Enslave Me Sweetly

Enslave Me Sweetly is a 2006 romance by Gena Showalter, published by Pocket Books as a 367-page paperback.

The premise is an operative's mistake. Eden Black is an alien of a kind that human beings would not recognise, and she works to protect them from the other-worlders who abduct and enslave people. Her record is flawless until she misses a single shot at a human slaver, and the professional failure is what leads to the arrangement the book is built on.

Being paired with a partner is treated as a punishment as much as an assignment. Lucius Adaire is a human agent who enjoys provoking her, and the two of them are locked into a mission they cannot afford to lose, so the romance and the operation advance together. Eden is a Raka rather than a human, and her professional problem is made worse by the arrangement her agency imposes: a human partner, Lucius Adaire, who is as good at the work as she is and considerably better at provoking her. The operation concerns a slaver, so the two halves of the book stay in the same frame, an assignment that has to be finished and two agents who have to decide what they are to each other.