Loose Id, $7.99, ISBN 978-1-59632-506-7
Fantasy Erotica, 2007
Can I tell you a secret? I secretly buy every Evangeline Anderson e-book but I only tell you about the ones that work. I have got to give it to her, Anderson takes risk after risk after risk and sometimes it works and most of the times I am like hmmmmm.
OK OK, How hot is this book? To quote the remarkable Robin Williams from Good Morning Vietnam: “It’s hot. Damn hot! Real hot! Hottest thing is my shorts. I could cook things in it. A little crotch pot cooking.”
Rachel Kemet and Richard Kemet are Amon-kai. Raised as brother and sister. Rachel was kidnapped by her mother in an act of betrayal and kept away from her father and adopted brother and taught to deny her heritage as Amon-kai (Egyptian werewolves).
Seventeen years, three months, and five days later her brother Richard comes to Tampa and promptly gets into trouble thus running into Rachel, an Assistant District Attorney, at the police station while under questioning. Rachel who is getting married in a month, immediately invites her brother to stay at her place despite the protests of her fiance.
“Oh, Richard…” I disengaged from the hug, feeling like I was going to cry. I’d had enough drama in my life for one night; I needed to get control of myself. “How’s Dad?” I asked to change the subject. “Are you two still close?”
“He’s…Rachel, I’m sorry but he’s dead.” Richard sank onto the couch, and I sat beside him, feeling like I’d been punched in the gut.
“When…when did he die?” I managed to ask. So much for no more drama.
“A few years after Mom took you away.” Richard’s voice was low and troubled. “He, uh…he committed suicide.”
“No.” I put a hand over my mouth, my eyes wide.
He nodded. “I’m afraid so. He just, well…he couldn’t live without her.”
“Couldn’t he have found someone else? Someone new?” I still couldn’t believe it. My father, the strong, black-haired man with the deep voice and the warm scent of aftershave and cigars…my father was dead. Dead so many years and I had never known it until now.
“There was no one else for him but her. Just like there’s no one else –” He shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll spare you the trauma and let you know that I know Mom’s gone, too.”
“She passed away almost three years ago,” I said dully. “Some kind of fast-acting cancer. It was all through her almost before we knew anything was wrong. She got the diagnosis and a month later…” I shook my head.
Richard looked troubled. “That’s fast, all right. I’m sorry, Rache.”
Charles Rivera, her fiancé, has every right to be worried. Rachel by getting back in touch with her brother will also be getting back in touch with her heritage and the fact that she is Richard’s Lana-zeel and he is her Lanor-zur. (Are carved in Lapis Lazuli… oops Yeats moment there. Man, that was close.) Charles is getting cock blocked but good. Soon Richard will be in her bed and luring his mate into breeding with him.
Oh man, I swear people use the paranormal category to get away with stuff that would never pass muster otherwise. Please keep in mind at all times while reading this book that Richard is her “adopted brother” and your tray in an upright locked position… What did you just say? You are just plain sick, hear me, shame on you! The sex scenes in this book are “hot hot hot” which is also a really good remixed Cure song. Evangeline Anderson is working that werewolf sex thang for all it is worth here.
So, the sex is hot and the guy is hot but did I have problems with the rest of the story? I mean it is violent, and you will find out why Richard has hunted his dear sister down and it is not just for the great sex. It might also be because he turns into a mindless homicidal werewolf during full moons and the only thing that can stop him is a little sisterly lovin. Egyptian Werewolves are freaks like that.
One of the noticeable problems I had is with the “no means yes”. Seems every sex scene between Rachel and her humpalicious brother Richard included the word NO and the word STOP and the letter OOOOH, again and again. Even as a gay man who has said “No, a thousand times no!” to a big bruiser in bed only to later allow him to ravish my delicate behind (HAH!), it really started to irk me out. I guess she did not want to come across as a major slut yelling “Do me now Moondoggy, I’ll be your Gidget forevers!”. Rachel just overplays this stuff and seems to feel being Amon-kai makes her queen of denial. She denies just about everything…
“That’s enough!” I pulled away from him suddenly, sitting up in bed, heedless of the fact that he could see my bare breasts. “Don’t, Richard,” I told him, holding up a hand when he would have gathered me into his arms. “Don’t. We can’t — it’s wrong.”
