Review: Beneath the Surface

Beneath the Surface‏ (Reluctance #1) by M.A. Stacie

Beneath the Surface is the first book in a new series that I am very interested to read more about.

Kyran Reese is a CEO by day and by night secretly a bare knuckle fighter. Rich and under pressure to make his retired father's company succeed with(out) the help of his younger brother, Kyran is a tyrant to his employees and demands perfection from everyone around him. Dale (yes that's a female) Porter is looking to start over after finding her long time boyfriend and best friend from childhood in bed together. She starts her new job as the other Mr. Reese's assistant, but encounters Kyran instead, and sparks fly.

Kyran is always focused, and as soon as he meets Dale, he is in a constant state of confusion and anger because she takes his focus away with her beauty, vanilla scent, and no-nonsense approach to him. He sends grown men scurrying away from him in fear, yet Dale has no problem standing up to him. Dale's brother works at the bar where Kyran fights, and his secret is out. They can't deny their attraction and decide to enter into a no-strings attached relationship.

The meat of the story here is great, and I really am interested in the other stories that can be told here-Kyran's brother, Taylor, or even some of the other fighters at the bar. Kyran was a real piece of work who went through a believable and sweet change because of his relationship with Dale. The sex scenes were hot and passionate-clandestine office hook ups, stolen moments, and spicy innuendo as well as overt alpha demands peppered this erotic story. There were minor edit issues, and sometimes the movement of the story itself could come off clunky, but this was an ARC and they could have fixed those flow issues in the final edit. Dale was an interesting character because it seemed like she was set up to be a mousy shrinking violet, yet she was kind of a ballsy, mouthy badass. I liked her a lot-she was honest, upfront, and understood what her feelings and boundaries were.

A hot, sometimes intense good read. 3.5 stars.