Is it ever really “just a hookup” in romance books? Nope! But these couples can fool themselves into thinking that there are no strings attached when they bang for the first time. I’m usually more of a slow burn girl, but every once in awhile I’ll devour a smokin’ hot romance novel that doesn’t take long to bring the heat. Whether it’s a one night stand that turns into a relationship, a no strings fling that starts to feel like more, an arrangement that’s supposed to be temporary, or a friends with benefits situation, fling to more romances can be vastly satisfying. A slow emotional burn keeps things interesting in an entirely different way, and I love some of the dilemmas these couples find themselves in.
Every book on this list has its own unique vibe and scenario. From light to angsty, vacation fling to enemies with benefits, there’s a little something for everyone on this list. They’re all steamy contemporary romance novels that were 4 or 5-star reads for me. I’ve included the blurbs, links to my book reviews, and links to Amazon for easy addition to your collection. Happy reading!
Owen North by Nina Levine
A steamy forbidden office romance from USA Today & Wall Street Journal bestselling author Nina Levine.
My one-night stand is my new boss.
I met him at the society wedding of the year.
The man every woman in New York wants.
He’s rich.
Devastatingly good looking.
Charming.
Mr. I-Could-Blow-Your-Mind.
And yes, he did blow my mind.
It was just supposed to be one night.
I told him I don’t date.
But now he wants to make me his.
How will I resist all those suits and the muscles they hide?
How will I survive the unexpected dinner parties and work trips?
How will I ignore the scorching chemistry between us?
I can’t give my heart away again.
Spoiler alert: I’m failing epically.
Owen North is a standalone billionaire boss romance featuring a swoonworthy, protective alpha hero; a quirky heroine who can’t control a thing she says; forced proximity; forbidden office steamy moments; a hero who will stop at nothing to get his woman; so much fun banter; a heroine who loves being her hero’s good girl; and a HEA you will swoon over.
Read the review here
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3Pz0wBK
My Killer Vacation by Tessa Bailey
An all-new, spicy murder mystery from Tessa Bailey, New York Times bestselling author of It Happened One Summer…
It was supposed to be a relaxing vacation in sweet, sunny Cape Cod—just me and my beloved brother—but discovering a corpse in our rental house really throws a wrench into our tanning schedule. Now a rude, crude bounty hunter has arrived on the back of his motorcycle to catch the killer and refuses to believe I can be helpful, despite countless hours of true crime podcast listening. Not to mention a fulfilling teaching career of wrangling second graders.
A brash bounty hunter and an energetic elementary schoolteacher: the murder-solving team no one asked for, but thanks to these pesky attempts on my life, we’re stuck together, come hell or high tide.
I’m just here to do a job, not babysit an amateur sleuth. Although…it is becoming less and less of a hardship to have her around. Sure, she’s stubborn, distracting and can’t stay out of harm’s way. She’s also brave and beautiful and reminds me of the home I left behind three years ago. In other words, the painful hunger and protectiveness she is waking up in me is a threat to my peace of mind. Before I sink any deeper into this dangerous attraction, I need to solve this murder and get back on the road. But will fate take her from me before I realize the road has been leading to her all along?
Read the review here
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3LACeWe
Last on the List by Amy Daws
Only a bad nanny knows what it’s like to kiss the boss.
CEO millionaire, Max Fletcher is a single dad in desperate need of a nanny.
Cozy Barlow is in the middle of her self-appointed “gap year” and doing everything she can to detach from her past.
But when her sister begs her to interview for the nanny position of a high maintenance client, she doesn’t have a good enough reason to say no.
And when Max locks eyes on the twenty-something in a tie-dye sweatsuit who pitches the idea of daydreaming all summer—he prepares to give this bad nanny the boot.
One problem: Max’s little girl thinks this plus-sized in body and spirit nanny might be her new bestie, so she hires her on the spot.
Now Max is stuck with this bizarre woman who hates everything he represents—corporate greed, money, status, power.
But one stormy night when the power goes out, he discovers Cozy doesn’t hate him. In fact, he’s the leading role in her fantasies.
Fantasies, he would very much like to make a reality.
Read the audiobook review here
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3lkDlOZ
The Worst Guy by Kate Canterbary
Eight weeks of forced proximity is a long time to hate someone you’re trying not to love.
Sebastian Stremmel doesn’t need another headache. He has enough of his own without Sara Shapiro, the noisy new reconstructive surgeon, stomping all around his surgical wing with her chippy, chirpy cheerfulness.
But Sebastian doesn’t usually get what he wants.
