Katie is the executive manager at Marathon Corp. She is mortified when the company is bought by Brandon Hastings, a multi-millionaire with whom she had a five-month-long passionate love affair when she was eighteen-years-old.
Katie, now twenty-five, anxiously heads to a meeting with the new boss and remembers how their steamy relationship began years ago, based on a lie. When she sees him, Katie finds herself swallowed up by her previous lust and love for Brandon. To make matters worse, Brandon is still enamored with her, or at very least, desires her physically with the same intensity he did years ago. Now however, Brandon’s attentions take on a very different quality – one that has a hard, edgy drive to it. A drive that Katie still can’t deny, and one that will cause her regret and shame – yet again.
EX GAMES I is the first novella of a three-part series by co-authors, J.S. Cooper and Helen Cooper. Katie is a seemingly confused and love-lost protagonist trying to get on with her life after a traumatic breakup with Brandon years ago, but who doesn’t have the will power to say “no” to his emotionally manipulative talk or the incredible sex they share. Meanwhile Brandon is fully actualized as a likeable character that is transformed from a caring, loving and passionate man into a mean and manipulative emotional control freak by Katie’s lie. The narrative moves along quickly thanks to clean, smooth transitions between present time and flashbacks and the frequent- extremely frequent –sex scenes, which are graphic and well directed. Though the cliffhanger ending leaves the reader ready for more, the plot and protagonists of this book can’t be fully appreciated without the sequel, which adds dimension to the story and the characters.
EX GAMES I is a provocative and sexy erotic romance, that when read with the sequel, provides a potent reading experience.
Reviewed by Maya Fleischmann for IndieReader