Sunday, May 31, 2009

Getting Away From Me

By Lisabet Sarai


Kate O'Neill, the heroine of my first novel, had quite a lot in common with her creator. Like me, she was petite and curvy, loved to dance, and was sufficiently adventurous to go live in Thailand. She had graduate degrees and worked as a software engineer, just as I did. True, she had flaming red hair – I've always wanted coppery curls instead of my mousy brown – and she was quite a bit younger than I was when I dreamed her up, but I think it's fair to say that many of her emotions, reactions and fantasies mirrored my own. Most importantly, the journey of sexual self-discovery that she undertook in Raw Silk paralleled my personal sexual quest, in spirit though not in detail.

Writing Raw Silk was surprisingly easy. All I had to do was look inside my own heart.

I shared a lot with Miranda Cahill, the protagonist of Incognito, too. Not physically – Miranda was a tall, slim brunette. However, otherwise, she was much like me during my (many) years in college and graduate school: shy, hard-working, so serious that she doesn't always understand other people's jokes, but seething with desire and sexual curiosity underneath her prim, good-girl exterior.

By the time I got to Ruby Maxwell Chen in Ruby's Rules, I was beginning to create characters whose emotions and history weren't copies of my own. For one thing, Ruby was bossy, bitchy and competitive – nothing at all like me! Ruby was also far richer than I could ever dream of being, and part Chinese. I tried to make her cultural heritage an integral aspect of her personality. With Exposure's Stella Xanathakeos, I moved even further from my roots and comfort zone. Stella is working class and not particularly well-educated. She's streetwise in a way that I, a product of the suburbs and the American middle class, will never be.

In recent years, I've challenged myself to write characters with whom I have very little in common. In my short story “Fire”, my nameless character is a young man from the American midwest with a fetish that compels him to arson. The story is told in the first person – there could hardly be a voice more different than mine. “Refuge”, the story I wrote for Alessia Brio's charitable anthology Coming Together: At Last, is narrated by a dark-skinned youth from the backwaters of northeast Thailand, forced to join the army and work as a guard in a refugee camp by his family's extreme poverty. I'm currently working on a M/M paranormal romance novel called Necessary Madness, featuring the rocky relationship between a homeless clairvoyant teenager and a bitter city cop.

As the social, psychological and experiential differences between me and my characters increase, it becomes more difficult to create characters with depth, breadth and believability. To succeed in capturing my readers, I need characters whose emotions and actions are both genuine and compelling. How can I step into someone else's skin and imagine his or her thoughts and feelings, when that person and I come from different worlds?

Part of the answer, for me, is my conviction that individuals, despite their backgrounds, histories, cultures and gender, are more similar than might be expected based on surface characteristics. Certain emotions are fundamental: fear, anger, desire, sorrow, joy. Although different people express and react to emotions differently, we all experience them. In fact, I think my job as an author is to elicit these emotions in my readers. The very act of creating characters with whom my readers can identify presupposes a level of emotional commonality.

So, when I am trying to create a character very different from me, I assume that I can still use my own emotional reactions as a starting point. This seems to work quite well for sexual desire. If my story requires a character whose sexual interests don't mirror my own, I begin by imagining a scene that does turn me on. Then I transplant my arousal to my character, focusing it on different objects or activities. In Raw Silk, my personal kinks drove the story, quite transparently. My lusts and fantasies still stoke the fire in my work, but now they're subterranean, roiling like molten rock beneath the surface of my characters' existence.

Imagination and analogy can take you a long way toward an understanding of life in someone else's skin. But this strategy will fail if not accompanied by research. Writing requires creation not only of your characters but also the world they inhabit. If you are writing a tale set in a different time period or culture (including a sub-culture), you need to have a deep sense of the world you're trying to evoke and the ways that it shapes its denizens. Assumptions, vocabulary, sexual practices and taboos will vary from one world to another. Sadly, I've read far too many historical romances in which the characters wear period costumes but think and act like representatives of modern Western culture.

So if you are writing, for instance, a homoerotic tale, you can't simply rely on your imagination to tell you how gay men interact. You need to watch and read gay porn. You need to talk to gay men and read about their experiences. In the case of M/M erotic romance, it also helps to read other authors in the genre and figure out what works and what doesn't.

