Excerpt #5 from He Has Charm
Jul 03, 2022 5:31 pm
Excerpt #5: He Has Charm
If you missed the previous excerpts, check past newsletters HERE!
Who's on vacation besides me, my romance reading pals?
This week was a test of my self-discipline to get the writing done since I was on *vacation* in London. But the story has to be told as the sensual tension between Maddox and Harper builds to boiling over.
Check out the excerpt below to get a taste! 🧡
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At SQ's House
Check out Rose's book featured below!
Everything about the trip was fun, if not perfect!
Weather in the 60s and 70s--though it rained almost every day--I only got drenched once. Then I bought an umbrella and didn't need it again. Now it's a souvenir. 😜
I could see the London Eye Ferris wheel from my room, though that was the best part about the no-frills hotel (i.e. no bar soap, no face cloths, no shampoo, etc.) Great location though, only a 5-minute walk to the river and the conference.
We did a bus tour with a knowledgeable and irreverently funny tour guide named Dominic.
We ate at the top of The Shard at the Oblix restaurant for a breathtaking view of a rainbow, the city and all those famous old buildings like Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London mixed in with the new glass skyscrapers and the very busy river Thames. (We did not wait in line to go inside the Tower of London or Westminster Abbey.)
Now I'm writing at the airport and ready to get back home to digest my whirlwind adventure abroad.🧡
Meanwhile, I'll sort through and share more pictures next week--unless you vote to tell me you'd rather see something else besides tourist photos of London. 😜🧡
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✍️My Writing Progress
2022 so far: 238,626 words, 3.5 Novels
2022 Goal: 480,000 words, 6 Novels, 1 Novella
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What Am I Reading? This week I'm listening to The Kiss List by Maya Hughes, a college football romance.
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➜➜For Audiobook Addicts (like me)
by Spectrum Audiobooks!
He Has Trouble
He Has It All
He Has MVP
Comnig soon... He Has Game
Coming soon... He Has a Baby
CLICK HERE!
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NEW! FREE!
Dane Blaise: FLASHBACK - AUDIOBOOK
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➜➜If you'd like a chance for a review copy of a Boston Brawlers audiobook, let me know at stephanie@stephaniequeen.com.
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He Has Charm - Excerpt #5
Maddox
“Didn’t you already take a shower at the rink?” Her voice pitches high and panic flashes in those eyes before disappearing. She steps back. I step forward. She clears her throat.
“Why do you need another shower now?” she whispers. The look I give her is nothing short of simmering, relaying my meaning without spelling it out as I rake my eyes over her body, roaming over every sensual line of her though she’s covered by that severe business suit.
I can literally see her go from warm to volcanic in so short a time that it doesn’t seem possible. But one look at those sizzling green eyes and I feel the answering passion reaching out and grabbing me by the balls. The need to escape to the shower intensifies because the alternative is to ravish her where she stands. Holding up to the invitation of her shiver as she stares, her mouth slightly open and her tongue darting out to lick her lips, whether she understands the siren call she’s screaming at me or not, is getting harder by the second. Literally. I swallow because there’s no mistaking that she knows what I want to do in that shower. And that I would so much rather do it with her.
“Take my word for it, sugar buns. I need a shower. Now.” Her eyes flare wide for an instant.
“Maybe I should,” she says, then pauses and clears the rasp from her voice before continuing. “Should take that extra room and leave you on your own tonight.”
“And free the prisoner?” I can’t resist taunting her. And I don’t want her to leave in spite of the torture. “What kind of warden are you anyway?” Struggling to match my lighthearted words deep down, the slight twitch in my jaw muscle betrays my tension, the raw sensuality of my posture and vibration in my voice is impossible to control. The intensity of my passion scares the hell out of me because she’s wearing an unattractive brown skirt and we’ve never kissed let alone had any other real intimacy to tease my appetite for her. Yet my appetite is there in full technicolor ball-tightening reality and I can’t seem to control it.
And most unfortunately, there’s no relief in sight. Except the shower.
