In her witty and breathtakingly sexy novel, Emily Foster introduces a story of lust, friendship, and other unpredictable experiments. . .
Data, research, scientific formulae–Annabelle Coffey is completely at ease with all of them. Men, not so much. But that’s all going to change after she asks Dr. Charles Douglas, the postdoctoral fellow in her lab, to have sex with her. Charles is not only beautiful, he is also adorably awkward, British, brilliant, and nice. What are the odds he’d turn her down?
Very high, as it happens. Something to do with that whole student/teacher/ethics thing. But in a few weeks, Annie will graduate. As soon as she does, the unlikely friendship that’s developing between them can turn physical–just until Annie leaves for graduate school. Yet nothing could have prepared either Annie or Charles for chemistry like this, or for what happens when a simple exercise in mutual pleasure turns into something as exhilarating and infernally complicated as love.
From the author of How Not to Fall comes an electrifying, powerful new story about love, trust, and emotional surrender.
Once upon a time, med student Annie Coffey set out to have a purely physical fling with Charles Douglas, a gorgeous British doctor in her lab. It didn’t quite work out that way. Instead, secrets—and desires—were bared, hearts were broken, and Annie knew she had to leave this complicated, compelling man who remains convinced he can never give her what she needs.
Walking away is one thing. Staying away is another. Annie and Charles reunite at a London conference, rekindling a friendship they struggle to protect from their intense physical connection. Little by little, Annie gets a glimpse into Charles’s dark past and his wealthy, dysfunctional family. Soon, she’s discovering what it means to have someone claim her, body and soul. And she’s learning that once in a lifetime you find a love that can make you do anything…except let go.
My inner nerd is all about Charles’s note!
Keep reading to see the full Love Note!
Termagant, harpy, shrew,
I wish I could have been here when you woke up, but hopefully the contents of the kitchen can serve as a surrogate. Coffee’s in the carafe. Lunch is in the fridge. My heart is in your hands: The little box next to the coffee pot? It’s the ring. It arrived yesterday. I know you’ve said yes already, but you know my scaredy cat heart. It jumps to my throat and hangs on with claws, just at the sight of the postage stamp Mum put on the box. Will Annie come home and gently, kindly tell me she can’t accept it, can’t accept me?
Of course, I can only write that, knowing you’ll read it, because my scaredy cat heart has begun to learn how to trust the strange, impossible magic that brings you home to me every day and to the bed every night.
As a matter of fact – I didn’t get a chance to tell you last night – I’m reading a paper about a two-person neuroscience study of the co-regulation of mesolimbic cortical activity between people who are deeply in love. Apparently, mere co-presence of any two individuals, even strangers, is all it takes for a human brain to begin tuning itself to the other person’s rhythms, but when two people in love are asked to look in each other’s eyes while scientists measure their brainwaves, the synchrony is almost instantaneous, and comes and goes in long, intense waves. Research participants match each other’s respiration rate, even as both people’s blood pressure drops. Two hearts quite literally beat as one. I read that and thought of your stillness, how it anchors me.
I suppose that’s me turning the magic into something tangible, something I can measure. But also, I know it’s the language of your heart, Miss “My Soul Is the Biology of the Brain,” with your love of cadaver dissection and your poster of Alan Turing. I’d explain the research methodology in more detail, but I’m afraid it would get pornographic. Well, when I see you tonight and I put that ring on your finger, I’ll whisper randomized placebo-controlled sweet nothings in your external auditory canal.
Happy Valentine’s Day, domina.
Love (by which I mean instantaneous co-regulation of dopaminergic activity in the mesolimbic cortex),
Cxx
Emily wrote her first romance, How Not to Fall, because she was totally sure it was possible to write a romance about a college student who experiences her sexual awakening with an older, more powerful man, in a way that was sex positive, feminist, and medically accurate, as well as sexy as heck. She was right; Sarah MacLean called it “devastatingly sexy, deeply emotional beginning to one of the most satisfying romances I’ve ever read,” and Sarah MacLean is amazing.
(HNTF has a cliffhanger ending. Its sequel, How Not to Let Go, gives the hero and heroine the happy ending they were always destined to have.)
Emily is currently working on more novels with lots of high quality sex between very, very smart characters.
In life outside romance, Emily is Emily Nagoski, a sex educator and bestselling author of nonfiction on the science of women’s sexual wellbeing.
If you’d like to invite Emily to do an event or something, she’s actively looking for reasons to put on real pants and leave the house, so please drop a line to:
Emily Foster (that’s a pen name) writes erotic romances about smart people. She has BES (Bachelor of Elf Spotting) from Last Week Tonight and is an ordained minister of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
I love him.