Author: Melissa Foster
Genre/Age: Contemporary Romance
Series: Bad Boys After Dark Series (Book Two)
Publisher: World Literary Press
Format: ebook via Tasty Book Tours
Rating: ✺✺✺.5
Links: Goodreads
Synopsis: Sinfully sexy bar owner Dylan Bad has a thing for needy women. He’s a savior, a knight in shining armor, and his mighty talented sword has no trouble bringing damsels in distress to their knees.
Enter Tiffany Winters, a gorgeous cutthroat sports agent who looks like sex on legs, f**ks like she’s passion personified, and wouldn’t let a man help her if she were dangling from a ledge and he was her only hope.
One night and too much tequila might change their lives forever. The question is, will either one survive?
With her phone pressed to her ear, Tiffany Winters ducked out of the rain and into the Kiss, an eclectic Manhattan bar, to return calls and take care of a mountain of text messages that had piled up during her dinner meeting. She listened to her client’s wife explain why she didn’t want her husband traveling too often to endorse a hotel chain Tiffany was planning on pitching to him next week. Her client had already nixed any mention of his family in the advertisements, and reducing his travel would make it an even harder sell.
“I hear your concern, Allison,” she said as she sat on a barstool. “If you and Matt decide this isn’t the right thing for your family, we’ll turn our efforts in another direction.” As a sports agent, dealing with significant others was part of the job, a part Tiffany enjoyed and other agents rued. Sure, some wives assumed their husband’s success granted them the power to be overly demanding. Ass kissing was part of the game. Sometimes she wished she could give the meeker wives lessons in how to be tough. Teach them to have balls as big as their husbands’ and come right out and say what they meant instead of beating around the bush with bullshit hypotheticals. She reminded herself often that not every woman grew up in a testosterone-laden house with two competitive older brothers and a father who won the Heisman in college and went on to play pro sports—a house where mincing words didn’t cut the mustard.
“You missed the wedding.”
The deep male voice drew Tiffany’s attention from her phone call to the fine specimen of a man standing behind the bar. He looked like he’d just stepped off a Hot Guys in Suits Pinterest page. His tie hung loosely around the collar of his white dress shirt, which was open three buttons deep, revealing a smattering of dark chest hair, a rarity nowadays, when so many men manscaped every inch of their bodies. Tiffany preferred a man to look like a man, which included hair in all the right places. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, exposing heavily corded forearms, and his jacket hung casually from two fingers over his left shoulder. Her fingers itched to send the last few buttons—and that jacket—flying to the floor. The guy’s chiseled jaw and dark eyes were movie-star classic, and his dark hair was thick enough to hang on to. She’d had a long, hard day, and he looked like he could provide a long, hard, pleasure-filled night.
Perfect.
Holding his gaze, she spoke into the phone as he laid his jacket across the bar, giving her the impression he wasn’t the bartender, but rather a guest who’d happened to wander back there. “Allison, I’ll see what else I can come up with and get back to you. Right. Okay, hon. Thank you.” After ending the call, she responded to the stud behind the bar. “Wedding? Who gets married at a bar?”
“My brother, for one.” He nodded across the room to a group of men and women who were holding their glasses up in a toast.
She zeroed in on one she recognized as her tall, dark colleague. “Mick Bad is married?” The high-powered attorney was a workaholic like her, and he’d been unattached two months earlier, when they’d worked together on a deal for one of her clients. She’d never understand couples who claimed to fall in love practically overnight. Love was a crutch for weak people who needed someone else to lean on. Except Mick Bad had never needed anyone to lean on. She wondered if his new bride was pregnant.
“The one and only.” Hot guy’s eyes took a long, luxurious stroll down her body, lingered on her breasts, then roamed north, hovering around her mouth, before finally meeting her gaze. He flashed a wolfish grin full of sinful promises.
“Dylan Bad at your service.”
Pushing thoughts of her newly married colleague’s expedient nuptials aside, she focused on his very available brother. A definite player, which was fine with her. She had no time—or interest—in anything but a quick hookup, and the six-two or -three stud had already shot to the top of tonight’s fantasy list.
“What’s your pleasure?” he asked with more than a hint of innuendo.
You. Naked, with your head buried between my legs, to start.
“Surprise me.” She watched him turn to prepare her drink and checked out the way his dark slacks hugged his perfect ass. It had been a long time since she’d found a man this attractive. But Mick Bad’s brother? That spelled trouble.
