Does she dare to fulfill her secret fantasy? #BDSM #EroticRomance #Submission @KetaDiablo

 

Blurb

Will her secret fantasies be the downfall of her marriage?

Clare is keeping a big secret from her husband. After six years of marriage, there’s something missing in their lives.

Attempting to fill her lonely existence, Clare signs up for a kinky chat group. After weeks of chatting, she agrees to meet with a Dom for hire.

Will she go through with it? Does she dare? Will this mean the end of her marriage, or is it just another path to fulfillment?

Excerpt

By the time I reach the hotel, I’m soaked clear through to my skin. My long hair is drenched and drips down my chest, leaving massive droplets on my new spring coat. What the hell was I thinking when I asked the cabbie to drop me off two blocks away? I mean, who would see me, and even if they did, why would they question my destination?

I enter through the main doors and walk into the lobby. The desk clerk looks up but I smile and find my way to the elevator. He doesn’t try to stop me or ask if he can assist me. He must think I have an air of independence about me, despite my wet-hen look.

My breathing is erratic by the time I ride the elevator to the fifth floor. I follow the signs posted on the wall that direct me to room 510. I hesitate and tap my head with a closed fist. What am I doing here?

A man opens the door after my three light taps. He’s tall with broad shoulders, a narrow waist and lean hips. Sort of like my Michael I guess and then tell myself not to go there.

“You’re soaked,” he says through the black hood with only narrow slits where his eyes should be.

This puts me at a disadvantage right away. He can see my eyes but I don’t have the slightest idea what color his are. “Yes, I got caught in the rain.”

The words fly into my head before I can stop them. I like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain. I'm not much into health food, I am into champagne.

With a flourish of his arm, he directs me into the room. It’s luxurious, opulent and well-furnished. A four-poster bed sits center stage, companioned by two nightstands, one on each side. Near the window, there’s a sitting area, two plush, magenta wingbacks separated by another small table.

The bathroom door is ajar, but I don’t allow my gaze to linger there. I’m too nervous to think about anything except the hooded man standing in the center of the room and the reason I’m standing there in front of him.

“Well, that’s convenient . . . getting caught in the rain, I mean. Take your clothes off and I’ll drape them over the wingbacks. Hopefully they’ll dry a little.”

I mutter a feeble thank you and begin to undress. He watches me with morbid fascination, and I wonder how many times he’s done this before.

“I assume you brought cash. Most bring cash, nothing traceable.”

I nod.

“Lay it on the nightstand and then take a seat on the slat-backed chair at the foot of the bed.”

“Naked, you mean.”

“Well, there wouldn’t be much sense conducting our session in wet clothes, would there?”

“No, I guess not.”

If you were to ask me what happened next, other than a vague memory of me removing my clothing, laying the money on the night table and walking naked to the chair he pointed to, I couldn’t tell you. Everything from that moment on meshed together until I heard my own voice echo through the quiet solitude of the hotel room.

“Yes, oh, yes!”

Buy Links

Kindle Unlimited Only. 

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086H3HWY6

About the Author

Keta Diablo lives in the Midwest part of the United States on six acres of gorgeous woodland. When she isn't writing or gardening, she loves to commune with nature. A pair of barn owls returns to the property every year to birth their young and show them off in the high branches of the oak trees. Nothing more adorable than these white fluffy babies with heart-shaped faces. A lifelong animal lover, Keta devotes her time and support to the local animal shelter. Emma LaPounce, a rescued feline, has been her furry companion for the last ten years.

Keta is an award-winning and bestselling author who writes in several genres: Western Romance, Historical Romance, Paranormal Romance and Contemporary Romance. Occasionally, she writes Gay Romance. Her books have received numerous accolades, including RWA contest finalist, Authors After Dark finalist, Top Pick of the Month and Recommended Review from many top review sites, and Best Romance Finalist from The Independent Author Network.

