RELEASE BLITZ
Title: Spooning Leads to Forking
Series: Hot in the Kitchen #2
Author: Kilby Blades
Genre: Contemporary Romance/Romantic Comedy
Release Date: April 28, 2020
BLURB
Leaving her name—and her job as a top food critic—behind in New York, Shea Summers seeks respite in Sapling. Her borrowed mountain getaway seems perfect for writing her opus. It’s also perfect for riding out a messy divorce and hiding the roomful of cash she kind-of-sort-of stole from her ex.
Too bad Sapling is a remote, three-restaurant town with food that leaves much to be desired. Sexy grocer, Dev Kingston, may be Shea’s saving grace. The way he looks at her with his aspen-green eyes shows her everything her marriage was missing, and he can special-order every delicacy she craves.
But Shea’s not the only one who isn’t what she seems. Dev moonlights as a sheriff’s deputy, a fact she finds out too late; a string of suspicious crimes finds newcomers under scrutiny; and her ex is going to extremes to find out where she is.
Taking the money and living under an assumed name might be on the right side of wrong, but dating Dev is a dangerous game. She's still running and he's still the law.
GOODREADS LINK: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49390330-spooning-leads-to-forking
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EXCERPTS
#1
Act natural, Shea instructed herself after she’d parked, let herself out and slammed shut her car door. Slinging her bag over her shoulder, she gave herself a pep talk as she took measured steps toward the door:
People go to the market more than twice a week in a lot of cultures.
It’s not a crime anywhere to show up looking cute. Own it.
The first part of her little routine was being the first to say hello. He was almost always near the front—not at either of the three lonely registers—behind a computer at the customer service desk. The service area was on a raised platform and sat adjacent to the leftmost register. Shea surmised he could process refunds for customers—only there were never many customers. Weekend mornings aside, it wasn’t uncommon for she and Dev to be the only ones in the store.
“Oh, hey, Dev,” she said breezily, casting him a slightly lingering smile. Sapling was a place where people stopped to greet one another. There was eye contact and genuine curiosity, and a growing warmth as people started to get to know her. When it came to Shea, Dev’s prevalent emotion seemed to be amusement.
Far be it from her to disown her own quirks. Her culinary requests were bizarre—bordering on outlandish—even for a health food specialty store. She didn’t dress like anyone else in Sapling, despite having once thought the garments she’d cherry-picked from her New York closet to be quite tame. If not for Dallas Eaton—the guy who wore 80s track suits and walked down Oliver Street with his macaw on his shoulder—Shea could win an award for most unusual fashion sense in town.
“Mornin’ Shea.”
Dev’s warm baritone made her as melty as Nutella on oven-fresh brioche. She’d come to crave it like sugar. As expected, he sat in front of his laptop and the desk was littered with papers. Apart from Mondays and Thursdays, when the deliveries came, he tended to be glued to his seat, unless he was helping some random customer.
Half the fun for Shea was being a customer who needed help. Seeking his guidance had become addictive. At the beginning, it had been legitimate to confirm whether he carried things like prepared guacamole, pre-bottled, MCT-enhanced cold brew coffee and manuka honey. But she’d been shown the location of so many items, and knew the store so well by then, her new help requests were pure theater. Asking for obscure items tucked away in odd corners of the store was her newest gambit.
Pushing back in his rolling chair in a single, smooth motion, Dev got to his feet. Shea was ridiculously charmed by the gesture. Men who walked on the outside and rose when a lady walked into the room were a dying breed. Sure, she could chalk it up to attentive customer service, but her intuition told her Devon Kingston was a real gentleman.
“Looking for anything special?” She caught the bemused smirk that played at his lips a second before said lips captured his straw. He drank dark green juice from the same clear cup every day. Whatever he put in there, it was working. Dev was the picture of vitality—tall and lean and built like a cyclist, or a swimmer, or a rock climber or the player of any endurance sport. Shea didn’t know when he played said sports because he always seemed to be at the market. Still, a healthy tan proved he found time to be outdoors.
His beard was lustrous and dark—in her fantasies she had touched it—and it was impossibly soft. It matched silky hair that was shaven on the sides and grown in on the top and tousled just right. Spiked up at the roots somehow with ends that fell into form without looking stiff, it managed to achieve a frightening shine. But his eyes—God, his eyes—they were the real stars of her fantasies, not dull green like his juice—bright and vibrant like aspen leaves. Even his skin seemed to glow.
