Welcome to another week for my First Kiss Friday blog. Today’s guest is USA Today bestselling author Collette Cameron who has an excerpt from her latest release, Never Dance with a Duke. Isn’t this cover just gorgeous? Get your fans ready, my lovelies. Happy reading and enjoy!

Excerpt:

“Nicolette?” Mathias’s silky-smooth timber caressed her. “Darling, are you all right? You fled before I could speak with you.”

His smile was endearingly bashful. Charmingly vulnerable. And if she hadn’t already been in love with him, she’d have fallen in love at that moment.

She averted her face and shook her head. Struggling to regain her composure, she said, “I just needed a moment.”

A moment to come to grips with my love for you.

He sank onto the bench beside her, his heat enveloping her at once. Without a word, he drew her back against his chest and pressed a kiss to her crown. “Forgive me if I overstepped. I seem to forget myself when I’m with you. I’m completely under your spell, Nicolette.”

A watery chuckle escaped her. “And I with you.”

Whenever she was in his arms, the world felt right.

Relaxing into Mathias’s sturdy strength, she angled her head, looking up at the sky. Though it was a cloudless night, few stars were visible because of London’s many lights, and the new moon wasn’t noticeable at all.

With one finger, he turned her chin toward him, their eyes meeting.

Searching. Seeking. Speaking what neither had dared to voice.

And call her a fool, Nicolette closed her eyes and raised her mouth. Silently inviting him to give her what she craved, more than oxygen or food or water.

Not a heartbeat later, he settled those marvelous lips upon hers.

And he did everything he’d promised during that tantalizing dance, and more.

So much more.

She turned into Mathias, sliding her arms around his back and clutching him to her, letting sensation and desire take over.

“Nicolette, my sweet darling.” He groaned low in his throat, and a thrill shot through her that she’d brought him to this state.

He kissed the sensitive place below her ear, and she angled her head to allow him better access. Who knew a kiss in that particular spot could pebble her nipples and cause dampness to gather in the cleft between her legs?

In this blissful moment, she didn’t care that this was unwise.

Perhaps, utterly foolish.

That it might lead to heartache and regrets.

I love him. I love him. I love Mathias.

Never Dance With A Duke
By Collette Cameron

The cost of trust is more than she’s willing to pay. But he’ll do everything he can to change her mind…

A scandal ruined her future…

Nicolette Twistleton delights in thumbing her nose at Society. After all, becoming the Spiteful Spinster was what helped her through being jilted by her betrothed. Putting her faith in another man? Impossible. But there’s something about the entirely too handsome and charming Mathias Pembroke that makes her wish she was the kind of woman who could learn to trust again.

A secret can destroy his…

Mathias, Duke of Westfall, wants nothing to do with his inherited title and all the public scrutiny it brings. He has dark secrets to protect, and can’t afford to be distracted by the trappings of Society. What he apparently can be distracted by, however, is the lovely Nicolette. He understands her pain and knows he could help her heal…if only she were willing to open her heart to him.

Can love save them both?

When ghosts from the past emerge and threaten the fragile bonds they’ve begun to build, Nicolette and Mathias find themselves caught between their feelings for each other and devastating scandal. Will love be enough to protect them—or was their happily ever after doomed from the very start?

This friends-to-lovers, second chance historical romance by a USA Today bestselling author, will have you flipping the pages to find out if Mathias and Nicolette trust themselves to love again.

If you enjoy reading witty, lovable rogue and duke love stories with a pinch of mystery, a dash of humor, and soul-searing emotion, then you’ll adore Collette Cameron’s enthralling SEDUCTIVE SCOUNDRELS SERIES. Buy NEVER DANCE WITH A DUKE and settle into your favorite reading nook for a page-turning, entertaining Regency world adventure you can’t put down.

Though this book can easily be read as a stand-alone, most readers prefer to read the series in order.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0866BHZ4C?tag=collett-20

B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/never-dance-with-a-duke-collette-cameron/1136700213?ean=2940162630432

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/never-dance-with-a-duke

Google: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=vg3YDwAAQBAJ

iTunes: https://books.apple.com/us/book/never-dance-with-a-duke/id1503827728

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52583377

 BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/books/never-dance-with-a-duke-a-historical-regency-romance-seductive-scoundrels-book-7-by-collette-cameron

About the Author:

USA Today Bestselling, award-winning author COLLETTE CAMERON^® scribbles Scottish and Regency historical romance novels featuring dashing rogues, rakes, and scoundrels and the strong heroines who reform them. Blessed with an overactive and witty muse that won’t stop whispering new romantic romps in her ear, she’s lived in Oregon her entire life. Although she dreams of living in Scotland part-time. A confessed Cadbury chocoholic, you’ll always find a dash of inspiration and a pinch of humor in her sweet-to-spicy timeless romances^®.

