Just a Bit Bossy (Straight Guys Book 12) by Alessandra Hazard Series: Straight Guys #12
Published by Kindle Unlimited on August 19, 2021
Genres: Gay Fiction, LGBTQ+, M/M Romance
Pages: 308
Format: eBook
Source: Kindle Unlimited
Buy on Amazon
Boss from hell. Satan personified. A tyrant everyone fears.
Nate Parrish loathes his boss from the moment they meet.
Raffaele Ferrara is probably the most insufferable, domineering man in the world. He doesn't seem to understand that his personal assistant isn't actually his personal slave. He expects Nate to do his bidding with a single word. He expects that Nate's whole life will revolve around him. He expects other, entirely unreasonable things, even though they're both straight and there's supposed to be a line your boss should never cross. Apparently, as his personal assistant, Nate has to assist him... personally.
Except Nate knows it's just a game. His boss is straight. He knows Raffaele just wants to make him angry enough to quit. But Nate has always been too stubborn for his own good, and he's determined to be the best assistant his boss has ever had, no matter how insane—or inappropriate—Raffaele's orders may become. Before long, the two men are drawn into a twisted game neither wants to lose.
Nate knows it has to stop. He has to leave his job. It's not good for his sanity. Except his horrible boss is like a bad addiction he can't quit. The world feels boring without Raffaele's intensity, and his focus on Nate might be infuriating... but it's also something Nate's starting to realize he can't live without.
Just a Bit Bossy is a hate-to-love steamy MM romance that contains dubcon (the character gives his consent, but there's an obvious power imbalance between a boss and his assistant), lots of snark, a long-suffering sister, two straight men who become obsessed with each other, and a happily ever after. Book 12 in the Straight Guys series, but it can be read as a standalone.
A job offered on a dare turns into an erotic clash of wills where the stakes keep rising until serving his boss feels like an addiction that Nate can’t shake, and for Raffaele, no one else will do.
This book is part of a series called #Straight Guys, so clearly there is a theme, and it’s undeniably shameless…but each story completely avoids falling into that ‘trash erotica’ trap by having compelling characters and off-the-charts chemistry.
I love Alessandra Hazard’s writing so much that it’s a struggle for me to find fault.
At the worst, some of the other book reviews draw attention to the elements of workplace harassment, but I don’t think that applies here. When you read a book, you are suspending reality to at least a small degree. In this situation, Nate instigated his employment and turned it into a dare, a challenge. So to a degree, the harassment was made into a term of employment. I digress. I’m not trying to support harassment in the workplace, just explaining that everyone knew going into this book that there would be workplace sex between a boss and an employee that had questionable power inequality. So don’t dredge that up and judge a book by it. That’s literally what you signed up for.
The best part for me was absolutely the smut. I’m shameless. And this delivers most potently the first time Raffaele demands that Nate jerk him off and then escalates the first time Nate uses his mouth. The fact that Nate ends up loving it like it’s an illicit fetish? Even better.
If you love enemies-to-lovers, boss/assistant, and straight-first-time tropes done with characters with such great chemistry that you don’t even care that they are tropes, read every book in this series. You won’t be sorry.
