Delighted Reader

Need You Tonight by Roni Loren 
Series: Loving on the Edge, book #5 
Genres: BDSM, Contemporary Romance 
Published by Berkley 
Published on March 4, 2014 
Pages: 400 
Format: eARC 
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Rating:  

Need You Tonight by Roni Loren starts with a bang when trophy wife Tessa McAllen finds her husband banging her best friend on the kitchen counter. Growing up in foster care, she thought she found the right man in husband, forgoing college. The one thing she does well is does champion her own charity to help foster kids move on after foster care ends. Using her husband’s credit card, she finds a good lawyer and gets a divorce. Now back in her last known home town, she is going back to college and trying to move on with her life.

Kade Vandergriff finds Tessa at a singles event at one of his restaurants and just knows he has to get to know her. More than food sizzled that night, but when the restaurant catches on fire, Kade realizes just who Tessa is and was to him. He harbored a huge teenage crush on Tessa, but things ended badly. He’s changed his name and moved on from the kid who was tormented by Tessa’s boyfriend. He’s got his own problems to deal with and doesn’t need to go back to the Hell of his teenage years.

Being the good guy though, Kade hires Tessa to work on a charity event which puts them closer together. Slowly he reveals to her his darkest desires while also taking his time telling Tessa who he really is. The BDSM gets dark at parts, but through it all, Kade never betrays the trust Tessa gives him.

The ex-husband comes back and dark memories of what really happened the night Kade and Tessa last saw each other is revealed. This is an absolutely dark memory that I could have done with the details on. Just hinting at it was enough for my reading tastes. But this is also the turning point for Kade to leave the bad situation of his life and make more of himself rather than stay with his dead beat stepfather and mother.

The first half of the book I really enjoyed. The cooking scene was awesome and I looked forward to more of that, but alas that was the only cooking/lovemaking scene. As memories were revealed, I found myself drawing back from the violence of their youth. It disturbed me mostly. Moving back to the future, Kade has just as many problems with is ex-wife as Tessa has with her ex-husband. The two storms of ex’s connect to push these two closer together. Their past binding them deeper. I am just not to sure the past can be forgiven as much as it was.

There is a lot of violence in this story, both past and present. Kidnapping, rape, punching, threatening, unwanted photographs, etc. It wasn’t an easy story to like. I wanted a lot for Kade. I wanted to knock Tessa for her insecurities. I just wanted these two to get together as kids and grow old together, but that didn’t happen.

In the end, I loved the characters, but had hard times with the story. It was just too sad and depressing. It does end on a high note, but the pain is there still. I can only hope that life eases for these two because they have lived through enough for a couple of life times. The love scenes were dealt with respectfully and  consensually with just enough sizzle and zinge to make your girly parts tingle.

How do you feel about bullies? This story deals with a really awful bully forcing his will on someone in a bad very bad way. How do you feel about an abused person becoming a Dom? Do this allow them to take over where they have felt helpless in the past?