Guest post written by While You Were Seething author Charlotte Stein
Charlotte Stein is the RT and DABWAHA nominated author of over fifty short stories, novellas and novels, including the Library Journal starred When Grumpy Met Sunshine. When not writing deeply emotional and intensely sexy books, she can be found eating jelly turtles, getting way too excited over a million movies and TV shows, and occasionally lusting after moustaches. She lives in Leeds with her family.
About While You Were Seething: The road to love is bumpy in Charlotte Stein’s WHILE YOU WERE SEETHING— a sexy and heartwarming contemporary romance filled with fake dating hijinks, delicious forced proximity, and top tier banter. Out April 14th 2026, but you can read an excerpt below too!
I have always loved enemies to lovers—right the way back to things like Coppola’s Dracula and The Vampire Diaries and True Blood. The idea of the evil option being the one she can’t resist, the one she hates but also is drawn to. Who doesn’t love that? I mean don’t get me wrong, I also adore a cinnamon roll. Give me Brendan Fraser being a himbo in anything and I am happy as a cat in custard.
But sometimes you just want the horrible yearning.
The desperate desire to resist and the slow failure at it.
That part when they finally succumb to their forbidden feelings, and it’s awful. But also absolutely spectacular, just truly amazing. Everything about it is the best. And then the regret afterwards. That sense of what have I done? Why am I doing this? Ah yes, give me twenty of that. Give me a million of that. Give me it to infinity and beyond.
But there’s one place I tend to differ from the enemies to lovers loving club (yes, I am going to call us a club), and that is in what constitutes enemies to lovers. Because although I love a fantasy enemies to lovers, although I think it does allow you to get more life and death and still have it be a romance, I feel that enemies to lovers in a contemporary setting still fully qualifies.
And I’ll accept anything.
He stole her pencil once?
Fine by me!
She ate his lunch from the break room fridge?
I’m down with it. No problems from me here.
She owns a bookstore and he’s in charge of some major chain that crushes her out? Well to be honest that’s so much like being actual enemies that I no longer believe in the HEA. But the point is, I do believe in the seething hatred. I still can feel the same feelings, can get the same buzz from the forbidden, from the idea of going against all of your own values and sensibilities, from overcoming your every worry about what this means.
And that’s why I wrote While You Were Seething, the book I have out on April 14th. And also why I wrote Falling For A Villainous Vampire, the book I have coming out on October 26th (yes, that is the same day as the new Sarah J Maas, fun!).
I wanted to roll around in all of the bantering, the bickering, the sniping, the never wanting to see each other again but being unable to stay away. Caleb and Daisy say they can’t stand each other. But somehow they’re stuck together in one tent and one elevator and one hotel room and one car all the same.
And also I’m just a sucker for Eric Northman.
Give me a baddie who gets amnesia and I’m a goner.
I’m a goner for all things enemies to lovers.
And I always will be.
EXCERPT
From While You Were Seething by Charlotte Stein Copyright © 2026 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
Chapter 15
He’d been pacing up to that point. He stopped now. Stared at her, until she had to accept he was talking about her. Somehow, that word concerned was for her. Or at least, something about them both, and their bizarre relationship.
In a way she wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about. Just pretend it didn’t happen, she willed him, as she eked out two tight words.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem it. Disappearing like that.”
“I didn’t disappear. I needed a snack. And a sit-down.”
“Yeah, but you seem different in other ways, too. Do you think I don’t know that you do? Always sleeping in the car now, looking at me with those wild eyes. And you’re too quiet. No yammering a mile a minute, like normal.”
“Okay, first of all, everybody is a yammerer compared to you. You seem to actively resent that I even make you argue about things. And second of all, you know I have a lot on my mind right now,” she said, then gestured back in the direction of the stage he’d just come from. Though as soon as she did it she knew that wasn’t what it sounded like.
He went very still. His face tightened.
“You mean what I did to you. In the woods.”
“Don’t say it like that.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”
“Like you’re a monster who mauled me.”
“Well, doesn’t seem that far from the truth.”
“You can’t be fucking serious. You were gentle as anything. Not to mention the fact that you made me do something that nobody ever has before,” she said, but knew as soon as she had that she shouldn’t have put it like that. His eyes widened—briefly and only slightly, but they did.
And he straightened just a little.
Like an animal bristling.
“I shouldn’t have said that. Let’s just forget that I did,” she ordered him.
He didn’t listen. “Might be a little hard when it’s lodged in my brain like a ten-inch splinter.”
“Sorry,” she tried. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to, I just—I didn’t expect you to—”
“Doesn’t matter why, I don’t care if you did. That’s not what struck me.”
