While I’ve read a few of the other books in this series, I’m not quite caught up, but I’m skipping ahead to this one because I’ve loved the author’s previous work. And look! There’s hockey, ice skating, lots of good food, and a very sweet cinnamon roll Dom.
Tom seems to attract all the wrong guys – Doms who don’t treat him right, who equate submission with humiliation. In frustration, he posts an ad at Bold Brew looking for a new Dom, but even with screening the applicants, it’s still a bag of, well, ugh. Max has seen Tom around town, and after seeing the ad (and the applicants) orders him a cappuccino. They start chatting and find out that a lot of their kinks overlap, and, oh, it just so happens that Max is doing a demo tomorrow and his sub had to call out. It’s a perfect opportunity to figure out if there’s anything between them. But as their relationship progress and Tom realizes what he’s been missing, will he make a run for it, or will Max convince him to give them a chance?
“Aaron often teased that Tom acted as if Max was a cinnamon roll of a man, too good, too pure for Tom’s world. He was, though. Max was entirely too good. Plus, he left Tom sticky.”
Tom isn’t sure if he’s demiromantic, aromantic or that he just has really bad taste in men. After all, all the relationships he’s had before have been strictly sexual, and they’ve all been jerks. When they weren’t doing a scene, they had no interest in him. Being friends with Max is surreal to him, let alone any other sort of attachment. Max seems too good to be real – or at least too good for Tom. For his part, Max knows he’s falling in love with Tom, but worries that he’s moving too fast in their relationship. Max recognizes that Tom’s the perfect sub for him, but that he’s been badly mistreated, so he has to walk a fine line between giving Tom what he craves and demonstrating how a relationship between two adults is supposed to work. Basically, the whole book is a mixture of fluffy “this is how you relationship” mixed in with “I’m going to tie you up and whip you” sex scenes.
“An honest-to-goodness cinnamon roll.”
Max knew that meme. “Too good, too pure for this world?” Couldn’t keep the incredulousness out of his tone. He lowered his voice. “You know for a fact that I am not at all pure.”
There’s quite a lot of steamy sex scenes. A lot of it was not my cup of tea, but I think they were well done. The only thing I wish is that there was a more overt example of Tom hitting his limits and using his safe word. There’s one bit where he kind of does that, but it wasn’t quite that. I know part of it was that it was showing how perfectly matched the two of them were kink-wise, and how Tom trusted Max to push his boundaries a little, but given Tom’s past relationships, I think I would’ve liked to see him asserting himself that way. That’s not to say that the consent isn’t excellent! Max is literally a complete cinnamon roll Dom and he takes Tom’s trust very seriously. Their relationship turns into a good mix of kink and lovemaking.
And yes, Max does bake cinnamon rolls in this book. There’s a sweet backstory for why Max is so good at baking, so there’s lots of delicious bread, chocolate croissants, rolls… just lots of extremely delicious food. The hockey was a fun touch as well. I follow the author on Twitter, so I know they’re a huge Pens fan, so I got a good laugh out of Max being one as well, even though he’s French-Canadian.
Overall, this was a lot of fluffy fun, and I’m very glad to see something new from this author. I’ll definitely be going back and catching up with the series.
I received an advance review copy of this book from the author. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