Melissa Foster is a New York Times & USA Today bestselling and award-winning author. She writes sexy and heartwarming contemporary romance, new adult romance, and women's fiction with emotionally compelling characters that stay with you long after you turn the last page. Melissa's emotional journeys are lovingly erotic, perfect beach reads, and always family oriented.
**Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for honest review.**
When a tough-hearted woman and a soft-loving man collide...
Tiffany's job as a sports agent is time consuming. And she's good at her job. Unfortunately, work is all that she ever does and her love life is practically non-existent. A quick romp in the hay is all that she has time for these days and a real relationship just doesn't have a place in her itinerary.
Dylan is a hard worker, also. But he knows that while it's important to work hard, it's just as important to play hard, too. And when he sets his sights on Tiffany, he is faced with his biggest challenge yet. Breaking her out of her shell and getting her to open up, to him and to a less-stressful life, is a full-time job all of its own.
What begins as undeniable chemistry leads to lustful encounters and soon turns into a need on both sides for a little more than just physical enjoyment. As Dylan works to tear down the wall around Tiffany's heart, she fights against her instinct to shut him out and obsess over her work.
This was my first Melissa Foster book and the only one I've read of this series, thus far. We're introduced to Dylan and Tiffany, of course, but we also get to meet members of both families, as well. I don't necessarily have an opinion of most of the secondary characters because we really didn't spend enough time with any of them for me to form an opinion but I am open to reading more about them in other books of the series.
The plot was pretty good and I loved Dylan's healthy view of romance and relationships. I liked him from the beginning and his adorable little gifts and interactions with Tiffany were swoon-worthy. He was a fantastic male lead and I would read another entire book about him if I could.
Tiffany, I liked quite a bit at first. She was tough but honest and I can admire a woman who works for what she wants. I could tell from the first few chapters that she had trust and commitment issues to work through. Normally, I'm all for a flawed character who needs to do a bit of soul-searching before reaching their destination.
Unfortunately, I found that I grew tired of her journey that was laced with rudeness and self-absorption. In fact, pretty much the only conflict in this entire book was that of Tiffany trying to escape Dylan's affection. She protested so much that I mentally said, "Well, then just live a miserable life all by yourself!" I wanted to pull for her but she made it so hard.
The saving grace in this, for me, were the love scenes. Even though I knew Tiffany would deny her feelings the moment the sex was over, the actual love-making was spot on stupendous. I really enjoyed that element of the book and it's what helped me to accept the story in the end.
Tiffany's job as a sports agent is time consuming. And she's good at her job. Unfortunately, work is all that she ever does and her love life is practically non-existent. A quick romp in the hay is all that she has time for these days and a real relationship just doesn't have a place in her itinerary.
Dylan is a hard worker, also. But he knows that while it's important to work hard, it's just as important to play hard, too. And when he sets his sights on Tiffany, he is faced with his biggest challenge yet. Breaking her out of her shell and getting her to open up, to him and to a less-stressful life, is a full-time job all of its own.
What begins as undeniable chemistry leads to lustful encounters and soon turns into a need on both sides for a little more than just physical enjoyment. As Dylan works to tear down the wall around Tiffany's heart, she fights against her instinct to shut him out and obsess over her work.
This was my first Melissa Foster book and the only one I've read of this series, thus far. We're introduced to Dylan and Tiffany, of course, but we also get to meet members of both families, as well. I don't necessarily have an opinion of most of the secondary characters because we really didn't spend enough time with any of them for me to form an opinion but I am open to reading more about them in other books of the series.
The plot was pretty good and I loved Dylan's healthy view of romance and relationships. I liked him from the beginning and his adorable little gifts and interactions with Tiffany were swoon-worthy. He was a fantastic male lead and I would read another entire book about him if I could.
Tiffany, I liked quite a bit at first. She was tough but honest and I can admire a woman who works for what she wants. I could tell from the first few chapters that she had trust and commitment issues to work through. Normally, I'm all for a flawed character who needs to do a bit of soul-searching before reaching their destination.
Unfortunately, I found that I grew tired of her journey that was laced with rudeness and self-absorption. In fact, pretty much the only conflict in this entire book was that of Tiffany trying to escape Dylan's affection. She protested so much that I mentally said, "Well, then just live a miserable life all by yourself!" I wanted to pull for her but she made it so hard.
The saving grace in this, for me, were the love scenes. Even though I knew Tiffany would deny her feelings the moment the sex was over, the actual love-making was spot on stupendous. I really enjoyed that element of the book and it's what helped me to accept the story in the end.
In closing...
I am curious to see how the other brothers find their happy endings (in more ways than one!). For this story, 3.5 suns!
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