Provoked age gap grumpy.., p.1
Provoked: Age Gap Grumpy Boss Romance, page 1
PROVOKED
AN AFTER DARK ROMANCE
TARYN QUINN
eBooks are not transferable.
They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Provoked
© 2022 Taryn Quinn
Rainbow Rage Publishing
Cover by LateNite Designs
Photograph by Lindee Robinson Photography
Models: Julie & Logan
All Rights Are Reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First ebook edition: Originally published in 2011 by Cari Quinn
Second ebook edition: July 2022
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PROVOKED
Being pinned to the wall by her boss suddenly just might be her favorite thing…
Kelly Crossman’s life is focused on advancing at The Book Nook.
Then a certain intimate list she wrote on a lark starts circulating around the store.
A list with her inscrutable, infuriating hot as Hades boss Spencer Galvin’s name on it.
She’s mortified her secret interest in her boss has become public knowledge, but that doesn’t stop her from checking out the wild new club in town with her best friend.
No one will know, right?
Until she locks eyes with Spencer and he’s not at all behaving like her uptight, by-the-rules boss.
He knows all about her list—and he’s definitely not turning away. Now she's right in his crosshairs.
Their battles of will at work are legendary. But in this case, Spencer coming out on top might be the hottest, riskiest thing she’s ever experienced….
Provoked was previously published by Ellora’s Cave as Provoke Me in the Unveiled series by Cari Quinn, detailed in a reader’s note within. Provoked can be read as a standalone and ends in a happily-ever-after for the main couple.
CONTENTS
Reader’s Note
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
Wanted
After Dark
Unwrapped
More by Taryn Quinn
Crescent Cove
About Taryn Quinn
Quinn and Elliott
Follow Us
READER’S NOTE
Reader’s Note
Some years ago, I (Cari) started out my career writing really spicy books that were published with different publishers. When those publishers closed, I received the books back and renamed them and lightly reedited them. The Unveiled series, now part of TQ’s After Dark line, is one such series.
We updated some technology and some references about the bookstore, due to current conditions, but in some cases, we left the vintage references alone. Books are kind of time capsules, so we didn’t want to change this time period entirely to match the current one, though it mostly does.
Provoked was originally called Provoke Me about Kelly and Spencer and was originally published with Ellora’s Cave. Reveal Me about Kelly’s bestie Alana and Carter is now called Revealed and is available at the back of this book for free if you sign up for our newsletter (or if you’re already on it and want a free copy, just email us at taryncari at gmail dot com.) Need Me, about Spencer’s sister Marcia and her boyfriend Tony and his best friend Cale, is now called Wanted, is available too.
Provoked and Wanted both contain threesome scenes but there are no swords crossing and ultimately both books end in a HEA for the main couple
If you’ve read these books before, they are not hugely different and you do not need to purchase them again unless you want the gorgeous new covers designed by the awesome Taryn Elliott (the other half of Taryn Quinn.)
If you haven’t read these stories, these books are NOT like the usual TQ book in recent years, which is why they are under the After Dark series heading. They’re darker, edgier, and include some partner sharing on that road to a sweet Happily Ever After for the main couple. So if you want “safe” stories, these aren’t it although these couples are also deeply in love and find their HEAs by the end. These books also include some of our staples—found family, lots of emotions, and a few laughs.
If you’re open to trying a new experience with us, give these emotional, sometimes angsty, and yes, naughty stories a try. If not, no worries, we have many more of our typical funny, steamy, small town TQ reads on the way!
Thanks as always for reading our stories!
Xoxo,
Taryn and Cari
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Sometimes we make up fictional places that end up having the same names as actual places. These are our fictional interpretations only. Please grant us leeway if our creative vision isn't true to reality.
1
Being called to the boss’s office was never a good thing. Especially when said boss sat entirely too close to the doe-eyed pastry vixen from the bookstore café.
But she wasn’t jealous. Not in the slightest.
Kelly Crossman inhaled deeply and knocked on Spencer Galvin’s partially open door, interrupting the Hallmark moment on the loveseat. Spencer and Leigh stared at her silently. Looking guilty as hell, the both of them.
“You wanted to see me, Spencer?” Kelly asked, when her vocal cords unfroze.
Had she just interrupted them on the verge of a clutch? Forget verge. Leigh had practically been in his lap and her graspy little hands had been an inch away from his dark blond curls.
Petite and adorable, Leigh Cory was the kind of woman men loved to fawn over to feel big, strong and capable. Kelly had never figured Spencer as the type to need that kind of ego stroking.
