Kiss of Fury
Author: Cara Bristol
Reviewer: Sophia Rose
Rating: A-
What I’m Talking About:
He’s waiting to become part of a happy couple and live happily ever after on Refuge in his new life, but then she gets out of the wagon with a plus one. Cara Bristol’s latest series combines sci-fi with the mail-order bride trope for a sparkling and sexy good time.
Kiss of Fury is the fourth in the Cosmic Mates series and the second in a couplet of stories featuring cyborgs living among aliens. The couplets should be read together in order, but each pair offer standalone settings and situations like this one featuring cyborgs.
Mike Fury was an assassin, but he chose to escape that life and now yearns for normal and his very own special someone like his friend Steel. Thus, he had an unfortunate first reaction when his bride arrives with her son in tow. Are her lies and reasons for the lies worse than his? He knows they are not and is determined to try, but will his own secret be the deal breaker?
On the other end of the romance is Verity who had a brief liaison with a man from a powerful family. He didn’t want her or her son so she got on with life. Now, his powerful parents want their grandchild and can and will do anything to get him. So, she gambles all on Cosmic Mates, Refuge, and a stern-faced man who wasn’t expecting a package deal. She’s told he’s a good man. Maybe the attraction she feels for Mike stands a chance of more?
Like the previous stories in the series, Kiss of Fury is a quick read. I love how Cara Bristol can set the scene, introduce her characters and their circumstances, and get on with the personal, romance, and plot development so that a full, rich story happens in an economical amount of page space.
Verity and Mike had to get over their first impressions and work up the courage to believe in themselves and get past their secrets that protect their very lives. Like most secrets, there is a ticking clock as the story progresses as to when not if the secrets will come out and just how much fall out will happen.
I’m a sucker for a guy who is good with kids, and this lethal cyborg assassin who chose a better life for himself was sweet as could be when he really made an effort with a lonely boy adjusting to this alien world and his new life. Cosmic Mates is known for matching people with who they need and not who they want so I loved seeing how that played out here and for this pair to realize they were perfect matches.
I will be sorry to leave the fascinating world of Refuge, but curious to see where the Cosmic Mates series takes the stories for the next pair of romances. I recommend these for sci fi romance fans who like it sexy, but well-developed in a quick read long-novella format.
My Rating: A-
Sophia Rose
About the Book:
The cyborg assassin and the single mom…
Owned by a corporation and forced to work as an assassin, cyborg Mike Fury dreams of freedom and having a woman to call his own, someone to love, who will love him. He plots his escape and seeks asylum on planet Refuge, applying for a wife through the Cosmic Mates interplanetary matchmaking program.
When his dream woman arrives, she brings an unpleasant surprise—she is not unencumbered; she has a child. It quickly becomes obvious that she’s more committed to her son than she will ever be to him. It’s within his rights to send her packing, but when he hears of her plight he agrees to continue with the marriage until the end of the probationary period when they can both apply for new spouses.
Single mom Verity Vale would do anything to protect her young son, even marry a stranger. When a rich, powerful family threatens to lay claim to her son, she knows the only way to keep him is to get him off Earth as quickly as possible. Figuring a woman with a child seeking a match through Cosmic Mates would send up red flags, she omits mention of her son in her application. She hopes that whoever the man is, he’ll have a heart big enough to accept a package deal.
The marriage starts out strained and awkward, but Verity soon recognizes her husband’s innate kindness and goodness. Even more, he’s patient with her son who adores him. Nor does it hurt that he’s smokin’ hot. Their marriage of convenience turns loving and passionate, and both revel in their good fortune.
But Fury knows his happiness is doomed. He can’t keep lying to Verity about his past. And when the protective mom learns she married a coldhearted cyborg assassin, it will be the end of his dream.
* * * *
The Cosmic Mates sci-fi romances are being released in “duets,” a two-book series within a series. Books one and two are a set, books three and four are a different set, etc. Kiss of Fury (Cosmic Mates 4) is the second book of a the mini-series. All the Cosmic Mates sci-fi romances can be read as standalones.
Release Date: November 18, 2024
Publisher: Cara Bristol
Series: Cosmic Mates #4
Genre: Sci-Fi Romance
Format(s): paperback (213 pages), e-book
Book Source: Author
Purchase Info:
Amazon (affiliate link)