Steamycontemporary tagged booklist

Fake Dating the Firefighter

by Jolene Mosi

Fake dating a small-town firefighter seemed like a solid plan. Asher Mason, with his piercing green eyes, infuriating dominance, and muscles built to carry a house out of a fire, needed better optics for an audit. I needed a protective shield to keep my sister safe. The rules were simple: public affection only. No crossing lines. No letting this get real. Too bad Ash and I argue like enemies and burn like a wildfire. One weak night, we crossed every boundary. I stopped fighting the friction and let myself slide into his bed. God, that night changed everything. Now I’m falling hard, and I’m running out of reasons to call this a mistake. I’ve always been the independent fixer, but when my sister ran into danger, I was ready to walk through hell alone. I didn’t count on Ash right behind me. Protective. Furious. No more pretending. I’m carrying his baby and Ash Mason is done kissing me for show. Now he wants forever. Tropes you are going to love: Friends to Lovers, Fake Relationship, Surprise Pregnancy, Firefighter, Small-Town, Dominant Alpha, Bad Boy with a Good Heart, smart & sassy, Damsel in Distress, Wholesome [Read More]

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Breaking the Captain

by Megan Tate

Luke Callahan runs the first lap on fresh ice every morning. He keeps his hands flat on his thighs when his pulse misbehaves. At twenty-two he's the youngest captain in the league, the golden boy with the clean stat line — and lately he's been jolting awake at five a.m. from a dream about a faceless man, a hand at his throat, a voice telling him to let go. Then the Titans trade for Evan Mercer: same position, dark hair, broken nose, and zero interest in being convenient for anybody after his last team quietly shipped him out for being caught with the wrong person. Evan looks at the captain wound tight across the faceoff dot and figures he's going to crack. He's right. He's just early. A turf war over one roster spot turns into board battles that last a beat too long, a handshake held a second past polite, and a pull Luke has no language for. Evan isn't asking him to come out. He's just standing there — steady, patient, unafraid — holding the door. All Luke has to do is stop running long enough to walk through it. Breaking the Captain is a slow-burn, explicit MM hockey romance and the first in the Lakeview Titans series. If you like rivals-to-lovers with a closeted control freak, an out-and-proud love interest who refuses to shrink, forced proximity in a scrappy minor-league locker room, and a found family with one menace of a best friend — this one's for you. [Read More]

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A Field Beyond Notions

by Atria J. Merian

The scythe meets its match in a paranormal tale of mutual obsession. Humans think I’m a psychopath. I don’t think about them at all. My routines keep me in check. Seven days for a prisoner. Feed off their fear. Dispose. Paperwork. Repeat. But ever since Rosario had stepped into my office for an interview to be my operations manager, I’ve been lovestruck. For the first time in centuries. I watch her sleep. I plan our life together. I hear the bells toll. She may be trying to outrun her past, but she will never outrun her future. Till death do us part is a wonderful notion. Especially since I have no intention of ever dying. [Read More]

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A Shore Thing

by Emily Shacklette

Juliette Matthews has chased light across the globe—from the Andes to North Africa—but nothing throws her off balance quite like being back at her family’s Jersey Shore summer home. Especially when “temporary” starts looking a lot like staying… and Wesley Olson is everywhere she turns. Wesley never left Ocean City—and never forgot the girl next door who wrecked him in the best and worst ways. He’s spent seventeen years building a life that’s safe, steady, and entirely Juliette-free. That is, until, she shows back up on his front porch like the prettiest ghost he’s ever seen. Because one look at her, and suddenly the past isn’t so past. The summer is hotter, the tension thicker, and staying away? Not an option. Not when every shared glance feels like a dare—and every touch reminds them exactly what they lost. This summer, Juliette and Wesley will have to decide—were they destined to be nothing more than a summer fling…or have they always been a shore thing? [Read More]

