There’s sweet romance, there’s YA romance. There’s romantic comedic, romantic tragedy.
And then there’s hot romance—stories that cut past the chase, right to the incendiary contact of lovers.
It’s no surprise that your favorite BestsSelling authors have stories that will make your heart pound and heat up every part of you.
Here are a few samples:
For the Win
By Raine Thomas
Locking the door behind them and turning on his phone’s flashlight, he pulled Jasmine over to a small side room with a workbench against the far wall. He strode over to the workbench, put his phone down, and pulled her hard against him, claiming her lips in a searing kiss.
She immediately sank into it. He heard a soft thud that he vaguely registered as her purse hitting the floor. She reached up to clutch the lapels of his suit jacket. His hands spanned her waist, itching to pull her even closer. When she parted her lips, he tasted her like he’d been craving to all evening, though he knew he was playing with fire.
God, he wanted her…more than he’d ever wanted another woman.
About For the Win
Determination.
It’s what gets Jasmine Li out of bed every morning. She’s determined to overcome the injury that has derailed her career in ballet, the only love she’s ever known.
Commitment.
Will Campbell defines the word. It’s what makes him a successful pitcher and it’s helping him learn how to be a single dad to a little girl with plenty of trust issues. Just his luck, the one person his daughter—and his heart—finally respond to is a stubborn, sexy ballerina with plans that don’t involve relationships or children.
But Will didn’t become the best closer in the majors by giving up. He knows what he wants and what his daughter needs, and he’s going to get it. Jasmine Li has met her match…and he’s playing for the win.
The Hunt for Xanadu
By Elyse Salpeter
Kelsey glanced over her shoulder at the man, craning her neck upwards to see his face. Yes, it was him, though he was taller than she’d originally thought, pegging him to be about six feet two. He was also significantly broader and more handsome, too, with what looked like a three-day growth of beard creating a dark shadow on his jaw.
His full lips were posed in a quirky smile making him appear youthful. She couldn’t fixate on his age, but she estimated him to be in his early thirties.
She glanced at his unruly mop of brown hair, but it was his remarkable eyes that drew her in. They were a blue-green, with flecks of yellow dotting through them, making them appear to shine and sparkle.
With an effort, she pulled her gaze away and back to the artists.
About The Hunt for Xanadu
She survived… but she was the only one.
Who murdered her parents?
At twenty-two years old, Kelsey Porter has been trying to avenge her parent’s death for years. Why had they taken her to Tibet? Why had they actually believed in the mystical land of Xanadu? Why had they dedicated their life to finding it… only to get killed on their quest? Xanadu wasn’t real.
Or was it?
She needed to know more and with the help of Detective Desmond Gisborne, maybe they could find the killers and avenge her parent’s deaths. She had nothing to lose.
Or did she?
One Shade of Red
By Scott Bury
I was sure she could hear my heart pounding, because that’s all I could hear at that point. I hadn’t noticed what she was wearing when I got in the car. As we passed under streetlamps, I could see that she was wearing a pink jogging jacket, but her legs were bare.
She noticed me looking at her. “That’s right, Damian. This jacket is all I have on.”
With that, she swung the car into her driveway. I sat there, staring as she walked, bare-assed, to her front door, the flip-flops of her sandals echoing down the street. She turned to me from the step, smiled and pulled off the jacket. She posed for a second, nude, and tossed the jacket into the house, then stepped inside.
She left the door open. I ran in after her, slammed the door behind me and took the stairs two at a time.
About One Shade of Red
Women want the perfect man, so they can change him. But when university student Damian Serr discovers a rich, beautiful woman who’s voracious about sex, he doesn’t try to improve on perfection. It’s all that he can do to hold on for the ride.
Widow Alexis Rosse is far from helpless or lonely. This beautiful financial genius is busy turning the markets upside-down, and she revels in sex wherever, whenever and with whomever she wants.
Over the summer, Alexis gives Damian an intense education. Day after day, she pushes him to his sexual limits. The only question he has is: will she break them?
Mist-Chi-Mas
By J.L. Oakley
“What are you reading today?” she asked as sat down on a stool.
“An American— Emerson.” He sat down next to her and cut some cheese and bread. He gave her a sampling.
She opened the book to an essay and read out loud, “Self-Reliance.” He leaned over her shoulder and read a paragraph or two before they grew too conscious of each other.