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Review Tuesday: Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs -- #ReviewTuesday #stereotypes #tragichero

Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs

A few months ago I had the opportunity to see the 1934 blockbuster Tarzan and His Mate at a local film club. This classic movie, which stars Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan, is particularly famous for its implied sexuality and its nudity, so I figured that as an erotic author it was my duty to check it out. ;^)

In fact, I felt the film left a lot to be desired. Maureen O’Sullivan is lovely as Jane, but Weissmuller makes a rather skinny and anemic-looking ape man, in my opinion. The characters are stereotyped and the treatment of black-skinned people is appalling.

However, the experience made me curious about the original story, so I downloaded the book from the Gutenberg Project. This is a non-profit organization devoted to digitizing and distributing books that are out of copyright. Their website offers thousands of ebooks in a variety of formats, including (I discovered) Epub. 

 

I found that Burroughs’ Tarzan has little in common with the popular movie versions. He is a natural gentleman, with a powerful sense of morality, despite having grown to maturity in the jungle. His parents, members of the English nobility, are abandoned on an uninhabited African beach by mutineers and eventually killed by the wild apes, one of whom takes their infant to her breast after her own child is slaughtered by her jealous mate. She raises the boy to manhood. Although he cannot compete physically with the male apes, Tarzan triumphs to become the leader of the tribe due to his superior intelligence. However, he eventually finds himself dissatisfied with the society of the apes. When he enters the world of men, he’s dismayed to realize he does not belong there either.

In Burroughs’ novel, Tarzan laboriously teaches himself to read and write English by studying books, including children’s primers, he finds in the hut his parents built. When Jane Porter and her entourage arrive (similarly abandoned by greedy and murderous seamen), he communicates with them by writing notes, but cannot understand their spoken language at all. When he does learn to speak, there’s none of the “Me Tarzan, you Jane” nonsense we’ve been fed over the years by the popular adaptations.In fact, his first spoken language is French!

I was very much caught up by Burroughs’ adventure, despite its occasionally racist tone and its confused notions about Africa. (As far as I know, lions do not inhabit the jungle, only the plains.) I read the whole book in a couple of hours, and truly enjoyed it. The author does a remarkable job capturing Tarzan’s concurrent civility and savagery. I couldn’t help fall in love with him, right along with Jane.

Burroughs portrays Tarzan as something of a tragic hero, a man of great promise who will always be an outsider. Much to my surprise, this first book ended not with him claiming Jane as his mate, but on the contrary, sacrificing his own desires because he believed she would be happier with someone else.

This was definitely not what I expected. I immediately downloaded the next volume in the series, The Return of Tarzan – hoping for a happier and more romantic ending!

Cupid’s Christmas Gift #HolidayRomance #StockingStuffer #HEA

By Tim Smith (Guest Blogger)

If it’s the Holiday Season, it must be time for Stocking Stuffers from Extasy Books. My contribution to this annual series of short books, Cupid Says Happy New Year, was recently released. This is a sequel to last year’s holiday release, Santa Slept Here. As with all of my series titles, they don’t need to be read in order.

In last year’s tale, we met Scott Burke and Lisa Berger who were high school sweetheart wannabes once upon a time. That was fifteen years ago. Sparks were rekindled when Lisa found herself stranded in Scott’s home base on Christmas Eve, and they realized that they never should have parted. Now it’s a week later, and they’ve made plans to spend New Year’s Eve together. Will the two lovers keep the flames burning, or will Lisa decide to return to her lucrative job in another state once the glow of the New Year begins to fade? Can Scott bring himself to make the ultimate commitment, or will he stand aside and lose her a second time?

When I conceived Santa Slept Here last year, the premise I started with was the lonely guy, not looking forward to his first post-divorce Christmas. His family had other plans, so he was on his own. On his way home from work on Christmas Eve, he stops at his favorite bistro and runs into his former high school sweetheart, whose car had broken down on her way to their old hometown. One thing leads to another and she agrees to stay at his home until her car can be repaired. Your imagination can fill in the rest.

