Almost makes me want to take up cosplay…
Playing for Her Heart
Gamers # 2
By: Megan Erickson
Releasing August 11, 2015
Entangled Brazen
Blurb:
Grant Osprey just had the hottest sex of his life. Sure, they were both in costume, and yes, it was anonymous, but he never expected her to bolt in the middle of the night without so much as a good bye, let alone exchanging numbers. Or names. All he’s left with are her panties and some seriously X-rated memories…until he meets his business partner’s little sister.
Only Chloe Talley isn’t the bold, sexy vixen he remembers. And she wants nothing to do with him.
Cosplay is Chloe’s only chance to leave her boring, socially awkward world behind. To forget that she’s failing at life and can’t be with anyone, let alone a single-father like Grant. But the raw hunger between them is undeniable. With him, she can be a misbehaving maid. A sexy call girl for hire. Each scene pushes Chloe beyond her strict boundaries, until Grant demands the one character she can’t play.
Herself.
Excerpt:
He peered through the peephole. Chloe was standing on the front porch, large sunglasses over her eyes—even though it was nighttime—and wearing a belted trench coat.
When he opened the door, he gazed down to her bare legs and sky-high black heels.
“Mr. Osprey?” she asked, her lips a bright cherry red.
He leaned on the door and raised an eyebrow. “Yes.”
Her pink tongue slipped out, wetting her bottom lip.
“My handler said you have hired my services for the night. I only accept cash.”
He nearly swallowed his tongue. So she wanted to play some Pretty Woman role, huh? He went from kinda hard to full mast.
“We agreed on two grand and I get you until two in the morning.” He deliberately leered. “All of you. Every inch of you. However I want you. Suit you, Princess?”
The lapels of her trench coat quivered. “Suits me.”
“Great.” He stepped back and gestured inside. “Come in, please.”
She brushed past him and he smelled strawberries. He shut and locked the door, then turned around to face Chloe.
She’d taken her sunglasses off and her hands were on her untied belt. In one practiced move, she flung open the edges of the coat and rolled her shoulders so the khaki material fluttered to the ground at her feet.
Grant had to shoot out a hand to brace himself on the wall because he suddenly had vertigo.The physical parts of Chloe he loved the most were encased in lavender lace—a bra that didn’t cover much, because he could see her hardened nipples poking through.
Her thong didn’t cover much except for a small triangle scrap, hiding her pussy—which he knew she shaved bare—from his view.
Jesus, all that skin, that delicious lace, all for him.
She watched him with those green eyes, a sexy smirk to her mouth. She slowly twisted, so that her ankles were crossed, and showed him her back, she looked at him through her lashes over her shoulder. Only a string ran along the top of her ass and between her crease.
He was hard in his jeans, ridiculously so, and he hadn’t even touched her yet. Hadn’t yet taken that mouth or plunged his fingers in that tight heat. He was going to do all of that and then some.
He stepped toward her. “Hands on the wall. Ass out.”
Review:
Playing for Her Heart was so much fun to read! I loved the nerdy aspects of the story, and all of their role-playing scenes were even-reading-this-on-my-lunch-break-at-work-feels-kinda-wrong (but I’m going to do it anyway) H-O-T.
Grant is a fantastic hero–I loved that he decided to raise his daughter all alone since college, when his one-night stand let him know she was pregnant and didn’t want to keep the baby. Sydney is almost too perfect for a fourteen-year-old, but you still just have to love her. Especially when she’s managing her father so expertly–
“You going to be fine while I’m at Grandmom’s and Grandad’s?” she asked.
He threw up his hands. “I’m thirty-two and your father. I can handle a weekend by myself.”
“Yeah, but last time I spent the weekend there, you decided to retile the bathroom and we all remember how that turned out.”
“My hand slipped,” he groused, thinking back to the hole in the wall he’d had to patch.
LOL 🙂
And when he works so hard to convince Chloe that it really is her that he loves, not any of the roles she’s felt she has to play?
Hero of the year.
Chloe is a great heroine. She’s long felt like the invisible sibling–a label she was actually okay with–until her more charismatic sister dies in a car accident, when she takes it upon herself to try and fix her family but feels completely overwhelmed and not up to the task. She feels major survivor’s guilt–if Samantha had been the one to live, Chloe’s sure she would have been able to hold the family together in a way that Chloe can’t. Their brother Ethan was driving the car, so his guilt is Chloe’s increased by about a million, and their parents appear to be blaming him for the accident as well, so…
Yeah, it’s a mess. And obviously not an issue that’s going to be easily fixed, nor will it be completely resolved by the end of this book. Though Chloe will get to a more comfortable spot with it all, and she will make strides towards giving her parents the kick in the butt that they need.
But obviously Ethan’s going to have to face his demons in his own future book–one which I am so lining up to read.
Chloe’s been using role playing as a way to get out of her head and live more than she’s let herself do since the accident, and though it makes for some really steamy scenes, it’s obviously a crutch she’s going to need to get over in order to reach some kind of an HEA. When she finally does? That scene? Oh. My. Gosh…it seriously brought me to tears. It was that good.
“I like the reality better than the fiction,” she said. “And I’m not sure I ever thought I’d say that.”
Sigh.
The hero and heroine from book one ( Changing His Game ) make brief appearances here, but Playing for Her Heart works perfectly fine as a standalone.
As long as “perfectly fine” is code for “you’re going to feel a burning desire to read book one as soon as you finish this one, and will be counting the days until book three comes out”, that is. 😉
Rating: 4 1/2 stars / A
I received a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.
Goodreads Link
Goodreads Series Link
Buy Links: Amazon | B & N | iTunes | Kobo | GooglePlay
Author Info:
Megan worked as a journalist covering real-life dramas before she decided she liked writing her own endings better and switched to fiction.
She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, two kids and two cats. When she’s not tapping away on her laptop, she’s probably listening to the characters in her head who won’t stop talking.
Thank you for hosting PLAYING FOR HER HEART