This brings up the fascinating issue of realism versus expectations. I will use M/M erotic romance as an example here, but the same question arises with BDSM or interracial or lesbian or historical erotica. Readers have certain notions about what to expect from a particular genre. In the M/M romance I have read, the rough aspects of gay sex rarely appear. Furthermore, the fear of homophobic attacks, the stigma of being gay in an ostensibly straight society, the effects of HIV on the gay community, are mostly absent. I suspect that if an author tried to be realistic about the experience of being a man who desires men, a significant segment of the readership for M/M romance would be turned off, possibly even upset.

The same could be said of BDSM erotica. Most BDSM tales present an idealized dominant who magically understands the needs of the submissive. (Raw Silk is no exception.) They ignore the far more common situation of insecure, incompetent, ego-tripping or genuinely cruel doms. They usually omit the lengthy negotiation process between dom and sub, in which the pair explores the submissive's squicks and limits. It's far more exciting to imagine a master so intuitive, so attuned to his slave, that he understands what she wants and needs without any prior discussion.

Thus, research by itself is not sufficient. Once you understand how your character's world is different from your own, you still need to decide which differences to highlight and which ones to discard. Reviewing the conventions of your chosen genre can help, but this can also be a trap, producing cookie-cutter stories where the characters and situations are far too predictable to be interesting.

Slipping inside someone else's skin and writing from their experience is tough. It requires considerable effort and judicious craft. Writing characters that are similar to me is far easier. Sometimes I feel like being lazy, just opening up my mind and letting my perversions flow unchecked onto the page. When I do, though, I run the risk that I'll just be writing Raw Silk, over and over again. To keep my work fresh, novel, exciting to other readers as well as to me, I need to get away from myself, to look through the eyes of characters who see a different world.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Threesome? What Threesome?

Writing group sex is not something I'm new at. My first book included a 40-man orgy. One of my first stories published by ERWA included a bunch of aliens getting it on as the universe came to an end. I've written about all sorts of arrangements from M/M/F to F/M/F/F to F/M/? and even some M/?/F/B/3/!, plus a few things that may not have been invented yet. It's one of the benefits of writing science fiction erotica. The types of partners and arrangements thereof are as infinite as the stars.


I once wrote a story about conjoined twins hitting on someone with multiple personalities. I loved that story.


But in my personal life, I've never indulged in more than one partner at a time. At least not in the bedroom. In my writing though...


It's not a partnership like what some folks here have. There are actually three writers involved in this situation, but we're not writing together, we're podcasting together (yes, that kinky fetish of mine, podcasting, rears it's ugly head even here, but bear with me). Last November, feeling the strain of being a writer on her own, I decided to reach out to a fellow writer for a special project. You see, writing is often a masturbatory experience, where you spend a lot of time by yourself, pounding out your own twisted little fantasies on the computer. But I was getting a little tired of playing by myself, so I got in touch with Nobilis, a fellow podcaster and erotica writer. Since we both already podcast erotic fiction, we decided we wanted to do a podcast on what it's like to be an erotica writer. Nobilis contacted Ann Regentin, and before you knew it, we had a threesome. The Write Threesome!


In some ways, the Write Threesome is much like Oh Get A Grip. We don't write erotica together, but we do sit down once a month and shoot the breeze about what it's like to do what we do. We sort of keep a blog, but it's mostly about getting together via Skype to discuss what's on our minds regarding our favorite genre. It's not sex, but a conversation that usually devolves into an orgy of words and ideas that leaves me mentally buzzing for days. It's the kind of intimacy that can only occur between writers talking about what they love, with the added excitement of exhibitionism thrown in. Everything we discuss gets recorded and sent out to the web for anyone to hear, and the things we say in our talks might surprise you.


So it's not what you would typically think of when thinking of menage, but it is a relationship I haven't had anywhere else, and I'm pleased to share it with you. Checkout the podcast, take a listen, slip into bed and let the three of us whisper naughty thoughts into your ears. I promise, we'll be good. Or we'll be bad. But we won't be boring, because a threesome is never boring. Especially when it's the Write Threesome.



Helen, Nobilis and Ann (erotica makes for strange bedfellows!)

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Never say Never!

When I started writing erotic romance, I had no intention of writing menages. They just didn't appeal.

I think part of the problem is I'd read too many BDSM stories that involve the sort of menages that leave me cold. They always seemed to revolve around the idea that one submissive wasn't enough for a dominant, or on the other hand that the dominant had the right to offer his submissive to whoever he chose. Neither arrangement appealed to me, or to my characters.

