The game maker 2 kresley cole read online

A need colder than Siberian winter meets an attitude hotter than the Florida sun in #1 New York Times bestselling author Kresley Cole's sultry new Game Maker novel, the second installment in the series! Get lost in the sizzling world of the Game Maker series with The Professional, book one, and The Player, book three!

Everyone fears the Master...
Rich, irresistible politician/Mafiya boss Maksimilian Sevastyan prefers tall, obedient blondes to fulfill his…complicated desires. That is, until the icy Russian encounters a disobedient brunette whose exquisite little body threatens his legendary restraint.

Except her.
Catarina Marín was a well-off young wife until her world fell apart. Now she’s hiding out, forced to start working as an escort in Miami. Her very first client is beyond gorgeous, but when he tells her what he plans to do to her, Cat almost walks out of the door.

If pleasure is a game, play to win.
After their mind-blowing encounter burns out of control, the lovers crave more. If they escape the deadly threats surrounding them, can Maksim overcome his past—to offer Cat his future? Only then will she tempt him with what he really wants: her, all tied up with a bow.

Mafiya enforcer Aleksandr “The Siberian” Sevastyan’s loyalty to his boss is unwavering, until he meets the boss’s long-lost daughter, a curvy, tantalizing redhead who haunts his mind and heats his blood like no other. Ordered to protect her, Sevastyan will do anything to possess her as well—on his own wicked terms.

RULES ARE MADE TO BE BROKEN . . .

PhD student Natalie Porter had barely recovered from her first sight of the breathtakingly gorgeous Sevastyan before the professional hit man whisks her away to Russia, thrusting her into a world of extreme wealth and wanton pleasures. With every day she spends under his protection, she falls deeper under his masterful spell.

ARE YOU READY TO PLAY?

Yet all is not as it seems. To remove Natalie from an enemy’s reach, Aleksandr spirits her into hiding. From an opulent palace in Russia to the decadent playgrounds of the mega-wealthy in Paris, the two lovers will discover that even their darkest—and most forbidden—fantasies can come true . . . 

EXCERPT: Check out an exclusive 6 Chapter Excerpt HERE.

Read a press release from The Hollywood Reporter HERE

Series Trivia

• The idea for Aleksandr Sevastyan, a Russian mafiya enforcer, came to me several years ago (incidentally, right around the same time I was introducing Russian vampires in my Immortals After Dark Series).

• I outlined and fleshed out numerous scenes with Aleksandr and Natalie (the masquerade, for one). When each of their encounters turned out more provocative than the last, I grew worried about showing them to my editor. I’d been writing about vampires and demons, and all the sudden, I was going to pop up with: “BDSM, baby! Can you dig it?!” So I decided to sit on the pages.

• I took some of those scenes and refashioned them for my 2009 release, KISS OF A DEMON KING. 

• The book Natalie thinks about at the beginning of the masquerade scene is IF YOU DECEIVE, the last historical romance I wrote. The author with the weird first name is me. 

NEWS: THE MASTER (Book 2 in the Game Maker Series) is now available.  Click HERE for more info.

Reviews

• Shayna Renee’s Spicy Reads
• The Romance Reviews 
• Romantic Book Affairs
• Kayla the Bibliophile
• Sensual Reads – Part 3
• Sensual Reads – Part 1
• Guilty Pleasures Book Reviews
• Reading in Pajamas
• Fresh Fiction – Part  3 
• Fresh Fiction – Part 1 
• Fiction Vixen – Part 3
• The Lusty Literate
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• The Book Vixen
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• Wickedly Delicious
• CS Maxwell-Where’s My Muse?
• Cocktails and Books
• Book Sniffers Anonymous
• Tome Tender
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• KT Book Reviews

Frequently Asked Questions

If I like the Immortals After Dark Series, will I enjoy the Game Makers?

You betcha. This new series has the same intense love stories, the same family dynamics, the same alpha heroes and adventurous women. You’ll even see the same humor. We basically substituted extraordinary mortals for immortals and dialed up the sex a few hundred notches.

Will these books be as hot as the Immortals After Dark?

Hotter. Ahem. Ever so much hotter.

How will this affect the timing of your other series?

It shouldn’t. Barring unforeseen circumstances, we should still have an IAD and an Arcana Chronicles installment at least once every year.

Author's Notes

Background

For this story, I envisioned the clock maker/repair shop that Natalie’s grandparents owned as one of the many underground enterprises that flourished in Russia outside of State control in the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

While researching Russian organized crime—facets of which grew apace with the underground economy in those decades—I dug into the backgrounds of various crime bosses. They ran the gamut. Some had advanced degrees; others were political activists. One had even become a TV producer. With such real-life variety, I felt comfortable portraying a gentleman clockmaker (one with a violent and dark past that he specifically glossed over for his new-found daughter).

Lastly, I can’t take credit for Sevastyan’s vodka/wiper-fluid import idea. This scheme was based on true events.

Language

To write the smoothest possible story for the largest number of readers, I had to fudge some things (kind of like bending grammar rules to make for more realistic dialogue).

For instance, when Paxán asks Natalie to call him Dad, he translates this as Bátja, which is a stretch. She would most likely call him Papa. However, I couldn’t imagine a character like Natalie saying Papa (unless John’s came immediately after). It took me out of the story every time I read it. So Bátja it was.

I also took some liberties with certain rules of address to keep the prose as streamlined as possible.