Sandy M’s review of Wicked Ties by Shayla Black
Contemporary Erotic Romance published by Berkley Trade 2 Jan 07
I’ve been wanting to read this book for a while, especially after I read and reviewed my first Shayla Black, Decadent, last year and really liked it. I figured I’d like this one just as well. But somewhere along the way, I figured wrong. This book didn’t work for me nearly as well as Decadent.
I like the characters, Morgan and Jack, just fine, the sexual tension between them is edgy and sensual. The plot is intriguing, as are the secondary characters. What turned me off is the way Jack more or less pushes his wicked lifestyle onto Morgan. Okay, I know it’s an erotic book, the toys, the ties, the whatever are part of that. But for me Jack just pushed too much and too hard.
But before all of that, Morgan hosts a sex talk show and she’s meeting Master J to bone up on the BDSM lifestyle which is the subject of her next show. She’s also being stalked and during her meet with Master J, someone takes a shot at her, turns the master in to professional bodyguard Jack Cole, and he takes it upon himself to keep her safe.
Stealing her away with the help of some friends and creative ways to get her out of town, they end up at his cabin in the swamps of Louisiana where Jack’s alphaness and lust hits an all-time high. He wants Morgan but he wants her his way. This is where he begins to really push her toward her inner submissiveness. He’s so certain she is a sub and he’s going to prove it to her.
He even has a sex room set up with every toy imagineable and then some. He basically challenges Morgan to give it all a go, even though she really doesn’t want to. It’s either do it his way or she doesn’t get the guy at all. So she chooses to do as he wants, though I didn’t see it as a choice. Just didn’t care of the ultimatum feel of that whole thing between them.
That’s really the only thing I didn’t care for in this book. Even despite his attitude along that vein, I still like Jack very much. Of course, they both have secrets that they eventually will have to deal with. And I do like how Jack does in the end realize Morgan is the one for him and he gives thanks that she does embrace her role as a submissive. For me he just went about it the wrong way.
Grade: C-
Summary:
She didn’t know what she wanted until he made her beg for it…
Morgan O’Malley has seen a lot of kinky things as the hostess of a cable sex talk show. But she’s never met a man like Jack Cole before. A self-proclaimed dominant, he’s as alpha as a male can get–and good for Morgan to have around when an obsessed stalker ratchets up his attempts to get to her.
Though Jack is a bodyguard, Morgan feels anything but safe in his presence. Because slowly and seductively, Jack is bringing her deepest fantasies to the surface. And when he bends her to his will, what’s more shocking than her surrender is how much she enjoys it–and starts to crave his masterful touch. A willing player in Jack’s games, Morgan knows that his motives aren’t pure, but she has no idea how personal they are…
Read an excerpt.
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