“The kind of warden who feels like the prisoner is in charge,” she says. I laugh trying to dispel some of my tension though I know there’s only one way to do that. Staring at her doesn’t help, especially with the grudging upturn on one side of her lush kissable mouth. God I want to taste her, to own that mouth, to ravage those lips and plunge inside.
Or maybe I’m not thinking about her mouth.
“Go ahead.” She waves a hand toward her bedroom, a fierce flush tinting her skin. “Take your shower.” Fighting the notion that she’s giving me permission to do what’s on my filthy mind, I force myself to turn away from her and head for her bathroom.
Coming soon...
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Stephanie Queen’s Playlist for He Has Charm
Wasn't Tom talking about romance novels?
The Playlist
NEW! I Started a Joke - Bee Gees
In the Air Tonight - Phil Collins
I Can't Go For That (No Can Do) - Hall & Oates
More next week...
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The NEXT story Boston Brawlers hockey romance...
He Has Pluck will be released in September.
His name? That's where I'm counting on YOU to help me out.
Look for the Name That Character Contest for that mischievous guy who's up to something naughty soon... 💜
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Featured Review
The Romantics
a romantic thriller
--E.A. Walsh, Amazon reviewer
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Stephanie Queen Featured Authors:
The Decrypter and the Beale Ciphers - a Thriller by Rose Sandy
200 years ago, Thomas J. Beale hid a treasure and wrote a cipher that has been unbreakable until today…that is until Calla Cress starts to read it. Now, some secrets are too dangerous to know.
Nursing a past loss and failure, artifacts handler, codebreaker, and government agent, Calla Cress is framed for the disappearance and murder of the ISTF spy agency’s Chief of technology and science, her best friend, Jack Kleve.
All is not as it seems. When she’s discredited and forced on the run, she travels to the African continent to find secrets her murdered friend wanted hidden, only to discover someone very dangerous betrayed him and is out for blood.
Now she must follow Jack’s clues and an uncertain trail that leads her deeper into the dark territories of a vengeful enemy who will unleash hell on Earth, and has a dangerous plan for the Beale Ciphers unless she stops him. And wait, all before her government finds and prosecutes her.
Rogue - L.M. Mountford
John Greystoke was the DeCampo Famiglia's most feared enforcer.
Then he was betrayed by those he trusted most and left for dead.
Five years later, John has escaped and started anew in Washington state.
However, his enemies are closer than he knows, and they have not forgotten about the man they called Tarzan.
However, every Tarzan needs his Jane. John might just have found his, but there is no place in her life for a man like him.
To keep her, he'll have to turn his back on that world for good, but with the demons of his past getting closer, can he become the man she deserves and still save her from his past, or will the Bratva finally take his head for their Pakhan's wall...
This sizzling dark mafia romance is a high octane adventure that combines Tarzan and The Godfather, and is loaded with action, mature themes, and the page igniting steam that earned L.M. Mountford the moniker 'The Lord of Lust'.
The Billionaire's Doc - Rachel J. Green
Would she be able to find love again?
Dr. Rhiannon Terrebonne’s new life in the cozy coastal town of Waterbury, Oregon, was exactly what she had wanted. The new hospital was perfect, and she’d even met the town’s most eligible bachelor, Peyton, a tech billionaire with a plan to save the world.
The first date sizzled . . .
. . . and the chemistry was undeniable.
She couldn’t get him off her mind—until the unthinkable happened. A huge explosion off the coast at an oil rig had victims pouring into the hospital.
Had the disaster at the oil rig been an accident?
While working through the casualties, a news broadcast stopped Rhiannon in her tracks. She had only gotten a glimpse, but as she watched the chaos, a face in the crowd turned her blood cold. She tried to phone Peyton, but he didn’t answer.
Terror set in.
Had her tormentor, Kyle Banner, been released from prison?
Could he have found her?*******************************************************************
Stephanie Queen Featured Book Deals
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To get into that summer fun mood, I'm writing and reading more lighthearted books I call rom-com hockey romance. Hope you find your summer fun book reads to fill your heart. 💜
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