But guess what my first published story included?

Yep. A menage. An all male, paranormal one to be precise.

I didn't intend it to. And like Jamie, looking back I can see that there is something in common about the psychology that leads into the menages. The characters don't start out wanting a threesome. It's not their fantasy or anything like that. It's just what turns out to be right for them. It's what they need to have their happy ending.

Take Nicky and Charles from The Gift for example. Nicky doesn't like the idea of menages at all, but he knows that his master has enjoyed them with other lovers in the past, and he he can't settle until he's at least tried it and seen what all the fuss is about.

And since there's been a very cute and enthusiastic spirit of Christmas Past lurking around throughout the book, one who is about to disappear into the either before the end of the night, this is their perfect chance.

It's the only threesome I've ever written where all three characters didn't live happily ever after all together at the end. That said - it sure as hell makes them all very happy while it lasts!

Nicky glanced at the spirit. He looked even more nervous than him. Nicky offered the spirit a reassuring smile as they joined him to stand at the edge of the bed.

Charles wasted no time with preliminaries. The toga was barely held together by a few clips and pins. They were gone in moments. A gentle nudge backwards and the spirit lay sprawled naked on the bed.

Nicky crawled across the mattress to him. While his master hadn’t shared him with another man before, Nicky was well aware Charles loved the sight of two men enjoying each other’s bodies. He kissed the spirit, guiding him to lie back comfortably on the mattress.

If the spirit did not have the strength and muscular bulk of his master, then he was still well-built, with a fine torso of sculpted lines. It was strange to explore another man’s body, but it got easier as Nicky got used to it. He ran his hands over the spirit’s skin, enjoying the way his touch affected the spirit.

He was so innocent and untried, so responsive to every finger tip trailing over his body. Both Charles and the spirit followed his every movement over the spirit’s skin. Nicky bit his lip, realising Charles took more pleasure in watching him with the spirit than he would probably gain from topping the spirit when the time came.

He looked to his master. Charles smiled at him. Leaning over, he brushed their lips together. It looked like a gentle touch, beneath the surface his tongue thrust hungrily into Nicky’s mouth. The spirit could not see that, it was theirs, their private moment in a shared bed.

Nicky smiled when Charles broke the kiss. The spirit watched them, slack jawed. Nicky turned back to him and kissed him. Nicky had rarely taken the lead with any lover—certainly not with his master. It felt awkward at first to feel in charge of everything, to be the man guiding the novice rather than the novice himself.

The spirit gradually relaxed and began to return Nicky’s caresses with tentative touches of his own. He didn’t have Charles’s way about him. His hands felt pleasant on Nicky’s skin, but there was nothing special about his touch.

A finger tip trailing along his spine sent a shockwave straight through him. Nicky looked over his shoulder at his master. Charles’s touch always felt different. Nicky tried to hold back a shiver as he kissed his way down the spirit’s body.

When he reached the spirit’s erection, Nicky carefully wrapped his lips around the tip. He’d always liked going down on men, even before he came to his master. There was something about it that always made his own arousal peak, but the spirit wasn’t used to the sensations as Charles was. His hips bucked wildly, Nicky only just managed to ride out the motion.

The spirit put his hand on the back of Nicky’s head.

Nicky forced himself to stay still and not panic. He closed his eyes for a moment.

“He doesn’t like anyone’s hand on the back of his head,” Charles said for him.

Nicky opened his eyes and looked up at them both.

The spirit took his hand away. “I’m sorry, I…”

Charles took the spirit’s hand and softened the correction by leading it back to Nicky’s neck. “He likes you to touch him here.”

He guided the spirit’s fingers to trail along his neck, underneath his ear, to touch the sensitive little spot which made a shiver run down Nicky’s spine. He gasped, sucking firmly around the spirit’s cock.

The spirit groaned his pleasure.

A few moments later, Nicky felt another hand on the back of his head, a more familiar touch that didn’t make him feel panicked. He looked up at his master.

“You said…” the spirit whispered to Charles.

“I am not just anyone,” Charles said simply, “I am his master.”


********************************

The thing about that one, is that it was a very specific circumstance. Charles and Nicky were able to work out something in their relationship without running the risk of bringing someone into their lives for anything longer than that night.

My next attempt was somewhat different.

I wrote Between Tooth and Paw for a specific anthology call. The menage had to be MFM - that's the one where the two guys are straight, in case your wondering. Quite a change of direction for a writer who usually writes MM!

