Rating: 5 Stars

Publisher: Lark Taylor

Genre: Gay Romance

Tags: Contemporary, Bi (?) Character, First Time, Opposites Attract, Secret Society, Series

Length: 322 Pages

Reviewer: Cindi

Purchase At: Amazon

Blurb –

As the eldest brother and leader of The Firm, I take my responsibilities very seriously. There’s nothing I won’t do to keep my family safe. Staying vigilant, always thinking ten steps ahead, and holding the pieces of my life together with steady hands. Control is everything, because if I loosen my grip for even a moment, the darkness I’ve buried inside will claw its way free.

Everything is stable. Predictable. Safe.

Until Neo.

He’s a distraction I can’t afford but a temptation I can’t seem to ignore. My darkness is drawn to him; it wants to be set free.

And as our enemies close in, Neo becomes the one variable I can’t control… and the one risk I find myself wanting to take. Because for the first time, surrendering to the dark doesn’t feel like weakness.

It feels a lot like love.

Review –

Even from beyond the grave, Father is still pulling my strings.

Wylder is the head of the Buckingham family. The Buckingham brothers are The Firm, a secret organization that grants certain wishes – for a price. The series started with Matthias and Wyatt’s story, Covenant, and the next one was Cade and Ansel’s story, Deviant. The brothers consist of Wylder, Matthias, Cade, Harley, Dalton, and Samson, who will have their own stories at some point, with Samson’s being next, Allegiant, that will be released in 2027.

I probably missed a brother. There are a bunch of them.

Then there’s Neo, Ansel’s best friend, who was introduced in his and Cade’s book. Neo is a hacker who has been staying with the Buckinghams for protection from an organization that has already tried to hurt Ansel.

Neo and Wylder are as different as night and day. Neo has blue hair, wears jeans and tees, and is the complete opposite of Wylder, who’s more comfortable in a suit than anything else. Neo has made it his mission to drive Wylder crazy. There are pranks and innuendos, with Neo doing everything in his power to rile up the ‘perfect’ Wylder. Wylder is able to ignore it all for the most part – until he can’t. They’re still trying to find the people who hurt Ansel. Cade flat out refuses to allow Ansel to be part of anything to do with it anymore after everything he went through before. So, it falls on Neo, who also hacks into Wylder’s emails and starts responding back to them. Apparently, Wylder’s way of responding to scholarship donors is too stiff and unfeeling, so Neo takes care of it. The funny thing is that he does a much better job.

This puts Neo and Wylder way too close, especially after Wylder hires him to to be his personal assistant because his regular one is on maternity leave. We’re not talking just in his office. He parks himself right next to him, touching him every chance he gets. It drives Wylder crazy, but he does start wearing him down.

Wylder carries the weight of the world on his shoulders. As the head of the family and The Firm, he feels responsible for everything and everybody, never asking anybody for help. Nobody sees it but Neo. There’s pressure, guilt, and the feeling that he has to do it all. It’s his job to keep everything going smoothly. He’s been so busy taking care of everybody else, that he never allows himself to let go, to be himself. He wants to, but he keeps that side, that he refers to as his monster, locked away from the world.

Neo grew up with nobody. The only person who ever stayed was Ansel. He grew up poor, and has never felt worthy of any more than what’s he’s had his entire life, which is not a whole lot.

I’m not good enough for him, and I know it. He’s Wylder Buckingham, heir to the Buckingham fortune and estates. Head of the fabled Firm. He wields more power than anyone else in a five-hundred mile radius. Meanwhile, I’m a two-bit hacker with a state-given surname and no family or home to call my own.

He broke my heart a little.

Neo drives Wylder crazy with the flirting, and even crawling into bed with him some nights. Wylder has never been with a man, has never wanted to be with a man, but he’s finding himself really wanting Neo.

I thought I was straight, but judging by the erection I’m still rocking, I’m not. That doesn’t bother me. The fact that I’m attracted to Neo? That’s the thing setting me off.

Neo does wear him down, giving him a couple of blowjobs, with Wylder battling with himself over it. Not him being with a man, him getting involved with anybody. He has too many responsibilities, and doesn’t have time for any distractions. Neo is definitely a distraction.

The flirting and everything else stops suddenly when Neo starts to care a little too much. This has Wylder opening his eyes to what he’s feeling as well.

Then there’s Candace, Wylder’s not-girlfriend. He says she is, but she’s totally not. Candace is hated by everybody, to the point of all the brothers threatening her life at least once every time she visits. The last time we saw Candace Ansel was shoving pie in her face in his and Cade’s book because she dared insult Jules, the chef. Wylder doesn’t even like her. He uses her to go with him to the many formal events that he has to go to. After the pie incident, I thought Candace was out of the picture. Apparently not. Wylder invites her to dinner to prove a point to Neo, which was really dumb on his part. The dinner went about as well as the last one. It’s what happened after dinner that ultimately kicked her out of his life for good. Let’s just say that one of Neo’s pranks wasn’t aimed at Wylder this time. 🙂

Candace came into my house – albeit invited – and criticized my family. She insulted Neo. Hurt his feelings. For that, I will burn her world down.

For the record, there’s no cheating, even if Wylder does claim publicly that he and Candace are a couple.

Neo is the only person who sees the real Wylder. It takes a while, but Wylder finally starts opening up, trusting Neo with secrets he’s never shared with anybody else, including his brothers.

He’s able to see past the mask I put on, to the real me inside. He knows exactly what I need, and he makes sure I get it.

When Neo suddenly stops pushing things, Wylder gets desperate. He misses him. They still work in the same office, and are only a wall away from each other every night, but Neo might as well be in another state with how much he’s pulled away. They eventually do come together, obviously, and I loved how that happened. Let’s just say that Mr. I’m Always Wearing A Suit Wylder and Neo got down and dirty in the mud. That was one hell of a hot scene, and it was nice seeing Wylder finally stop fighting his feelings.

“Would you like that? To be the first man I’ve ever fucked?”

I loved watching Wylder come out of his shell, and allowing himself to let go, to feel. I loved watching him finally give up some of the responsibilities that he’s carried for years. He and Neo may be as different as night and day, but they were perfect for each other.

There’s still the danger of the organization that’s trying to take the family and The Firm down. The brothers are forced to come together to save their own. When it was over, there was zero doubt how Wylder felt, and that he wouldn’t be walking away. It was also made clear that Neo is part of the family now.

“You’re ours now. Mine. I’ll always come for you. I’ll always choose you.”

I love all the brothers, though I’m iffy about Samson. Of course, his book is next. I liked him okay, but there really wasn’t enough of him in any of the books for me to have any real opinion one way or another. He’s there, he’s just not as out there as the others. I’m sure I’ll enjoy it as much as I have the first three. The epilogue is in Samson’s POV, giving the reader a glimpse of how his story begins.

Cade and his deviant self will probably always be my favorite brother.

I’m really eager for Jules and Harley’s story, and Dalton and Jackson’s, though Dalton did irk me a little in this one.

There’s a bit of violence, though not as much as in some of the other books by these authors.

I added a question mark in my above tags next to ‘bi character’, and I also clicked the GFY category, but I honestly have no clue where to classify Wylder. He’d never been with a man, but the sex he’d had with women had always been bleh, no excitement. Having sex with Neo, however, is explosive. I hate the ‘gay for you’ and ‘bi awakening’ tags, but I honestly don’t know with Wylder.

Great book. Cora Rose is an autobuy for me these days. I’ve only read one so far by Lark Taylor outside of this series, and those characters were introduced in The Silencer, my favorite Cora Rose book so far. I’ll definitely be reading more.

I can’t wait for the next book.