Stripping Her Defenses

I am amazed with how much story went in this book. Its not a long book but so much happened. Our couple met in high school and fell in love. Even though they both knew it was that special kind of love things went wrong. I have to give the author credit for accurately portraying a woman with depression issue who along with having that also had abandonment issues and self image issues. I’ve have a friend that suffers from depression and its not pretty and I know she has it – in the book her husband was clueless of what she was going through and just knew that she was longer the woman he married and instead of trying to find out what was going on he opted for more mission with his SEAL team so he wouldn’t have to be home. To make things worse she was pregnant which just added more emotions to her already overwhelming ones. When a tragic car accident takes her baby’s life and her husband is nowhere to be found on a mission she walks away from it all and files for divorce and he is left to grieve for everything – his marriage – his soul mate and his son all on his own with no answers as to what happened.

After that heartbreaking mess we jump to present day 8 years later not to long after the first book ended. The Ex Ops team wants to bring down the men responsible for the kidnapping and selling of women which resulted in the heroine of the last book getting kidnapped and the death of another woman she had been in captivity with who had been brutally tortured and raped. They find a new connection of girls being taken with strip clubs and a joint undercover operation is put into play.

Now here is where that “so much happened” comes in to play again. The author Jessie Lane and author Chelsea Camaron have decided to loosely connect their two series into a new one called Regulators MC. So we are introduced to the heads of that MC club as they own some of the strip clubs in Miami where girls have gone missing and this is where the Ex Ops team is headed undercover to try and find the new players in the sex slave ring.

Boy once they get to Miami things heat up. I think I’ve given quite a bit of the story away already so I’m gonna leave what happens in Miami to the reader to find out. All I have to say I was very satisfied with how Riley and Kara dealt with each other when they were brought back together in a surprising way and that the author didn’t sugar coat Kara’s recovery – she let it be known that Kara had to do years of therapy to get her to a comfortable place and that with the type of depression she has there may be times she has an episode that could require her to seek meds to help her through it.

This book did such a great set up for ICE – which will be the first book in the new series by Chelsea and Jessie – which I cannot wait till next month to read. A lot of things happened at the end of this book that also has me wanting the next Ex Ops book too. Love this series and glad a new one is coming that looks just as good!

Riley's assignment has him running head first into his past. It is the last place he thought he'd see Kara. He never expected to see her with an MC crew working in a strip club. Even seeing her in this new life he still won't give up on making her his present and future.

Kara would have liked him to stay in the past where her secrets are. There are so many things she hasn't told him. She's afraid once she does he won't look at her the same. She is no longer the passive woman. She is now strong and confident. Can his alpha personality handle it?

Will their past issues with his job continue to distance and put a wedge between them? Has too much happened for them to repair what broke them?