Left Break Press | July 23, 2015 | MC RomanceBayonet Scars, book 5
★★★★★
SOURCE: INKSLINGER PR
Tragedy cuts deep. Revenge burns deeper.
The blood of their enemies coats the leather of their cuts and a trail of bodies lie in their wake, but the Forsaken Motorcycle Club isn't done yet. Carlo Mancuso still needs to pay for his sins. Nobody knows that more than Ian Buckley, the Treasurer for Forsaken.
Ian prefers his pleasure mixed with pain and he's only ever at peace when he's doling out justice. Convinced that he's too unstable and sadistic to take an old lady, he keeps his trysts, like all of his relationships, brief and anonymous. But with his club at war, and the stakes being so personal, Ian's feeling the events around him more deeply than he expects.
Mindy Mercer is the sweet daughter of Fort Bragg’s most respectable cop. At least that’s how the town sees her. Very few people know the Mindy who hides her tracks and battles her cravings by lying to everyone around her. She thinks she has control of her addiction until she suffers an attack that leaves her searching for a way out of her own personal hell.
Mindy has never been more desperately in need of a savior and Ian has never seen a more beautifully destroyed creature in his life. Their attraction is intense, but their damage is extreme. Some scars never heal, and some people never get better.
Love is never more painful than when it can kill you.
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{ about jc emery } .
As a child, JC was fascinated by things that went bump in the night. As they say, some things never change. Now, as an adult, she divides her time between the sexy law men, mythical creatures, and kick-ass heroines that live inside her head and pursuing her bachelor's degree in English. JC is a San Francisco Bay Area native, but has also called both Texas and Louisiana home. These days she rocks her flip flops year round in Northern California and can't imagine a climate more beautiful.JC writes adult, new adult, and young adult fiction. She dabbles in many different genres including science fiction, horror, chick lit, and murder mysteries, yet she is most enthralled by supernatural stories-- and everything has at least a splash of romance.
{ excerpt } .
“You ride?”I shake my head. He turns his face toward mine and waits as though I haven’t answered him. Maybe he thinks I haven’t. I guess I’ve been silent too long because he squeezes my hand and continues to stare at me with searching eyes. I shake my head again and this time he sees it and nods his head in return. He drops my hand and climbs on his bike. He nudges the kickstand up and holds the bike upright. He has a helmet in his outstretched hand.
“Wear this, then climb on like I did and place your feet here,” he says and points to a cylindrical black peg that juts out of the bike. “Don’t drop your feet and let your body lean into the turns.”
He’s patient with me as I stand here and psych myself up. I’ve had maybe a fantasy or two about a sexy man on a motorcycle, but until Ian it was just that—a passing fantasy that went as quickly as it came.
With his pointer finger, he summons me forward and sets the helmet on the tank between his legs. His eyes aren’t kind exactly and they’re not dark and sexy. They’re something else that I’m desperate to place, but can’t. I close the distance between us and stand before him. Slowly, he reaches out and brushes a lock of hair from my face and tucks it behind my ear.
“Tell me where you’re at,” he says quietly. He tucks my hair behind my other ear as well. I let out a soft, unintentional sigh. I barely hear the question—or order rather—and instead have all my attention focused on his touch. Being able, and even wanting, to be touched is such a wonder. “Tell me I help.”
There’s such a vulnerability about him in this moment as his fingers lightly weave through my messy hair and he’s asking for reassurance. My breath halts in my lungs. I both loathe and love the sound of his plea. I didn’t even know he was capable of this. Ian is always so strong for me that I think I sometimes forget that he’s human.“I need you.”
{ review } .
First: I think the cover for BURN may just be my favorite... Not sure why, I just really like it.
Second: I've loved Ian from the moment we met him. So getting his story? I was so ecstatic. This was, hands down, my favorite BAYONET SCARS story.
In BURN, we get to watch Mindy fight for herself. She's been sober of drugs and alcohol for 4-plus years, but after the events in REV, life becomes a daily battle. I have a note in REV, when Ian is talking Holly through a phone call, about how I could not wait for Ian to get his story. Of all the men in Forsaken, I've always felt that Ian was the most soft-spoken, the most gentle: something that Mindy sort of alludes to in one of her first thoughts in BURN:
I don't get it -- his resistance to admit that he likes things a little sweet.
While she's thinking about his coffee preference (that he doesn't admit to but Mindy knows from days of sitting with him in the morning), it is telling of Ian in general. Like his coffee, he likes his Mindy sweet and is terrified of changing her. Then there's the whole gentle thing -- Ian has a gooey soft side when it comes to Mindy.
-- Don't get me wrong, the boy has fight in him -- with his Ma and Pop, and Ryan at his side, he's had no choice but to grow up hard -- but he's definitely the most gentle of the group.
He doesn't want to like Alex, but because he grew up celebrating her and Michael's birthday, he watched his Ma cry over the two of them and now he sees how much Ryan loves her... he accepts her -- and because as much as he won't admit it, it's ingrained in him, to accept those his family loves. Granted, he has a difficult time with the whole Ryan's his brother, Alex is his sister, and they're together thing, but when you break it down and don't look so closely, it's not so bad.
Anyway. Ian has been in Mindy's corner since at least that disastrous day when men took her and Holly, and raped Mindy thinking she was Nic. Every day, he has sat with Mindy and has been simply there for her. But when he stops coming daily, Mindy has her moments of panic.
Ian will stop short of nothing to keep Mindy safe, sober, and happy. He proves again and again that he's there for her, even when she asks things of him that he'd rather not do.
Don't tell him I told you, but Ian is incredibly sweet -- even when he's pissed and pulling her full name. No, he doesn't want Mindy to see the dark side of him; he doesn't want her to watch him and the boys when they seek revenge, he wants to shield her from the intricacies of the club -- she is, after all, the daughter of law and only recently became part of club 'life'. Another little part in what I loved about him was that while she wasn't his Old Lady, she wasn't even seeing him other than for the occasional cup of morning coffee, he protected her as if she were. He refuses to let her relapse and has the men of Forsaken in his corner, telling him if and when she does. He also refuses to be the catalyst in her breaking her sobriety. He greets her always with a kiss on the forehead (and eventually leaves her with a kiss on the lips); he quiets her fears and is always willing to wrap her in his arms.
But Mindy's demons started well before the incident less than a year prior; it was only the most recent events that made her more of a shell. She's adaptable, something that hurts Ian. The one thing Mindy hasn't done, though, is properly grieve for the events that transpired and when she does?
...the woman breaks down and then some. It's Ian, though, who's there to pick up her pieces, it's Ian to comfort her, and it's Ian who learns that maybe his Mindy is a little stronger than he gives her credit for.
You can't fault the man for wanting to keep Mindy safe and guarded. And while he's had an inkling toward him loving her for quite some time, when he finally completely accepts it? When his heart breaks for things Mindy wants and can't have? When he proves he'd do absolutely anything for this woman? Can't help but love him more.
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