I'll let you in on a secret - this story almost drove me crazy. I put my name down for the anthology while I was in a bit of a strop over something entirely unrelated. I didn't actually think about if I could write it until it was too late.

Luckily, it turned out to be a challenge in all the best ways.

By far the hardest part was trying to think of a reason why two dominant men would want to share one submissive. The answer was easy in the end. If they want her, they have to share. And since they really do want her, they have to - although that doesn't stop them bickering the whole time.


“I want you to ride me.”

Jasmine immediately pushed herself up onto her elbow, ready to get into whatever position he wanted. Stafford knelt on the bed behind her and gently guided her to spread her legs so he could put his knees between them. She leaned forward putting her hands on the mattress, as if she thought he wanted her doggie style, like the damn wolf inevitably would. Sitting back on his heels, Stafford pulled her back close to him instead, so she would be able to ride him.

She hesitated for a moment, and then she seemed to realise what he wanted and she nodded her understanding. “Yes, sir.”

“That’s right,” he soothed, as she he guided her to lower herself down onto the full length of his erection. Stafford pushed her hair aside and kissed her neck as she settled onto him.

Looking across at Hayden, still watching their every move, Stafford met his eyes as he bit down on her neck.

His teeth sliced neatly through her skin. She threw her head back with a pleasure filled gasp as her muscles clamped down around him.

Hayden tilted his head to the side, frowning as if he only then realised Stafford told the truth when he said human women enjoyed being bitten by him. Stafford smiled against the cut and teased it with his tongue as blood began to seep into his mouth.

She was so sweet, so perfect, and he didn’t need Hayden’s sense of smell to tell him she wasn’t afraid anymore—he could taste her pleasure, hot and eager on his tongue. He rocked his hips, pushing his cock deeper into her slit as she rode him and he felt her pleasure grow and double.

Reaching around with his free hand he teased her nipple between his thumb and forefinger the way she seemed to like so much. She seemed to appreciate a rougher touch than other women in his experience. A sharper pinch of his fingers, a scrape of his nail across the nipple and she gasped and writhed around his cock for him.

He closed his eyes and sucked at the small wounds on her neck, coaxing the blood to flow more freely as his fingers danced across her breasts. Jasmine shakily took up the rhythm he set for her and she began to ride him properly. She took control of the movements, leaving him free to concentrate on the feeding while she worked hard and fast for both their pleasure. All of a sudden she faltered, gasping and bucking as her rhythm deserted her.

Endorphins failed to pour into his mouth. Her blood made it very clear she hadn’t come. He frowned, breaking the bite to speak to her.

Something moved against the base of his cock.

“What the…!”

He looked down. Hayden’s head was down between her legs, lapping at her clit as she rode him, and the damn wolf wasn’t being too careful about who received the benefits of his tongue’s attention.

Before he could reach around Jasmine and push the other man away, she moaned low in the back of her throat and dropped her head right back onto his shoulder. She shifted in his embrace, turning her head to rub her cheek against his neck. Her eyes were closed, but he didn’t need to see into her eyes to see her pleasure.

She reached back for him. One hand threaded into his hair to guide his lips back to her neck, begging him to resume the feeding. Her other hand went behind his waist, to slide down over his arse. She whimpered and tugged at his body, pleading with him to thrust into her, imploring him to ignore the other man and finish what he had started.

Stafford automatically kissed the wound on her neck. His every instinct told him she was right. What the pup did was irrelevant. He could wring Hayden’s neck for his impudence later. Right then, when pleasure was flowing through her veins and straight onto his tongue, there was nothing to do but keep going.

Warm breaths caressed his cock as Hayden’s tongue worked Jasmine to fever pitch, but right then it was impossible to care if those breaths belonged to a man or a werewolf or anything else.

Jasmine whimpered again and bit her lip. Her rhythm was shot after the shock the wolf had given her, but she was still doing her very best to ride him, encasing his cock in her hot, wet slit only to slide off him a little way and repeat the process again and again.

With each bit of pleasure his teeth and the other man’s tongue gave her, she writhed against him, no longer able to think but only to react. The hand she’d tangled in his hair, slipped forward to stroke his cheek, then she arched sharply, pressing herself back against his body. Her hand went to his hair again, as if those strands twining through her fingers represented her only grip on reality.

Her other hand left his backside and move forward to tangle into Hayden’s longer, fairer hair too.