“Self-reliance, indeed. More like wit’s end,” Breed said. “Something I learned at a young age.” He kissed her on her shouldermjnm/. A crumb dropped from her mouth onto the pages. Breed picked it up and put it into her mouth. She closed her mouth down on his fingers.
“Did we come to read or talk?” he asked,
Jeannie laughed. “You undid me, sir, with your proposal. I can’t contain my joy.”
“You’ve undone me, Mrs. King George.”
Jeannie closed her eyes as he lightly ran his fingers over her arms, his breath at her neck. She leaned into his shoulder and did not protest when he put his other hand on top of her corset where her breasts swelled. My own choice.
“I love you, He said. “You are kloshe tum tum to me. Gently, he pulled on the ribbon that suspended the thimble and drew it out. He kissed it. “Toketie. On my mother’s grave, my pledge to you.”
About Mist-Chi-Mas
In MIST-CHI-MAS: A NOVEL OF CAPTIVITY, everyone is bound to something.
Englishwoman Jeannie Naughton never intends to run away from life, but in 1860 a woman’s reputation is everything. A scandal not of her own making forces her to flee to an island in the Pacific Northwest. The island, home to Coast Salish people and Hawaiians working for the Hudson’s Bay Company, is jointly occupied by British and American military forces.
Jeannie settles into life at English Camp where she meets American Jonas Breed. As a youth he was captured and held as a slave—a mist-chi-mas—by the Haida. Jeannie forms a passionate, hidden liaison with Breed.Jeannie and Breed plan to run away and marry. News that Breed has been killed in a fight with a dangerous smuggler causes Jeannie to take refuge with Andrew Pierce, an acquaintance of Breed’s. She marries Pierce, then moves to Seattle.
Twenty years later, recently widowed, Jeannie receives a note that Breed may be alive. Jeannie now embarks on a journey to find Breed, unaware she is stirring up an old and dangerous struggle of power and revenge.
Life and Being
By DelSheree Gladden
I locked my legs around his waist as he carried me up the stairs. Holding no fear that he would drop me, my hands roamed over his chest, sliding onto his face and pulling his mouth up to mine. Everything I’d felt as he kissed my neck dulled in comparison to what rushed through me then. I felt as though I were on fire as his mouth claimed me. It wasn’t just lust fueling our frenzy. I knew then that no amount of fear would ever change my mind about being with Sanford.
About Life and Being
Although he hasn’t spoken to Dahlia Carter since they graduated high school two years ago, football player catches Sanford Camden rushes to catch up with her, and warn her the police are watching the campus. Dahlia storms away. That should be the end of it. Move on. For some reason Sanford can’t quite explain, it’s only the beginning.
Dahlia can’t decide whether Sanford is simply weird or if he’s not all there. Neither option explains why he shows up at a party to stalk her, then lock lips just to piss off the skanky girl hounding him. It puts everything at risk, in fact. If her dad ever finds out…about any of her extracurricular activities…
An insane father becomes the least of Dahlia’s worries when long-hidden secrets bubble to the surface, and what once seemed like paranoid delusions become threats to her life.
Ma Ma Loa
A Vampire in Waikiki, Book #3
By AJ Llewellyn
“Oh, Div…”
He was lapping at me, and I felt my whole body go slack. Oh, he was a bad man, capable of keeping me hard and panting for hours. I could smell the remnants of our supper—strawberries and cream, fresh ahi tunaf or our cat, Moontime—and I screamed out in hunger for my husband. “Give it to me! Please, Div, please!”
He raised his mouth from my flesh, and I grabbed him with both hands and pointed. Like the man didn’t know I needed him right where I always wanted it, where he needed to put it.
“You ready for me, baby?”
He should have known better than to tease me. I bit his neck, sending him spastic with desire. He leapt right into me as his blood met mine, our souls sighing, and then Div eased me away from his neck as his heartbeat quickened. Sadly, I sealed the two tiny fissures with my tongue.
About Ma Ma Loa
Waikiki vampire Jimmy Thunder is excited to finally have his cherished mate Tem all to himself. With their family members gone, and this being Valentine’s Day, he has one thing on his mind—some hot undead, man-on-man action. Except Jimmy’s life is never that simple.
