Sandy M’s review of Killer Secrets (Tempting SEALs, Book 5) by Lora Leigh
Contemporary Romance released by St. Martin’s 4 Mar 08

This book is intense. No other word readily comes to mind when thinking back over this story. From the moment we meet Ian, vowing to his tortured and comatose best friend that he will avenge Nathan’s nightmare at the hands of two of the world’s most notorious and bloodthirsty drug lords, we are caught up in the intensity of his life. His need for revenge. His need to rid the world of these monsters. His lust for the one woman who can distract him from his mission, and his need of and love for that woman to keep him sane and assure him of a future.

Ian is branded a traitor when he turns his back on Durango team, the other SEALs he’s lived and worked with for years, the men who watched his back on every mission and who would have died for him just as he would for them if the situation warranted it. Now Ian is on the wrong side of the law, taking over the Fuentes cartel from his drug lord father, vowing to bring down Diego’s counterpart of a rival cartel as well as his father, but also leading Diego to believe he truly has his son with him at last. It’s the life that Ian has led since leaving his military life behind that brings out his anger, his disgust for the man who sired him, a man who kills on a whim to keep his soldiers in line. It is with a single-minded intensity that Ian has whipped the cartel into shape and closer to his ultimate goal. However, suddenly there is a wrinkle in his plans, one he intends to get rid of before it turns into a problem that will lead to his failure.

Kira is that wrinkle. She’s the woman who stirs his senses, hardens his body, and drives him to distraction. The woman who is a trained agent, his equal in nearly every way when it comes to a mission. The woman who is in love with Ian. Ian’s singlemindedness really jumps off the page when Kira is in his head, in his arms, or in his bed. When he’s loving this woman, intense is almost too light-hearted a word to use to describe those scenes. His instinct to protect overshadows everything when it comes to Kira, even when he knows she’s a trained and deadly agent. He’s a chauvinist and he admits it. Readily. He’s not going to let anything happen to his woman and heaven help anyone who even touches her, let alone tries to harm her. Kira handles him beautifully, however. Of course, she spends most of the book in the throes of the passion this man constantly dishes out, but she is still able to calm him and watch his back when needed, even when she’s been sent to keep him from doing the one thing she knows will eventually destroy him after all is said and done.

The scenes between Ian and his father, between Ian and his SEAL team when they come face to face again, and between Ian and any other character in this book are all intense and gripping. The action scenes are, in their own way, just as passionate as the love scenes, though much fewer, thank goodness because those love scenes are something else. I almost wanted to skip over other scenes just to get back to all that great sex. Almost. All those in-between scenes are that good too to really do that.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a hero who sustains such a level of intensity throughout the entire book like Ian Fuentes. I can speculate, of course, that perhaps another of the SEAL books previous to this one might boast such a hero. Guess I’ll have to start reading them to find out.

Grade: A+

From the back cover:

     THE FIGHT OF HIS LIFE

     As the illegitimate son of Diego Fuentes, Ian Richards faces danger at every turn. Neither his father nor his fellow Navy SEALs knows which side he’s fighting for-or against. Which is exactly how the game must be played…until Agent Porter enters the picture.

     STIRS HER DESIRE FOR LIVING

     Kira Porter, undercover agent for the Department of Homeland Security, shadows Ian on his journey. She thinks she can see the real man beneath Ian’s bad-boy exterior…but the ever-elusive Ian keeps her guessing at every turn. Is his goal to protect the Fuentes cartel from French terrorists? Or to do his father in for good? The only thing Kira does know is that her attraction to Ian is a time-bomb waiting to explode. With time running out on the Fuentes mission, she and Ian are drawn ever close to the edge of desire-and even closer into the line of fire…

     Read an excerpt here.