No one gets under his skin like Sara – so much so a heated “debate” and an exam room left in shambles later, they land themselves in eight weeks of hospital-mandated conflict resolution counseling. Now they’re forced to fight fair…which quickly leads them to playing dirty when no one’s looking.
They know it’s a mistake.
They promise themselves it will never happen again.
They swear they got it out of their systems.
They didn’t.
Author’s Note: Grumpy/recovering people-pleaser sunshine. Introverts attract. Enemies-to-lovers in the workplace. Banter, bicker, and button-pushing foreplay. Don’t tell the friend group, get jealous when the friend group tries to fix her up.
Heat: rip her clothes off before you get the front door open.
CW/TW: chronic illness, absent/negligent parents, history of disordered eating.
Read the review here
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3z1vhZw
The Billionaire by Marni Mann
A sexy, forbidden, billionaire, stand-alone romance from USA Today best-selling author Marni Mann …
I’ve always been a good girl.
But the second I walk into the hotel bar, I see temptation.
The man sitting there is delicious. Older. Experienced. Once our eyes meet, I know I’m not walking away unscathed. I’ve heard about men like Jenner Dalton—richer than God and hotter than sin. He’s got heartbreak written all over him.
But it only takes fifteen minutes before we’re headed up to his room.
I’ve never done anything like this before, but something tells me he’s worth it. Every swipe of his tongue feels electric, every kiss sets me on fire, and his experience has me begging for more.
And more.
And more.
In one week, I’ll return to college in Miami.
He’ll go back to being LA’s most eligible billionaire.
The miles and years between us are just too many for this to mean anything.
So, between now and then, I plan to spend every moment being anything but good …
Read the review here
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3u16SD1
In the Weeds by B.K. Borison
Evelyn St. James isn’t the kind of woman you forget.
Beckett Porter certainly hasn’t. One incredible weekend in Maine, and he’s officially a man distracted. He’s not unfamiliar with hot and heavy flings. He knows how it goes. But Evie wove some sort of magic over him during their tumble in the sheets. He can’t stop thinking about her laugh. Her hand pressed flat against his chest. Her smiling mouth at his neck.
Also, her eyes. And her legs.
So when she suddenly appears on his farm as part of a social media contest, he is … confused. He had no idea that the sweet and sexy woman he met at a bar is actually a global phenomenon: social media influencer Evelyn St. James. When she disappears again, Beckett resolves to finally forget her and move on.
But Evelyn St. James has a problem.
Feeling disconnected from her work and increasingly unhappy, she’s trying to find her way back to something real. She returns to the last place she was happy, Lovelight Farms and the tiny town of Inglewild.
It has absolutely nothing to do with the hot farmer she spent two incredible nights with.
Nothing at all.
In The Weeds is a sweet and steamy second-chance romance about finding your happiness. It features a grumpy farmer, a no-nonsense social media influencer, a small town of busybodies, and four very cute kittens. This is the second book in a series of interconnected standalones following the three Lovelight owners.
Read the audiobook review here
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3KsSYQi
The Devil You Know by Elizabeth O’Roark
There’s a devil on my shoulder, and every Monday morning she announces herself. She’s this delicious flame in my chest, a flurry of whispered suggestions in my ear. Suggestions I ignore…because every single one of them is about Ben Tate.
Ben—Stealer of Clients, Evicter of Homeless Women, Nemesis. Sitting across from me every damn Monday with his lovely, smug smile and his too-perfect teeth, the living symbol of everything I hate.
It’s been my policy to avoid him, but when a case comes into the firm—one that could change his career and mine—I make an exception. It means weekends and evenings by his side. It means enduring his smirk and his smart mouth and never taking the bait.
Until the night Ben says “Beg”…and that devil on my shoulder decides to make a few demands of her own.
Read the review here
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3usLXHk
Doctor Heartless by J. Saman
He’s cruel. Insufferably attractive. And broken beyond redemption.
After the nightmare I just ran from, those details should have made him the perfect storm of do not touch. Except I didn’t know any of this—other than the attractive part—when I met him.
Our story started on a lie.
He pretended to be someone else, and I didn’t ask a lot of questions. Nor did I try to stop him when he snuck out of my hotel room in the wee hours of the morning. I was determined to start my new life on an uptick and a wild one-night with a hot stranger felt like just the ticket.
Only I should have known something that good wouldn’t end that easy.
On my first night in my new house, our paths cross again when I discover he’s my new neighbor. No longer the charming man I met in the bar, he’s a grump, completely unfriendly, and utterly intolerable. As if this couldn’t get any worse, I quickly learn I’m also his daughter’s new teacher.
