Reviewer: Tracy
Road of No Return by KA Merikan
Series: Sex and Mayhem #1

Publication Date: July 17, 2014
Genres: M/M
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Series Rating:

Zak. Tattoo artist. Independent. Doesn’t do relationships.
Stitch. Outlaw biker. Deep in the closet. Doesn’t share his property.

On the day of Stitch’s divorce, lust personified enters the biker bar he’s celebrating at. Tattooed all over, pierced, confident, and hot as hellfire, Zak is the bone Stitch has waited for life to throw him. All Stitch wants is a sniff, a taste, a lick. What follows instead is gluttony of the most carnal sort, and nothing will ever be the same. Forced to hide his new love affair from the whole world, Stitch juggles family, club life, and crime, but it’s only a matter of time until it becomes too hard.

Zak moves to Lake Valley in search of peace and quiet, but when he puts his hand into the jaws of a Hound of Valhalla, life gets all but simple. In order to be with Stitch, Zak’s biker wet dream, he has to crawl right back into the closet. As heated as the relationship is, the secrets, the hiding, the violence, jealousy, and conservative attitudes in the town rub Zak in all the wrong ways. When pretending he doesn't know what his man does becomes impossible, Zak needs to decide if life with an outlaw biker is really what he wants.

As club life and the love affair collide, all that’s left in Zak and Stitch’s life is mayhem.

Stitch, who is in the Hounds of Valhalla MC, is celebrating his divorce when Zak walks in. Stitch is immediately enamored with the tattooed man. Stitch is a gay man who has never been with a man. He’s not sure how to categorize his sexuality but he knows he can’t get it up for women any longer. Zak, however, is making his body respond.

As Zak is a new tattoo artist in town Stitch takes that as an opportunity to get a tattoo to cover the name of his ex-wife and to get closer to Zak. During their first encounter a blow job ensues and afterward Stitch kind of loses his mind. Zak ends up sleeping with a knife from the kitchen as Stitch scared the shit out of him. Stitch does come back and ends up apologizing.

The men start spending more and more time together but they have to keep everything on the down low as Stitch’s MC can never know that he’s gay. Stitch is thinking that he and Zak are in a relationship but Zak has different ideas about what’s going on between them and starts seeing someone else as well. Stitch is not happy about that, to say the least.

While Zak and Stitch are dealing with their relationship issues and trying to work things out, the MC is moving in a direction that Stitch isn’t real thrilled with. He’s happy with the businesses that the club owns as well as their thieving of electronics and reselling. He has no need to get into the drug business but that’s exactly where the club president wants to go. This ends up putting the Hounds of Valhalla into a club war with a larger, fiercer club and that doesn’t necessarily work out well for the Hounds.

I have to say I was excited to start this story. It started well but quickly went downhill for me. From that point on it was a constant roller coaster of good then bad. The relationship would go well then something would go horribly wrong and it was always taken to the nth degree. Stitch was wonderful then not, then wonderful, then not. I really, really liked him at times and then really, really disliked him at others. I don’t think I liked having such changing feelings about one of the main characters.

Zak was pretty great. I thought he was more than a bit out of his element with Stitch but I had to admire him for sticking with it when Stitch went a little craze-balls. He was even tempered and I enjoyed his character for the most part.

Overall the story was a good but as you can read, I had some issues with it. I also felt it had way too many sex scenes in it – but that’s something that falls into the personal preference category. I’m not sure that I would read another in this series as I thought there was too much violence for my liking.

Rating: 3 out of 5