Lavender & Lore
Sapphic Contemporary Romance
by Aurora North
Available at all major retailers
Pairing: FF (Sapphic)
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno
Tropes: Bi Awakening, Boss/Employee, Praise Kink, D/s Dynamic, Butch/Femme, Found Family, Slow Burn, Grumpy/Sunshine
She came for the books. She stayed for her.
Hannah Liu is a broke, anxious college grad stuck in a soul-crushing data entry job. When she ducks into a queer bookstore to escape the rain, she finds the first place that’s ever felt like home — and a boss who makes her forget her own name.
Rowan “Ro” Martinez is the butch, quietly intense owner of Lavender & Lore. She left a six-figure publishing career to build a queer literary sanctuary, lost a relationship over it, and is convinced love and the bookstore can’t coexist. Then Hannah walks in soaking wet and talks about romance like it’s scripture, and Ro’s composure starts to crack.
What starts as workplace admiration becomes something dangerous — a slow, devastating tension fueled by Ro’s praise and Hannah’s response to it. Every “good job” lands like a caress. Every “you’re extraordinary” rewires Hannah’s brain. And when the dam finally breaks, what they discover about each other — and themselves — will change everything.
But Hannah’s never been with a woman. Ro’s her boss. And the rules they’ve built to protect each other are the same ones keeping them apart.
You’ll love this book if you enjoy:
✅ Sapphic romance with a “straight girl” awakening that’s handled with nuance and joy
✅ Praise kink as both erotic engine and emotional through-line
✅ Boss/employee with ethical restraint that makes the payoff devastating
✅ Gentle D/s dynamic — warm dominance, not cold control
✅ Queer bookstore setting with found family energy
✅ 15 chapters of unbearable tension before the first sex scene
✅ HEA guaranteed
⚠️ Content Warning: This novel contains explicit sexual content (graphic FF scenes including D/s dynamics and praise kink), strong language, family conflict around coming out, and themes of sexual identity discovery. Intended for readers 18+.
📖 Read Chapter One Free
Not sure yet? Read the full first chapter right here.
Chapter One: Shelter from the Rain
The sky opened up like it had a personal vendetta against Hannah Liu’s suede flats.
She stood on the corner of Birch and Main, rain hammering the pavement so hard it bounced, her laptop bag clutched to her chest like a shield that was doing exactly nothing.
This is fine, she told herself. This is a metaphor for your life and you’re handling it beautifully.
She was not handling it beautifully.
Then she saw it. Tucked between a vintage clothing store and a yoga studio, a storefront she’d walked past a hundred times without really seeing. Warm light glowed through rain-streaked windows. A hand-painted sign: Lavender & Lore.
She ducked inside.
Then she found the romance section, and her heart did something complicated. An entire bookcase labeled in bold cursive: SAPPHIC ROMANCE. Beneath it: She loves her. Deal with it.
“That’s her best one.”
The woman standing at the end of the aisle was tall, dark-skinned, sharp-jawed, with short-cropped curly hair and a charcoal button-up with the sleeves rolled to her elbows. She was leaning against the bookshelf like the world had been built for her to lean against.
“Rowan Martinez. I own the place. Most people call me Ro.”
Hannah shook her hand. Ro’s grip was firm, her palm warm. “Hannah Liu. I’m a disaster, currently.”
“You have good taste,” Ro said. She paused. “I like that in an employee.”
I like that. Three words. There was absolutely no reason for them to hit Hannah the way they did.
She fell asleep with the book on her chest and Ro’s voice in her head: Saturday. Nine a.m. Don’t be late.
She was never late.
Want to keep reading? The full novel is available now.
🔥 Want an EXCLUSIVE Bonus Chapter?
Good Girl, My Girl — A scene TOO HOT for Amazon
A blindfold. A negotiation. The night Ro and Hannah push past every boundary and discover what total surrender really means.
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