Psychologist Kai Ferguson has had his eye on Kori Williamson for a long time. His assistant is everything he’s ever wanted in a partner—smart, caring, witty, and a bit of a masochist. More than a little, actually, but that’s the problem. Kori won’t admit her own desires. She’s afraid of him and what he has to offer. Luckily for her, helping patients face their fears is one of his specialties.

Kori knows she wants Kai. Her boss is the most amazing man she’s ever met. She’s also smart enough to stay away from him. Having been down this road before, she knows it only leads to heartache. She’s just found a place where she can belong. Another failed relationship is the last thing she needs. It’s better to guard her heart and let Kai think she’s frightened of his dark, dominant nature.

When Kai is recruited for an operation with McKay-Taggart, everything is turned upside down. Kai’s brother, international superstar Jared Johns, is in town and Kai must juggle his family issues along with a desperate hunt for a serial killer. The investigation throws Kori and Kai together, and they quickly discover the chemistry between them is undeniable. But even if their newfound love can survive his secrets and her lies, it may not be enough to save them both from a killer’s twisted obsession.

Pre-order:

Amazon Amazon UK iTunes Google Play Barnes & Noble

Kori ran back to her room and gave serious consideration to locking the door behind her. She could live here now. Sarah could stuff protein bars under the door and she could live off tap water. This could be her home for many years. As long as it took for that wicked look to get out of Kai’s eyes.

Or he would find a way inside anyway and then her ass was grass because that man looked serious.

She should have told him about the tires. She’d made that promise a long time before. In her attempts to avoid him the previous evening she’d decided that calling and telling him her car had been viciously attacked was counter productive to the whole point of avoiding him. Now with a whole night’s wisdom behind her, she could see that it might have been a mistake.

Locking him out of her room would probably be another mistake.

She turned on him. Maybe she could get out of this. “Hey, you know in all the craziness of last night I totally forgot to mention that my tires got messed up. Maybe that was a manufacturer defect or something. It’s hard to tell in the dark.”

He stood in the doorway to her bedroom. Past him, she could still hear a lot of talking since it seemed her normally quiet house had been invaded. It didn’t matter. They could talk all they liked because all Kori could see or really hear was Kai. “Are you certain that’s the tactic you want to take with me?”

“Nope. I’m not certain at all.” She wasn’t certain of anything. When she’d woken and realized he wasn’t still in bed with her, she’d been disappointed. She’d reached out and his side of the bed had been cold, and for a second she’d felt tears cloud her eyes. Then she’d decided it was a good thing. He’d done what she wanted him to do. He’d snuck out and avoided embarrassing morning-after stuff. Except he hadn’t. Apparently he’d invited friends over to witness the embarrassing morning-after stuff. “What are you still doing here?”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “What am I still doing here? I was making you and your friends some breakfast. I was attempting to be a good…houseguest.”

She was almost certain houseguest wasn’t what he’d meant to say. What other words would he have used? Boyfriend? Dom? Master? Every single one of them got her heart racing. Was she thinking of trying with Kai? Could her heart handle that? “How did everyone else get here?”

“My brother seems to be stalking me and Case came over because he was worried about you. Apparently he knew about someone vandalizing your car.”

That was news to her. “He did? I didn’t tell him.”

“Who did you tell?” The question came out with an edge of irritation.

“Sarah and Mia. I decided to wait until this morning to call someone because it was late last night.” And I’d been trying to avoid you only to end up having the best sleep of my life because I was wrapped around you. Yeah, she wasn’t going to say that.

“How about the police? Were you going to call them? If you’re going to make an insurance claim, you’ll need a police report. Or are you going to claim that your tires died of natural causes?”

She held her hands up, attempting to placate him. Why did her room seem so much smaller when he was in it? It was a good-sized room, but Kai took up all the space. “You’re right. I should have called last night, but I was tired and I wanted to get home and get in bed.”

His gorgeous eyes narrowed. “You weren’t in bed. You were sitting up with your friends drinking wine. Try again.”

“Kai, what’s going on here? It’s a couple of tires.”

