Review: Long Slow Tease - Truly Ann Mayburn's best work to date
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 6, 2014
Note:  I wanted to wait until both books were out before writing a review.STILL, book #1 in this two-part saga, introduces us to Wyatt Callahan and Michelle Sapphire with one of the best openings I have read in a long time. As the story progresses, we learn that they served together in 'the sandbox', she a physician and Navy Lieutenant, he a Marine Gunnery Sargent. They are very much attracted to one another, but military regs forbid any interaction other than professional. Neither discloses their feelings for the other until they are riding together in a convoy that encounters an IED and Michelle holds a critically injured Wyatt in her arms. Wyatt's injury necessitates his retirement from the Marines, and Michelle finishes up her Navy enlistment. They have gone their separate ways until they are brought together again in a police station at OMG-dark-thirty in the morning. Thus begins an intense, sexy, incredible story of two broken people who begin to heal each other.PENANCE opens and Michelle and Wyatt are very much together in a relationship that is clearly built on love and blossoming trust. They have both decided this will be for life. Wyatt has begun to heal and Michelle has been pivotal in his journey of recovery - but at what cost to herself? To help Wyatt heal, Michelle has put her own issues into the psychological 'little black box'. There is only so much room in that box and it now begins to get harder and harder to close the lid.To understand the story, Still and Penance much be read together. This is an incredible story that is gritty, real, and one helluva ride. It takes a hard look at the impact of PTSD on the victims and those who love them. It is also a story that portrays what it really means to stand beside someone "in sickness and in health, for better, for worse". Even in the face of incredible odds, these two people are made stronger because they are together and that, my friends, is what true, deep and abiding love is all about.Ms. Mayburn pulls no punches in this book. You'll laugh; you'll cry; you'll want to throw your ereader across the room (Michelle's mother is a real piece of work), and you'll get all hot and bothered, too. This book has one of the most impassioned declarations of love between two people I have ever read. There is also anger, betrayal, revelation, and healing - all played out on the backdrop of a very realistically written, honest, abiding love and devotion.Ms. Mayburn also blows the myths surrounding female Dominants and their male submissives out of the water with her very realistic portrayal of relationships in which the women are the Dominants - and make no mistake, the men in these relationships are Alpha to the marrow of their bones.Bottom line:  Ms. Mayburn is on my auto-buy list and I have read everything she has written. IMHO, she is one of the best authors of romance and romance erotica out there today. This is truly her best work to date. You will not be disappointed, and this is one you'll want to read more than once.