved, Only Soft For You, Slow Burn, Hurt/Comfort
A numb defense lawyer hires an exclusive escort for brutal scenes just to feel something again — only to fall for the man whose soft hands are rebuilding him from the inside out.
Aaron Blake doesn’t feel anything anymore.
He wins cases for monsters. He goes home to an apartment that looks like nobody lives there. He picks up strangers in hotel bars and fucks them in bathrooms and feels nothing — not the guilt, not the pleasure, not the shaking in his hands that won’t stop no matter how many bourbons he pours. He’s the best criminal defense attorney in Manhattan. He’s also slowly disappearing.
Luca Santos doesn’t fix people. He makes space for them to fix themselves.
A high-end escort who specializes in kink scenes wrapped in methodical aftercare, Luca has rules: no attachment, no between-session contact, no kissing. His clients pay for controlled intensity and the radical experience of being cared for. He’s very good at his job. He’s also very good at keeping his heart out of it.
When Aaron fills out Luca’s intake form and writes I want to feel anything in the emotional-needs section, Luca knows this one is different. Dangerous. The kind of client whose damage could pull him under if he isn’t careful. He takes Aaron on anyway — and the sessions that follow will wreck them both in ways neither of them saw coming.
He asked for pain. Luca gave him praise. And the praise broke him open wider than any belt ever could.
HARD LIMITS, SOFT HANDS — a high-heat MM romance about the escort who refuses to let his client self-destruct and the lawyer who discovers that wanting softness isn’t weakness.
You’ll love this book if you enjoy:
✅ Escort/client romance with full sex-worker-positive portrayal
✅ “I’ll pay you to wreck me” meets “I’ll hold you until you’re whole”
✅ Praise kink so devastating it rewires a man’s self-worth
✅ Touch-starved hero who hasn’t been held in years
✅ The safeword scene that will make you cry
✅ Age gap (35/28) with a caretaking top who catches feelings
✅ 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Graphic, explicit, emotional, 10 full scenes
✅ HEA guaranteed
⚠️ Content Warning: This novel contains extremely explicit sexual content (graphic MM scenes including impact play, restraint, edging, blindfold/sensation play, and power exchange), strong language, depictions of panic attacks and PTSD flashbacks, moral injury from legal work, and emotional intensity. Sex-worker-positive portrayal. Intended for readers 18+.
📖 Read Chapter One Free
Not sure yet? Read the full first chapter right here.
Chapter 1: Verdict
The jury foreman didn’t look at my client when he read the verdict.
That was always the tell. When they looked at the defendant, it meant guilty — one last glance at the monster before they put him away. When they looked at me, it meant they were still trying to convince themselves they’d done the right thing.
“Not guilty.”
The courtroom exhaled. Behind me, Richard Davenport let out a sound — a soft, satisfied grunt, like a man who’d just had a steak cooked exactly to his liking. To my left, his wife pressed a tissue to her dry eyes and performed a sob for the gallery. Across the aisle, the prosecution team sat very still, their faces carved from professional disappointment and private fury.
I didn’t look at anyone. I straightened my notes into a neat stack, capped my pen, and waited for the judge to dismiss the jury. My face was exactly what it needed to be: composed, unsurprised, mildly grateful. The face of a man who’d done his job.
“Counselor.” Davenport leaned into me, his breath warm and cologne-soaked against my ear. “You’re a goddamn genius.”
“You’re welcome, Richard.”
What I didn’t say: Don’t touch anyone on your way home. What I didn’t say: The housekeeper was telling the truth and we both know it. What I didn’t say: I watched the security footage your tech guy doctored and I used it anyway because that’s what you paid me seven hundred thousand dollars to do.
I shook his hand. His palm was dry and warm. Mine was steady.
The full first chapter continues — over 4,000 words of Aaron Blake’s world before Luca Santos changes everything. Download the full novel free to keep reading.
Want to keep reading? The full novel is yours free.
🔥 Want an EXCLUSIVE Bonus Chapter?
Appendix B: Make-Up Sex Protocols — A scene TOO HOT for Amazon
Saturday morning. The retainer agreement is on the table. The rope is in the closet. And Appendix B — the make-up sex protocol Aaron left blank — is about to get drafted with Luca’s mouth on his neck and the kitchen chair creaking underneath them. The hottest, funniest, most tender chapter in the book — and it’s yours free.
More from Jace Wilder
Browse all Jace Wilder books.
Old Dog, New Tricks
He went to the bar to teach the kid a lesson. The kid taught him how to want things again.
Hard Limits, Soft Hands
His hard limits saved him. His soft hands rebuilt him.
Handled
The Marlowe Building
He moved in broke and broken. The man downstairs decided that was his problem now.
Sweat, Stretch, Submit
He came to sweat. He stayed to surrender.
Step Out of Line
He walked into his dad's kitchen and found the man who used to own him on his knees—proposing to his father.
Brat in the Boardroom
He said “obedience.” The intern said “make me.”
Never Miss a Release
Get new release alerts, exclusive bonus content, and reader-only giveaways.