From award-winning and international best-selling author Melanie A. Smith comes a standalone steamy contemporary romance about life choices, love, and finding yourself in between.
Sometimes you need a bit of tough love to get where you’re supposed to be …
Mia Anderson has been living a life that was chosen for her. But her impending thirtieth birthday is the wake-up call she needed to stop wasting time on all the wrong pursuits. Just as she’s figuring out what she wants to do about it, her beloved grandmother falls ill and Mia drops everything to be with her. What she didn’t expect to find in her grandmother’s tiny mountain town is the courage to quit working for her father, supplied by a little tough love from her Gran. Now faced with an uncertain future, the last thing on her mind is finding love.
Nate Edwards is living a solitary life deep in the Cascade Mountains of Washington. He’s content, or at least he thinks he is — until the granddaughter of a good friend shows up and he starts having feelings he thought he’d never have again. But Mia’s future isn’t in Alpine Ridge, so acting on it would lead to nothing but heartbreak. Still, their connection is undeniable and circumstances continue to push them together, despite their resistance. Will Mia stick to her decision to carve her own path? And if she does, will it be with Nate? Or is he doomed to an isolated life?
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EXCERPT:
“I need to know what it’s like to kiss you,” she whispers.
My chest tightens with longing, but I press her away far enough to look into her eyes. “Mia, you’ve had a lot to drink, and —”
“No, I think I’ve had just enough,” she interrupts, and then she breaks free of my hold and kisses me.
I’m so startled I don’t react until her arms are around the back of my neck and she slides into my lap.
Her lips are hot and supple, and she definitely tastes like the wine. But I can only fight it so much when she’s warm and willing and sitting on top of me, and I wrap my arms around her. I open my mouth and slide my tongue over her bottom lip to allow myself a real taste.
It nearly undoes me as she accepts it, as our tongues tangle while her hands wind into my hair. I slide my hands to her face, tilting her head to give me better access to her delicious mouth.
It’s heaven and hell at the same time, as all the fantasies I didn’t even let myself have come to life. Fantasies I knew I shouldn’t want. Couldn’t want. But right now, I don’t care.
I’ve kissed a lot of women in my day, but it’s never been so good. I’m burning with desire on every possible level. The fire I’ve seen in her eyes has become a raging passion between us that continues to build to an inferno as she grinds into me, as I slip a hand under her shirt, the soft skin under my fingertips causing me to moan into her mouth.
She inhales sharply and tilts her head up, and my lips finds the soft skin of her neck, licking, sucking, and biting as she makes the most erotic noises. It makes me want to strip her bare, slip inside of her, and see what other noises I can get her to make. My cock swells at the thought and she clearly feels it, grinding harder toward the spot where it meets her thigh.
It’s been too long since I’ve let myself go, and as she tugs at my shirt, my good sense rallies a cry from underneath the mind-numbing need Mia just drew out of me.
“Stop,” I breathe out, gathering myself and pressing her back. “We can’t do this.”
She looks at me, clearly bewildered. “I think your erection disagrees with you,” she sasses me.
Author Bio:
Melanie A. Smith is an award-winning and international best-selling author of steamy contemporary romance fiction. Originally from upstate New York, she spent most of her childhood in the San Francisco Bay Area before moving to Los Angeles for college. After that, she spent almost fifteen years in the Seattle Area, and now lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas with her family.
A voracious reader and lifelong writer, Melanie’s writing began at a young age with short stories and poetry. Having completed a bachelor of science in electrical engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a master’s in business administration at the University of Washington, her writing abilities were mainly utilized for technical documents as a lead engineer for the Boeing Company, where she worked for ten years.
After shifting careers to domestic engineering and property management in 2015, she eventually found a balance where she was able to return to writing fiction.
Melanie is also a Mensan and enjoys spending time with her family, cooking, and driving with the windows down and the stereo cranked up loud.
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