Rating: 5 ‘More Leo!’ Stars

Publisher: A.E. Wasp

Genre: Gay Mystery and Romance 

Tags: Contemporary, Age Gap (8 years), Humor, Mystery/Suspense, Series

Length: 271 Pages

Reviewer: Cindi

Purchase At: Amazon.com

Blurb –

FIVE JOBS. FIVE CHANCES FOR REDEMPTION. One thing’s for sure: these men are no angels.

There’s nothing like being blackmailed by a dead man to really bring a group of cons together. The deal is simple, we do the jobs and Charlie’s lawyer wipes the slate clean for each of us, one at a time.

Job number two lands right in my lap. I’m Bond. Wesley Bond. (I can’t resist saying it that way. Blame my dad, if you can find him.) You could call me a hacker. I redistribute wealth – moving it from rich slimebags to poorer but infinitely more deserving people – and make a tidy profit as I do.  My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to bring down some modern-day slave traders.

I definitely choose to accept it. 

With the life of the one person in this world I love on the line, I can’t afford any screw ups or distractions. Unfortunately, my biggest distraction is my biggest asset – Danny Monroe. Danny is an leftover complication from our first job; a victim of the vicious senator we’d gotten locked up. He’s a smart, funny, gorgeous, ex-prostitute, who can’t seem to keep his clothes on. I can’t seem to keep my mouth shut around him. But I need a fake boyfriend, and Danny is the only option.

Fooling the world into thinking we’re in love will be easy; fooling myself that I’m not might be impossible.

We don’t know who the bad guy is, we have no idea how to prove anything. There’s no internet on the island, no cell service, and i’ll have only the bare bones of my gear. If I’m going to do this, I’m going to need all the help I can get. 

Like it or not, we’re all in this together.

Review –

Pros & Cons of Deception picks up at the end of Pros & Cons of Vengeance. There’s a scene from that book but it’s now told in Wes’ point of view, not Steele’s or Breck’s.

Quick summary of the first one – 5 men have been blackmailed by a dead man (Charlie) who has something on them. They’ll each be given a task and once the tasks are complete, their slate will be wiped clean. These men are as different as night and day, but they work well together, as was proven in the first book when Steele was given the first assignment to take down a dirty senator and rescue two rent boys that were in danger from the politician. One of the rent boys, Breck, was a twin of one of the five men, Ridge. It didn’t take long before Steele and Breck were going at it hot and heavy.

Now it’s time for Wesley and Danny’s story. Danny is the other rent boy who was rescued from Senator Harlan. Danny, Breck’s best friend, was allowed to stay in Charlie’s home after the danger had passed. To say that Wes and Danny don’t get along early on is an understatement. Wes, a notorious hacker and computer geek, has a hard time talking to Danny so when he does he comes across as a jerk. If Danny was just some random guy it wouldn’t be a big deal. But Danny is just so… pretty, and (Wes believes) way out of his league.

It also doesn’t help that Danny is a month shy of turning twenty when Wes is twenty-seven. The age difference doesn’t bother Danny in the least – he’s endured a lot in his nineteen years – but it does Wes.

Foreign workers are being forced to work under horrible conditions and minimum pay at an exclusive resort. Wes, when given the assignment, has no idea what’s going on at the island resort, but he knows he’ll do everything in his power to save whoever needs to be saved and to bring the bad guy (s) down. The problem? Nobody knows who the bad guy is.

This is where the other guys come in. Wes, using his hacker skills, makes it where they’re all given specific jobs at the resort so they can keep an eye on things and hopefully get the assignment done quickly.

Leo, the resident FBI agent, will be a bartender. Ridge, the resident thief and Breck’s twin, will be a dance instructor. Poor Breck will be forced to handle maintenance. Carson, a man of many faces (the only way to describe him) will work with the gardeners. And Steele will be in charge of childcare at the resort. And Danny… well, Danny will be Wesley’s pretend boyfriend.

I laughed out loud so many times just seeing Leo (aka Big Daddy) and Steele (aka Mrs. Doubtfire) do their jobs at the resort. Leo, the poor thing, has to wear tiny, shiny boy shorts and other sexy uniforms. Of course, this gives the other guys lots of ammo to make fun of ‘Big Daddy’ as they started calling him, regardless of how much he tells them to knock it off. Steele, my favorite character in the series, is hilarious in the way he handles the kids in his care. Management doesn’t like his style but the moms and kids sure do. 😉 There’s a scene with one of the kids shooting a plastic dart and hitting Leo’s shiny tiny boy short covered butt. I can’t remember the last time I giggled like that.

