Review: Notorious Pleasures by Elizabeth Hoyt

 Their lives were perfect . . .

Lady Hero Batten, the beautiful sister of the Duke of Wakefield, has everything a woman could want, including the perfect fiancé. True, the Marquis of Mandeville is a trifle dull and has no sense of humor, but that doesn't bother Hero. Until she meets his notorious brother . . .


Until they met each other.

Griffin Remmington, Lord Reading, is far from perfect - and he likes it that way. How he spends his days is a mystery, but all of London knows he engages in the worst sorts of drunken revelry at night. Hero takes an instant dislike to him, and Griffin thinks that Hero, with her charities and faultless manners, is much too impeccable for society, let alone his brother. Yet their near-constant battle of wits soon sparks desire - desire that causes their carefully constructed worlds to come tumbling down. As Hero's wedding nears, and Griffin's enemies lay plans to end their dreams forever, can two imperfect people find perfect true love?

Ms. Hoyt is on my automatic buy list, and Notorious Pleasures may just be my favorite of her books thus far.  Of course there's sexual tension: 

"Damn you."

Her vision was blurred, so she didn't see his movement, but she was suddenly across the carriage, half sprawled on his lap.

"I dare," he muttered, "because I'm selfish and black-hearted and vain.  I dare because you are what you are and I am what I am.  I dare because I cannot otherwise.  I've lived too long without bread or wine, crawling desperate in a lonely, barren desert, and you, my darling Lady Perfect, are manna sent directly from heaven above."

His lips were on hers, urgent and hot. Oh, Lord, she had not known how much she missed his kisses!  His mouth tasted of need too long suppressed, but where he might've been rough with her, he was instead gentle.
Very gentle.

...

His big hands were on her breasts, and he pinched both her nipples at once.  She bit her lip at the pleasure-pain, a tear slipping down one cheek.  This was real.  This was something outside of everyday bland interactions and rote conversation.  His mouth was on hers, open and wild, and  his hips were thrusting, moving his cock in her hand in an animal rhythm.  He squeezed her poor engorged nipples again, pulling at them at the same time.  And she felt.

She felt alive.

And a little bit of humor: 

He shook his head. "This isn't a whim."

"Then why didn't you ask me before you bedded me?"

He stared at her, tempted to answer that he'd been thinking with the smaller of his two heads before he'd bedded her, thank you very much.

But at the heart of the matter is the fact that Ms. Hoyt's writing is impossible (for me) to put down.  That's one of the main problems:  I read her books too damn fast.  Each page adds more sexual tension, more intrigue, more drama, more romance, and the hero and heroine become people I feel I know -- even better, I want to know them.  I'm a spectator to their little moments and I want more of them. 

And I cannot express how giddy I am at the thought of Silence's book [Scandalous Desires, November 2011].