The Russian Bodyguard (Krasnov Brothers 3) by Rie Warren-Review & Excerpt Tour
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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date December 7, 2020
I am her bodyguard.
I’m her only hope.
I’m going to break her, teach her, train her.
I cannot stand this prissy brat who practically throws herself at every guy she meets. Yet I’m tasked with babysitting her. The pakhan’s daughter tests my patience, makes me want to break out in uncontrolled violence, or maybe just throw her down to show her what all her teasing does to a real man.
She’s untouchable. Until a Russian rival mafia comes seeking revenge. I’m about to teach the printsessa a lesson she’ll never forget, and I guarantee she’s the one who will be taking my orders from now on.
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REVIEW:THE RUSSIAN BODYGUARD is the third instalment in Rie Warren’s contemporary, adult KRASNOV BROTHERS erotic, Russian Bratva, romance series. This is youngest Krasnov brother, twenty-nine year old, Zolotov bodyguard/ sharp shooter Maksim Krasnov, and twenty-three year old Bratva heiress/ printsessa Sashenka ‘Sasha’ Zolotov’s story line. THE RUSSIAN BODYGUARD can be read as a stand alone without any difficulty. Any important information from the previous instalments is revealed where necessary.
TRIGGER WARNING: THE RUSSIAN BODYGUARD contains strong, adult language as well as scenes of spanking/discipline, graphic violence, sexual assault, and torture, and may not be suitable for more sensitive readers.
SOME BACKGROUND: As young children, Maksim Krasnov and his brothers Arkady and Kirill found themselves abandoned on the streets of Mother Russia. Fighting to stay alive, the brothers, led by eldest Arkady became a gang unto themselves until they tried to shake down a member of the Russian Bratva, a man who once ruled the notorious gulag. Seeing something in the boys, and without any male heirs of his own, Yury Zolotov adopted the young boys, and raised them as his own, preparing their way to rule the criminal underworld.
Told from dual first person perspectives (Maksim and Sasha) THE RUSSIAN BODYGUARD focuses on the tempestuous relationship between twenty-nine year old, Zolotov bodyguard Maksim Krasnov, and twenty-three year old Bratva heiress/ printsessa Sashenka ‘Sasha’ Zolotov. The wedding of Arkady Krasnov and Lucia Leone (The Russian Savage 2) was a grand affair but the abduction of Sasha Zolotov sent Maksim into overdrive when the woman with whom he had always loved found herself the target of revenge against her father Yury Zolotov. Forcing his hand, Zolotov Bratva leader Yury Zolotov ordered Maksim to marry his daughter Sasha, in an effort to protect the Bratva heir, believing her to be safe through the code of honor. What ensues is the acrimonious, turbulent, highly sexual and impassioned relationship between Sasha and Maksim, and the potential fall-out as Sasha becomes payment for sins of the past.
The relationship between Maksim and Sasha has always been heated, emotional and intense. Maksim has been Sasha’s bodyguard for several years but our heroine pushed all of Maksim’s buttons as she continue to defy her father’s and our hero’s orders of protection. Maksim never thought he would be worthy of love but marriage to Sasha brought out a side to Maksiim he never expected. The $ex scenes are erotic, provocative, dramatic and energetic but I struggled with the use of a certain four-letter word, and the some of the sexual descriptions used by the author.
There is a large ensemble cast of colorful secondary and supporting characters including Kirill and his wife Joanna (The Russian Thug #1), Arkady and Lucia (The Russian Savage 2), their ‘grandmother’ Svetlana, as well as the head of the Bratva and ‘father figure’ Yury Zolotov, and Joanna’s brothers Lucky, Kelly and Dex O’Sullivan. The requisite evil has many faces including Oleg Kamenev and his underboss Feliks .
THE RUSSIAN BODYGUARD, like the previous two instalments, is a story of family, relationships, power, betrayal and revenge. The premise is dark, dramatic and intense; the romance is provocative and edgy; the characters are charismatic and intense.
Reading order and previous reviews
The Russian Thug
The Russian Savage
Copy supplied for review
Reviewed by Sandy
NOTE: Excerpt intended for mature readers 18+ due to strong language and content.
Maksim’s chest heaved as he read me the riot act. “You are fucking impossible.”
“And you are the worst man I could ever have been shackled to!”
His hand snapping out, he squeezed my cheeks hard.
I tried not to flinch, but his grip was vise-like.
Maksim lowered his face to mine, his gunmetal irises just this side of demonic. “I really will beat your ass if you ever attempt to go out on your own again.”
“Do it!”
Releasing my face, he yanked me into his unyielding embrace. His mouth crashed over mine with a fury I’d never tasted before.
I struggled, kicking at anything I could reach.
He speared his tongue into my mouth, wildly claiming what he thought was rightfully his. Holding me caged against him, he drove a hand into my hair, angling my neck, trying to conquer me.
I let out a strangled growl then let the rage and arousal explode out of me.
Wrath, lust . . . I despised him.
Desire, rage . . . I wanted some part of him.
Maksim grunted when I licked between his lips, drawing me up his body so we collided in all the right ways—for once.
We kissed so ferociously, clawing at each other, practically tearing into one another to get some kind of upper hand out of this pure madness.