“Sorry…I’m sorry.” He shook his head and ran a hand through his thick, dark hair, his eyes glowing green in the darkness of the room. “It’s just that I…I missed you so much, Rache.”
I knew it was more than that — more than missing — more than longing for whatever it was that we had had as children that was now perhaps lost to us forever. But I didn’t want to admit it to myself or to Richard.
“Let’s just…just go to sleep.” I fumbled for my nightshirt, suddenly aware of my state of undress.
“Wait…” He put out a hand to stop me. “Let me just…let me look at you for a minute. You’re so beautiful, Rachel, so absolutely gorgeous. I just want to look, I swear.”
“All — all right,” I said at last. Lowering my crumpled nightshirt to my lap, I let him see me, let him drink in the sight of me bare-breasted in the dim light of my room.
“Goin’ on a spider hunt,” he said softly, trailing one long finger over my full breasts and down to the shivering cup of my navel. “X marks the spot.”
But instead of marking an X on my trembling flesh, he cupped my naked breasts in his hands, rubbing gently over my tight nipples with his thumbs until I had to bite back a moan.
“You said…you said you just wanted to look,” I accused him in a breathless whisper. I wanted to pull away from him, but somehow I didn’t feel able.
“I can’t help myself,” he murmured, still stroking the tight nubs of my sensitive nipples. “I need to touch you, Rachel. Even if it’s just to play a child’s game.”
I don’t think it was lost on either of us that what we were doing was much more serious than any game we’d played as children. From somewhere deep inside of me, I found the strength to pull away from him and slip my nightshirt back over my head.
“No more ‘spider hunt’ tonight,” I said. “Okay?”
“All right.” He made as though to leave the bed, but I pulled him back, unable to let him go no matter what forbidden thing had just happened or almost happened between us.
“Just hold me,” I told him. “Hold me and let’s go to sleep.”Richard lay with me cupped in the curve of his body in the old familiar way. But when his hands traveled under my nightshirt and cupped the bottom curves of my breasts, I somehow couldn’t stop him. Even when he stroked my nipples with gentle fingers, I didn’t say a word, although I told myself I would if he tried anything else. To my mingled relief and disappointment, he didn’t try to go any further. But I felt a hot hardness pressing against the back of my thighs, reminding me that the innocence of our childhood was gone forever even as he stroked me to sleep.
Uh yeah…
After more than a few moments like this and even up to the very last pages of the book Rachel’s denial makes her character seem fucking weak for a lawyer. A District mother fucking Attorney? Then Richard saves her sorry ass several times and god damn it, instead of moral outrage, I wanted her to show the stud some sort of obligation to try and overcome her inner (The man is my brother, I shall not want. Oooooh look at his shiny hard magically delicious cock.) turmoil and at least throw him a dang bone.
I am not even so sure on the HEA here. Rachel, like her mother, might take off on poor old brother Richard eventually. The ongoing protests and the constant denial well, it undercut my trust in her judgment and frankly it undermined her change of heart at the very end of the book as believable and long lasting. No matter how many paragraphs were used to justify the switch.
But! STOP, NO, WAIT, OOOOOOOH! This book is still well worth picking up. Richard is magically delicious (Yellow moons, orange stars, and green clovers!) and the sex is hotter than any of the current batch of e-books I have bought lately and damn it all, if I can overlook HER, you can overlook HER. Just like you can overlook everything bad I just said because the “no means yes” and the sisterly lovin’ is fun, and the attempted fiancé rape scene… well hey, Charles was in the way. Richard’s knotty dick of death made for a great diversion I’m sure.
Grade B as in buy it!