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Room 002: Devoured and Desired

by Nyx Walker

Emily came to Whispering Hollow for artistic inspiration and ended up with a roommate who howls at the moon. Caleb is gorgeous, guarded, and cursed: a loup-garou bound to the land, he storms out when his wolf threatens to get the better of him. Emily doesn’t flinch—she sketches him, teases him, and maybe stares a little too long. At the Specter Suites, where magic is just part of the décor, Nina—the hotel's owner and resident witch—offers a tea that coaxes truth from the heart. When she proposes a ritual to help Caleb gain control, Emily volunteers. What started as curiosity becomes connection. The ritual forces Caleb to see himself through Emily’s eyes; it forces Emily to decide how much of herself she’s willing to risk. The stakes are personal: a future he chooses, or a curse that keeps choosing for him. Part small-town charm, part dangerous heat, this novella is for those who aren't afraid of the big bad wolf. [Read More]

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Blue Sky Black

by Lea Vale

Zelda never stopped loving Ari. She just got better at pretending she was over him. Then she ran into him again on the last normal morning in America. By the end of the day, he was missing. Now Zelda is searching the wreckage of September 11th for two people: her best friend, Charlie, and the man she thought she'd lost long before the towers fell. *** As teenagers, Zelda and her best friend Charlie had been trying to escape Philadelphia for as long as they could remember. Ari was never part of that plan—until he walked into the pawn shop where Zelda worked and refused to leave her alone. They fell in love too young. They fell apart too fast. Six years later, September 11th puts them face to face on a Manhattan street, hours before the world changes forever. When the towers fall, Zelda survives and realizes Charlie and Ari were both inside and are missing. She has to find them both. Blue Sky Black moves between Zelda's desperate search through the aftermath of September 11th and the years that made her: a lonely, furious girl learning the value of things in a back-room pawn shop, falling in love for the first time, and losing everything she wasn't ready to hold. Perfect for readers who love: - Emotionally devastating love stories - Second chance romance - Slow burn with heat - Dual timeline - Found family - Female ambition Steam: Open door emotionally driven intimacy with explicit detail. Content Warning: Depictions of September 11, 2001, Grief, Loss [Read More]

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Shattered Edges

by Marion Thomas

A contemporary dark romance about forbidden love and ambition in elite competitive figure skating and what happens when survival leaves no safe choices. (warning: contains graphic, explicit language and mature themes) Richard Hale has spent his life on the ice, chasing precision, relevance, and a career that refuses to wait for anyone. When his skating partner walks away he’s left staring down the quiet, humiliating end of everything he’s built. His younger sister Holly faces the same erasure when her partner’s injury ends her season overnight, leaving her suddenly expendable. The solution is obvious, dangerous and unthinkable. Forced to skate together by circumstance and desperation, Richard and Holly form a partnership that some think shouldn’t exist. On the ice, their connection is undeniable. Off it, the pressure fractures restraint, blurring lines they were never meant to cross and leaving them scrutinized by a world eager to judge what it doesn’t understand. As Nationals loom, obsession threatens to eclipse reason, and desire threatens to destroy the very thing they’re fighting to save. [Read More]

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Her Heart's Wish

by Dawn Baca

Can a woman who built her life around everyone else finally choose love? Leila Durand has spent years being exactly who her family needed: a devoted mother, a doting grandmother, and the steady heart of the farm that saved her after loss. But when Yuri Petrova asks her to come to Saint Petersburg, the quiet life she has carefully built begins to feel less like safety and more like a beautiful cage. Yuri has always been a man of stars, students, and solitude—until one unforgettable Frenchwoman makes his orderly world feel suddenly incomplete. From their first meeting at a family wedding, Leila’s warmth, strength, and laughter unsettled him in ways no equation ever could. After three years of calls, letters, and longing, he is ready to stop loving her from a distance. Leila is falling for Yuri, but loving him means facing the grief, guilt, and fear she has buried beneath decades of devotion. Yuri is falling just as hard, but winning Leila’s heart may mean leaving behind the life, career, and country that have defined him. When distance, family ties, and old wounds threaten to keep them apart, Leila must decide whether being wanted is worth the risk of finally being seen. Will she cling to the life that made her feel necessary—or open her heart to the man who makes her feel chosen? Her Heart’s Wish is an emotional later-in-life romance about second chances, found family, healing after grief, and the brave, terrifying joy of beginning again. Perfect for readers who love mature heroines, patient heroes, slow-burn longing, complicated families, European settings, and love stories where the biggest battle is learning to believe happiness is still allowed. Read Her Heart’s Wish today and fall in love with a romance that proves it’s never too late to choose your own happily ever after. [Read More]

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