Sarah MacLean is an expert in romance. She's been reading them since the age of 12, and estimates that she's read more than 6,000 in her lifetime (she has more than 1,000 in her home office, and that doesn't include her Kindle). She's also written nine of her own historical romances, the most recent of which, A Scot in the Dark, comes out this week. Basically, you could not ask for a better person to give you book recommendations, so Cosmopolitan.com asked Sarah to share her picks for the steamiest romances out there. "What was most important is that the books are (1) sexy, (2) romantic, and (3) leave you feeling better about love than you did when you came into them," she said. These 10 books meet all those requirements, so clear some space on your shelf and make sure you've got the place to yourself for the night.
1. The Player by Kresley Cole
VALKYRIE PRESS
"This is a contemporary romance series about three Russian mobster brothers, and it is so, so good. The hero is a brilliant billionaire who's got a devastatingly broken past. He falls for this young heroine who was raised in a family of con artists, and she sets her sights on him because she needs money. She catches him and then immediately starts to feel a great deal of guilt over the fact that she's trying to con him, and he so desperately desires and wants her. They have an incredible, intense sexual relationship. He's been celibate for years, like saving himself for thisexperience with this woman, and the conflict between them is so hot. Kresley is terrific at the sexy alpha hero who's instantly drawn to the heroine and willing to do absolutely anything to win her. There's something tremendously sexy about the idea that a man could meet your eyes across a crowded room, and he would be willing to change everything about himself and everything about the world for you."
2. Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas
AVON
"[The hero in this book is] a total scoundrel who's basically been disowned by his father. The heroine is the daughter of a casino owner and is desperate to get married to escape, and she can provide the hero with money for the price of his hand in marriage. He agrees to marry her not realizing that she's unwilling to sacrifice her heart and fall in love with him, because she knows that he's unable to be monogamous. They consummate the marriage the first night, and he's so blown away by the sex — and so too will readers be — that he's like, 'Great, we're gonna just do this all the time,' and she's like, 'No we're not. That's it, we've consummated the marriage, we never have to touch again, you go off and be the ladies' man that you've always been. I will only love for monogamy.' He swears he can be monogamous and she says, 'Well, prove it to me by being celibate,' and he agrees. There are these incredibly sexy shenanigans that ensue, and again we go back to the idea of this incredibly strong, virile, alpha male being willing to give up the one thing that he wants more than anything in the world — being able to give up everything to prove his love for the heroine."
3. Serving Pleasure by Alisha Rai
AMAZON
"The heroine is Indian-American, and she works at her family's restaurant. Her mom desperately wants to get her married, but the heroine is too bold and too sexy and too too for her mother's liking. She decides she's going to tame herself to prepare to find a man and settle down and do the bidding of her mom, except this totally hot, very broken artist moves in next door. She can't stop herself from wanting him. This book is bananas sexy. It's filled with all sorts of kinks — voyeurism, masturbation, mutual masturbation, food play, and art play. It will set your panties ablaze."
4. Priest by Sierra Simone
AMAZON
"The hero of this book is a priest, and not like soon-to-be-ordained, potentially going to take the vow — he's an actual priest. The heroine is an exotic dancer who's very at sea for many reasons that have nothing to do with her being an exotic dancer. This is not a 'save the prostitute' kind of book; she's just looking for answers. She's not a Catholic but she walks into church one day when he's having confession, and they fall for each other almost instantly. This book just smolders from the moment these two are on the page together. It's told almost exclusively in first-person point of view from the hero's perspective, so you're in this constant state of feeling his conflict at having already taken the vow of the priesthood and his newfound, deep-rooted passion for this woman. There are these remarkable, incredibly sexy moments that are actually set in the church, and they should feel really blasphemous ... but somehow they also feel almost inspirational."
5. Three Little Mistakes by Nikki Sloane
AMAZON
"I recommend this one to anybody who read Fifty Shades and thought it was sexy but didn't know where to go next, because it will show you how BDSM can light up the pages without being bogged down in, say, contract negotiations. The hero in this book owns a nightclub, and the heroine wanders in and he sees her dancing on the floor and can't resist her. The plot itself is tremendously character-driven. Often with erotic romance, we say it's just sex on the page, sex on the page, but it really does need to hinge on a strong character-driven plot, and these two are just really perfect for each other. He's a Dom, she's a natural submissive, so they work beautifully together sexually, but their love for each other is really palpable. So on top of it just being flaming hot, it's also a really beautiful love story."
