MauledRating: 4 stars
Buy Links: 
 Amazon | All Romance | Amazon UK
Length: Novella


Mac and Gunny are enjoying their retirement from the Marines and their new married life together.  For their honeymoon, Mac plans a trip to New York to visit a BDSM club.  The men have been playing a bit with BDSM, and practicing submission often helps Gunny deal with the stress with his past life in the military.  But this would be the first time the men have taken things public and they are both excited, as well as a little nervous.

Mac and Gunny end up at Guards of Folsom and spend an evening getting to meet other Doms and subs, as well as watching a live BDSM show.  They each get a chance to try on their roles and see how it feels to have a bit more structure to their play.  Gunny especially enjoys the peace of kneeling at Mac’s side and letting all his worries fade away.  The two men have a sexy night to remember, which only reinforces the love they have for one another.

So Mauled is kind of a crossover story, in that it features Mac and Gunny, characters from Peterson’s Beyond Duty, and brings them to Guards of Folsom, the club from her Guards of Folsom series.  I absolutely love Mac and Gunny so I was thrilled to get this little epilogue to their story.  We get to catch up on their lives, see how they are settling in after their retirement and marriage, and get a couple of hot, sexy encounters.  I am also a huge fan of Guards of Folsom, so I loved that the book is set there and we get a chance to reconnect with some of those folks as well.  Mac and Gunny get to see all four couples/threesomes from that series while they are at the club, and we get a tiny bit of catch up with them as well.  Although the book takes place at the club, however, I would say the feel of it is much more Mac and Gunny’s story.

As much as I enjoyed reconnecting with these guys and found them super sexy, I do feel like there were a couple of areas that felt a bit incomplete.  There is a lot of set up about the guys having this kinky night together, and even as they tour Folsom they comment on how excited they are for the room with all the pain toys.  However, when they ultimately get together, things are pretty tame and fairly quick, with just some light bondage.  Not that there is anything wrong with a scene like that, it just felt like we got a lot of buildup for something super kinky (and Peterson definitely knows how to write kink), but then ultimately things were pretty low key.  There is also much made of Mac’s conflict with his brother and the fact that he doesn’t want to go home for Christmas and have to see him.  This is brought up multiple times, but then it doesn’t really go anywhere.  We don’t see their ultimate meeting and it is just kind of mentioned but not dealt with in any way.

Overall I found this one very enjoyable however. If you are fans of either series, you aren’t going to want to miss Mauled. And if you aren’t familiar with Mac and Gunny or Guards of Folsom, this is a great story to try things out.  Especially because it is being offered for free at both All Romance Ebooks and Dreamspinner’s store.  So this was a fun, sexy story and a great chance to reconnect with some old friends.

P.S. For some reason Amazon is being grouchy and pricing this at 99 cents even though it is supposed to be free. So I’d suggest picking up your copy from ARe or DSP rather than paying for it from Amazon.

Cover Review: As always with the Guards of Folsom series, the cover is awesome and super sexy.  Love it.

A review copy of this book was provided by Dreamspinner Press.

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