If he did, well, bully for him. That would explain a lot about why he’d never looked her way. She was as far from petite and fawnlike as a sheep was from being sleek. And God, she’d never felt more tall and gawky and completely out of her element than she did right now.
“Yes, Ms. Crossman, I did. Come in.”
Everyone else in the store got the first name treatment, she got Ms. Crossman. What did he call Leigh when they were alone?
Maybe he just groaned unintelligible words. Who really needed names then?
Wincing at that image, Kelly propped her hands on her hips and strode into his office. She’d be damned if she shrank away. Not here, not now. And for damn sure, not with him.
Not only was Spencer the big boss man, he’d been her crush since oh, the moment she’d laid eyes on him. The first time he’d argued with her in that alpha male I always know best way she’d been in serious lust, which probably proved the depth of her dysfunction. But he never talked down to her. Much. He just liked to poke holes in her ideas until they resembled swiss cheese.
He was brilliant, ruthlessly so. An amazing boss. And his ass was a thing of beauty.
She hooked her thumbs in her belt loops. “Sure I’m not intruding?”
“No.” He gritted out the word. “You’re not.”
Kelly almost said, Tell that to Doe Eyes, who looked as if she’d been socked in the stomach. But somehow she held her tongue.
Leigh reluctantly slid away from Spencer and rose. She lifted her chin and shot Kelly a look that spoke volumes.
Hands off.
Kelly smiled again, this time icily. As if she’d pay attention to Leigh’s warnings. She’d seen her type before. They radiated that don’t hurt me, I’m so wittle and defenseless vibe.
“Have a nice day, Lisa,” she said as Leigh booked for the exit.
She always called Leigh the wrong name, helpless against her urge to needle Little Miss Perfect. Did she really think no one noticed the way she simpered around Spencer? He seemed immune to her attempts at flirtation, or at least that’s what Kelly had thought.
Then again, Leigh had just been in his arms. A place Kelly had never been.
Would never be.
She shook off that thought as the door closed behind Leigh. She’d never be in his arms for lots of reasons, number one being they worked together. Her job meant everything to her. She wouldn’t jeopardize that for a one-night stand. Even if there were times she was sure she’d climb out of her own skin if she couldn’t get her hands on him, she wouldn’t risk her position in the store. She had her priorities.
Spencer skirted his desk, giving her a glimpse of his toned ass showcased in perfectly cut slacks. Her mouth watered.
It didn’t hurt to look.
He sat in his captain’s chair and steepled his hands on his stomach, a pose intended to radiate relaxed confidence. Normally it might have. But she’d become adept at reading him over the years and there was no mistaking the deep lines of tension etched around his eyes. She imagined those eyes warming like hot coffee, steam rising in their hidden depths. Scalding her if she got too close, like she was now. Here in his inner sanctum with another woman’s fresh-cut-apple scent a tart tang in the air, she wanted more than ever to push the limits between them.
They worked well together. Mostly well. They disagreed from time to time, occasionally saw things differently. The Book Nook was his life, as it was hers. When he was in town—as regional manager, he attended to The Book Nook’s other stores in Maryland as well as the new stores they were opening in Virginia and South Carolina—he was at work before sunup and remained there long after closing. Nights she made sure to work an extra shift, just in case she’d get to tease him. She loved doing that.
And she’d never once seen him loosen his tie.
Then there were the other nights she stayed late, when he wasn’t around. One of them stood out in her mind in particular. When he’d left his office unlocked and she’d been alone in the store—and lonely. Feeling more than a little reckless. Weeks later she still couldn’t believe she’d taken things so far. But exploring his office had led to imagining he was there with her, and then exploring herself…
She’d kicked back in his chair and stretched out her legs, rubbing her thighs against the supple leather. His crisp aftershave permeated the air and she’d reveled in it, spinning fantasies worthy of the sexy books she read during breaks. He’d left some paperwork on his blotter and though she hadn’t snooped, his messy handwriting made her smile. He wrote fast. Did everything fast, from what she could tell. She’d pictured him swiveling to talk to her as he always did, except this time he flipped up her skirt to rub her ass. And then he guided her down on his waiting cock, her name spilling from his lips.
“Kelly. Oh God, Kelly.”
By then she’d been on the loveseat, her fingers moving frantically over herself. She’d brought herself to the most spectacular orgasm ever. All because of him.
