Title: Adam’s Obsession
Ellora’s Cave Moderne Series
Author: Sabrina York
Release Date: April 4, 2012
Publisher: Ellora’s Cave
Category: Contemporary Erotic Romance
Type: Kindle
Book Blurb:
Hopelessly shy and utterly repressed, Katherine Hart slakes her taboo desires online, where the anonymity allows her to indulge without embarrassment. Her virtual lover, Savage, is willing to meet her every need, especially once he discovers her naughty little secret—more than anything, she craves a masterful man. Fortunately, Savage is just that. And then some.
When Adam Trillo—aka Savage—discovers the shameless, erotic woman he’s been tangling with online is actually his demure coworker, he’s determined to seduce her in real life. He longs to release the wild Kat he knows lurks just below the surface. With a relentless mix of domination and persuasive charm, he draws her into his web until she’s helpless to deny their mutual passion. Particularly when she’s tied to his bed.
Book Excerpt:
To see her now, sitting there in her office, stroking that long strand of honeyed hair, all thoughts of her business acumen fled. Adam tried to imagine her without those glasses, with her hair down, in a satin teddy, stroking her swollen nipples, and his temperature rose. He closed his eyes and tried to recapture the timbre of Wildkat’s voice, tried to remember the sound, the tempo, the dulcet tones. And his eyes flew open.
Last night, just as a mind-blowing orgasm had consumed him, she’d cried out a name. Wrapped in the claws of his own ravening passion, he’d heard his name.
Naturally he’d assumed his imagination was working overtime.
What if… What if…
He peeped at Katherine and to his surprise found her staring directly at him. Their eyes met and a shock wave crested within him, settling in his groin. His cockstand was immediate. Curious as to how she would react to his bold stare, he held her gaze and watched as a slow flush stole up her creamy cheeks.
She looked away.
A second or so later, she flicked another questing glance in his direction.
Holy crap, he thought. She’s flirting.
Not flirting flirting—not the way a normal woman would flirt. She was Katherine flirting. It was subtle and understated, something a man might almost miss. But Adam didn’t miss it. The timid glance, the quick retreat, the tentative parry. It was electrifying.
He sucked in a deep breath as the realization flooded him.
Katherine Hart was hot.
And it was the most alluring kind of hot. Not a flashy, blowsy I’m-so-hot kind of hot. It was a hidden, smoldering come-and-get-me-if-you-dare kind of hot. And it had him poleaxed. He shifted uncomfortably as a certain restlessness stole over him.
He wanted to fuck her, he realized with surprise. For the first time in two years, here was a woman—a real, live, flesh-and-blood woman—he desperately wanted to taste. He wanted to throw her to the ground and cover her, spread her legs and plow into her. He wanted…
Hell. He wanted.
“Hey, Adam?” Sara’s cheerful voice shattered his welling fantasy. Damn. He slid his notebook over the lip of his desk to shield his raging hard-on, blithely pretending to consult the figures on the page. It wouldn’t do to frighten the staff with the size of his…staff.
“Yes?”
“Do you have the blurb we wrote up for the Carlson presentation last fall? I was thinking we could use that in the PowerPoint.”
Huh? What? Oh. Yeah. Sara was talking about work. The remaining whiffs of his fantasy drifted away and with them the sharp edge of his desire. “Yeah. I think I have it on my laptop. Let me check and I’ll email it to you.”
“’Kay. Thanks.” With a sketchy wave, she was gone.
Her interruption had been fortuitous. Had his errant thoughts been allowed to rove unchecked, he could easily have become carried away, stormed over to Katherine’s office and bent her over her desk or something.
He could be in her by now.
That quickly, his wilted erection sprang back to life. Hell, he thought, shooting a surreptitious glance across the hall. He was in trouble.
He forced himself to focus on work, to ignore the elegant little movements he could see her making out of the corner of his eye. He flipped open his laptop and switched it on, pretending to study it diligently as it sped through its routine. It chimed. Loudly.
Katherine’s head shot up at the sound. She eyed him warily from across the hall, like a cornered rabbit.
Adam merely ignored her and filed this odd reaction away, pressing the mute button on his speakers as he logged online. He was supposed to be hunting for Sara’s file. He knew that. But for some reason, he was drawn inexorably toward his chat room.
