Review - Scorched Edges by L.M. Somerton

Fireman Beau first met Marty when he helped to rescue the young intelligence service analyst from a church that had been bombed. He was attracted to the geeky man from the start but has held off making a move on him. After a lousy shift dealing with the latest work of a serial arsonist, Beau decides he should stop wasting time and ask Marty out. Marty can't believe his luck. He has no experience as a submissive, but everything about Beau turns him on. The two hit it off right away, but that arsonist continues to escalate, and seems to have focused on Beau.

This installment of the Tales From The Edge series harks back to the fourth book of the series, A Double-Edged Sword. Beau and Marty meet in the bombing that throws Beckett and Cristian more firmly together. That said, you don't really need to have read that volume before this one. As with most of the books of the series, the main characters are effectively new to this story. However, as always, you will want to have read at least a few of the others to know a little about the secondary characters and the club.

Like many of the submissives depicted in this series, Marty is almost too cute and sweet to be believed. His nerdy nature is played for laughs, but it's not unkind and actually quite believable. As with Kai in the previous book, Marty is a newcomer to the D/s lifestyle. The heady mixture of fascination and apprehension is depicted in a way that feels quite honest.

Beau is yet another dominant out of the standard mold for D/s fiction. Nonetheless, we still get a very good picture of him, making Beau a distinct three-dimensional character. The fire scenes are well enough researched that they feel incredibly realistic.

“Scorched Edges” is available from Amazon.