A Tuesday treat- an excerpt from Every New Year by Katrina Jackson. This book releases on 12/31/19 and is available for pre-order now. This book looks sexy AF and I can’t wait to read it.
Blurb:
When Ezra Posner was eighteen, he met Candace Garret and fell in love.
When Candace met Ezra, she instantly knew he was the boy for her.
In the middle of their first year at college, Candace and Ezra share a clumsy kiss that should have been the beginning of an epic love affair, but it’s not. Instead, it begins a nearly two-decade journey of never quite getting the timing right for love. For almost every New Year’s Eve after, Candace and Ezra stumble into one another’s arms, but can’t manage to hold onto each other for more than a single night. They live with the expectant giddiness of being able to spend New Year’s Eve with the person they love, always hoping that next year will be their year. Until eventually, their annual trysts ruin even the friendship that held them together.
As 2019 ends, Candace and Ezra are both running away from their broken hearts. They board a plane hoping to finally move on from their relationship, only to run right into each other’s arms.
Every New Year is a friends-to-lovers romance that takes nearly twenty years to bloom. It’s also the first in the Love At Last series, where happily ever afters might take some time to mature, but they’re always worth the wait.
Content Warnings:
parental sickness (cancer, diabetes, hypertension)
EXCERPT:
For the past three years, Candace had travelled from Ecuador to Nicaragua, Jamaica, Mexico (to get to Cuba without having her passport stamped), Puerto Rico, New York, Toronto, Vancouver and then home. She hadn’t planned any leg of that travel except the last part. Mei had asked her to be her maid of honor over Skype. She’d emailed Candace’s official invitation. Candace had sent her measurements by email to Mei and Candace’s cousin Lisa — who was a similar height and weight — had stood in at her fittings. Mei didn’t care as long as Candace made it to the wedding. That was her only request. And she’d only had to ask once, because there was no way Candace would miss Miles and Mei’s wedding. There was no way she could bear to miss seeing Ezra one more time.
But she’d thought all she’d do was look, because that’s all she’d really been accustomed to doing in college. Except for those three nights when there had been hugs and a little light making out, and that one time when they’d defiled Teddy. But now Ezra was holding her hand, leading her down the hall to his hotel room, turning every now and then to smile at her as if to reassure himself that she was still there. She squeezed his hand and their warm palms pressed together, because she needed to be reminded that this was real too.
When Ezra’s hotel room door closed behind them, the quiet was deafening. She blinked into the darkness and gasped when she felt his soft breath on her skin. His lips tentatively touched her back just at the top of her spine. She moaned as his wet tongue traced the skin over her right shoulder before his forehead pressed against her skin and his big hands settled on her waist.
She’d had dreams like this, but she’d never believed they’d come true.
His breath was ragged against her skin. This wasn’t the Ezra she knew. The boy who’d been blushing at her longer than she could remember right up until a few hours ago. This new Ezra was more like the Ezra of her dreams. The Ezra she’d been carrying around with her all over the Americas. The Ezra she sometimes conjured to mind when she touched herself or even when she fucked her ex-boyfriend. The Ezra she’d wanted so desperately she could taste him on her tongue, imagining what he would feel like in her hand and mouth and pussy since she’d never gotten the chance.
But she didn’t have to settle for dream Ezra, she realized. For the first time in so long, he was right behind her. Holding her.
She turned in his arms and he stepped back just enough to let her move. But he never let her go. She swallowed a groan as his hands rubbed along her waist and over her stomach, his hard body still so close. His eyes were focused on her mouth and she sucked her bottom lip between her teeth.
Ezra groaned.
Candace smiled. God, she’d missed him. She raised her hands to his chest and lifted her right eyebrow. “You been lifting weights, Ezra?”
His chest hitched before he spoke. “Miles made me start going to the gym with him.”
She smiled. “Just like he used to make you come to our dorm room freshman year?”
His fingers flexed and dug into her hips. “He never had to make me come to your room,” he whispered.
It was her turn for her chest to hitch. She leaned into his body, the smell of his cologne engulfing her as she pressed herself to him. The hard points of her silk-covered nipples touched him first. Her mouth fell open on a soft sigh. Her hands moved up his chest to glide around his neck, and then her fingers sunk into the hair at his nape. “God, Ezra,” she whispered just as he captured her mouth with his own.
Candace wouldn’t have said that Ezra had been her best kiss ever, especially not that first kiss. But what she could say was that every kiss with him was always better than the last. And this kiss was by far the best. Not because it was perfect, but because they poured themselves wholeheartedly into it. Candace loved Ezra’s awkwardness, his blushing, all that nervous energy and banked intensity, and this kiss was that times infinity. He plied Candace’s lips open with his own and slipped his tongue into her mouth, groaning when her tongue eagerly met his. She smiled and he kissed her deeper, gripped her hips tighter and pulled her close. Candace sighed and wrapped her arms around his neck, meeting every thrust of his tongue and press of his lips with equal fervor, reveling in a kiss she’d been too scared to hope for. As Ezra kissed her, she let her bruised heart imagine that he’d missed her almost as much as she’d missed him.
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