6. Never Sweeter by Charlotte Stein
LOVESWEPT
"This is for anybody who's never read a romance novel, likes literary fiction, and is afraid to try romance because they're not sure what they're gonna get. Charlotte Stein brings you in close and then punches you in the gut with emotion. The premise is really kind of disturbing — it's set in college, and the hero and heroine went to high school together. The heroine was brutally bullied, to the point that a car drove her off the side of a cliff. She survived and took a year off to get over the physical repercussions of that episode, then ends up at college with one of the boys who was in the car that hit her. It sounds so totally off-putting, I know, but it is so deeply emotional because she's so angry and scared and devastated by his presence, and she loathes him, and he is a lumbering kid who has figured out that he really did wrong. Charlotte shows you how both of these characters can not only coexist and forgive each other, but also fall in love. It's a very slow build. She obviously doesn't trust him at all at the beginning, so this book is very much about building trust in a relationship before you ever have contact, and that is very sexy."
7. For Real by Alexis Hall
RIPTIDE
"This is a male-male romance, and it won the Romance Writers of America RITA Award this year for best erotic romance. This is also a BDSM book. One of the heroes is Laurie, a 37-year-old, very grumpy, bitter doctor who was in a 10-year-long relationship and his partner left him. He's closed off from the world, then convinced by a group of his friends that he should go to a club one night and try to resurrect his life. It's a bondage club, because he's a natural submissive, and he's looking around, loathing this world that he can no longer draw pleasure from, and across the room he sees Toby, a young man who he thinks is too young to be in this club. He goes over to this other man and says, 'You shouldn't even be here, you're virtually a baby.' The second hero says, 'I'm a natural Dom, I can feel it inside me. How am I supposed to learn to be a Dom without coming to places like this and starting to learn?' It's sort of shocking for Laurie because he didn't expect this kid to be a Dom. I find this whole book incredibly subversive in lots of different ways. When we come to BDSM romance, often we come to it with, like, a virginal heroine and a hero who's 20 years older than she is, who has experienced absolutely everything and is able to dominate her in every perfect, pleasurable way. In this case, everything about this is twisted. We never think about Doms as, 'Well, how did they learn to be a Dom?' We never think about sexual kink as a natural extension of a person's identity, from the birth of their sexual identity. All these things are really fascinating, and then on top of it, Alexis just writes this beautiful love story that's about what happens when two people shouldn't be right for each other and are so perfect for each other at the same time."
8. The Raven Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt
GRAND CENTRAL PUBLISHING
"This is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, in a really interesting way. The hero is an earl who is scarred and broken in many different ways, and he has a terrible temper and is just a horrible dude. He hires a local widow who desperately needs a job as his secretary. He's very gruff and rough with her, but they slowly start to come together. She's a widow, but she's never really had tremendous sexual pleasure, so there's something very interesting about the way that he can awaken her despite being a beast, so to speak. There's a great scene inside a men's club, like a sex club. She sneaks in and he's a member, and it's all very clandestine and masked and beautiful. If you've never read historical romance, this is a good place to start if you're looking for something one-handed."
9. Evernight by Kristen Callihan
FOREVER
"This is the fifth book in Kristen's Darkest London series, but it did not matter to me that it was the fifth in the series because I think it's smokin' hot. The hero is like a part-demon, part-vampire, otherworldly creature. He was captured by a foe who inserted a clockwork metal heart into him, and the metal is taking over his body and he is dying. He goes off to find the person who made the heart, and that person is the heroine, Holly Evernight. She's also otherworldly and is able to manipulate metal with touch, so she can literally save him by laying her hands on him and pushing the metal back. As you can imagine, this makes for incredibly sexy scenes because he loathes her. She's the instrument of his demise but she's also the only thing that can save him, and in order to save him, she has to touch him. He is a tremendous dirty talker, so if dirty talk is a thing you like, this book is for you."