Tem is troubled by bad dreams of the life he left behind. And Jimmy, the go-to guy for Waikiki’s undead denizens, is required to come up with a new Ma Ma Loa. But who, or what, is a Ma Ma Loa? Can’t a guy be left in piece to enjoy love’s most famous day?
A Case of Sour Grapes
By Gae-Lynn Woods
“That’s not what I meant,” Bruce said. “Are you okay to stay here alone?”
I hadn’t thought about that. It was one of those things I could avoid until I had to face it head on, and now was the moment of truth. Tears stung the back of my eyes and my lower lip quivered. I bit it to keep it still.
Bruce watched, then took me in his arms, pulling me close. I rested my head against his chest and let the rhythm of his breathing and his thumb tracing circles on the back of my neck relax me.
I lifted my head, intending to thank him, but he brought his lips to mine and kissed me. Softly at first, and then with more heat. I lifted my hands to his broad shoulders and he circled my waist with his arms. His hands, rough with calluses, slipped under my blouse and electricity crackled along my spine. He pulled my hips to his and desire exploded through me.
At last he pulled back, his soft brown eyes shining with lust and concern in equal measure. “Pack some clothes and stay with us for a few days. At least until your new furniture arrives.”
His face was so open and full of hope I couldn’t help but say yes.
“Good,” Bruce said. “I’ll do the dishes while you pack.”
A man who cooks and does the dishes? That’s the second most sexy thing out there. My knees trembled as he picked up a sponge.
About A Case of Sour Grapes
Wine, women, and song. What could possibly go wrong?
Meet Maxine Leverman, lover of expensive shoes, beautiful handbags, and her lingerie wearing ex-husband’s hush money. When she pleads her way into a job at family run Lost and Found Investigations, Maxine’s only goal is to gain the concealed carry license and PI skills she needs to find the man who attacked her, and then kill him. (Or maybe just put him in jail, that decision can wait.)
But when she secretly takes a missing husband case on her first day at the agency, she stumbles into a high-stakes game of blackmail and murder. Maxine must unravel the links between a forgotten folk punk band, an international drug cartel, and the tangled history of the missing husband to keep the women in his life alive.
And a special treat: a glimpse at a bestseller in progress:
Unveiled
By Samreen Ahsan
His mouth left hers, kissing and licking from her jawline, to her earlobe, to her neck, as he slid the white denim jacket from her shoulders. She was glad she had showered and smelled good. As if he knew that she was uncomfortable on the bench, he lowered her onto the mat, continuing to kiss from her neck to her shoulders, caressing her bare arms.
Her whole body was on fire. She wanted to show him that she wasn’t trading herself for anyone. To give him a sign, she bent her knees in pleasure. He ran his hand from her ankle into her sundress.
She had not been touched like this by any man. His hands worked like a virtuoso pianist. Why isn’t he taking off my dress? If she asked him, would it sound desperate? She had never been so desperate for a man’s touch until he touched her. His hand slid inside her dress, caressing her left ankle, her calf, then her thigh, rising higher. She wanted his hands and lips on her breast, too. Was she getting too greedy?
His hand left her thigh and sneaked around her back to unlock her bra. A moan escaped her lips. He kissed her again on the lips and, in one swift move, pulled out her bra, throwing it away. His hand returned to cup her breast, directly on her skin, teasing her nipple.
She wanted more.
“Kiss me,” she demanded. She dug her nails into his arms. “Kiss me everywhere.” She was breathless, caught up in his storm and let herself be blown, battered, as they ravaged each other.
About Unveiled
How far will a mother go for her missing child?
She can walk barefoot through the fires of Hell.
She can be friends with the Devil.
She can sleep with the Devil.
And when it is needed, she can be the Devil.
As the only daughter of an orthodox Imam, Amal Sadik knows what it means to cut all ties with the past—until it returns with vengeance. Amal learns her radicalized daughter has joined Daesh as a jihadi bride. To rescue her daughter, Amal travels to the militant camps to become a jihadi herself.
Abdullah Yaqub is the best, most ruthless commander in ISIS. Commanding six hundred men and with new recruits joining every day, he has money, power, wealth and women falling his feet. The only thing he cannot afford is love—but he falls for a recruit who offers him only damnation.
This action-packed thriller takes a woman from the motherhood to the horror of radicalization, and a strong woman to seduction in a war zone, as she risks her life and soul to save her daughter.