Wicked Game – #Exposure #Striptease #Mystery

 

By Lisabet Sarai

In my post two weeks ago, I talked about how my body responds to music, and how my characters often mirror these feelings. To demonstrate, here’s a snippet from Exposure: An Erotic Murder Mystery. The protagonist of this novel, Stella Xanathakeos, is an independent, self-confident woman who just happens to make her living as a stripper. Like me, she answers when the music calls.

Blurb

Sex, blood and betrayal: it's all in a day's work.

 

Stella is just minding her own business and having a bit of fun, working as an exotic dancer at the Peacock Lounge. Through no fault of her own, she witnesses a double murder and gets pulled into a shady dance of deceit with political bigwigs, mob bosses, dirty cops and scheming widows. Now she's everyone's target; her only chance is to sift through the lies and expose the truth.

Excerpt

Ginger’s routine is hot and raunchy. She wears an animal print jumpsuit, gold and black. She shakes her tawny hair around her face like a mane. The costume is all zippers. Little by little she sheds pieces of the skin-tight garment to reveal the real skin underneath, creamy dark brown, glistening with sweat. She’s a jungle cat, sinuous, dangerous. I imagine I can smell the musk from way back here. My nipples tighten to aching nubs under my silk blouse. I squeeze my thighs together, creating ripples of sensation in my cunt that grow more intense the longer I watch Ginger’s performance.

By the time she’s finished, I’m actually panting. I’m amazed at my reactions. After all, I’m a professional. I know it’s all show business.

Maybe it’s the alcohol. Maybe it’s the after-effects from last night, the explosive sex cut short by terror. I don’t care. I’m having a wonderful time. I’m glad I came.

Who’s next? I wonder. Then the music starts, and it’s like someone plunged a knife into my heart. Chris Isaak. “Wicked Game.” My song.

Before I realize what’s happening, I’m walking between the tables, making my way to the stage. It’s like I’m in a trance. I climb the stairs to the platform, swaying already in time with the haunting tune.

The audience realizes that something odd is going on. The men fall silent, their eyes following me as I move dreamily around the stage. “Strange what desire will make foolish people do,” the singer’s hoarse voice croons as I slowly unbutton my jacket.

I shrug and it slips from my shoulders, making a green puddle on the stage. My blouse is beige silk, high-necked, buttoned up the back. My nipples poke lewdly through the fabric of the demure garment. I cup my breasts, slowly stroking my thumbs across the protruding flesh. Pleasure shimmers through me, sparkling in the shadowy chasm between my legs.

I scan the audience, but I’m not really seeing anyone. I’m not using the stare. I don’t sense any particular person’s lust. I’m just floating in the sea of their collective desire.

I turn my back on the audience, working the buttons of my top. My hair is coming loose from my businesswoman’s twist. Tendrils keep getting caught in my fingers as I struggle to release myself from the confining embrace of the silk.

Finally I get the last button undone. In triumph, I pull it over my head, turning to face the audience as I do. The clips holding my hair in place surrender completely. Black curls tumble over my shoulders, hiding my breasts.

I flick my hair back and smooth my hands over the satin of my bra, caressing the fullness it hides and constrains. The song rises to a climax. My sex spasms every time I stroke my fingers across the smooth, taut fabric. My tits ache for freedom, for nakedness. I reach for the front clasp of my bra, eager to release them.

Get your copy here:

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http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00OMFS2B8/

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When the Music Calls - #dancing #musicalinstrument #seduction

By Lisabet Sarai

I’ve got music in my blood. My mom crooned 1940s torch songs while she did housework. My dad played clarinet and sax in swing bands from the time he was eleven years old. Later, he was a soloist for the local symphony orchestra. My sister tackled the violin and performed in musical comedies, while my brother could coax amazing sounds from pretty much any instrument he picked up. In fact, he has supported himself as a singer and song-writer for more than three decades – a feat possibly even more difficult than making a living as a writer.

And me? I’ve always loved to sing and have a decent voice, even now, but somehow all my attempts to learn a musical instrument have fallen flat. As a child I tried the clarinet (following in my father’s footsteps). As a teen I took piano lessons. In my twenties, I bought a guitar. I never got beyond the rank beginner stage with any of these efforts, possibly due to insufficient motivation. Somehow the process did not inspire me. Or perhaps the problem was poor teachers. My piano instructor, for instance, never realized I was memorizing all my pieces so I didn’t have to read the score.