She was so close to coming, Stafford could taste it. She tried to say something, but she couldn’t even seem to catch her breath to ask either man to push her over the edge.

Stafford pressed his teeth deeper into her jugular.


*************************

As for what comes next?

I've come a long way from not liking menages. For a start I understand now that I do love menages were the characters all live happily ever after together. And I know that I love a certain combination of characters.

MFM and MMF are very nice, but MMM is the one that seriously rocks for me.

Two minor characters make an appearance in Between Tooth and Paw. Mr Washington and his submissive Ethan Stewart. I am head over heels in love with both of them. And they are now the starting point of a whole series of MMM paranormal menages.

What about you? Always in favour of menages? Is there a type of menage that rocks your boat or turns you off more than all the others?

Kim Dare.
Kink, love and a happy ending. Do you Dare?

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

The Big Bang



There was a time when the fastest communication technology in the world was a man on a fast horse. The Pony Express. A guy with a mail bag who rode like hell, hundreds of miles through foul weather and resentful Apaches from post to post. Even if he made it, it took days. Then the telegraph. Then the telephone. Then the Internet. Then twitter, instant messaging with a cell phone. Last week on the news I saw a demonstration of an invention some MIT students threw together using off the shelf EEG equipment and a home computer. The student is wearing the electrode hat with wires coming out of his head, sitting motionless in front of a computer on which letters are forming. But he is thinking the letters. There is no keyboard, only a letter chart. He sees the letter, wants the letter the way he wants to stand up or yawn – and the brain waves tell the computer. So he is thinking his message, touching nothing, the message is produced by desire alone. This is a humble and powerful little miracle, on a par with a man tapping a brass key in New York and another man writing out the taps in San Francisco. Small taps that move worlds. The space between the resolute man on the horse and the student thinking a message to someone on the other side of the planet is a hundred and forty years.


Carl Sagan once said that to bake an apple pie, first you must invent the Universe. An apple pie is made from materials that originated in the core of ancient supernovas in our wing of the Milky Way, then were processed by bacteria and the gut of animals, then by plants cells, then by evolution, then came apples, then came ovens, then came apple pie, then came Twinkies. The progress of technology increases exponentially. It starts slow at first, but each invention builds on the last, just as each new species is born of the older. Each invention that comes before is one more thing that doesn’t need to be figured out, and becomes a piece of a pattern and the pattern the next invention. A guy sends a message over a computer by thinking it. What else is possible? A haptic interface glove already developed in Spain is able to telecast the feeling of touch. Put them together, someday you might really be able to reach out and touch somebody.

I’ve always had an interest in evolution, and especially the evolution of human beings. This had a lot to do with the decisions I invested myself in during my youth. What is the direction of human evolution? Are we still evolving? Our bodies are evolving, due to advances in food and medical knowledge, to become larger and more robust than our grandparents, even as we become fatter and maybe weaker. But what I think is really happening on a more significant level is that our minds and even our brains are changing. I think that as change continues in a few generations even our definition of what it means to be human will change.


Bionics are being developed and integrated into our bodies, first as aids to combat injuries and then introduced into the larger public. Artificial limbs that respond to thought. Artificial hands that can grasp and hold, and even feel fragility are not now being fitted to combat veterans returning from war. Artificial legs are of such quality that recently a man with both legs amputated above the knees was disqualified from a race because his steel spring legs gave him an advantage over the other runners. What about the brain?


I think the next step; the real step in Homo Sapiens will not be physical as much as spiritual. A major leap in consciousness. Evolutionary scientists even have a name for this new version – Home Noeticus. You can look it up. I don’t know if these things are guided by God or not, I wish I did, but it is definitely coming.


This is how it works, dig:


Religion can be roughly divided into two camps – exoteric religion, and esoteric religion. Exoteric religion is what people usually think of when they think of religion. The external trappings of ritual and dogma. To be a Catholic. To be a Muslim. To be a Jew or a Buddhist. The image of God and the demands of that God are different, sometimes radically different in each of these religions. They are not the same. However each of the world’s major religions has always had a “secret” or inner path, the esoteric religion contained off to the margins, offered only to those who seek it. In Judaism, Jewish mysticism is Kabbalah. In Islam, it is Sufism. Buddhism is an esoteric religion that has gradually become more exoteric. In early Christianity there had been several forms of Christian mysticism, such as Gnosticism, which were stamped out by the council of Nicaea. Christian mysticism has made a comeback recently in the form of Pentecostalism and the Quaker church. What is intriguing about these inner paths is that, unlike exoteric religion – they have the same image of God, arrived at by independent means. It is as though scientists, working independently had done a series of different experiments testing the same hypothesis and arrived at the same theory. To my way of thinking it means there must be something there.