“Yo, Big Daddy,” Steele said from wherever he was. “Nice outfit. You’re making Thing Two think bad thoughts.”

“A hot dog makes him think bad thoughts,” Leo said.

“You ain’t wrong,” Steele admitted. “And I ain’t complaining.”

~~~

“Ooh, Big D. I like it,” Breck said. “He’s totally bringing the big D energy. Cuff me, Daddy.”

Now back to Wes and Danny.

Danny, a former high school swimmer, tends to hang out in nothing but a speedo when they’re at Charlie’s big house. Of course Wes can’t keep his eyes off him. Being forced to stay in the same villa with him at the resort terrifies Wes. He already has a hard time keeping his hands to himself. Now he has to be the perfect fake boyfriend in public… kissing and hugging and all the other things new couples do, and sleeping in the same villa. Hey, it’s a tough job but somebody’s gotta do it. *smirk*

Danny wants a friends with benefits type of relationship for the time they’ll be at the resort. Wes says no way. While he’s only ever done random hookups in the past, Danny is different. He knows if he takes that step he won’t be able to keep it just casual. He’s already wanting more and they’ve not even had sex yet.

But when they do….. wow. It was sweet. Sexy, but sweet. Steele and Breck were all about rough, hard, and fast. Wesley doesn’t want that. He goes slow, letting Danny know that it’s more than just getting off – a lot more than just getting off.

Then there’s the pervy son of the owner of the resort. Just ugh. He was constantly putting his hands all over Danny, who was forced to endure it for the assignment. Wes wanted to kick his ass and I was pulling for Wes to do just that.

When the bad guy is discovered, things take a dangerous turn for Danny. It was kind of an edge-of-the-seat thing as you wait to find out how Danny will get out of it and what Wes does to rescue his man.

One thing to note is how everyone – from Leo to Josie the ‘housekeeper’ – wants to protect Danny, and I’m not just referring to at the resort. He was kicked out of his home at seventeen and forced to sell himself to survive. Once he was rescued from the senator, he became a kid brother of sorts to everybody in Charlie’s house except Wesley, who damn sure wasn’t thinking brotherly thoughts about the younger man. He’s a sweet kid and everybody wants to adopt him. Hell, I want to adopt him.

Another thing that I found funny (though Wes found it embarrassing) is how the communication devices ‘accidentally’ get unmuted often during sex, meaning the others can pretty much hear everything. It may not seem that funny unless you’ve read the book, but the comments by the men after had me laughing. There’s been an issue with Steele’s and Breck’s getting unmuted, but it’s funny to them. To poor Wes, not so much.

And now we get back to Leo, Mr. Hot FBI Agent, or aka Big Daddy. 😉 My love of Leo was mentioned a couple of times in my review of Pros & Cons of Vengeance. Because of Leo I went back and reread the prologue, something I almost never do. I did it to look for hints of who Leo’s love interest will be and certain other things that I believe will happen as the series plays out. Each story might not be Leo’s specifically, but he plays a huge part because of (I believe) what’s going on in the background. Each book begins with a prologue with a mystery man talking to Miranda, the attorney who distributes the assignments. Each book ends with Leo’s point of view and a phone call from said mystery man. There’s so much to Leo I want to explore, mainly his relationship with Charlie, who he’d been trying to capture and arrest for a long time.

That’s all I can say about that.

This was an excellent book, almost as good as the first one. Each character is entertaining and unique and they all work well together. There’s mutual respect and what looks to be the start of good friendships. They made me laugh, Wes and Danny got me misty eyed more than once, and I was eager to see the bad guy get his due.

I can’t wait to see whose story is up next. I’m going to throw out a guess that it’s Ridge. He got a bit secretive toward the end, along with another character introduced in the story. I’m eager to see how that plays out, especially considering there’s an age difference between them. We know how much I love characters with big age differences. 🙂

Highly recommended.

This book was provided by the author in exchange for a fair and honest review.