Title: Slow Hands (Harlequin Blaze)
Author: Leslie Kelly
Release Date: June 1, 2008
Publisher: Harlequin
Category: Contemporary Romance
Type: Kindle/Paperback
Book Blurb:
His price? Pure pleasure...
This is Maddy Turner's lucky day. The civilized society girl just bid on sexy rogue Jake Wallace at a charity bachelor auction and won! But Maddy knows Jake's dirty little secret. And it should keep her from trying out her new boy toy. Too bad she can't stop herself from indulging in raw, quite uncivilized sex all the same....
Book Excerpt:
“Let me make sure I understand,” he said, his voice gravelly and thick, “you would like to pay me a large sum of money to have sex with you for the next thirty days.”
“Right. Sex with only you. A lot of sex. All kinds of crazy sex.”
She couldn’t be blushing, she hadn’t blushed since she was a twelve year old whose budding figure had attracted the very verbal notice of the boys in her class. It was merely the heat of the summer day hitting her cheeks. God, please let her not be blushing, not now that she’d come this far.
“Well, not just sex.” But mostly sex. She thought quickly, scrambling for other duties he could fulfill, to make the whole thing worth his while and to convince him that she wasn’t just asking out of the selfish, helpless want that had filled her from the moment they’d met.
She lit upon the perfect thing. “My sister’s wedding! It’s in two weeks, and I desperately need an escort. You can be my date. That’s within your purview, isn’t it?”
He tsked lightly. “Buying another date with me, hmh?”
“Well, you are a paid escort, right? Isn’t that your usual job title? You’d actually be escorting me, rather than, well, you know, just...”
“Screwing you.”
That was very crude. It was also very exciting, almost dangerous. She’d never had a man treat her with anything but gentlemanly restraint, but she sensed that, if she wanted to let him, Jake could be much more aggressive--wildly so.
“But I suppose I could live with being arm candy for a society wedding.”
He’d be a perfect escort, tall and strong and utterly magnificent in a tux, she knew.
She would not think about Tabby laughing her ass off over this, or about Deborah choking on her chateaubriand. There was too much at stake right now. Even more than Maddy had suspected, given the way she could barely breathe and the sweat was probably dripping off her hands to flood the deck. A pirate could probably swab the entire surface already.
"So, what do you say? You’d be doing me an enormous favor,” she insisted, hoping she wasn’t babbling by now. “You already know as well as I do that I have no use for the typical games--romance and love and such. I’m a businesswoman and this is a business proposal I’m making.”
“Strictly business. That’s the only way you want it.”
Gulping, she nodded. It wasn’t exactly a lie.
If she and Jake decided at the end of their thirty days that there was more to this than lust, maybe she’d find her way clear to at least considering dipping her toes in romance waters again. Maybe.
Really, when she thought about it, this was the perfect way to build up to that--with no risks. No embarrassment. No scenes or break-ups. It was like getting to test-drive a sporty little Mercedes for a month without getting her heart set on the pretty pink color. Without expecting it to possibly look as good to her in thirty days as the day she’d first set eyes on it.
And without letting anybody else behind the wheel until she’d figured out if she could afford it.
“So, constant wild sex and a date to a wedding for...how much?”
Constant wild sex...think, damn it. She quickly named a figure off the top of her head, figuring he had to make at least what a top executive at the bank would make. But suddenly remembering that before she had stepped into the fray at the auction the bid had been over five-thousand dollars for one date with the man, and thinking of how incredibly he’d made love to her, she worried she’d offered far too little.
He didn’t respond by so much as the quirk of a muscle.
“If that’s not enough...”
Dialogue Highlight:
“Why is falling in love impossible?”
She sighed as they continued walking. “Falling in love isn’t the problem,” she murmured. “It’s the staying in love part that I don’t have much faith in.”
“I have two parents, four grandparents, and about fifty aunts, uncles, cousins and friends who’d say you’re wrong about that.”
She finally turned to really look at him, a hard, skeptical glint appearing in those big brown eyes. That was when he knew—the woman had been burned. Badly. The realization made something twist inside him, deep down, to the nice-guy core who detested the jerks who hurt women.
“And I have a father, a sister, a couple of former stepmothers, several cousins, aunts, uncles and friends who say I’m right.”