Mysticism says that there is no separation between the creator and the creation. They are the same. Physical objects are manifested from the same ocean of consciousness, to which we return when we die. The problem is individual ego. We are attached to the ego construct that we identify as ourselves. The goal of mysticism is to transcend the illusion of ego to a higher level of consciousness that encompasses the whole of creation, to become one with God.


Our bodies appear to be one solid thing to our consciousness, but on a more basic level this is an illusion. Our bodies are complex colonial organisms of specialized cells and bacteria living cooperatively. In fact, bacteria, the dominant life form on our planet exist in your body on a 10 to 1 ratio. You have ten times more bacteria in your body then tissue cells. As long as the cells in your body perform their specialized roles cooperatively, symbiotically, everybody lives. As long as the bacteria in your body behaves benevolently, it allowed to live there. When cells break out on their own, as in the case of cancer, the result can be disastrous and mortal for the entire organism. An interesting thing about cancer cells. Normal cells are limited in the number of times they can be replaced, which is the cause of aging. Cancer cells, the ones that multiply until they kill you, have no regeneration limit. As far as anyone knows these cells are immortal unless they’re killed.


Human beings are social animals, that have been pushed apart by the pack hunting predator nature we developed from but in the Internet age we are coming together communally with technology. God like, we know what is happening anywhere on the planet at any time. Now the magic words every writer lives by - What if . . .


What if the destiny of our species was to be united together? Like really together?


Cooperatively, the way the cells in our bodies are united? What if that was our evolutionary destiny as a species? Never to be alone or without someone to touch? If technology, which is developing very fast, could link us together by an internal internet, it could cause our consciousness to make the genetic evolutionary jump, that until now has only been possible for a very few through a contemplative life. Enlightenment on a mass scale. A species level leap in consciousness to the level of a Buddha or a Jesus Christ.


What if. . . you could really touch somebody on the other side of the planet, or maybe a LOT of people at the same time all over the planet?


What if you could send thoughts and feelings and sensation? What would it be like to make love that way to a lot of people all at once? And what if something unusal happened that caused an interlinked human consciousness to fuse? Permanently?


A vast colonial being of Godlike power and wisdom. Is this how Gods are born?

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Arms, legs, fingers and tongues... Oh my!

by Jude Mason

Sam reached around and gripped his lover's ass, squeezing it while he kissed the warm soft lips he'd hungered for. Arms slid around his waist, a hard body pressed against the back of his, an erection slipped between his thighs. His own, jerks upward, dancing along the smooth expanse of skin of his lover's belly.

Okay, if I don't watch it, Sam's going to wind up getting overwhelmed with arms, legs and whatever else can be pushed at him, in him or passed by his mouth. When you're writing menage, or more, it's often a real challenge to get the limbs all in order. I've wound up with too many. I've had characters in impossibly positions, doing impossible things with body parts they don't have. Thank Gawd for editors and proof readers!

I've also seen a few covers with extra limbs. LOL I do adore both reading and writing menage. The possibilities of what and why are endless and the mechanics, while troublesome, are fun to play with. Here's a snippet of what my three lovers in Scorpio Tattoo experienced after a mystery was solved.

Jessica chose that instant to pull her mouth off him. The sudden chill air on his cock took his breath. He shuddered in frustration, but a moment later, sensed her teeth scrape his glans. Looking down, he saw she'd moved. Knelt and eager-faced, she nipped at the tip of Nathanial's cock.

Both men groaned.

Jonathan was enthr
alled. To experience the pleasure of another man was something he'd never dreamed was possible. Her mouth and lips, teasing and tantalizing, were on him, but not. He felt each nip of her pursed lips and each scrape of her teeth as she nibbled on the other man's cock. He gripped the shaft of his own cock and squeezed, desperately trying to hold off the climax that threatened.

Nathanial lunged ahead—his cock sinking into the soft wetness of
her mouth. Jonathan sobbed with the sensation of her sucking. Side by side, yet much more, the two men reveled in the woman's teasing wiles.

