Wondering what all the fuss is about when it comes to my awesome April release from Harlequin Desire, ON THE VERGE OF I DO?  Well, I am here to give you a little hint in the form of a sexy excerpt… :winkwink

The elevator doors slid open and they stepped inside. Eli swiped his pass key and punched the button for his private suites, then brought her around so they could face forward while remaining in physical contact. Otherwise, she was sure they looked perfectly professional, perfectly normal.

The doors slid closed, shutting them in together, alone. One minute she was staring at their blurry reflection in the polished silver of the double elevator doors. The next, she was spinning like a top, coming to rest between the hard wall of Eli’s broad chest at her front and the cool steel of the doors at her back.

“I can’t wait one more minute to do this,” he growled.

She opened her mouth to ask Do what?, but didn’t get the chance to voice the first syllable before his mouth crushed down on hers. It took her completely by surprise, cutting off her oxygen and making her muscles go limp as noodles.

Against her better judgment, when his tongue licked the seam of her lips and he attempted to nudge his way inside, she let him. It was just a kiss, after all. Just one . . . tiny . . . kiss.

Somewhere over their heads, a bell dinged. The sound didn’t have time to register in her fog-laden brain before the doors behind her slid open and she fell backward.

Eli stumbled after her, catching them both before they ended up in an undignified pile on the foyer floor. Keeping them on their feet, he continued backing her across the entryway until she was once again stopped by a wall. He pinned her there with his body, touching her from collarbones to knee bones.

He kissed her again, not nearly as gently as he had in the elevator. If the kiss in the elevator could be called gentle, which is couldn’t. But he didn’t wait for her compliance, didn’t give her time to adjust or a chance to open her mouth in invitation. He simply leaned in and took what he wanted.

For long, languid moments, they stood there, tasting, touching, letting the rest of the world spin out of control. His hands clutched her waist. His erection pressed into her belly. In return, she pawed at his shoulders, her nails kneading him through the material of his suit jacket like a kitten kneading for cream.

When he released her mouth, she gasped. Then, while she was sucking air into her scalded, much-abused lungs, he caught her off-guard by scooping her into his arms.

She let out a startled yip to find herself suddenly horizontal, literally swept off her feet.  “What are you doing?”

“What do you think?” he retorted without inflection, not sounding the least bit out of breath, even though she was still struggling not to pant.

Now that he wasn’t muddling her mind with steamy kisses and subtle strokes of his hands up and down her sides, she could almost think straight, and she knew this wasn’t right. Knew they couldn’t do what he was carrying her off to do.

Pressing a palm to his rock-solid shoulder and wiggling slightly in his embrace, she said, “Eli, no. We can’t do this.”

“Yes,” he told her in no uncertain terms. “We can.”

Reaching the bedroom doorway, he elbowed open the pocket doors and headed straight for the massive king size mattress at its center. The entire room was decorated in shades of the ocean—sand, turquoise, salmon—and the bed was made up with a thick golden comforter with enough pillows stacked against the woven bamboo headboard to build a fort.

That’s all she had time to notice, though, as he carried her around to the side and set her on her feet so he could begin tossing those pillows onto the floor and tearing back the covers. Snowy white sheets in what she was sure was the finest Egyptian cotton lay beneath, just begging to be dirtied and rumpled.

Uh-oh. She took a step back in self-preservation.

Eli noticed her retreat immediately.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” he mumbled, grabbing her wrist and tugging her toward him.

Her hands went up to stop her from bumping into his chest, but he apparently wanted her to do just that, because he kept tugging until she made contact with a solid thump.

“We can’t do this, Eli,” she said again, trying desperately to make him see sense.

“Yes,” he returned with even more resolve than before, “we can.”

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This month’s drink recipe—in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, of course—isn’t green, but it is Irish.  :stpat

Irish Kilt

Ingredients:

2 oz. Irish Whisky
1 oz. Scotch
1 oz. Lemon juice
1 oz. Sugar water
3 dashes of Orange bitters

Directions:

Combine all the ingredients in a shaker filled with ice, shake and strain into a martini glass.

Enjoy! :drinkup

P.S.  It’s “Moan & Groan Monday” on the HappyBookersYahooLoop today, so drop by if you need to vent. :curses

We are ready & willing to listen…not to mention throwing in a few complaints of our own. :angry

Happy Sunday!

I hope you had a great week & are having an even better weekend, with lots of fun stuff to share today!

This week, I am sad that I forgot to mention last week that I AM HAPPY I got the nicest note from Darling Bobbi Dumas, thanking me for the book & goodies I sent her recently after her Free Book Friday.  As I’ve mentioned before, you don’t have to thank me for your Dungeon-won prizes, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy hearing from you & receiving such nice mail in my mailbox.  So thank you, Bobbi, that was very sweet of you. :blowkiss

I AM HAPPY that I got my annual physical exam out of the way last week.  Still not sure why I do that every year, considering there’s never anything wrong with me & it seems like a waste of time, but better safe than sorry, I guess.  And it is kind of fun to hear your doctor say you’re in “excellent” shape with just a wee bit of awe in his voice. *snicker*

I AM HAPPY, too, that my cholesterol has apparently fallen 30 points.  It was okay to begin with, but I was annoyed that it never budged a single digit even after I lost a hundred pounds.  I mean, you’d think completely changing one’s diet, cutting out all fried foods & meat for the most part would result in at least a teeny-tiny decline in cholesterol levels, right?  Nope. :angry   And now suddenly—BAM!  Maybe cholesterol takes a while to work out of your system…you know, like crack. :moon   Or maybe it’s the fact that I drink my weight in green tea every day.  But I’ve also been eating a lot of eggs, so maybe by next year it will be back up. LOL

As long as I was on a medical run, I hit the chiropractor, & I AM HAPPY that I haven’t had a headache since.  (Knock on wood.)  I tend to get cluster headaches, & they’re usually due to either stress or being out of whack spine-wise.  And when you sound like a bag of Jiffy Pop during an adjustment…yeah, you know you were crooked. :runrun

Last but definitely not least, I AM HAPPY that I don’t have to write a big ol’ check I thought I was going to have to write.  Yes, it’s tax related again :curses but for once the numbers added up in my favor. Yay!  (The bad news is, I’ll probably have to write that check this time next year, but I’m going to enjoy the reprieve while I’ve got it. :kitty )

That about does it for me this week—how about you?  Let us know what great stuff has been going on in your life this week, or even just what you’re happy about on a daily basis!

Remember:  Count your blessings today, for tomorrow is “Moan & Groan Monday”…at least on the HappyBookers loop. :peekaboo

Now to announce the winner of our latest Free Book Friday giveaway, an early autographed copy of my very own April Harlequin Desire release, ON THE VERGE OF I DO!

:twirl Cindy Holub!!! :twirl

Congratulations, Cindy! :thumbsup Please contact me with your full name & mailing information, & I’ll get your book out to you as soon as I can!