Title: Power and Possession
Author: CC Gibbs
Publisher/Year: Grand Central Publishing 9/1/125
Length: 266
Series: Reckless #1

Overview

The ultimate pleasure lies in sweet surrender . . .

Brash. Brilliant. Devastatingly handsome. Billionaire playboy Rafe Contini can have any woman he wants-no strings, no commitments, no promises. But when American graduate student Nicole Parrish crashes his private party in Monte Carlo, he wants more than a casual one-night stand. He wants to possess this beautiful stranger-body, mind, and soul.
Nicole isn’t interested in being possessed by any man-especially one as powerful as Rafe. But with a seductive smile and enigmatic charm, he lures her into his private world of erotic discovery and pushes her to the brink of ecstasy. In the summer days-and nights-that follow, they explore every forbidden fantasy, every willful desire, every wild, dizzying sensation. And come dangerously close to crossing the line-between love and lust, pleasure and pain, power and possession . . .

My Thoughts

I loved the All or Nothing series and this is a spin off of that so i knew that i’d get something great and fantastic.  That and i think that we got a teaser of this story in the final installment of the former series.  I actually feel like i kept waiting for that scene to show up in this first intro to this new series and it wasn’t until the latter third actually when it did pop up.

So as you guys all recall, Dominic has a niece named Nicole who is 22 and this is her story.  Or at least the continuation of her story.  We meet up with her while she’s on ‘holiday’ or summer break from school with her friend Fiona – and they are living it up in Europe somewhere – on a yacht.  It’s on this boat that her life changes and we don’t know yet if it’s for the better or not.  While she’s walking aorund this yacht, nursing a hangover and recalling the craziness of the night before, she runs into what is propbably the sexiest man that she’s ever seen – and well….the sparks fly.  This man of course is Rafe Contini – billionaire businessman, and playboy.

Where we go on this journey is actually a nice place – both are really strong characters – so it’s not one of those ‘naive girl gets sucked into a world that she’s unfamiliar’.  Similar to how CC Gibbs wrote Kate in the other series – we have a girl who knows her value, and maybe she’s still got a bit of ‘finding herself to do;’ but it’s definitely not due to a lack of confidence.  Rafe also knows that he’s sought after – for his money, sexual appeal and any number of other things.

Rafe finds that because Nicole doesn’t just say ‘yes’ to him, that he’s drawn deeper into her web, and Nicole feels like he’s her match in the sense that he gives her butterflies but also makes her feel like she’s able to push herself and him at the same time.  This makes for some GREAT sexual chemistry – and the scening that we have come to love an expect from our author comes out here with vengeance.

I’d have to say that the one downfall to this story is that 2/3 is really just a lot of banter and sexual chemistry – not a bad thing in reality but there’s really a lack of the story development.  I get that the basis for doing this is to show how far out of each of their comfort zone they are in – neither does relationships and that’s exactly where it seems like this is going – but i think that the excitement really only starts when we’re in the last third and Rafe’s company comes under attack from hackers and then well, Dominic shows up at an inopportune time in Paris.  That’s when it gets tense, angsty and well – things really begin to speed up.

Where we are left in the final pages of this story is the edge – there’s definitely a cliffhanger here.  Nicole and Rafe have to ‘flee to safety’ and there’s a big question on if they will be safe, if someone’s going to die, and who’s going to protect whom since we know that Dominic protects what’s his as does Rafe.

There’s also the underlying story of who Rafe’s father is, when he’s going to find out, and the fact that Dominic is so close to him in an odd sort of way.  So…i guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens in book 2 of this series and i’d love to get my hands on that ARC too since i don’t know that i can wait so long.  so….thanks Netgalley and the publisher for giving me access to this early and i hope that you guys enjoy it as well!