Rating: 2.25 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | All Romance | Amazon UK
Length: Novella
The last time Noah was with a man was six years ago. His strict father and his promising career as a lawyer leave no room for him to think about men. Noah thought he was doing okay suppressing his desires until he takes one look at Shea, the sexy bartender serving him a drink. All of Noah’s hidden desires surge forward and, despite trying to talk himself out of it, all he sees is Shea.
Shea shows Noah all that he has been missing and wanting and needing and as a dominant lover taking control, Shea brings all of Noah’s deepest, darkest fantasies to life. But Shea already had his heart broken by a man that was in the closet and he has no intention of doing it again when Noah tells him their relationship has to be secret. Noah will have to be brave and Shea will have to give a little in order to make any type of relationship work.
It’s great when an author can really set the stage for the initial attraction. Wright does that well from the beginning as Noah first sees Shea and the attraction is tangible. Everything about Shea gets to Noah, including his possessions.
Noah leaned against his car and discreetly adjusted his rapidly growing erection. This was going to be impossible. Just looking at the man’s truck had him getting hard.
The setup here was great, the writing itself was good, but after this, the story line unraveled and kept unraveling. When Noah and Shea are alone together for the first time, Noah gives in as Shea is driving him crazy. It was hot and continued to be erotic when Shea’s dominant side surged forward. But then, one moment Noah was constantly blushing and telling Shea he wasn’t gay and the next moment he goes submissive calling Shea, “sir” and they went from zero to Master from one breath to the next.
Inevitably, Noah can’t come to terms with being with a man and Shea walks. Then when Noah wants to talk to Shea he doesn’t have his phone number or address and hires an investigator that he uses at his law practice. It takes the PI days to find info on Shea, but Noah knows where the guy works. The logic and sequence of events were not well presented.
Mixed in here were brief back stories on a mutual friend, Noah’s father, and Shea’s ex, and my view was that this was a case of the book being too short for what it was trying to accomplish. It was also definitely a case of really just being too bad since it started off promising and the style of writing itself was good, but the story line just never came together here for me.
Cover: The cover fails me here. Both Noah and Shea are in their 20s and neither of the cover models are in the correct age range or match the descriptions of the characters. It’s like whoever selected this cover never read the book.