Website: http://collettecameron.com

Facebook: http://facebook.com/collettecameronauthor

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/colletteauthor/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/Collette_Author

Amazon Author Page:  http://amazon.com/author/collettecameron.com/

Book Bub:  https://www.bookbub.com/authors/collette-cameron

Collette’s Chèris VIP Reader Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/CollettesCheris/

Instagram: https://instagram.com/collettecameronauthor/

Newsletter: https://bit.ly/TheRegencyRoseGift

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/collettecameron

Welcome to another First Kiss Friday. Today’s guest is my friend Virginia Heath who as an excerpt from Redeeming the Reclusive Earl. Take it away Virginia!

I love a quirky pairing and Max and Effie in REDEEMING THE RECLUSIVE EARL are certainly that. Scarred from a fire, Max is trying to hide from the world at his newly inherited estate but those plans are scuppered by the tenacious Effie who flatly refuses to abandon her archaeological dig on his land. Effie is, for want of a better word, a genius with a photographic mind who terrifies most men with her intelligence. Despite his initial anger at her trespassing, the pair form an unlikely friendship as Max finds himself recruited as her reluctant assistant…

Excerpt:

Did she intimidate him?

What sort of a blasted question was that to ask hot on the heels after he had only just discovered there had been multiple idiots who had apparently kissed her in the past. Idiots who were too stupid not to want to do it again! Because to his way of thinking, asking if she intimidated him was merely a polite way of asking if she emasculated him, which would be laughable if everything about Effie didn’t remind him hourly exactly how masculine he truly was.

The most masculine part of him was still reeling at the sight of her all flustered and damp in that worn shirt and those damned form-fitting breeches. And she had a smear of mud on her cheek, which he’d had the devil of a job not brushing away the second he had seen it. The only way he could stop himself was to pretend he did not want to hold her muddy hand when he had stupidly offered to help her out of the trench, because in that precise moment, had he hauled her up, he would have hauled her into his arms and likely scared the hell out of her.

What baffled him, what he still couldn’t wrap his head around, was how those idiotic men had found the strength not to kiss her because he was severely struggling with it.

Every day it got harder and, to make it worse, the urge wasn’t only fired by her pretty face and mouth-watering figure, but by her mind. The more he got to know her, the more he wanted to know her in every sense of the word. His unwelcome infestation of visitors aside, the past three days had been interminable because he had missed her. He’d even ridden twice in the pouring rain in the pathetic hope he would still find her here, tenaciously digging despite the foul weather. The linen shirt plastered to her skin and rendered translucent…

And those thoughts were not helping his discomfort at all. What had possessed him to work in the same trench as her? Mere inches away, but still too many miles apart for his liking.

Blasted torture!

Clearly he had a masochistic streak to have chosen this, rather than the other fifteen trenches he had dug, just to be close to her?

Annoyed, he thrust the trowel into the soft mud wall in front of him and felt the tip of it strike something solid. Even though he knew it was probably a rock, he still took the time to remove the soil carefully from the surface exactly as Effie had taught him.

The edge of whatever it was seemed large and curved like a wheel and, because he did not possess her patience or want to alert her to the fact he might have found something and then have to suffer her leaning over him while he worked, he discarded the trowel and began to tug away the earth with his fingers. Then he hit peat and that happily crumbled with the merest touch.

Little by little, the object quickly revealed itself until Max had uncovered a foot-wide crescent. But unlike a wheel, it wasn’t hollow, nor did it have spokes. He swiped his hands over it to clean away the mud and then stared in disbelief at the tiny spot of ornately tooled metal he had clumsily uncovered.

‘Effie…’

His tone must have alerted her to his discovery, because like a shot she as at his side and staring in disbelief. ‘Good heavens…’

Suddenly crouched next to him, her fingers joined his as they frantically removed the dirt. A task made easier by the moisture left in the ground from days of rain , the removal of years of compacted earth with the pickaxe only days before and the fresh drops which decided to fall from the sky to soften the peat it sat in. In no time and oblivious of the rainfall soaking them through, they had unveiled a perfect circle, obviously an ancient shield, the centre decorated with a proud riveted disc around which swirling patterns had been pressed into the metal.

