I'll Be Hot For Christmas, by Evangeline Anderson

I'll Be Hot For Christmas (excerpt) is a short sequel to Evangeline Anderson's The Assignment.

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.It’s a year after their assignment at the RamJack where they first confessed their feelings for each other and Valenti and O’Brian have been sharing an exclusive and white-hot relationship when Valenti suddenly pulls away. Understandably upset, O’Brian is determined to find out why his partner/lover is giving him the cold shoulder on Christmas, even if it means handcuffing Valenti to the bed to get the truth out of him! .
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I liked the idea of catching up with O'Brien and Valenti, but I'm afraid this wasn't too good. Obviously in such a short piece (some 50 pages in my Ebookwise, so at most, 30 pages in a regular paperback), I'm not expecting something complex and deep, but I am expecting an interesting conflict.

I thought for a minute that Anderson was heading in an interesting direction, into dealing with what being known to be gay might mean for these two cops, but the reason why Valenti was being stand-offish ended up being beyond lame, which pretty much ruined it all for me.

There was also something about the dialogue that really grated on me, and it was the way both O'Brien and Valenti seemed to be allergic to the word "I". It was never "I want you", always "Want you"; never "I need you", always "Need you". This was a low-grade annoyance in The Assignment, but for some reason, here it bothered me much more.

The one thing that I did find myself intrigued by was Sean's insistence that he wasn't gay. He isn't attracted to "men", he says, he's simply in love with Valenti, nothing more. I kind of like that idea, that he is in love with a person, regardless of that person's sex.

Unfortunately, other than this, the story is just blah. A C-.