Look at that cover: no naked chests, no passionate embraces, no kissing with glorious flags on the background... an old boot and a piece of camouflage cloth. What can you understand from that cover? that this is an hard book without romance? That you will find sex but not love? That the two main characters are all manly and without feelings? yes and no, yes and no, yes and no...

Sergeant Alex Turner is a scarred man, not only in body but also deep in his soul. He trusted a person, a woman, his wife and he was frustrated. Coming home from a mission that almost cost him his life, he didn't find a warm embrace and a comforting body, he found the cold refusal of a woman that couldn't see past his marked body. And Alex turned for the embrace toward the Army, a family that never disappointed him, even if he didn't expected to find also the comforting body. Even if he doens't show it, Alex has mental scars that run deeply than the visual ones: he probably thinks to have failed, that he didn't deserve to be still alive, that he now doesn't deserve to have a normal life and to feel pleasure again. These are the barriers he has in his mind, but also his body has some idea for his own: wounded in what are the most intimate and fragile parts of a man, he can't react to a gentle touch, since it's too light for the shield he built around himself, the reaction can only be forced, through a strong and authoritative touch.

Sergeant Tom Warren is Alex's buddy friend, the man with whom he spends all his free time, the one that probably helped him to fill a void. But Tom can't hide no more: he doesn't want Alex as a friend, he wants the man in every way he can. Tom enlisted when he was 16 years old, when he wasn't meat or fish, when he wasn't a man. Growing up, Tom realized that he preferred men, and in way or another he always fulfilled his desires. But now his mind, and body, wants Alex, and Alex's is not available... or so he thinks. When a fist fight with his friend over the discovery that Tom is gay, ends in a burst of unexpected sex, Tom and Alex have to find a way to go on.

Alex accepts Tom's attentions like an unavoidable thing, like something he searches only when he can no more deny his body, a body that has decided to respond only to Tom's. Tom accepts Alex's unwilling surrender like the only way to be with the man he desperately wants. Is it love? maybe. Tom interprets his feelings as lust over Alex's body, better over Alex's scarred body: the scars for Tom are like symbols of Alex's strenght, the testimony that he survived; he almost feels guilty to be so aroused by something that witnesses Alex's pain. In a way Alex, who unlike Tom's never admits to be gay, is more sincere, since he instead admit that it's not Tom's body that turns him on, it's Tom, apart from the fact that he is a man, or gay, or whatsoever.

There is only one thing that I don't like of the book: that it's too short (142 pages in print version)! While reading faster than I can to see what it happened next, I was also thinking, or damn, I'm at mid book, it's almost finished! and I would liked for it to have still more to read. And I forgot to mention that obviously, the military part of the story is convincing and heroic, all male and proud and adventures filled... but well, I'm a romantic at heart and so I was led astray from the romance!

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Amazon: Her Majesty's Men

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