10. When the Duke Was Wicked by Lorraine Heath
AVON
"Almost all of Lorraine's books have at least one really electric sex scene. The heroine inherits a ton of money, and of course the men come out of the woodwork looking to woo her. She wants to learn how men seduce so she can tell the difference between seduction and love. As luck would have it, she has a childhood friend who is a duke — even better! — and who has no interest in marriage, but she enlists him to teach her how men seduce women. It's such a classic storyline that you can sort of see the end coming, and you just can't wait for this duke to be wrecked by how much he adores the heroine. There is a remarkable scene that involves rum that will change the way you look at rum forever."
1. The Player by Kresley Cole
VALKYRIE PRESS
"This is a contemporary romance series about three Russian mobster brothers, and it is so, so good. The hero is a brilliant billionaire who's got a devastatingly broken past. He falls for this young heroine who was raised in a family of con artists, and she sets her sights on him because she needs money. She catches him and then immediately starts to feel a great deal of guilt over the fact that she's trying to con him, and he so desperately desires and wants her. They have an incredible, intense sexual relationship. He's been celibate for years, like saving himself for thisexperience with this woman, and the conflict between them is so hot. Kresley is terrific at the sexy alpha hero who's instantly drawn to the heroine and willing to do absolutely anything to win her. There's something tremendously sexy about the idea that a man could meet your eyes across a crowded room, and he would be willing to change everything about himself and everything about the world for you."
2. Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas
AVON
"[The hero in this book is] a total scoundrel who's basically been disowned by his father. The heroine is the daughter of a casino owner and is desperate to get married to escape, and she can provide the hero with money for the price of his hand in marriage. He agrees to marry her not realizing that she's unwilling to sacrifice her heart and fall in love with him, because she knows that he's unable to be monogamous. They consummate the marriage the first night, and he's so blown away by the sex — and so too will readers be — that he's like, 'Great, we're gonna just do this all the time,' and she's like, 'No we're not. That's it, we've consummated the marriage, we never have to touch again, you go off and be the ladies' man that you've always been. I will only love for monogamy.' He swears he can be monogamous and she says, 'Well, prove it to me by being celibate,' and he agrees. There are these incredibly sexy shenanigans that ensue, and again we go back to the idea of this incredibly strong, virile, alpha male being willing to give up the one thing that he wants more than anything in the world — being able to give up everything to prove his love for the heroine."
3. Serving Pleasure by Alisha Rai
AMAZON
"The heroine is Indian-American, and she works at her family's restaurant. Her mom desperately wants to get her married, but the heroine is too bold and too sexy and too too for her mother's liking. She decides she's going to tame herself to prepare to find a man and settle down and do the bidding of her mom, except this totally hot, very broken artist moves in next door. She can't stop herself from wanting him. This book is bananas sexy. It's filled with all sorts of kinks — voyeurism, masturbation, mutual masturbation, food play, and art play. It will set your panties ablaze."
4. Priest by Sierra Simone
AMAZON
"The hero of this book is a priest, and not like soon-to-be-ordained, potentially going to take the vow — he's an actual priest. The heroine is an exotic dancer who's very at sea for many reasons that have nothing to do with her being an exotic dancer. This is not a 'save the prostitute' kind of book; she's just looking for answers. She's not a Catholic but she walks into church one day when he's having confession, and they fall for each other almost instantly. This book just smolders from the moment these two are on the page together. It's told almost exclusively in first-person point of view from the hero's perspective, so you're in this constant state of feeling his conflict at having already taken the vow of the priesthood and his newfound, deep-rooted passion for this woman. There are these remarkable, incredibly sexy moments that are actually set in the church, and they should feel really blasphemous ... but somehow they also feel almost inspirational."
5. Three Little Mistakes by Nikki Sloane
AMAZON
"I recommend this one to anybody who read Fifty Shades and thought it was sexy but didn't know where to go next, because it will show you how BDSM can light up the pages without being bogged down in, say, contract negotiations. The hero in this book owns a nightclub, and the heroine wanders in and he sees her dancing on the floor and can't resist her. The plot itself is tremendously character-driven. Often with erotic romance, we say it's just sex on the page, sex on the page, but it really does need to hinge on a strong character-driven plot, and these two are just really perfect for each other. He's a Dom, she's a natural submissive, so they work beautifully together sexually, but their love for each other is really palpable. So on top of it just being flaming hot, it's also a really beautiful love story."
