Title: The Professional
Series: The Game Maker
Author: Kresley Cole
Genre: Erotic Romance
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Kresley Cole comes The Professional—the first scorching installment in her Game Maker series, an erotica collection that has readers asking: How hot is too hot?
He makes the rules . . .
Mafiya enforcer Aleksandr “The Siberian” Sevastyan’s loyalty to his boss is unwavering, until he meets the boss’s long-lost daughter, a curvy, tantalizing redhead who haunts his mind and heats his blood like no other. Ordered to protect her, Sevastyan will do anything to possess her as well—on his own wicked terms.
Rules are made to be broken . . .
PhD student Natalie Porter had barely recovered from her first sight of the breathtakingly gorgeous Sevastyan before the professional hit man whisks her away to Russia, thrusting her into a world of extreme wealth and wanton pleasures. With every day she spends under his protection, she falls deeper under his masterful spell.
Are you ready to play?
Yet all is not as it seems. To remove Natalie from an enemy’s reach, Aleksandr spirits her into hiding. From an opulent palace in Russia to the decadent playgrounds of the mega-wealthy in Paris, the two lovers will discover that even their darkest—and most forbidden—fantasies can come true .
Thoughts: I’ve been a fan of Kresley’s for a long time, so when I found out about this series I thought well I love Russian heroes, and bad boys so I better check this series/book out. And whoa boy is HAWT!!!
First off let me tell you that it was released in three parts, and that all three parts will be in one paperback edition in the spring, or so I’ve been told.
I’m not a huge fan of serials, unless they are about a couple already in a committed relationship who are experiencing something in their marriage/relationship (Erika Wilde’s Marriage Diaries is a prime example of this). Because of this I waited until the second book was out before I read the first book, and I only had about a 2 week wait for the third and final installment. Which made me a happy camper.
Because of this I’m going to treat all three parts as if it was already one book, which it will be, in my review.
When Natalie see’s the dark handsome stranger at the bar she frequents by her college campus where she’s a Ph.d, student she has a very good feeling about him, and that he could possibly be the one guy that can give her what she needs sexually. When he turns her attempts at picking him up down, she’s disappointed, but not devastated. Later that night while she’s in the bath trying to get a little relief, she looks up and finds the stranger from the bar in her bathroom doorway.
He’s been sent by the father she never knew and needs to leave now.
I have to tell you, I’m not a huge fan of this story line. I get why adopted kids want to know about their biological family’s, I do. But to me it feels like a slap in the face, as if the kid is saying thanks for raising me and loving me and supporting me, but you’re not enough. I say this as an adoptive parent who has had the child she’s had since he was an infant scream at her, You’re not my real mom, every day for almost a year.
That being said I loved how Kresley handled this issue. As a student of history she simply wanted to know her history. She was also concerned with how her mom, her dad had passed away, would handle her search. This part of the story was done so well that none of my normal triggers went off making it unreadable for me.
As for The Siberian as Natalie calls him. Talk about tortured hero. The constant push pull he had with her was enough to make me want to reach into the book and slap, shake, hurt him to make him wake up and see what he was doing to Natalie. But when he finally breaks, and tells her everything, it was so worth the wait and all the angst from him we had.
As for the sex between these two, let me just tell I’ve read a lot of erotic romance, and a lot of BDSM stories, and Kresley did her research and this is some of the best and hottest I’ve ever read. She is up there with my favorites in this genre, Lauren Dane and Eden Bradley-Eve Berlin when it comes to writing excellent BDSM.
I do have to admit when the book ended and the revelations about Aleksandre were revealed I was/am hoping that Kresley will continue this series and that the next heroine will be Jess, Natalie’s best friend who as a secondary character is simply awesome. She seriously cracked me up at times.
This is one series/book you absolutely can’t miss.
Grade A+
