Today on The Bookpushers we are excited to bring you an exclusive excerpt of Part II of Lauren Jameson’s six part serial Surrender to Temptation. The official blurb for the entire store is below.
After discovering her boyfriend was cheating on her, Devon Reid takes a soul-searching trip to the sleepy town of Cambria, California. Soon after her arrival she meets a sexy and enigmatic man named Zach. They flirt, but he abruptly warns her to steer clear of him. Reeling from their one kiss, Devon slowly begins to find more within herself than she realized possible… and more heat in this new attraction than anything she’s ever experienced.
Part IV releases today. Tomorrow Lauren will continue to host a Twitter chat beginning at 9pm EST, to discuss the latest release using the hashtag #aboutlastnight.
Enjoy the excerpt!
Surrender to Temptation
Part II – Tempted to Rebel
$1.99
Available Now!
By Lauren Jameson
“Delayed gratification can bring you to heights of pleasure that you have never dared imagine, Miss Reid.” Pressing his hand in the indentation between my shoulder blades, he rubbed lightly with his index and middle fingers. “Now. Into the car.”
I planted my feet, trying to glare up at him, even though my body was screaming at me to do as he said. But I felt the need to take some sort of stand, to ascertain that I was not a shrinking violet.
I was just beginning to realize that I had been exactly that for nearly all of my life. It was time to change.
“Tell me where we’re going. Then I’ll think about getting in the car.” I quivered with nerves when Zach’s expression darkened. I saw his fingers curl, his nails biting into his palms.
“We are going to my house.” The pressure of the fingers on my back increased, and I was startled enough by his words that I moved with it, bending to climb into the car. It was the same one that I had been in before, the sleek insides similar to a limousine, and I pressed my hands to my skirt to keep from flashing him a glimpse of my simple panties.
When I had seated myself, I looked back to find Zach grinning at me widely, even thought the lust and the danger was still on his face.
“What?” I couldn’t possibly have embarrassed myself in the last sixty seconds, could I? “What’s so funny?”
Zach slid into the car behind me, much more gracefully than I had. I thought that he might sit beside me, might touch me—he had just had his fingers in between my legs, after all. But instead he settled himself on the soft leather bench seat directly across from me . . . the one where we had coupled so feverishly on my first day in his employ.
With him sitting straight across from me, I couldn’t help but look directly at him, right into his gorgeous face. He loosened his tie, one patterned with green and gray today, then ran his fingers through his hair.
I imagined doing both of those things for him myself, and my mouth went dry.
“Why . . . why are we going to your house?” I wasn’t an idiot—I knew very well where this was heading. However, the man and his mercurial mood changes had me feeling just uncertain enough that I wanted it in words.
Leaning forward, Zach pressed one single finger against my lips. I smelled copper and heat, and realized that the scent had come from me. I flushed all over, and that tense coil of need tightened even more.
“We are going to spend the night there.”
***
I nervously tried to keep up a conversation as the car twisted its way along winding roads that were a slender black ribbon of asphalt bordering the ocean. Zach appeared to be entertained by my monologue, though he couldn’t possibly have listened to even a fraction of it.
Soon the car coasted to a stop. Peering out the window, I saw a massive garage door yawning open, and then we glided inside, pulling into line with another half dozen pricey-looking vehicles. I heard the sounds of the driver’s side door opening then closing, and then Charles opened the door to the area where we were seated. He helped me out first, and as I righted myself and smoothed down my skirt, again trying ridiculously hard to keep my underwear to myself, I heard Zach thank the man in a low voice.
“That will be all, Charles.” I looked up to find the chauffeur peering at me with his curiosity more apparent than it had been earlier. He nodded at Zach, then at me.
“Goodnight, Miss Reid. Mr. St. Brenton.”
And then I was alone with Zach. His expression still yielded no explanation for the sudden switch in his mood in the car, and I didn’t like being in the dark.
Where once I would have just kept my mouth shut, I now felt compelled to question him. Perhaps some of Zach’s brusque, confident demeanor was rubbing off on me.
“Why does Charles look at me that way?” Zach didn’t pretend that he didn’t know what I was talking about. Instead he sighed, ruffled a hand through his hair, and shoved his fingers down deep in his pockets.
“I’ve never brought a woman here before.” I wanted to be suspicious—Zachariah St. Brenton had surely dated scores of women—but the simplicity of his words told me that he spoke the truth.
“Why?” I’d come this far, after all. Why not poke the sleeping bear a bit more?
He raised an eyebrow at me, and the hint of a wicked smile played over the corners of his lips.
“I’ve never wanted to.” His eyes roamed over me, daring me to ask him another question. I felt the fire that had been banked by his mood change suddenly roar back to life.
“And you always do just what you want to?” I spoke before thinking, but I was still irritated with him, and at the same time envious. What would it be like to live like that, I wondered. Doing only as you wished, all the time?
“Always.” My question had been meant to provoke, but as Zach suddenly stepped toward me, I realized that I had pushed him in an unexpected way.
He closed his hand around the back of my neck and dipped his head. I closed my eyes, waiting for the kiss. Instead of the brush of his lips on my own, I felt the warmth of his breath as he whispered.
“Will you still stay the night?” My eyes flew open. His face was a study in seriousness, and I realized that the answer to this—my consent—was incredibly important to him.
Weighing my options, I let both the good angel and the bad berate me. Staying the night at some remote fortress of a mansion with an enigmatic stranger was not the brightest idea I’d ever had, and I was more than willing to admit it.
Lauren Jameson is a writer, yoga newbie, knitting aficionado, and animal lover who loves in the shadows of the great Rocky Mountains of Alberta, Canada. She also writes erotic romance as Lauren Hawkeye for Avon and Harlequin. For more on Lauren visit her website and follow her on Twitter @LaurenHJameson