My friend Lissa Matthews has a hot new book out from Loose Id and I wanted to share the excerpt. Which meant sharing the blurb. Which meant telling you that “Sugar Rush is a straight contemporary male/female erotic romance. As you can probably guess from the title, there’s something about sugar in…truffles, to be exact. Yum, right? I know. Dark chocolate truffles with a hint of spice from peppers.”
Lissa will be here blogging on Wednesday, Feb 3rd. So be here.
Here’s the blurb for you:
Graham Hall is twenty-six and has a dream job as a travel writer. He’s come to Colorado for work and a little personal down time. With his article done and the six-month lease up on the small cabin in the valley, he’s stayed around until his next assignment. In a downtown Denver bar, Graham meets Edward and after a short conversation agrees to a blind date with Edward’s business partner, Jane. Afterall, what could it hurt?
Jane is completely oblivious to the machinations of Edward and Graham and shows up at Graham’s cabin to deliver a box of handmade chocolate truffles. From the minute he opens the door, she falls head over heels in lust. A plus size, mid-thirties woman, Jane isn’t sure what Cowboy Surfer, as she’s dubbed him, sees in her or why he’s so tenacious in his pursuit and tries throwing him off at every turn.
The inability to say continue saying ‘No’ leads to hot, scorching sex and a lot of follow-up phone calls opening Jane’s eyes to the realization that maybe life doesn’t have to revolve around chocolate truffles, but rather around a delicious well traveled younger man.
And now an excerpt:
“What the…?” Graham stood with his arms braced against the window frame and watched the wobbling woman outside on his front walk. Dressed from head to toe in pink and white fluff, she carried a pink box with a dark brown bow and was wearing the most absurd shoes.
Snow had fallen the previous night, and the drive up the mountains would have been a little tricky. She looked like a ski bunny, albeit a rather curvy one. He didn’t do ski bunnies. Much as he liked outdoorsy, adventurous women, something about the winter resort crowd had never appealed to him. He preferred privacy and solitary mountain escapes with roaring fires.
She stepped onto the porch and lowered the hood of her jacket. Her hair was a rich, dark brown wavy mass that stopped at her shoulders, and her cheeks were rosy from the cold. She was muttering something between barely moving lips, then pasted on a dazzling smile, shook her head, and knocked on the door.
Graham opened it, swung it wide, and grinned down at her. “My oh my.” He let his gaze travel leisurely from the top of her tousled mane to her pointed toes. She was a delectable, pink confection, crazy-ass footwear and all. From her mumbling on the porch and her scrunched-up face to the moment she shook it off and gave his door the most beautiful smile, his cock had stirred in his jeans and he’d had a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“Oh. Wow. I, ummm…I have a delivery for…” She fumbled in her coat pocket then pulled out a card, stealing small glances up at him as her cheeks reddened further. He would bet his next paycheck it wasn’t from the cold this time. “For a Mr. Graham Hall. Are you him?”
He gave it an exaggerated thought. “If I wasn’t, I would certainly lie and say I was.” She frowned. He grinned. “What are you delivering?”
“Huh? Oh. Ummm, candy. Truffles, to be exact.”
She couldn’t stop staring at him. Did she like what she saw? He sure as hell did. “I didn’t order any truffles.”
“You didn’t?”
“Nope. I don’t even remember the last time I ate candy.”
Her frown deepened, and her brows furrowed. It was all he could do to keep from pulling her against him so he could taste those pouty lips. She was adorable. “I’m sorry for the mistake, Mr. Hall.”
“Quite all right. Would you like to come in and warm up for a bit? I can make some coffee or hot chocolate. I might even have some marshmallows around here.”
“I…uh, no, thank you. I should get back to town and see about clearing this up. I am so, so sorry for bothering you.”
She wasn’t looking at him any longer. “You didn’t. Bother me, that is, and I really must insist that you come in and get warm. Your feet have got to be cold in those…those shoes.” He grimaced as he said the word and took her by the arm, ushering her inside before she could say no again. Besides, it was damn cold out there, and he was glad to have the door closed.
