SET THE PACE
Series: The Detroit Love Duet #1
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Author: Kim Karr
Release Date: February 21, 2016
Every city needs a hero, but Detroit’s white knight just might be a villain.
A rough childhood branded Jasper Storm trouble. A bad boy. Not worth a damn. His love of cars was the only thing that could battle his delinquency. With the need for speed in his blood, he overcame his wayward ways. Mostly. All grown up, the broken city of Detroit hails him their shining star. And the man behind a new cutting-edge automobile is ready to turn this bankrupt town around.
Everything he does in life is fast. He talks fast, f*cks fast, and drives fast. But when one reckless turn brings him face-to-face with the childhood he has tried very hard to forget, he finds himself on the edge of wondering if he shouldn’t slow down.
Charlotte Lane was the tomboy who lived next door. She was his best friend. He was her protector. Then tragedy struck and she disappeared, forever—or so he thought.
Jasper has many reasons to hate Charlotte and keep his distance, but she’s infiltrating his every thought and he can’t stay away. Back in town with an agenda of her own, she should push him aside. Make him turn around. Walk away herself. Yet she can’t.
With the past lurking between them, they proceed with caution. That is until one sex-filled night leads to murder. When Detroit’s biggest ally suddenly becomes suspect number one, will Charlotte—the girl Jasper once kept safe—be the one to save him?
Set the Pace
Excerpt
© 2016 by Kim Karr
Charlotte Lane
Buzz. Buzz.
Startled, I jump and quickly place the frame back in its place.
Buzz. Buzz.
It’s the call button from the lobby. I’m not sure what to do. I should probably ask Jasper if he is expecting anyone before I let whomever it is up.
The hallway he disappeared down is fairly long and at the end are two doors. Both are slightly ajar. I can hear the shower running and music playing. I try to place the song. Just as I go to knock, I pause, and then grin, it’s Led Zeppelin—the same music that used to blare from his garage when he was out there with his father.
Somehow in my absentminded quandary, my fingertips have nudged the door open just enough that I can see inside the bathroom. Perfectly. In my direct line of sight is a huge glass wall and he is just beyond it.
My pulse is beating so hard I can feel it pounding at all my pulse points. I should leave. I don’t need to bother Jasper. Whoever it is buzzing to come up can just come back later. Yet, I can’t move. Or maybe it’s more like I don’t want to move.
Steam hovers in the air but there’s not nearly enough to obscure anything. And there he is, naked in the water, head bent as it sluices over him. His eyes are closed. One hand is on the wall. The other slides slowly down his belly and lands between his thighs.
Oh, God.
Now I really can’t move. I’m frozen in place. His hand is on his cock. I swallow the noise my throat tries to make, but I’m sure I don’t do a good job of it. Thank you, Jesus, he doesn’t seem to notice. No, he definitely doesn’t notice because oh, my God, now he’s stroking himself. Slowly. Deliciously. Up, then down, and a twist of his palm around the head of his cock.
I shouldn’t be watching this, and yet I can’t look away. This is private. For him only, and yet I have to wonder if it’s because of me. Is it his attraction to me that made him step back just moments ago? Made him have to relieve the desire he was feeling? Then why did he say he wouldn’t kiss me again?
When he moves his wrist faster, I have to stifle my sudden harsh breath with my hand. My eyes are glued to his body and although I should leave, I can’t. I just can’t. Jasper, doing this to himself, is the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen in my life. The only thing stopping me from reaching between my own legs is my perverted fascination with wanting to watch him come. Oh, and of course the terror of getting caught.
His mouth opens, water filling it and overflowing when he tips his face into the spray. I want so much to be in there with him, share the water, and feel that mouth on my body, but I’m not sure that’s ever going to happen. We seem to be dancing around the attraction we feel for each other. Like both of us are afraid to take that leap from a two-decade-old friendship to intimacy. Afraid perhaps of where it might lead, or maybe where it won’t.
I can’t be sure.
Then again, it could be that the ghosts that accompany us are just too strong to bear.
Soon he’s fucking into his fist with a deliberation that makes me weak at the knees, and I watch. I watch the way his muscles cord in his arms, the way his cock moves within the confines of his fist, the way his face contorts into pure pleasure.
Looking at Jasper, watching him about to come, it opens up something within me. The feeling is hard to describe and I can only think of one word that is fitting—primal.