“You were supposed to call me if you got in trouble.”

“I wasn’t really in…” What was she doing? Before yesterday, she would never have lied to Kai. Not right to his face. “I was nervous about seeing you after the scene.”

“Finally some honesty. I’ll handle it. I’ll deal with the police and get you what you need for your insurance. The boys from McKay-Taggart will set up some discreet surveillance cameras around our parking lot.”

There was a reason they didn’t have that. “I thought you didn’t want the patients to feel like they were walking into a secure zone.”

Some of them had serious issues with people watching them. They dealt with a lot of PTSD patients.

“I will deal with them. Your safety is more important. Now turn around, pull your pants down, and place your palms flat on the bed. It’s a count of thirty.”

She could actually feel her womb spasm. “What?”

Nothing about his face or stance told he was anything but dead serious. “This was a condition of your employment. It has been from the beginning.”

If she wasn’t careful her damn jaw was going to hit the floor. “I remember the conditions of my employment. Are you saying if I’d been late and hadn’t called, you would have spanked me?”

“I suppose we should be happy you’re a very prompt girl. And you tend to be good about calling. We’ll never know. What I do know is that after last night, I will definitely spank you and you’ll enjoy it. You might start showing up late just so you can walk into my office and present that juicy ass to me.” He moved in front of her, staring down at her with heat in his eyes. “I want you to think before you tell me no. I want you to question which side of the Kori I know is going to win this battle. Is it the funny, happy, brave Kori who never stands down from a challenge, or the one who’s denied herself for years because some idiot asshole Dom made her feel small. I won’t ever make you feel small. My job in life will be to lift you up, to help you be strong.”

His words cut through her. “What are you saying, Kai? Is this about you being my boss or acting as my play partner?”

She thought they’d worked it out last night.

His hands cupped her cheeks, forcing her to look up at him. “I’m acting as your Dom, Kori, and you know it. You can pretend all you like. You can call it whatever you want to, but you know how this ends. This ends with you and me.”

NY Times and USA Today bestselling author Lexi Blake lives in North Texas with her husband, three kids, and the laziest rescue dog in the world. She began writing at a young age, concentrating on plays and journalism. It wasn’t until she started writing romance and urban fantasy that she found the stories of her heart. She likes to find humor in the strangest places and believes in happy endings no matter how odd the couple, threesome, or foursome may seem.

Facebook Twitter Website Amazon Author Page

Subordination

Chronicles Of A Domme

By Katie Ashley

Buy: Amazon / Amazon UK

Synopsis

When Sophie Jameson first became a domme at Club 1740, it was more out of financial necessity than it was for personal pleasure and sexual exploration. But over the years as she rocked her leather corsets and boots while wielding every crop and flogger imaginable, she grew to love the thrill and adulation that her clients brought her. But all along, her path in life and her heart was with a different profession—one she was planning to embark on at the summer’s end.
And then he changed everything. Tall, dark, impossibly built—William was the complete opposite of whatever image a male sub conjured up. After all the subs, Sophie finally felt true lust and desire. Although he was the proud stallion who needed breaking, he became the one to make her break all her rules and let down all her walls.
But it was just supposed to be for that one night, but an accidental encounter days later outside Club 1740’s protected walls had the two seeing each other in a different light—as simply Sophie and William, not Domme and sub. While they should have parted ways, they couldn’t. While they should never have gone back to her place, they did.

And that simple mistake has a serious price for both of them.

Excerpt

In the distance, a figure crested the hill on his way down from the mountain. Something about the man appeared familiar. Over the years of running at the park, I was used to seeing fellow running acquaintances. But as the incredibly built man grew nearer, my stomach lurched. Oh no, this wasn’t possible. I couldn’t literally be running into someone I’d been in a scene with the night before. In the five years I’d worked at 1740, I had never, ever run into a client.

We were within a few feet of each other when he gave a complimentary nod of hello. Then he literally skidded to a stop, sending bits of gravel flying around us. Just as I started to pass him, acknowledgement of who I truly was flashed on his face.

