Ramblings From This Chick: Guest Post with Author Kate Meader and Giveaway

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Guest Post with Author Kate Meader and Giveaway

Meet Kate Meader author of Taking the Score.

Originally from Ireland, Kate cut her romance reader teeth on Maeve Binchy and Jilly Cooper novels, with some Mills & Boon thrown in for variety. Give her tales about brooding mill owners, oversexed equestrians, and men who can rock an apron or a fire hose, and she’s there. Now based in Chicago, she writes sexy contemporary romance with alpha heroes and strong heroines who can match their men quip for quip.

The Perks of Romance in the Workplace

For many of us, a workplace romance was the first sexy love story we read, usually with the standard template of all powerful, brooding boss and wide-eyed, innocent, (much) younger secretary. We’ve come a long way—these days, you’re more likely to see a pairing of equals—but the elements we love are still there. Pencil skirts and heels, sharp suits and ties, and best of all, the long hours in close proximity working on that merger, case, or presentation.

TAKING THE SCORE, my boss/assistant entry in the Tall, Dark, and Texan series takes the ingredients we all love about a workplace romance and adds a spicy twist. The sexual tension has been building between Brody and Emma for months. He hired her, insisting that he could never be interested in a woman who dresses in ill-fitting suits covered with cat hair, styles her hair in the most unflattering way possible, and shows no hint of having a personal life. She comes to work, does her job, and keeps his life organized. He doesn’t know anything about her. He doesn’t want to know anything about her.

So much for good intentions. The not knowing means that Brody can’t stop thinking about her and all the dirty things he’d like to do to her. But he’d never act on his inappropriate lust … until he finds out about her second “job.” At the strip club! Seeing Ms. Strickland in this new position—straddled over his thighs during an amazingly bad lap dance—flips a switch in Brody’s brain. The dam he’s been building to keep his dangerous desire walled in bursts and now he can think of nothing more than all the new “tasks” he has for his assistant.

This little snippet shows how their dynamic has changed—yet Emma is the one holding all the cards:

He stilled, inches away, maybe feet—shit, she didn’t know. He was close, but too far. His supreme control, the tether she knew was in her power to break, was like a third person in the room. She had to slice through it. Make him crazy.

“I’ve fantasized about this,” she said.

“About what?” His voice sounded strangled and closer than she’d suspected.

“You. Finding me in your office. When I shouldn’t be there.”

She tried to keep the wobble from her legs, quell the sexual anticipation that had a grip on her. Yes, she’d indulged in fantasies with men before. Years before, when she was Bad-Girl Emma. But this was a whole other level, because Brody Kane was a different kind of man. A powerful specimen who could likely make her come on command. She’d never let someone control her that way, but she rather relished the idea of handing it off to someone else for a while.

On her terms.

She listened to the quiet. The erotically charged space between them.

“You come in early, unexpectedly, and see me here,” she whispered. “You ask what I’m doing. You think I’m nosing around, going through your stuff.”

“I don’t like that,” he murmured.

“No, you don’t. You’re a really private person and you have rules. Lines you refuse to cross. Ethics you refuse to breach. But you see me at the desk and—”

“Something snaps.” His voice sounded strained, as taut as the nipples budding her silk shell.

“You demand to know my business, and I try to tell you I just needed something.”

“Like a file.” Sexy pause. “Or a paper clip.” Amusement colored his voice at that alternative.

“But you won’t listen.”

Another sound of movement preceded a whisper of air at her back. He was mere inches away, but still not touching. It was excruciating.

“I refuse to listen,” he said softly. “I don’t want to hear your excuses.” His fingertips brushed her hip and she shivered. “They’ll never be good enough because I’ve already decided.”

She could feel her body angling over the desk, hinging at her hips to make her ass more accessible to him.

“Decided what?”

“To punish you.”

His office temptation is now his full-blown fantasy…

Paying down her sister’s debts has left Emma Strickland with little more than the thrift store suit on her back. And as if the suckfest couldn’t get worse, she’s forced to moonlight as a waitress to support herself and her cat. At a strip club. Her uptight, sexy-as-hell boss Brody Kane can never find out.

Texas property tycoon Brody Kane hired Emma for her spreadsheet skills, but her prim and proper demeanor sealed the deal. There’s no room in his life for a sexy distraction … and yet, he can’t stop lusting after the delicious Ms. Strickland. And then he takes an important client to a Chicago strip club and gets the worst lap dance in adult entertainment history. From Emma.

Now that he knows his office good girl has a naughty streak, Brody makes it his mission to uncover her secrets, one steamy, illicit, over-the-desk encounter at a time. But Emma is hiding more than her side job, and her final secret could end up destroying them both.

Purchase: | Amazon | B&N | iTunes | Google Play | Kobo |

Check out the Tall, Dark, and Texan series:

A growl erupted from his throat, an unabashed display of possessiveness that even he found to be clichéd. But it drew the perfect reaction. Her teeth snagged on the pillow of her lower lip and emerged moist. Her nipples budded against the thin fabric of his tee.

Ms. Strickland likes it when you growl.

He closed the gap between them, gratified when she stepped back against the counter.

“Admit you’re jealous, Emma.”

“Never,” she said defiantly.

“Just your nipples then. They’re pouting.” He inclined his head. “And these earlobes have a greenish tinge to them.” He brushed his lips across the delicate shell of her ear. “And this spot where your neck meets your shoulder”—he inhaled her scent and placed the lightest kiss at that sensitive patch of skin—“the most jealous of all. And you in that tee is not helpin’ anyone, baby.”

“Are you telling me your engine gets all revved up when you see an old tee?” Fake bravado trilled through her voice. She pulled at the hem of the shirt. It fell to midthigh, but her drawing attention to it stirred his blood into a cauldron of need.

“When I see you in it. Because now it’s going to smell of you.” Reaching behind her, he bunched the material so it shaped to her perky breasts. “I know it brushed your skin, rubbed your nipples, that you were wearing it when I fucked you to paradise on my bedroom floor. Maybe you hitched it up to your hips while you thought about me and stroked yourself last night.”

He gave her a moment to pull out of his grasp, and when she didn’t, he hiked the tee higher, up past her ass. A wisp of lace crashed into his vision field as she parted her legs on a moan.

“You have other clothes. Ones I bought you. You don’t have to wear this, so why are you tormenting me?”

Her breathing came in short tugs, her breasts straining against the fabric he held taut against her body. Every part of him howled to be completed by her surrender. He could dip his head and suck her stiff nipple, but she had to ask for it. Beg for it. Last time, he took.

“Why are you wearing it?” he repeated.

“Be-because it’s soft.”

“And?”

“Comfortable.”

Not satisfied with that answer, he nudged his knee between her legs. Her lips parted to reveal all that wet, succulent pink, mimicking the pliant heat he longed to plant his cock into over and over. “And?”

“It smells of you.” In a surprise move, she put him on the back foot by leaning in and inhaling from his neck. “But it’s a ghost of your scent and can’t possibly compete with the real thing. God, you smell so good. It was the first thing I noticed about you when I interviewed. You shook my hand and I walked out of there on a contact high. No one should smell that good or look that hot. And in glasses, too, you fucking dick.”