A wonderful daughter I can’t help but fall in love with.
Something I refuse to do with him. Our button-pushing back and forth never fails to get under my skin. If anything, his sudden off-limits status makes resisting this devil of a single dad that much easier.
Regardless of the temptation he presents. How searing his heated gaze is when I catch him staring. Or how breathless our stolen moments leave us.
After all, this is the fresh start I so desperately need, and I will not let anything get in my way.
No. I can’t give in to Doctor Heartless. No matter how hard he tries to change my mind.
DOCTOR HEARTLESS is a 95k word deliciously STEAMY, grumpy/sunshine, enemies-to-lovers romance that will hit you straight in the feels! It is a standalone in the bestselling Boston’s Billionaire Bachelors series featuring Boston’s hottest billionaire doctors and the women they fall head over heels for!
Read the review here
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3v2cj4U
Last Resort by K. Bromberg
I was never supposed to see him again. Him being the man wearing the perfectly tailored suit who oozed an intoxicating mixture of wealth, rebellion, and sex appeal.
One night.
No strings.
No names.
Great sex.
Still riding the high from last night, I walk in to meet my new client, and he’s wearing that same dangerous smirk that reeled me in hours ago.
Yes, I’m consulting for Callahan Sharpe. And yes, he’s that Callahan Sharpe.
Billionaire heir apparent who abides by no rules, bucks convention, and is determined to complete one final project to honor his late father’s legacy before walking away from the family business for good. Luckily and unluckily for me, I’ve been tasked to go to the Virgin Islands to help accomplish his goal. Callahan has no problem breaking his company’s no fraternization rule, but not me. There’s too much at stake.
What could possibly go wrong when you’re forced to work—and live—side by side with a man you can’t resist?
Are you ready to fall for the Sharpe brothers in K. Bromberg’s sexy, contemporary, billionaire romance series? These books can all be read as standalones, but can be enjoyed as a series as well . . .
Read the audiobook review here
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3rij407
Taste by Melanie Harlow
The last person on earth I want to be stranded with is Gianni Lupo.
But thanks to the blizzard of the century, I’m trapped in a roadside motel room with that cocky bastard for two straight days.
With one small bed.
Some women might thank Mother Nature for delivering a polar vortex that maroons them with six feet of solid muscle, those deep blue eyes, that sexy grin–but not me. I’ve known Gianni Lupo all my life, and he’s never brought me anything but bad luck and trouble.
So when the tension between us explodes with enough fiery heat to melt my icy defenses, I should have known what the disastrous end result would be–
A big fat plus sign.
After the snow melts, I’m left with more than just memories of the night we spent keeping each other warm. And he might be a rising star on the culinary scene, but he’s got no idea how to handle this bun in the oven.
He says he wants to do the right thing, but I’m not about to spend the rest of my life feeling like someone settled for me.
But just when I think I’ve got Gianni Lupo all figured out, he gives me a taste of the man he could be, of the family we could become, of the way he could love me if I let him.
I’m terrified of falling for him.
But one taste might be all it takes.
Read the audiobook review here
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3BMV7C9
Love Lessons by Sarina Bowen
He needs an image makeover, she needs a mojo upgrade. A new lessons-in-seduction hockey romance from Wall Street Journal bestselling author Sarina Bowen.
After I’m arrested for throwing a raucous party, my hockey team says I have an image problem. And I need to fix it, stat.
Charity work? Check. Haircut? Sure. But I draw the line at hiring my neighbor to style me. In the first place “style” shouldn’t be a verb. And I’m tired of people who’d judge me on appearances.
Vera and I don’t see eye to eye on anything. She wants me to try on clothes, while I just want to remove hers. She’s distractingly pretty, with soulful eyes and a sinful mouth that likes to argue with me.
But when management threatens my summer vacation, I grudgingly agree to Vera’s unusual proposal: she’ll give me an image makeover. But in return, she wants lessons in the art of seduction.
It sounds a little nutty, but I know a good opening when I hear it. Besides, it’s not like I’ll ever fall for her…
Read the audiobook review here
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3yiOMOM
Sin Bin by Teagan Hunter
I should stay away.
Emilia Anderson is the team’s social media manager, and there are strict rules about not fraternizing with the staff. It doesn’t matter that we already accidentally broke them—we can’t let it happen again.
Besides, my time in the NHL is winding down, and this is my last shot at winning the Cup. I need to focus on the game, not some girl I have no business chasing.
She’s ten years younger than me.
She’s the assistant coach’s niece.
And she works for the team.
