Format: E-book
Read with: Amazon Kindle
Length: Novel
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Series: Passion for Danger, Book 2
Publisher: Berkley
Hero: Marc Boudreaux Lafayette (Marc)
Heroines: Tara Reeves
Sensuality: 3.5
Date of Publication: December 1, 2009
Started On: September 21, 2010
Finished On: September 29, 2010

This book has taken me like forever to finish – not because the story was in anyway boring or didn’t measure up to its predecessor. I managed to get distracted by other books that I just HAD to read before I could come back and finish this great book which I left hanging for a while. Once again I just have to point out the fact that I am so VERY glad that I gave this series a chance based on the rave reviews this series has received. These books manage to keep the tempo up and running and I have never encountered a dull moment when I lost myself in the 2 stories of the series that I have managed to read so far.

Its hard to say that this is just the story of Marc Boudreaux Lafayette (Marc) and State Trooper First Class Tara Reeves (Tara)’s story alone – because this is just so much more than just your average romantic suspense story that is focused on one single hero and heroine. Rather equally interesting heroes and heroines come together to make these books one of the hottest and best romantic suspense books I have had the fortune to come across. I have to warn you though, before you proceed that there might be spoilers in my review for readers who have never read these books.

This story kicks off 5 years before the present day at the Dumani Embassy in Istanbul when two STORM (Strategic Technical Operations & Rescue Missions) agents Marc and Bobby Lee Quinn together with then CIA agent Darcy Zimmerman work together on a mission to access and photo digitize documents contained on the well guarded 3rd floor of the Embassy building – papers that contained the identities of the elusive two leaders Jalil Abu Bakr and Abbas Tawhid of the al Sayika terrorist organization. The papers also contained al-Sayika’s plans of a bio-weapon mix of deadly viruses to unleash to fulfill their purposes. This scene opens up the possibility of a very delicious liaison between Darcy and Bobby Lee, an attraction that flares between the two so scorching that  they don’t really have to play the part of being infatuated with one another to provide the diversion needed for Marc to do his thing. However, things go awfully wrong and Marc ends in jail, Darcy gets kicked out of CIA for unsavory conduct and gets hired by Bobby Lee as the newest recruit of STORM in the process as well.

Five years later, the setting is Lower St. Martin Parish, Louisiana where the al Sayika group has pretty much succeeded in creating the bio-weapon mix of the deadly viruses that could wipe out an entire continent. To meet this end, Dr. Gina Cappozia had been kidnapped at the end of book 1, a process that had been seemingly helped along by Captain Gregg van Halen of the Zero Unit of CIA. Kick Jackson (hero from Shoot to Thrill) and his best friend Alex Zane who had undergone 16 months of torture under the hands of al Sayika’s Jalil Abu Bakr, who had been killed by Kick at the end of Shoot to Thrill; had their own ideas about how a mole within the CIA was operating against them. Thus STORM was keeping  the whereabouts of Alex under wraps for the moment and in the process working to identify the mole and stop the terrorists from achieving what they hoped to gain on American soil.

Marc is less than happy when he encounters State Trooper First Class Tara Reeves who investigates the seemingly mysterious deaths of the swamp animals which Marc had been investigating. STORM’s orders that Tara be misled and neutralized using any means possible doesn’t sit well with Marc. Marc is not the type of man who can sit around twiddling his thumbs waiting for the action  to happen and the idea of babysitting the state trooper irked Marc more than he was willing to admit. But with his usual abundance of charm and wit he manages to convince an adamant Tara who wants to investigate what has caused the deaths that he is the best Cajun guide available to  take her along for the ride through the swamp, a ride made more precarious by the fact that Marc desperately wants to end his two year self imposed ban on sex with the delectable Tara who seems all wrong for him, an attraction that seems to be unequivocally returned by Tara herself. Their first encounter together is way off the charts hot, Marc’s Cajun charm lending that sizzling factor that zips through the reader with every scorching kiss and touch.

Equally interesting are the developments between Darcy and Bobby Lee, both of whom had been seeing each other on and off when time off from their busy schedules had allowed them to. Darcy and Bobby certainly doesn’t give the reader any reprieve to cool off after the encounters between Tara and Marc; in fact each encounter just keeps getting hotter and better. And of course, the story of Alex who is engaged to be married to Helena Middleton, whilst he yearns for FBI Special Agent Rebel Haywood, his friend and savior when he was been tortured horribly whom he calls his angel continues in this book as well and makes the reader yearn to just put them in a room for 48 hours and throw away the key until these two admit to the fact that they are definitely made for one another.

However things are far from what you expect when Dr. Gina’s ex-fiance Wade Montana comes into the scene and heads the investigation to find what has happened to her, an investigation that Rebel is part of and before long Rebel has done the hot and sweaty deed with Wade, though it is Alex that she yearns for day and night. The ending in this book for Alex and Rebel is not a happy one and I am definitely psyched to reach their happily ever after in the next book which brings back the brooding and mouth watering Gregg whose explosive encounters with Dr. Gina in book 1 knocked me off my feet.

All in all this book takes the reader on the wildest ride ever, never a moment to take a breather and get your heart rate back to its normal rhythm. Because if its not the ultimate bad guys with their hair raising evil plans to commit mass murder, the hot encounters between all equally strong and mouth watering men with women definitely made for them keeps the excitement levels always at a 10. Whilst Darcy and Bobby Lee together with Marc and Tara gets their happy endings in this story, I am definitely looking forward to how Alex and Rebel as well as Gregg and Gina would attain their ever afters with one another.

Definitely very highly recommended for fans of romantic suspense who loves a scorching hot read.

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