“Any chance my order is in?” Shea asked, knowing full well today was Wednesday and deliveries were Mondays and Thursdays.
“Sorry. You’re a day early,” he said.
“Oh.” She pouted a little, then appeared to recover from feigned disappointment.
Dev leaned his hip against the counter and his lips eased into a slow smile. “Guess you’ll just have to come back tomorrow.”
The rumble of his voice gave her a shiver. “I guess I will.”
#2
“Hey—do you have any sumac?” she asked, circling back to the front after looking for the herb herself. She’d become convinced that a little sumac was the perfect addition to the aioli they served with the calamari at The Big Spoon. Sapling had exactly three restaurants: Delilah’s served sweet and savory pastries. Gator’s Sports Bar had pub food and wings. The Big Spoon served breakfast, lunch and dinner had the largest menu of them all.
“Sumac is edible?” Dev looked up from shuffling his papers, looking a bit surprised.
She frowned. “What else would it be?”
“Poisonous,” Dev picked up his green juice cup again. “Worse than poison ivy, but not as bad as poison oak. Poison sumac’ll give you a rash all over your body.”
“Huh,” Shea tutted. “Well, it’s a spice, too. I’ve never seen it in the wild, but the flower is a deep red. It’s actually kind of beautiful.”
Then, Dev did that thing he did whenever they got to talking. He got quiet for a minute, but never broke their gaze. In moments like that, he had this way of looking at her that made her feel like he was right up in her space, rather than all the way across the room.
“Sounds like you want it?” his lips settled into a half-smile. The full smile, she’d noticed was for genuine amusement. The half-smile seemed to mean something else. It held a different sort of softness too intimate to have a name.
“If you can get it…” Her voice held shyness and hope and all the other complex tones she’d forgotten her voice could make. The thrill of possibility was a heady thing. She felt it in spades every time she talked to Dev.
“How much do you need?” he wanted to know, shifting his weight to lean against the counter with one hip.
“I guess a single bottle is fine.”
The warmth in his eyes lingered even as the set of his lips changed. “I can get you sumac.”
What else can you get me?
Shea came close to saying it out loud. Her face heated, not so much in a blush of embarrassment as in a flush of lust. With Dev, lust flushes had become a thing. Nodding her thanks, she walked off before she could pounce on the man. With every visit, she wanted to a little bit more. Her life was still too messy for all of that. But she had willpower. Discipline. She could be patient and methodical until whatever wanted to happen was meant to be, just as she’d been patient and methodical in plotting her divorce.
#3
Dev Kingston has some nerve, Shea said to herself rather unreasonably. She’d been mentally cursing the man all morning. He was utterly responsible for her lack of concentration. Maybe some of the blame ought to be put on Delilah, whose abrupt disappearance the night before had perpetrated events that left Shea and Dev alone in his car.
Even before last night, Shea had struggled to remain impervious to his charm. Seeing him with Evie had done nothing to diminish his appeal. There were few things more attractive than a man who doted on his momma. Then, to be in his car, surrounded by a cocoon of his citrusy, spicy aroma had made Shea ache to do spicy things.
Don’t forget the arm squeeze, sex-starved Shea reminded reasonable Shea, as if any version of Shea could forget. It was the least-perfunctory cheek kiss she’d ever received. His big hand had cuffed her upper arm firmly. His green eyes had narrowed slightly, telegraphing something complex before warm lips delivered a too-brief kiss to her cheek.
A wave of his delectable scent had filled her senses as soon as he’d pulled back and she might have leant forward just a bit—her nose’s attempt to follow. She might’ve taken it farther, trailing said nose up the column of his beautiful neck, if his voice hadn’t broken the spell, speaking a deep, “Good night.”
#4
“The Shining, Deliverance, or Scream?” Dev called over his shoulder from the sofa as Shea strode back into the room, popcorn in one hand and opened bottle of a red blend in the other. The remote was in his hand and the enormous TV with its parabolic screen was lit up with the on-demand menu that offered a virtual feast of horror.
“Scream,” Shea decided easily. The idea to stay in on a rainy night and watch a movie with Dev was born of a sheer, selfish desire to snuggle—not from any natural tendency to seek hair-raising thrill. Shea was a woman living alone, isolated on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. The last thing she needed was a horror film so convincing it would actually make her scared.