Toward Wildkat. Somehow he knew, he hoped, there’d be a message from her.
And holy hell, there was.
His hand shook as he clicked open the message box and read.
WILDKAT: Savage, I have to work tonight, so I have to cancel our date. Sorry.
Adam stared at the message. Hope and a hint of certainty skirled in his gut. What were the odds? He kept asking himself and the answer kept coming back fuzzy.
Statistically, it was a billion to one that Katherine could be Wildkat. The thought was insane.
But the coincidences were piling up. Her “duck on a june bug” comment, the familiar tenor of Wildkat’s voice and now this? That they both had to work late? On the same night? It could be nothing more than a bizarre twist of fate but the odds on that were increasing by the moment. All in all, it was pretty convincing evidence.
Still, Adam was an empirical thinker, a scientist who liked to—no, needed to—prove theories before he acted on them.
There was only one thing to do.
Run a test.
With steely resolve, he logged in as his alter ego, as Savage.
Dialogue Highlight:
Adam Trillo didn’t want her. That hard-on had probably been her imagination. His cell phone. A banana.
She swallowed a hysterical little laugh. Damn. It was a bitter pill.
How she wished she was the kind of woman who could seduce a man like him—confidently, fearlessly. Just walk right up to him, rip open her blouse and reveal her hunger.
She wanted him so much. She had for so long, sometimes the ache felt like a familiar friend. What she wouldn’t give to have a chance with him. A night with him. Just one amazing tryst.
Something.
Anything.
By the time they arrived at the hotel, she was in a pissy mood, feeling slighted and resentful. Cheated by life. Why was it the men she found attractive, the men she actually wanted to fuck, looked right through her? She was damn tired of it. She had something to offer. Hell, she had a lot to offer. And she deserved this.
She had every intention of going online and giving Savage a piece of her mind. So when they arrived at their suite, she flung a crisp “good night” over her shoulder at Adam and stormed into her room, closing the door with a controlled snick. She logged on in a rare fury. She had to wait a few minutes for him to respond to her insistent call but finally he appeared.
“Hey, Wildkat.” God. Did he have to sound so chipper?
“Savage.” Her greeting was short, clipped, annoyed.
“So,” he asked. “How’d it go?”
“It was dismal.” She glared at the screen. “You were sooo wrong.”
“What?” He sounded shocked. Katherine snorted in derision.
Savage probably had a vision of her in his head as this Amazon beauty, some sultry siren, some woman he wanted to fuck. He had no concept of the reality of the situation. No idea of who she was, how intimidated she was by a man like Adam Trillo. Adam could have any woman he wanted. He was that perfect. While she…
“Didn’t he ask you to dance?” He said this as if dancing with a man was the be-all and end-all in a relationship—like a marriage proposal or something.
“He did ask me to dance. But—”
“If he asked you to dance, he wants to fuck you. Why don’t you believe me?”
Katherine shook her head. “It was just a dance.”
“Was it a romantic song?”
She thought back. “Yes.”
“Did you accidentally stumble and rub up against him?”
“It wasn’t much of an accident. These heels are hell on wheels.”
“But you did feel him up?”
“Yes.”
“Was he hard?”
“I think so.”
“You think so?” His bellow resonated through the room. “How could you not notice if he was hard?”
“I thought he was hard but it was a very brief contact.”
“Because you pulled back.” It wasn’t a question. It was as though Savage knew of her cowardice. “You should have leaned in. Rubbed harder.”
“I couldn’t do that!”
“Why not?”
“He’s my boss.”
“Bullshit. That wouldn’t stop you. Why don’t you just admit it? He scares you.”
“Of course he scares me. He scares the life out of me.”
“Why?”
She didn’t answer for a long moment. She could hear him breathing over the speakers, waiting patiently for her response. Finally, she said it. She admitted the truth to Savage and to herself.
“Because I want him more than any man I’ve ever known. And I really, seriously doubt he wants me the same way.”
“He wants you.” He sounded so sure, like he knew, which was ridiculous.
Katherine swallowed her tears with a laugh. “You don’t understand, Savage. He had the chance to kiss me and he didn’t do it.”
