BEAUTIFUL KILLER (Lawless Kings #3) by Sherilee Gray-a review

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About the book: Release Date January 9, 2018

She’s wanted a big family ever since her distant father and cold stepfamily isolated her from affection. He’s an ex-SEAL sniper with PTSD.

Too bad she’s been told she can never have children, never have a family of her own.

Too bad he’s shut off his heart from love.

What do you do when one secret could bring you ultimate happiness…or destroy everything you hold close?

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REVIEW: BEAUTIFUL KILLER is the third instalment in Sherilee Gray’s contemporary, adult LAWLESS KINGS erotic, romantic suspense series focusing on the men and women who work for King Agency doing personal protection and security, private investigation (corporate and domestic) and high-risk fugitive recovery, missing persons and kidnapping investigations. This is King Security PI, sniper and ex Navy SEAL Zeke Stanton, and jewelry designer Sunny’s story line. BEAUTIFUL KILLER can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty. Any important information from the previous story lines is revealed where necessary.

Told from dual first person perspectives (Sunny and Zeke) BEAUTIFUL KILLER follows the unconventional relationship between PI and sniper Zeke Stanton, and jewelry designer Sunny. When her blind date was a no-show Sunny propositioned the stranger at the bar, a man so intense and dark, she couldn’t help but be attracted like a moth to a flame. Enter Zeke Stanton, broken and embattled ex-Navy SEAL whose demons continue to ride him hard. What ensues is the sex only arrangement between our leading couple that grows into something following an attack on our heroine by an unknown assailant. Left alone, and with no where to turn Sunny approaches the security specialists at King Agency only to come face to face with the man with whom she was falling in love.

Zeke Stanton is a broken man, an ex-Navy SEAL who suffers nightmares, PTSD and survivors remorse following the last mission that went all to h*ll. Working for high school friend and fellow Navy SEAL Van King, Zeke continues to place himself in dangerous situations while on assignment, with the possibility of never coming home alive. Meeting the beautiful and talented Sunny begins to melt the ice around our hero’s heart but Zeke wants nothing to do with family or relationships forcing a stricken Sunny to move forward, alone.

The relationship between Sunny and Zeke begins as a one-night stand that turns into something more. Zeke wants nothing to do with a forever kind of love but he finds himself unable to walk away from the woman that calls to his heart. Days, weeks and months of emotionless $ex begin to push at our story line couple until news of a different sort finds Sunny at a crossroads towards the future. The $ex scenes are intimate, erotic and intense, without the use of over the top, sexually graphic language and text.

All of the previous story line couples play secondary and supporting characters including Hunter King and Lulu Frost (Shattered King #1), and Neco Malik and Ruby Styles (Broken Rebel #2), and co-owner of the King Agency Van King. We are introduced to Sunny’s step-sister Julia and her husband Bobby Grant, as well as Zeke’s parents Ron and Jane Stanton.

BEAUTIFUL KILLER is an emotional story line of one man who is unable to move on from the past, and one woman whose history of rejection continues to push her forward-alone. The premise is heart breaking and impassioned; the characters are charismatic but damaged; the romance is seductive and fierce.

Reading Order and Previous Reviews
Shattered King
Broken Rebel
Beautiful Killer

Copy supplied by the publisher through Netgalley

Reviewed by Sandy