Book Title: TASTE (London Love #2)
Author: Sophia Soames
Publisher: Self-Published
Cover Artist: Christina Stern
Release Date: November 1, 2021
Genre: Contemporary M/M Romance
Trope: Enemies to lovers
Theme: Hotel, London, Hurt/Comfort
Length: 91 000 words
It is a standalone story and the second book in the London Love series.
Buy Links – Available in Kindle Unlimited
Universal Link | Amazon US | Amazon UK
There is a fine line between love and hate.
Blurb
“Emotional, funny, gripping, and heart-wrenching, Sophia Soames’ books pulled me in and stuck with me well after. Highly recommend.” —Jennifer Cody, author of the Diviner’s Game and Shattered Pawns universe.
Finn Christensen doesn’t do feelings. He doesn’t do relationships either and when he has an itch to scratch, there are always clubs and hook-ups. He works every hour of the day as the Front Office manager for the Clouds Westminster Hotel in central London. He’s respected in the industry, and as senior management, deserves the reputation and fear his name carries.
Then award-winning restauranteur Mark Quinton swans in like he owns the bloody place, and Finn’s carefully managed world starts to fall apart.
Mark Quinton needs. He’s impulsive and stupid and childish and probably the last person in the world who should be allowed to run the Food and Beverage department at the Clouds Westminster Hotel, however many brilliant ideas he has and seems to manage to miraculously pull off. He needs. And he needs Finn Christensen.
It’s a match made in hell. A recipe for disaster. There will be a bloodbath one day. They all know. Everyone knows.
TASTE is the second book in the London Love series, following four extraordinary ordinary couples living real fairy-tales in the city of London. TASTE is a hurt/comfort, enemy-to-lovers romance set behind the scenes in a busy inner-city business hotel.
Trigger-warnings for off-page mentions of domestic violence, kleptomania, depression, ADHD and culinary crimes involving cheese. HEA.
“FUCKING HELL, YOU ARSEHOLE!” My eyes stung from the salt-and-chlorine-infused water and my suit clung to me as I clumsily treaded water. I couldn’t believe he’d done it! He was clearly as insane as everyone said he was.
He was laughing. Of course, he was. Laughing that brilliant laugh and reaching out to grab my hand so he could pull me towards the edge of the pool.
“I know how to swim,” I protested and batted at him like the child I was.
“It’s not easy when you’re wearing a suit,” he said, smiling at me from beneath his wet fringe and looking…I hated that I admitted it…ethereally perfect. Beautiful. Gorgeous in all that skin and water. A droplet sparkled on his top lip, and I wanted to kiss it off—just one more thing that made my rage crank another degree closer to boiling point.
I reined myself in with a deep breath.
“How the hell will I get this dry? How the fuck do you expect me to explain this?” I tried to wave my soggy jacket arm in demonstration. My tie was strangling me, twisted back around my neck, and my shirt was riding up as I attempted to manoeuvre back to the ladder. I wasn’t even going to try jumping up onto the side, not in front of him. The indignity of losing my trousers as I clambered out of this cesspit of a pool was playing on loop in my head—a constant reminder that I was not, and never would be, someone as effortlessly cool as him.
“Just say you fell into the water while I was retrieving a lost earring from the pool. Doing a good deed, utilising your time well by organising a small rescue mission or something? Mrs Khalifa is forever losing her jewellery up here, and of course, I kindly offered to help you attempt to retrieve it when you accidentally slipped. How very inconvenient. No biggie.” He shrugged like his ridiculous fairy tale of a lie would ever find its way out of my mouth.
“Oh, put a sock in it,” I snarled as I got my shoe on the bottom step of the pool ladder and heaved myself upwards, then, predictably, slipped, arms flailing, and hit the water with an almighty splash. Next thing, he wrapped his arms around me, hauling me close like he was saving my stupid life. He wasn’t, and I was falling for his stunts again, letting his reel me in with his ridiculous non-happening plans.
I forced my arms down, but like the cowards they were, they floated up again, coming to a rest against his naked shoulders.
“Just let me go,” I hissed.
“No,” he hissed back.