When I finished it, I knew it cried out for a sequel. I had made it a happy-for-now ending, and I asked myself “What happens next?” Hence, here we are, a week later on New Year’s Eve. Both stories are lightweight romances with some erotic scenes and a few laughs. The stories bring to mind the holiday movies that saturate Lifetime and the Hallmark Channel this time of year, but with a lot more spice. Here’s an excerpt from Cupid Says Happy New Year:

* * *

Scott slid out of bed and refilled their glasses. He handed Lisa her glass, then joined her under the covers. They rested against the headboard and toasted each other. Lisa snuggled closer and rested her head on his shoulder.

“This is nice,” she said. “It’s fun cuddling with you. I think I could get used to this, Scotty.”

“Do you know that you’re one of the only people I let get away with calling me that?”

“Who else?”

“My grandmother, but I let it go because she thinks I’m perpetually eight years old.”

Lisa laughed with him. “I say that as a term of affection.”

“In that case, I don’t mind.”

They cuddled in silence for a few minutes. Scott enjoyed Lisa’s warm, soft body next to his. She placed her hand on his chest and lightly traced a pattern with her French-manicured nails, causing a slight tickling sensation. He ran his palm along her upper arm and inhaled her scent.

“I love that perfume you’re wearing,” he commented. “What is it?”

“Allure.”

“It fits.”

“Thank you.” She hesitated. “Can I tell you something?”

“Go for it.”

“Last week, when we lay together like this in your bed, I felt something I hadn’t experienced in a long time.”

Scott took a sip from his glass. “What was that?”

“It was the way you held me, and talked to me, like you’re doing now. You made me feel really close to you, like you didn’t want to let me go.”

“You didn’t like it?”

“No, I liked it a lot. I just hadn’t felt it recently.”

Scott thought for a few moments, dredging up memories of his failed marriage while wondering how much he wanted to share.

“Since we’re being honest, it had been a while since I felt a deep connection with anyone like I did with you. The last year or so of my marriage wasn’t the best of times, and sex was more biological necessity than I-want-to-hold-you-forever. Make sense?”

Lisa took a drink of wine. “Actually, it does, now that you put it that way.”

“Similar experience in your failed relationship with the guy you were telling me about?”

“Pretty much, but I never thought of it that way. He was such a control freak that I felt like I was just spreading my legs so he could get off while fantasizing about the cute ass of the new secretary he’d just hired.” She paused. “The last few months we were together, I felt like he was making love to someone else.”

Scott gave her a soft kiss, letting his lips linger against hers for a few moments. He placed his palm on her cheek and peered into her eyes.

“I think that’s the difference. When we reconnected and talked about how we’d always had feelings for each other but never did anything about them, that made me realize how much I’ve always loved you. I guess that’s what you were feeling last week.”

Lisa ran her fingers along his cheek. “You mean it wasn’t just because we finally made it into bed and lived out a few dormant high school fantasies?”

Scott chuckled. “Trust me, it was a lot more than just that. What we did last week wouldn’t have meant nearly as much then as it did now.”

“It sounds like we’ve both grown up.”

* * *

Cupid Says Happy New Year and the prequel, Santa Slept Here, are both available at Extasy Books and Kindle. They make the perfect stocking stuffers!

http://www.extasybooks.com/978-1-4874-1539-6-santa-slept-here/

http://www.extasybooks.com/978-1-4874-2031-4-cupid-says-happy-new-year/

https://www.amazon.com/Santa-Slept-Here-Tim-Smith-ebook/dp/B078LKFR1Y

Tim Smith is an award-winning, bestselling author of romantic mystery/thrillers and contemporary erotic romance. His website is www.timsmithauthor.com. 

 

Mutual Inspiration - #erotica #inspiration #smut @LarryArcher

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Torn (#HEA #revisions #honesty)

I recently reclaimed the rights to one of my stories, which had not sold at all through its original publisher. I am planning to self-publish it as part of my new Asian Adventures series. However, I’m facing a dilemma.

This tale is M/F romantic erotica, set in Cambodia. I guess you’d call it “literary”, in the sense that it concerns itself with issues like prejudice and cultural misunderstandings, as well as focusing on the relationship between the main characters. In the original version, the story has a bittersweet ending. The couple separates because, in the real world, it would be almost impossible for them to make a life together.

