Everyone’s favourite dominant
tennis player, Travis Connolly, is back! Grand Slam, a
M/F BDSM sports erotic romance by award-winning authors Lily Harlem and Lucy
Felthouse has been re-launched with a brand new cover, but is the same gripping
book—so if you’ve read it before, be aware the content hasn’t changed.
California had seduced me with
promises of a new life working at Los Carlos Tennis Academy. What I didn’t
expect was the dark, brooding number one seed, Travis Connolly, resisting my
help. He wasn’t interested in my psychology skills. Instead his attention was
drawn to the edgy, sharper corners of my desires, proving that they existed,
setting me challenges and driving me crazy to the point of combustion.
I’m the best tennis player in the
world—officially—so why would I need a damn woman full of psychobabble to get
me on form? Despite my irritation, however, I can’t resist pushing Marie
Sherratt’s buttons even though doing that shows her the darkest shades of my
lust, the parts of me I buried deep. So I set her a challenge, one she rises
to, one that has me rising too, and before long my game relies on her calling
the shots, hitting the target and bending to my will. One thing was certain,
being not just master of the court, but also of Marie is seriously good for my
soul.
I turned to the door. I always
kept it ajar when expecting a client, to give the impression that I was open to
whatever they needed to talk about. It was a subliminal thing.
Travis stood in the frame, his
wide shoulders filling the space, the top of his head almost brushing the wood
and his jawline holding a heavy sprinkle of black stubble.
Fuck, he should come with a
warning. Hazard to the health of every female heart. He looked good enough to
eat, or lick all over at the very least. Tasty.
“Knock, knock,” he said, slipping
his gaze down my body.
“Come in. Take a seat.” I gestured
to the couch and made a point of not letting my attention slide over his body.
I didn’t need to look at soft blue jeans worn in all the right places or at his
black polo top with a Nike logo just over his right nipple to imagine what was
beneath them. I took a deep breath to stop myself doing just that. His physical
attributes weren’t my concern, it was his mind I was after.
He shut the door and sat sideways
on the low S curve of the black leather recliner, his long legs folding over
and his knees coming up high.
“Please,” I said. “Lie back, make
yourself comfortable.” I took a seat on a soft chair just to his left and
crossed my legs.
Damn, I hadn’t realized how short
this tight little red skirt was. Quickly I uncrossed, then started to worry
there was a gap between my knees that would flash the top of my stockings or
worse, what was between them. Hurriedly I pressed my notebook over my lap,
resisted a squirm and forced a gentle smile at Travis.
“You wear glasses,” he said.
“Contacts usually.” I touched the
black frames and pressed them up the bridge of my nose a fraction.
“You were in a hurry this morning
then?” He frowned, as though irritated by me being in a hurry.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You were in a rush to get to
work?”
“Not especially, it’s just the
heat and being tired, it’s made my eyes a little sensitive. I thought it best
to opt for my glasses when I left home this morning.”
“So you slept at home last night?”
“Pardon?” I creased my brow in
confusion.
His fists were clenched and a
muscle twitched in his jawline. “You slept at home then and not at…?”
I struggled to keep the surprise
out of my expression. Bloody hell, was he getting at what I thought he was? Did
he want to know if I’d slept at Peter’s?
His dark eyes were boring into me;
they were deep chocolate-brown, almost black. Annoyance swirled in their
depths, so did a curious certainty that I’d answer his question. He was
definitely a man who was used to getting what he wanted.
Well, I supposed he would again
now, because if he didn’t chill out we’d get nowhere and I had things to start
work on. Plus I hadn’t slept with Peter. I wasn’t a to-bed-on-the-first-date
kind of woman, so what was the harm in being truthful? “Yes, I slept at home
last night.” I opened my notepad, clicked the spring on my ball-point pen and
tilted my chin. “Alone.” I caught his steady gaze. Yes, I’d told him something
he had no right to wonder about. But by telling Travis what he appeared to want
to know, he owed me something in the confessing stakes.
He nodded slowly, then lifted his
legs and did as I’d asked, lay back on the chair and settled his gaze over the
L.A. skyline.
“And what about you?” I asked, watching
as he unfurled his fists and rested his hands over his flat belly. “Did you
sleep alone?”
He frowned. “You know I did.”
“No I don’t.”
“I was eating alone, Marie. You
saw me.”
“Yes. I did. But you could have
been heading out to meet someone or catching up with other players. I’m not a
mind-reader.”
I waited for him to elaborate on
our chance encounter or offer some information on the rest of his evening. He
didn’t.
