Aidan
O’Malley walked away from his fiancée, Lexi, and their best friend, Lucas, after a night of passion left him shaken to his core. Years
later, Aidan returns home from Iraq haunted by all he has lost. The enemy broke
his body, destroying his dreams of a career in music. Worse still, he lost Lexi
and Lucas. That damage he’d done all by himself. While he can’t restore what
combat took from him, he’s determined to reclaim the two loves of his life.
Lucas Cameron is a changed man. After connecting with his brother,
he found the discipline to get his life on track. His legal career is
flourishing, but his love life is a train wreck. The woman he loves is
spiraling out of control. After Aidan abandoned them, Lucas and Lexi clung
together but no matter how hard he tries, Lucas can’t find a way to heal the
wounds that Lexi carries.
Lexi Moore feels like a jigsaw puzzle with too many missing
pieces. Losing Aidan was hard, but the true reason for her shattered spirit is
a secret she only shares with her beloved Lucas. She knows she is drowning and
the time has come to heal, but the holes in her heart hold her back from moving
on. Shedding the burden she carries is her only hope for a happy future, but
she fears she will never have the strength to reveal her secret.
When Aidan walks back into their lives, Lucas and Lexi know
everything is about to change. But as they fight to reconcile their past and
reclaim what they lost, a vicious predator stalks Lexi. In order to stop the
killer, all three must confront the secrets they’ve carried…before they’re
buried by them.
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Lexi realized she was in
serious trouble the minute the words left Lucas’s mouth. Hell, she’d realized
she was in trouble the minute she opened her mouth. What was she thinking? She
knew damn well how to behave in a dungeon, but something about this Master made
her want to push him. Damn it. She’d
been this way all of her life. She had to push. She thought about taking a step
back, but before she could make her feet move, Master A had her in a fireman’s
hold.
“Hey!” She shouted as her
world upended. She turned her head up to throw a desperate look Lucas’s way.
Lucas stood there, a stony
cold look on his face. In that moment, he was all Dom, and she’d never seen him
look hotter. There was a confidence about him she had rarely seen when he was
around her. Lucas was utterly in command at work, but his surety faltered when
she walked into the room. Even when he performed a scene with her, she knew he
worried about her comfort. He didn’t look worried now. He looked ready.
Her heart started to pound as
Master A turned, and she lost sight of Lucas.
“I need a chair, Lucas.” The
words came out of the Master’s mouth like a judge delivering a sentence.
“Yes, Sir.” Lucas’s words
were silky smooth. There was not a hint of hesitation now. She could hear him
moving to do Master A’s bidding.
“What do you think you’re
doing?” she asked, though she was a bit less hostile now. She’d fucked up. She
was glad Julian wasn’t around to witness it, though Leo would probably tell
him. Tears pricked her eyes. Damn, she was proving to Leo she couldn’t handle the
lifestyle. “Look, Sir, I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to be rude to you, but I
was merely pointing out that Lucas and I had a plan for tonight.”
Reason. She could reason with him, surely. It worked
on all the men in her life. Of course, usually she was looking at them instead
of trying to plead her case to a group of back muscles. The muscles were
unbelievably tight, but his skin—oh, his skin had been decimated in his lower
back. It was a mess of white, puckered flesh, and she could see both neat,
surgical lines, and jagged edges. She reached out to touch the mass of scars,
but she was jerked back over his shoulder and set on her feet before she could
make it. She wobbled on her heels, but Master A’s big hands held her shoulders.
“I don’t think you understand
how this is going to go, sub. I am the Master, and you are the one being
punished. I won’t put up with a spoiled princess telling me how her punishment
will go. It will go the way I say it will go. First, you will pay for the
insult to me, and then we’ll proceed to the sawhorse.”
“I don’t like the sawhorse.”
The words came out breathy and small, because she was beginning to understand
that this was serious.
Master A didn’t look like he
was planning on giving in. And she hated being called a spoiled princess, but a
part of her worried that he was right. The last few years, she’d allowed
herself to become spoiled and dependent. She’d fled from everything that hurt
her. She’d hidden. She’d let her stepfathers and Lucas coddle and provide for
her so she didn’t have to face the truth.
Master A didn’t flinch. “I
don’t care. Lucas has done the best he can, but the truth is he wasn’t trained
to be a Dom. He might enjoy it from time to time, but he prefers bottoming. You
require a firm hand. If you don’t want it, then you’re free to leave. No one is
holding you against your will. This is all about consensual play, so you have
to make the choice. Do you want the session to continue?”
She hated this part. This was
the part that she’d never understood. She had to make the choice, and she
couldn’t put it off on anyone else. She wanted for him to simply do it. Then
she could blame him later, but that wasn’t what The Club was about. She’d been
coming here for over a year, and she finally had to decide to make the
choice—stay and put herself in the hands of a stranger, or go and never know
what it was like. And then there was the fact that Master A was right. Lucas
needed something she couldn’t give him.
She cast her eyes down
submissively. How bad could it be? “Yes, Sir.”
“Then strip.” I'm glad we got Lexi and Lucas's story. Aiden was their perfect third, but he definitely hurt them. There was a secret that Lexi hid from everyone in her family and I was able to predict was it was fairly easily. I wasn't a big fan of the manipulation Aiden used to get back in Lexi and Lucas' lives, but his heart was in the right place, so I can understand it. It was fun seeing characters from other books again, but it is not necessary to have read other books in order to enjoy this one. The sex was hot and the story was great. I definitely recommend this book and all the others in this series.
NY Times and USA Today bestselling author Lexi Blake lives in North Texas with her husband, three kids, and the laziest rescue dog in the world. She began writing at a young age, concentrating on plays and journalism. It wasn’t until she started writing romance and urban fantasy that she found the stories of her heart. She likes to find humor in the strangest places and believes in happy endings no matter how odd the couple, threesome, or foursome may seem.