Again, she withdrew, moved over, and took Jonathan's cock into her mouth. She sucked him deeply, thoroughly, but only for a moment, before returning to her other lover. She went from one to the other, sucking for a moment, then nibbling on the other, each twitching and groaning for more. Jonathan felt it all. And from the way Nathanial sobbed and groaned beside him, so did the apparition.

It was Nathanial who first put his arm around Jonathan. A warm presence that felt so natural and caring, he didn't at first realize what it was. When he did, Jonathan slid his arm around the slender waist of the surprisingly solid specter.

Jessica stopped her teasing and sat back on her heels to look at them both. He
r smile was radiant, her lips shiny with saliva. The flush of sexual excitement bathed her cheeks and down her neck, covering her chest and the tops of each plump breast. Her nipples were tight little buds of need. And, as if his counterpart had read his mind, they both reached for one at the same time. Pinched and pulled, they sent shockwaves of pleasure through her, and Jonathan felt it all.

Sigh, to me, two guys into each other along with a woman is pretty much the hottest mix there is. If you add changeling to that mix, I'll be drooling. But, you have to get the limbs and attributes right. When it works, it's amazing! Here's a taste of Feral Heat the first book in the Untamed Hearts series and the first collaboration between Jamie Hill and myself.

“Answer him,” snarled Aric. He lifted her bodily, denying her the pleasure of Kai’s thigh, but not his mouth. “Please,” she moaned, twisting her body, trying, it seemed, to connect with Kai again.

“Just answer.” Kai’s mouth was still full of her teat. One last flick of his tongue and he let it go. Her torment wasn’t over. He dropped to his knees between her feet. The muscles in her belly tensed as his lips touched her. He lavished her with soft kisses and licks from just below her large round breasts to her navel. For a moment he twirled his tongue into the indentation before moving down and nipping the soft flesh of her lower belly.

The woman-scent of her thrilled him, drew him lower.

“Oh please,” she begged, thrusting herself firmly against Kai’s face.

Backing away, he demanded, “Talk or I stop.”


“It’s all Dagen’s fault. He sent me. He told me to say he was going to lead the tribe. He said it was his right to rule. That he was stronger, a better leader than you.”

“He did, did he?” Aric’s voice was low and filled with anger.

Sobbing, Sable replied, “Yes, he’s craz
y.” She pushed her pelvis forward as if seeking Kai’s mouth. “Please, don’t stop.”

You haven’t told it all.” He backed away, hopefully enough for her to see him reach down and stroke his shaft. Watching her, he smiled when her eyes travelled down his body. His cock pulsed, and he tightened his grip around the base.

From behind the struggling woman, Aric said, “Bastard. You’re killing me.”
Kai looked past Sable, chuckling at the expression on Aric’s face. His lover was horny, and so was he. One way or another, they’d fuck soon.

Phew, all the arms and legs worked...and it's getting warm in here. I do love menage. Has anyone ever written or read a book where the number of limbs was in question? Or the position the characters got into just wouldn't work?

Monday, May 25, 2009

Ulterior Motives

By Jamie Hill


Terri and Scott never intended to have menage sex. It happened quite naturally. Oh, there were a couple bottles of wine involved.

She turned and he kissed her mouth hungrily. Terri resisted at first, then parted her lips and allowed his tongue entry. Scott groaned at her acceptance, and what it might mean for the night ahead. He glanced at Rafe, who watched their kiss intently, almost longingly.

Looking back at Terri, Scott murmured, "You're so beautiful."

Terri moaned, her eyes closed.

He unfastened the buttons of her shirt slowly, one by one. Pushing the fabric open, he slid his hands around behind and unhooked her functional white bra. It dropped to her lap, exposing her full breasts.

Terri's eyes flashed open, but Scott cupped her chin and turned her face toward his. "Relax," he whispered. "You're safe. I won't let anything happen that you don't want."

She nodded, and he released her face. He watched Terri close her eyes, and he smiled. Glancing at Rafe, he nodded.

Rafe dropped to his knees in front of Terri. As Scott leaned in to suckle her left breast, Rafe targeted her right. She gasped as the second mouth closed on her nipple, but she didn't open her eyes. Instead, she arched her back and brought her hands around, cupping each man's head.

He groaned at her eagerness. He had thought he might be able to bring her around, but didn't realize how easy it would be. As he licked and sucked one nipple, and Rafe nipped and tugged on the other more intensely, Terri pressed their faces into her tits, silently demanding more.

