A SEAL's Seduction - Tawny Weber (HB #738 - Feb 2013)

Series: Sexy SEALs (Book 1) Uniformly Hot (Book 32)

Subject: Navy SEAL Lieutenant Blake Landon

Current Status: Two weeks of enforced leave

Mission: Distract himself in any way possible

Obstacle: A woman who tempts him to break the rules…including his own!

Navy SEAL Blake Landon (aka "Boy Scout") knows the rule book inside and out. Checked. Rechecked. But when a mission ends badly, his entire team is ordered on leave. And that's when Blake sees the tall redhead whose dark eyes suggest that the rules -- especially those in bed -- are made to be broken.

Scientist Alexia Lane has sex on the brain -- partly for work, but mostly because she needs a man who makes her girly parts do the happy dance. Her only no-no? No military dudes. But Blake's rockin' bod promises delicious pleasures, and Alexia is halfway to sexual Nirvana before she can find out he's actually a Navy SEAL.

And where one rule is broken, more are sure to follow….

Good book. Blake is a SEAL who is very good at what he does. When a mission ends badly he and his team are ordered to take leave. Blake prefers to be busy, so the time with nothing to do gives him too much time to think and remember the loss of his friend. When he meets Alexia on the beach, they immediately connect. They don't exchange much in the way of personal information, but their other exchanges are smoking hot.

Alexia has come back to California for a research job. It also puts her closer to her family, including her by-the-book admiral father. They barely speak, and when they do it's usually to argue. Alexia has a mind of her own and her father's controlling attitude always rubs her wrong. She is also very big on communication, and growing up there was very little of that going on. She swears she will never get involved with a military man because of it. When she meets Blake, she doesn't know that he's a SEAL, and not just any SEAL, but one of her father's proteges. She finds out when her father tries to set them up. She's furious, thinking that Blake had purposely hidden who and what he was, and ends things right there.

Fast forward eight months. She hasn't been able to forget him, and Blake is constantly thinking about her. Then he gets tagged for a special rescue mission, only to discover that it's Alexia that has been captured by a terrorist. The rescue mission and its aftermath are eyeopeners for both of them. I loved Alexia's conversation with her mother about life as a military wife - so true. And Blake learns how the support of someone you love can make you stronger, not weaker. The ending with the dinner at her parents' house was terrific.

My only complaint with the book was the constant referring to the SEALs as soldiers. They are not. Soldiers are in the army. SEALs are sailors, first and foremost, just as Marines are Marines. Both get a bit testy when you call them soldiers.

A SEAL's Salvation - Tawny Weber (HB #783 - Feb 2014)

Series: Sexy SEALs (Book 3), Uniformly Hot (Book 42)

Subject: Navy SEAL Petty Officer Brody Lane

Current Status: On leave

Obstacle: The one girl who was off-limits…

Where Navy SEAL "Bad Ass" Brody Lane goes, trouble follows. Being run out of his hometown years ago for misbehaving with Genna Reilly -- the sheriff's daughter -- was one thing. Now Brody is about to step into real danger. Not the suggestive letters he's been exchanging with Genna, but the kind of trouble that can send a soldier home injured and broken inside…

Genna's entire life has been orchestrated by her family. The right job. The right friends. Enough! Brody's return offers the promise of lust-filled pleasures. Of flesh teased and tasted. She's not expecting to find a soldier with distant eyes who has secluded himself from the world. But this good girl knows exactly how to bring a bad boy back to life….

Very good book.  Brody was the bad boy, son of the local drunk.  Genna was the seventeen year old daughter of the sheriff, with a huge crush on Brody.  One night she took a dare to corner him and kiss him. Just as things were getting interesting they were caught by her father. Brody was given the choice of joining the military or being arrested.  Being a smart guy he left town and joined the navy.

Ten years later, Brody is a navy SEAL who hasn't seen Genna since that night.  When he receives a letter from her, telling him about her brother's death, he writes back, beginning an exchange of steamy letters.  When he gets injured during a mission, his grandmother brings him back to his hometown to heal and try to escape the memories of that mission.  He doesn't expect to be faced with Genna almost as soon as he gets there.

Genna has been paying for that one kiss for ten years.  Thanks to her brother's out of control behavior her parents became even more overprotective.  She's been stuck in her hometown, doing the job her father got her, dating the men they approved of, and never making any waves.  When Brody comes back to town she figures it's her chance to live a little.

I loved the two of them together.  Genna has always had some sass to her personality, but it's been buried under her efforts to please her parents.  It really comes out when she faces down Brody the first time she sees him after he comes back.  She doesn't let him get away with hiding out.  Brody has always had the bad boy reputation, but under all that attitude is a pretty sensitive guy.  The loss of his friend during the mission has caused a loss of confidence in his abilities to protect the rest of his team.  He is ready to turn his back on the job that he loves because he feels he isn't capable any longer.  The chemistry between Brody and Genna is sizzling, but Brody is determined to resist.  I loved seeing the way they settled for friendship at first, giving them a chance to actually get to know each other, before Genna gives in to her attraction and seduces him.

I loved the growth that both characters went through.  Just having her hero back in town gives Genna the self confidence to finally stand up to her parents and go after the life she wants.  I loved seeing the way that she takes her stress-coping mechanism of baking and turns it into the career she can love.  I liked the way that she made her plans with the options that were most flexible for the life she wanted to have.  I loved seeing her with Brody's friends who visited and asked her help with Brody.  It opened her eyes to more of who Brody is beneath the bad boy exterior.  Meanwhile, Brody has had to deal with healing his physical injuries, but also to come to terms with the loss of his friend.  He tries leaving the job he loves behind, but his sense of loss gets even worse.  It is a conversation with Genna's dad that actually brings him the peace he's been looking for, and is reinforced by Genna in an act that shows just how well she's come to know him.