She released a shaky breath and blinked the memory away. No one knew. She’d just had some harmless fun. Even so, she never did crazy stuff like that. But damn, had it felt good.
“Are you dating Leigh?” she blurted.
Are you fucking her? Is she getting what I’ve never had the guts to go after?
The list on her phone didn’t count. She’d listed him as number ten on her somewhat sophomoric list of men she wanted to have sex with as a whim, not out of some misplaced belief she’d ever actually get her hands on his naked body. But for a while, that list had given her—the girl once voted most likely to be the last virgin at Middlemarch High—a way to level the playing field.
She didn’t have to wait for some guy to find her sexy. Instead she could pick her targets and go after them as methodically as some women charted caloric intake.
She charted that too. But her notes app was basically her diary and she liked keeping a record of things. Just call her sentimental. But no matter how many lists she put Spencer on, unless she changed her name to Profit and Loss, he wasn’t interested.
Or so she’d believed until she’d seen him in a semi-clinch with Leigh. Now she wasn’t so sure.
Maybe she didn’t have him pegged at all. Just because he was devoted to work didn’t mean he didn’t have sex. He had needs like everyone else.
And oh God, so did she. She bit the inside of her cheek as his gaze pierced hers.
“Absolutely not. Leigh is my employee.” As are you. He didn’t voice the rest, but she heard the implication just the same.
Kelly lifted a shoulder, let it fall. “When I came in here, I assumed—”
“Assumptions are dangerous. Didn’t anyone ever teach you that?”
“What about a girlfriend?” she pressed, going for the gold while she had the opening. Her gaze dropped to his noticeably bare left hand. “No wife,” she added, though she already knew he was single.
“I’m married to the store,” he said simply.
If he was surprised by her line of questioning, he didn’t show it. But that was Spencer. Inscrutable, controlled, driven. He wouldn’t be flustered by a few pesky questions from one of his employees.
One of his much younger employees. He was a decade older than she, and probably considered her about as complex as a tricycle.
But Leigh was several years younger than she was. So what did that mean?
He wouldn’t lie. She might not know much when it came to the inner workings of the man’s mind, but she knew that. He’d never been anything but honest in the three years she’d known him. True, he tended to be close-lipped. But he wouldn’t shy away from a direct question. If he said he wasn’t dating Leigh, he wasn’t.
“Why did you ask to see me, Spencer?” she asked finally, the silence beginning to unnerve her.
He rarely looked at her for more than an instant, but right now those instants were piling up. Her skin prickled under his attention and a single drop of sweat slipped down the back of her knee, wending its way down to her fashionably cheap clogs.
She wasn’t dressed in something cute and flirty like Leigh. She didn’t own cute and flirty. Well, maybe at the back of her closet, along with her precious few going-out outfits. But cute wasn’t her standard MO. That was a hard look to pull off when you were almost five-ten in flats.
His hand dropped to his top drawer, still partially open. His fingertips slid along the edge, drawing her gaze until she shook herself out of the mental fog he seemed to invoke every time he was within spitting distance. “Unlike everyone else, you call me Spencer. Not Mr. Galvin. Why is that?”
She tried not to frown. Why wouldn’t he get to the point? She wasn’t called to his office very often. Now he wanted to play guessing games?
“Leigh calls you Spencer.” She also undresses you with her eyes every time your very fine ass strolls past her café counter. “Marcia also calls you Spence,” she reminded him. Marcia was the store manager and Kelly’s immediate supervisor.
He waited. Apparently Leigh and Marcia didn’t count.
She hissed out a breath. He never strayed into personal territory with her but she’d also never seen him this stilted. This forced. “Because when we met, you told me to drop the formalities.”
“And you took my advice.” With a thin smile, he shut the drawer with an audible click. “Yet I’ve never even called you Kelly.”
“You can. You should. Isn’t The Book Nook’s spiel that we’re all one big family?” Her palms were so wet that she scrubbed them on her cargo pants. “I love my job. There’s nothing else as important to me.”
He tapped his thumb on his blotter, his gaze unwavering. “Not even your extracurricular activities?”
“What extracurricular activities? I fucking live and breathe this store. If you’re requiring more than that from me—”
He held up a hand. “You’ve more than met every requirement set before you thus far. Since you have, I’ll ignore your very smart mouth.”
That very smart mouth opened and closed on another retort. She perched on the edge of the loveseat, her breath tripping as his gaze rested just a shade too long on her tight yellow blouse. She hadn’t worn it to showcase the girls, but it was a nice side benny. Apparently her boss had noticed.
