Too Many Stars to Count: Spicy Book Extract

The following is a spicy book extract from the third book in my Sun, Moon & Stars series, Too Many Stars to Count. It has a female heroine, Maeve, and non-binary love interest, Loncey. Because Maeve is asexual and still figuring out how she feels about sex, I would describe this book as "atypically spicy" but it still has plenty of intimacy and brings the heat, I promise you, and this extract - their first kiss - demonstrates this well.

You can read Too Many Stars to Count in full here, or start with the first book in the series, Five Sunsets (and don't forget the second, The Moon Also Rises!).

Chapter Thirty-Three

Maeve

They’re staring at me like they’ve just discovered something new and fascinating about me. Or like maybe I’ve got a bogey hanging out of my nose. I lift my hand to my face and wipe, but it comes back clean.

“What?” I ask. “What is it?”

Loncey gives me a small, soft smile. “It’s you.”

I feel heat in my cheeks and my voice comes out like a croak. “What about me?”

“Nothing,” they say but their smile grows. “So, shall we?”     

“Shall we what?” I ask, still preoccupied by trying to guess what they were just thinking about as they stared fixatedly on me.

Their fingers rub back and forth along the edge of my jaw.

“Shall we kiss?”

They want to do this. They want to kiss me. They want to kiss me and nothing else.

“Yes,” I whisper.

Loncey inches closer to me and brings their other hand up to cup the other side of my face. In their hold like this, I feel tension leave my body, like I’m surrendering to them holding me up.

I close my eyes and ever so slightly pucker my lips.

“Wait, Maeve,” they say gently. “First, I want to know where you’re comfortable with me touching you.”

They shouldn’t, but my shoulders sink with irritation. I don’t want to talk any more. I definitely don’t want to have to tell them all the places I don’t like to be touched. I don’t want to highlight how different I must be from the many other people Loncey has kissed before.

“Maeve.” Loncey’s voice has a warning edge. They can sense my reluctance.

“Fine,” I say grumpily. “No boobs, no genitals, maybe avoid my arse too.”

Loncey’s smile is one of amusement. “So can I touch your face? Your hair? Your arms? Your neck?”

“Yes,” I say and I shiver at the prospect. If they notice, they don’t comment on it. “And how about you?”

“How about me what?”

“Where can I touch you?”

Loncey looks surprised at being asked but they school their face quickly. “You can touch me wherever you want. Apart from my armpits.”

“I remember,” I smile at them.

“I’m glad,” they say before their eyes drop to my mouth and I don’t know why but it makes me laugh nervously. This is really going to happen.

And then I do what I always do when I’m anxious or nervous. I make a bad joke. “I mean, I wasn’t planning on tickling you under your arms, or grabbing you between your legs, but I thought it was polite to ask.”

“It was… polite.”

I let out a ragged sigh and possibly overemphasise the frustration in it. My nerves are quickly turning into impatience. “Well, do we now have to decide which way your head is going to go and if we use tongue or not?”

Loncey gives me an assessing look. “Maeve, are you sure you really want to do this?”

I shake their hands off my face, my hair flying around my face and shoulders. “Well, I don’t know now, do I? All this talking is making me second-guess myself and believe me, I’ve lived a life of second-guessing myself and I’m bored of it, bored to fecking tears—”

My outburst stops abruptly as Loncey moves slowly closer to me and I expect their lips to land on mine, but that doesn’t happen. They stop when their head is beside mine, the heat from their cheek radiating to my skin.

“Maeve,” they say, husky and low into my ear. “I’m going to kiss you, but it’s not going to be quick or rushed. I’m going to go slow so I can listen to your body, so I know what it wants. I’m going to take my time with you.”

“Okay,” I say, aware of their warm breath on my earlobe and how their body brackets around mine, the bed dipping underneath our weight.

“All you have to do is say yes,” they add. “And keep telling me yes, unless it’s a no.”

