Before we get to the very hot excerpt from The Chef’s Cutie, out December 16, available for pre-order now. Rebecca and Jamaila are giving away three copies of their book. Comment now through 11:59 pm Friday, December 13 below for a chance to win an ARC.

This excerpt features Max and Lizzie’s first time together, which comes after spending months trying to fight their attraction. Of course, a New Year’s Eve kiss a few chapters before makes it even harder for him to resist her when she shows up on his doorstep in the middle of a freak snow storm, telling him that she wants him – everything else be damned. If there’s one romance trope I love above all others, it’s the good old snowed-in together with only one bed one, and these two make really good use of his.

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“The truth is, I’m not sure that’s what I want to do anymore.” Lizzie bit her lip. “I hadn’t realized it until now, is all.”

“What do you want to do?” Max asked.

“In the future? I don’t know. Right now?” She pulled away from him, and his brain short circuited and started a hasty reboot process. 

Because she’d just pulled off her shirt.

“I. Uh.” He realized he was panting. Actually panting, like a dog. “Lizzie.”

She grinned at him, a slow curve of her lips leading up to sparkling blue eyes that held none of the worry and stress she’d been radiating every time he’d seen her lately. She was nothing short of spectacular. “I think right now, we should get naked and see what happens.”

“But—”

She put a hand on his chest and he froze. “Listen. I’ve been reading quite a few romance novels lately.”

He blinked. It was such a non-sequitur that he found himself able to tear his gaze away from the view of her breasts cupped in perfect cream lace and back up to her face. “What?”

“I was pretty dubious about them, but it turns out that what they’re really about is women standing up for themselves and taking what they want. And right now, Max, I want you.”

“Feeling’s mutual,” he managed to croak.

“Then you’re wearing too many clothes.”

The next few seconds were a blur.

Somehow, they made it to his bedroom, shedding clothes in a trail he was going to have to remember to pick up before his niece got home tomorrow morning. 

He tumbled Lizzie onto his bed, pausing for a moment to admire the sight of her sprawled against his sheets, eyes dark with desire as they looked him up and down. When her gaze took in his cock, he felt it harden even further. He groaned out loud. “You can’t look at it like that.”

She licked her lips and his knees buckled. He fell forward onto the bed, bracing himself above her with his arms locked. She wrapped her legs around his waist and he gave up all pretense of resistance.

His lips made a trail from her neck to her breast, and the gasps and moans she made as he closed his lips around her nipple bubbled in his veins like champagne. Her skin was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted; he was ruined for desserts forever. He sucked gently and swirled his tongue in a circle around the hardening bud as her fingers clamped onto his arms. 

“Max,” she moaned.

“I’m just getting started,” he said against her skin. 

He licked his way over to the other nipple, repeating the treatment. By the time he moved further down, she was arching against him and gasping for breath. When he reached ribs that were more visible than he expected, he scraped his teeth gently across them, surprised by how much weight she had lost since they’d first met. The stress she’d described a few minutes earlier had taken a harder toll on her than Max had realized. But he was a chef; if there was one thing in this world he was good at, it was feeding people. Nourishing them. He liked to think in both body and soul. 

He chuckled against her skin. 

It all came back to wanting to feed her. 

And he would. Again. Soon. Later. 

But right now …

He wrapped his hand around her knee and raised his head to look up at her. “Can I move you?”

“God, Max, you can do anything you want to me,” she whispered.

“Duly noted.” He bent her knee and slid her leg up and over. “How about this?” He slid a finger gently along her crease, following it with his lips.

“Yes, yes, yes,” she chanted.

“Mmm. And this?” He tasted her, finally, and her ‘yes’ turned into a shriek.

He grinned against her warmth and dove in, finding the perfect angle to swirl his tongue against her clit to make her shake. He kept one hand splayed against her hips and brought the other to her entrance, touching gently and waiting for her.

“Please,” she whispered. “More.”

He slid one finger into her, letting the flat of his tongue swipe against it as he took her higher. Her breathing grew faster, more labored, and she arched against his hand on her hip. He added pressure to keep her in place and slid a second finger inside, sucking gently on her clit and curving his fingers and tongue against her. He felt her stiffening a second before she came, crying out his name. 

It was the best thing he’d heard all day. 

He stroked her through it until she went limp against him, then raised his head to look at her.

She met his eyes and smiled, dark and sultry. “Come here,” she said.

Obeying, he slid his body along hers, enjoying the shudders underneath him as he hit every sensitive part of her. He took it slow, and by the time he lay full against her, they were both gasping for air. She opened her legs wider, and his cock brushed against her warm, wet heat. “Nightstand,” he said. “Hang on.”

She nodded, and used the time it took him to reach with one arm into the drawer of his bedside table to reduce him to a quivering wreck by tracing the inside of his other elbow with her tongue and teeth. 

“Oh, god. Lizzie … ah … let me—” Soon the words coming out of his mouth weren’t even words at all, more like grunts and half-formed syllables, as he tore the condom open with shaking hands and somehow managed roll it on. 

Then he moved over her, and suddenly her hands were everywhere, raking against him, tugging him downward, sliding over his ass. Her lips met his again, the sweetness of her mouth mixing with the deeper flavor of her core, and he thought he might actually come right then and there. 

He slid a hand down between them and closed it around the base of his cock, willing himself to hold out. She chuckled, a low and dirty sound, as he buried his face in her skin, mouthing her neck and breasts and every inch he could reach. She did the same, and the scrape of her teeth against his collarbone undid him. 

He rose up, shifted them both, and finally did what he’d been wanting to do since the first day she’d showed up on his doorstep.

Sinking into her felt like coming home.

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I have known Jamaila since she recorded an episode of my now defunct podcast, Romance Romp. I recently met Rebecca and was on panels with her during Baltimore Book Festival