Alison Kent

I was looking at my Amazon page for MAXIMUM EXPOSURE to see if it was shipping yet (it says the 25th, but sometimes they don’t hold to that), and I found this:

What’s so cool about this is that Cindy graciously read MAXIMUM EXPOSURE (before it was officially titled and I was still calling it SIZZLE) and gave me a cover quote that’s excerpted on the cover, though the whole thing is printed on the flyleaf:

“MAXIMUM EXPOSURE is sexy, smart and suspenseful. As usual, Alison Kent delivers in style!” ~ New York Times Bestselling author, Cindy Gerard

What’s also cool is that my first SG-5 books had a cover quote from Cherry that said:

“Smart, funny, exciting, touching and hot!” ~ New York Times Bestselling author, Cherry Adair

It’s fun to see my new release selling along with theirs since we all began in writing series romances! (I also have the Best! Quote! Ever! from someone very special on the book’s flyleaf, but that one you’ll see for yourself when you buy the book!)

(Oh, my Fresh Fiction Amazon or B&N gift card giveaway is now live.)

Though it won’t ship from Amazon until Tuesday, MAXIMUM EXPOSURE is shipping from Barnes & Noble, so go and buy NOW! Here’s a link to make it easy for you. It’s a perfect stocking stuffer for all your reading friends who love Cindy and Cherry! Ask reader Victoria W who posted at Borders and Barnes & Noble, saying:

“From the very beginning the characters pull you in. Their problems and the ways they overcome them are very realistic. It’s something that could happen to anyone. The emotion is raw. The sex scenes hot! The ending brought closure. Some books leave you wanting more. And that’s fine if the author plans on writing another story for those characters. This book gave both couples their happy endings. It’s two romances put into one great book!”

Or ask reader Annmarie who said:

Let me tell you that the hero, Finn, is *rawr* hot. And not a two week old kitten *rawr* but a lord of the lions *rawr*! Finn is imaginative and open to new experiences. Laid back but intense. Finn is hubba hubba hot! He makes my hips swivel.

I don’t think I’ve ever in my whole entire life met a heroine like Olivia. Bold, fresh and did I mention bold? Olivia is unlike your typical heroine in so many ways. I think you’ll like her. A lot. She does things the rest of us never even imagine, much less have the courage to do. (If you do, you know, DO the things Olivia does, email me the deets. K?)

Finn and Olivia burn up the pages! Not only do they tangle up the sheets (that’s just an expression cause beds are way too tame for these two) they become involved in an investigation that needs some serious untangling before someone gets hurt!

Now, have you ordered yet? Do you need more incentive?

How ’bout an excerpt?

“I have a question,” was the first thing out of his mouth once she answered the phone.

She didn’t respond right away. Either he’d taken her aback, or she couldn’t place his voice. It had to be the latter. He doubted Olivia Hammond could be taken aback by anyone or anything.

He thought about clearing up the creepy anonymity, but then she said, “I didn’t think you’d wait till tomorrow, but thought you might give it more than an hour.”

He was intrigued. Sue him. “This isn’t about the drinks thing. I wanted to ask you something else.”

He put his cell on speaker phone, set it on the window ledge, and did his best to be quiet as he reached for his camera. He found and framed her, focused, watched as she swiveled her chair side to side.

He wouldn’t be able to see her much longer. The sun was creeping higher in the sky, and already there was a glare smearing the east side of the window. But that was okay.

This was nothing more than a fact-gathering mission. He’d be much more interested in seeing if she left the lights on in her office after dark.

She got to her feet, crossed the office and closed the door, on her way back, asking him, “What do you want to know?”

He waited until she’d circled the desk. She didn’t sit, but stood behind her chair. “What you said today. That you let people look.”

“What about it?”

“Did you mean look? Or watch?” he asked, and clicked the shutter.

He could only see her profile, but at the sound of her picture being taken, she turned to face him, and so he took it again.

“What exactly is it you’re asking?”

She knew what he was asking. She wasn’t a stupid woman. And he was pretty sure she wasn’t being purposefully obtuse but was instead buying time.

He watched as she switched her own handset to speaker, and set the phone on her desk. She then shrugged out of the unstructured jacket she wore over her low-cut top and draped it over her chair.

That’s when he noticed that the top wasn’t only low-cut, it was a halter, and it bared her entire back along with a lot of her breast on the side. He swallowed, found his voice, focused, and took another shot.

“Looking,” he said. “That’s what you do in a museum. Or an art gallery. You find a piece you really like and you study it. Analyze it. Get a feel for what it does to you.”

She laughed softly. “I hope you didn’t just call me a piece.”

He clicked the shutter, captured her smile. “Watching is more about action. You watch a baseball game. A tennis match. You pretty much look at golf, but you watch a jet take off, or the sun rise.”

