Getting Naughty with Avril Tremayne

I’ll share a secret. Getting Naughty was originally pitched something like this: 

Teague Hamilton is the ultimate good boy – a clean cut, unflappable lawyer. Every element of his life has been chosen with even-keel confidence, including pretty, polished Lydia Laverton with whom he’s trying to fall in love. When his old college friend Romy, a restaurant consultant, asks him to help one of her clients cut through the red tape to open an eatery in New York, things don’t go according to plan for the very first time in his life.

Hana Larsson is a Danish dynamo, a girl who won’t take “no” for an answer and doesn’t expect to hear it. At their first meeting, Teague explains a few things she can't do and she promptly sacks him. Neither of them can understand how they end up having sex in Teague’s office, but from that moment, Teague’s tame life seems suddenly unbearable – especially when she dares him to greater and greater wildness.

The book that actually emerged had only one of these elements in it: Teague Hamilton is definitely the ultimate good boy, clean cut lawyer, whose life is pretty well prescribed for him. Other than that... Well, there's no sign of Lydia. And instead of being set in New York, the book ended up at Bondi Beach, Sydney. There's no Danish chef – the heroine, Frankie, is an Aussie, and dances in a gentleman’s club. And most importantly, Teague and Frankie knew (and wanted) each other ten years ago but he was never game enough to take a walk on the wild side with her. And then they meet again ten years later...

I don't really know how the changeover from story A to story B happened, but my best guess is that my subconscious was busily wresting the story from me from the moment I sat down to write book 1 in the series, Getting Lucky. You see, I wrote a reference in that book to Teague almost drowning once upon a time while participating in the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race. So risky, with such an imperfect result - most un-Teague-like! And then I started penning book 2 in the series, Getting Even, and I started to understand why he entered that race. Teague is the lighthouse in his circle of friends - calm, stalwart, supportive, guiding his volatile friends when they're adrift in turbulent seas aboard rickety boats. He doesn't precisely want to be in one of those rickety boats, but he sure wants to come down from the lantern room and leave the lighthouse to get out in the elements from time to time, even if it's only to watch the sea from the cliff's edge. Once I knew that about him, I saw that he didn’t need a woman to fall in love with his hidden depths; he needed a woman who liked him exactly the way he was - a woman who would let him decide for himself whether to stay in the lighthouse, walk along the cliff, get out on the water - or do all three! And suddenly there was Frankie, already an off-stage character in both Getting Lucky and Getting Even, and she was waiting for him to turn up at her house in Bondi…

Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia

 Here’s a little excerpt from Chapter 1, after Teague has arrived at Frankie’s to deliver something from their mutual friend Matt (the hero of Getting Lucky). Frankie has just propositioned Teague and he’s having a hard time believing she means it!

He frowned like he really did not get it!

    “Teague!” she cried. “Seriously!”

He looked behind him, as though he thought she must be talking to someone else even though she’d just addressed him by his damn name.

 “I’m talking about you having a fling while you’re here.”

“I don’t have flings.”

“Oh, I know that, Teague! I tried hard enough to get you to have a fling with me the whole time I was in DC! But now... Well, now you’re here, and I never thought you would be, so I’m making one more attempt. And you can say no, but I hope you don’t, because I think I can help you not be miserable, or at least give you a respite from it while—while you’re here. In Sydney. So. That’s all.”

Silence. Stillness.

A rush of heartbeats later, with her words hanging in the air, he shook his head. “No,” he said.

“Well!” She blushed again, brought both hands up to her face. “This is embarrassing.”

“No, I mean—” He made a sound—like a cross between a sigh and a huff. “You said something about meeting your friends, so I thought you must mean I should have fling with one of... But—” Slight head shake. “Do you mean a fling with you? No. You can’t mean that.”

“That’s funny, Teague, because I’m pretty sure what I’m doing right at this moment, sitting here at some godawful hour of the morning when I’m far from at my best, is offering myself to you straight up, since you’ve never been able to take a damn hint.”
 

Buy the book HERE!

I'm giving away a signed print copy of book 2 in the series, Getting Even. It's a hottie, so approach with caution. To go into the draw,  follow me somewhere! (eg, like Amazon or Bookbub or my 18+ Facebook page Tremayne Untamed). The links for all of the options are HERE, where you can tick off which option you chose and leave me your email address. Meanwhile, I'd love to hear if you prefer sweet or sexy romance - and if you've read any DAREs!

Getting Even - Love, Lust, Laughs and Vengeance

My second Harlequin DARE novel, Getting Even, is out in the world! A second chance at love story, super steamy, as are all the DAREs, and intensely romantic.

The story in a nutshell...

Veronica and Rafael fell in love at first sight as college freshmen and spent the next three and a half years in what their friends describe as a Molotov cocktail of a relationship. Tempestuous. Passionate. Obsessive. Characterised by fiery arguments followed by spectacular reconciliations. Everyone expected Rafael to propose to Veronica on graduation day – including Veronica, who was preparing to ride off into the sunset with him on graduation day! Instead, Rafael left her, and to add insult to injury, he did so straight after telling her he’d love her forever. Now, seven years later, they meet again at a Yorkshire wedding – and this time it’s not love that draws them instantly, inexorably together, but a mutual desire for revenge for the torment those lost years have caused. In a lightning moment, they vow to break the emotional chain that’s tethering them to each other, and they’ll use any weapon at their disposal to do it – including the lust that flares as hot and fierce as ever.