After navigating to Scream, Dev tossed down the remote and extended his arms to relieve her of her popcorn and her bottle of wine. Two stemless glasses sat on the table, waiting. He filled and set them down in short form. Then, as if neither the popcorn or the wine existed, he pulled Shea with him in settling back on the plushy microfiber sofa, spreading a throw blanket over them and tucking her into the crook of his arm.
Seriously. Why does he smell so good? Shea couldn’t help from thinking as she reveled in the result of her nose being so close to his chest. Before the opening credits, her head was already on his shoulder, his strong arm holding her to him in a delightfully-possessive way. Five minutes into the movie, and her attention was already split between following the plot and enjoying the movement of his body—his groaning at the writing and his laughter at the camp of the Drew Barrymore scene.
The blanket felt good on her lap and, before long, she’d tucked her legs beneath her, which only caused her to settle further into him. He held her tighter through the scary parts—brought up the popcorn and wine halfway in.
Halfway through the movie was also when the real rain began. Until then, most thunderstorms Shea had seen had been during the day. The afternoon ones had always felt a bit routine—a purging of afternoon clouds so that the mountain can get on with this beautiful day. But this storm—more like a lightning storm—felt fierce. So much so, that Shea reflexively jumped from being spooked—not by the movie, but the brightest bolt of lightning she’d ever seen. It earned her one of Dev’s amused smiles.
“Want me to find the remote and close the blinds?“ He asked, more grace in his voice than on his face.
“No making fun of the New Yorker,“ she chided. “We’ve got thunderstorms, too. And I wasn’t really scared—just startled.“
“I wasn’t making fun,” he insisted in his disarming voice. “Just lookin’ for any way to be accommodating.”
She relaxed back into his arms. “No need.” She nestled in. “I’m fine exactly where I am.”
With her ear against his chest, the low growl of his voice shook her with vibrations.
“Good. Because I like a good storm.“
Shea stopped pretending to track the movie, stopped pretending the real experience wasn’t being in his arms. At some point, her senses became as heightened as her awareness of the intensity of the storm.
At some point, Dev must have stopped watching the movie, too. The credits were rolling and neither had said a word in acknowledgment of the close of the final scene. The show out the window had turned out to be much better. The storm was frightening, and awesome, and so intense that merely sharing the moment of witnessing it held an intimacy that she didn’t expect.
Yes. Being there, in that house, on that hill, and sharing it only with Dev, made her feel as if they were the only two people in the world. Nothing about the notion scared her. Shea was falling into something that felt a whole lot like love. Even if it wasn’t, being with a man who made her feel this way was good for her. And this last new development had given her some sort of permission she hadn’t known she was waiting for. It felt as if Keenan was finally out of the picture.
It felt surreal and liberating to say, “Stay here tonight.“
She didn’t bother to follow her bold statement with any of at least five logical rationales: the storm was too bad to drive in; better to wait it out at her place; no need to take a risk and drive home. She also didn’t bother with the pretense of offering to put him up in the guest room. And she didn’t follow it with some quip to lighten it up.
“Are you asking as a kindly neighbor, or are you asking as a woman?“
She felt his heartbeat race at the same time as she was pinned by the intensity in his eyes. Something even changed in his breath. It led her to swift comprehension she hadn’t let herself consider until then. This was more to him than comfort and attraction. There was something as intense in this for him as there was for her.
“Technically, both…“ She tipped her chin upward, wanting to him to see it in her face. “Mostly, I’m asking as a woman.“
Thunder, which had been absent for the majority of the storm, cracked on the ends of her words. When answering lightning burst, the furious gales could be seen in the tops of the trees. The rain continue to pelt on the deck, beating percussion that she would not soon forget. Nor did she think she would ever forget the hitch of his breath a second before he leaned in.
What happened next was so surreal that Shea might never know whether it came from the sheer thrill of breaking her ten-year streak of sleeping only with Keenan, the fact that her partner was Dev, or some strange magic that came from the storm. The sublime anticipation of having Dev that night promised to be otherworldly. Later, Shea would reflect that there was no name to describe the perfection of what they had done.
Dev pulled her into his lap in a single smooth motion and she twisted her body to face his. He wasted no time threading his fingers in the back of her hair and craning his neck to rise in a hungry devouring of her lips. This kiss was different. They’d kissed before and each previous kiss hadn’t been amazing. This kiss felt as if it spoke: his body speaking to hers and hers to his, giving voice to their current of electricity.