“Are you sure you don’t look at the sun?”

“You never look at the sun. It’s bad for your eyes. But you definitely watch it come up.” He knew because he’d done it umpty dozen times before deciding which beach house to buy.

“You do that often?”

“Oh, yeah. I watch the change of colors, like a year’s worth of seasons passing in the blink of an eye. I watch the clouds and what their shadows do to the water. And, yeah, I watch the water most of all. The ripples when the air is calm. The whitecaps it kicks up when it’s mad.”

“You’ve put a lot of thought into this sunrise thing. Are you a poet or a romantic or just a fisherman?”

He zoomed in closer. “Mostly I’m a guy working on his beach house.”

“I don’t believe that’s mostly it. Not for a minute.”

“You picked me up on the street, remember? Me? Random guy? You don’t even know my name, do you Olivia Hammond?”

“You’re right. I don’t.”

And that was all she said. She didn’t ask what it was. Neither did she pretend as if she was going to answer his question. She just let the airtime fill with the sounds of their breathing, her fingers tapping the frame of her chair, the shuck-shing of the camera’s shutter as he caught her again.

“Let me ask you something else.”

“You’re welcome to,” she said, “but I did tell you that I’d give you everything you need to know tomorrow.”

He lifted a knee to better stabilize his equipment for his next shot. “This thing you do. Do you ever take orders?”

Shuck-shing.

She turned to face the window, slowly walked to stand directly in front of the large glass panes.

Shuck-shing.

She searched the street below, her gaze crawling through the bistro’s tables, moving on before coming back and coming up. The window shielded him with its reflective tint, but he knew she knew he was there.

Shuck-shing.

“Is there something you’d like me to do?”

He nodded because he couldn’t find his voice, and because the air in the empty room had grown not only still but stifling. “I want you to let your hair all the way down.”

Staring straight toward him, she reached for the clip without any hesitation. A sassy smirk pulled at her mouth before she bent at the waist, shook out her hair, straightened and tossed it back to fall like a lion’s mane over her shoulders, wild and untamed and free.

Then she asked, “Is that all?”, and he decided he might as well go for broke, so he answered, “No. Untie your top at the waist.”

He’d seen the knot when she’d leaned forward. That knot and the one at her nape. Big loose knots with long dangling sashes of the paisley print fabric in golds and browns and the red of dried chilies.

This time her hesitation was brief, but it was there, and he started to tell her never mind, he’d been kidding. But he hadn’t been and he was still of the very same mind of wanting to see her body unclothed.

She turned, showed him her back, and held the two ends of the tie out to the side. She shook her hips, a quick little shimmy, then spun slowly to face him – the only thing between her tits and his impatience one more knot.

He didn’t count the one gnawing in his gut.

“Seen enough?” she asked, her voice sounding strained, though the distortion could easily have been the rush of blood from his head.

“No,” he said, and then he waited, the single word needing no explanation.

He watched her lips part, the tip of her tongue appear against her teeth. Watched the motion of her hands and wrists and elbows as she lifted her arms.

He pulled back from the viewfinder only long enough to mop his forehead with his sleeve, soaking the T-shirt’s worn cotton that then stuck to his shoulder like gum.

It seemed to take her longer with this knot than it had the other. He didn’t know if she was teasing him or if she wasn’t sure this was something she wanted to do. That she wanted him to look at. That she wanted him to see, to watch. He couldn’t know because he didn’t know her. All he had to go on were her words from earlier today.

He started to let her off the hook. He wasn’t pressuring her, but he didn’t want her to feel that he was. Or that their having drinks tomorrow or her hiring him for his photography skills had anything to do with what came next.

But then she pulled the ties free, and he couldn’t say anything at all. His mouth went dry. His fingers froze on the camera. She held the loose fabric in front of her body, waved it like a matador waving his cape at a bull, and then let it go. Just released it there where she held it pinched between her fingers and thumbs.

Her nipples were pierced; that was the first thing he noticed, the tiny gold hoops and the nearly invisible gold chain connected to each and threaded through the matching one piercing her navel. Her skirt rode low on her hips, exposing the softly feminine swell of her abdomen and the precious metal.

“Don’t feel bad,” she said. “You’re not the first man I’ve rendered speechless.”

She looked like she belonged in a harem, his harem, the bronze of her skin setting off the expensive sheen of the jewelry she wore, the cascade of her spun sugar hair caressing her shoulders, her breasts plump and heavy with centers the color of toffee.

His mouth that had been cotton balls in the Sahara was now Niagara Falls. And when she twisted one finger around the chain and tugged, lifting both nipples to beg, he had to adjust his crouching position to ease the stress on his cock.