Lease, Lies & Love Handles
MM Contemporary Romance
by Chase Power
Available at all major retailers
Pairing: MM
Heat: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno
Tropes: Fake Dating, Landlord/Tenant, Single Guardian, Grumpy/Sunshine, Body Worship, Size Difference, Praise Kink, Age Gap, One Bed, Found Family
A broke cover model. His terrifyingly built landlord. A fake-dating deal that was never supposed to feel this real.
Mason Reed has a face built for romance covers, a mouth built for trouble, and exactly fourteen dollars left after his last modeling job falls through. So when his terrifyingly attractive landlord offers him reduced rent in exchange for renovation help, Mason accepts. He can handle power tools, paint fumes, and the fact that Owen Vale looks like a bodyguard who learned to wear cashmere.
What Mason cannot handle is Owen asking him to play boyfriend.
Owen Vale is fighting for guardianship of his sixteen-year-old niece after his sister’s death. Her wealthy grandparents claim Owen’s bachelor life and small apartment building make him too unstable to raise her. He doesn’t need a fake boyfriend to convince a judge — but a warm, visible support system could stop the grandparents from turning every family event into evidence that Owen is alone.
Mason agrees to a few dinners, a charity gala, and one convincingly romantic social-media photo. Then Owen starts packing Mason lunch. His niece starts calling Mason “kind of family.” And the man pretending to be his boyfriend begins looking at him like Mason is the one thing in his life worth keeping.
You’ll love this book if you enjoy:
✅ Grumpy landlord x sunshine cover model
✅ 14-year age gap that earns every scene
✅ Fake dating that becomes devastatingly real
✅ Body worship, praise kink, and size difference (🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ — graphic, explicit, emotionally annihilating)
✅ A sixteen-year-old niece who steals every scene she’s in
✅ Found family that will make you ugly-cry
✅ HEA guaranteed — proposal included
⚠️ Content Warning: This novel contains explicit MM sex scenes (graphic, multiple, varied dynamics including body worship, praise kink, and power exchange). Strong language throughout. Depictions of grief and loss. Family conflict around guardianship. Financial precarity. References to emotionally neglectful parenting. One character has a history of being hidden by romantic partners. Intended for readers 18+.
📖 Read Chapter One Free
Not sure yet? Read the full first chapter right here.
Chapter One: Rent Is Due and So Is My Dignity
Fourteen dollars and thirty-two cents.
I stared at my phone like the banking app might blink and correct itself. Like maybe there’d been a glitch—some digital hiccup that had accidentally swallowed the rest of my money and would spit it back up any second now with an apologetic little notification. Sorry about that, Mason! Here’s your actual balance, plus a coupon for the emotional distress.
Fourteen dollars. And thirty-two cents.
The feeling was panic. I judged it harshly.
Which brought me to today. Rent day. And fourteen dollars.
“You’re doing the thing,” Rafi said from behind me.
“Everything’s fine.”
Rafi gave me the look—the one that said I love you but you’re exhausting—and hitched his camera bag higher. “Talk to him, Mase. Owen’s strict but he’s not a monster.”
My landlord. My terminally attractive, unfairly built, maddeningly unreadable landlord. I had a crush on my landlord. I also couldn’t pay my landlord. The universe had a sense of humor, and it was mean.
Owen appeared at the top of the stairs. Six foot four. Broad shoulders. Forearm tattoos. Gray eyes—the flat, cool, unreadable gray of lake water before a storm. He looked like a bodyguard who’d been taught to wear cashmere.
“Come upstairs when you’re done,” he said. “I have a proposal.”
“Should I be nervous?”
“Probably.” The faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth. Almost a smile. Not quite. Worse.
Mrs. Huang looked at Owen’s retreating form, then at my face. “Money,” she said firmly. “You’re worried about money. The other one is not a worry—it’s a fact.”
“Okay,” I told nobody. “Let’s go find out how screwed I am.”
I wiped the sawdust off my jeans and headed up.
Want to keep reading? The full novel is available now.
🔥 Want an EXCLUSIVE Bonus Chapter?
The Rooftop — A scene TOO HOT for Amazon.
Mason and Owen’s engagement night on the rooftop — after the party, after the ring, after everyone goes home. Stars, city lights, and the filthiest “yes” you’ve ever read. 4,000+ words of explicit celebratory heat, rooftop sex, and a proposal that gets consummated against the skyline.
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