SALT

Island Love – Book One

by Fearne Hill

Cover & Excerpt Reveal

Release Date: April 10, 2024

Cover Design:






Black Jazz Design

Genre: M/M Romance Standalone

Tropes: Bi-awakening, age-gap, hurt/comfort, slow burn, rich man/poor man, troubled past, Synaesthesia

Synopsis

When was the right time to tell someone that silver flames were shooting from their hair? And that your own tranquil green desired nothing more than to tangle with them, if only it could escape a malevolent orange flare hounding your every move?

Over-stressed businessman Charles Heyer is not like most people. With a rare medical condition that scrambles the senses, he experiences emotions as flashes of colour, giving them the power to disrupt, dismay, or delight. Alone in his over-vivid world, a devastating bereavement leaves him mentally scarred and recuperating on the picturesque French island of Ré where, through a chance encounter and a good deed, he is introduced to Florian, a flirty local salt farmer.

What with trying to protect the island salt cooperative from a corporate takeover and keeping a watchful eye on his errant grandfather, handsome Florian is not as carefree as he appears. Falling in love with this odd Englishman is as unexpected as it is welcome. Both exploring new feelings, the lazy days of summer stretch out for miles until a visitor from Charles’s London life throws their peaceful idyll into a kaleidoscope of chaos. And, all of a sudden, the island’s glorious palette of colour turns several shades darker.

Excerpt

Charles sank into our kiss with a deep and low hunger, opening wide for me, like a wilting plant starved of water and weeping for rainfall. He pulled me closer, sealing us together. Our ridiculous flirtatious game suddenly became more urgent and I cradled his tired, pale face between my palms, crushing his lips into mine. His choked little moan as his eyes fluttered closed sent a sweet lurch low in my belly.

“You like that, mon chéri?”

I bit down on his bottom lip then licked the sting away as he melted in my arms, folding against me like warm clean laundry, as if he’d never been held this way before. And the sounds he made as he kissed me back, with lips soft and lax and oh, so fucking needy for me? Hearing and seeing his outer layers crumbling? Oh, fucking merde, it was hot as hell.

I walked him backwards until he hit the rear wall of my shack, out of view of late-night cyclists and joggers and any other nosy mec straying beyond the path. I slid my fingers under his shirt, hitching it up to run my hands over the planes of his back, touching the heat of him as I tugged him closer. “Putain, you feel so good under here.” I dipped down over the smooth swell of his arse.

He took a sharp breath. “I haven’t… I’m not experienced with a man,” he said. His cheeks pinked. A light, delicate hue. As if that wasn’t a turn-on.

Nonetheless, I slowed, against my every instinct to push forwards. A dusty wise corner of my brain semaphored this was different, not like my quick lays with tourists. And if Charles was nervous, then maybe I was too, just a little. Although desperate, that he was willing to let me to peel back his layers was both exhilarating and a huge fucking responsibility.

So I ignored the needy throbbing in my jeans and traded soft kisses instead; even then Charles let me take the lead, with patient, teasing laps of my tongue, absorbing his damned sighs until my thoughts wouldn’t line up. And when he started to move, when an exploratory palm slid under the hem of my T-shirt, I resisted the urge to push up into him and instead dropped more gentle kisses onto the fine lines bracketing his mouth and the dark smudges under his eyes.

“Hot night, non?” A low and pleasing hum warmed my blood as his thumb massaged the arc of my hip bone. I dropped my hands to my T-shirt. “We need to take these off.”

He nodded, and I couldn’t interpret what I saw in those grey depths as I unbuttoned his pale linen shirt. Desire for sure; the little sounds he made told me how his body responded to the slightest of touches and the barest of kisses. But pain and heartache were there, too, and as my fingers tangled in the coarse hairs sprinkled across his chest, he caught my wrist in his finger and thumb.

“Your friend Jerome said that you play games with tourists.” He flushed, with an uneasy half smile. “Can I check you’re not…” he searched for the right word, “Sporting with me Florian? I can’t… I don’t… I don’t have the mental capacity right now to play games.”

About the Author

Fearne Hill can be found deep in the British countryside surrounded by trees, flowers, birds, and pets. She likes it that way.

Her novel, Two Tribes, is a Lambda Literary finalist 2023. The first book in her Rossingley series, To Hold A Hidden Pearl, received nominations in five categories in the 2020-2021 M/M Romance Group Book Awards. It was also an Honourable Mention in the 2020-2021 Rainbow Romance Awards.