After Hours - Lynda Aicher Review

“The Boardroom. After hours, it’s where Bay Area moguls indulge their fantasies. Ties are loosened. Inhibitions, too.
Assistant Avery Fast watched from a distance, mouth gaping, blood roaring wildly in her ears as she stared at the naked woman on the table before her. At executive Carson Taggert ordering a man to pleasure her. It made her feel guilty, embarrassed…and hot.
Carson watched and waited. Waited for Avery to notice him in the Boardroom. Waited for her to like what she saw. Waited to see what she’d do the next day. And the next. He couldn't let her go—not when she'd seen what goes on in the Boardroom. He couldn't stop thinking about the desire in her eyes, the flush on her cheeks, her obvious arousal.
Getting her to join was easy. But now Carson wants Avery all to himself.”

Thank you to Carina Press and Net Galley for providing my with an ARC of this book. All opinions of this are my own.

This follows Carson and Avery and their adventures with the boardroom which is a secret sex club set-up for safe and private sexual exploration of those whose are member. I really enjoyed how Avery managed to accidentally stumble upon the boardroom and I think it made for a really great first story in “The Boardroom” series. As Avery learned more about the Boardroom and what it was, what happened there and how it worked so did we and it was really useful to not have both characters knowing what was going on as they obviously had to learn along with us. I was worried this wasn’t going to happen because of the Prequel Novella “Done Deal” which I didn’t enjoy but gave us an introduction into “The Boardroom” and some of its background so I didn’t think the background would feature as much in this but I’m definitely glad I did.

This does involve a lot of sexual exploration, mainly for Avery, as she tries to figure out what she wants from her Boardroom experience as you can pretty much tailor make the experience to you depending on the scene that is occurring for that boardroom meeting. The boardroom is also a very secretive and private place (which is the whole point) which means that you can’t talk about it with anyone who isn’t a member and it’s also a judgement free place which was something that Avery definitely struggled with at first and again it was great to see her going through the motions of feeling guilty for what she likes, to just accepting that everyone likes different things and there’s nothing wrong with that.

There wasn’t that much character development around the main characters Avery and Carson which I wasn’t actually mad at. This book was very much just centred on Avery and Carson’s relationship and them finding out what they want from each other and dealing with the feelings which are developing for each other along with the sexual exploration side of things too. You did get a bit of background on some of the characters like Avery’s boss Gregory and his Wife and Avery’s roommate Karen so it wasn’t 100% focused on Avery and Carson. You also get an introduction to Drake who is a friend of Carson’s and a fellow member of the boardroom who has actually been present in one of the scenes that Avery and Carson were present at – I presume that this is so he can be in the next book and we’ll have an idea of who he was in this book

I really enjoyed this book and I thought the mix of romance with also sexual and self-discovery was very well done and they played very well off of each other. It was executed in a way where Avery was relying on Carson to help her self-discovery but only because he was most experienced and knew more about how to do it and I feel that if Avery and Carson didn’t end up together in this book, then Avery would still be interested in continuing her sexual exploration without Carson because all he’d done was help open her eyes to possibilities and it didn’t feel like it was dependent upon Carson being there.

I don’t really feel like the first book added that much to this book to be honest; it gave you a short introduction to Trevor but you can definitely read this book straight away without reading Done Deal.