Review Stop on the Tasty Virtual Book Tour for BLUE BLOODED by Shelly Bell with #excerpt + #giveaway

Welcome to my Review/Excerpt stop on the Tasty Virtual Book Tour for BLUE BLOODED, book 3 in the Benediction series by Shelly Bell. This is my first experience with a Benediction book and I was not disappointed, in fact, I am now hooked. I need to catch up. Stay tuned for an excerpt after my thoughts, and a giveaway.

This one releases tomorrow! A must read!

***eARC provided by publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest and unscripted review.

Blurb for BLUE BLOODED:

In the next sexy and suspenseful Benediction novel, an investigative reporter and an ex-soldier witness a murder outside of an exclusive sex club and while on the run, uncover a deadly conspiracy that begins with mobsters and corrupt FBI agents... and ends on Capitol Hill.

A woman who refuses to be tied down...

Investigative reporter Rachel Dawson is always looking for her next big story. While working on a feature about BDSM, she lands a one-night, no-holds-barred pass into the exclusive sex club, Benediction. Rachel doesn't have a deviant bone in her body—or so she thought—until the infuriating, ex-soldier Logan Bradford convinces her to try rope bondage under his capable hands. But a steamy night turns deadly when Rachel and Logan witness a gruesome murder.

A Dom who's determined to bind her to him...

Framed for a crime they didn't commit and hunted by corrupt FBI agents, they flee. As Rachel and Logan search for evidence to clear their names, the attraction they've been fighting ignites into fiery passion. Love is the last thing Rachel wants, but night by night, as Logan binds her body, he unravels the knots around her heart. And when they uncover a shocking political conspiracy, Rachel will stop at nothing to reveal the truth…and it just might kill her.

My Review:

Wow, Wow, and WOW! I was hooked from page one and had I the time, I have no doubt I would have read this in one sitting. BLUE BLOODED by Shelly Bell is fast-paced, action-packed, sensual, sexy, and downright excitement filled with every turn, twist, and white-knuckle page turn. Shelly has packed in everything that could make a story grand, exciting, sexually adventurous, romance driven, and character exceptional. I don’t know if the first two books are this good but I surely plan to find out.

Rachel and Logan burn up the pages with the sexual tension that exists between them from the start but as you start to see the control shift and wobble between them, you feel the attraction grow and become more. Logan is all about control but when he thinks he can no longer maintain it, he surprises you. Rachel is also all about control but when she gives it over to Logan, she realizes that there is more to control than who is pushing the buttons. It’s about give and take, and control becomes more about allowing someone to do what he, or she, needs to do rather than doing it for them.

BLUE BLOODED, book 3 in the Benediction series by Shelly Bell is most definitely erotic romance. It takes you into the world of BDSM, its light, its darkness, its smells, sounds, pain, and pleasure. However, it doesn’t saturate the pages with it, but rather turns the sexual adventures into yet another in-depth and living character in the story. Whereas it might not be for everyone, I highly recommend it…you can always skip the erotic sex scenes…for the story, the emotional relationships, the surrendering of one strong dominating personality to another and vice versa. BLUE BLOODED is a thrill ride, not only for the erotic sexual scenes but also for the imaginative and terrifying plot line which could so easily happen in today’s world…truth always is more strange, and more often, terrifying than fiction. I am absolutely so eager to experience more of the world of Benediction.

Happy Reading Everyone!

Excerpt:

Puffing on his Cuban cigar, the Senator reclined in his chair, a tumbler of scotch on the rocks in front of him. He stared down the two men sitting on the other side of his desk, daring them to repeat the words that had just been uttered.

Sweating profusely, FBI Agent Seymour Fink tugged on his tie, his Adam’s apple bobbing above the buttoned collar of his shirt.

For a moment, the Senator considered retrieving his gun from his desk drawer and shooting the agent in the head, but he couldn’t risk getting blood or splatters of brain matter on his tuxedo. After all, he had an important dinner to attend in an hour and didn’t want to disappoint his wife.

He downed the rest of his drink and then shook the ice in the glass the way he’d like to shake the mobster who was fucking with him. “Tell me what you’re going to do to fix the problem,” he said calmly, unwilling to allow this minor bump in the road to waylay his plans.

There were only a few problems in the world money couldn’t solve, and this was not one of them. His men were loyal to him because he paid them to be loyal. They believed in his cause because he paid them to believe in his cause. The whole goddamned US of A was manipulated by money, making it possible for great men like him to become even wealthier.

But he was different because unlike most men, he cared more for this country than he did money.

“Do, sir?” Using the sleeve of his suit jacket, Agent Fink wiped the sweat from his brow, cigar smoke circling around his head like a boa constrictor. “I’m not certain we should do—”

“You listen to me, you little prick. There is nothing that will stand in my way.” The Senator hurled his tumbler against the wall above the fireplace, shattering the glass into a million tiny pieces. “Do you understand me? I’ve got your balls in a vise underneath my blade, so let’s try this again. What are you going to do to fix the problem?”

These agents had been instrumental in helping him to get the charges against Anthony Rinaldi dropped in exchange for the mobster’s valuable foreign contacts. A few months ago, the FBI had arrested Rinaldi for the extortion and kidnapping of Danielle Walker and, in the process, had discovered the bodies of thirteen young women buried on his property. But thanks to Agent Richard Evans and Fink, vital evidence had disappeared from the FBI’s possession, helping the judge in the case, a man all too easy to blackmail due to his expensive cocaine habit, to render his decision in dropping the charges. In exchange, Rinaldi had brokered a deal with a Congo mafia leader, and an item found exclusively in the Congo region was about to arrive in the United States. Now that the ship had sailed and all the components were successfully in place, Rinaldi’s usefulness had come to an end.

Seymour swallowed convulsively. “No one was supposed to get hurt.”

“Don’t pull that bullshit now. You knew when I approached you that lives would be lost for the greater good,” the Senator said. He handed off his cigar and nodded to the other agent, a bruiser of a man whom he’d chosen not only for his twenty years of service to this country but for his lack of empathy. Agent Richard Evans understood the risks involved in his job, the three bullets he’d taken in the chest a testament to that fact.

Evans pinched the fat cigar between his fingers and, in a flash, locked his partner’s head under his arm, pinning Fink’s hands to the table and singeing the top of one with the foot of the cigar. Fink screamed, his smaller body thrashing wildly as he fruitlessly tried to escape from his partner and the pain he was inflicting.

The acrid scent of burnt flesh overpowered the cigar’s sweet one, a smell he would forever more attribute to power.

By the time Evans released him, Fink’s skin had turned pasty white, his shirt completely drenched from his sweat. He breathed heavily, nodding. “Consider the problem solved, sir. By this time tomorrow night, Rinaldi will be dead.”

The Senator leaned back in his chair and smiled.

God bless the USA. 

About the Author:

A sucker for a happy ending, Shelly Bell writes sensual romance often with a bit of kink and action-filled erotic thrillers with high-emotional stakes for her alpha heroes and kick-ass heroines.

She began writing upon the insistence of her husband who dragged her to the store and bought her a laptop. When she’s not working her day job, taking care of her family, or writing, you’ll find her reading the latest smutty romance.

She currently writes for Avon Red Impulse, Loose Id, and Soul Mate Publishing. 

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