MarkAlan

I guess one could call this a Regency Romantic Suspense, and the crime plot is rather good with enough twists and turns to hold my interest. The romantic electricity between the protagonists was quite good, but the first half half of the book contained a lot of bonking going on for pages and pages, so I skipped over much of it. I enjoy seduction scenes, but descriptions of actual bonking tend to bore me.

Here's the blurb:

Most women will give him anything he wants. She is not most women… 

As a well-known barrister and the son of a duke, Ives confines his passionate impulses to discreet affairs with worldly mistresses. A twist of fate, however, has him looking for a new lover right when a fascinating woman shows up in his chambers, asking him to help save her father from the gallows. Unfortunately, he has already been asked to serve as the prosecutor in the case, but that only ensures close encounters with the rarity named Padua Belvoir. And every encounter increases his desire to tutor her in pleasure’s wicked ways...

Having always been too tall, too willful, and too smart to appeal to men, Padua Belvoir is shocked when Ives shows interest in her. Knowing his penchant for helping the wrongly accused, she had initially thought he might be her father’s best hope for salvation. Instead, he is her worst adversary—not least because every time he looks at her, she is tempted to give him anything he wants…

I really liked Padua. She's smart and knows it, knows her own mind, is quite willing to be a lover, but not a mistress, and confuses the hell out of Ives. She's not a wallflower and know exactly what she wants. Ives was interesting in that he liked being controlling, but he was confused by Sophia liking being controlled, but only sexually. Outside of the bedroom, she constantly denied him his will. This made for some interesting scenes.

There's a subtext of a rotten, criminal criminal justice system and political radicals supporting universal suffrage which gets some attention.

A good read, and much fun in spots.