Double Down by Katie Porter (Vegas Top Guns #1)
Erotic Contemporary
July 31, 2012
Samhain
Reviewed by Mandi
Katie Porter is the pen name for authors Carrie Lofty and Lorelei Brown. Because of that, and because the series name is Vegas Top Guns, featuring some hottie air force pilots, I wanted to read this one. Unfortunately, I was kind of disappointed.
Major Ryan Haverty is a pilot and instructor at a base in Las Vegas. One night out with some fellow pilots, he sets his eyes on a waitress named Cassandra. He sees her with her skirt and pantyhose with the seams up the back, and can barely drag his eyes away. Ryan grew up in a trailer park surrounded by people who openly talked about sex. Because of that (maybe?) he has convinced himself that he likes really dirty things in the bedroom (role play especially) and his previous fiancé left him because of this. He would never let this desire be known to the public because he is too shamed. As a reader, this annoyed me because I feel like we truly never dive into this issue/insecurity he has. So he likes his sex partners to dress up as a french maid. I don’t think this is too out of line kinky. But for whatever reason, this shames him.
Cassandra works part-time in an art gallery, and is just waitressing until she has enough money, or a position available to move to the gallery full-time. She notices Ryan watching her in the restaurant, and after some big-time flirting, they head out on the town together. As Cass says:
After half a year of polite and frankly inadequate lovemaking, Cass wanted to go for it. She wanted to have sex with the man who’d hit on an eighteen (blackjack). Something hot and daring. A memory in the making.
“Tonight I like fast,” she whispered.
They plan to have a weekend full of fun, adventurous, carefree sex, which turns into much more.
There is a lot of sex in this book, and it is dirty. I don’t have a problem with the actual sex scenes. And I didn’t necessarily mind how fast they start having a physical relationship. As I mentioned, there is a lot of role playing – french maid, high class hooker, that type of stuff. Ryan gets off on Cassandra wearing pigtails and telling him what a naughty man he is. Cassandra gets off on it too, although they don’t really communicate that well with each other.
Ryan is very screwed up over his big confession to his previous fiancé that he likes things a little more spicy in the bedroom. Very shamed, always thinking Cassandra is going to come to her senses and treat him the same way once she realizes ‘who’ he really is. He brings this up to himself several times:
“Yes, sir,” she breathed.
Oh shit, did he like that or what? He was turning out to be more of a sicko than he’d though.
Or
Regular people shut the doors and turned down the lights. Good, regular men didn’t ask women to dress up and play stupid sex games. He wanted to at least make the attempt, no matter what turned him on.
After this one risky night, he’d go back to being sane. Normal.
Or
He was rapidly starting to suspect Cassandra was a woman worth knowing. That meant treating her with the respect she deserved.
No more weird stuff.
Besides, sex had been fantastic no matter what they did. He didn’t need seamed stockings and French accents. Wouldn’t let himself need them.
Dude – get a grip. First of all, from night one, they start with role play and never once does Cassandra object to it. It is actually her idea to go to an adult sex store and go into the dressing room to try things on. So why Ryan would think she isn’t into this type of sexual play, I have no idea. Plus, the extent of their role play is dressing up and maybe talking in an accent. Nothing kinky. Or maybe I’ve read too many erotic books lately, but this is all pretty vanilla stuff. I didn’t understand Ryan’s mind frame at all and got so tired of his constant worrying over it because he never stopped doing it. And Cassandra never complained once.
Outside of the sex scenes, I got bored and annoyed with the storyline. Nothing to keep me interested in reading. While Ryan obsessed over being such a dirty, sicko of a man, Cassandra fell kind of flat (although I did like her forwardness in the bedroom) and the story kind of fell apart for me.
Rating: C-
Recent Reviews:
The Book Pushers – B+
Limecello – A-
Fiction Vixen – D
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Ugh, yes! I felt the same. His whining and angsting about how sick he was got old real fast. I wasn’t thrilled with the story outside of that and found myself irritated with his two friends. They didn’t have enough depth to interest me and they didn’t seem like the greatest people anyway.