FUUUUUCK I screamed in my head. With everything I had in me, I raced ahead.

“Mistress Juliette?” he called.

Those two little words from his mouth send me tripping over a limb. As I sprawled onto the ground, my knees bumped along the uneven terrain. Once I came to a stop, pain raged all through my body, although it was excruciatingly centralized in my right ankle.

I rolled into a sitting position and brought my hand to my tennis shoe. “Fuck,” I muttered. It was to address both the pain and the fact that a shadow had crossed over me. A bulky shadow belonging to the only sub I had ever let myself go with.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry, Mistress.”

My gaze spun wildly around the clearing. “Stop calling me that!” I hissed.

“I’m sorry. Are you all right?”

Damn, that voice of his. Momentarily forgetting my ankle, I could feel myself growing wet just from the deep timbre, not to mention how sexy his concern was.

“No, actually, I’m not.” I jerked my gaze from my foot up to his handsome face. “My ankle is throbbing like a mother fucker, not to mention I’m mortified as hell I just busted my ass right in front of you.”

The corners of his lips fluttered, and I could tell he was fighting the urge not to laugh at me. Without a word, he knelt down beside me. “Let me take a look.”

I jerked my foot away from his overeager hands, which caused me to wince from the pain. “I think you’ve done enough already.”

Cocking his dark brows at me, he said, “My mistress’s health and well-being is always my upmost concern.”

I fought the urge to smack him and not so he could get off on it. “Here’s a newsflash for you. We are not in 1740 anymore, Toto, so this whole sub taking care of his mistress bullshit isn’t going to fly.”

“I’m not in to dog play,” he countered, with a wink.

“Yeah, well, last time I checked, you’re not sporting my collar, so I’m not your mistress.”

“Ouch, you really bring out the claws when you’re hurting, don’t you?” When I opened my mouth to lay into him again, he brought a finger over my lips. “Quit your bitching, and let me check out your ankle, okay?”

“Are you a doctor or paramedic in real life?”

He smiled, causing those delicious dimples of his to pop out. “No, not quite.”

“Then how do I know you’re actually qualified to look at my ankle and not just wanting to cop a feel of my foot?”

With a chuckle, he replied, “Don’t have a foot fetish either.”

As he slid my tennis shoe off, I hissed. “Answer the question.”

“Easy now,” he murmured.

“What qualifies you to look at my ankle?” I demanded.

“I used to be a football coach.”

“Professional?”

He laughed. “No, high school.”

“Oh,” I murmured.

“Yeah, you bandage at least one sprained ankle every game.” He glanced up at me. “Yours doesn’t feel sprained, but it’s definitely swollen. I have a first aid kit in my truck. I can bandage it for you.”

I eyed him suspiciously. As a submissive, I knew he truly subscribed to the code of conduct that his mistress always came first. But we weren’t in the club, and although club management did background checks that rivaled the FBI, he was still a stranger to me. Well, a stranger who I’d seen naked and bent over a spanking horse.

Knowing that I didn’t really have a choice, I huffed out a frustrated breath. “Okay, fine. I’ll let you take care of my ankle.”

“Try not to sound so excited about it, okay?” William said with a teasing expression.

__________________________________________

 Katie Ashley is the New York Times, USA Today, and Amazon Best-Selling author of The Proposition Series, Runaway Train Series, as well as several New Adult and Young Adult titles. Her latest series, Vicious Cycle, has been picked up for publication by Penguin Books.

She lives outside of Atlanta, Georgia with her two very spoiled dogs. She has a slight obsession with Pinterest, The Golden Girls, Harry Potter, Shakespeare, Supernatural, Sons of Anarchy, Downton Abbey, Designing Women, and Scooby-Doo. 

With a BA in English, a BS in Secondary English Education, and a Masters in English Education, she spent 11 1/2 years educating the Youth of America aka teaching MS and HS English until she left to write full time in December 2012.


She is represented by Jane Dystel of Dystel and Goderich Literary Management.

Website ~ Facebook ~ Twitter ~ Goodreads