His cock disappears inside his curled fingers and this stroke seems somehow more determined. Up, down, a twist around his crown, and then another twist. This time his head dips down, and then lowers still.
I press my thighs together to ward off the ache of arousal that is flooding me. I can’t hear him, but I wish I could. I know what he’s feeling, though, because I can see his mouth open and his face contort with satisfaction. He’s close. I can tell. And then soon enough, his taut belly strains, the muscles in his legs bunch, and then it happens—his desire jets out.
Never in my life have I wanted to make myself come like I do right in this moment. No, that’s not true. Never in my life have I wished for a man to take me the way I wish for Jasper to take me right now. Still, this is all kinds of wrong. I shouldn’t have watched him. I know this. Chiding myself, I lick salt from my upper lip and slowly, cautiously take a step back.
“Is there a show going on that I wasn’t invited to?”
That voice. I know that voice. The cynicism behind the tone.
Oh, God.
No. No. No.
Reader * Writer * Coffeelover * Romantic
She was obsessed with a dream, because having Drake was a beautiful illusion.
Seven books. Seven erotically charged and deliciously addicting books. All of it leading up to this glorious moment; Drake. I’ve been anxiously anticipating for the leader of the Guardians and constantly growling and smoke billowing dragon shifter to get his book, even before his heroine was introduced. And when the author did reveal who the heroine would be in one of the biggest twists ever? Let’s just say on a scale of 1 to ten, I was somewhere around rabid. I wanted it BAD is what I’m trying to tell you here.
Have you ever read a book that touched you on such a visceral level you almost felt like you were living it along with the characters. Where you felt every emotion, every painful revelation, every bruise and emotional scar? A book that gutted you and at the same time you can’t stop thinking about? A book that you just know will stay with you for a long while yet? Sinner’s Creed was that book to me.
Dirk is a nomad National for Sinner’s Creed MC. He’s the shadow that you don’t see coming, and only see right before your final breath. He’s a third generation, and the MC life is all he knows. He grew up with violence and blood. The club is his life and his salvation. He rides for it, he kills for it, and he knows that eventually he’ll die for it. But then a blonde beauty rocks his world to its very core.
Dirk and Saylor’s relationship may have started off from 60 right away, but there was always something so fateful about it. I was totally buying what the author was selling and man oh man but she sold their love to me. I felt it to my very core. It could have been cheesy or OTT, but it never was. It was beautiful, and real, and authentic. I was eating it up with a spoon and loving every second of it.
Lexi Blake’s romances are an addiction I never want a cure from. I don’t care how many books this woman writes in this series because I will read each and every single one of them with the fervor of a kid at a candy store for the very first time. Yes. They’re that good. Her Masters and Mercenaries has been my biggest addiction for years now. And with ten novels into the series, I still hope it never ends. Each book continues to be just as good if not better than the last; keeping me on the edge of my seat one minute, and uncomfortably squirming in it and fanning myself in the next. It’s the perfect combination of romance and suspense, espionage and action, all topped with sizzling hot BDSM that together makes for one unputdownable read.
Kori and Kai together burned up the pages. I loved them as individual characters but I absolutely adored them as a couple. They may not have had a strong presence in the previous books, but they were still a dynamic couple in their own. Sadism isn’t typically my cuppa either, but something about just did it for me here. Possibly because Kai was such a great balance of loving and sweet with that demanding Dom persona with his sadistic urges.
Being a huge Carmen Jenner fan, when I saw she’s coming out with an MM romance, I didn’t even bat an eyelash before adding this beauty to my shelves. And when it landed on my kindle? I devoured it in one sitting…though with much fidgeting involved because holy hot sex scenes! My ovaries got a hell of a work out is all I can tell you, because if there’s one thing this woman can write, it’s one extremely hot sex scene. Finding North certainly didn’t lack in steam, but it also packed on emotion and angst all tied together in a steamy GFY set up that I absolutely enjoyed the hell out of.
North and Will grew up together and were the best of friends until one day everything changed. Now twelve years later all they have between them is regret, longing, and resentment. Will is openly gay in a small Australian town where they’re not exactly excepting of that sort of thing. But with his father being the owner of the town’s lone watering hole where he bartends, they mainly ignore it for the booze they come to him for.