As I contemplate republishing the tale, though, I’m wondering if I should change it to have at least a HFN ending. I know that would probably increase sales. It also fits better with the first installment of Asian Adventures, which definitely does end happily.

But I’m wondering—would this be a violation of artistic integrity? Would it be honest to flip the ending just to fit popular tastes? A happy ending isn’t realistic for these characters. A happy ending would also reduce the emotional punch of the story.

On the other hand, emotional punch hardly matters if nobody reads the story... 

Am I being elitist? Silly? Or am I justified in feeling a bit like a whore if I modify the ending?

I am really torn. What do you think I should do?

Kicking and Screaming (#HEA #romance #Exposure)

Let me say right off that I have nothing against happy endings, if they're right for the book. My first three novels end happily, with plenty of sexual satisfaction and the intimation of more to come, possibly even in the shape of - gasp - marriage (although non-traditional in every case). On the other hand, my fourth novel Exposure has a far more ambiguous conclusion. The heroine has lost everything she owned. She's torn between two relationships, neither of which is completely what she wants. Her future is a huge question mark.

Personally, I really liked that ending. However, I had a tough time getting that book published, and it hasn't sold all that well. Meanwhile, over the past three years I've been drawn deeper into the world of erotic romance, where a happy ending ("HEA", i.e. Happily Ever After, or at least "HFN", Happy For Now) is the single most important requirement of both readers and publishers. These days, romance can be sweet or steamy, with any mix of genders and quite a level of flexibility in numbers, but the story must conclude with the protagonists in love and together for the foreseeable future. And I'll admit, sometimes I find it difficult to deliver the sort of HEA that readers want.

Before I began writing romance, I really hadn't read any of the genre, the one major exception being Daphne DuMaurier's delicious Frenchman's Creek. The stories I've always considered the most romantic - Romeo and Juliet, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, The English Patient - have tragic or painful conclusions. Meanwhile, sexual relationships are so often fraught with conflict - even if it's something as simple A desires B but is married to C - that not-so-happy endings are far easier to imagine than happy ones where everyone gets what he or she wants.

So, sometimes I find I have to drag my characters, kicking and screaming, to the rosy resolution that readers seem to crave. Even worse, sometimes the constraint that all must end well limits my story ideas in the first place. I'll throw away a perfectly usable premise or set of characters because, honestly, I can't imagine a happy finish.

Some of you might be shaking your heads, thinking, "So why the heck does she keep trying to write romance? Why doesn't she go back to her first love, erotica?"

First of all, the romance publishing world offers some things that are hard to come by in erotica: a plethora of publishers, a huge pool of potential readers and many opportunities to interact with them, and yes, money. More seriously, I see signs that happy-ending-ism has infected the erotica publishing world as well. More and more calls for short story anthologies are looking for "romantic erotica". Others explicitly say that they do not want "dark themes". There are fringe publishers who will look at such work, but the mainstream erotica publishers (if one can use this term without snickering) seem to seeking fantasy-generating material, where everyone orgasms and even more sex looms on the horizon. Unhappiness, darkness, even serious ambiguity, threaten the post-climactic glow.

Obviously I'm generalizing here (and every generalization can be attacked). One could also claim that my complaints are the result of sour grapes. I recently had a story rejected, a story that I wrote specifically for a particular call from a well-known editor working with a well-known publisher. I may be wrong, but I strongly suspect that the ending of this tale was the main reason for its rejection. The story concludes with the woman leaving her husband of thirty years for a man she has just met. The ending is right for the story; I'm quite confident of that, although I wavered as to whether I was brave enough to write it. It's not a happily ever after, though, certainly not for the abandoned husband and probably not for the woman either. No matter how fulfilling her relationship with her new lover may be, she'll always have doubts and possibly regrets. Not HEA material.

In short stories, especially, I'm drawn to the unresolved. The very first short story I published, "Glass House", ends with the following:

Still, I am not thinking. I do not dare. Mechanically, I gather my clothing and make myself as presentable as I can. I turn off the light as I leave, and stiffly navigate the spiral stairs, every step reminding me of my exquisite violation.