“In these sessions, Travis, it’s
important for me to know who else is in your life, who you hang out with, who
you share your thoughts and feelings with.”
“You have everything you need to
know in my file.”
“Your file is full of facts. I’m
more interested in the non-tangible things.”
“Like what?”
“Things like who your special
someone is.”
He sucked in a breath, rolled his
lips in on themselves and stared out the window.
“Have you left someone you care
about back in England?” I asked gently.
“I think this is all very much
beyond the realms of what we’re supposed to be doing here.” He’d fisted his
fingers again and shifted his right foot irritably, as though kicking something
away. I wondered if he was imagining it was my head.
“It’s up to us to decide what we
want to do with our time together, Travis. We can talk about your accident or
cognitive methods for keeping calm and focused under pressure, or you can
unload all the stuff that fills your mind and stops you from being able to
concentrate on court. Entirely up to you.”
“Great, in that case we won’t
discuss my love life. It really is the last thing that plays on my mind when
I’m beating an opponent into submission.”
Okay, now was the time to play my
trump card. “Yet you feel it necessary to ask me about my love life.”
“You didn’t have to answer.”
“No, I didn’t, but you wanted to
know, and since we’re stuck with each other for three hours a week for the
foreseeable future I figured it would make sense for us to know a little about
each other’s lives.”
“So now we do. I know you’re
dating my coach and he wants to get into your knickers, and you know I sleep
alone and have done for a long time now.” He paused. “Too long.”
Great, now we were getting
somewhere. “And would you like that to change?”
“What?”
“Sleeping alone.”
He sighed and shoved his hand
through his hair. I watched the black strands feather through his fingers and
an image of myself doing that to him as he kissed down my sternum, onto my
stomach, lower, suddenly stole into my mind.
I tightened my legs together. Felt
a pleasurable little rush of heat in my lower abdomen. No. That was a
ridiculous thing to daydream about. Travis Connolly was not only way out of my
league, he was also a surly grump. Sitting here talking to him was stretching
seconds into minutes.
“Are you asking me if I want to
get married?” he asked, his gaze slipping to my chest.
Damn it, my nipples were tingling
now.
“No, not at all. Simply wondering
if you feel your career allows you to have a romantic relationship or if it’s
something you’ve sacrificed in the name of tennis.”
“I’ve sacrificed lots of
things to be number one seed.”
About Lily Harlem
Lily Harlem lives in the UK and is
an award-winning author of erotic romance. She writes for publishers on both
sides of the Atlantic including HarperCollins, Totally Bound, Pride Publishing,
Evernight Publishing, All Romance eBooks, Stormy Nights Publishing, Tirgearr
and Sweetmeats Press. Her work regularly receives high praise and industry
nominations.
Before turning her hand to writing
Lily Harlem worked as a trauma nurse and her latest HarperCollins release,
Confessions of a Naughty Night Nurse draws on her many experiences while
nursing in London. Lily also self-publishes and The
Silk Tie, The Glass Knot and Scored have been blessed with many 5* reviews
since their release.
Lily writes MF, MM and ménage a
trois, her books regularly hit the #1 spot on Amazon Best Seller lists and
Breathe You In was named a USA Today Reviewer’s Recommended Read of 2014. Her
latest MM novel is Dark Warrior.
Lily also co-authors with Natalie
Dae and publishes under the name Harlem Dae - check out the Sexy as Hell
Trilogy - The Novice, The Player, and The Vixen - and That Filthy Book which
has been hailed as a novel 'every woman should read' and is available in book
stores nationwide.
One thing you can be sure of,
whatever book you pick up by Ms Harlem, is it will be wildly romantic and
down-and-dirty sexy. Enjoy!
Check out Lily’s website for details of her other books.
Subscribe to her newsletter
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reads, and if you enjoy Facebook, hop on over
there and say hi!
About Lucy Felthouse
Lucy Felthouse is the
award-winning author of erotic romance novels Stately Pleasures (named in the top 5 of Cliterati.co.uk’s 100
Modern Erotic Classics That You’ve Never Heard Of, and an Amazon bestseller)
and Eyes Wide Open (winner of the
Love Romances Café’s Best Ménage Book 2015 award, and an Amazon bestseller). Including novels, short stories and
novellas, she has over 140 publications to her name. She owns Erotica For All, is book editor for Cliterati, and is one eighth of The Brit Babes. Find out more about
her writing at http://lucyfelthouse.co.uk,
or on Twitter and Facebook. You can also
subscribe to her monthly newsletter at: http://eepurl.com/gMQb9
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