Reviewed by Carissa

TITLE:  Double Blind

SERIES:  Special Delivery #2

AUTHOR:  Heidi Cullinan

PUBLISHER:  Samhain Publishing

LENGTH:  454 pages

BLURB:  Know when to show your hand…and when to hedge your bets.

Randy Jensen can’t stand to just sit by and watch as a mysterious man throws money away on the roulette wheel, especially since Randy’s got his own bet going as to the reason this guy is making every play like it’s his last day on earth. The man’s dark desperation hits Randy right in the gut. Half of him warns that getting involved is a sucker’s bet, and the other half scrambles for a reason—any reason—to save the man’s soul.

Ethan Ellison has no idea what he’s going to do with himself once his last dollar is gone—until Randy whirls into his life with a heart-stealing smile and a poker player’s gaze that sees too much.

Randy draws Ethan into a series of wagers that leads to a scorching kiss by midnight, but he isn’t the only one with an interest in Ethan’s vulnerability. Soon they’re both taking risks that not only play fast and loose with the law, but with the biggest prize of all: their hearts.

Warning: This story contains high-stakes poker, gangsters with a weakness for kittens, foursomes, and kinky consensual sex.

REVIEW:  

Randy is a bit of an ass.  He’s abrasive and stubborn, and has the annoying ability to read people–even when people would rather he not.  He’s good at poker, trucks, cooking, and fucking.  He has his enemies, his friends, and some people who make a pretty good case for being both.  And ever since Mitch and Sam went and got all hitched, he has been feeling a little jealous of what the two have.  Even when the three of them are together, he can’t help but feel like a third wheel on an already perfectly functioning bike.  He knows they love him, and he loves them, but would it really be so bad if he had that kind of relationship for himself?  Love, and marriage, and happily-ever-af….yeah, that is so not going to happen.  Not for him.

Then he sees Ethan, who seems determined to lose everything to the belief that life owes him something.  Be it a win on a lousy fiver at the roulette wheel, or just a flicker of hope that life isn’t always going to be so goddamn fucked up.  And lonely.  But Ethan loses everything to the wheel, because fate, or god, or statistical probability, don’t owe him shit.  Except maybe just this once it might give him what he needs.

Not that anyone ever thought they would ‘need’ Randy.  But when a bet leads to drinks…and then even higher wagers, Randy and Ethan get tangled up in a need so powerful they don’t know what the hell to do with it.  Well, except screw each other’s brains out.  But after that?  Not a clue…

…what he really loved was the game— the chance to use his skill and his smarts to make sure even when he didn’t have much of a hand, he always had the best of it. It didn’t always work out, which was part of the fun. But more often than not he could control a game, almost any game, and this, to his mind, was the whole point of playing.

Watch me, Slick.

Randy went to work.

I have to admit that when I read Special Delivery I wasn’t much of a Randy fan.  I wasn’t a hater…but I couldn’t see how I would enjoy a whole book with him in it, let alone one with him as the MC.  Then I read Ms. Cullinan’s lovely (and steaming) short, Hooch & Cake, and I was so excited to see where this book would take us.  Yes, parts of Randy I still find annoying, but I’ve come to, over the course of this book, really love him.  Once we got a peek into his head a lot of his actions really started to make sense, and when he finds Ethan, a lot of his walls start to take a beating.  Which is good, if painful.

After the last couple of stories in this series I was expecting this book to be non-stop kinky fuckery…and while there is plenty hot kink (hello, foursomes, paddles, and spanking benches!), I found that this book is a lot more than just a good way to get hot and bothered.  No one seems to being riding the high life in this story. Ethan is broke (in more ways than just one) at the beginning of the story, Randy is lonely, Sam is freaking out, Mitch is determined to protect everyone (even if he knows he shouldn’t), and Crabtree is…well he is a conniving old mobster with a love of knives and kittens (though, thankfully, not together).  This book is less about the sex and more about the relationships in the story.  I loved the way that everyone was struggling to find an even keel in this book, how it didn’t take one person to solve all the problems, but instead everyone leaning on everyone else to make it to the top.

The presence of Crabtree in this story was a great way to manipulate all the characters without it seeming heavy handed.  He moves the men around like game pieces, to his benefit, but also for themselves.  He may be tricksy and a little bit evil (mobster, after all), but he does seem to care about the guys.  Even if a favor given is always going to come at a price.  And I really enjoyed the way his manipulations were subtle enough that I didn’t guess his end game till almost the last minute.

There is a lot of gambling in this book, what with it happening in Vegas and all, but it is not just going on on the tables.  Wagers are flying all over the place, some for fun, some for keeps, but if there is one thing I have learned it is that the house always wins.  Especially at roulette (clearly an evil game).  I enjoyed the fact that Randy taught Ethan poker, and the ideas/strategies behind the game played a big part in this story.  Crabtree’s belief of Kings and Aces, of rulers and parasites, shows up a lot in the way that the guys try to figure out who they are and who they want to be.  Not everyone is who they thought they were, but sometimes they find that they’re exactly who they need to be, when they look hard enough at themselves.

The in depth explanations of Poker were a little boring to me, though.  I just wasn’t that interested in having the game explained to me (I’m going to be horrible at it, no matter what) in that much detail, so those sections had a tendency to drag the story down.  Now, if you like that sort of thing, I’m sure it will be fascinating, it just wasn’t for me.

I never expected to like this story as much as I did. I certainly never expected to love it.  But there is something about Randy and Ethan that just clicked with me.  There were points where I desperately wanted them to just for the love of god, communicate already! but their story dragged me in, beat me up, and didn’t let me go till I was nice and tender inside.  Ethan came out of this so strong, and Randy finally got what he never wanted to ask for, but always needed.  Such a great story.  Can’t wait till I can read the next one.

RATING:

BUY LINKS: Samhain  ::  Amazon