Truthful Change by Jane Davitt & Alexa Snow
Starting this novel I was having the impression of have already read it, cute gardener draws attention of older (and experienced) gay man; older gay man offers to be the “playfield” for cute gardener, to test the waters, and the boundaries, in all security and without strings attached.
But already at the end of chapter 2 the story took a different route, and even if it was about FBI agents spying on former mercenaries, the path led to a very personal story, about Aiden/Adam who is not able to split between his job and his personal life; he has to have sex with Karl, for the sake of his undercover assignment, but he is not able to consider it only a job, problem is that sex with Karl is way better of what he has ever experienced with his in-living boyfriend Scott.
Nothing out of the ordinary, only more passionate sex that apparently Scott is not able to give him; Aiden doesn’t want excitement, he is not searching for a dominant lover, even if he is an FBI agent, Aiden basically remains the linguistic student who was recruited by the Agency as soon as he was out of college. With Scott he has a good life, and if he was the teacher he was supposing to be, that life would have been probably perfect: Scott, an emergency doctor, the one with the demanding job, and Aiden more or less willing to shape his life around it. But with his work as an FBI agent, Aiden had the chance to see something more, to realize that even if he likes Scott, he is not really in love with him.
Karl is like a punch in the gut, he immediately takes root in Aiden’s mind and heart, and it’s really difficult to play the innocent man with him. Aiden wants to prove to Karl that he can be the right partner for him, that he is not the naïve boy he is posing.
The first half of the book is all about Karl and Aiden, about their relationship, and Aiden’s mission is almost inexistent. But even when the dangerous plot takes place, it’s always less important than the possible evolution of Karl and Aiden’s story.
The story is mostly about Aiden, about his point of view. Even if Karl is an imposing character, he gave me the idea of a balanced man, not easy to burst of rage; he starts his relationship with Aiden almost out of boring, he continues it since it’s good, and when Aiden’s true identity comes out, he has almost no reaction, if not for a somewhat annoyed feeling, like someone had crushed down his house of cards.
There is a lot of sex and it’s good; Karl knows how to play Aiden in the right way, and yes, in this case, sex comes way before love and it’s good even without it.
http://www.loose-id.com/Truthful-Change.aspx
Amazon Kindle: Truthful Change
Reading List:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading list&view=elisa.rolle
Cover Art by April Martinez