These women like their horses fast and their men hard. And they always know how to get what they want. . .
"Cinnamon and Sparks" by Layla Chase
When Sheriff Kent Wyman saves Oriana Ignacio from a runaway horse, he can barely stop the stampede of his own passion. For once he feels her smooth skin and sweet curves, he's rock-hard and ready for pure pleasure. . .
"Once Upon a Legend" by Delilah Devlin
When Prudence Vogel finally meets Jake White Eagle, she discovers he really is the tall, handsome hero of her novel. And his dark sensuality and raw masculinity make her eager to explore every intimate inch of his beautiful body. . .
"Second Wind" by Myla Jackson
All Seth Turner wants is a woman to marry and bear him children. But just when he's given up hope, out of the sky drops a luscious beauty, whose naked body arouses his red-hot desire. . .
The combination of years spent working with words in the secretarial field and a love of reading romances sparked Layla’s initial urge to write. Add to that the experience of reaching a landmark birthday, and you might say a mid-life crisis was born. Relocating from her native California to Texas in 2000 provided more time to focus on the craft. A direct challenge form a critique partner turned Layla’s writing toward the sensual side and she hasn’t looked back since. Writing erotic romance allows her to spread her creative wings and let her imagination take off.
Multi-published in historical, paranormal and contemporary, Layla’s sexy stories are mixed with a bit of humor or a tug of emotion, but always have a happy ending.
Layla lives in south Texas with her engineer husband and teenage daughter. Her other three children are scattered up and down California and having adventures of their own. When not writing or plotting her next story, she spends time reading, watching movies and traveling (so many possible locales for the next adventure).
I often don't like these erotic romance short story anthologies much. Too short and not enough detail or depth. But I enjoyed this set quite a bit. And I was happy to discover they were historical erotic romance novellas...which you can't tell from the back cover summaries or the front cover (at least I didn't realize it!).
The first book, "Once Upon A Legend", is about a young woman who wrote a dime novel based on stories she'd heard of Jake White Eagle. She admits she's a bit obsessed with him. So when she decides to write a sequel, she travels to where he's settled to meet him, never expecting he'd return her interest.
In book 2, "Second Wind", Dolly Sherman is a hot air balloon operator hoping to get a job with a Wild West Show and gain complete independence for herself. But a storm drops her nearly in Seth Turner's lap. Seth thinks it's fate, he'd just been wishing for a good woman to marry and have children with. Now he just has to convince her to stay.
And in the last book, "Cinnamon and Sparks", Oriana works with her family's pyrotechnics company and is in town to set up a display for the mine owner when she meets sheriff Kent Wyman. There's an instant chemistry that they two are helpless to control.
All three of these books where hot, sexy, and just a bit sweet. It's true to say that all could have been more thorough, had more depth and detailed, had some better realism, but short stories are what they are. You can only squish so much into such a short space. And these three made up for what lacked with interesting characters and situations and hot sex.
The first book was my favorite, and probably the hottest. I liked the third one a lot too, but I wish the ending had been more solid. It was a little too vague about what the H/H planned to do. And the second book was good as well, just my least favorite of the three.
So overall, a fun, hot read. If you don't mind short stories and like historical erotica, then give this one a try. I enjoyed it.
WARNING, this book contains: explicit sex, anal sex, light bondage, some dominance/submission