I didn’t think it was possible, but this series just keeps getting better and better. Suspenseful, unexpected, irresistibly erotic, yet deeply romantic too, this book is truly the full package in every possible way, and as hard as I tried to savour it for as long as I could, I ended up devouring it in a single sitting. A sensual, gripping page-turner that starts off with a ruse, but then turns into a high-stakes chase around the globe that leads a woman to believe in the promise of a better tomorrow, this was one of my most addictive reads of the year, and it only made me fall even more in love with J.T. Geissinger’s superb writing.
“Of all the men in all the world who could’ve been staying in that room, he’s a mercenary. A knife-wielding, kidnapped-daughter-extracting, goddamn mercenary.”
When Mariana Lora chose a beautiful beast of a man sitting on the edge of an infinity pool at a luxury resort in the Caribbean as her next target, she never expected there to be more to the boisterous American than meets the eye. From the moment he sees her, however, her elaborate game of seduction becomes a futile attempt on her part to resist his advances, and what should have been nothing more than a means to an end turns into the most passionate and out-of-control night of her life.
“The way you move. The way you look at me. Your laugh. That kiss. I’m thirty-four years old, Angel, and I’ve had my share of women. Not a single one has ever challenged me, made me laugh, called me on my shit, looked at me like they understood me, and given me a boner that could cut glass while at the same time makin’ me feel like a teenager with his first crush. I wouldn’t care if you lived in fuckin’ Antarctica. This is gonna happen.”
Waking up drugged and naked in his hotel room is not how Ryan McLean, former Marine and now security specialist, thought his wild night with a beautiful stranger would end. But to add insult to injury, he soon discovers that their meeting was everything but coincidental, the serendipitous location of his room providing a professional thief perfect access to her true target. Yet even with his pride more than a little bruised, Ryan knows in his heart that he has found the woman of his dreams. And that the only way to convince her of this is to hunt her down and show her.
I’d never spent time considering what my dream woman would be like, but apparently she’s on Interpol’s Most Wanted list.
Being the best in the business, he catches his deceiving seductress in no time, only to find a woman trapped in a life she never chose for herself, beholden to one of the most dangerous criminals on the planet, and persuaded to believe that pandering to his very whim is her only path to freedom. She tries to shield him from the monsters in her life by running away from him every chance she gets, but when a man like Ryan falls for a woman, he’d move mountains to protect her, and not even his runaway lover could ever stop him. With a psychotic killer at their heels, however, Ryan and Mariana soon find themselves in a dangerous game of cat and mouse, booby-trapped with dangerous secrets and lies, and threatening everything their hold dear.
“I stopped believing in fairy tales a long time ago.”
“Maybe they didn’t stop believin’ in you,”
The author kept the story exciting and suspenseful until the very end, and by building the kind of explosive chemistry between the characters that demands three whole chapters for their very first sex scene alone, this is the type of book you wish would never end. There’s something truly beautiful about a heroine who remains vulnerable throughout the story but never fails to demonstrate her strength of character in the face of adversity, and that contrast becomes even more compelling when her romantic counterpart is an alpha male who would wrap her in cotton wool if he could, but is never even given a chance. I loved the way their relationship remained emotionally charged even through their steamiest moments together, and how that intensity only grew page after page, adding even more magic to their romps between the sheets. An absolute must-read.
“You think this kinda shit happens every day? You think two people meet and have thermonuclear chemistry and make each other laugh and have mind-blowing sex, and then one of them steals a fifteen-million-dollar necklace and disappears and the other one finds the first one within a few days and breaks into her hotel room and almost gets stabbed but ends up on top of her in bed?”
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Wicked Games - Recommended Reading Order
(standalone stories with interconnected characters)
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