So….This is the last book in the Nauti Boys series. It is always sad to come to the end of a series that you have grown to love over the years that it has taken to finish. I am hoped that we would get a story for Timothy Cranston. He deserves a happy ending and he needs a woman to keep him from sticking his nose into other people’s business. This is John Calvin Walker, Jr.’s story. Since this is a short story this review may not be as long because I don’t want to give away too much.

It looks like John took his sister’s, Rogue, advice and stayed in Somerset, Kentucky. He has found a peace and contentment that was missing in Boston. He has also put a broken engagement behind him. The one thing he is missing is Sierra Lucas. One night of passion when he was in a drunken haze and all he can think about is Sierra. He finally gets his chance to get back into Sierra’s life after someone attacks her. John knows that he is going to claim the woman that he has known for her entire life.

This is a steamy hot novella that will work the reader into a sweat in no time. These two can't keep their hands and mouths off each other. I guessed who had attacked Sierra fairly early in the story but not the reason that they did it. I also did guess about a crime family being involved. As with so many of these novellas there just doesn't seem to be enough story. Ms. Leigh does do a good job of making a complete story and we get to see all the Mackay's and their toddlers. You are definitely going to want to read the other books in this series so you will know all the players and their back stories. ( )

Very good. Liked the chemistry between Rick and Ava, and the sex scenes were off the charts with all that hotiness. ( )

My only complaint was that it was too short. Both Lora Leigh and Jaci Burton excelled as usual. Sensual, Romantic, With great leading ladies and Men. ( )

What to do? I didn’t like Lora Leigh’s story enough for three stars, but I didn’t dislike Jaci Burton’s enough to give it two. I’m giving this three on behalf of Jaci Burton.

Nauti Kisses – Lora Leigh

This wasn’t the worst thing Lora Leigh’s written, but it’s not her best either.

Worst thing about the story? This:

He stepped confidently from the floating walkway to the deck of a two-storey houseboat whose side was emblazoned with the words NAUTI WET DREAMS.

Ick.

It was always going to be fighting an uphill battle with me. For starters, it’s Lora Leigh, and I’ll never be recognised as her greatest fan. Secondly, it’s in the Nauti series – the incestuous, partner-sharing spankorama show. If that wasn’t enough, the hero calls the heroine ‘Lollipop’!!

But it’s nice to start on a positive. Here the first thing I liked about this one:
The hero’s called ‘John’!! Yes, that shouldn’t be a cause for excitement, but seeing as the other men in this series have names like Rowdy, Dawg and Natches, it was quite impressive to meet a regular man. She didn’t even spell his name ‘Jahwn’ or anything.
Of course, that excellent achievement was nearly destroyed by the likes of:

"You make me hungry, lollipop."
A slow smile curled the lips beneath his. "Your lollipop?"
…“My lollipop." And he'd be damned if he let another man have a taste of it now.

Damn. He was going to enjoy this. He was going to make sure she enjoyed it.
This was his sweet. His treat.

In turn, Sierra calls John ‘Dummy’. There was a disturbingly childish edge to it.

The first thing I noticed was that I was basically reading the same story as Nauti Boy. How can someone write the same story twice and get away with it?! Virginal heroine who is destined to be with older ‘Nauti’ hero. She loses her virginity to him and he acts like a caveman. Well, that’s basically every Lora Leigh book, but the reason this one is so similar to Nauti Boy is because the hero goes off somewhere and when he returns he finds out someone broke into the heroine’s room, beat her and nearly raped her. Then he’s upset he wasn’t there to stop it. He immediately establishes himself in her bed, and they never spend another moment apart.
The heroes of both books seem to think the cure for sexual trauma is to force lots and lots of crazy sex on the heroine. Immediately.
It’s unclear to me why an author of erotic romance would want to use sexual assault as a plot device so often. We all know the book is going to have sex in it, so why not introduce a conflict that makes the heroine’s porn star performances and forgotten trauma more believable? It’s something I find very strange.
In this one, John forces Sierra to sleep with him in his bed from the first morning on. He has this to say:

"Sweet Sierra," he sighed as though with relish. "You think you can sleep in my bed night after night, put up with me holding you, touching you, and still deny me?"
"I'm not sleeping in your bed." The very thought of it was more dangerous than she wanted to contemplate.
"Sorry, but that's exactly where you're sleeping."

"You think only weeks after that attack that I want any man in my bed?"

"No, I don't think you want any man at all," he agreed much too easily. "But I'm not just any man, lollipop, I'm the man you actually want."

"Once I have you in my bed and I see how deep those bruises are, how much loving you can take. But be prepared, Sierra, you're sharing my bed, and I'll touch you when I want to, when I need to. You might have run before, but I think we both know your running days are over here."

By bruises, he literally means bruises. She’s still having trouble moving because she’s so badly bruised by her attack and surviving on painkillers. How considerate of the hero to ease her into it.

