Review Tuesday moved to Thursday: Her Untameable Lust by A P von K'Ory #EroticRomance #Suspense #ReviewTuesday

Her Untameable Lust by A P von K’Ory

Self-Published, 2022

Leontine “Leo” Boswell deserves the somewhat nasty sobriquet bestowed by admiring, envious New York society: Gorgeous Ice Block. Exquisitely beautiful, ferociously intelligent, rigorously self-disciplined, a calculating predator who wields tremendous power at the top of the finance world food chain, Leo is formidable and untouchable. A secret history of violence and abuse has fueled her ambition while eroding her ability to trust, especially to trust men.

Then she meets Adrian Xerxes Cranford, a gorgeous, brilliant and insufferably arrogant Brit with secrets of his own. Like calls to like, darkness to darkness: Adrian turns out to be the one man with the ability to kindle Leo’s desire and melt her heart. Smugly certain of his own irresistible power over women in general and Leo in particular, he doesn’t realize until it’s too late that he’s irrevocably bound to the passionate, stubborn woman he has claimed as his.

Her Untameable Lust continues Leo’s and Adrian’s story, begun in His Untameable Wickedness. Leo and Adrian have mostly stopped fighting their intense emotional and physical connection. Adrian is pursuing complex, covert operations to punish the forces responsible for murdering Leo’s mother. He insists that Leo stand back and stay well out of harm’s way. When she violates his instructions, he punishes her with brutal sex that neither seems to be able to resist.

I found the first half of Her Untameable Lust both compelling and disturbing. With their overwhelming passion and mutual darkness, Leo’s and Adrian’s relationship strains credulity. Nevertheless, the author managed to suck me in. Both characters are damaged and of questionable morality. Yet underneath their fierce, competitive interactions, I sense a strange innocence, an unbreakable love that neither of them wanted or expected but which they can’t deny. Somehow this calls to the romantic in me.

Although I’m partial to erotic scenes and write BDSM content myself, I’m really not comfortable with characters who engage in dangerously rough sex to the point of damaging one another. Adrian can be cruel and scary. Women have died in the hands of men like him. It’s consensual – though just barely. Leo eggs him on; her abused background has made her a genuine masochist. Nevertheless, I can’t really enjoy a sex scene in which a woman is fucked so hard that she bleeds and cannot walk. To me, that’s the opposite of arousing.

For some reason, though, I didn’t give up on the book. I was too invested, despite myself, in Leo’s and Adrian’s connection, and too curious to see what would happen next.

The latter half of the book swings away from sex toward other types of action, as Adrian and Leo, independently, pursue her mother’s murderers. To be honest, I couldn’t follow (or recall) a lot of the plot details from Book 1, but it didn’t really matter. It’s a guilty pleasure to watch both Leo and Adrian at work – bold, brilliant, and ready to take risks. As Leo races off on her motorcycle, I was reminded of Emma Peel from The Avengers. Leo is younger and more twisted, but has some of the same style.

A warning: Her Untameable Lust ends with a cliff-hanger. I know that some readers dislike this. As for me, I’m looking forwarded to reading Book 3. Despite myself, I’m hooked.