If His Kiss Is Wicked by Jo Goodman

USA Today bestselling author Jo Goodman delivers the unforgettable story of a beautiful young woman who believes someone wants to kill her. Only one man can reveal if she’s truly in peril or if she’s going mad. But will his forbidden kiss lead to a dangerous seduction?

Shy by nature, Emma Hathaway usually leaves the drama to her rebellious cousin, Marisol. But when Emma agrees to meet with her cousin’s secret lover to end the affair, she is pulled into a dangerous game. Now Emma is convinced her involvement in the scandal has put her life in jeopardy. The trouble is none of Emma’s confidantes believe anyone is trying to harm her. As whispers of madness begin, Emma turns to the only person who might be able to help…

The very handsome, barely respectable Restell Gardner has gained a reputation for helping people out of compromising positions. Never one to turn away a lady in need, Restell agrees to help solve the intrigue. Sensing there is more to the green-eyed beauty than meets the eye, Restell feels himself falling for Emma. But he resists succumbing to his passion… at least until he learns the truth about the danger that is haunting her. For if he gives in to temptation to soon, he could lose Emma forever…

I want this! It is a new historical from Zebra but once again a very contemporary cover on a historical.

Start counting the days… This books is FANTASTIC. I honestly didn’t know if I was going to like it because the summary just didn’t do much for me. But I had to read it because it was Jo Goodman!

And man she just keeps getting better and better. And when you think of how fabulous her back list is that says something. You want to sit there and read it over and over.

I don’t have an excerpt but this is the very short teaser in the front of the book. It stops your breath…

HIS WICKED KISS

The moment he inclined his head, Emma rose on tiptoes. Her arms went around his neck with enough force to bring her body flush to his. His hands at the small of her back held her there. She lifted her face and the distance that separated their mouths ceased to exist. When he whispered her name, it was as if she could taste the sound of it on her lips.

She was delighted to learn her name tasted like warm brandy.

Restell edged Emma backward against the pianoforte, and her hip brushed the keys. Neither of them noticed the oddly discordant accompaniment to their kiss, nor would they have done anything differently if they had.

This kiss would suffer no trivial interruption.

There was little that was gentle in the press of their mouths. Need did not make much allowance for tenderness. There was heat here, and passion. Nothing about the movement of his lips across hers was hurried. He drank slowly, tempered by the knowledge that he had been thirsting for just this end for a very long time and desiring that the end should not come too quickly. Emma’s desire matched his own.

Her fingertips brushed the damp, curling ends of his hair just above his collar. The color and texture of it was so light she might have been threading sunshine. She felt him shiver, then knew a like response in herself. His tongue swept across the ridge of her teeth. She opened her mouth wider and her own tongue tangled with his…

le sigh… I love her way with words. And the banter between Restell and Emma… well it is hard to say what is better.

“You must stop,” she said under her breath. “Mr. Charters could walk in at any moment.”

“And we will be caught with our mouths open as wide as fledglings. I tell you, he will be flattered.”

“Flattered?”

“That we are properly awed, of course. It will not occur to him that you and I are appalled.”

“You cannot possible know that,”

“Would you like to engage in a wager?”‘

“Do not be foolish.”

“Do not be fussy. I can see you are intrigued. You are wondering what we might wager.”

“I am not,” she said primly. Her eyes darted toward the door. “What would we wager?”

Restell and Emma say so much, sometimes with no words and often with many that mean much more than plain definition. If His Kiss Is Wicked is historical romance at its best.