U.S. Release!

So today, The Things That Make Me Give In is released in the states. Et voila:

http://www.amazon.com/Things-That-Make-Give-Black/dp/035234542X/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_1

It's also available here and here:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Things-That-Make-Me-Give-In/Charlotte-Stein/e/9780352345424/?itm=1&usri=the+things+that+make+me+give+in

http://www.booksamillion.com/product/9780352345424?id=4602919566365

Amazing! Especially considering that I didn't even think it would get released in England, never mind America.

So to celebrate, I'm putting up yet another excerpt from my book. I know, I know. You're tired of excerpts. Where are all the hot men? Well, I'll give you one of those, too. Because I'm nice that way.

Here is an excerpt from Spying, and a pic of Alex O'Loughlin looking an awful lot like the main character...




Spying

That first time– I tried to turn away. I thought about saintly things, like Jesus and Gandhi and charity drives.

But even then it was too much for me to fight. Gandhi lost and I ended up standing at that secret window, fingernail between my chewing teeth, thighs pressed too tight together, watching the man in the apartment across the alley.

It’s the angle of the apartments, I think. Mine is higher up, and his is lower down, and the strip of alley between us means that he can’t see my window as well as I can see his.

At first I was sure he was putting on a show for the couple below, but then they invited me around to tea and I saw nothing but wall facing the alley. No window. He thinks he does his little show for nothing but brick, or maybe he doesn’t think it’s a show at all.

It’s just the way he is. He can’t help himself.

And I can’t help watching.

I mean, it makes things worse that he’s gorgeous. I don’t think that’s what initially hooked me, but it certainly contributes. He has this lean, leonine face, which gives him a constant predatory air. His lips curl into an ever-pout, as sultry as the exotic dancer I liked to imagine he was. When his mouth hangs open, pulled by lust, it destroys every effort that morality makes at claiming me.

But I didn’t notice his face the first time, because I was too busy watching him reveal his body to my starving eyes.

He had been wearing this clingy top, with buttons all down the front. A kind of undershirt, I think– obviously I had missed the first part of the show. But the second part was the real meat of the thing, so I needn’t have worried.

I remember thinking in an almost laughing way: what is he doing? Because he had stood there in front of his window, sideways on to me, and started unbuttoning the shirt. And he had done it in such a deliberate, sluttish, stripping sort of way that I had immediately thought: he’s with someone. Someone is in front of him, off-screen where I can’t see, and he’s stripping for her one button at a time.

But I know now that there was no one.

I think he does it in front of a mirror. I can’t fault him for it; God knows I would too, if I looked like him. I would slide that shirt off my shoulders, shoulders jutting out like accusing fingers, lips parted. I would admire the golden slide of my body, the rough scratch of hair on my chest, the dip of my navel and the curves of my solid muscles.

Oh mystery apartment guy, how glorious you are! I’m weak, I’m weak, weak in the presence of shapely strippers.

And then he slid his jeans down his legs, too, and I was hypnotised. I was paralysed. The little movie he made in the box of his window got hold of me, and chained me to my own window. I bit semi-circles into all of my nails. I spliced my thighs together.

The jockeys he was wearing clung to him in a way I wanted my hands to. My hands were actually briefly jealous of them. He had – has – a fabulous arse. Almost too big, perhaps, with a delicious curving heft to it that makes a person want to squeeze.

And of course, his cock. I think his cock sealed the paralysis. The way it curved – really curved – like a crooked finger, and always seemed to try and bob upwards as though its own weight kept dragging it back down again. It had a lot of weight, like the rest of him. A real fleshiness, a solidness.

It didn’t take much for me to imagine taking that cock in my mouth, my pussy, my arse– anywhere, anywhere he wanted to put it. For the first time in my life, I fantasised about a real live man, a man I could actually see, fucking and fucking me. I remember standing there feeling a hollow space between my legs, one that waited for him to fill it up.

And it was better and dirtier because it wasn’t some actor in some movie, but a real person. I watched a real person take his cock in his hand, and rub himself slowly, so slowly. I watched him look down at what he was doing, and watched his lips part and heard the groan he made even though it was soundless to me, and it was as sweet as ripe cherries. As sweet as sugar poured on my tongue.

He fucked his own hand, and rocked his hips into it, and let his eyes shutter closed just for me, all for me. And when he came I came close too, because there’s nothing sexier than watching a man make love to himself.

Or at least, that’s what I thought.

In truth, there are sexier things. And he was only too happy to show them to me.