Of course, the heroine – in between nearly being raped, nearly being killed, hiding from her attacker and moving to the Nauti Wet Dreams – has had time to go to the salon and have her pubic hair waxed off. Lora Leigh just isn’t Lora Leigh until the pubic hair’s gone.

"Strip." He could see her intent to lie down in that bed fully clothed.

She wore no bra, nothing to hide the bruises that still marked her flesh.

With the backs of his fingers, he stroked down the underside of her arms and the purple marks that led to her full, hard-tipped breasts. Harsh finger marks marred her flesh,

Below her breasts were fainter bruises, where she'd been struck, though the blows hadn't connected as hard as he knew they were meant to. He could tell by the placement that the son of a bitch had been trying to damage her ribs.
Lower, along her rounded thighs, was heavier bruising. Finger marks, thumb imprints.

Yep. Sounds like she’s primed and raring to go.

The hero was drunk a year earlier when he took the heroine’s virginity, and he doesn’t remember doing it, and assumes she’s slept with loads of men. That pisses her off, but instead of telling him the truth, she decides to let him think whatever he wants. I was moderately annoyed by that plot device. I was even more annoyed by the implication a man can miraculously remember some things about that night a year after the event. Sure, some memories from a drunken night might return after a little while, but after a year of what is basically amnesia? Seemed weird to me.

I’m well aware the point of Lora Leigh’s books is for the characters to get it on, over and over and over (and almost always in the order of: woman gets man off, man gets woman off, and they missionary position each other off together), but it was weird how they all just waited around for the bad guys to come and get them. Couldn’t they have been a little more active in trying to track down Sierra’s attacker, instead of hosting brief family barbeques and following them up with sex?!

The first book in the Nauti series read as dirty porn, and I felt gross just reading it. I did think this one was better in that respect; I thought John considered Sierra to be something other than a sex toy, which was so much better than the other book I read.

There's no 'Who licked my butt?' mystery in this one either.

If you’re a fan of the series, you might enjoy the catch-ups with the heroes’ and heroines’ sickeningly white picket fencey, happy endings. I’m talking diabetes-inducing.
Just make sure you love lotsa babies.

I might have given this story a higher rating if it wasn’t for the weird logic. I find it offensive that so many of Lora Leigh’s heroes force sex on traumatised heroines.

Number of times one of them damned the other in conversation (often during sex) – as in, “Damn you!”: 18
Number of times someone had a conversation about their soul: 5
(Not really that many for this writer!)

Riding The Edge – Jaci Burton

What I liked about this story was that it was a whole lot less sordid than the Lora Leigh entry.
It was a decent little story with the requisite steamy stuff, and held up well enough for me, even though I’ve never read anything else from this author, let alone anything else in this series. It’s not going to change my life, but at least there weren’t any cringeworthy moments – or any characters called ‘Lollipop’ or ‘Dummy’.

The outlandish concept of federal agents who spend their lives working undercover in motorcycle gangs – or something like that – is one of those, ‘just go with it and don’t question it’ things. So I went with it.
But I’m not entirely sure why we had to have a big long scene where the hero and heroine sit there watching an orgy…

Rick is sent to look after a senator’s daughter, Ava, who has suddenly decided to join a bikie gang. Of course there’s a lot more to the story than that, and of course she isn’t some crazy, drug-addicted criminal as it’s presumed she is at the beginning. She’s a good girl with a heart of gold who’s out to save her friend. And of course there’s time for lots of Rick/Ava stuff. Private stuff.

I liked that the hero in this book was ‘such a man’ rather than an arrogant, pushy, dominant bastard. He felt far more like a real person than Lora Leigh’s alternately mean and sappy John. The same goes for the heroine – Lora Leigh’s women are often frighteningly childish when they’re not being dirty in the bedroom. The heroine of this book wasn’t some mightily experienced dominatrix, but I actually believed she’d matured enough to graduate from school and was legal enough to have a relationship with the hero.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t a federal agent read up on a case before he took it? How in the world did Rick not know Ava had a master’s in social work if he was there specifically for her?

But there definitely was some super-clunky dialogue throughout:

"A little tight here."
"Um. Yes."
She seemed to try to make herself smaller, as if pushing her shoulders forward could make her breasts smaller.
"Honey, you can't downsize them. They are what they are." He pulled the jacket edges closer, then finished zipping her up. "They're really nice, by the way."
She seemed to relax, then, because she laughed. "Thanks. They get in the way a lot."
"Yeah, but I'll bet they're a lot of fun to play with."

They’ve just met, and he’s complimenting her on her breasts – and she’s thanking him politely – like they’re talking about the weather!

On the plus side, at least Burton’s more creative with the love stuff.

On the other hand, this relationship is really rushed! But then another positive is that the author actually convinced me this couple could stay together.

So for me, Jaci Burton’s contribution was the stronger of the two. It kept me entertained and I had a connection with both Rick and Ava. It’s more than I can say for the other one. ( )