As the kiss brought them impossibly closer, soft and delicious but urgent in it’s desire, she got lost in other little things—the way his thumb stroked the side of her neck, the sounds of his sighs as he breathed, and the fresh aroma of his beard. Kissing him then gave new meaning to the concept of taking time. Slow lovemaking, indeed. He was insistently hard beneath her, but nothing distracted him from getting his fill of her lips.
“You got any religion about doing this in a bed?
Dev asked her the question in between sensuous bites to her neck that had her nearly delirious with bliss. She was ridiculously wet for someone who had barely been touched and was still fully clothed.
“Beds are for amateurs,“ She managed a second before the hand she had cupped on the back of his neck dropped to his shoulder to grab a fistful of his shirt. She couldn’t help it—his tongue had just done the most delectable thing to her ear.
It was a good thing she was holding on, one arm around his shoulder and the other around his waist from sitting side saddle in his lap. In an effortless motion, he stood, picking them both up and holding her bridal style as he walked her forward. As promised, he did not take her to the bed.
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AUTHOR BIO
Kilby Blades is a 45-time-award-winning author of Romance and Women's Fiction. Her debut novel, Snapdragon, was a HOLT Medallion finalist, a Publisher’s Weekly Book Life Prize Semi-Finalist, and an IPPY Award medalist. Kilby was honored with an RSJ Emma Award for Best Debut Author in 2018 and has been lauded by critics for “easing feminism and equality into her novels” (IndieReader) and “writing characters who complement each other like a fine wine does a good meal” (Publisher’s Weekly).
When she's not writing, Kilby goes to movie matinees alone, where she eats Chocolate Pocky and buttered popcorn and usually smuggles in not-a-little-bit of red wine. She procrastinates from the difficult process of writing by oversharing on Facebook and Instagram and giving away cool stuff related to her fiction novels to her newsletter subscribers.
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There is a giveaway for 5 signed paperbacks of Spooning Leads to Forking, 1 super-awesome gift basket that has cute dish towels and a spoon holder and heart-shaped measuring spoons + a signed copy of the first book in the series – The Secret Ingredient, 5 ebook copies of The Secret Ingredient, + 5 signed paperbacks of The Secret Ingredient (16 winners total, open internationally)
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Title: Spooning Leads to Forking
Series: Hot in the Kitchen #2
Author: Kilby Blades
Genre: Contemporary Romance/Romantic Comedy
Release Date: April 28, 2020
BLURB
Leaving her name—and her job as a top food critic—behind in New York, Shea Summers seeks respite in Sapling. Her borrowed mountain getaway seems perfect for writing her opus. It’s also perfect for riding out a messy divorce and hiding the roomful of cash she kind-of-sort-of stole from her ex.
Too bad Sapling is a remote, three-restaurant town with food that leaves much to be desired. Sexy grocer, Dev Kingston, may be Shea’s saving grace. The way he looks at her with his aspen-green eyes shows her everything her marriage was missing, and he can special-order every delicacy she craves.
But Shea’s not the only one who isn’t what she seems. Dev moonlights as a sheriff’s deputy, a fact she finds out too late; a string of suspicious crimes finds newcomers under scrutiny; and her ex is going to extremes to find out where she is.
Taking the money and living under an assumed name might be on the right side of wrong, but dating Dev is a dangerous game. She's still running and he's still the law.
GOODREADS LINK: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49390330-spooning-leads-to-forking
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EXCERPTS
#1
Act natural, Shea instructed herself after she’d parked, let herself out and slammed shut her car door. Slinging her bag over her shoulder, she gave herself a pep talk as she took measured steps toward the door:
People go to the market more than twice a week in a lot of cultures.
It’s not a crime anywhere to show up looking cute. Own it.
The first part of her little routine was being the first to say hello. He was almost always near the front—not at either of the three lonely registers—behind a computer at the customer service desk. The service area was on a raised platform and sat adjacent to the leftmost register. Shea surmised he could process refunds for customers—only there were never many customers. Weekend mornings aside, it wasn’t uncommon for she and Dev to be the only ones in the store.
“Oh, hey, Dev,” she said breezily, casting him a slightly lingering smile. Sapling was a place where people stopped to greet one another. There was eye contact and genuine curiosity, and a growing warmth as people started to get to know her. When it came to Shea, Dev’s prevalent emotion seemed to be amusement.
