Fire Season (Tales of the Darkworld 3) by Lex Valentine
I think that basically Lex Valentine is an het romance writer, and a good one, and she decided to write a gay romance episode to mount it in a series, Tales of the Darkworld, that again, is basically an het paranormal romance series. The result is good and enjoyable, but clearly aimed to those readers that, before shifting to the gay romance world, enjoyed the classical paranormal romance. I will not be strict, and say "women", since I know there are also men, even if few, who like that genre, but I think that the intake the author has and writes on men, is of a straight man who, for a reason or the other, loves another man, but only that one. Holden, the straight man, is a women's man, but his mate is another man, and the pull of the mating is stronger than his sexual preferences; so Holden is forced to accept Garret as his mate, but this doesn't mean that he stops to like women. Holden has written "gay for you" in his forehead, and the author is very much aware of this subgenre, since she is the first to use, and put in the mouth of her characters, that definition.
Holden's family is an ancient dragon clan, black dragons, and Holden and his brothers and sisters reach that age when they have to mate. When Holden meets Garret, thanks to the help of a family friend, from his smell and from the reaction of his body, he soon understands that Garret is his mate. Doesn't matter that Garret is a man, and even less doesn't matter that Garret is a green dragon. The pull of mating goes beyond gender differences and clan old fights. Being Garret a declared bisexual, he has fewer trouble than Holden to accept the unavoidable; and on Holden's side, the first rebuttal reaction is soon forgotten and he is ready to come down to pact.
Holden's behavior is very much what you would expect from a straight man who has to deal with an homosexual relationship; in a way it's like Holden and Garret are forced in an arranged marriage, and their personal preferences don't matter. Holden fears everything he is not able to relate in some way to an het relationship: that his partner can go down to him or that they can have anal sex (with Holden on the giving end), those are things he can understand and accept, but everytime he arrives to the realization that his partner has a penis, he freaks out. But Garret is patient and Holden is like a good little boy who follows the command of his parents, like a virgin maid sent to sacrifice.
The relationship between them starts with Garret letting Holden experiment all the new way they can have sex, and Holden who plays a little the coy virgin girl, refusing to officially "mate" till the moment he is not sure that he can really love Garret, despite the mating bond. Basically Holden wants to understand if, even without the mating pull, he would have been able to find Garret's attractive. Even if they are having a full and very intimate sexual life, Holden doesn't put out, he preserves the "last" virgin territory, till the moment he is not sure of his real feelings for Garret... in a way I find this behavior quite funny, above all since it arrives from a big bad boy like Holden.
The story is a good mix of sex, paranormal and even funny moments (I really like the in dragon form teasing scene, even if they don't arrive to really have sex in shifting form, don't worry). Again, I recommend it to who likes the paranormal genre (all the "mating" related matter...) and my opinion is that it's a story aimed to a female target.
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