Title: Bad Behavior (Bad in Baltimore: Book Five)
Author: K.A. Mitchell
Publisher: Samhain Publishing
Pages/Word Count: 366 Pages
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Blurb: David Beauchamp might as well be in jail. After one too many misunderstandings with the law, he’s chained to the city by the GPS and alcohol sensor strapped to his ankle. Awaiting trial, cut off from usual forms of entertainment, he goes looking for a nameless sexual encounter—and winds up with almost more than he can handle.
Reality comes crashing back the next day with a summons for another random drug test, and the man behind the badge turns out to be the very man who took him for one hell of a ride.
Probation Officer Tai Fonoti is used to handling other people’s problems, but he’s horrified when one of the clients his boss dumps on him is the sweet piece of ass he screwed the night before. It makes getting a urine sample a pretty loaded situation.
That single encounter left Beach craving Tai’s unique brand of control and discipline. But while Tai relishes laying down the law in the bedroom, the letter of the law stands between them and kinkily ever after.
Warning: This book is kinky. I mean kinky. With lots of sex. It describes a fully consensual, intense D/s relationship which changes a character’s life. It includes impact play and bondage along the way to a very happily ever after.
Review: David is more than a rich, somewhat spoiled brat. He is a man who has been abandoned by his parents, told more often than not that he is a class A screw-up, and left adrift far too long to his own capricious devices. However, after one too many times of playing on the edge, he pulls both himself and his best friend Gavin into some dangerously blind mission to absolve his erstwhile father of a seemingly trumped up charge of having sex with a minor. Now David is shackled and awaiting trial, and is bound to a probation officer who pushes all his buttons. Tai is a stand up guy with a kinky side. A natural born Dominant, Tai is not about to be saddled with the one off he had at the bar the night before. David Beauchamp is a snotty rich boy who Tai unwittingly had sex with before he realized he was his new case file. Passing him off to another officer, Tai now must grapple with the fact that David is the quintessential submissive, and one that gets Tai going in all the right ways. Theirs is an evolving story but it remains to be seen if David can actually change his ways enough to be the “good boy” Tai feels he can become.
I have enjoyed many of the other installments in K.A. Mitchell’s Bad in Baltimore Series, and this one was no exception. Tai and David were fascinating men, each driven by certain needs that many would never understand but which they now not only embraced but found most completely in each other. David was not an easy submissive—often pushing Tai beyond his limits—but is astounding in his desire to please Tai and be his boy. The problem was that David was pursued by his past and his playboy persona, one he had perfected to the extent that very few, if any, people saw beneath his brash, sarcastic exterior. Tai does see, however, and when David can no longer hide, he must admit to himself that his need for someone else to take control is what drives him. The interchanges between these two men are feisty and hot, though, admittedly, I felt that at times the sex trumped the storyline. While I saw the need to experience David’s process of submission, I felt we saw too little interaction between Tai and David outside the bedroom. In fact, as the premise for a 24/7 Dom/sub relationship became a real possibility, I also felt the acceptance of that kind of lifestyle came awfully rapidly in the novel—just a few weeks’ time.
So, while I liked the play between these two men and the plot line that brought them together, I also was torn by the fact that very little was revealed about their backgrounds, their families, and what had brought them to this point. I really would have liked to know more about Tai’s family—and if he was gay, how could he have ever thought he fathered a child? I felt that plot point was explained rather poorly and left dangling. David apparently had a fairly horrible childhood, finally escaping when he was 15. But why did his mother leave the country? I understood about his father and the impending charges against him, but I never got an explanation of where his mother had disappeared to. Also, friends and enemies alike were brutal to David—calling him a loser outright. Why? What past discretions brought him to where he was in the present?
All in all, while this was a well-written exploration of a Dominant/submissive relationship, it lacked the much needed backstory and history that would explain how our two lead characters became the men they were. Without that, this became just a bit more than a “how-to” novel with a weak storyline thrown in to keep it interesting. I like these guys and wished I had more of their story, with a little less of their bedroom adventures.
You can buy Bad Behavior (Bad in Baltimore: Book Five) here:
