STRIKE UP THE AULD LANG SYNE! It's time for exciting NEW YEAR'S KISSES!

For the 2nd year in a row, I'm so thrilled to be hosting the webbie's most romantic New Year's Bash: the 2014 NEW YEAR'S KISSES Party!

For three spicy, sizzling days, you can look here for a collection of some kisses from some of your favorite romance creators--plus a few new faces to discover in the New Year. When you respond to the trivia questions each day--on my blog, there will be one core set and one bonus set--you are automatically entered to win some AMAZING prizes, including free books and online gift certificates.

*Toots horn* PASS OUT THE CHAMPAGNE AND LET'S GET THE PARTY STARTED...

INSTRUCTIONS: Answer the question after each kiss in the comments below (comments will be screened) for a chance to win one of three massive selections of romance and erotica ebooks, plus $GCs, and more! **PLEASE LEAVE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS OR FACEBOOK PAGE WITH YOUR ENTRY. For security purposes, comments will be screened and addresses removed before we actually post your answer.**   

Find out details of prizes here.

You only need to answer ONE set of FIVE questions-I'll do two sets on 12/31, one set on 1/1, and two more sets on 1/2--at the New Year’s Kisses Party to enter the draw, but every set you enter gives you another chance of winning these great prizes. Please indicate after your answer if you’d rather win m/m prizes, m/f prizes, or a mixed batch. Leave blank if you have no preference.

Good luck and enjoy those kisses! Excerpts are predominantly m/m and m/f with some ménage and transgender. We proudly swing all ways.

YOU CAN ACCESS ALL THE KISSES ONCE THEY ARE POSTED AT THE INDEX PAGE HERE.

Kisses are hosted by Tara Lain, Angel Payne, and Kay Berrisford. 

EXCERPT ONE:  Polished by Alyssa Turner (copyright 2013)

Buy it now here

The door slid shut behind them with a definitive thud. Rory was full of goose bumps, but it wasn’t from the November chill in the air. Jack was standing in their living room with a basket of promises that had turned her knees to Jell-O. She couldn’t help but smile, and she couldn’t wait to throw her arms around him and hug him tight. “I’m so glad I was wrong about you.” Rory felt such a rush of relief fall over her. Jack’s arms wrapped her up like a blanket, her head tucked under his chin as he placed a kiss on her crown. He felt good and it felt OK to say it: “We missed you.”

“We?” Jack asked, raising his gaze to Spencer.

Spencer swallowed some kind of imaginary rock. She watched his Adam’s apple rise and fall in something close to slow motion. Rory thought it might have been his stubborn pride disappearing down his throat. He came to them, placing a hand at the back of each of their heads. Spencer kissed her first, tickling her lips with the softness of his tongue. Then he turned to Jack.

“Rory knows me better than I know myself. Always has.” He blew out the words against Jack’s mouth. Hot, heavy words that fueled a fire deep inside her.

Jack clasped the back of Spencer’s neck and took his mouth hard and fast. She watched their tongues make brief appearances together before their lips crushed together again. Rory peeled her coat off and let it drop to the floor. Next she stepped out of her jeans and shucked off her pink angora sweater. Not quite naked, but close, she went to work on getting Spencer’s clothes off next.

His lips still busy with Jack, Spencer maneuvered his arms from his jacket as she pulled it away. He started to unbutton his shirt while she reached around him and unfastened his cargo pants. With the button and zipper released, they fell to the floor. The guys’ kiss deepened with Spencer’s hands on either side of Jack’s face. Rory slipped behind Jack and tugged at his coat until it was gone. He hastily worked his belt and jeans loose while her hands slid under his fleece sweater, over the warm and buttery smooth expanse of his muscular back.

He and Spencer broke their kiss long enough for Jack to remove his shirt entirely and toss it onto the sofa. Rory watched their twin erections strain at the fronts of their underwear. Long, lean torsos rippled with flexing muscles as they groped for more and more purchase on each other. It was frenzied and needy and sexy as all hell.

Jack pulled away, pressing his flat palm against Spencer’s heaving chest. He turned to look at Rory with eyes so sincere they made her hold her breath.

“Come here, sweetheart.” Two steps and she was between them, their hunger now directed at her. Their bodies engulfed her in warmth. Spencer’s lightly hair-dusted chest pressed against her bra while he devoured her neck with soft nips and wet kisses and wove his fingers in her hair. Jack threaded his arms under Spencer’s as he ran his fingers up and down her sides and licked a path from her shoulder to the sensitive spot behind her ear. She felt herself crumbling under the weight of her arousal, soaking her panties even more.

“Oh baby,” Spencer whispered. “Let us make you come. I love it when we make you come together.”

“I love it when you make me come…together,” Rory whispered back at him with a smile. He grinned and scooped her up, hiking her legs around his waist. Rory hung on tight to his neck as he headed to the kitchen table.

QUESTION ONE: What color is Rory’s angora sweater?

EXCERPT TWO: Infected (Lesser Evils) by Andrea Speed

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Scott approached him, looking a bit more lucid than he would have expected. “I’m not sure what you are, but you aren’t a whore. Sure, you sell yourself for money, but whore’s a state of mind, and you’re not there. You know it too, why else do you not know what you are?”

Holden stared at him a moment. “How wasted are you?” But what Scott had said was deeply strange, mainly because Holden didn’t expect it. Where the fuck did that come from? Scott couldn’t know him that well.

He gave him a lazy smirk. “Not nearly wasted enough.”

“You don’t know me.”

“No, but I know me, and I’m all kinds of fucked-up. So are you.”

“Fuck you.” He really didn’t like be psychoanalyzed, even in a half-assed way, by a bi jock closet case, and certainly not tonight. Holden wasn’t sure if he was more angry or exhausted, it all got tangled up, and he realized, for the first time in a long time, he wanted to get falling-down drunk. He wanted to go numb and not think about anything, which he didn’t allow himself the luxury of doing that often, because it was oh so tempting to just go into that state and stay there. Life was lived a lot easier numb.

When Scott got close, heading for the door, Holden grabbed him and threw him against the wall, kissing him and pinning him with his body, just to see how he liked it. From the way he responded, he liked it a lot. He smelled like beer and soap, which wasn’t as unpleasant as Holden would have assumed, and he had faint stubble he could feel more than see. As kissers went, Scott wasn’t too bad, and of course he was as hot as hell, a continual mark in his favor.

Scott’s hands felt lightly callused on his back, which Holden found a little surprising. Scott tangled a hand in his hair and pulled, just hard enough to be mildly painful, but not hard enough to really hurt. Holden did it to him, and Scott groaned in pleasure. So he liked it a little rough, huh?

There were other ways to get numb. And this was probably cheaper.

QUESTION TWO: What does Scott smell like?

EXCERPT THREE: Breeder by Cara Bristol

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He cupped her head and flattened his other hand on her back. For the longest time, he held her. Then he brushed his mouth against her hair. Her temple. No one had ever touched her so with such tenderness.

Whisperflies. Fields of them took flight. So many that she could rise and drift away on the draft of their wings. She clung to Alpha’s hard biceps. She didn’t care if the coupling hurt.

With his lips, he grazed her jaw. Her cheek. Her eyelids, which fluttered shut.

“Say my name.”

“Dak,” she whispered.

His breath warmed her face for an instant; then he pressed his lips to hers and stuck his tongue into her mouth.

Omra’s eyes sprang open. He stared back, his gaze lit by that blinding fire, but he continued to move his mouth, to lick, to stroke. She closed her eyes. Sensation spiraled. Awkward. Foreign. Intimate. Satisfying. He tightened his arms around her and pressed a little harder, continuing the invasion.

When he broke off, she felt bereft, her lips swollen.

“That’s called a kiss,” he said hoarsely.

“A kiss?” She practiced the alien word. “Do it again.”

QUESTION THREE: How does Omra feel when Dak breaks off?

EXCERPT FOUR: Naughty Little Christmas by Ella Sheridan

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“Go back to your tart, Damien. You’re the one playing games. Go play with yourself and leave me out of it.”

Between one breath and the next, she found herself pinned face-first against the nearby wall, Damien’s arms sandwiching her between his hard frame and the unyielding surface. “I’d rather you played with me,” he whispered, the sound rough, raspy in her ear. When she raised her hands to grip his, to tear him away, he forced them out to the sides and leaned in, grinding the engorged length of his shaft against her lower back. Harley squirmed, pinned like a butterfly beneath his heavy weight. Damien’s curse was harsh and explicit.

“Damien.”

Hot, heavy breathing seared her skin; then his mouth brushed the juncture of her shoulder and neck. The sting of his teeth nipping her skin pulled a squeak from her trembling lips.

“Just shut up, Harley. Shut up and let me do this.”

Why, you sweet talker, you. But she bit down on her bottom lip, trapping in any sound that might seek escape. Because as much as her mind screamed at her to fight, to flee, her body had gone cooked-noodle limp and desperate for his touch. The one thing she wasn’t willing to do was take him from behind. He could fuck her into the wall all he wanted—all they wanted—but he’d do it facing her. Looking into her eyes.

With a quick step back and turn, she found her spine pressed into the wall and Damien aligned perfectly, pressed to her front. Face-to-face, breasts to chest, and pelvis to pelvis thanks to her stiletto heels. Harley groaned at the delicious sensation, a groan Damien swallowed with the first ravaging touch of his lips to hers.

His kiss was rough and punishing and perfect. Harley instinctively opened her mouth, and his tongue forced its way in, marauding, pillaging, taking what he wanted without asking permission. Everything feminine in her melted in surrender. His taste was dark and hot, chocolate with a zing of peppermint, and she sucked at his tongue in wonder. Nothing she’d ever tasted had been nearly so good.

She was drowning in the scent and feel and sheer sexual energy of him. She felt herself go under, and panic choked her. She began to fight—him, herself, the sense that she was surrendering something she could never reclaim. Damien backed off, and she forced her eyes open, forced herself to meet his gaze. Whatever he saw there softened the hard, hungry edge of his need, and he returned to her lips with softer, sweeter kisses, his caresses now soothing instead of punishing.

And oh, so much more devastating.

The sweetness of his touch brought tears to her eyes. They escaped down her cheeks, tingeing their mouths with salt, but still Damien kissed her. He kissed her until she was arching into him, until she dug her fingers into his hair and gripped tight, intensifying the pressure of their lips and bodies against each other. Only then did Damien stop, though his body continued to force her into the wall. He settled his forehead against hers, his swollen mouth a mere breath away.

Harley hiccuped softly. “I thought you said this was a bad idea.”

QUESTION FOUR: What does Harley do instinctively?

EXCERPT FIVE: Now Comes the Night (Children of Night, book 3) by PG Forte

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Set up: It’s New Year’s Eve, 1981 and master vampire Conrad Quintano has been reluctantly talked into throwing a New Year’s Eve party. For the sake of the children they are raising together Conrad, and his estranged lover Damian, have been passing themselves off as father and son.  This is the scene where Damian attempts to introduce Conrad to his human lover, Paul.

Still annoyed, Conrad allowed his gaze to lock with Damian’s and time lost its meaning. The look in Damian’s eyes was one Conrad had seen countless times before. There was something Damian wanted tonight, something he wanted very badly and only Conrad could give it to him. Oh, if only it were the same thing that Conrad wanted—just as badly—from Damian. It wasn’t however, and Conrad knew it.

Smiling determinedly, Conrad turned his gaze to the other man, only to find his eyes had narrowed suspiciously. Conrad extended his hand all the same. “Paul, is it?” he murmured in dangerous tones, practically daring the boy not to take his hand. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

The young man clenched his jaw and said nothing.

“Paul,” Damian prodded softly. The plaintive note in his voice nearly undid all of Conrad’s good intentions. Who was this boy that Damian—nearly as stiff-necked and proud as Conrad himself—should feel obliged to beg?

Paul shot Damian an angry look then reluctantly forced a smile. “Very pleased to meet you too,” he said his eyes still flashing a challenge as he shook Conrad’s hand, squeezing it with all-too-tight a grip.

Conrad sighed in annoyance. He sent an appealing glance in Damian’s direction, apologizing for what he was about to do, then he too tightened his grip, just enough to pull a gasp of pained surprise from Paul’s lips.

Damian cleared his throat and frowned pointedly at Conrad, but Conrad had already released Paul’s hand…

Conrad hadn’t missed the angry look that passed between the two men. He wondered what he wasn’t being told this time. Before he had a chance to pursue it, or Damian to respond, a chant broke out in the room around them.

“Ten…nine…eight…”

The countdown to the New Year had begun. Conrad’s lip curled into a rueful smile as he once again met Damian’s eyes. In seasons now long since passed, they might have heralded the New Year’s arrival with a kiss. Or even, perhaps, with a more intimate display of their mutual devotion.

“Seven…six…five…”

Right now, their masquerade as father and son precluded any sort of intimacy in public and the sins that lay between them kept them apart the rest of the time, as well. But it didn’t always have to be that way, did it?

“Four…three…two…”

Someday, perhaps, there would come a time when all these petty constraints would be lifted and the two of them might ring in the New Year as they once had done. Someday. Perhaps.

“Happy New Year!”

The entire room erupted in a cheer and Paul, who was under no constraints whatsoever, turned suddenly toward Damian. He clasped Damian’s head between his hands and kissed him—hard and fast and far too intimately for two men who were mere acquaintances. If Conrad had still retained any doubts, that kiss would have resolved them. The two were lovers, but he already knew that. What he didn’t know, and what he needed to know, badly, was how deeply entrenched Damian’s heart had become.

Damian grasped Paul by the shoulders and pushed him away, breaking the kiss. His face was white with shock, his eyes wide with fear, but for once, Paul seemed not to notice Damian’s distress. Instead, he turned to Conrad with an insufferably smug smile on his face. “And a very Happy New Year to you too.”

QUESTION FIVE: What happens after the cry of “Happy New Year”?