Oooooh book-catnip alert! Delicious sounds…. delicious. 😉 He’s scarred, and reclusive, and… in love with her. :D!!
<— Author Cybill Cain is this week’s newsletter sponsor, and she’s having a HUGE sale on this SEXY Christmas-themed romance!! Only $0.99 cents today, while we continue to celebrate this awesome Holiday!! Plus, she’s sent over an excerpt for us to “taste-test” it. See what I did there? 😛
She says:
“This Christmas love story is so hot you’ll forget it’s cold outside. Grab the cookies and the nog, put the phone on silent and prepare to be seduced by Delicious.”
❤Let Cybill tuck you in tonight. ❤
Book Synopsis for Delicious:
One taste will never be enough.
James Draven is a handsome successful billionaire, and the driving force behind the Chimera Club. He’s at the top of his game when he sees the woman he’s been waiting for across a crowded restaurant. His plans to seduce and claim her are brought to a screeching halt when he crashes his car, leaving him scarred, angry and alone, surviving on dreams of the woman he almost met in another life.
Della Martin grew up an orphan, and worked her way to the top of New York’s gourmet elite. When she’s summoned to receive a compliment her first night as head chef she glimpses a man that takes her breath away, but before she can get to him fate intervenes, and she makes a choice that prevents their meeting. A year later, still dreaming of the handsome stranger, she meets Thomas Meenan, who tells her that the man she can’t stop thinking about is in trouble, and only she can save him.
Excerpt from Cybill Cain’s Delicious
***
“Jesus, Delicious. What did you do?” he asked, taking my hand in his, and putting it back over the sink. “That’s deep,” he muttered, looking at my wounds under the water. I felt the cuts start to sting, but barely noticed. He was here. He was standing beside me, the sheer size of him made me breathless, and he’d called me Delicious again, like he had the first night.
He grabbed a clean dish towel. “Keep pressure on it.” He disappeared as quickly as he had appeared. As I held the towel tightly on the cuts I wondered if he was coming back. A few minutes later he did, carrying a first aid kit in his hands. “Come over to the table, Della.” He pulled a chair out for me, and another close to it.
My mind wasn’t working right, because even with my wounds I couldn’t help but wonder if Della was a step up or a step down from Delicious. I hissed when he took the dishtowel away, and the blood immediately started streaming down my hand again. “Put your hand here,” he said, placing another clean towel on the table. I glanced up and saw his soft gray eyes filled with worry, before he dropped his gaze and reached into the first aid kit.
I hissed again when he doused my wounds in peroxide. “Sorry,” he muttered, glancing at me again, before focusing on my hand. “This is a topical anesthetic,” he told me as he sprayed my hand. “It’ll make it easier for the stitches.”
“Stitches?” I asked, speaking for the first time since he’d appeared.
“Yes, you need them.”
“A-And you can do that?” His eyes met mine again, this time holding my gaze with a warm confidence that gave me the tingles.
“Yes. I can take care of you, Della.” It felt like he was talking about more than my fingers, causing a flurry of thoughts to tangle in my mind. One simple sentence had knocked the bottom out of me.
Oh, you were wrong, James, I thought as I stared into his eyes. You are still the man I saw at Lemonge, confident, calm, dominant and breathtakingly sexy. I forgot all about my hand, and what had happened earlier, as I stared into his eyes.
This was the man who had kissed me. This was the one who’d known exactly how to touch me when he pulled me into his bed. This was the man I had come half way around the world to see.
“I believe you,” I told him. He smiled, just a little and shook his head as if to clear it, before he looked back at my hand, and started rummaging in the kit again. When I saw the needle I must have made a sound because he spoke to me again in a soothing tone.
“It’ll be all right, Della. Just stay with me, and everything will be all right.” Were we still talking about my hand?
“Where did you learn how to do this?” I asked as I watched him work. He completed the first stitch, and all I felt was a slight pressure. He was really good at this.
“In college, my best friend Max and I used to hike on the weekends. For safety we took a first aid course, so we could patch each other up if necessary. We liked to go way out into the wilderness. If something had happened, and we didn’t know how to handle it properly, it would have been dangerous.” He’d been so shut off with me that it seemed odd to hear him speak so casually about having close friends.
“What’s he like? Your best friend?” He chuckled, but kept his eyes on what he was doing.
“A pain in the ass. Even with his busy schedule and his new wife, he still won’t quit calling me.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s an actor.” I only knew of one famous Max who had recently married. The story had been top news for a week when he married his reclusive artist girlfriend from North Carolina. I remembered they had looked so happy together in the pictures I’d seen online and in the news; almost like they knew some secret the rest of us had yet to figure out. That Max couldn’t be his Max, could he?
“Max Alexander? Max Alexander is your best friend from college?” His eyes met mine, and for just a second I thought I saw jealousy in them, but he looked down again before I could be sure.
“Fangirl,” he scoffed at me, but I saw the corner of his mouth quirk up in amusement. “I run one of the largest multinational conglomerates in the world, but you get wet for Max,” he mumbled. He was jealous! I chuckled, disturbing his concentration with my involuntary movement. “Be still,” he scolded. “I’m nearly done here.” I sobered instantly. Would he disappear again when he was done with caring for my wounds?
As he concentrated I took the opportunity to look at his face. He had healed remarkably well. There were scars, but they did not diminish his handsome visage as much as he seemed to think. He caught me staring. “I know I’m hideous. You don’t have to stare,” he snapped, but his touch remained soft and tender. I shook my head. I was over this attitude in a major way.
“Stop telling me what I think.”
“I’m just saying what everyone thinks.”
“I’m not everyone,” I said through my locked angry jaw. “You should take the time to figure that out.” He sighed, sounding exhausted, but never wavered in his gentle care for me. I couldn’t bear the thought of him leaving me alone again.
He started on the second wound, dousing it again to clear away the blood still coming out before putting in another stitch. He glanced up at me occasionally, meeting my eyes before looking back down at what he was doing. I met his gaze each time, wondering how best to reach him, and convince him of the things my words had failed to get across. There was only one other way I could think of, but it meant I had to be bolder than I had ever been before.
When he finished sewing up my fingers, he wrapped them in gauze, and taped them loosely. He was putting everything back into the first aid kit when I slid off my chair and onto my knees, kneeling before him. I leaned in, placing my hands on his muscular thighs to maintain my balance. I saw his chest hitch once. His hands stopped moving, and hovered over the kit, frozen, as if he was afraid of what might come next.
On my knees, I walked a step closer to him, moving deeper into the V of his legs. I put one hand on each side of his face, and gently pulled him to face me. The things I saw in his soft gray velvet gaze gutted me. I deliberately used his words from the first night, hoping they’d spark some memory and feeling of shared desire between us again.
“Did you dream about me like this, James?” I asked him, barely more than a whisper. “I dreamed about me like this.” His eyes widened briefly, before he searched my face, perhaps wondering if he was dreaming now. “I came all this way for a kiss. May I have it?”
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