In
New York Times Bestselling author Nalini Singh’s newest contemporary romance,
passion ignites between a gorgeous, sinfully sexy man who built himself up from
nothing and a shy woman who has a terrible secret in her past…
Wealthy
businessman Gabriel Bishop rules the boardroom with the same determination and
ruthlessness that made him a rock star on the rugby field. He knows what he
wants, and he’ll go after it no-holds-barred.
And
what he wants is Charlotte Baird.
Charlotte
knows she’s a mouse. Emotionally scarred and painfully shy, she just wants to
do her job and remain as invisible as possible. But the new CEO—a brilliant,
broad-shouldered T-Rex of a man who growls and storms through the office,
leaving carnage in his wake—clearly has other plans. Plans that may be equal
parts business and bedroom.
If
Charlotte intends to survive this battle of wits and hearts, the mouse will
have to learn to wrangle the T-Rex. Game on.
Charlotte arrived at work
at seven thirty the next morning to find Gabriel Bishop’s office door open, but
no carnivorous predator inside. A fresh suit was hanging on the back of his
door, however, which meant he’d been in already.
Deciding to catch up on
e-mails that had come in overnight from international suppliers as well as
stores involved in a stock take, she was typing a reply when a sweaty Gabriel
arrived fifteen minutes later. He was dressed in black running shorts and a
faded University of Auckland T-shirt that was currently sticking to his body.
She’d known he was in
shape, but now she realized none of it was an illusion created by his well-cut
suits. Okay, she’d already known that, but seeing his muscled body in the flesh
was a whole different ball game. He was built like a tank, hard and powerful.
Each of his thighs was
thicker than both of hers put together, his biceps toned, his shoulders
appearing even wider than usual. Everything about him was big. Civilized clothing didn’t make him look better, she
realized—it toned down his intense masculinity. Out of his suits, with the ink
on the upper part of his left arm exposed, as well as that on his opposing
thigh and…
Her skin hot and lower body
clenching, she just nodded in response to his “Good morning.”
Disappearing into his
office, he returned with his suit pants and a fresh shirt slung over his arm,
along with a sports bag. “Push the meeting with Sales to nine, will you, Ms.
Baird? I need to talk to HR about something before then.”
“Yes, sir,” Charlotte said
almost soundlessly, but he was already gone, heading toward the employee shower
one floor down.
The thigh tattoo went all
the way around, the design intricate.
Heart rate a rapid stutter,
Charlotte got up after he disappeared and decided to go grab him a coffee. He’d
bought her one yesterday after all. She was just being nice. “Oh, shut up,
Charlotte,” she muttered once she was in the elevator, and slumped her face
into an upraised hand.
The truth was she was
running away. Only for a few minutes, but that’s what this was: strategic
retreat. Gabriel Bishop was overwhelming. Once, before she’d ever met him and
under the influence of cocktails, she’d told Molly she wanted to rip off his
shirt and sink her teeth into his pecs.
That desire hadn’t waned
even now that she knew he was a T-Rex. Of course, the desire was all strictly
in her imagination. The idea of actually handling him in real life? So
impossible as to be laughable. Charlie-mouse was not about to play with a
predator who could eat her alive and not even notice the bones. The good news
was that she could admire him in relative safety—there was no chance in hell
he’d ever notice her as a woman.
Getting the coffee from a
nearby café, she took it back upstairs. He was in his office when she entered,
the striped dark gray of his tie hanging around his neck and his damp hair
roughly combed. The scent of clean, fresh soap over warm skin permeated the
office. Shooting her a smile that turned him from gorgeous to flat-out
devastating, he flipped up the collar of his white shirt to get the tie in
place. “Thank you, Ms. Baird.”
Nodding, Charlotte escaped,
though she really wanted to stay.
She’d never realized how erotic it was to watch a man dress until this precise
moment. And she shouldn’t be having these thoughts about her boss—especially
since she couldn’t keep from quivering like a rabbit in his presence. Sometimes
she just annoyed herself.
“Get to work,” she muttered
and knuckled down.
Gabriel was fine for the
first hour, but then he began barking orders even a six-armed woman with a
split personality would have had trouble handling.
Finally, pushed to the
edge, Charlotte snapped. “I’m going as fast as I can!” she yelled when he asked
her for something a minute after he’d asked her to complete another task.
He scowled and held out a
file. “This is a priority.”
Grabbing it from his hand,
she said, “Fine,” and slapped it down on her desk.
It was over an hour later
that he disappeared for ten minutes. When he returned, it was to put a small
bakery box on her desk. “I think you need something to sweeten your mood today,
Ms. Baird.”
What she needed was for the T-Rex who was her
boss to stop snarling and growling, she thought as he returned to his office.
Not opening the box until her curiosity had almost killed her, she found it
held a slice of decadent chocolate cake with a white-chocolate ganache topped
with curls of both white and milk chocolate. “I cannot be bribed with cake,”
she muttered, eating a bite nonetheless.
Full two-chapter excerpt
available on Nalini’s Website: http://nalinisingh.com/rockhard.php
The Rock Kiss Series
Rock Addiction (Book One) Rock Kiss Series
Rock Courtship (bk 1.5) A Rock Kiss Novel
Rock Hard (Book Two) Rock Kiss Series
Nalini lives and works in beautiful New Zealand, and is passionate about writing. If you’d like to explore her other books, you can find lots of excerpts on her website. Slave to Sensation is the first book in the Psy-Changeling series, while Angels’ Blood is the first book in the Guild Hunter series. Also, don't forget to swing by the site to check out the special behind-the-scenes page for the Rock Kiss series, complete with photos of many of the locations used in the books.
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