“Okay,” I say.

They brush the tip of their nose on the skin where my ear meets my neck.

“So?”

“Yes,” I say, my voice hoarse but I don’t care. I don’t care about anything but Loncey’s next move.

It takes an age to come. I feel like I’m sitting there for hours with their breath coasting across my skin and the warmth of their body inching closer and closer to mine, and yet no contact is made.

“Loncey,” I say, and I have a scathing remark ready. I have a very bossy, “Hurry the fuck up!” on the tip of my tongue but it doesn’t come out. Instead, their mouth opens and they say one word and yet it comes out like a long, deep exhale, like they’ve been holding their breath for the longest time and they’ve finally let it go.

“Maeve,” they say and then their lips are on mine. Warm, soft and plumper than I expect. There is force in their kiss and it knocks me a little off balance, pushing me back. I bring my hands down onto the bed behind me to steady myself and they ease off a little, but instantly I miss the pressure so I apply a little of my own as I chase their mouth.

As if to reward me for giving as good as I can get, Loncey’s hand comes up to grip the side of my face, their thumb stroking my cheek. We stay like this for a while, our lips closed and pushing against each other. Then Loncey lifts their mouth up and kisses around my top lip, again and again and again until they drop down and do the same to my bottom lip. Then their mouth comes completely off mine and they rub their nose against mine.

     I open my eyes and panic inside, fearing that this means the is the kiss over, but I am wrong. I am so very wrong. Their mouth returns to mine and this time their lips are slightly parted and they use them to nudge mine apart. I close my eyes again as I let them ease my mouth open, my head falling back a little but still safe in their hold. A second later their tongue swipes slowly across the length of my bottom lip and I sigh. It's like they want to catch that sigh when they seal my open mouth with theirs and all I can think, all I can feel is soft wet flesh, the texture of their tongue as it touches mine, and the continuous stroking, stroking, stroking of their fingertips along my cheekbone.

     Our kiss deepens. Our tongues tease each other endlessly. Our mouths open wider, and our lips push harder. My tongue constantly chases theirs. I follow it as they explore my mouth, running the tip of their tongue across my teeth and taking their sweet time sucking my bottom lip into their mouth.

Loncey is true to their word and their hands only touch my face, my neck, my shoulders and my arms. As their one hand continues to cup my face as if to keep me tenderly but firmly in place, their other hand slides up the full length of my arm, their fingertips almost frustratingly light as they stroke the sensitive skin of my upper arm and collarbone. But then they slide that hand up my neck, wrapping their fingers around my throat, and there is nothing light about their touch. It’s not dangerous or threatening, but their grip around my throat has intent. It’s possessive and purposeful and I like it. I like feeling like they want me – sexually, or otherwise – and I realise I like it because I feel safe with it. I feel safe with Loncey.

I feel safe and I feel lost. Lost in their kiss.

Their kiss that doesn’t end, and more beautifully, doesn’t develop into anything else. Even as we fall back onto the bed, both of us lying side by side, and our legs become tangled, we don’t stop kissing. They let go of my neck and then move their hands around the safe parts of my body, stroking my arms, my face, the underside of my chin. And I lose my hands in their hair, I squeeze the tight muscles of their arms, and I slip my hands under their clothes and spread my fingers out against their back.

At one point, I shift closer to them, feeling a slight strain in my neck from not being as close as I could be, but they shift back.

“Wait,” they say and they reach a hand behind their head. They pull one of the pillows out from under them and lodge it between us.

“What…” I begin, but I immediately realise what they’re doing. They’re covering their erection for me.

“Thanks,” I say, quietly.

“Are you okay?” they ask and I don’t miss how their eyes dip down to my lips. I wonder if my mouth looks like theirs, all red and swollen.

“Fuck, yeah,” I say, breathless.

“Want to stop?”

“Fuck, no.” And I dive in for more.

*****

Read the book in full here!