Far be it from her to disown her own quirks. Her culinary requests were bizarre—bordering on outlandish—even for a health food specialty store. She didn’t dress like anyone else in Sapling, despite having once thought the garments she’d cherry-picked from her New York closet to be quite tame. If not for Dallas Eaton—the guy who wore 80s track suits and walked down Oliver Street with his macaw on his shoulder—Shea could win an award for most unusual fashion sense in town.
“Mornin’ Shea.”
Dev’s warm baritone made her as melty as Nutella on oven-fresh brioche. She’d come to crave it like sugar. As expected, he sat in front of his laptop and the desk was littered with papers. Apart from Mondays and Thursdays, when the deliveries came, he tended to be glued to his seat, unless he was helping some random customer.
Half the fun for Shea was being a customer who needed help. Seeking his guidance had become addictive. At the beginning, it had been legitimate to confirm whether he carried things like prepared guacamole, pre-bottled, MCT-enhanced cold brew coffee and manuka honey. But she’d been shown the location of so many items, and knew the store so well by then, her new help requests were pure theater. Asking for obscure items tucked away in odd corners of the store was her newest gambit.
Pushing back in his rolling chair in a single, smooth motion, Dev got to his feet. Shea was ridiculously charmed by the gesture. Men who walked on the outside and rose when a lady walked into the room were a dying breed. Sure, she could chalk it up to attentive customer service, but her intuition told her Devon Kingston was a real gentleman.
“Looking for anything special?” She caught the bemused smirk that played at his lips a second before said lips captured his straw. He drank dark green juice from the same clear cup every day. Whatever he put in there, it was working. Dev was the picture of vitality—tall and lean and built like a cyclist, or a swimmer, or a rock climber or the player of any endurance sport. Shea didn’t know when he played said sports because he always seemed to be at the market. Still, a healthy tan proved he found time to be outdoors.
His beard was lustrous and dark—in her fantasies she had touched it—and it was impossibly soft. It matched silky hair that was shaven on the sides and grown in on the top and tousled just right. Spiked up at the roots somehow with ends that fell into form without looking stiff, it managed to achieve a frightening shine. But his eyes—God, his eyes—they were the real stars of her fantasies, not dull green like his juice—bright and vibrant like aspen leaves. Even his skin seemed to glow.
“Any chance my order is in?” Shea asked, knowing full well today was Wednesday and deliveries were Mondays and Thursdays.
“Sorry. You’re a day early,” he said.
“Oh.” She pouted a little, then appeared to recover from feigned disappointment.
Dev leaned his hip against the counter and his lips eased into a slow smile. “Guess you’ll just have to come back tomorrow.”
The rumble of his voice gave her a shiver. “I guess I will.”
#2
“Hey—do you have any sumac?” she asked, circling back to the front after looking for the herb herself. She’d become convinced that a little sumac was the perfect addition to the aioli they served with the calamari at The Big Spoon. Sapling had exactly three restaurants: Delilah’s served sweet and savory pastries. Gator’s Sports Bar had pub food and wings. The Big Spoon served breakfast, lunch and dinner had the largest menu of them all.
“Sumac is edible?” Dev looked up from shuffling his papers, looking a bit surprised.
She frowned. “What else would it be?”
“Poisonous,” Dev picked up his green juice cup again. “Worse than poison ivy, but not as bad as poison oak. Poison sumac’ll give you a rash all over your body.”
“Huh,” Shea tutted. “Well, it’s a spice, too. I’ve never seen it in the wild, but the flower is a deep red. It’s actually kind of beautiful.”
Then, Dev did that thing he did whenever they got to talking. He got quiet for a minute, but never broke their gaze. In moments like that, he had this way of looking at her that made her feel like he was right up in her space, rather than all the way across the room.
“Sounds like you want it?” his lips settled into a half-smile. The full smile, she’d noticed was for genuine amusement. The half-smile seemed to mean something else. It held a different sort of softness too intimate to have a name.
“If you can get it…” Her voice held shyness and hope and all the other complex tones she’d forgotten her voice could make. The thrill of possibility was a heady thing. She felt it in spades every time she talked to Dev.
“How much do you need?” he wanted to know, shifting his weight to lean against the counter with one hip.
“I guess a single bottle is fine.”
The warmth in his eyes lingered even as the set of his lips changed. “I can get you sumac.”
