Review: Wild Card - Lora Leigh

A Fatal Escape

It was supposed to be simple.  All Navy SEAL Nathan Malone had to do was rescue three young girls from a Colombia drug cartel, then allow himself to be captured just long enough to draw out a government spy.  That was before his mission went disastrously wrong ... and before his wife, Bella, was told that Nathan was never coming home.

A Dangerous Desire...

Bella's mourned her husband's death for three long years.  But she has no idea he's alive.  Forced to assume a new identity, the man Nathan was is now dead.  If he can get back to his wife, can he keep the secret of who he really is ... even as desire threatens to consume them?  And as danger threatens to tear Bella from Nathan's arms once more?

Elite Ops Series:
Wild Card
Night Hawk (Free short story)
Maverick
Heat Seeker
Black Jack

Visit Lora Leigh's website for more information.

Review:
When Navy SEAL Nathan went on a mission he thought it was going to be easy and he'd be back with his wife Bella within a couple of weeks.  However, when the mission went wrong he ended up captured and tortured for 19 months.  By the time he was rescued Bella had already been told he was dead.  Both physically and mentally scarred from the torture he endured Nathan believes that Bella is better off without him and to protect her he takes on an assumed identity as Noah Blake and starts working for an elite team who carry out dangerous missions for the government.  6 years after he left on his last fateful mission as Nathan, Noah's team is called in to investigate a white supremacist group in his home town.  Noah believes he can go undercover even working in Bella's garage without her realising who he is and without having to act on his love for her. 

Bella has been grieving for years for the husband who was her soul mate so she is shocked to find herself drawn to the sexy stranger Noah.  It doesn't take her too long to discover who he actually is and she is hurt that he was alive for all this time and didn't come back to her.  Noah finds Bella is very different from the helpless young wife he left behind, in fact she is the perfect match for the man he has become.  The attraction between them is intense and they are unable to resist each other but with Bella waiting for Noah to tell her who he really is and Noah not wanting to tell her for the fear that she will reject him their relationship isn't going to be resolved easily.  Add to that the danger that Bella is in from the supremacist group and the couple are in for a bumpy ride.

Wild Card is the first book I've read by Lora Leigh and it won't be the last.  Although Wild Card is the first book in the Elite Ops series I have since found out that this series is a spin off from Lora's Seals series so Nathan's character had already been introduced in previous books.  I didn't feel like I'd missed anything by not reading the Seals series first but I enjoyed this book so much I'll definitely be reading that series in the future.

Nathan & Bella's relationship is intense and passionate (with plenty of really hot love scenes!) and I really found myself liking both of the main characters.  Bella has gone through hell grieving for her husband but she is a survivor and has come through it stronger than ever.  Now that Nathan (Noah) is back in her life she refuses to go back to being the "little woman" who waits around helplessly waiting for his instructions.  She wants to be an equal partner and she isn't prepared to settle for less.  Noah isn't the same man that Nathan was but she can still see the man she loved under the tough exterior and she still loves him just as much.  Although at times I wanted to shake Noah until he told her who he really was (particularly when he was getting jealous of his wife's memory of Nathan and the love he believes she still has for him) I could understand why he felt the way he did.  He had been changed deeply by the torture he had gone through at the hands of the drug lord who had captured him but it was his love for Bella that got him through.

I loved the intensity of their relationship and the fact that although they had both changed considerably from the people they were when they married they both remained true to each other and were still deeply in love.  The passion between them was smoking hot - believe me you're going to need plenty of cold showers reading this one!  I can't remember who suggested Lora Leigh to me but I will definitely be reading more of her books in the future and would recommend Wild Card to any fans of erotic romance.  I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the next book in this series and will definitely be reading the Seals series too.

Source: Library

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