At this point in my life, I sometimes regret my failures in this area. However, I recently came to the realization that my body is my instrument. As long as I can remember, I’ve been a dancer. Music speaks to me in a deeply physical way, animates me, takes me over. When the music calls, I can hardly sit still.

For my fifth birthday, my parents took me to a performance of the ballet “Giselle”. I was enchanted. I still remember the breathless excitement of that frigid January night, coming home on the subway long after midnight. I had no doubt I was destined to be a ballerina. My father and mother indulged my fantasies, enrolling me in ballet and tap dancing classes. I was immediately hooked. I’d gladly practice for hours, and shy as I was, I adored being on stage.

In high school, I line danced to Greek and Israeli music. In college, I belonged to the modern dance club. During my years in grad school I studied belly dancing and began to perform semi-professionally.

Meanwhile, there was square dancing, swing, salsa, rock ‘n roll, all the multitudinous ways two people can move together. Nothing can match the thrill of dancing with a compatible partner, the sense of two bodies totally in sync. Dipping, twirling, swinging your hips, matching your steps, anticipating the moves, riding the beat – it’s almost as good as sex. I get the same sort of high. And to be completely honest, I’ve been literally seduced more than once by the sense of connection I’ve found with a skilled dancer.

These days, arthritis and injuries restrict my ability to play my chosen instrument. Still, the energy flows. When the band strikes up a Rolling Stones number – when the guitar wails and the drum pounds – when Rickie Martin croons about La Vida Loca or Carlos Santana invokes his Black Magic Woman, I’m caught once more in the web of music. I slide off my bar stool, shimmy my shoulders, shake my booty, ripple and whirl, ignoring the very real possibility that I will barely be able to move at all the next day. The music commands my body and I obey. And for those moments, I’m flying, young and full of power once again, lost in the pure joy of dancing.

I come back to this sense of buoyancy and freedom again and again in my writing. I’ve penned many scenes where a heroine is taken over by the music. Often, she’s doing a strip tease, but there’s nothing sleazy about these performances. On the contrary, there’s a purity to the way these dances merge with desire. My women are lit up from within by the rhythm, the melody and the mirroring lyrics.

Mirroring me, of course. As we explored last month, we all write ourselves into our stories. My characters dance because I do, deep inside if not always in the world, when the music calls.

Do Your Characters Work Out?

By Lisabet Sarai

A screaming siren wakens me at four-thirty. The sound fades off into the distance, but my heart continues to pound against my ribs. Somebody else bleeding, maybe dying. Another victim.

I try to argue myself out of these dark thoughts and back to sleep, but it’s no use. The rectangle of gray that is my uncurtained window gradually brightens: first to charcoal, then to ash, finally to pearl. I turn my thoughts to Jimmy Ostermann, but they keep sliding away to Tony Pinelli.

Finally, around six, I give up and head downstairs for a cup of coffee. Throwing open the back door, I take a deep breath of the early morning. The air is cool and smells of earth and growth. It’s drizzling, the sticky warmth of the previous day only a memory.

My work means late nights. I don’t usually get out of bed before noon. I hardly know what to do with myself at this time of day. Munching on a piece of toast, I consider the question.

Rainy weather. Good for paperwork: paying bills, filing receipts and so on. Maybe I’ll spend some time looking through those Adriatic cruise brochures I got last week.

And Tony? Some other part of me interrupts my planning session. You need to figure out what’s going on with this situation, she says. If only to protect yourself. How did Tony’s widow know who you are, or how to find you? Why did she come by, and why did she seduce you? And why did you tell her that Mr. Clean—Andy—intended to shoot you in the hotel room? What’s going on, Stella? You’re a smart lady; figure it out.

This other voice is giving me a headache. Okay, I’ll spend some time on these questions. But bills first, and then a bit of a workout. After that, I’ll sit down and do some serious thinking.

Telephone, electric, gas, dry cleaning account. (My costumes need special care.) Department store charge. (They had a big sale last month, and I do like to dress well.) Maintenance fee for my dad’s cemetery plot. With a sigh, I update the balance and slide my checkbook back into the desk drawer. I can take care of myself, but it feels as though I have been doing it for an awfully long time.