She’s off-limits…and too hard to resist.
I know better than to play this game…
But it looks like I’m heading to the sin bin.
SIN BIN is a standalone age gap/forbidden hockey romcom with lots of steam, wit, and fun!
Read the review here
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3BNwtTU
Rival Radio by Kathryn Nolan
These two on-air enemies can’t stop rubbing each other the wrong way in the booth…and the right way in bed.
Theo
Whoever said “keep your enemies close” never had to share a small, dark sound booth with her. Daria Stone is the infuriating host of “Choosing Yourself.” The name is almost as ridiculous as the concept. Permanently single? Please. The woman’s made a career out of rejecting everything I stand for.
I’m looking for the one. The right woman who’s ready for marriage and a lifetime together. Not some sultry, stubborn vixen who makes my life a living hell and insists a husband can be replaced by a curated collection of bedroom toys. And I know she’s wearing those skin-tight leather pants just to annoy me.
Daria
Dr. Theo Chadwick is a professional pain in my…workplace. Sure—on the outside, the man is gorgeous. But he’s also obsessed with finding his better half and getting his radio show, “True Romance,” syndicated so he can give false hope to lovelorn listeners everywhere.
He keeps pushing my buttons with his arrogant “expertise” about how wrong I am. I just want to see him snap. Maybe that’s how I ended up here, pinned against a wall with my legs wrapped around his waist…whoops…
Can these enemies put their feud on hold and play nice in a shared timeslot to save their popular beach town radio station? Or will their sparks burn everything to the ground?
Author’s Note: One-click if you love forced proximity, breakroom bickering, “we’re just getting it out of our system” one-night stands, a rag-tag crew of DJs, and beachy, retro boardwalk magic.
Read the review here
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3wEbkXV
The Dealmaker by Jessica Peterson
Hating and dating: I didn’t realize they’re two sides of the same coin until I met him. Theo Morgan.
One of Wall Street’s highest-paid traders, he may be hot as sin in his five-thousand-dollar custom-made suit. But Theo is the bane of my existence. He’s arrogant, rude, and as brash as they come.
As our bank’s newest star hire, he’s also after the same promotion I am. But I didn’t make it this far in a man’s world just to be passed over for an entitled egomaniac. Two can play at this game.
In a surprise to exactly no one, Theo and I butt heads from the beginning–and end up losing my biggest client with a trade gone bad. Our boss’s punishment: fly us to California together to make nice with the client—or else.
When a snowstorm back home leaves us stranded on the West Coast, we learn our hotel is fully booked, save for one room.
And of course that room would have only one king-sized bed. After a little too much wine, our deal to stick to opposite sides of that bed goes out the window. But on the flight home, my resolve to keep things professional remains intact, until Theo offers me a new deal.
The gloves (and clothes) can come off. But the lipstick stays on…
THE DEALMAKER is an all-new, outrageously sexy romantic comedy!
Read the review here
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3O12ElA
Those Three Little Words by Meghan Quinn
I knocked up my best friend’s sister.
Figured I would get straight to the point because how it happened is a mere snippet of the story I have to tell. The real meat and potatoes is what happened after.
Let’s start with how she decided to inform me and Pacey the news . . . together. Imagine that nightmare. I was going into what I thought was a hockey marketing meeting and then BAM! I’m going to be a dad and my best friend/teammate is attempting to imprint my face with his fist.
It wasn’t pretty.
Threats were tossed around, friendships were revoked, and then I was marched up to her apartment, suitcases in hand, and forced to live with her so I could take care of her every need. Given how much I’ve pined for the girl, you would think that wouldn’t be a hardship. Wrong.
This is my one shot to win my teammate back. Pacey is the only family I’ve got, so hooking up with his sister isn’t a mistake I can make twice . . . despite the fact that she’s pregnant with my child.
But with every mood swing, every pair of pants that doesn’t fit right, and every late night run to find the perfect donut, I’m finding it harder and harder not to fall for my best friend’s little sister.
Especially when she kisses me…
Read the audiobook review here
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3twxyux
Want more no-strings romance recommendations? Check out another recent list!
15 HOT & Steamy Fling to More Romance Books
Want more romance recommendations? Check out some of my other lists!
15 Sweet & Spicy Small Town Romance Books
15 Sexy Fake Relationship Romance Books
15 Sexy Office Romance Books
15 Low Angst Romantic Comedy Novels
15 Sexy Single Dad Romance Books
15 (More) Great Grumpy / Sunshine Romance Books
15 Sexy Single Mom Romance Novels
15 Fiery Forbidden Romance Novels
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