Max stepped back to allow her smaller, more nimble, gentle fingers to prise the embedded edges from the earth, then watched transfixed as it was suddenly and miraculously free with hardly any effort and she lifted it.

‘I cannot believe it is completely intact.’ She laid it reverently on the grass on the top of the trench and ran her palm over the pattern as the rain that had started again hammered down on it. ‘Unless the peat somehow preserves things better than normal soil?’ She tugged free the hem of her shirt and used it to clean away as much muck as she could and then just stood and stared at it in wonder. ‘It is beautiful… Truly beautiful… Obviously bronze by the patina and lack of rust… The workmanship exquisite.’

‘So much for the Celts being savages, then? The man who used this had excellent taste and knew one hell of a blacksmith.’

She slowly turned to him, half-smiling, half-agog. ‘You are right… The man who owned this was someone special, Max. This shield is a statement. Purely ceremonial, I’ll wager, and a mark of his status, exactly like the gold bracelet. Both are incredibly special objects and it is too coincidental to find two such treasures in one small space.’

‘Do you think it plausible this wooden hut belonged to a king?’ If the Celts even had kings.

‘Perhaps… Which would make this dwelling…’ Awe turned to excitement as she beamed, then launched at him, wrapping her arms around him in an exuberant hug while jumping up and down. ‘Oh, Max! This is wonderful! Wonderful! You’ve found something wonderful! He’s someone important! Someone hugely important! That explains why his house is so big!’

‘Do you think?’

‘It has to be! He is an eminent chieftain or a king!’

‘Or a queen like that Boudicca you and my sister are so fond of. That bracelet is too small for a man’s wrist. And then there is that comb you found. Big, hairy, blue men wouldn’t bother with a comb…’

‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this was a woman’s house? A different sort of woman than society understands today, of course.’ Much like Effie herself. ‘But one who mattered once. Someone important…’ Her hands clutched at his waistcoat as she beamed and bounced on the spot. ‘You’ve found something amazing, Max!’ Caught up in her excitement he looped his arm around her waist and laughed, picking her up and spinning her around in the confined space as best he could until they were both giddy. ‘You’ve found something amazing!’

‘We found something amazing, Effie.’

We…

He liked the sound of that on his lips. Liked the feel of her arms locked around his neck. The feel of her lush body in damp fabric plastered against him. The sight of her bedraggled hair and the way it dripped rainwater on to his face. The way that rainwater spiked her long lashes and dewed her lips.

He felt his heart beating against her ribs.

Felt his chest rise and fall in time with hers.

Lost himself in the depths of her beautiful, expressive eyes.

Then forgot all the reasons why he shouldn’t kiss her and simply did, sighing against her mouth as he gathered her close. She tasted like the outdoors. The sea air. The vast horizons he had sailed towards, filled with promise and wonder. Smelled of lilacs and roses and rainwater. Felt like utter perfection in his arms.

As if she had been made for him. That was his last rational thought before he lost himself.

Until the sound of rapidly approaching hoofbeats broke the spell and the pair of them jumped apart and blinked at each other, stunned.

REDEEMING THE RECLUSIVE  EARL
By Virginia Heath

His heart is a fortress.

And she’s trespassing!

After losing all he holds dear in a horrific fire, Max Aldersley, Earl of Rivenhall, shuns the world—until he catches Effie Nithercott digging holes on his estate! He banishes the intrepid archaeologist and the unsettled feelings she rouses within him. But she returns even more determined and infuriatingly desirable than before! He wonders just how deep she’s prepared to dig—so far she’ll reach the man beneath his scars?

Giveaway question: For a chance to win 1 of 3 eBook copies of REDEEMING THE RECLUSIVE EARL simply answer the following question:

I love a tortured hero and there aren’t many more tortured than poor Max- who is you favourite fictional tortured hero?

Buy link: mybook.to/reclusiveearl

Social links:

https://www.facebook.com/virginiaheathauthor/

https://www.virginiaheathromance.com/

Virginia Heath bio:

When Virginia Heath was a little girl it took her ages to fall asleep, so she made up stories in her head to help pass the time while she was staring at the ceiling. As she got older, the stories became more complicated, sometimes taking weeks to get to the happy ending. Then one day, she decided to embrace the insomnia and start writing them down. Eighteen books later, it still takes her forever to fall asleep.