Some stretching will pull me out of this funk. I change into leggings and a jog bra, then carefully unwrap my ankle. It’s still swollen, but a lot less discolored. Definitely better. When I put full weight on it, though, fiery pain shoots up my leg. Okay, so I’ll go easy for today and just do floor work and my weights.

A Supremes CD in my compact stereo, I begin with some leg lifts and sit ups. It doesn’t take long before I’m shimmying my shoulders in time with the beat, singing along with Diana. “Stop, in the name of love,” I moan as I alternate bicep curls with pec presses. “Before you break my heart, think it over.” Old as it is, this music never fails to cheer me up. Three quarters of an hour, and I feel like myself again: Stella Xanathakeos, queen of the strippers, one tough cookie.

~ From Exposure by Lisabet Sarai

****

Exercise has been part of my life ever since I was a kid. With my coke bottle glasses, clumsiness and flat feet, I was never athletic. However, for some reason my general klutziness didn't extend to dancing.

Growing up, I became used to seeing my mom put a record on the hifi (hey, this was a while ago!) and do stretches and dance exercises. Like me, she had dancing in her blood – she even worked as a professional belly dancer for a while. Sometimes I'd join her. I took dance lessons as a kid and belonged to the modern dance club in high school. I even performed in the school talent show, dancing the role of Bonnie in a number a friend and I choreographed to the theme from “Bonnie and Clyde”. (My eagerness to perform was another paradoxical contrast with my terrible shyness during this period.)

In college I swam laps as well as doing more modern dance. In grad school I swam, bicycled and belly danced. When I got my first job and moved to the west coast, one of the first things I did was to join the Y so I could use their pool. Later, I discovered Jazzercise. I was addicted to this lively, rowdy activity, doing two or three classes a week for more than two decades, even though I had to drive half an hour each way through rush hour traffic. (Now I guess Jazzercise is a bit passé, superseded by Zumba, pole dancing, and the Vixen Workout. The latter, I have to admit, sounds like incredible fun.)

Anyway, I've always enjoyed (moderate) exercise, especially when it involves music. When I don't work out for a while, my stress level noticeably increases. Like my heroine Stella, I find that exercise cheers me up and gets my mind off whatever's bothering me.

Of course, for an erotica author, exercise, with its tendency toward minimal clothing and lots of sweat, can serve as an intro or an excuse for characters to get involved in other sorts of physical activity. Gym equipment presents all sorts of opportunities for novel positions and sensations. And given my penchant for writing BDSM, how can I ignore the fact that a gym makes a fantastic impromptu dungeon?

****

I want sex, I need release, but it doesn't seem that I'm going to get it tonight. I stand, stretch, realize that my muscles are stiff and sore. Perhaps from my awkward position this afternoon. Perhaps because I haven't worked out in several days. Then I remember the well-equipped gym Rick showed me during our tour of the house. Just the thing.

I change from my sweat- and sex-damp dress into a sports bra and shorts, pull my hair into a low ponytail, and wend my way down the dark corridor toward the back of the building, where it settles into the hillside. Everything's very quiet. There's no light under Rick's door, or under Margaret's.

It crosses my mind that Margaret was odd and unfamiliar tonight, less diffident, more assertive than usual. She seemed to radiate a happy confidence that overwhelmed her usual seriousness. I guess that she has gotten over her embarrassment about her interlude with our host. I'm pleased at her resiliency.

The gym is even darker than the corridor. Like Rick's office, it has only small windows set high in the wall. I grope for the light switch, turning on the track lights overhead. Experimenting, I find that I can dim them down to a more pleasant, less blinding level.

I start with some stretches at the barre, watching myself in the mirror opposite me. I don't normally spend much time gazing at myself. I know I'm beautiful. But the woman I see reflected back at me tonight seems a stranger. Her petite frame, her small breasts, her delicate ankles, make her seem fragile. With my hair pulled back loosely, I look young. Innocent. Vulnerable.

I have to laugh at this fancy. I know that I am strong and full of power. I shift to one of the stationary weight machines, working my triceps and biceps until they burn. I've stopped watching myself. Next I turn my attention to my quads and adductors, pushing the weights apart as I open my thighs, working against their force to pull my legs back together again.

