Office Hours is a quick and sexy (lots of sexy!) take on the “hot for teacher” theme, in which English professor Thad Wells, a surly and standoffish man who doesn’t do romantic entanglements, is knocked for a loop–both literally and figuratively–by Jay Banner, a grad student and practicing Dom who’s working on his PhD in xenobiology.
What Thad lacks in self confidence, Jay more than makes up for in his relentless pursuit of the older man with the ex-lover from hell. Thad’s self esteem issues stem from his former battle with obesity, a handicap his ex used (and still does) to frequently berate and humiliate Thad, to the point that he was forced to get a restraining order against the man. A false accusation, for which Thad was later exonerated, prompted him to build walls to protect himself against both the memories of the psychological abuse and the damage to his reputation. He does everything in his power to keep people at arm’s length, but Jay is not the sort of man who takes no for an answer.
Jay pursues and Thad ultimately succumbs to his alpha-prowess, but Jay and Thad are both keeping secrets that loom large and threaten to tank their burgeoning relationship. It’s an encounter with the sadistic and questionably sane ex-lover, David, that provides the launching point for repairing the rift, and though it fell a little short on suspense with a somewhat quick and easy resolution, I was truly rooting for Thad and Jay by then so was satisfied with the outcome.
I’m not really an afficionado of the BDSM genre at all, but based on what Sean Michael presented here, in comparison to some other stories I’ve read, I’d say this was BDSM lite. Never having read this author before, I can’t say how this one stacks up against his other work, in that regard, but can say that I liked his writing style and bought into Jay and Thad’s connection, every step of the way.
This was a fast paced and fun read for me, start to finish.