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Featured Blog Post - Getting Rid of Those Pesky Clothes
As an author of smoking hot romances, I’m always confronted with the first time the hero and heroine have to shed their clothes and melt into each other’s arms.
That can prove problematic. After all, up until that point I’ve created a fever-pitch of interest for the couple to do the deed. However, it’s a let down if clothes are flying everywhere and they simply do it.
So how do we authors make shedding the garments interesting?
Well, there’s always the striptease with the heroine trying to drive the hero nuts, but that can become clichéd and I’ve always found it a bit contrived. Every time I’ve tried to write it, I have trouble keeping a straight face. However, it’s very much in character to have an Alpha male ordering his lady to undress.
Here’s a blurb (for background) and an excerpt from my newest release Lush Velvet Nights to show you what I mean.
BLURB:
Lush Velvet Nights - When wanton desires & love demand all…
During the day, Adriana’s a lonely corporate heiress, helming a supermarket empire. At night, she hires escorts, scripting provocative fantasies of kidnapping, lust, submission and endless longing. It’s all she has to excite her until she meets Nathan Wynn. Tall, blond and muscular—like a modern-day Viking—Nathan’s a labor relations attorney representing Adriana’s union employees. His imposing presence intensifies her basest desires. When he protects her from an escort he believes is an attacker, she knows he’s wonderfully dominant and unrestrained. Fascinated by Adriana’s underlying sensuality, Nathan brings her to his secluded mountain estate, determined she submit fully to his hunger. At a gentleman’s club, he makes certain she denies him nothing. Engaging in a seductive sexual journey, Nathan’s caught off-guard by his stunning need for Adriana. An attraction he fears because of past events in his life. A growing emotional connection she will not let him deny.
EXCERPT: (In this scene, Nathan has just ordered Adriana to undress)
Her expression grew preoccupied. Eyes unfocused, she lost her fuck you expression and shrugged out of her suit jacket. It fell to the floor with a gentle rustle. Casually, she stepped well around the garment, which brought her to the safety of the closest shadow and one of the chairs.
Nathan allowed it. She’d soon learn there’d be nowhere to hide in this room.
Her hand gripped the top of the chair for support as she lifted her left foot to remove her high heel.
“The heels stay,” he directed, his firm voice cutting through the space separating them. “So do the garter and stockings.”
Slowly, her foot sank to the floor. A moment passed and another as she remained perfectly still. He saw her inner turmoil, hoping she wouldn’t cave to propriety and her need for control. He wanted her vulnerable, uncivilized, completely his. He swallowed hard. His palms began to sweat.
With a barely audible sigh, she moved, lowering her head to hide her face. She opened her skirt’s side zip and glanced up. Her eyes shifted to his, much as they would to a captor…to see her effect on him, to see what his next command might be.
Nathan’s shoulders were too tense, hurting from the uncertainty of the last few seconds and his forced restraint. He kept the pain from his voice. “Take it off.”
Once past her hips, the skirt glided over her knees and calves to the floor.
He stared at the tails of her silk blouse. The sapphire color looked deeper, richer against her naked thighs. Her garters evoked images of harlots in the 1920s, their plush bodies imprisoned and shaped by cruel corsets, their shapely legs covered by black stockings, their intimate areas bared, inviting a man’s touch, yielding to it.
His fingers curled into fists. Blood collected in his groin, glutting his shaft. Tormented at her slow, indecisive pace, he fought to take a full breath. Faster, his mind warned.
Headstrong, she drew this out as she had when opening his gift. The hem of her blouse shimmied as she unfastened the buttons. One, two, three—at last, the garment hung opened, revealing the flat crescent of her navel and the front clasp of her satiny black bra. She slipped the blouse off her right shoulder and her left. With her shoulders drawn together, her breasts plumped over the bra cups.
Nathan advanced a step.
Adriana’s movements stalled, not allowing the blouse to fall to the floor with her other clothing. Her eyes lifted. In them, he saw stark indecency and bestial greed to match his own.
“Go on,” he ordered. His voice sounded stiff, unnatural.
The blouse floated to the floor. She faced him wearing only her underwear, garter belt, stockings and heels.
“I want to see your cunt first,” he said.
Her hands remained on the bra’s clasp, sudden shyness dancing in her eyes. Bared breasts were one thing. A naked mound represented true nudity and availability to a man’s organ.
