Carole Mortimer, $2.99, ISBN 978-1-910597-68-2
Historical Romance, 2018
Emma Harris, the heroine of Carole Mortimer’s Indecent, starts the show with the whole predictable “I am not marrying that hot, loaded wealthy toff!” act. Oh please, of course she is, but we need to drag things out because there needs to be a story for the author to sell.
“I know how much you wished me to accept the duke’s proposal,” Emma continued in a shaky voice. “But the man is beyond detestable to have visited you this afternoon to request my hand in marriage, and then this evening to flaunt his affair with Juanita Millbrook to all in Society. It is not only unacceptable, it is positively indecent.” Emma’s whole body was now shaking with the depth of the devastation she had suffered as she and everyone else present had witnessed Hawkwood and Juanita Millbrook’s intimate behavior together.
Ooh, spicy. No, it is, as she saw the woman in question giving a close-up visual and oral inspection of the duke’s manliness in a private alcove.
Her stomach now churned at the unforgettable sight of her possible future husband’s thick and rampant cock being thrust in and out of another woman’s mouth.
You see, this is why I read the author’s stuff these days. She makes me laugh out loud with sentences like the one above, although I often have a hard time figuring out whether the author is doing all this deliberately.
Back to the story: well, it isn’t the duke, as he explains in the first page itself that, with the event mentioned above being a masked ball, he had intended to surprise her by showing up with a mask that matched hers. She didn’t know that, or that he had just arrived at the ball shortly before she flounced off with a huff. The man she saw receiving the lady’s oral ministration was his brother.
I mean, that’s what Adam Stirling, the Duke of Hawkwood, says, and I am supposed to believe him because…
Miss Emma Harris, Adam decided grimly, had earned herself suitable punishment for daring to accuse him of engaging in oral sex with another woman in the middle of a Society ball.
Oh, the author then has the hero telling me that he’s innocent, hmm. How sneaky, it’s like she could read my mind!
Adam insists that Emma makes her apology to him at his place tomorrow, because this is a perfectly respectable and reasonable request. Oh don’t worry, he has honorable intentions. You see, after seeing her, Adam can’t get it up anymore unless it’s in her presence, so clearly he has to marry her or he will never be able to have sex again find true love again.
I wish I am joking about the above, but I am not. I’m, however, laughing again because I don’t how else to react to this.
Her parents are all “Go, go! He’s a duke so nothing he does to you will ever be considered beyond the pale!” so off she goes. He then asks her to get down on her knees right after she’s in his place.
“Having now witnessed how it is done, I believe a demonstration of what you learned from your spying yesterday evening to be appropriate.”
The color quickly left and then blossomed in Emma’s cheeks. “You cannot be serious.”
“Completely.”
“But—”
“It is nothing more than I shall expect once you are my wife. If you become my wife,” he added in warning.
How rude! Offer the poor dear a drink first, at least!
Emma’s gaze became riveted on the thick length of Hawkwood’s bared cock the moment it was released from its confines.
A cock she instantly realized was not the same one she had seen entering Lady Millbrook’s mouth yesterday evening. Hawkwood’s cock was even thicker and slightly longer than his brother’s, the bulbous top a deeper shade of red.
“I will not wait indefinitely, Emma.”
Oh, don’t cringe, people. He’s hot and rich, so all this is sexy, not horrifying.
Fortunately, he only wants to scare Emma, and in a way, he’s pleased that she doesn’t automatically slobber over that thing. See, she’s an innocent and virtuous woman, so 10/10; will bang and marry.
He insists that she keeps visiting him for the next few days to determine whether she’s really wife material for him, and on the second day, he talks about how he’d like to do it to her arse.
So it goes. After all the bullying and intimidation he carries out on her, Emma’s sole reason not to want to marry him is because he may just want to marry her for her family home. By that point, she’s already given away the milk and took down his pre-orders all the way to the next 10 years, so I’d think she’d jolly well marry him, but hey, who am I to try to fathom the workings of the mind of a romance heroine?
Indecent is like an artistic rendition of a 10-car pile up. It’s like trying to look away from all the dead and dismembered people in the scene, but can’t because the eyes refuse to obey the brain. Some things are unexpectedly hilarious in a “I can’t believe what I’m reading, and I don’t know what to react aside from laughing maniacally!” way, and other things are just “I wake up and I see Epstein’s naked ghost leering over me!” ghastly.
A part of me is tempted to give this one three oogies because of its macabre quality, but I fear I may get sued by people that will blame me for making them pick up this thing. So, two oogies it is, and consider yourself appropriately forewarned.
