"Yummy hero, lovable heroine, exciting suspense -- and great sex."

Candy Nelson is a wealthy corporate lawyer, making a business trip to Singapore over the Christmas holiday. While she's there, she plans to attend an antiques auction and bid on a doll for her private collection. But her cabdriver's English is almost non-existent, and her command of Malay is not much better. The auction she ends up at is in a very bad part of town, and it's not antiques that are being sold -- it is people. Candy assumes that the bidders are contracting for workers for their businesses, although seeing the men bidding on the very young Asian girls is a bit disturbing . . . Then she notices one man amongst those up on the auction stage -- clearly a Westerner, model- handsome, with the buff body of a construction worker. She doesn't need to hire a worker, but she would like some companionship over the holidays, and he looks so desperate and afraid -- so she bids on him and wins. It isn't until they are leaving that Brooke Harper explains to Candy that she has just bought him at a slave auction!

It takes Candy a while to accept that such things actually happen in the modern day. Her type of law deals with contracts, not criminals and their activities. But once she hears Brooke's story, she becomes determined to help him get back to his "real life". Of course, maybe she can enjoy him for a few days while they straighten things out -- she can't help panting over his body, and he's been a long time without a woman. Except little discrepancies keep cropping up about Brooke, and then there are the guys with the guns . . .

I loved this story! The hero and heroine were engaging and realistic, the suspense element had some surprising twists, the ending was very satisfying. (And of course there was great sex.) It was easy to empathize with and understand Candy and her reactions to the situation in which she found herself -- she's a well-educated and well-traveled woman, but her money and position have insulated her from the harsher aspects of life, and like so many of us in wealthy developed countries, she has no concept of the reality of what goes on in the darker areas of other parts of the world. Brooke was absolutely yummy, I just wanted to cuddle him -- he was by turns unsure and forceful, frightened and resolute, both annoyed with and entranced by Candy's behavior toward him.

Many authors are not particularly successful with the short or novella length story. They confuse and disappoint the reader by either leaving out so much that the story makes no sense, or by trying to cram a full-length plot and too many characters into the limited number of pages. Ms. Morgen has shown that she can expertly fit everything necessary for plot and character development into novella length, without leaving out anything important. When I finished reading this story, I was completely satisfied -- I felt neither shortchanged nor overwhelmed.

Sensuality: Rated NC-17 by Ellora's Cave. I'd consider it more Hard R -- explicit sex; oral sex; monogamous and consensual.

Reviewed by Raelene Gorlinsky
Courtesy Sensual Romance
Posted August 4, 2002

Rated NC-17

Summary

Sex For Hire

Candy thought she was hiring an escort to keep her company for the week. She'd never done anything like that before, but she was spending Christmas alone in Singapore, and the handsome man was going to be her present to herself. It was dangerous. It was foolish. But it was only for a week. One week of indulging herself. She could afford it. And after all, it was her birthday. She had certainly never intended to end up owning the man...

State Secrets

Brooke knew smuggling information into China was dangerous when he volunteered -- he just never expected to get caught. And he certainly never expected to end up on the auction block in some underground black market slave ring. Now he's the personal sex slave to successful entertainment lawyer Candy Nelson. She's everything he ever wanted -- a lifetime ago. Now he has to choose between the assignment and the woman he's falling in love with -- and time's running out...