The Professional (The Game Maker, #1)

by Kresley Cole

[EBookObsessed]

Natalie Porter is a hard-working, conscientious student working towards her doctorate. She was raised as a simple Nebraska farm girl, but she was adopted as a baby from a Russian orphanage. She has always wanted to know about her birth parents and she has been working three jobs for the last six years to earn money to hire an investigator to find them. What she doesn’t know yet is that the investigator has found her birth father and that knowledge will soon be changing her life forever.

Natalie’s father is Pavel Kovalev, a vor v zakone, head of the Bratva, the Brotherhood, the Russkaya Mafiya, and he has sent his most trusted enforcer first to verify that Natalie is his daughter and then to protect her. Except the investigator has been paid by more than just Kovalev for this information. He has also informed Ivan Travkin, Kovelov’s biggest rival of his newest weakness. Travkin has sent enforcers of his own to kidnap Natalie and use her as a bargaining chip in a Russian turf war.

Aleksandr “The Siberian” Sevastyan has been watching over Natalie for several weeks now. He was here first to make sure she wasn’t some gold-digging scam artist like all the others, and then to protect the daughter of the man he admires most. But no matter how much Sevastyan is concerned about protecting Natalie from outside threats, he needs to protect her from himself as well. He knows that the desires he harbors for his boss’s daughter are dark and he craves to have her in his bed and under his control. It is the type of desires that could get even the loyalest of men killed. Yet with killers coming for her, he has no choice but to grab Natalie and bring her to Russia where she can be kept safe in Kovalev’s compound.

But is he strong enough to keep her safe from himself?

THOUGHTS:
I have been a big fan of Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark series for some years now and have turned all my PNR friends on to her work. I have always found her characters to be likeable and her stories to be captivating and exciting. When I heard that she was writing an erotica, I wondered how it could be more stimulating that some of her very memorable IAD scenes, including my personal favorite–the bath scene from Demon the Dark. Just thinking about that one could warm me up on the coldest night.

The characters in The Professional drew me in from the beginning with Natalie and her friends out drinking and Natalie using her “manalyst” powers to I.D. the losers in the bar until a gorgeous and clearly dangerous, cross between cage fighter and GQ model walks in and takes her breath away. I, along with Natalie, was drawn in by Sevastyan’s penetrating stare and cool demeanor. While his eyes eat her up, he coldly turns her down and walks away. From that moment, I was hooked. I have to know what’s behind the mind and heart of the very intense Sevastyan. It seemed to me to be a case where Sevastyan has put Natalie on a pedestal since she is smart and kind and caring and so unlike the women he usually spends his time with. He desires her, but his sexual preferences are toward domination, etc. which are too base for the likes of Natalie. He fantasizes about having her fulfill his dark desires, but is offended when she is willing to submit to him, since in his mind he has made her too good and too pure for such things.

In the last few IAD books, Lothaire and especially MacRieve, there was a very dark sexual overtone to the story that I disliked intensely. Wherein our hero was disgusted by the heroine (in Lothaire she was just a human and in MacRieve she was a succubus) his body and his instincts craved her and he couldn’t stop himself from having sex with her. Although the scenes were always erotic and titillating, they always ended up with the hero then tossing her aside in disgust after he climaxed, and in MacRieve he actually ran away and vomited since he was so disgusted that he had sex with her. I was happy and relieved in this book that when Sevastyan went icy whenever Natalie expressed interest in being with him, it was more that he felt she was too good to be with someone as evil as him. He was a killer, an enforcer for the mob, and his sexual preferences were towards bondage and pain. He wanted her, but he didn’t want her to want him.

Natalie is like all Kresley’s heroines: intelligent, strong-willed and smart-mouthed, and you know that there is no way for Sevastyan to resist her charms. Natalie is even more surprised by how intensely she wants this man whose very presence screams danger. She will do whatever she needs to do to convince him that this boss’s daughter isn’t forbidden.

The only thing I truly hated was the fact that this was Part I of a serial story. I avoid anything written in serial form since nothing is more frustrating than being left hanging in the middle of a story and having to wait months for all the parts to be released. Worse, not only does Kresley leave you hanging in the middle of story, she leaves you in the middle of a scene. I had to re-read it again from the beginning just to make sure, and sure enough, she leaves us as frustrated as Natalie in her bathtub. The next two parts can’t be released soon enough for me.

If you aren’t a fan of paranormal romance and want to know what all the hub-bub is about when we keep talking about Kresley Cole, now’s your chance to find out how she can add hot, sensual tension to the simplest scene. You won’t be disappointed.

Received an ARC courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

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