“Fuck this.”
“No.” He was looking straight at me, his face a little too close.
“You promised,” I whispered. “You promised we wouldn’t do this again.”
“So did you.”
I pushed at his arms, wriggled clumsily in my suit as he pulled me tighter to his chest. His shoulder muscles flexed with the effort of keeping me still, which wasn’t difficult when I was weighed down by wet clothes and he had his feet on that little ledge on the side of the pool. I suddenly wished I was naked, which should’ve been a sobering thought, but it wasn’t, and I hated myself. So, so much.
“We need to stop this,” he murmured.
“No shit!” I shot back.
I tried to turn away, but his forehead fell against mine, and I had no choice. I looked at him. Looked him straight in the eyes, and my body let out an embarrassingly loud sigh.
“I don’t know what it is that’s going on between us, but it’s… It’s eating at me on the inside, and we need to put an end to it.” His voice was calm, a million miles calmer than the stuttered syllables that came out of mine.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Bad lie, Christensen. You coward, my inner demons heckled at me.
“Arsehole.”
“Wanker,” I retaliated.
“You uptight twatface.”
“Cunt.”
“Dickhead.”
“You lying bastard.”
“You imbecilic piece of shit.”
Show-off. I scrambled to think of something else to cut him down with. I couldn’t. My mind swam, as his eyes were firmly set on mine, his nose nudging the tip of my own, just soft little touches that had me shivering although the water was warm and my suit was clinging to every inch of my over-sensitised body.
Then he kissed me. Angled his head and leant right in. His lips were as perfect as I remembered, soothing my worries with just the right amount of touch, the tang of salt and perfumed water.
I may have whimpered, because this wasn’t right, and it was nothing to do with the exceptionally clear cameras down here and the strong probability that Higgins was sitting up in the security booth filming it all on his mobile. Nor was it because this was so way-out-there wrong that we could both end up in Mr Klutz’s office before daylight being asked to explain what the hell we were thinking.
I whimpered because, under all the heady scents of the water and the spa and the candles that burned down here all day, I couldn’t taste him or smell him. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I knew what Mark Quinton tasted like, and this wasn’t it. It wasn’t enough. I needed more, and I hated myself for how little self-preservation I had left and how easily he’d manipulated me.
“Finn.” He stroked a finger over my temple, lifting a wet curl from my face. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”
“It does,” I whispered back, trembling with shame at my own words. I had nothing to add to this conversation, apart from my arms around his neck, my lips on his and that gut-punch feeling of being whole, of knowing you are half of something wondrous. Because having someone desire you the way Mark Quinton seemed to desire me was wondrous.
But I was a fraud. I pretended to hate him when all I could think of was his skin against mine. I played the part of someone completely in control, yet one tiny flick of his wrist had me succumbing to whatever game he was playing.
For a minute, his face changed, his cheeks creasing with the tiniest smile as his eyes twinkled with a rare moment of light.
“I like you so much when you’re like this, when you just let your guard down and I get to see you. The real you. Because he’s in there, isn’t he? This playful, cute, lovely man that…”
His demeanour changed again, probably in response to how my whole body tensed at his words. His stupid, stupid words.
“There’s never going to be an us, if that’s what you’re insinuating.” My anger was on the rise again. “This, whatever this is, is a mistake, an error of judgement, a stupid game that I have no interest in playing.”
“I’m not playing. I’m hoping… Fuck, Finn, I just want to have something. Something real.”
“It’s not real. There’s nothing sustainable here. Nothing to build on. Too much history.”
“History? A half-hearted blowjob in the changing rooms? You call that history? You call this nothing? That, was…” He let go of me, splashing his palms into the water in sheer frustration while I clung to him like a fool and another truth hit me like a brick to the chest. He was truly that shallow and seemed to have no idea of the trouble he caused or the trail of destruction he left behind. Mark Quinton just ploughed through life leaving nothing but darkness in his wake and tossed-up fragments of humanity that meant nothing to him.
“You get off on playing games,” I accused and went on before he could challenge me. “But those games, Quinton—they destroy people’s lives.”
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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