Playing With Trouble by Chanel Cleeton (Capitol Confessions #2)
Released: July 21, 2015
Contemporary Romance
Intermix

Reviewed by Mandi

Favorite Quote: He was an asshole, but he was definitely a hot asshole.

I recently read the first book in this series (books are stand alone) and I enjoyed the author’s voice a lot. I picked this book up without even reading the blurb, so when a student/professor romance hit me in the face, I was surprised. I normally don’t seek out this trope, as I usually find myself feeling ragey with the unetichal dating between the student and the teacher. But! This romance worked so well for me. I rooted for this couple to get together and seriously didn’t care that he was her teacher. Gray is intense and sexy and I became…..hot for teacher.

Gray grew up in a bad part of town and found himself in juvie after stealing a car. He turns his life around, gets into law school and starts working at a big firm. But he loses control of his life again. His marriage falls apart, he starts doing cocaine and strippers. He loses his job and his reputation. This is how he finds himself as a visiting professor at a law school in DC. This law school isn’t that great, but at least he has a job.

Blair is the daughter of a very powerful Senator and knows how to play the DC game. After a failed engagement, to please her parents, she goes to law school, but didn’t have good enough grades to get into a great school. So she stays local in DC. She isn’t thrilled with law school, but decides to try her best. She has an immediate hate for her professor Gray. He calls on her constantly, more than anyone in the class. He flusters her and is cold and she cusses him out constantly inside her head. She hates him – until she falls for him.

It was the cruelest irony that the man I despised, the man who tortured me from the front of the classroom three days a week, was the hottest fucking thing I’d ever seen.

That fine line between lust and hate is walked in this romance and it’s fun.

Gray is a self-proclaimed asshole. Blair agrees. He is rude and stand-offish and can’t keep his eyes off of Blair.

I called on her way too much. I knew it, and based off the way her eyes fairly screamed, Go fuck yourself, she knew it, too. But I’d always had remarkably poor impulse control, and like everything that came before her and annihilated my life, she was another thing that tempted me.

I found it hot and sexy. Their chemistry and sexual tension is written so well in this book. They fall for each other during one semester, and they push and pull throughout this semester as they know what they are doing is frowned upon, but they can’t keep their lusty urges under control.

Her breasts rose and fell, her eyes wide, her chest flushed.

I didn’t speak, just waited for her to give me more, anything, everything. In this moment, her standing there like a fucking queen, I’d take it all.

We stood there starting at each other, the silence closing in, neither one of us moving, It was like we were locked in place.

There was no coming back from that kiss.

Eventually the semester ends and they make a deeper commitment to each other. I enjoyed Blair a lot. I liked that she isn’t some super smart, goody-goody student. She has a very poor relationship with her political powerhouse parents, a pretty good relationship with her sisters, and some good friends. She is smart and hard-working, but law school challenges her. It doesn’t come easy to her so it’s always a struggle. Although Gray is older and her professor, she is the one that pushes a little more for the relationship.

Gray starts off as an asshole, but he is the good kind. The kind that keeps that edge, but softens too. He falls in love – and this frustrates him as he elegantly puts it:

I didn’t want to make love to her. I didn’t want to give her my heart – didn’t even have one to give. I wanted to fuck her. That was it. That was all this was supposed to be.

He doesn’t think he is good enough for Blair due to his past. I liked his struggle with self-worth. I also liked him naked in bed.

In the first book, I was annoyed with the Capital Confessions blog – a gossip website that created conflict between the protagonists. The blog also created conflict in this book, and it annoyed me again, but not as much this time. It doesn’t  have quite as large of a role – but still.

Besides the blog, I really had fun reading this one. It was naughty and sexy and a believable romance. I really like this author’s voice.

Grade: B

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