What else can you get me?
Shea came close to saying it out loud. Her face heated, not so much in a blush of embarrassment as in a flush of lust. With Dev, lust flushes had become a thing. Nodding her thanks, she walked off before she could pounce on the man. With every visit, she wanted to a little bit more. Her life was still too messy for all of that. But she had willpower. Discipline. She could be patient and methodical until whatever wanted to happen was meant to be, just as she’d been patient and methodical in plotting her divorce.
#3
Dev Kingston has some nerve, Shea said to herself rather unreasonably. She’d been mentally cursing the man all morning. He was utterly responsible for her lack of concentration. Maybe some of the blame ought to be put on Delilah, whose abrupt disappearance the night before had perpetrated events that left Shea and Dev alone in his car.
Even before last night, Shea had struggled to remain impervious to his charm. Seeing him with Evie had done nothing to diminish his appeal. There were few things more attractive than a man who doted on his momma. Then, to be in his car, surrounded by a cocoon of his citrusy, spicy aroma had made Shea ache to do spicy things.
Don’t forget the arm squeeze, sex-starved Shea reminded reasonable Shea, as if any version of Shea could forget. It was the least-perfunctory cheek kiss she’d ever received. His big hand had cuffed her upper arm firmly. His green eyes had narrowed slightly, telegraphing something complex before warm lips delivered a too-brief kiss to her cheek.
A wave of his delectable scent had filled her senses as soon as he’d pulled back and she might have leant forward just a bit—her nose’s attempt to follow. She might’ve taken it farther, trailing said nose up the column of his beautiful neck, if his voice hadn’t broken the spell, speaking a deep, “Good night.”
#4
“The Shining, Deliverance, or Scream?” Dev called over his shoulder from the sofa as Shea strode back into the room, popcorn in one hand and opened bottle of a red blend in the other. The remote was in his hand and the enormous TV with its parabolic screen was lit up with the on-demand menu that offered a virtual feast of horror.
“Scream,” Shea decided easily. The idea to stay in on a rainy night and watch a movie with Dev was born of a sheer, selfish desire to snuggle—not from any natural tendency to seek hair-raising thrill. Shea was a woman living alone, isolated on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. The last thing she needed was a horror film so convincing it would actually make her scared.
After navigating to Scream, Dev tossed down the remote and extended his arms to relieve her of her popcorn and her bottle of wine. Two stemless glasses sat on the table, waiting. He filled and set them down in short form. Then, as if neither the popcorn or the wine existed, he pulled Shea with him in settling back on the plushy microfiber sofa, spreading a throw blanket over them and tucking her into the crook of his arm.
Seriously. Why does he smell so good? Shea couldn’t help from thinking as she reveled in the result of her nose being so close to his chest. Before the opening credits, her head was already on his shoulder, his strong arm holding her to him in a delightfully-possessive way. Five minutes into the movie, and her attention was already split between following the plot and enjoying the movement of his body—his groaning at the writing and his laughter at the camp of the Drew Barrymore scene.
The blanket felt good on her lap and, before long, she’d tucked her legs beneath her, which only caused her to settle further into him. He held her tighter through the scary parts—brought up the popcorn and wine halfway in.
Halfway through the movie was also when the real rain began. Until then, most thunderstorms Shea had seen had been during the day. The afternoon ones had always felt a bit routine—a purging of afternoon clouds so that the mountain can get on with this beautiful day. But this storm—more like a lightning storm—felt fierce. So much so, that Shea reflexively jumped from being spooked—not by the movie, but the brightest bolt of lightning she’d ever seen. It earned her one of Dev’s amused smiles.
“Want me to find the remote and close the blinds?“ He asked, more grace in his voice than on his face.
“No making fun of the New Yorker,“ she chided. “We’ve got thunderstorms, too. And I wasn’t really scared—just startled.“
“I wasn’t making fun,” he insisted in his disarming voice. “Just lookin’ for any way to be accommodating.”
She relaxed back into his arms. “No need.” She nestled in. “I’m fine exactly where I am.”
With her ear against his chest, the low growl of his voice shook her with vibrations.
“Good. Because I like a good storm.“
Shea stopped pretending to track the movie, stopped pretending the real experience wasn’t being in his arms. At some point, her senses became as heightened as her awareness of the intensity of the storm.
