Title: At His Mercy
Author: Shelly Bell
Publisher/Year: Grand Central Publishing 6/20/17
Length:   245 Pages
Series:  Forbidden Lovers #1

Overview

Angel in his arms . . . Devil at her heels

One last, no-strings night of indulgence. That’s all Tristan wants before he begins a much-needed new chapter in his life. Instead he finds an innocent angel in pink who brings him to his knees.

Isabella is done hiding from the world . . . and her haunting memories. Discovering courage in the arms of a perfect stranger, she finally lets go and sheds her inhibitions.

To Isabella’s shock, she soon learns that Tristan is more than her mystery man-he’s her professor. But Tristan isn’t the only person who’s found Isabella on campus. A dark figure from her past has come back for her. Now Tristan will risk anything to protect Isabella . . . even if it costs him his life.

My Thoughts

First off i should thank the folks at Netgalley and Grand Central Publishing for giving me this ARC to read.  I”m a huge fan of discovering new authors and series and this one is definitely one that i’m intrigued to learn more about.

What we have here is an introduction to the world of Tristan and Isabella – 2 people who’ve had a really tough life so far because of people who they mistakenly trusted and well, now they are both guarded and jaded and really just looking to the end game professionally.  NOT romantically.

The story starts with a view about a year and a half in the past to ground us on what’s driving Isabella’s life.  She was almost killed by her jealous and mentally ill boyfriend and now as she’s trying to put her life back together, we see that it’s taking a few interesting turns.  The first being that she’s finally getting herself to college and the 2nd is her interest in exploring the BDSM lifestyle.

Thankfully for her, she’s got her cousin Dreama there to guide her into the lifestyle and when she’s brought to her first ever play party  – just days before she’s heading to college, she gets a surprise that she wasn’t expecting.  It was supposed to be an opportunity to enjoy a night with no strings and when a connection is made that shocks her to her core, well i think that we know things will get good from there.

Then there’s Tristan, a Dom who’s had a lot of turmoil from women in his life and is absolutely not looking for something more than just a night, and in the group of subs available at the party – not even that is interesting to him.  Until Isabella walks in.

What starts as a night turns into something more when Tristan shows up at Isabella’s college not just as a professor, but as the one that she’s due to be an assistant to.  So – you know sparks will fly.

If that weren’t enough in this story – knowing that you’re going to get some of the most intense scenes because first, she’s being introduced into the lifestyle and those scenes are often amazing but second because there’s so much chemistry between them that regardless of the fact that their situation is ‘forbidden’ – they still try to figure it out.

Add to that the fact that Isabella’s crazy ex may be getting out of his rehab program, and Tristan’s ex is trying to blackmail him again, and you know that there’s a lot of anxiety.  All wrapped up in this story is murder, suicide, multiple attempts on killing folks and well a twist that i sorts of figured out early on but had confirmed towards the end.  It was really nicely written and i can’t wait to see what’s next since i know that we’ll get a story on Ryder (Tristan’s best friend and business partner) or perhaps Dreama – Isabella’s cousin.  On that note – enjoy! and Happy Friday!