Title: Restrained Under His Duty
Author: Stacey Kennedy
Publisher/Year:  Random House 4/4/17
Length:  220 Pages
Series: Dirty Little Secrets #3

Overview

As the chief of security for a prominent senator, Ryder Blackwood is stunned when an anonymous source sends him a compromising photo of his boss’s twenty-five-year-old daughter getting down and dirty in an underground sex club. If it gets out, the media firestorm could ruin her father. More troubling for Ryder is how arousing he finds the whole situation. He’s known Hadley Winters since she was a kid. And now she’s the woman in all his most private fantasies.

Wild behavior helps Hadley get through those painful, lonely nights, but she’s been waiting a long time for a man like Ryder to protect her from herself. Ryder is raw. He’s real. And he makes her feel safe. Now that they’ve both become pawns in a blackmailer’s dangerous game, there’s more at stake than her father’s political career. As the intimate threats tear apart a tender new love, Hadley is forced to trust Ryder with her life—and her heart.

My Thoughts

So i’ll be honest, it’s been quite a bit of time since I was with this series, but I do vaguely remember what was going on with the four friends. They’re all successful and they all own sex clubs, but that’s only a part of who they are. They have these amazing identities and lives that fly above and beyond what they try to hide, and it’s what they’re trying to hide that often gets them into trouble.

In this story – we are focused on Ryder – he owns a security firm and he has been working for a Senator for longer than he can remember. He’s grown close to the man, as well as to his daughter, and the sparks fly between them but they both fight it since there’s complications in what that could mean.

Of course, when something comes out that has the power to compromise Hadley, and in turn harm her father, we see the protective nature of Ryder come out in full force and as a result, the sparks fly to a point where they combust and the world is turned on its side.

There’s a lot of deceit in this story. There’s someone who’s been selling false stories to the tabloids about the friends, and now Hadley has been brought into it. There’s someone who’s trying to get her father to step down from office and when that doesn’t happen, Hadley is blackmailed for it.

Murders are attempted, moles and false stories are planted to weed out whos behind everything, and what inevitably happens is that there’s an unhappy ending for several people. We don’t know who’s trustworthy and we have ideas on who’s not for sure. Will it all come to a head before or after any chance of romance has passed.

The conclusion here sets up a story for the final man of the quad, and we now know who’s behind some things but not yet why. The implications there are immense and I can’t wait to find out now how it resolves since i’ve discovered this series again. Enjoy!