Waking up naked in bed with a man’s arms holding you close wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing…except when that man is your husband.

Leslie has tried so hard to put Leo’s betrayal behind her—the ink was almost dry on the divorce papers. But when circumstances throw her in bed with her estranged husband one last explosive time, Leslie learns how quickly anger can turn to passion and hurt can turn to need, even while she knows there’s no way she can ever trust him again.

What Leslie considers goodbye, Leo insists is only the beginning. But the damage between them runs too deep, and sometimes, the only thing more devastating than the night before, is the morning after...

Title: The Morning After
Author: J.K. Coi
Series: Stand Alone
Genre: Contemporary Romance, Erotic Romance
Publisher: Ellora’s Cave Publishing
Year of release: 2010, January 12
Format: eBook, 55 pages
Source: Won in a Twitter contest held by author

First line: Consciousness came slowly.
Memorable Scenes:
- Against the bedroom door scene > don't think I need to elaborate on that
- On the stairs scene > I reserve the right to refer you to my above comment
- In the club chair scene > again I refer to my above comment (seeing a pattern yet? LOL)

Quick & Dirty-review:

Ingredients:
a separated, soon-to-be-ex-couple, drugged drinks, hazy memories, two very different views on a marriage, misunderstanding and ready assumptions, steamy hot passion,

Hero:
Leo Stevenson is a successful agent to the stars. He seemed to genuinely love his wife so I was wondering what he'd done to cause Leslie to kick him out and start separation/divorce. He is lightly sexually dominant and that’s just the way I like my romance novel heroes.

Heroine:
Leslie Stevenson. The only thing I noted about Leslie other than her stubbornness and tenaciousness was her irrational fear of crowds as she was agoraphobic.

Plot/Theme:
An estranged couple who, because of miscommunication, are struggling their way back to each other

Writing:
J.K. Coi’s writing is clean, crisp and fluent. The story is fast paced because due to the short length there are no unnecessary amounts of background information. And yet you get all the information you need to fill in the gaps along the way.

Likes:
- smoking hot sex scenes
- fast pace and great writing
- resolution to the conflict

Dislikes:
- non-communication and assumptions instead of talking stuff out
- Leslie's initial refusal to explain to Leo why she kicked him out
- Leo's initial acceptance of this refusal, no questions asked whereas in other areas his dominance shone through
- Leslie's acceptance of how her father dictates her life

Verdict:
THE MORNING AFTER is a smoking hot and well rounded for a very short novella. It was an unputdownable lightning-quick read that I enjoyed immensely and makes me hunt down all J.K. Coi's erotic contemporary work asap!

Favorite Quotes:
Need, desire, anger and pain all swirled together in his gut until he was afraid it would overflow and cause him to do something stupid--like kiss her. Fuck. How many times was she going to be able to rip out his soul before there was nothing left of him? Why was he letting her?

(...) and she knew that he was gauging her reaction to every one of his long, controlled thrusts. Slow thrusts to drive her crazy. Slow thrusts until she completely lost control. He'd always been relentless when it came to sex, driving her until she fell apart, mind, body, soul. There was something inside him that needed to dominate her responses until she begged him to let her come.

He couldn't get enough of her touch, needing it as much as he'd always needed her, with a fierce, possessive intensity that sometimes frightened him to his soul.