RIDING TEMPTATION

Author: Jaci Burton ISBN: 9780425223574 11/2008 EROTIC/CONTEMP Publisher: BERKLEY

Ever since runaway Jessie Matthews teamed up with the gang of special ops bikers, the guys of the Wild Riders have thought of her as their kid sister. Except for Diaz Delgado. Over the past few years he's been watching the budding of a ripe young woman. Jessie's glad somebody finally sees her for who she is—and she's thrilled it's Diaz. His dark good looks and killer body have tempted her since day one. Diaz's unbrotherly urges have been hard to fight but the last thing he'd want to do is hurt Jessie and break up the gang. But when they both go undercover to infiltrate a group of killer survivalists, he knows it'll be hard to keep his distance—especially when the mission takes a risky turn. Now Diaz has no choice but to open himself up to the one woman who may be strong enough to take him on.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Jaci Burton sets her contemporary erotic romance, RIDING TEMPTATION, on the back roads and in the wilderness of Arkansas where Jessie Matthew loves the good vibrations of straddling her hot, powerful, throbbing, piston-pumping, roaring, hard-as-steel motorcycle. She's been part of an elite federal group of bikers known as the Wild Riders since she was hauled off the streets at 15, and after years of training and college has finally been promised a place on the next mission. She's one of the few women in the Wild Riders group, and the guys would all swear she's like a little sister. All except for Diaz Delgado. Which is a good thing because Jess thinks he's hot!

Burton creates characters that just ooze sensuality and eroticism. Diaz is the mission's team leader with Spence as his second in command. Jessie talks her way onto the mission despite Diaz's opposition. He can't deal with business and the temptation to ride Jess like one of his bikes. Unfortunately for him, Jess has intel and a connection to the biker gang that the team suspects of dealing arms to an extreme survivalist group. They need to infiltrate the bikers and will have to pass an initiation involving a lot of fighting and sex. Once the team arrives at the biker festival in a small town in Arkansas where they plan to join up with the Devil's Skulls, Jess puts the moves on Diaz, but in an attempt to save their careers and the mission, he rebuffs her every effort. He's starting to crack when Jessie drops a bomb in his lap. She's technically a virgin and doesn't want her first time to be in public in front of a group of bikers. Could he? For the sake of the mission?

RIDING TEMPTATION is filled with brilliant action tracking down the arms dealers, beautiful countryside on the biker rides, and the psychology of looking into the broken lives of the Wild Riders was educational. But the sexual tension between Diaz and Jess and their subsequent nocturnal gymnastics, kind of takes over plot, characters and scenery. It's a wonder that they have time and energy to catch the bad guys. (Uh oh, spoiler alert—the bad guys bite dirt.) Seriously, Burton expertly builds the erotic encounters, drawing them out, taking Jessie and Diaz to critical mass and then leaving them and the reader in a breathless, barely conscious pile. The book's length made for a goodly number of pages with which to fan my overheated face.

I highly recommend RIDING TEMPTATION to any reader looking for an entertaining way to scratch "that itch" and get a nice little suspense plot as well. It tempts me into getting my own motorcycle to ride until the next book in the series comes out.

Susan Barton