When an accident burns down Jesse’s apartment, he’s left broke and homeless, with a giant dog and a college schedule he can’t afford to maintain. And no family who’s willing to take him in.
Lucky for him, a sexy fireman offers him a place to stay. The drawback? The fireman’s big Latino family lives next door, and they don’t know their son is gay.
Tomas’s parents made their way in America with hard work and by accepting help when it was offered, so he won’t let Jesse drop out of school just so he can afford a place to live. Besides, Jesse’s the perfect roommate—funny, sweet and breathtakingly cute. He climbs into Tomas’s bed and tugs at his heart. Until Jesse starts pushing for more.
Their passion enflames their bodies but threatens to crush Tomas’s family. Tomas is willing to fight for Jesse, but after losing everything, Jesse isn’t sure he can bear to risk his one remaining possession—his heart.
Jesse is devastated when he comes home one afternoon and finds his building on fire. Yeah, that’s what he gets for renting from a couple who have a meth lab in their basement. Firefighter Tomas Perez is there to help him at the scene and starts to feel an attachment to Jesse even though he doesn’t know him from Adam. He wanders with him after the fire and eventually realizes that Jess isn’t planning on calling anyone to help him. Tomas offers him the couch in his small house and Jesse takes him up on it.
Jesse moved out of his parents house just 2 months prior after having saved up money to go to school and live. Now it’s all gone and he’s not sure what he’s gonna do. He likes Tomas but he’s a bit confused as to why the guy wants him around. Jesse is hot for Tomas, and at times Tomas seems to feel the same but while Jesse is enjoying being out and proud Tomas is in the closet and has some issues with the gay part of his life.
Soon the two are practically inseparable but Tomas’s family doesn’t know he’s gay – or so Tomas thinks – and then there are the guys from the fire station. Tomas refuses to come out to even his homophobic brother, Diego, and this causes strife between Tomas and Jesse. Jesse’s just not sure he wants to continue a relationship where he has to hide all the time.
A different kind of story where the two hero’s are thrown together almost immediately. Tomas really wants to be with Jesse but he has some deep seeded issues about two men being together and what part of sex constitutes love and which part constitutes just plain sleaziness. He’s had blow jobs from guys in back alleys but those weren’t men he’d loved and having Jesse do that seems wrong. The problem was that Tomas couldn’t just come out and tell him that as he was just trying to find his way. Unfortunately things like that never stay a secret and when it comes out it causes friction between the two men. Tomas’s refusal to come out to even his brother was another cog in the wheel of their relationship that was broken and at one point we didn’t know if it could be fixed.
Jesse was a character that I’m not sure I knew all that well by the end of the book. I liked him a lot and I liked him with Tomas but it seemed that he wasn’t satisfied with his place in life with Tomas and that confused me. One minute he would seem content and then in another he would be acting uncertain with people about his place. This is book 1 in a new series and hopefully we’ll get to read more about Tomas and Jesse and their life and how it’s going in subsequent books.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Daisy Harris
Sounds like a delicious read, thanks for the review.
ELF – You're welcome. It was really good.