From Let the Sunshine In, in the 413 Remembrance Lane: Diary of a House Anthology




Terri thought it was all an innocent, wine-induced stupor. Scott had an ulterior motive. He wanted to have sex with Rafe, and the easiest way for a married man to accomplish that is to bring the wife along.

Rafe squeezed Terri's breast against the one he toyed with, so their faces were almost touching. He stuck out his tongue to lick her nipple and ended up licking Scott's cheek.

Scott turned to face Rafe, only to find their lips pressed together. He was startled at how much he enjoyed Rafe's rough, scratchy face against his own. It was so arousing that Scott shoved his tongue deeper into Rafe's mouth.

Both men continued tweaking Terri's nipples as they kissed. Rafe unzipped Scott's trousers and worked his hand inside them again. Instantly, Scott knew it wouldn't take much to make him shoot his load, but he didn't want to do it in his pants. He jerked his hips at Rafe, who seemed to understand.

"Here," Rafe murmured in Scott's ear. "You suck on these fabulous tits. I found something else to suck."

Looking back over my menage repertoire, it seems most of my characters had an ulterior motive. Take Bobby, Jade and Quentin for example. Bobby worked too much, and Jade kept getting pissed off about it. He felt his research was important, and he was so close to a scientific breakthrough. Perhaps, if he made a new friend for Jade to spend time with, she'd get off his back.

"Dance for us." Quentin urged.

She raised her glass to him, downing the wine. Bobby wondered if she did it purposely. Perhaps she thought the first step would be a little easier if she was drunk. At the rate she was going, she might pass out before anything happened.

Setting her glass on the table, she turned in a slow twirl, running both hands over her hips. She let one hand slide between her breasts, rubbing her stomach. Her other hand cupped her crotch through the silky fabric.

"Strip for us," Quentin encouraged.

Jade didn't need to be asked twice. The dress came over her head, swung on the tip of her finger for a moment, and then hit the wall. She cupped her bare breasts and squeezed.

"You're a beauty." The large man stroked his cock through his pants. "I'll bet you taste as good as you look."

"Come find out," she teased.

He stepped in front of her, bending low to suck a nipple into his mouth.

"Yes," he sighed, "sweeter than the wine."

Jade cupped her other breast, offering it to him. Quentin scooped her into his arms and suckled both nipples eagerly before setting her on the bed. His mouth went back and forth between nipples until she groaned, raising her hips, obviously desiring more. He spread her thighs and slid down her body, settling in front of her luscious, moist pussy.

Bobby watched his lover open her legs to this man, practically begging him to take her. He sat forward in his chair to get a better view. Quentin's face was buried in Jade's cunt, slurping her juices loudly as she thrashed beneath him.

He unzipped his khakis and pulled out his cock. It was torture to only watch. Bobby tugged his shaft slowly, with firm strokes. He licked his lips, hearing Quentin's low, muffled groans. The big man seemed to be enjoying it as much as Bobby's eager, spread-eagled girlfriend. She twisted and gyrated, squeezing her tits enthusiastically.

Bobby recognized the look on her face. She was close to orgasm. For the first time, he'd watch her come at the hands of another man. It felt strange and surreal, but for some reason, his cock pulsed harder. He stroked up and down, a drop of pre-cum landing on his pants.


From Deep Obsessions



Bobby didn't have everything planned out perfectly, though. Come to find out, Quentin was a gay man who'd set his sights on Bobby. Oh, what a tangled web we weave...


Things were working out exactly as he'd planned, though. He'd hatched the scheme with Quentin Brooks in mind. The large black man was a regular visitor to his lab, delivering research materials for UPS on a daily basis. They'd become friends, good enough buddies to crack jokes every day. Eventually, the jokes turned sexual, and Bobby could tell the big man was open-minded. Quentin had been extremely interested when Bobby approached him with his offer.

Jade was lonely, and needed more attention. If he could find a plaything for her, Bobby reasoned, some of the pressure would be off him. He had to be careful, though. The wrong man could steal her away from him. It was a risky game, but he thought it would work.


Writing menage is another fun little goodie I occasionally pull from my bag of tricks. I like to mix things up, and this is a favorite technique when I need to include a woman into my beloved m/m genre. I think it works rather well. I'm quite sure Terri and Jade would agree.


Just be prepared when reading my menage stories, because things aren't always what they seem. Hopefully, they're better!