Anybody else so over 2016?  Aside from the Cubs bringing joy to the world, it’s been a slog all around – and the pages have suffered.  What to do?

How about making 2017 all about fun, sexy reads to fill your e-reader?  Let’s start with a new Kringle book – ETHAN (The Kringle Boys #2) is coming up just in time to distract you from your relatives this holiday season.  I’ll have a blurb and a release date up in a couple of days, but let’s just say that Jack Frost’s chilly son is going to get a bit of a warm-up from a sexy scientist in his Antarctic fortress. There will be penguins.  This might be the strangest Kringle book yet, but I’m hoping you’ll find it as funny and hot as I do.

Meanwhile, you’ve got a few days to catch up on the Kringles!  Here’s the collection of Kringle Girls:

And here’s Nick, along with an excerpt to get you going:

Bah, humbug. Nick Kringle is having a rotten Christmas. A huge disappointment to his chilly, holiday-stomping father, Jack Frost, Nick’s punishment for his refusal to take on the family business is exile to the human world, no magic allowed. Luckily, his North Pole relatives take pity on him, letting him run Santa’s big city candy factory and store. But Nick never counted on having to deal with customers, elves, or Santa’s nitpicky Candy Manager, the lovely but tightly wound Phoebe Winters. He’s never had a sweet tooth before, but everything about her has his mouth watering for a taste, despite the fact that they come from different worlds.

Phoebe Winters is determined to be the best Candy Manager that Santa has ever had, even though it means controlling her magical sugar addiction and her impossible attraction to Nick Kringle. Santa’s nephew has no right to be so hot, especially when he seems to be as coldhearted as his chilly father. But when a dangerous saboteur puts Santa’s magical candy supply in jeopardy right before the holiday, Phoebe and Nick must work together to repair the damage and save Christmas. Can Phoebe melt the icy shell around Nick’s heart? Or will the cold sweep away any chance of holiday-ever-after?

EXCERPT:

Nick grudgingly admitted that the candy shop was a great idea.  Customers entered, lured by the smell of sugar and spice, wide-eyed and jittery at the sight of the elves. They quickly relaxed as the chipper little creatures heaped smiles, attention, and free samples on them, and left with boxes and bags of cheerfully wrapped candy and cookies.

When closing time came, Nick was surprised – the hour had flown. Wanting to get the caramel cookies set before he closed up for the night, he’d sent the rest home with a gruff, “Thanks,” feeling unaccountably warm and pleased with himself when Mirabelle hopped up to pinch his cheek.

The soft squeak from the doorway to the factory had him looking up.

Phoebe stood there, staring at him as though he’d grown another head.

“About this morning—” he began, determined to at least get them back to civility.

Phoebe held up a hand.

“It’s okay. Let’s just put it behind us. I thought you didn’t want anything to do with this?”

She fluttered a hand to encompass the candy shop with its rows of sweets in enticing, old-fashioned jars along every shelf.

“I’m coming around,” admitted Nick with a grin.

Phoebe drew in a sharp breath, and her eyes drifted down to his hands. And stayed there.

Intuition tickled the back of Nick’s neck, and he examined the petite half-elf by the door. She seemed reluctant to come all the way inside the shop. And the way she was looking at his hands…

Nick poured the sticky mess onto the marble slab and started kneading it, adding powdered sugar as the caramel goo began to hold its shape.

“Would you like a taste?”

The words popped out of him. If possible, Phoebe grew even stiffer in the doorway.

“I don’t…sample,” said Phoebe coldly, her tone as frigid as the icy fields of home.

“Never?”

“No.”

“Because you don’t like candy,” he prodded.

“Yes. I mean, no. No, I don’t.”

“Suit yourself.”

Shrugging as he dismissed the odd sensation that he was missing something, Nick wrapped the ball of dough in plastic and reached for the sink to wash his caramel-coated hands, absently popping his finger in his mouth to suck the gooey goodness off his thumb. Another soft squeak had him looking up.

He froze.

Phoebe’s eyes were wide and bright, flitting between his fingers and his mouth, her skin flushed, and she was doing a rotten job controlling her breathing as an excited little pant escaped her lips. Nick was shocked to see that the prickly half-elf was nearly bubbling over with repressed arousal. She looked ready to explode at the lightest brush of skin against skin.

Nick knew elves were susceptible to sugar – they craved it, had to have it, and used it to soothe, to comfort, and to fuel their magical ability. Phoebe claimed to dislike it, but Nick had never seen a reaction quite like this – he’d seen elves lust over candy, but she was quivering as though he’d taken a long, fat candy cane and slid it into her throbbing pussy. His inner devil grinned even as blood rushed southward.

She doesn’t hate candy.

Forgetting the sink, he moved around the counter.

“What are you doing?”

Phoebe skittered around the edge of the room, avoiding him, stopping in front of the closed front door. The shades were drawn, the door frosted glass. They were completely alone.

“Sure you don’t want a lick?” asked Nick, holding up his hand, moving ever so carefully closer, like a lion stalking its prey.

Phoebe stepped back until the door prevented her from retreating further, her clipboard clutched in a death grip in front of her as though to ward him off. Bells jangled above as she pressed herself flat.

“It’s good,” he murmured, “Warm, buttery, rich. Perfect for drizzling all over warm skin so that I can lap it off, one delicious lick at a time.”

Phoebe moaned. Nick’s cock tightened painfully.

He wasn’t sure when teasing turned to seduction, but despite her buttoned up demeanor, he had to admit that everything about Phoebe flooded his mind with naughty fantasies he was dying to make reality. Their animosity of earlier suddenly seemed like foreplay, and Nick was beginning to think he might actually lose his mind if he didn’t get his mouth on her within the next thirty seconds. He’d never responded to a woman like this, but didn’t have the brain cells to examine it, because she shocked him, grabbing his wrist in a firm grip and bringing his fingers to her mouth. The clipboard clattered to the ground.

Oh God.

Phoebe was still holding back, breathing in the scent of caramel, watching it drip slowly down his hand, practically shaking. Nick swiped her lower lip with one finger, spreading sticky sugar.

Soft.

“Open your mouth, Phoebe.”

His tongue felt thick in his mouth, and he felt heat surge through him as she obeyed, her tongue darting out to lick it away, eager and hot. The sound she made was so throaty and delicious, he shuddered in reaction, wrapping his free arm around her waist to pull her tight against him, his cock hard enough to pound nails, pressed into the softness of her belly. Nick couldn’t even be insulted that she didn’t seem to notice, because that gorgeous mouth was on him now, savoring the caramel on his skin, slowly sucking his fingers inside, one at a time, rooting for every little trace of sugar. Her eyelids fluttered down as pleasure suffused her face. It didn’t look like she was planning to release him anytime soon.

Nick absorbed each lick and hot little suck with greed. He wanted her mouth on him, everywhere. He wanted to feel her exploring his chest, his abs, with the same hunger. He wanted to watch her take his cock down her throat, stretching her lips with each sumptuous stroke.

Nick groaned.

SWEET, SHE THOUGHT. SO incredibly sweet.

Phoebe lapped up the caramel, hungry for all of it, feeling the magic of sugar zing through her system. And the taste of his skin was delicious – salty and hot and addictive.

There’s a reason I shouldn’t be doing this.

Happy Holidays!

xoxo, Lily