{Blog Tour Review} Last Kiss by Laurelin Paige (@LaurelinPaige @SMPRomance)

LAST KISS
By Laurelin Paige
St. Martin’s Griffin
Publication Date: June 14, 2016
Trade Paperback Original: 9781250075208 / $14.99
eBook: 9781250094186 / $9.99

A GAME OF CAT AND MOUSE FILLED WITH DARK DESIRES AND DANGEROUS SECRETS…

Emily Wayborn has made a decision.

She might not fully trust handsome and deadly Reeve Sallis, but he is the one person that gives her what she needs. With Reeve she can finally be herself. Submitting to him is the only thing keeping her grounded as the rest of her life falls apart. But the hotelier is a master at keeping secrets and as she continues her quest for answers someone is making sure she doesn’t find them.

Time is running out and she is questioning everything she thought she knew about friendship and love. She must now make an impossible choice that will determine if she will survive with her heart…or at all.

​Emily Wayborn may have just made the biggest mistake of her life – She’s fallen in love with Reeve Sallis. Despite the doubt and danger, she is drawn to him like a moth to a flame and she can’t wait to get burned.
 
For as long as she can remember she’s always been the one to walk away if it came down to a choice between her happiness and Amber’s.  And Amber has made it clear that she’s back to reclaim what was once hers.

“This is me taking care of you. How you need to be taken care of. Whether you want to admit it or not.  I know what you need.  This is me doing what’s best for you.”
Men had said similar words to me in the past, usually as some form of justification for having just treated me badly.  For abusing me and destroying me in irreparable ways. It was always a lie.  Pretty prose to convince me that their sadistic behavior was only for my benefit.
​
But this time, when Reeve said it, the words sounded different to my ears.  They felt different in my body.  They reverberated through my skeleton with truth and recognition and clarity.  And even though Reeve had been harsh and savage, and even though his actions fed some primal hunger in his own soul, he was absolutely correct in knowing it was exactly what I needed too.

​Reeve Sallis is unlike any man that Emily has ever known.  He truly knows her.  Knows her wants.  Knows her desires. Knows her soul. 
 
But now Amber’s life is in danger and Reeve is her only protector.  Emily is once again going to be the one to sacrifice everything for her only friend and walk away from the only man she’s ever loved.
 
In this game, the stakes are high and the players will do anything to win – and Emily is caught standing in the eye of the storm.

His mouth found mine, and his lips, firm and demanding and without any more words, told a thousand other tales about a future that we’d never have. He lingered and he loved.  He shared dreams he’s never spoken of and showed me how they fit with mine.  He rebuilt me for all the times he’d broken me before.  He claimed and made me new.
​
And I pretended it was the kind of kiss that could make all that possible.  The kind of kiss that could seal and bind and change and forgive.  A kiss that couldn’t fade.  A kiss that could go on forever.  A kiss that could last. 
​
Instead of what it really was – a last kiss.

​Last Kiss is everything that fans of the First and Last series want it to be!  It’s a breakneck race through passion that is perfectly laced with sweet deception.  It’s part love story, part mystery and utterly seductive with scenes that will have your emotions running riot and your blood burning through your veins. 
 
Laurelin has once again proven that she can make her readers gasp out loud and revel in every minute of it…

Exclusive Excerpt - 

“Oh, hi! I didn’t see you there.” I sounded flustered and on edge. “Sorry to have surprised you.” The man’s head tipped toward me. “Emily, right?” he asked, as he exhaled a puff of smoke.

I squinted at him, trying to place him, but I couldn’t. In fact, I was certain I hadn’t seen him before. He had to be one of the ranch guests, which didn’t explain how he knew me. “That’s right,” I said tentatively. “I don’t think we’ve met.”

He tilted his head as he took another slow draw from his cigarette. “Nope. We haven’t.” Even in the dark, I didn’t miss the hungry way his eyes groped my frame.

He took a step toward me, and I readied myself to run. Just then, the front door slammed open. I looked up to the porch to see a couple of Reeve’s men leaving the house. When I turned back, the man wasn’t there anymore. I glanced around and caught sight of him circling around behind the building.

A man didn’t run off that easily if he hadn’t had ill intent.

