The Dom Who Loved Me (Masters and Mercenaries Book 1)

I had NO IDEA what 'Dom' meant when I purchased this. Sean, the main male character, is the Dom (meaning dominatrix) in this story. He literally wants his woman (Grace) to be his SLAVE.I had enough of reading this when he started thinking he was going to have Grace pierce her nipples with rings so he could lead her around on chains. He'd just finished drugging her without her knowledge so his buddies to come sweep her laptop. Oh and by the way, he'd allowed them earlier to 'bug' her home, including the bedroom where he then proceeded to dominate her while the drugs worked. This is so far out in left field for this century I found it appalling! There were other issues for me too. At this point, I was done reading this.Caution: This book is EXPLICIT! EXTREMELY EXPLICIT! If you're wanting to read porn, this may be for you.The 'plot' other than this though seemed somewhat interesting. Just a shame this author had to ruin it with the dominatrix thing being so HEAVY. And I do mean HEAVY. All the guys Sean works with, including his brother are also into it. They are in their own private world! It's nuts! This book read so heavy on the sex end I kept wondering, is Lexi the author Male? Women don't revolve around sex! Its kind of creepy the way Sean thinks he's going to control this woman with his domination.Personally, I'd recommend going with something different unless you enjoy reading about a man wanting to and then carrying out, complete and total domination over a woman, two 'straight' men acting gay so they can have group sex with ladies.. etc. TOTAL TRASH!

I'm taking a break from this book about halfway to the end because it is soooo unrealistic. I may come back to it at a later date. What's so wrong? Glad you asked. I love BDSM novel and I love a good series. The title and cover grabbed me and the synopsis intrigued me. Sean, who is supposed to be the Dom comes across as a kid in the midst of his first crush instead of a grown ex-special ops man familiar with the intricacies of D/s relationships. He seemed to be submissive to his brother and so I found it difficult placing him as a Dom. They begin talks of what he's looking for, but stop to have sex and never revisit the conversation. His relationship with Jake and Adam also seems antagonistic instead of caring. Sean describes himself as alone because he realizes he doesn't have anyone to watch his back. I agree. Weak main character and that just made the whole protect and catch the bad guy scenario ridiculous. Sean, Adam and Jake spend more time trying to sleep with Grace than anything else. As for Grace, her character lacked development. I'm 40+ and I know I would not have sex with a man I just met days earlier without a condom. As for all the rest, she was ridiculously insecure, but a flirt, she was bossy and nosy and just irritating. I don't know any secretaries that open locked doors and go snooping around their bosses office. This book could have done without the BDSM theme, I may have liked it more. I may change my mind when I finish, but right now 2 stars is all I could award, and that's because I liked the plot and the sex was scenes were good.

I have this as the Masters and Mercenaries Collection: The Early Years, which is the first 5 books. I am going to review them individually.Sean Taggart works for McKay/Taggart a Security firm that also handles some things borderline stuff for the government. A former Green Beret he and two of his former team are hunting down a terrorist.Grace Hamilton is the administrative assistant for Matt Wright, he runs an employment agency that mostly handles IT contracts. Recently her boss has also started with some janitorial contracts that are handled by Evan Parnell. Grace doesn't care for the man, and has as little contact with him as possible.Undercover as a possible client, Sean quickly discovers there is something special about Grace. She's older than him but he doesn't care, he has decided to get to know her and when this investigation is over he hopes to win her heart.Sean interrupts her skinny dipping when he decides to take her up on her offer of a home cooked meal after a dinner meeting with her boss. Things started melting my kindle here.All is not fun and games though as the stakes get higher. Plenty of action, suspense and emotional drama as they get closer to solving this case.I just keep turning the pages, I'm so glad I have the collection so I don't have to download the next book!

I have loved this book since 2016, and am listening to the audible version currently. I see the one star reviews and just don't understand them. 1. "lack of character development" this comment in other reviews makes no sense to me at all. The female lead I understand completely. I have known her IRL. maybe she comes from a place others don't understand, but she isn't shallow and one dimensional. A mom who is now an empty nester goes through a lot, and starts looking for that next phase in her life. I have over 2000 books in my kindle and Lexi Blake/Sophie Oak writes with laughter, love and an interesting view point on folks who don't fit the mold of conformity. I appreciate others may not like it, but the author puts a lot into her characters, and as you progress through the series you grow to love this crazy insane crew.2. " Ryan West being a bad narrator" not even sure what universe this comment comes from. Yes, I can definitely tell the difference between his narration on this book compared to his work on books 10-12, but he does a great voice range and is very comfortable to listen to. I would rather listen to his female characters, than any of the female narrators I have heard so far try and do men that are supposed to be Alpha males.But whether you read this or listen to this series of books you will find a lot to laugh and page turn in these books. Lexi - you need to write FOREVER!!

This is the first book I've read by this author. I found the writing style to be fine, albeit a bit blunt and lacking description. The plot was full of action, intrigue and mystery – lots of double crossing ex-CIA agents, money laundering and hot private security agents. There was even a murder or three. That was all fine, exciting and it did keep me reading...My issue was the relationship between Sean and Grace. I liked Grace and felt a great deal of empathy for her – she's a forty year old widow who believes that she's past her prime with two college-aged sons. She lives a simple, lonely life in the suburbs. She works in admin and dedicates her working life to propping up her pathetic, alcoholic, boss. She's one of those women who gains her own self-worth from nurturing and looking after others – from taking calls from her grown-up sons begging for money to working her ass off to meet every ridiculous whim of her boss... she felt vulnerable. And then in comes Sean, a thirty two year old, gorgeous, confident ex-serviceman working undercover. It's his job to try and get close to Grace to expose her and her boss's secrets. Sean brazenly seduces her against her better judgement and introduces her to BDSM. Only on the side, he and his security pals are planting bugs in her home, copying her hard drives and drugging her so that when she sleeps, they can break in and look around her home. He even had the audacity to collar her, claiming she was his 'soul-mate' in the middle of it all!I'm hardly an expert in BDSM (although I've read enough fiction on the subject!), but from what I gather, trust is the absolute lifeblood of the relationship. And the bottom line is that Sean completely and utterly abused Grace's trust. He took advantage of her vulnerability and her low self-esteem regarding her age to wiggle his way into her life, she even allowed him to live with her for a few days before he returned to Chicago – she gave him a key to her home and he copied it and gave the spare to his security buddies! The story then tries to convince us that Sean realises he's falling for Grace while he's spying on her... but by that point it was too late for me. The foundation of the romance just wasn't there.The final nail in the 'relationship' coffin was when Sean and his friends decided to kidnap Grace for an illegal interrogation – despite having only known Grace for a few days, Sean seems to think that he can command her around like an errant dog whenever he puts on his stern 'dom voice'. Oh, and nobody else will interfere with this because he owns her apparently. Anyway, he proceeds to tie her up and strip her naked (in front of his brother and his friends) before telling everyone else to leave because he wants an hour alone with her. But don't worry... it's not weird because he keeps yelling at her that she can use her safe word if she wants to leave him... talk about all or nothing! The thing is that to me, Grace felt like the kind of sub with too much pride and too great a need to please her dom that safe wording would be the very last thing on her mind – I got the impression that she'd take whatever Sean did to her, even at detriment to herself.Sean just didn't seem to give a damn about Grace's feelings or emotions. All he cared about was sex... He kept referring to the fact that Grace would forgive all of his infractions and lies if he could only force her to have sex with him one more time. Because apparently he was so good at it, he could make her feel things that no other person in the world could make her feel?! He was like some sort of narcissistic serial killer who justifies his crimes with the most twisted logic. Oh, and also the way he kept telling Grace their entire 'relationship' was her doing because she 'manipulated' him into having sex with her – just to refresh our memories... he'd been nagging her to go out to dinner with him for days. One evening while she's cooling off in her (private) pool, he turns up in her back garden (which is a little weird since he shouldn't know where she lives) and finds her skinny-dipping. He plays on her naïve interest in BDSM to get her to have sex with him. Then he goes inside and has a shower, telling her to pour the wine in preparation for when he gets out. She serves the wine but decides to try and further please him by adopting a submissive position she's read about in her erotic romance novels... Apparently that is her manipulating him?!Don't get me wrong there was sex, lots of it... but it was graphic and emotionless. It wasn't realistic – the scenes themselves moved far too quickly. It felt a teenager had written the scenes after watching a load of porn... smutty and clichéd, almost bordering on ridiculous. Also, it was very, very light on the D/s spectrum. The sex scenes kind of felt like a means to an end and nothing else – honestly, to me, there was nothing remotely romantic about them.In summary... This book made me uncomfortable. It wasn't that it wasn't written well – like I said, I felt great empathy for Grace, to the extent that I felt she was being taken advantage of by Sean. And the action was good too. The problem is that I read for the romance as much as the action, and the romance was all wrong. Domination is sexy when it's consensual and the submissive is being cared for. But it wasn't like that here – Sean treated Grace like a pet, bossing her around and using sex to make everything better. I'm a bit surprised the book has got such a high rating – it makes me wonder if perhaps the successive books in the series might get better?

