EYES WIDE OPEN – Raine Miller
The Blackstone Affair , Book 3
Atria Books
ISBN-13:978-1-4767-3560-3
August 2013
Erotic Contemporary Romance

London, England – 2012

Ethan Blackstone and his security company are in the middle of providing protection for the London Olympics when his girlfriend Brynne Bennett is almost kidnapped at a charity gala.  Ethan knows Brynne's history; during high school some boys got her drunk and took a YouTube movie of them having sex with her.  Now, years later, one of the boy's fathers is running for Vice President, and the other boys keep turning up dead, and after what happened at the gala he's afraid Brynne is next.  Ethan decides to spend the weekend out of London at his sister and brother-in-law's estate, but worries about Brynne who is feeling sick and light-headed all the time.  Ethan knows he loves Brynne, but he still is not comfortable sharing with her his nightmares of being captured and tortured in Afghanistan.  With Brynne's own nightmares, they are quite a couple, except Ethan knows about what happened to her, and she is at least getting counseling for her problems.  Ethan needs to be the dominant person in their relationship, and sex seems to be an integral part of it.

Brynne loves Ethan's sister's estate, despite feeling sick all the time.  After a fight when Ethan's doctor brother-in-law suggests she might be pregnant, she runs away to the nearest town.  She buys a pregnancy test but is afraid to actually look at the results and goes to the deserted house overlooking the cliff Ethan and she had walked to earlier.  Ethan finds her there, and she is so sick he must take her home and put her to bed.  Brynne never expected anything like a pregnancy; will Ethan run away from her, or is she even ready to be a mother?  She is even more scared when Ethan proposes marriage…is he asking her out of duty?  The thought of living without Ethan tears her apart, but with both of them having ghosts in their pasts, Brynne doesn't even know if marriage is the right answer.

There is someone after Brynne; she should be his, and except for Ethan, she would gladly have come back to him .  He doesn't know how she escaped him at the charity party, but he has plans to approach her in a different way...she will be his eventually.

The first book in Raine Miller's trilogy was written from Brynne's point of view, and the second from Ethan's.  Here, they each take definite turns telling their story.  Ethan is still dealing with his nightmares and refuses to deal with them in any way or even share them with anyone.  Brynne still has nightmares, but has continued counseling.  Ethan definitely helps her with his strong and resilient feelings of love and caring for her; she never doubts he loves her, but perhaps all her baggage, issues, and now a baby will drive Ethan away.  Ethan realizes how Brynne has changed him for the better, and he tries his best to assure her, usually with sex, that nothing will come between them.  Brynne leaving him is definitely not a possibility.

Secondary characters are mostly in the background, including Ethan's dad and Brynne's aunt, Brynne's father and mother, and Ethan's sister and brother-in-law.  No one can believe how Ethan has changed with Brynne in his life, and they all credit her with making him more human.

EYES WIDE OPEN is the final book in The Blackstone Affair, following NAKED (May 2013) and ALL IN (June 2013).  This is a hot trio of stories about Ethan and Brynne's relationship and how their lust for each other slowly simmers and develops into true love, despite a killer determined to make Brynne his.  If you enjoy erotic stories with an actual plot, this whole series will check all your boxes.

CeCe Johns