I shivered. I wondered  if all of the guests were that creepy. No wonder Reeve was wary of them. Suddenly, I wanted to run and tell him about the encounter.

Then, at the top of the stairs, I noticed his door was shut, which meant he was in there. But what if he wasn’t alone? What if the conversation with Amber at dinner had led them to his bedroom?

Before I let myself get worked up, I looked to Amber’s door. It was shut too. It was the first time I’d seen it closed since her arrival, and my mind jumped to a hundred different possible conclusions. Maybe she was exercising her new babysitter-free status. Maybe she was puking again in the bathroom and wanted privacy. Or she was making out with one of the ranchers. Or crying over whatever Reeve had said to her after I’d left them.

Or she wasn’t in there at all.

I could easily knock on her door to find out, but I wasn’t sure I could face her if she answered, and I was absolutely sure I couldn’t take it if she didn’t.

Hoping I would be better equipped to handle the situation after a good night’s sleep, I retreated to my own room with a sigh of resignation.

Though it was late enough to go to bed, my emotions were too frazzled for sleep. And I was cold. My evening walk had set a chill in my bones that lingered even in the warm house. While I wished it was Reeve warming me up, a hot shower would be just as effective at raising my body temperature and would also calm my nerves.

I stripped, tossing my clothes onto the chair in the corner of my room, then went to start the shower. I turned the water on without getting in, sticking my hand under the stream until it was hot enough. Then I crossed to the linen closet at the other end of the bathroom and picked out a couple of towels. When I shut the door, I turned back toward the shower and nearly jumped out of my skin.

​ “Reeve!” I patted my breastbone, trying to calm the thudding in my chest. “Goddammit, you scared the hell out of me.” Between his sneaky arrival and the lurking cowboy outside, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I was on my way to a heart attack.

His lip curled up with amusement.

I scowled. “I’m glad you think sending me to an early grave is funny.” But I wasn’t really irritated by his arrival in the least. I was glad, and I was certain the accelerated tempo of my heart rate had as much to do with his appearance at all as it did with the element of surprise.

He leaned his hip against the vanity and folded his arms across his chest, a position that highlighted both his broad shoulders and toned biceps. “You like it when I keep you guessing,” he said dismissively, not an entirely inaccurate statement, though it was a bit discomforting that he knew it so well.

“And I like you on your toes,” he added, his eyes dark as they slid the length of my body. I felt them like silk as they caressed over the slopes of my breasts, down the plane of my stomach, zeroing in on the landing strip above my pussy. Suddenly I’d warmed up quite sufficiently, the pool of moisture between my thighs as hot as the steam gathering in the room.

I met his scrutiny with ogling of my own, biting my lip as my eyes landed on the large bulge at the front of his pants. He was barefoot, and I tried not to wonder if that meant he’d been undressed once already in the evening. Tried not to wonder if it was his first or second erection of the night.

Bringing the towels in front of me as a much-needed barrier, I mirrored his crossed arms. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

He shrugged. “You wouldn’t come to my bed so I had to come to yours.”

It was surprising how easily happiness bubbled in my chest. Teasingly, I threw his words from the night before back at him. “This isn’t my bed.”

He was already walking toward me. “It’s close enough.” The towels fell to the floor as he seized my hips and turned my back to the counter. His mouth captured mine, greedily stealing my breath and sense of reason with his lips and tongue.

God, I was hungry for him. I roved my hands over his chest, wanting to touch all of his body at once, delighting at the hard muscles that met the underside of my palms. He was solid everywhere. A wall of strength and potency that could so easily over- power me. I was weak in his presence, incapable of anything except to yield.

A warning bell sounded in the back of my head, though, urging me to get my wits together and address . . . something.  It was difficult to remember what exactly when his hands were on my breasts, squeezing and pinching. The bite of pain sent jolts of electricity through my nervous system, signals that my brain read as pleasure.

​Pleasure I couldn’t resist.

About The Author - 

​NY Times & USA Today Bestselling author Laurelin Paige is a sucker for a good romance and gets giddy anytime there’s kissing, much to the embarrassment of her three daughters. Her husband doesn’t seem to complain, however. When she isn’t reading or writing sexy stories, she’s probably singing, watching Game of Thrones and the Walking Dead, or dreaming of Michael Fassbender.

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