This is probably a 3.5 rounded up to four.

Others have commented on the short time frame as being the main problem with this book.

I don't think the problem was so much the short time frame, as that within the time frame it felt rushed.

The whole set up was fine. The reader is 56% of the way through the book before the encounter starts. The last half should have had a few more pages to do the set up justice.

A couple of times a paragraph of conversation started at the right place and ended at the right place, but it was as if there was a whole chunk of dialogue missing in the middle to get it from point A to point B.

“Jack, when Alexei called me, he asked me to come over and meet with a man he holds in high regard. He explained this is a man ready to reconnect with the part of himself that can give up sexual control in order to find that intensity of experience he has been missing all these years. It’s not just a matter of letting yourself be tied up and whipped. You and I both know it’s so much more. Alexei told me, Jack. I know you—I know what you need, if you can let go enough to find it. If it makes you feel better, I’m not doing this for you—it’s for him, for Alexei.”

This is a seminal moment when Marcos has to convince Jack it's the right thing to do, but it's all handled in one paragraph.

It is this transition from anatagonism, to reluctant acceptance, to full acceptance, to welcoming it that really makes these sorts of enemies to lovers stories enjoyable. When I saw I was half way through and knew where it was going in the end, I though it could have been half as long again.

Spreading out the time frame wouldn't have solved the problem. They did know each other fairly well on one level, it's the journey to that first acceptance that needed to take longer. At least in my humble opinion.

Maybe it's only minor quibble, but it's what stops this book (and others of Claire's) being a solid 4 or even 5.

I love the variety of her characters and scenarios. I just feel she rushes the important bits. The mental bits.

The only other minor comment I might make is show me where all these men are who are so in tune with and able to articulate their feelings. I don't know any. LOL. ( )

Of all the Solitary Knights, Jack and Marcos are the two who left that famous night not really having a lost lover in their memory lane to track back. They instead have a common past experience, a man who made them believe in love to then inflict the worst of betrayals, indifference. Not the same man, but the same outcome, Jack and Marcos still believe in love but don’t trust anyone with their heart.

In both of them though the need of love is overwhelming, and they do what they can to quell it: Marcos working part time as a BDSM trainer in a private club, and Jack letting sometime his rage coming out, hurting himself to not hurt someone else. But there is a time when their self-control is not working and it’s when they are together in the same room. After one another of those meetings, Jack searches in the memory for the one man who always was able to calm him down, a Master but not his Master: Alexei is now more than 70 years old, and in a long term relationship with another man, but he still cares for Jack and he will be indeed the man that will give Jack the right answer, even if a bit unwillingly.

In the previous two stories in this series, two men met love when they were too young to understand what it meant, and they lost it; they were given a second chance and they took it. In this story, nor Jack or Marcos had indeed met their real love, more than the man, they “met” the lifestyle, but nevertheless, they were too young and not ready for it. Jack’s answer was to refuse it at all, Marcos to approach it without heart, being a Master for everyone but not for himself. In a way, also Jack and Marcos are searching the memory lane for a lost love, but in this case it’s a relationship, not a man: they are searching again for that perfect BDSM relationship they tasted but not obtained, only that now maybe they will try it with the right partner, savvier of their past bad experiences.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003BIGEY4/?tag=elimyrevandra-20