Title: Naked
Author:  Raine Miller
Publisher/Year:  Atria Books 5/14/13
Length:   164 Pages
Series:  The Blackstone Affair #1

Overview

Naked desire. Secret satisfaction. An affair you’ll never forget.

Brynne Bennett has left scandal in her past and is living the good life. An American grad student at the University of London and part-time photographic model, she’s getting back on track with lots of hard work and focus on a career in art conservation. When London businessman Ethan Blackstone buys her nude portrait, he wants to possess more than just her image. He wants Brynne in his bed, serving him in every way possible. He has no trouble voicing his desires, and he isn’t taking no for an answer.

At first his dominant nature captivates her, but it isn’t clear if the force of his powerful desire will ultimately awaken or dispel the demons Brynne is carrying inside. There are secrets on both sides of this relationship—huge ones. Can Ethan erase the scars of Brynne’s past so that she can reveal her true self to him? Or will the shadows cast by Ethan’s own mysterious former life destroy their chance at happiness?

Naked is the sizzling, unforgettable story of what happens when a strong woman meets the one man powerful enough to strip away all her defenses, leaving her standing naked and perfect before him.

My Thoughts

I feel like i’m often at a loss to find something to read from my favorite authors since i have make my way through their portfolios through the years so it’s time that i open my list to a few new ones.  Thank you Listopia over at Goodreads for giving me some new inspiration.

With this book, i read the reviews first and they were mixed, but i like to form my own opinion.  I think that i’m in the middle of how folks felt and let me tell you why.  The summary in the overview doesn’t quite do the story justice.  There’s so much more to it and i think that perhaps we miss out on the whole set up for things.

Brynne is an art student living in London, but there’s something in her past that she’s run from that we don’t quite understand yet.  She’s from the states, and something terrible happened which caused her both to leave the US and to seek the help of a therapist to cope, and there are teases of what that could be but it’s yet to be spelled out.  When circumstances change in the US and someone powerful gains recognition, we quickly learn that this could put Brynne’s safety at risk and that’s where Ethan comes into the picture.

Ethan, British and powerful, also the owner of his own security firm, and an acquaintance of Brynne’s father, so a quick call to make in the hopes of ensuring her safety.  What happens though is that Ethan’s drawn to her for more than just a job and that spells trouble.

We’re quickly pulled into a romance here with Ethan’s true domination side coming out.  He wants / needs control in everything and that means over Brynne.  Not just because he’s paid to protect her but because he wants her in a way that he can’t understand.  Brynne however has fought for control for so long – she suffered from something six years earlier and control is the only way that she can survive.

So for the rest of this first installment, we see how things grown between them, how they work to find compromise while fighting each other every step of the way.  Ethan puts Neil a bodyguard on her tail and she discovers this before he has time to tell her.  Then there’s the phone conversation with her father where she reveals that she’s dating Ethan, and you can only imagine what ensues afterwards because he’s supposed to be protecting her…..and that’s where we are left at the end of this book.

I honestly didn’t know what to expect from this author since this is the first writing that i’ve read.  I think there were moments of great depth and intrigue which kept me going, but there were also moments where i just wanted to skim through pages since i was losing interest in the conversation.  The upshot though was that there were some fairly steaming and romantic scenes between our mains, and that’s what tends to carry books in this genre through.  The cliff that we’re left on at the end of the book makes me all that more interested to see what happens, so now i’m off to find book 2 of this series.  Enjoy!