Obsession Mine (Tormentor Mine Book 2) Kindle Edition

***SPOILER ALERT*** I just have to get it off my chest at the outset and say that this book's ending is EPIC!! I know I'm in the minority when it comes to Anna's character Julian from her Twist Me series, so I might've been the only one who LOL'd and straight up fist-pumped at the "job offer" Peter gets at the end of this book. (But for real, Peter, you should seriously consider that one. The comp and fringe benefits are all there, and I'll totally back your waterboarding hot hiney up when throngs of Anna Zaires' Julian fans come after you to kill you, 'kay?)Full disclosure: As far as my reading tastes go, I'd just as soon poke a needle in my eye than pick up and read a sweet, safe, formulaic romance about a cute couple finding true love together. (I don’t have that kind of time to waste in a day. And schmaltz is my natural enemy.)I prefer a preposterous, implausible storyline featuring crazy, flawed characters who I often can't relate to and probably wouldn't even want to grab coffee with in real life for liability reasons. But the hitch is the story has to be well-written by an author talented and intelligent enough to pull off said outrageousness with emotional depth and most importantly, underlying humor and irony.The first book I ever read by Anna Zaires was her Krinar Chronicles. And the entire time I was thinking: Shut the door! This crazy woman is totally *$%&ing with me with this storyline. But geeeezus, look at the amount of research, world-building, character and backstory development lengths she went to just to get me to 100% buy into the idea of smokin' hot, vampiric aliens with awesome tech gadgets staging a hostile invasion of earth in order to put me on an organic, gluten-free, vegan diet so that I'll live a longer, healthier life and maybe firm up my backside!Needless to say, Anna's been on my go-to one-click storyteller list ever since.Which brings me to this latest and greatest delightful series. Anna catapulted herself to hero-worship status when she set about writing a story in which a sexy Russian villain/self-righteous vigilante named Peter falls in love with a woman named Sara after waterboarding her and offing her vegetable husband for the unforgivable wrongs he (Sara's husband) committed against Peter's family. Yes, you read that right. Flash 35 yrs into the future and Peter and Sara will be telling their grandkids the love story of how they first met when Grandpa broke into Grandma's house and waterboarded her in the kitchen one night.Tormentor Mine (book 1) was, in a word, perfection, setting the stage for an edgy, darkly humorous, sexy, fun, intro-to-waterboarding-as-foreplay mafia adventure saga. My one and only disappointment with its release was probably the lack of entertaining ranty reviews it garnered. I was almost offended on Anna’s behalf that it didn’t engender more outrage from the soapbox reader set who take their pleasure reading a little too seriously and their review-writing more so. But eh, I was able to console myself rereading outraged reviews to Twist Me and The Krinar Chronicles.Obsession Mine takes off right where Tormentor ended, with Peter drugging and kidnapping Sara in classic dark romance antihero fashion. We get to know Peter’s assassin cohorts better in book 2, adding to the humor, complexities and chemistry between the cast of characters involved in what becomes a much more complicated kidnapping and hostage scenario. We are also treated to Yulia and Lucas (from Anna’s Capture Me trilogy) entering the picture and serving as an integral part of the storyline—a surprise development that I was absolutely thrilled about!Zaires definitely cranks up the heat level in book 2 as well, proving once again that the kind of guy you can’t take home to meet your parents is truly the only kind you’d want to be trapped with on a secluded mountaintop. Let's face it, there’s just no room for vanilla sex in that scenario. And thankfully, there's none of that here in this sequel, either.Obsession Mine left me thoroughly satisfied while super-excited for book 3! Peter and Sara are solid, complex characters and I am totally invested in reading the continuation of their story and non-vanilla sexcapades in book 3. ☺

*ARC provided by author*If you have read book 1 in this trilogy, you are likely aware that it moves heavily into the territory of non-consent. Tormentor Mine ended with Sara warning Peter that the FBI was moving in on him and he took that as tacit agreement to kidnap her, so he does. This marks the end of their domestic arrangement where she continued to work as a doctor and came home to him each evening to be pampered (and more). Now he has whisked her away from everything she has known, her job, her parents, her friends/co-workers, her former life, to a secluded mountain-retreat on the other side of the world. There is no escape (Sara tries) and although Peter professes his love it appears more like he is obsessed with her. Sara’s feelings are torn: she misses her old life, she does not think she in love with Peter, yet they have this incredibly strong chemistry, this attraction that at times seems all-consuming. And when Peter is away on one of his missions with his men, she is worried sick about him. She wants to escape him, but she does not want anything to happen to him.Intellectually I feel I should abhor the level of non-consent in this tale, yet I don’t. Trying to analyze my reactions I think there are different reasons. On the one hand Sara is a grown woman, and she had a life and successful career before Peter which makes her easy to relate to. And although their sex is sometimes rough and Peter ventures into light bondage and breath play, he is never really abusive with her. The one time they get physical outside of the bedroom, it’s Sara who (almost inadvertently) manages to land a blow to his face and to draw some blood. We also get some glimpses of Peter’s childhood and his upbringing, and to say it was bleak is an understatement. And besides the fact that he keeps her captive (mostly against her will) Peter is the epitome of the perfect boyfriend/lover: he is attentive, he tries to fulfill her every wish, he makes breakfast for her every day, he spends time with and lets her call her parents to reassure them that she is fine. So as readers we are drawn in and made to empathize with Peter and to understand how an educated woman like Sara would stand for this kind of treatment.The story is told with shifting perspectives from Sara’s and Peter’s point of view. So we commiserate with Sara’s conflicting feelings of wanting to escape, wanting her life back, guilt for sleeping with the killer of her husband, but also her physical attraction, her unintentional liking for what he does make her feel. Peter’s emotions are also conflicted: he craves Sara physically, but he also wants to make her love him back. In the course of their seclusion in the mountain-retreat he starts to realize that he cannot force Sara to feel towards him as he feels towards her and that keeping her captive might break her. But since the feelings she has awoken in him are so violent and all-consuming, he just can’t bring himself to let her go. This conflict is exacerbated when Sara is hurt trying to flee from a friend’s home where he stashed her while away on another job... and that’s where this installment ends. There are some hints of exciting things to come with the promise of a grand finale, including revisiting characters from the connected series of Twist Me and Capture Me. I, for one, can hardly wait for the next (final?) installment, so definitively 5+ stars from me!