His Cocky Valet

A good erotic romance, hot and sweet. The kink of the older, bigger man taking care of and controlling a younger, smaller man (without the bdsm elements of pain or restraint) might not be to everyone's tastes, particularly as Ash seems to physically shrink through the course of the novel, but I enjoyed it. I thought the sex was a bit more realistic than some of the m/m books I've read in the past too.

3.75

I think we all know the genesis of this book and as such I'm going to rate on a curve.

I enjoyed this because it ended up being more and different from what I expected it to be. The general story is of a boy/man who has been leading the regular dissolute life of the aimlessly rich: parties, meaningless sex, and no obligations. The end of the party has come for Ashton Carrington when his father collapses and ends up in hospice. It turns out that Carrington Sr. has bone cancer and had kept it a secret from his heir. Ashton has to take the reins of the company but he's unraveling, luckily his school friend Vic sends him help in the form of Brand Forsythe, valet extraordinaire.

The story has a distinct Yaoi feel, Ash is even half Japanese. Forsythe is the all knowing, older, larger man. I loved the bigger/smaller aspect and they're own peculiar D/s dynamic:

“Brand was not whole unless he was shepherd to a lamb, and right now every soft and tender and vulnerable thing about Ashton Harrington was begging for Brand to protect him, possess him, do for him so that he might never need do for himself again. That hungry thing inside Brand needed someone to depend on him. He'd never wholly understood it – if it was about care or about control or about something else.”

or

“Ash's cheeks burned. There was both desire and shame in this, in wanting so desperately, in feeling so deeply, in begging so brazenly. He lowered his eyes away from that gaze that tore into him, searched deep, sought out everything that made him feel small, that made him want to submit to that hard, hot-sculpted body arched over his.”

It is by no means perfect. It would have benefited from a good once over from a good editor to both clean up easy mistakes and tighten the story. One must accept that this takes place in some NYC of the imagination and not the actual city. One has to make peace with the fact that Forsythe is not only an extremely competent valet but also seems to know everything about running a multimillion dollar company. One has to ignore the fact that Ash's friend Vic, a British public school graduate, would say something like:
“That's not such a bad way to feel around someone then, innit?. Vic said with unaccustomed gentleness. “How are things with your Da, then?”

Some have found the writing purple but I rather enjoyed the poetic notes that peppered the story.

If you like yaoi, D/s, Bigger/smaller and aren't looking for a dose of reality this could work for you.