The tips of her fingers trailed down her torso. Her softly rounded belly—the perfect pillow for his head—shook prettily at her touch. Reaching her panties, she eased her thumbs beneath the elastic and leaned against the chair for support as she pulled them down. In doing so, she’d also turned to the side, exposing her naked ass.
A muscle in Nathan’s right pec jumped at the sight of her luscious buttocks, plump with youth. He tore his attention from them to stare at her skimpy thong. The narrow end covering her anus now hung between her thighs. The crotch soon followed, its panel dark and wet, catching the pale light she’d unknowing moved into. Scented with her musk, the silk glistened with her arousal.
Determined to smell it, Nathan stepped closer and inhaled deeply. Her flowery, earthy fragrance set his heart to hammering at a speed he knew no doctor could sanction. Damn near dizzy, he watched Adriana toss her thong on her other clothes and straighten.
The dark, delicate curls between her legs spoke to the male in him, plumping his balls, hardening his cock. Her defenseless pussy captivated. Moments passed before he realized she’d lifted her hands to her bra.
He looked in time to see the cups parting, falling away from her breasts, the pliant mounds large enough to fill his hands easily. Her coffee-colored nipples complemented her olive skin, the areolas wrinkled from stimulation and possibly the cold radiating off the windowpanes. He wanted to ask if she was chilled and thought better of it. In a few minutes, she’d have all the warmth she needed.
Her bra fell from her fingers onto the pile of clothes at her feet.
Nathan’s eyes lifted. “Your hair.” Helpless to alter the tension in his voice, he continued, “Take it down. It’s the only part of you I’m going to allow to be free.”
AND THEN SHE UNDRESSES HIM. . .
The deep music of his voice, his undeniable virility called to her so strongly it pushed away everything else. Again, she forgot the neighbors. Readily, she dismissed the fire and the outside world. Her hands didn’t know where to go first, how to start. She felt as she had as a child, delighted by Joe’s special Christmases. Always he’d have a mound of presents for her to open, each wrapped beautifully, the boxes containing gifts she really wanted, the ones her parents hadn’t thought to buy. With so many choices and so much to surprise her, she hadn’t known where to begin.
She touched Nathan’s belt buckle and decided it should wait. Initially, she would bare his chest, followed by his cock. Her fingers fumbled with his top shirt button only to fall away and go to his cuffs, thinking she should tend to them first.
Shit. She’d forgotten he wore cufflinks. Breathing too hard, she pressed the metal ends of the first one together only to have it snag on a loose thread as she pulled it through the opening. “Damn.” She twisted and tugged it.
“Just rip the fucking thing off.” He paused to swallow. “I don’t care.”
“Got it.” She tossed it toward her pile of clothes and missed. The onyx-and-gold piece tumbled across the floor on a sequence of tiny clinks. The second cufflink bounced on her skirt. Hurriedly, she shoved his buttons through their holes. A shiver of delight tore through her at the thought of his muscular torso. She pushed the shirt inside-out over his shoulders and down his arms, halting at his elbows. Adriana gaped. “Oh my god,” she whispered, staring at his tattoo.
It covered his entire torso on the left side, from below the waistband of his pants up to his shoulder and down his arm, stopping at his elbow. A solid black, the design consisted of a series of connected and flowing geometric patterns—leaping flames, what looked to be the sun’s rays, swirls, long lines and bold curves. Never in her life had Adriana seen anything as amazing.
“Not what you expected?” he asked.
Surprised at the hesitation in his voice, she met his eyes. “Wow.”
He offered a tentative grin. “You like?”
“Oh god, yes. This is freaking awesome.” Her nails traveled the striking composition, taking a detour to the sharp peak of his nipple, the contours of his defined abs, the depression of his navel, the silky brown hairs swirling around it and dipping beneath his waistband. Whimpering like a chocoholic coveting a bag of Ghirardelli squares, she decided touch wasn’t enough to satisfy her scaling appetite. Palms on his ass, she traced the design with the tip of her tongue, intentionally marking him, leaving her scent.
Rather than having the hero/heroine just tossing off their clothes and getting right to it, I like to ratchet up the action with a smoldering scene like the ones above. J
Lush Velvet Nights is available from Ellora’s Cave
Buy link:
http://www.jasminejade.com/ps-8298-50-lush-velvet-nights.aspx
Website/blog/YouTube video trailer for Lush Velvet Nights: http://www.tinadonahue.com/
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