All Tucked in - Jule McBride

All Tucked In, by Jule McBride, was released in June 2003 as number 91 of the Harlequin Blaze line. It's a short book, as the Blaze lines tend to be, that I found an easy and sensual read. All right, so it was damn scorching in places and the sex scenes were very well written.

Carlia DiDolche has been spending her nights tossing and turning, but it isn't the coffee from her café that is keeping her up at nights. She's haunted by a re-occurring dream that she's been dealing with since childhood. But there's an answer close at hand. A sleep clinic with a new treatment for changing and confronting dreams, is nearby. The only problem is - it's run by her ex fiancé, a man she stood up at the altar, Tobias Free.

She bites the bullet at the insistence of her Mum, and takes the treatment at the clinic.

All too quickly those dreams turn into erotic images that revolve around deliciously sizzling sex with Tobias. The images so real that she is left aroused and hungry for his touch when she awakens.

Tobias wants to cure Carla's insomnia with dream therapy, but for him it's pure torture tucking her in at night and watching her through her sleep. Ever moan, each soft whimper and twist of hips has him remembering their times together. Not just that but he fights the urge to slip between her sheets.

Carla and Tobias are not just linked by the dreams, or their failed attempt to wed, but a love that both have tried to overcome. Can the dreams and the golden underwear, or rather the chastity belt, that Carla has seen in her dreams time and again, hold the answer? Perhaps, as it's the same one that Tobias has seen in a piece of artwork he found in the very building where his clinic is housed.

All Tucked In is a delicious little read. The story with the chastity belt did falter, for me, in places, but I understand that was most likely due to work count issues for the line, not lack of skill on the behalf of the author. I'd have loved to have seen that worked in a little more, but such is often not to be in a short read. One thing a reader has to remember with lines like Blaze is they are restricted by the word count on the line, and as long as that is taken into account then the books can be satisfying reads and easily kill a few stolen hours.

ISBN 0-373-79095-3