I work hard, trying to burn my arousal away into exhaustion. Somehow, it's not happening. Every time I spread my thighs apart, I'm acutely aware of my throbbing, swollen clit, hidden in my soaked shorts. I increase the force and pace of my repetitions, determined to be the mistress of my body and my urges. It's almost as though I'm climbing the slope to orgasm. The harder and faster I work, the more excited I become.

Finally, I have to stop. I lie back in the apparatus, panting. The room smells of musk and sweat. With a pang, I recognize the odor not only of my perspiration, but of his. Rick's. Damn. I close my eyes wearily, willing my body to relax. Damn, damn, damn.

There's a sound. My eyes fly open. I am no longer alone. For the briefest instant, I think that it's Rick, and my heart accelerates as though I were still working the machine. Then, with an inner smile, I realize my error. Raoul.

"Ruby!" he says in that soft Latin voice. "Sorry, I didn't mean to intrude. I had no idea that there was anyone here."

He has obviously come for his own workout. He wears a loose pair of shorts, nothing else. My eyes trace the curlicues of hair on his muscled chest. I smile. He smiles, sniffs, strolls over to stand between my spread thighs.

"I was having trouble sleeping," I tell him, knowing that he's reading other messages in my body, in the air. "Exercise is usually a good way for me to get rid of tension."

"Maybe I can help," he says, almost whispering. His hands on the tops of my thighs, he leans over and kisses me full on the lips. It's a simple, uncalculated kiss, no hidden agendas, no power trips, just texture, wetness, warmth. It's an invitation.

I accept. As he bends over me, I raise my legs and clasp them around his waist. I can feel his delicious hardness, pressing against me through our clothing. He gives a soft laugh, pulls up my bra and takes my nipple in his mouth. Lovely, to feel that texture, warmth, wetness against that sensitive flesh.

He gives me long minutes of bliss. When he stops, my nipples are round and rigid as ceramic beads. "Let me go for a moment," he says, and I release the clutch of my legs.

He stands and with a grace I find in few men, removes his shorts. I can't help but marvel at his beauty. Muscles that swell rather than bulge, curves that flow under his bronzed skin and lush fur. His cock juts proudly from a jet tangle at his groin. I have a sudden, uncharacteristic impulse to kneel at his feet and take him reverently into my mouth.

Before I can evaluate or act on this impulse, though, he seats himself on a recumbent stationary bicycle and leans back against the seat, one bare foot in each stirrup. His cock stands straight up, swaying a bit as he moves. It's simultaneously silly and wonderfully lewd.

He grins up at me. "Care to come for a ride, Ruby?"

~ From Nasty Business by Lisabet Sarai

****

Later in this novel, I set a long femdom scene in this same personal gym. Weight benches are great for bondage, I discovered. And the mirrors that line the walls of many gyms mean that both the dominant and her victim have an excellent view of discipline's effects.

Lately I haven't been working out as often as in the past. A hip replacement and a fractured knee have made me less flexible and a good deal more conservative in my routines. And I have such a long to-do list, I sometimes feel that I can't spare the time.

That's crazy. I know how delicious it will feel to get away from the computer, do some stretches, and shake my booty to some classic rock. If it's good for Stella and Ruby, I know it'll be good for me.

I Wanna Dance!

By Lisabet Sarai

On my next birthday, assuming I reach it, I'll be sixty years old. I find this close to unbelievable, for a wide variety of reasons.

1. I still feel like I'm about twenty seven. Mostly that's the age I seem to be in my dreams – those lovely ones where I meet a stranger who's madly in lust with me... In fact, a good deal of time, even when I'm awake, I don't even feel like an adult, despite the wrinkles, gray hair, aches and pains.
2. I grew up during the Cold War, more or less certain that I was going to die in a Russian nuclear attack. We all knew that was what the future held. I didn't expect to live beyond thirty – certainly not beyond forty.
3. I look at my Lisabet Sarai head shot often enough that I forget what I really look like! (That photo was taken when I was twenty seven. You can see why I'd cling to that age...)

However, the calendar and the mirror don't lie. I'll complete five decades next January. To be honest, it doesn't really bother me. What I'm really concerned about is how to celebrate.