At some point, Dev must have stopped watching the movie, too. The credits were rolling and neither had said a word in acknowledgment of the close of the final scene. The show out the window had turned out to be much better. The storm was frightening, and awesome, and so intense that merely sharing the moment of witnessing it held an intimacy that she didn’t expect.
Yes. Being there, in that house, on that hill, and sharing it only with Dev, made her feel as if they were the only two people in the world. Nothing about the notion scared her. Shea was falling into something that felt a whole lot like love. Even if it wasn’t, being with a man who made her feel this way was good for her. And this last new development had given her some sort of permission she hadn’t known she was waiting for. It felt as if Keenan was finally out of the picture.
It felt surreal and liberating to say, “Stay here tonight.“
She didn’t bother to follow her bold statement with any of at least five logical rationales: the storm was too bad to drive in; better to wait it out at her place; no need to take a risk and drive home. She also didn’t bother with the pretense of offering to put him up in the guest room. And she didn’t follow it with some quip to lighten it up.
“Are you asking as a kindly neighbor, or are you asking as a woman?“
She felt his heartbeat race at the same time as she was pinned by the intensity in his eyes. Something even changed in his breath. It led her to swift comprehension she hadn’t let herself consider until then. This was more to him than comfort and attraction. There was something as intense in this for him as there was for her.
“Technically, both…“ She tipped her chin upward, wanting to him to see it in her face. “Mostly, I’m asking as a woman.“
Thunder, which had been absent for the majority of the storm, cracked on the ends of her words. When answering lightning burst, the furious gales could be seen in the tops of the trees. The rain continue to pelt on the deck, beating percussion that she would not soon forget. Nor did she think she would ever forget the hitch of his breath a second before he leaned in.
What happened next was so surreal that Shea might never know whether it came from the sheer thrill of breaking her ten-year streak of sleeping only with Keenan, the fact that her partner was Dev, or some strange magic that came from the storm. The sublime anticipation of having Dev that night promised to be otherworldly. Later, Shea would reflect that there was no name to describe the perfection of what they had done.
Dev pulled her into his lap in a single smooth motion and she twisted her body to face his. He wasted no time threading his fingers in the back of her hair and craning his neck to rise in a hungry devouring of her lips. This kiss was different. They’d kissed before and each previous kiss hadn’t been amazing. This kiss felt as if it spoke: his body speaking to hers and hers to his, giving voice to their current of electricity.
As the kiss brought them impossibly closer, soft and delicious but urgent in it’s desire, she got lost in other little things—the way his thumb stroked the side of her neck, the sounds of his sighs as he breathed, and the fresh aroma of his beard. Kissing him then gave new meaning to the concept of taking time. Slow lovemaking, indeed. He was insistently hard beneath her, but nothing distracted him from getting his fill of her lips.
“You got any religion about doing this in a bed?
Dev asked her the question in between sensuous bites to her neck that had her nearly delirious with bliss. She was ridiculously wet for someone who had barely been touched and was still fully clothed.
“Beds are for amateurs,“ She managed a second before the hand she had cupped on the back of his neck dropped to his shoulder to grab a fistful of his shirt. She couldn’t help it—his tongue had just done the most delectable thing to her ear.
It was a good thing she was holding on, one arm around his shoulder and the other around his waist from sitting side saddle in his lap. In an effortless motion, he stood, picking them both up and holding her bridal style as he walked her forward. As promised, he did not take her to the bed.
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AUTHOR BIO
Kilby Blades is a 45-time-award-winning author of Romance and Women's Fiction. Her debut novel, Snapdragon, was a HOLT Medallion finalist, a Publisher’s Weekly Book Life Prize Semi-Finalist, and an IPPY Award medalist. Kilby was honored with an RSJ Emma Award for Best Debut Author in 2018 and has been lauded by critics for “easing feminism and equality into her novels” (IndieReader) and “writing characters who complement each other like a fine wine does a good meal” (Publisher’s Weekly).
When she's not writing, Kilby goes to movie matinees alone, where she eats Chocolate Pocky and buttered popcorn and usually smuggles in not-a-little-bit of red wine. She procrastinates from the difficult process of writing by oversharing on Facebook and Instagram and giving away cool stuff related to her fiction novels to her newsletter subscribers.
AUTHOR LINKS
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/kilbybladesauthor
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Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kilbyblades
Website: https://www.kilbyblades.com
GIVEAWAY
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