Back Cover:
A Desperate Plea - Ashley had no choice but to plead with Vito di Cavalieri to drop the charges that would put her brother in prison. She expected Vito to exact a high payment in return. But what shocked her was his asking price...
A Demanding Proposition - He wanted Ashley...in his bed, as his wife. And passion surged beneath her shaking defenses and betrayed her like never before. Because how could she control love turned to white-hot hatred-and desire that raged dangerously out of control?
Spoiler Warning: All my reviews contain spoilers to some degree
Favourite Scene:
She gave up on the unequal fight and folded into the heat and hardness of him, abandoning herself to the savage potency of his hunger as he swept her off her feet and carried her out of the room.
'Take the rest of the day off.'
She heard that. She heard him speaking to someone.
That penetrated the haze of passion even as she registered that Vito sounded most unlike his usual cool, controlled self. Some physical sense of where she was penetrated as he brought her down on some unyielding horizontal surface, and her eyes flew wide open, trained to his darkly handsome face above hers, taut and flushed and determined with the force of a hunger she too well understood.
'It's like the first time all over again,' Vito swore huskily. 'Except this time you still have too many clothes on.'
Another Fav Scene:
Vito's hands slowly stilled, virtually unnoticed by her. 'It hasn't changed, has it, cara? We have an insatiable hunger for each other. Something so powerful I didn't even believe it existed until I met you. That wasn't enough for me the last time,' he breathed in an unsteady undertone. 'But this time, it's going to be the icing on the cake.'
My Review:
Hmm. I was uncomfortable with the premise at first, so much pain for the heroine. She was the one who dumped the hero, but she tried to contact him after their break up to tell him she was pregnant, but found him engaged one month after the break up, and had to stay quiet and suffer as he married another month later. Really really painful to go through watching him move on so fast, though she knew she had turned down his proposal of marriage to HER and had some relief in knowing his new bride wasn't his first choice at least.
The heroine goes to the hero when her young brother trashes the hero's property to get revenge over him dumping his sister years ago. The hero very realistically (and rightly) refuses to drop the criminal charges against the brother, and argues well for them sticking, but then he finds a fitting payment: exchange her brother's freedom for hers, make her give him what he wanted before, her married to him and producing a baby. I liked that she turned him down at first and didn't blindly say yes.
The hero and heroine were emotional people who loved each other but conflicted and fought like wild cats when they couldn't seem to agree on what they wanted from each other. Their past break up four years ago was just full of pain and there was a lot of wild emotion in this one, they seemed well-matched because they were both such passionate people. I felt the heroine was so thoroughly punished with pain. The hero said he was punished too, but the heroine said it best when she thought "no you weren't, your life moved on, mine came to a crashing halt". It's not fun or fair that the heroine went through that and the hero lived in self-righteous anger and then sudden guilt when in the present he realizes everything that went down and why (and how if he hadn't gotten engaged to another woman so fast, he would have had his heroine back quick as can be).
My Rating: 3/5 stars, a very emotional read, you'll get swept up. For me personally, I felt like there was a bit too much pain in this book for my preference. I love passion, but I like a lighter read without all the pain and angst.
