EXTRACT FOR
Resisting Temptation
(Crimson Rose)

"Are you absolutely sure this is the life you wish to lead?" Mother Superior asked the much younger woman sitting opposite her.

"Yes," Mother Superior," Tanya answered with resounding surety. 

"Very well. In order to determine if you really have what it takes to be a nun here at the Sisterhood of the Veiled Heart, you will be put through a series of tests to see if you truly have what it takes to resist life's temptations. Are you ready?"

"I am ready," Tanya answered, a little less sure about her convictions than before. Unlike many who claim to hear God calling to them, she was doing it to get away from an abusive boyfriend who would do anything to keep her chained. Though she left him many times ??" each ending in a severe beating, she always returned when he started threatening her family and friends. Anyone harboring her was a target and she could no longer live with the prospects of being his slave, or if something happened to a loved one because she refused him. She had restraining orders. He spent time in jail, but nothing swayed his obsession for her. 

This is the only place he will not find me, she thought as she followed the Mother Superior out of the room. More than three hundred miles from where she once called home, the Sisterhood of the Veiled Heart was well off the beaten path and no one knew where she was. Her last call to James was to tell him she was moving across country where he would never find her again. After threats of violence, she hung up on him and turned her phone off.

Walking through the convent, Mother Superior led the prospective nun to a locked door. "This is the point of no return, Tanya. If you go beyond this door you will not be able to leave until your trials are complete. Do you understand?"

"I understand."

"Then please remove all of your clothing."

"Excuse me?"

"Your clothing. Take it all off. You will not be needing it in there. If you are having doubts then perhaps this really isn't the life you wish to live."

"I...yes, Mother Superior," Tanya said, taking off the nun's gown and habit she had been wearing the better part of a month and handing it to the Mother Superior. Next went her bra, panties and shoes and her cheeks flushed in embarrassment. "What will I have to do in there?"

"It will be explained once you are inside. I will ask again, are you certain this is how you wish to spend the rest of your life?"

"It is."

"Then enter, and let the trials begin," the Mother Superior said, retrieving a ring of keys from the folds of her gown and unlocking the heavy door. Pulling it open, she stepped to the side and motioned the novice nun into the short corridor with stairs leading down at the opposite end.

Stepping into the hallway, Tanya jumped when the door closed and locked behind her. With no way to go but forward, she walked to the edge of the steps and peered down into shadow. Taking a deep breath, she descended. And descended. And descended some more. Nearly a hundred steps later, she came to a landing with stairs leading down in the opposite direction than those she came from. Walking down them, she finally came to another landing ending in an ancient looking wooden door. Opening it, she stepped into a small room, empty save for a young woman dressed as a nun but in a much tighter and sexier dress, and doors on the other three walls leading to God knows what.