“Then what did?” She said it loud, frustrated now. Hand slapping the ground-floor
button, because seriously, why was the elevator not moving? She didn’t know, but it still refused. In fact it didn’t start up until he answered, quietly, to her turned back.
“You said nobody has.”
“That doesn’t seem like a big deal. Most women can’t.”
“But you can. You did. And you’re telling me nobody has ever made you before.”
Shit, she thought. How have I started confessing my sex life issues to him? And it showed in her flustered, red-faced attempts at explaining. “Well, usually they’re not using their hands, they’re using their . . . you know what. And then they don’t . . . I mean, they never last that long, so.”
“It took you twenty fucking seconds.”
“I think that’s an exaggeration.”
“A minute, then. At most.”
Now she was the one pacing.
“It was probably just the situation,” she said, eyes flicking up to the number above the door. Seventeen, it somehow said. Even though she was fairly sure this building didn’t have that many floors. Apparently elevators weren’t satisfied anymore with just placing her in tense situations. They had to use wizardry to trap her there. With a man who was now very worked up.
“The situation was fucking nothing. Hell, the situation now is even less than that and I know you’re going the same way. Trembling and blushing over a few touches, a kind word or two, someone talking to you the way I am now. That’s all it takes and they couldn’t even manage that much,” he said, at which point she went to scoff. The words I’m not trembling were on the tip of her tongue. But then she realized. She felt it. Like a kid after a hit of sugar. And apparently ready for another one, when he shook his head, words almost muttered under his breath.
“Always thought you were getting beyond what someone like me could ever give you in the sack, and instead it’s fucking crumbs. Assholes that can’t even fuck you right.”
Because seriously, what did that mean? She didn’t know. She only knew he wasn’t correct.
“But it’s different when it’s actual fucking.”
“You sure about that? Because, you know, we can easily test that theory out.”
“As if you’re going to do that. There’s no way you would. There’s no way you would even want to,” she said, half laughing as she did. Though she knew the laugh sounded just a little panicked. And that she was breathing way too hard now. But even scarier: He was breathing hard, too. His chest was almost heaving. She watched it rise and fall underneath his denim shirt, completely mesmerized. Then she looked up and met his eyes, and oh god. The second she did, something in them just seemed to shift. The light in them sunk, and left behind a sort of soft and subtle darkness.
Realization, she wanted to call it. But it was more than that, it was beyond that. She felt like she was drowning in it. In fact, she was still sinking into those depths when he slowly, slowly leant to one side. Eyes still locked with hers, as he did something she couldn’t see. Something she couldn’t believe, even when her mind informed her of what it was. And then it happened. The elevator jolted to a stop between floors five and six.
Courtesy of a man who couldn’t even stand someone not holding the doors. She’d seen him fume over it before now. But he did it. Then, in case she was in any doubt as to what this was, he spoke. “Just say if you want me to stop,” he said, and as he did he reached forward.
Eyes still on hers. And he slid his hand directly up her dress. All the way up, right to the elastic of her panties. The ones she’d worn thinking of the word sensible, but now they seemed like anything but. Too sweet and too cottony for something like this. And especially when he bunched one side of them into his big fist.
It felt outrageous, filthy.
And so good she couldn’t help making a sound. It just sighed out of her, all high and soft. Then again, when he started easing them down. Slow, like he had wanted her to do for herself in the tent. Gently parting her legs, then lifting her foot at the end so he could completely remove them. And now all there was between him and her bare pussy was a thin fall of material. The dress she’d worn, soft and flowery. Not her style at all, to the point where she wondered why she’d chosen it. But she didn’t wonder now.
I want to be fucked, she thought.
Though honestly she had no idea how she had ever thought this was going to happen. Even now, even at this point, it seemed ridiculous. Because yeah, okay, he sounded breathless—just as he had the night before. And she was pretty sure that was a flush creeping over his throat. Yet somehow she just couldn’t imagine him getting hard enough to do it.
She even went to look.
But he got there first.
“Turn around,” he said, low and hoarse.
And okay, she got it now. It was obvious now.
Most likely he needed to pretend it wasn’t her.
Though god, he was fucking fast about it, if that were true. She’d barely managed to face the wall of the elevator when she heard the rattle of his belt, the snap of rubber. No pause, no working himself to hardness with nothing but the sight of some anonymous curves in front of him.
Just done, immediately.
Then, in case she was in any doubt, he lifted her dress. Right up, right over her bare ass, one hand actually stroking over her there as he did. Getting a handful of her and squeezing, before he moved on to the hollow of her hip. One strong grip deep in it so he could tilt her up to meet him. So he could get her up on tiptoes, enough that he could do this.
Though it was still shocking when she felt it.
From While You Were Seething by Charlotte Stein Copyright © 2026 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
