Book Title: EXHALE (London Love 1.5)
Author: Sophia Soames
Publisher: Self Published
Cover Artist: Christina Stern
Release Date: October 25, 2021
Genre: Contemporary M/M Romance
Tropes: Instalove, First Date
Themes: Fairytale sweetness
Length: 29 000 words
It is a standalone story, but best enjoyed if you have read Breathe first.
Buy Links for EXHALE – Available in Kindle Unlimited
A sweet tale of figuring out that the future isn’t always straight.
Blurb
What do you do when your relationship falls apart? Well, you bury yourself in a deep hole of grief, one you have so carelessly dug for yourself. Jamie Walters needs to find a way out of the mess his life has become, but the way forward is not as straight as he thought it would have been. What’s the point anyway? Women are off the menu but Jamie still wants the entire textbook fairy-tale. The romantic dates and the flowers and holding hands in the dark, and Grindr certainly isn’t the place to find your happily ever after..
Catch up with Jamie and the rest of the Walters family in this sweet little insta-love fairy-tale where Jamie finally gets his happily ever after, Originally published as part of the Love is All Anthology, Exhale has been reedited and extended to the quirky little fairy-tale it was always meant to be.
Exhale is a standalone novella but is best enjoyed after reading Breathe.
Trigger warnings: Brief mention of pregnancy loss.
BREATHE – 99c Promo Offer
Also Available in Kindle Unlimited
Pre-Order Links for TASTE
Releasing on November 1, 2021
“Can I ask you something?” I tried to keep my voice steady, but I was sweating under my coat and wondering why I’d decided to wear so many layers. It was a warm, spring afternoon, and I was in my full winter gear, having dressed in a haze of daydreams mixed with frantic anxiety. I needed to calm the fuck down and get myself back to some kind of normal state, where I could speak without stuttering and my armpits weren’t drenched in sweat. I had no problem sitting down chatting with customers at work, talking about the weather and making jokes about current affairs. Yet, here I was all stupid, just because the guy sitting next to me at the rickety café table was the most normal man I’d ever seen.
He was an ordinary bloke. A nice bloke even. Someone who could easily have been the latest apprentice at the garage where I worked. But he was gay, and he’d agreed to have sex with me, and I was terrified, which made no sense. It was only sex. At the same time, looking into those big eyes, or at that lush mouth, or the mop of tight curls on his head, I wanted to reach out and touch him, brush my thumb over his cheek, feel his stubble under my fingertips. I wanted to stroke his lips, his eyebrows. I wanted to kiss his temples, and…yes, I wanted to do a lot of more than that. But still, here we were.
I took another sip of my coffee that was already going cold. “The thing is…” Fuck it. I needed to ask, though. I had expectations. I had hopes. I had bloody paralysing fears. “This sex thing? Are you into, like, all of it?”
“All of it?” he asked and started fiddling with the coke bottle again.
“I’ve had…like, anal with girls. I’ve never been brave enough to ask anyone to play with mine. Is that…what you kind of expect to do?”
He smiled, and I breathed a too-loud sigh of relief.
“Sex is whatever we make of it. If we both have fun, we can do whatever you want. I totally go either way, happy to bottom or top. So…there. We’ve had that awkward conversation.” He sat up a little straighter, his eyes trained on his hands as he asked, “You want to bottom then?”
“I don’t know?” There I was again. This was…such a stupid idea. I was an idiot. That much was obvious.
“It’s good to talk about these things.” He suddenly sounded far too grown up, despite his voice trembling. “Because then we can just go with it. I like that you asked—that’s decent of you. But the sex is usually the only part of my hook-ups I get right. It’s the after bit that I fuck up.”
“Then talk to me,” I said, trying to knock some sense into this conversation. We were both freaking out and that needed to stop. “What part goes wrong?”
“As I said, I’ve had more than a few hook-ups. None of them have been any good. I tend to go for guys who end up pitying or laughing at me. It’s kind of my own fault, as I go for a certain type, and they’re always wrong. I know what I’m looking for, what kind of guy would make me happy. Well, I think I know.”
“Chemistry and attraction are sometimes two completely different things,” I started, then I stopped. I had no right to claim to know what I was talking about.
“Exactly!” he agreed, beaming at me. “I go for people I fancy, but they never really fancy me back. Not when it comes down to it. They may like how I look, but they don’t want to talk to me or even stay the night.”
“I already like talking to you,” I said, and I did. I was enjoying hanging out with him, in the comfortable warmth of the coffee shop. He wasn’t trembling so hard anymore, and to top it all off, he was nice. Really nice.
“You’ll get tired of me,” he said. “I talk a lot and I’m intense. And apparently, I’m really demanding and needy and controlling. The last guy I hooked up with told me he was tired of my voice before he’d even finished blowing me. Said he couldn’t imagine being with someone who didn’t know when to shut the hell up.”
“That’s just rude. I would have kicked him out.”
“I did. Told him to go fuck himself.”
“Good for you.”
“I wanted…I suppose… Life is not that simple, is it? I just want to meet the right person, you know? Fall in crazy love with someone I can come home to in the evenings, who’ll hug me and love me and…yeah. All that. Some people find their soul mate and then they’re just, like, happy?”
“I don’t think they found their soul mates on Grindr.”
Sophia Soames should be old enough to know better but has barely grown up. She has been known to fangirl over TV shows, has fallen in and out of love with more popstars than she dares to remember, and has a ridiculously high-flying (un-)glamourous real-life job.
Her long-suffering husband just laughs at her antics. Their children are feral. The Au Pair just sighs.
She lives in a creaky old house in rural London, although her heart is still in Scandinavia.
Discovering that the stories in her head make sense when written down has been part of the most hilarious midlife crisis ever, and she hopes it may long continue.
Find me on social media @sophiasoames on all platforms
Christina Stern is a Russian based artist. Quick sketches and portraits drawn in pencil are what she likes to do the most. Her work can be found on @christinastern on Instagram
Aurelia Morris is a cover artist, photographer, Photoshop wiz and eternal fangirl. She works in many mediums under more aliases that she can keep track of.
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