On the sidewalk, I wonder where I should go. The city is foreign and strange. I am fragile and lost, but not, as I had imagined, empty.

There is something in my pocket: the delicate glass unicorn Lukaš gave me. The horn has broken off, but it is still a lovely thing.

I do not know what will happen next. But I sense that something will shatter.

This is the way of real relationships. We meet and couple with strangers, then say goodbye. We discover, sometimes, that even our long-time lovers have secret faces we've never seen. We desire multiple futures, with multiple people, and are forced to choose only one. Love and sexual communion are both peak experiences, to be celebrated in fiction as well as in life. However, the intricacies of desire thwarted, the bittersweet pangs of longing for what might have been, the bite of envy and the sting of rejection, are equally worthy to be chronicled in our stories.

Then I remember my deadlines and drag my imagination, kicking and screaming, back to the task of making my characters happy.

Review Tuesday: Lady Varney's Risque Business (#regency #review #romance @CeriseDeLand)

Lady Varney’s Risqué Business: A Regency Romp by Cerise DeLand

Amazon Digital Services, 2014

I’ve frequently hosted Cerise DeLand as my guest at Beyond Romance, and always enjoyed her excerpts, but I’d never read any of her books. When she mentioned that one of her Regencies was on sale for just 99 cents a few months ago, I decided to remedy this omission.

The recently widowed Lady Kitty Varney has an impeccable reputation. She’s welcome in salons, drawing rooms and ballrooms throughout the realm and has access to the upper echelons of society. Given her fashionable attire and aristocratic demeanor, no one would dream she’s close to penniless. In truth, her selfish and shiftless husband bequeathed her nothing but his gambling debts. To extricate herself from these financial difficulties, she undertakes the highly delicate occupation of matchmaker and marriage consultant for her peers.

Viscount Justin Belmont is the last individual she expects to find requesting her services. Years before, when he was merely the bastard of an English lord, he’d rescued Kitty from pirates and delivered her, intact, to her family, but they’d refused to allow her to wed the American ship captain. Now Justin’s fortunes have changed. Adopted as his noble uncle’s heir, he has moved to England and, under pressure from his guardian, is seeking a wife. When Justin lays out his criteria for an acceptable bride, Kitty realizes that she’s almost a perfect match—with one fatal exception. Justin’s uncle requires that his ward wed a wealthy woman. Despite appearances, Lady Varney can never provide the expected dowry. Kitty must come to terms with the fact that the man she loves will necessarily marry someone else.

Overall I enjoyed this brief, lively novella. I appreciated Kitty’s cleverness, her courage and ingenuity in the face of adversity. It’s a pleasant change to have a heroine who’s mature, self-confident and knowledgeable, as opposed to a clueless virgin. The snappy dialogue entertained and the lengthy sex scene, in which Kitty “auditions” for the role for Justin’s wife, is deliciously sensual if historically somewhat dubious.

However, I had the same problem with Lady Varney’s Risqué Business as I do with most of the romance I read. The story is totally predictable. There’s no suspense at all. The conflicts feel fake. Every reader knows that the obstacles to Justin’s and Kitty’s relationship won’t remain a serious barrier for long. When Justin apparently takes Kitty’s refusal to heart and courts another woman, it’s obvious he’s bluffing. Kitty and Justine are destined for their happily ever after from page one.

For many romance readers, this is a plus, not a negative. They like being reassured that the characters will finally be together. And I guess they don’t really care too much about the plausibility of the plot as the author moves her creations around on the fictional stage. The HEA is the payoff.

I prefer a book where the author keeps me guessing, up to the very end, whether the relationship in question will actually manage to survive. In fact, I don’t require a happy ending at all, but if the author does manage pull one out of her hat, I want to be surprised and delighted. I don’t want to take it for granted.

That’s just me. Millions of romance readers feel differently. That’s lucky for Cerise and all the other authors of “classic” romance whom I host, and rather unfortunate for me!