He gaped. “Not a single successful marriage in the bunch?”
Her gaze shifted, her lashes lowering over suddenly sad eyes. “My parents were supposedly happy.”
Confused, he waited for her to continue.
“My mother died when I was very young. My father once said the years he spent with her were the most blissful of his life.”
“So it is possible.”
“They were only married for five years before she got sick.”
“God, you’re a pessimist.”
“And you’re an optimist?”
“Hell, yes. My glass may only hold beer instead of champagne, but it’s almost always half full.”
******
“I’m not a pig. I’m a gentleman.” Tension snapping between them, he leaned closer, keeping his voice low and intimate. Raking a hot glance over her, he admitted, “And a gentleman doesn’t come right out on a first date and tell a woman he wants to smother her beautiful nipples in sugar and then suck every bit of sweetness right out of her until she’s begging to be taken.”
She gasped, but he was too far gone. Both his mouth…and his body, which was now rock-hard beneath the table.
“And it wouldn’t have been terribly polite of me to tell you I’ve been wondering all day what color panties you have on. Whether it’s a thong, whether the curves of your ass are really as round and sweet as I think they are.”
“Jake…”
“Or that if I fell into your incredible breasts and smothered to death, I’d die with a smile on my face.”
“Oh my.”
“Or that when I touched your leg this afternoon, all I could think of was how slim your thighs are. How easily my hands would wrap around them. How amazing it would be to lift them over my shoulders, getting the best possible angle so I could plunge into you, hard, and fill you so completely you feel like you’re gonna break in half.”
“Holy shit,” someone said.
It wasn’t her.
Sanity returned as he realized their waitress stood beside the table, wide-eyed, pink-cheeked. And all ears. “Wow, hot stuff, if she says no, you can have my number!”
Review:
This story is created around a misunderstanding – a mistaken identity. A fledgling graphic company has misplaced information about two of the men up for auction at an upcoming charity event. They have a 50/50 chance of guessing right … they are wrong.
Madeline is the polar opposite of her beautiful sister Tabitha. She is responsible, hard-working, and has morals while Tabitha lives life in the fast lane. When Tabitha gets word that her step-mother is about to buy a man at an auction, Madeline shrugs it off. But when Tabitha reveals that this particular man is a male escort, the two hatch a plan to thwart their potentially promiscuous step-mother. Madeline goes to the event and outbids everyone, effectively purchasing the gigolo for an evening.
Jake is a paramedic and has been finagled into auctioning himself up for the good of charity. While standing back stage, he catches sight of Madeline and is intrigued. Imagine his surprise when the woman he is attracted to is the one who wins him. But his plans go sideways when Maddy bolts. Jake is perplexed, obtains her information, and sets out to make good on his paid-for evening with Maddy.
This story is pretty cute and incredibly hot. While much of it is predictable, I was still drawn into the characters and their mistaken assumptions. Maddy is the type that sells herself short. She works her tail off and leaves little time for herself to do other than fantasize about a life outside of work. But Maddy is unaware that her whole family wants to see her happy in love with a lot less focus on work. She ends up offering to pay the persistent Jake for his services: services that include escorting Maddy to a wedding and posing as her boyfriend for a month. This is what Jake does for a living, so the situation should work out well for both of them, right?
Jake takes a while to figure out why Maddy has made such assumptions about him. When he does, he vows to make her see the real him and what they could be together. But not just yet … first he has a job to fulfill. Jake is the all-around good old American boy. He has his values and priorities straight and he is a gorgeous paramedic. Yowza! Did I just say Yowza? *face palm* That was a bit much perhaps. Anyway, I enjoyed my time spent getting to know Maddy, Jake, and the story surrounding them as secrets and truth come to light. But let me caution you that this story is not for the faint of heart – or rather those that offend in the presence of rather descriptive sex scenes because there are plenty of them. Hey, Jake’s supposed to be an escort, so why not play the part, right? Paramedic, hot sex … I’m trying to see a down side here. But in the end, we are treated to a story in which love just might be found in the strangest of places and circumstance.
(Digital book purchased for personal library)
I read this one ages ago, but I never reviewed it. I'm thinking I should read it again. It did have a cute premise. Plus, I can add it to my 'Why Buy the Cow?' challenge list. ;)
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