She eased her arm out of his grip then backed up against the door. “Really, this isn’t necessary. My car has a very good heater and…wait, what’s wrong with my shoes?” she asked, looking down and wiggling her toes, lifting her feet off the ground one by one as if trying to see what he found so distasteful.
“They’re nothing but two pieces of leather, a couple of strings, and a spike.” And would be much better suited to digging into my ass while you were on your back. He cleared his throat and tried his best to ignore the dirty thoughts running through his mind. He glared down at her feet rather than looking at her face, at her lush mouth, in her expressive eyes. “They are the most ridiculous things to be wearing while trudging through the snow. How in the hell do you even walk in those on a good day, much less when there’s ice covering the streets and sidewalks?”
“I…well, it wasn’t snowing in the city, and I didn’t know I would have to trudge through the snow, and I park inside a garage, so I didn’t have to walk on any icy streets or sidewalks. At least I didn’t until I got here. You should really shovel your walkway. It’s dangerous not knowing where one is walking.”
Her mouth had tightened, and her eyes had narrowed in his direction. She was not happy with him or his comments, and he was falling all over it, seeing her spark. Her smile twisted him all up inside, and her irritation with him did too. He loved that she couldn’t hide her emotions, that she showed everything she was feeling.
“Common sense should have told you that you wouldn’t be taking a leisurely stroll once you got up here. We’re in the mountains in winter. You need snow shoes, not those,” he offered with a dismissive wave of his hand in the direction of her feet.
He was rewarded with a huff. She crossed her arms over her chest, boosting what little of her cleavage he could see from the small opening at the top of the zipper in her jacket. Yum.
“You know what? You said I hadn’t bothered you, but you’re not being very nice and over a pair of… Look, just because you don’t like them –”
“I don’t like them because you’re an accident waiting to happen. You wouldn’t have slipped on the ice if you’d had proper shoes on.”
Embarrassment flooded her neck with heightened color. For a second, he felt bad at revealing that he’d seen her come close to falling on her face in his front yard, but the feeling didn’t last long. She could have been seriously hurt had she fallen.
She set the box of chocolates on the table beside the door and depressed the latch behind her. “Have a nice afternoon, Mr. Hall. Keep the truffles. Give them to your neighbor, your girlfriend, or throw them out.”
She opened the door. He put his hand on it over her head and closed it back again. “Stop. Please. I’m sorry for insulting your choice of footwear.” She just looked at him over her shoulder, one brow lifted in a quizzical expression. “Come over to the fire. Take your…whatever they are off and warm yourself up before you go back out there.”
When he made to put his arm around her waist, she shrugged him off and moved out of reach, walking over to the couch. She wasn’t lithe and skinny, his candy delivery girl. The ski bunny outfit couldn’t hide the natural curves of her hips and ass.
She was all woman under that bundle of fabric.
She unlaced her shoes, and he heard her sigh with pleasure when she got them off. She stuck her feet out in front of her toward the fire and wiggled her pink-socked toes. There was nothing flirty or coquettish in her movements. He found that interesting. She wasn’t trying to come on to him; she wasn’t trying to entice him.
What a fun challenge she would be.
“I offered coffee or hot chocolate to you before. Would you like me to make some?”
“No, thanks. I’m fine.”
He joined her on the couch after picking up the box of chocolates and settled into the corner behind her. “Want one?” he asked, holding out the unopened box to her.
She shifted on the couch. “No, thanks.”
Graham shrugged to himself and untied the ribbon, lifting the lid. “Uh, honey? The –”
“My name is Jane.”
He grinned behind her. “All right. Well, Jane, there are no truffles in the box, there’s only r–”
“What!” She turned around and took the box from him, looking inside it herself, finding only small pebbles glued to the bottom of the decorative paper cups. “I’m gonna kill him. I am going to wrap his tie around his gay little neck and strangle his gay ass,” she muttered.
This is probably one of my favorite novellas. I imagine that will change the more and longer I write, but for now, it’s one of my favorites and it’s fun, sexy, snarky, and romantic. I hope everyone that reads it will enjoy it.
