Indelibly Intimate by Regina Cole
Erotic Contemporary Romance
July 13, 2012
Ellora’s Cave

Reviewed by Mandi

Favorite Quote: “Good. I want you too,” he said seriously, holding her ass for dear life.

Quinn LaBrea is coming out of a relationship, not only with a jerk of an ex-boyfriend, but also with his name tattooed on her leg. And it is an ugly tattoo at that. She saves up  money to get the tattoo covered up, only to have the shop she was going to have gone out of business. Her salary as a waitress doesn’t give her much extra change, and when debt collectors start calling in regards to her ex’s many financial issues, she is stretched too thin. After work at a gas station, she meets tattoo artist Hamilton Dean, who goes by the name Hammer. She unloads her day’s problems on him, who decides he can at least help her out by covering the tattoo himself.

Later that night she shows up at his shop, and he does an amazing job of giving her a tattoo that she can now be proud of. Instead of demanding payment in cash, Hammer has another idea. He is going to a tattoo convention soon, and wants to enter Quinn’s tattoo in the cover-up contest. He asks her to come with him to the convention, help around on the convention floor, and show off her work during the contest. At first Quinn is wary of this, not wanting Hammer to think any untoward physical thoughts about their fragile friendship. But when Quinn gets home and the lights get shut off due to non-payment, she really has no other choice.

I’m weak for a tattoo artist hero. My knees started to shake when I realize he is not only a tattoo artist, but he has a shaved head, rides a motorcycle and is a law school drop out. Granted, he likes being called ‘Hammer’ rather than Hamilton he loses a few points. He also loses points when he immediately gives Quinn the nickname, ‘Sparky’ and pretty much calls her that the entire book. So we have Hammer and Sparky – a little hokey in my opinion, but I guess I can live with it.

This is a pretty sexy book with a nice storyline. Quinn is down on her luck and doesn’t have her life under control. She is quite frankly a mess. Hammer becomes enamored with her, more with her physical beauty at first. The first night they meet, because Quinn has no electricity, she ends up sleeping at his place. She gets drunk and starts advancing on Hammer. I’m not a fan of the hero taking sexual advantage of the heroine when she is drunk. She goes from slurring her words to eating a few slices of pizza and apparently that makes her lucid enough for Hammer to let her continue. As he says,

“He let her have control. It was easy to see she needed this tonight. He’d let her have him, let her do what she wanted. Later it would be his turn and he’d enjoy it to the fullest.”

Because I’m sure it’s a real hardship on you there buddy, to let a drunk girl give you sexual pleasure. That kind of ticked me off. I will say, he felt guilty about it later, which made the situation a little better. And Quinn doesn’t feel like it was the greatest decision she had ever made either.

The sex scenes are well done in this book, and although Quinn can lay it on heavy at times, I liked both of these characters. They had chemistry together. I think the weakest part of the book is that the author rolls out the, ‘lets have sex, no strings attached’ trope. This theme can be found in a lot of romance books and I’m sure I’ve read some books where this trope worked for me. But here, it felt more like a ploy to get the hero and heroine into bed so sex scenes could be written, instead of diving into the couple’s actual issues, working them out and letting them have a relationship before they decide sex would be a good thing for them. There are always ‘strings’ in romance books and with this set up, the outcome is so predictable. They have sex, feelings form, there are now strings.

So that set-up was frustrating and I think their relationship could have become much deeper and fuller. But getting past that, I liked Hammer and Quinn. They were fun and the sex was hot. I’ll be picking up her next book.

Rating: C+

Note: This book is from the ‘Pricked’ line at Ellora’s Cave, which includes all tattoo themed books. (which definitely interests me).

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