Flash Point

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Synopsis

Tigs is an alley cat shifter who owns a construction business. While cleaning up their latest job site alone one evening, a fire breaks out, trapping him on the second floor. He barely escapes by shifting into his cat form and leaping out a window into a nearby tree, where he's rescued by a handsome firefighter with striking green eyes. When Dustin takes him home, he figures he owes the guy for saving his life, and pays him back with an erotic evening of sex. But Tigs senses that Dustin is a classy guy while he's nothing but a lowly alley cat.

When Dustin Hardesty saved a scruffy tom cat from the fire and decided to take him home, he had no idea he'd brought a shifter into his life until he awakens from a hypoglycemic blackout with a gorgeous naked man hovering over him. Dustin shares a passionate evening with his cat shifter after which Tigs ghosts him. But Dustin fell hard and fast and isn't about to let this sexy new man get away so easily.

Review

Flash Point is a paranormal romance short story that is the first in the multi-author Protect & Serve series, which features characters who are first responders in addition to ones who are supernatural. In this one, Tigs is a cat shifter (of the domestic sort) who owns a construction business that's staffed with his fellow cat and dog shifters. They just finished up a shift on their latest project and Tigs is the only one left on site when an arson fire breaks out on the lower floor of the building. The fast-moving blaze nearly overtakes him before he shifts into his cat form and jumps out a window into a nearby tree. He's rescued by a handsome firefighter who decides to take him home instead of to the shelter. As Dustin is confiding grief over the loss of his husband and other things to his new feline companion, he passes out from hypoglycemia and awakens to the most gorgeous naked man he's ever seen tending to him. Figuring he owes Dustin for saving him, Tigs sticks around to give him a sexy good time. However, he can tell that Dustin is a class act, while he's just an alley cat, so he ghosts out while Dustin is asleep. It's not until he's called to meet with a guy about a prospective historic home restoration that Tigs sees Dustin again, but he has to decide if he can get past his hangups about their differing social statuses for a chance at forever love.

I think I was mostly attracted to the cover blurb for Flash Point because of one hero being a firefighter and the other being a cat shifter. I'm a sucker for men in uniform and I don't know that I've read many, if any, paranormal books so far with domestic animal shifters, so both were a big selling point for me. Unfortunately the story didn't quite live up to the promise. I liked both Dustin and Tigs fine, but the character development is minimal, leaving a great deal about them unexplored. I really would have loved if this had been built up into a longer book with more backstory for both men. Dustin was rejected by his father for being gay but there's little about how that has affected him, and his husband had recently died but we don't know how. Tigs has his crew who seem to be a pretty close group but we learn nothing about them at all, and he's clearly a little bothered by the fact that he's a mere alley cat while Dustin is a classy guy. There was just so much fodder for a deeper dive that didn't materialize. The romance is likewise underdeveloped, merely an insta-love, and when I insta, I mean they're inexplicably in love from the instant they have sex. The love scenes were okay, but they're written in a way that was more raw and erotic than sexy and romantic. Throughout the story there were times when there weren't quite enough details to fully envision what was happening and I found some inconsistencies and other editing errors. Overall, Flash Point wasn't a bad story per se and I did derive some enjoyment from reading it, which is why I gave it three stars, but I think it could have been so much more. For readers who are looking for a quick read that's more about the sex, it might just hit the spot, but for anyone who's wanting a deeper story, I'd recommend looking elsewhere.

Note: This book contains explicit language and sexual situations that include submissive tendencies, nipple clamps, intimate piercing, and rimming, all of which could be objectionable to sensitive readers.

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Themes

Opposite Sides of the Track