3.5 starsAnyone who follows my blog or is friends with me on Goodreads can't fail to have noticed that I've become a huge fan of Lexi Blake over the last year or so and I'm really enjoying working my way through her extensive backlist. I've been looking forward to starting the Masters and Mercenaries series for ages and have already met quite a few of the characters as they've made appearances in her other books. So I was excited to start the Dom Who Loved Me and overall I did enjoy the story but I did have a few issues with it that meant I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the Bliss or Texas Sirens books.To start with the positives I have to say I really loved Grace, she's an older heroine (something we don't see enough of in my opinion) who was widowed young and is now living alone for the first time after her two sons have left to go to college. Grace is a people pleaser who always goes out of her way to make sure everyone around her have what they need. Before all her energy went into looking after her sons and now she mainly focuses on her job and trying to anticipate the needs of her alcoholic boss. I thought Grace was a great character and I really enjoyed seeing the boost in her confidence that came from starting a relationship with Sean.When it comes to Sean I have more mixed feelings, in some ways I really liked him but there were other things that drove me absolutely crazy. Firstly was the fact that he met Grace when he was there to put both her and her boss under surveillance. McKay/Taggart Security Services are hunting a terrorist and they have reason to believe that the company Grace works for is somehow involved so several members of the team go undercover as both employees and clients while they try to figure out what is going on. I don't have an issue with that but I did find it uncomfortable that Sean gains Grace's trust specifically because he wants to spy on her, perhaps that wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't immediately pursued a relationship with her, if they'd become friends through the investigation but not taken it any further until he was sure of her innocence I'd probably have felt better about it.The fact that he takes advantage of her trust (even going so far as bugging her house, making a copy of the key she gave him for his friends to use to get inside her property and even drugging her so they could hack into her laptop!) while at the same time starting a D/s relationship with her just made things creepy, trust is the cornerstone of any kind of BDSM relationship and I didn't appreciate Sean completely ignoring that. Then, after abandoning her with no notice he ended up treating her terribly for no good reason which annoyed me even more. I thought the scenes after Grace found out the truth were totally unrealistic and I couldn't believe that she didn't use her safe word and walk away from him. To be honest I'd have liked the story a whole lot more if she'd done exactly that and he'd had to work at earning her forgiveness.That really makes it sound like I hated this book but that couldn't be further from the truth, like I said I did really like Grace and I even thought her and Sean were well matched both in and out of the bedroom. I liked that she was strong enough to challenge him when she needed to even if that did go a little awry towards the end of the book. I also thought they had a lot of potential as a couple and their chemistry was fantastic. One thing I really loved was getting to know the other members of Sean's team and I'm really excited to continue the series, especially Adam and Jacob's story which, luckily for me, is up next! This series definitely has the potential to become one of my favourites, we already have a group of fantastic characters and Lexi Blake excels at mixing a hint of suspense and danger in with really hot romances.

No plot spoilersNo potential triggersThere are no grammatical or editorial errors.I don't know why I have not left feedback before now because I've had the series for years and this first book in the world of Masters and Mercenaries (AKA McKay Taggart) is so beautifully crafted.The characterisation is outstanding, I connected fully with all of the characters, and even the baddies are written in such a way that they are relatable on some level and are not one dimensional characters built around a tick box for baddies.I adore all of the characters at MT but I fell for Sean when he jumps into the pool.Parts of the book are quite emotional and I cried, at other times I laughed but all of the book engaged me, even now at the umpteenth time of reading, I can't skip a scene and have to read the full book as fast as I can.There are some sex scenes, most with a D/s theme, and given the characters are previous military there is plenty of swearing.If you like strong dominant men, strong women not afraid to submit and most of all a strong storyline, then this is the series for you.

LOVE LOVE LOVE. This was a re-read and I can’t believe I hadn’t reviewed this book when I originally read it. I love this series of Lexi Blake’s Masters & Mercenaries series. Little Tag is the hero of this story (I’m a Big Tag fan personally) but it was great going back to this world and seeing little snippets of the people I know are going to be in this wonderful world that Lexi Blake has created. Grace Hawthorn I’m sorry I forgot how amazing you are (especially when answering back to Ian).This book is a must read for anyone who likes espionage, hot guys, strong female characters and some 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 action.

There were some interesting sex scenes and there was an actual plot (unfortunately you don't always get both). And I did like the humour at the beginning with Jake and Adam pretending to be gay. But Adam's character just had to push and push until it was totally predictable that Sean would lose his temper. The thing that spoilt the book for me was that I simply could not believe Sean's character at all. He is an ex Green Beret, now works with his brother doing undercover work and is currently tracking a deadly terrorist. Oh and by the way he is a dom.Someone with all those credentials should not come across as a moody wimp or indecisive. or as another reviewer said a spoilt brat who throws temper tantrums when he can't get his own way.I won't be bothering with any more in this series