“Has it ever occurred to you that he might be as nervous as you are?”
“Hah!”
“Maybe he was waiting for some sign from you?”
“No. That’s crazy.”
“Is it? You’ve already told me you’re reserved. Don’t they call you the ice queen in the office?”
“Yes.”
“So maybe you intimidate him.”
Katherine blew out a breath. No one intimidated Adam Trillo. No one. “You need to accept the truth. If he wanted me, he would have made a move tonight. The scene was set. Perfect. Yet he did nothing.”
“I think you’re jumping to conclusions.”
“Am I?”
“You are assuming he’s this totally self-confident guy.”
“He is.”
“No man is totally self-confident. Guys always wonder. Guys always worry. Especially if it’s a woman we desperately want.”
“He doesn’t desperately want me.”
“Because he didn’t throw himself at you on the dance floor? Did he at least cop a feel?”
She blushed from the bottom up. “Yes.” He had. The feel of him gently squeezing her ass had been delightful. She’d wanted it to go on forever.
“Why would a man who had no interest in you cop a feel?”
“Curiosity?”
He laughed. “Yeah. Right. Let’s face it, Kat, you’re terminally insecure. You need a man who can make you feel like a woman.”
She caught her breath at the shift in his tone. He’d gone from petulant and preachy to sexy and seductive. As disappointed as she was at the way the evening had turned out, she was horny. And if there was one thing Savage could do for her, it was scratch that particular itch.
“Are you that man?”
His chuckle had a dark thread. “Damn straight, I’m that man.”
Katherine shuddered. Those words in that tone…Savage had sounded just like Adam.
“Let me ask you this, Kat. What would you do if he stared you in the eye and said he wanted you?”
“He wouldn’t say that.”
“Play along, sweetheart. Imagine you’re standing there, face-to-face with this guy and he says, ‘Kat, I want to fuck you.’ What do you do?”
She snorted a laugh. “After I faint?”
“Yeah.”
She thought about it for a moment. Thought about what she wanted, what she would do if she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Adam wanted her. She shivered.
Her response came in a whisper. It was all she could manage. “Anything. Anything he asked.”
“God.” She heard his harsh exhalation of breath, the guttural groan rippling over the connection. “Kat. There’s something I need you to do.” His voice was low, hard. A certain intense timbre vibrated from him to her.
“Yes?” A pulse surged between her legs. Anticipation sizzled. Finally. Finally he was going to drop all that nonsense about Adam and get down to making her come.
“First, what are you wearing?”
It was all Katherine could do to hold back her laugh. “Not that again.”
“Seriously. I want an answer.”
She shrugged. “A cocktail dress. Black. With heels.”
“Put on your teddy,” he commanded and she complied.
She slipped off her dress and bra, dropping both on the floor, and pulled her satin teddy from her suitcase. It felt cool slipping over her skin. It caught on her hard nipples, making them grow fatter. She moaned as she rubbed them, just a little, to enhance the mood.
“Mmm. It feels good.”
“Are you wearing the teddy?”
“Yes.”
“Perfect. What do you have on under it?”
“Nothing. Well, panties.”
“Perfect. Do you still have the heels on?”
“Yes.” She did. As much as she hated them, she loved the elegant line of her legs when she wore them. Besides, the heels completely changed the way she felt in the black teddy. In the full-length mirror behind the door, she seemed practically sexy.
“How do you look?”
“Hot.”
“I’ll bet.” The words were heavy and harsh. “I wish I could see you. Now. There’s something I want you to do.”
“What?”
“I want you to go and get two ice cubes.”
“What?” Was he insane? She’d have to walk all the way through the suite to the kitchen. “In my teddy?”
“Yes.”
“He might see me.”
“What if he does? Maybe he’ll fuck you. That’s what you want. Isn’t it?”
Katherine didn’t answer.
“Isn’t it? Deep down, you want him to shove his cock into your pussy and fuck you ‘til you scream. Isn’t it?”
Again, she didn’t respond.
“Answer me.”
“Yes. Yes.”
“Then go to the kitchen. In your teddy. And get two ice cubes. Oh. And Wildkat?”