And still the heat roared.
We broke apart just as forcibly as we’d clashed together, both of us breathing hard.
“I hate you with every single fiber of my being,” I scathed.
“That makes two of us.” A hard sneer crossed his lips that had just been slanted across mine.
Then, Maksim struck.
He grabbed both sides of my blazer and ripped it open. Buttons popped off, pinging across the room. I looked down at my ruined leather jacket just as he tore if off my back.
Breasts thrust against the corset that remained, I saw him through a haze of red when he slung the jacket aside like it was no more than a piece of rubbish.
I launched back to smack him right across his face, but he captured my wrist in an iron grip.
He towed me inexorably against him again, and all my feral instincts went into meeting his wild kiss.
A loud groan thundered from his chest when I rolled my tongue over his then nipped at his bottom lip. His hands roved from my arms to my ass, and he cranked me right against his undeniable erection, which threw me back into that heady spiral of hate and lust.
His sculpted features came slowly into focus when he drew back.
A filthy grin the likes of which I’d never seen played across his lips that—goddamn him—had felt perfectly voracious against mine. “Shall I tell you what I’ve been thinking about?”
“What?” All the breath caught in my chest, my voice emerging raspingly.
His smirk widened. He paced backward a couple of steps. Without taking his eyes off mine, he removed his tie. With a shift of his strong hands, he unbuttoned his shirt from top to bottom. A shrug of ropey shoulders, and he eased the material from his muscular tattooed torso.
Then his fingers—the ones that had bit into the fleshiness of my ass—dropped to his trousers.
The belt slithered and hissed like a snake when he removed it. He stepped out of his shoes, toed off his socks, went for the closure of his pants.
His voice the same gruff timbre as always, he unzipped, saying, “I have been thinking about my cock in your mouth, Sashenka.”Excerpt twoClean and showered, I left the steamy enclave with a towel notched around my hips to see Sasha had woken.
She looked softer in the morning light. Sleep-tousled and inexplicably sensuous, unfortunately. Her lips became even puffier in repose, as opposed to when she was biting out snippy criticisms or cranking me up.
Lifting her arms, she yawned lazily, and one nipple came dangerously close to escaping the confines of her top. “What time is it?”
With my back to her, I dropped the towel.
Her hiss of breath was not missed on me.
Hiding a smirk, I stepped into clean briefs before turning. I didn’t care that she saw another thick boner outlined in the fabric that my meat stretched to the maximum.
“Time for you to get up, lazy.”
“Lazy!” She screeched, but her voice had a sleep-husky quality, and she kept looking.
She did not get out of bed though. With another stretch and a spine-tingling purr, she sat up.
I refused to fall into the trap of her seductress’s tools and tricks.
“I slept surprisingly well.” She fluffed up a pillow and rested against it.
“Da. I know you did.” I finished putting on my clothes, tugging on a T-shirt and tying my military boots.
I wore suits only when I needed to.
“What does that mean?” The female in my bed gathered the covers loosely around her waist.
Ranging closer with a belt dangling from my hands, I reached out for her.
She immediately shrank from me, which was funny considering she’d spent the night snuggled up to me like I was her comfort blanket or something.
Perhaps she thought I was going to crack the thick leather belt across her lush body.
Maybe I would, but that was not my intention at the moment.
I closed the gap between us, and that time she remained still.
After running a lone fingertip down her cheek, I swiped across her bottom lip. “I know you slept well because it turns out you are a bed hog and you drool.”
Sasha immediately reared back as if I had struck her with the belt. “I do not drool, zasranec!”
She called me an asshole, back to her biting ways.
I latched onto her arm and dragged her from the bed. “It is also time for you to make me breakfast.”
“I’m not making you shi—”
Doubling up my belt, I snapped her sharply across the ass.
Crack!
She jumped and shrieked.
The wail of leather smacking her would sound so much better on her bare ass.
“Maksim!” She rubbed her posterior, shooting a glare at me.
“Quickly now. Shower and do whatever else you need to do to make yourself presentable.”
Her glare turned even more brittle.
“I am hungry, Sashenka.”
Her hands clenched. Her delicate jaw tensed.
She kept her mouth shut.
A first.
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Badass, sassafras Rie Warren is an OG Amazon All Star author of Bad Boy books and MC romance. She delivers five-star sex, suspense, and the best banter around. Her stories are one hundred percent original, do not contain fluffy plots or virgin brides, and wring every last emotion from readers to leave them with a satisfied smile. Rie’s tough alpha males are never brought to heel, but are instead healed by the feisty femme fatale of their perfect match.
She grew up in Maine, went to college in Iowa (Iowa, what?), lived in Scotland, and married in Englishman. In true roundabout fashion, they came back to the States, settled in South Carolina’s lowcountry, putting down southern roots and pursuing their arty endeavors. Tale spinner and character diviner, Rie is a lover of sleep, wine, and rude memes often involving either Disney characters or Winnie the Pooh. She is raising two teen daughters along with an entire brain full of unruly characters.
Rough-talking alpha men? Rie has that on tap.
Stubborn sassy heroines? You bet.
Smoldering sex scenes that’ll set your Kindle on fire? Check, check, check.
Keep a fan handy, you’ll need it.