Title: The Viper (Untamed Hearts, #1)
Author: Kele Moon
Genre: Erotic / Contemporary Romance
Release Date: August 19, 2014
Marcos Rivera is a fighter. A gang member. Someone who has seen the dark side of humankind and survived. He has lost family and gained enemies. He has stolen cars and destroyed hearts, stripping one for money and the other for pleasure. His past is haunted and his future is bleak.
Until her.
Katie Foster is a high school history teacher. Smart, strong, and sexy. She is a woman Marcos shouldn’t want. Shouldn’t touch. Shouldn’t love. He met her in Garnet, a backwards, hick town that’s the last place in the world he wants to be, but he finds himself going back for a taste of the forbidden.
Katie represents all that is good in the world, and Marcos knows he’s nothing but trouble for her perfect life. He fights and he screws. He commits crimes and he breaks the rules. He will never change and he will never escape his gang lifestyle.
Or can he?
What happens when two different people from two very different walks of life risk it all by giving into the passion that threatens to consume both of them? Can a woman who only knows how to play it safe give her heart to a man who lives hard and loves harder?
Will she survive The Viper?
“You’re stubborn, cariño.”
Katie flipped her hair back. She
crawled over Marcos and straddled him once more. She reached for her coffee and
took a sip. She noticed he didn’t have a complaint this time. He seemed a
little too relaxed to bother as she admitted, “I am very stubborn. Ask anyone.
It’s usually their chief complaint about me.”
“I like it.” He tugged a long
strand of her hair. “A lot.”
“That’s why you’re perfect.” She
grinned, enjoying how completely unselfconscious she was around him. It was
such a rare commodity in her life. For some reason, she didn’t question for one
minute that he liked her just as she was. She felt the same about him as she
eyed his body under hers. She reached out and touched one of the stars on his
shoulder. There was a matching one on the other shoulder. “What do these mean?”
He winced. “If you knew, you
wouldn’t think I’m perfect.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Try me.”
“They mean I’m a thief,” he said
simply, as if daring her to judge him.
“Of what?” She took another sip
of her coffee as she studied the strange stars that decorated each of his
shoulders.
“Of anything left unattended
long enough for me to take advantage of.” He laced a hand behind his head,
still studying her thoughtfully. “Cars. Houses. Pretty, innocent gringas with
talented mouths.”
She laughed. “I’m not that
innocent.”
“That’s what you think.”
“Mmm,” she hummed rather than
argue, and took another sip of her coffee that was extra creamy and sweet,
making it the color of Marcos’s tan skin. She studied him again, and ran her
hand over the tattooed cross on his chest with the names of his mother and
cousin above and below it. Then she touched the inked black tribal tattoos on
his right biceps. It covered so much skin, and the left side matched. “What
about these?”
He looked amused with her
exploration of him. “They mean nothing.”
“Then why get them?”
“I dunno, ‘cause I was young and
vain and had a lot of disposable income.”
“From stealing things.”
“Yup.”
“Where’s your disposable income
now?”
He laughed. “On my arms.”
“So you must not be stealing
things anymore,” she said, because she suspected as much.
“Not right now, no.” He took her
coffee from her and leaned up, stealing a sip before he put it back on the
nightstand. “Soon, maybe.”
“Once a thief—” she mused.
“Always a thief,” he finished
for her as he laced his other hand behind his head. “You’d be smart to remember
it, chica.”
“Why did you get the tattoos?”
she asked as she touched his right arm again. She didn’t believe for one minute
he did them just for vanity. Every marking on his body had a meaning. It was
like an illustration to the history of his life, and she found it fascinating.
“The truth.”
He looked away from her. His
body stiffened all of a sudden, and she got the impression she may have pushed
too far before he admitted in a low, raspy voice, “Because they hurt.”
“Huh?”
“I just wanted something to hurt
me. To make me forget. To make it sting so bad I couldn’t think about anything
but the needle digging into my skin.”
“Did it work?”
“No.” He looked back to her, the
pain glimmering in his light eyes. “If it did, I would have a lot more.”
She laid down over him and let
her head rest on his shoulder over one of the stars that marked him as a thief.
He stroked her hair and together they shared a quiet moment where she didn’t
judge him, and he let her be still and ache for him.
The Viper was my first Kele Moon book. I have to say I am
mad at myself for not picking up her books sooner. She is a wonderful story
teller and I was absolutely sucked into this book from the very first chapter.
This is a story of opposites attract. Two negatives equaling
a positive. Katie and Marcus can not be any more different. She is a high
school teacher and he is a gang member from Miami. But their worlds collide,
literally, and they never were the same again.
Katie is a sweet, beautiful woman who is a divorcee to a
mental abusive man. Marcus is a hardcore gangster who let’s say likes cars.
While visiting his cousin, meets Katie. Their worlds were altered. In their
short time together, Marcus taught Katie to stand up for herself. And Katie
taught Marcus that maybe there was more to life than a gang.
Their story was so powerful to me. To me it was about not
judging someone by their appearance or what we think they are like from the
little we may know. Katie and Marcus really shut the world out and fell in
love. They ignored all the warning signs and went with their gut.
I truly loved Katie and Marcus and their connection. There
was a great supporting character of Chuito. He is Marcus’ cousin and he played
a great role in this book. I hope the Kele Moon gives us his story because I
just loved him and his loyalty to his family.
I highly recommend this book if you love hot men and great
connection of characters. This book had it in spades.
A freckle faced, redhead born and raised in Hawaii, Kele Moon has always been a bit of a sore thumb and has come to enjoy the novelty of it. She thrives off pushing the envelope and finding ways to make the impossible work in her story telling. With a mad passion for romance, she adores the art of falling in love. The only rules she believes in is that, in love there are no rules and true love knows no bounds.
So obsessed is she with the beauty of romance and the novelty of creating it she’s lost in her own wonder world most of the time. Thankfully she married her own dark, handsome, brooding hero who had infinite patience for her airy ways and attempts to keep her grounded. When she leaves her keys in the refrigerator or her cell phone in the oven he’s usually there to save her from herself. The two of them now reside in Florida with their three beautiful children who make their lives both fun and challenging in equal parts–They wouldn’t have it any other way.