“Yes?”
“Before you go, take off the panties.”
“What?”
“Take them off. I want you completely exposed. And I want you to know how exposed you are.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. If you don’t, I’ll have to punish you.”
“But—”
“No, Kat. No questions. Just do it.”
She stood by the door for several minutes, contemplating this challenge and, most especially, how it made her feel. She was liquid inside, quivering. Her clit throbbed. Her pussy lips were swollen and sensitive.
After a long internal debate, she decided she would go to the kitchen and get the ice cubes wearing her teddy but she would leave her panties in place. Utterly bare-assed was a little further than she was willing to go, especially when Adam might discover her at any moment.
Besides…Savage would never know she had cheated just a little.
She turned the knob and peered out into the hallway. There was no one there. She slipped through the shadows and into the living room, heading toward the kitchen. She pushed open the swinging door and froze.
There stood Adam Trillo cracking out ice cubes at the counter. His chest was bare—a magnificent panoply of rippling muscles and scattered darkling dust. He wore only baggy gray sweatpants held up, it seemed, by the enormous bulge in the front.
“Hey there, Wildkat,” he purred. “What took you so long?”
And her heart stopped beating.
Review:
Katherine has a bit of a wild side and a lotta bit of wild on her sexual side. But she plays things safe and refuses to give into what she desires. Live and learn, right? Well she did and after a failed attempt at a relationship with a co-worker at her previous place of employment, she toned things down. Did I mention she had a short failed marriage too? Part of the problem was that neither man satisfied her and had no wish to even try despite requests. I mean a man that laughs as my suggestion to spice up our sex life would sure put a damper on my ardor and pretty much seal the fate of the relationship. *cue sound of a plane crashing and burning* Anyway, her dalliance at work ended up costing her job. So now she is happy with her job of two years. The fact that she would love nothing more than to attract the attention of Adam means nil. She refuses to compromise her job … again … over a man so she dresses plainly and makes an attempt to detract from her appearance. And it seems to be working.
Adam has taken little notice of Katherine beyond her exceptional abilities at work. She is a hard worker and has saved the company a lot of money on occasion from her suggestions. Adam also suffered a divorce from an unfaithful woman and is pretty much turned off from the opposite sex as far as anything beyond physical gratification. So his virtual playtime with Wildcat is basically all he needs. But when he starts to notice similarities between his Wildcat and Katherine, Adam suddenly finds himself wanting more from Kat than the virtual romance they have cultivated. It doesn’t take long for Adam to see beyond the plain façade. When Kat is chosen to replace a co-worker on a business trip with Adam, he is suddenly given exactly the scenario he needs to seduce her. But revealing himself has to be timed right and Adam has a clever way to help himself get to cat by using ... well … himself. His Savage self, that is.
The catalyst comes when Adam wants to break the agreement he has with Kat. They can have a relationship so long as no one at work knows. And Kat would love to be able to end the secrets, but she can’t get past the possibility of losing the job that she loves for a man that definitely wants her, but isn’t in love with her. But Adam wants to out their secret romance because he is about to lose his mind over the young, horny punks at work trying to win Kat over. And the irony is that they only start taking notice after Adam himself causes them to. Jealousy is a mean beast sometimes. Of course Adam has to try and make his point with his brother Tristan also. Because coming out to the staff, so to speak, is also breaking a pact between brothers never to “fish in the company pond”. They both have a lot to lose by revealing themselves and with the hurt in their pasts, difficult becomes an understatement when trying to decide if they have a future beyond their lust for one another.
What a fun and flirty read. Can you imagine having a *coughs* relationship online only to find out that he was the guy at work that you lusted after? Fantastical! Outrageous! Awesomesauce! I love that there was well thought out characters to this story that reached beyond the hot, frequent sex. Don’t get me wrong. Reading the sex between the characters was very entertaining, but the substance to said characters made the difference between liking the story and truly enjoying the story. And while Tristan is not much of a key character in the story, I found myself wanting to know his story. In fact, I enjoyed my time spent with Adam and Katherine so much that I have already added the next book in the series to my TBR list, TRISTAN’S TEMPTATION. That pretty much says it all right there.
(EBook copy provided by author for review.)