Want. Need. Lust.

 

Just one more night!

For book editor Veronica Johnson it’s sheer hell seeing her ex Rafael Velez again. He’s the man she thought she’d be with for a lifetime, and here he is at her best friend’s wedding. How she hates him still! But Rafael has an outrageous proposition: just one more night together! It’s madness — but achingly tempting. Especially if she walks away without a backwards glance, just as he did to her…

Here's a little taste of what to expect...

Veronica and Rafael have gotten through the wedding and the reception, intensely aware of each other. Now, Rafael has hunted her down, determined to talk her into spending one more night with him in which they're supposed to burn their way out of each other's blood once and for all. But he's gotten off to a rocky start, telling her he brought a date to the wedding as protection from Veronica, who's there on her own. [The first line is Veronica's]

“What did you think I’d do? Throw myself at you if you wandered in on your own?”

“Go ahead and throw yourself at me. You can take it as a given I won’t fight you off.”

“The only thing I’ll be throwing at you is a dagger after what you did to me. So, if you want to stay safe, let me pass.”

“Who said I wanted to stay safe?”

She shook her head, held up a hand to ward him off.

“Ah, I see,” he said, “you want to stay safe.”

She laughed—unconvincingly. “If you think you scare me—”

“I think I never used to...but I think I do now. Look at your hand, keeping me away even though I haven’t taken one step closer.”

She dropped her hand. “I’m not scared of you.”

“Really? ’Cuz that’s quite a fight-flight-freeze response you’ve got going on. Pupils dilated. Body quivering. Breaths fast and shallow.” He smiled. “Oh, wait, that’s not fight-flight-freeze! I’ve seen you like this before, haven’t I? Every night for three and a half years.”

She licked her lips and, God, he wanted to be the one licking them. “That was then, this is now,” she said.

“Say the word and I’ll be on my knees for you in a heartbeat, same as I always was.”

“What you want is for me to be on my knees for you.”

He took two steps back, putting some distance between them to make it harder to haul her in. “You used to be braver than this, Veronica. The night we met you said straight-out you wanted me and you were going to have me.”

“And look how that turned out!”

“That turned out the way you wanted it to!”

“I didn’t leave myself you know!”

He felt his hand clench. Fury. She knew what she’d done. “You left me as surely as I left you. After defying your parents to live with me.”

“Which didn’t get me very far, did it?”

“It got you as far as you wanted to go!” he said, hating the bitterness in his voice. “It got you three and a half years of slumming it. But in the end you had to go and stick one price tag too many on me.”

She tossed her head—actually tossed her damn head. “You put all those price tags on yourself!”

“You lost your nerve.”

“How dare you say that!”

“What happened to you after I left, Veronica, that you couldn’t even pick up the goddamn phone when I called? Did Mommy send you back to finishing school? Did they tame you after all?”

And there it was—the flare of wild heat, unmasked, as she closed the distance he’d put between them and shoved him in the chest. “You want to know what happened to me? You happened, you bastard!” Shove. “Not my mother. Not my father. Not my sister. They weren’t the ones who told you to leave me. You did that yourself!” Shove. “You stole whatever bravery I had when you made my money more important to you than I was.” Shove. “When you told me you’d love me forever then made a fool of me by leaving me five minutes later.” Shove. “When you trampled all over my pride by leaving Matt to tell me you’d gone.”

“I stole your bravery? Okay, so be the old Veronica and come and get it back off me.”

“I don’t—”

“I made a fool of you? Come right at me and make me regret it. I trampled all over your pride? Get your steel-capped boots on and kick me for it. Make me pay for leaving you. Make me suffer. Make me shake with lust for you the way I always did. Make me work for what I want to take from you. Make me want nothing more than to have you. You know you can do it, Veronica. You were so close to turning me into your slave last time.”

“Oh! Oh! You were too stubborn to be anyone’s slave, and you certainly were never mine.”

“No? Then maybe you should prove that to me, because right about now I think you could get me to do anything you asked with one kiss.”

***** 

Whew! Needless to say, there's a lot of heat between these two, and it's a pretty intense read, albeit with quite a few laughs along the way! You can find the book via the links on my website.

Here’s a quick rundown of the three books, all set around the theme of reunions, involving a group of students who met at college ten years ago and are now picking up the shattered pieces of their lives as they reconnect in new ways:

• Getting Lucky – a ten year friendship goes off the rails when Romy needs to have a baby and Matt decides it might as well be with him
• Getting Even – after seven seething years, Veronica is ready to make Rafael pay for leaving her
• Getting Naughty (coming February 2019) – Mr Perfect is led astray by Ms Not-Perfect-At-All one hot Christmas in Sydney

To celebrate the release of Getting Even, I'm giving away a signed print copy of book 1 in the series, Getting Lucky. There are two options to go into the draw:

1. Comment below with the title of a hot read you’ve enjoyed, and either include your email address or send it to me via private Facebook message
2. Follow me on BookBub!