REVIEW: Restrained Under His Duty (Dirty Little Secrets #3)

Restrained Under His Duty (Dirty Little Secrets #3), by Stacey Kennedy
Publish Date: April 4, 2017
Publisher: Loveswept
Format: e-ARC, provided by the publisher via Netgalley
Genre: adult suspense romance
To Buy: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Rating: 4 STARS

(Synopsis) As the chief of security for a prominent senator, Ryder Blackwood is stunned when an anonymous source sends him a compromising photo of his boss’s twenty-five-year-old daughter getting down and dirty in an underground sex club. If it gets out, the media firestorm could ruin her father. More troubling for Ryder is how arousing he finds the whole situation. He’s known Hadley Winters since she was a kid. And now she’s the woman in all his most private fantasies.

Wild behavior helps Hadley get through those painful, lonely nights, but she’s been waiting a long time for a man like Ryder to protect her from herself. Ryder is raw. He’s real. And he makes her feel safe. Now that they’ve both become pawns in a blackmailer’s dangerous game, there’s more at stake than her father’s political career. As the intimate threats tear apart a tender new love, Hadley is forced to trust Ryder with her life—and her heart.

Restrained Under His Duty is a great unrequited love story with a hefty dose of intrigue, suspense and danger thrown into the mix. And, of course, when you add those particular items, that unrequited love (which, actually, is completely requited, as it turns out) has no choice but to build into something pretty awesome. 

Ryder has a lot of reasons for not getting into it with Hadley, despite his desire to do just that. He's known her since she was just a kid. He's friends with, and employed by, her father. He's into some kinky stuff, as is evidenced by his ownership of a BDSM club. But, it's getting harder and harder to resist her when she keeps suggesting the opposite of a friends-only relationship.

Hadley has wanted Ryder ever since she knew what it meant to want someone. She trusts him. She's attracted to him. She thinks he can give her what she needs. She's been biding her time in one sex club or another, waiting for Ryder to wake up and claim her, but she's just about done waiting. I would be too, if I were her.

Unfortunately, she and Ryder are forced into close quarters when she's threatened in a horrible way and Ryder's caveman protector instinct kick in. It was a really beautiful thing when that happened. It was like, all those years of frustration and angst exploded into this crazy passion. But, that doesn't fix all their problems. Ryder still has his hang-ups, Hadley still feels largely unwanted, and there's still a guy out there blackmailing, kidnapping and attempting to murder, and no one knows who it is.

I really like this series about a bunch of sex club owners and BFFs who have these secret meetings and help each other out. I like how Stacey Kennedy has woven this over arching plot into all their stories, too. There's one final book left in the series, and I can't wait to see how it all comes together in the end.