6. Never Sweeter by Charlotte Stein
LOVESWEPT"This is for anybody who's never read a romance novel, likes literary fiction, and is afraid to try romance because they're not sure what they're gonna get. Charlotte Stein brings you in close and then punches you in the gut with emotion. The premise is really kind of disturbing — it's set in college, and the hero and heroine went to high school together. The heroine was brutally bullied, to the point that a car drove her off the side of a cliff. She survived and took a year off to get over the physical repercussions of that episode, then ends up at college with one of the boys who was in the car that hit her. It sounds so totally off-putting, I know, but it is so deeply emotional because she's so angry and scared and devastated by his presence, and she loathes him, and he is a lumbering kid who has figured out that he really did wrong. Charlotte shows you how both of these characters can not only coexist and forgive each other, but also fall in love. It's a very slow build. She obviously doesn't trust him at all at the beginning, so this book is very much about building trust in a relationship before you ever have contact, and that is very sexy."
7. For Real by Alexis Hall
RIPTIDE
"This is a male-male romance, and it won the Romance Writers of America RITA Award this year for best erotic romance. This is also a BDSM book. One of the heroes is Laurie, a 37-year-old, very grumpy, bitter doctor who was in a 10-year-long relationship and his partner left him. He's closed off from the world, then convinced by a group of his friends that he should go to a club one night and try to resurrect his life. It's a bondage club, because he's a natural submissive, and he's looking around, loathing this world that he can no longer draw pleasure from, and across the room he sees Toby, a young man who he thinks is too young to be in this club. He goes over to this other man and says, 'You shouldn't even be here, you're virtually a baby.' The second hero says, 'I'm a natural Dom, I can feel it inside me. How am I supposed to learn to be a Dom without coming to places like this and starting to learn?' It's sort of shocking for Laurie because he didn't expect this kid to be a Dom. I find this whole book incredibly subversive in lots of different ways. When we come to BDSM romance, often we come to it with, like, a virginal heroine and a hero who's 20 years older than she is, who has experienced absolutely everything and is able to dominate her in every perfect, pleasurable way. In this case, everything about this is twisted. We never think about Doms as, 'Well, how did they learn to be a Dom?' We never think about sexual kink as a natural extension of a person's identity, from the birth of their sexual identity. All these things are really fascinating, and then on top of it, Alexis just writes this beautiful love story that's about what happens when two people shouldn't be right for each other and are so perfect for each other at the same time."
8. The Raven Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt
GRAND CENTRAL PUBLISHING
"This is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, in a really interesting way. The hero is an earl who is scarred and broken in many different ways, and he has a terrible temper and is just a horrible dude. He hires a local widow who desperately needs a job as his secretary. He's very gruff and rough with her, but they slowly start to come together. She's a widow, but she's never really had tremendous sexual pleasure, so there's something very interesting about the way that he can awaken her despite being a beast, so to speak. There's a great scene inside a men's club, like a sex club. She sneaks in and he's a member, and it's all very clandestine and masked and beautiful. If you've never read historical romance, this is a good place to start if you're looking for something one-handed."
9. Evernight by Kristen Callihan
FOREVER
"This is the fifth book in Kristen's Darkest London series, but it did not matter to me that it was the fifth in the series because I think it's smokin' hot. The hero is like a part-demon, part-vampire, otherworldly creature. He was captured by a foe who inserted a clockwork metal heart into him, and the metal is taking over his body and he is dying. He goes off to find the person who made the heart, and that person is the heroine, Holly Evernight. She's also otherworldly and is able to manipulate metal with touch, so she can literally save him by laying her hands on him and pushing the metal back. As you can imagine, this makes for incredibly sexy scenes because he loathes her. She's the instrument of his demise but she's also the only thing that can save him, and in order to save him, she has to touch him. He is a tremendous dirty talker, so if dirty talk is a thing you like, this book is for you."
10. When the Duke Was Wicked by Lorraine Heath
AVON
"Almost all of Lorraine's books have at least one really electric sex scene. The heroine inherits a ton of money, and of course the men come out of the woodwork looking to woo her. She wants to learn how men seduce so she can tell the difference between seduction and love. As luck would have it, she has a childhood friend who is a duke — even better! — and who has no interest in marriage, but she enlists him to teach her how men seduce women. It's such a classic storyline that you can sort of see the end coming, and you just can't wait for this duke to be wrecked by how much he adores the heroine. There is a remarkable scene that involves rum that will change the way you look at rum forever."