I fantasize about throwing a big party, inviting all my friends. Unfortunately, my friends are scattered from Boston to San Francisco, from London to Vietnam. The chances of getting them together in one place are pretty close to zero, especially when I'm half a world away from the States where the majority of them reside. What I'd really like is to have enough money to charter a jet and bring everyone here to Asia for a wild weekend.

A wild weekend at sixty? Why not? I want a party with sexy costumes and rock n' roll, plenty of wine and a bit of flirtation. I wanna dance! I want to stay up all night and take my bleary-eyed, beloved, friends to brunch the next morning.

Maybe I'll manage to arrange something along these lines – probably minus the chartered jet! I have a friend who has volunteered her vintage Victorian for a celebration. Though I'm not sure rock and roll really fits in that environment. I'd be too worried about damaging her antiques. Maybe I'll gather my friends (those who can make it) in a bar or club instead. I know a place where the DJ has a great collection of Rolling Stones, Creedence, and Deep Purple, and the clientele are tolerant of those who boogie...

I'm really not sure how I'll work this out. I have more than six months to think about it. I'll tell you one thing, though. I'm not going to let this birthday go by without some kind of celebration. You never know how many you have left.

Let's Do The Time Warp Again!

It's December 9th, 1990, and the place is Apartment 1 in Blacksburg, Virginia. What's that? You've never heard of Apartment 1? It's only the spot where all the truly great geeks hang out - the members of VTSFC (VA Tech Science Fiction Club), VTAS (VA Tech Animation Society), Ron's Women, the Patowski Twins, Whoman and Rueben the Boy Blunder, Fred, Derf (the anti-Fred), and a whole slew of guys named 'Michael.' I spent a lot of time with that gang, in that apartment. Back in those days I was their official Goddess of War (can you guess how I earned that title?), and I knew how to shake 'em down.

But back to Decemenber 9th, 1990, in Apartment 1. The hot chica in the football jersey and spandex leggings was yours truly, and the spry young stud dancing with her might have had a girl friend, but he was going to be mine before the night was out. Yeah, I was a home wrecker, a devastator, a woman with her sights set on a very specific prey. He was a hot Latin lover, one of the few boys who could actually dance, and you couldn't get a crow bar between us that night if you tried. And believe me, no one was trying. They didn't dare.

It was the last party of the year for Apartment 1. Winter finals were coming up, followed by Christmas break, and we were determined to dance until we fell through the floor into the apartment below up. Even the local stray cat, Mushroom, was doing his jive thing out on the porch, all hopped up on catnip and L'il Friskies. We played all our favorite songs that night - Paradise By The Dashboard Lights; Rocky Horror's Time Warp; a heavy metal dance mix of Carmina Burana's O Fortuna (I'd give my eye teeth to hear that song again); and a very naughty, outright nasty mash up of the Speed Racer theme song. Some genius had taken a bunch of sound clips of Trixie and Speed and mixed them with an electronica version of the theme. In the midst of the song was a high charged interlude of 'uhs' and 'ahs' that built until the song suddenly exploded into "Here he comes! Here comes Speed Racer!" and ended with Trixie giggling, "Oh Speed, you were WONDERFUL!" Another song I'd give my eye teeth to have.

Through it all, I danced with a boy I would one day marry. Kim called dancing a vertical expression of horizontal intent. I have never heard truer words. My future husband and I were as vertical and close as we could get when someone spun up "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" by the Police. When we kissed, the room exploded in applause. Like the Speed Racer mash up, we'd been going through our own little interlude, weeks of public flirting and promises of what might happen at the dance. People had been waiting for that moment for some time.

That was 1990. Now it's 2009, going on 19 years together. I wish I could say we still dance, but we left Blacksburg a few years later, after we got married, and moved to the suburbs where wild parties are few and far between. There are no good clubs that I know of, and even if there were, the cost of a babysitter these days and my bad knees kind of prohibits dancing. Even Apartment 1, that bastion of youth, will soon be gone. Developers are bulldozing it over to make way for new condos. It's the end of an era.

But I still feel that longing to dance, and I've done what I can to satisfy it. No longer a svelte twenty-something, I've turned to work out DVDs and Wii Dance Dance Revolution, trying to prove I can still get my groove on. We've got two mats for the DDR. Maybe tonight I'll put the kids to bed early and invite my husband to come join me in a dance.