The song is over but the story lingers forever

Having a little fun today. I’m writing about songs that inspire me. Leave a comment telling me what songs you think inspire love stories. Someone will win the ebook of Hard Lovin’ and someone else will win the ebook of Jungle Inferno.

A lot of people say music is their muse. I never thought so until I sat down to write this blog, but I guess it really has inspired a lot of the stories I’ve written. For example, when I was asked to write an erotic romance with a psychic element in it, the first thing I thought of was telepathy. Why? Because one of my favorite songs, one I have on my iPod Favorites list, is If I Needed You by the late great Townes Van Zandt.

“If I needed you would you come to me

Would you come to me for to ease my pain?”

That became the basis for Jungle Inferno, The Phoenix Agency Book #1.  

For Faith and Mark, the telepathic connection they’d shared for years was nothing compared to the scorching physical connection they realized as adults. From the first moment they came together, erotic was too pale a word to describe their relationship. Together they explored each other’s deepest, darkest desires. But now Mark, survivor of an ambush to his Delta Force team, is a prisoner of a terrorist group in the Peruvian jungle, and his telepathic communication with Faith is his only contact with the world. While she searches for help to save him, they survive on dreams that took them beyond all sexual boundaries. Can she persuade the men of Phoenix to undertake a treacherous rescue and bring Mark back to her arms?

“I need you.

The familiar voice blasted through her mind.

Mark! Oh God, Mark.

Stunned, she tried to focus her thoughts but a white-hot pain pierced her body, stealing her breath. She clenched her fists against it and as it faded an image of Mark’s face, bruised and lined with pain, flashed briefly and was gone.

Faith leaned back in her chair, using the skills she’d been taught to control her breathing and slow her racing pulse. Running her hands up and down her arms she discovered a fine sheen of perspiration on her skin.

Mark!

She tried to recapture pull the image back but it was gone.

Need you…captured…

Captured! Dear God. He’d reached out to her from wherever he was. But how could she find him? He could be anywhere. She felt as if a part of her body had been severed. Closing her eyes and pushing everything else from her brain, she concentrated on sending a reply.

I heard you. Where are you?

She sat perfectly still, eyes still tightly shut, blocking out everything else, focusing as she’d been taught, to strengthen her message.

Mark?

She waited but the only thing that answered her was the heavy silence. Either his strength had given out or something—or someone—had blocked him.”

Then there was my novella, Hard Lovin’, that I had such fun writing. That one was inspired by a sixteenth century air called The Gypsy Rover, recorded by The Highwaymen and The Clancy Brothers.

“The gypsy rover came over the hill
Down through the valley so shady,
He whistled and he sang 'til the greenwoods rang,
And he won the heart of a lady.”

I brought the story forward to the present and made the gypsy a traveling guitar player.

Erin Braddock, daughter of wealthy and powerful rancher Rance Braddock, has been to hell and back. So has wandering cowboy minstrel Grady Sinclair. But the moment they meet chemistry ignites between them, erasing everything else. The sex is scorching, explosive, addictive. They can’t get enough each other. The same talented fingers that coax seductive music from his guitar coax powerful orgasms from her body. Seduced by his music as well as the sinfully sexy man himself, Erin runs away with him. Nights she sits in the bar listening to his come-to-me voice promising her the erotic delights he delivers on when they’re back in their room. But will the past follow them or can they build a future together, in and out of bed?

“Erin Braddock slipped into the dark bar through the back door, squinty against the darkness and found her way to a tiny booth in the corner. The area was so small a second person would be hard pressed to find room in the space but that suited her just fine. She hadn’t come here looking for company. Unless it was the cowboy up on the postage stamp sized stage, alone in the spotlight with his guitar and his smoky voice. Ebony black hair curled down to the nape of his neck and a work shirt and worn jeans clung to his lean body like a second skin. The muscles in his arm flexed as he picked at the strings of the guitar, coaxing a tune from it.

The lights were dim in the smoky club, a sea of black with only himself in the searing white glow of the spotlight. The air was heavy with expectation as he strummed the melody of a love song that whipped its sound over the crowd only to slow like the stroke of a lover’s caress.

You are so out of your mind for doing this.

So what else was new?

She’d just had to get out of the house. Away from the ranch. Away from …everyone. Her father, Rance, who was suffocating her with his protective kindness. T.J. Elliott, the fiancé she couldn’t seem to break away from. The houseful of people all gathered to celebrate a wedding tomorrow.

Hers.

A wedding she didn’t want.

The memories of the nightmare with Cal hadn’t yet faded and her father was suffocating her with his protective kindness. The far too wealthy Rance Braddock was, if nothing else, like a tidal wave that swallowed people up. And then there was T.J. Elliott, her father’s choice for a ‘safe’ and well-connected husband. A way to guarantee her future. No danger there.

Not like Cal, the worst mistake she’d ever made. And she’d wanted safe. Needed it. Her father and T.J. treated her like some child too fragile to be let out on her own.  Well, maybe she was. Look what she’d gotten herself into. And didn’t want to get out of, until she’d had no other choice. Now, at thirty, she suddenly didn’t seem to be able to put one foot in front of the other any more.

Until now.

The bad part about being rescued from a situation like the one she’d been in was people were afraid to take their eyes off of you. She didn’t even seem to have the strength to tell them they could look away. She went along to get among, letting herself be swept up in a courtship she didn’t want and a wedding suddenly bearing down on her like a tornado.

She’d come to the bar a few nights ago with her girl friends who had practically dragged her out of the house.

“Have fun,” her father said.

“You’ll be fine with the girls,” T.J. told her. He’d kissed her on the cheek and teased, “Last night out before becoming Mrs. Elliott.”

She was safe with her friends. Girl’s night out was okay. Both her father and T.J. had relaxed.

But her friend Lili had whispered in her ear, ”Wait until you see Grady Sinclair. He’s hot, hot, hot. And his music!” Lili rolled her eyes. “Just listening to him makes your pussy get wet and your nipples poke like diamonds.”

Erin had shivered, skeptical but hopeful. She didn’t think she’d ever have that reaction again. Or want it. The best thing about T.J. was he was nonthreatening. She could always fake orgasms. She’d become a very good actress living with Cal.

So she’d let them coax her out and come to Smoky’s with them and damn but Lili was right. Wrapped in the almost mystical cloak of the music that drifted to her from the stage she’d felt stirrings that she thought long dead. Responses she didn’t think she was capable of anymore. And then she’d come back with them. Again and again, to hear the troubadour with eyes as black as his hair and a rugged face, drawn by the clear, mesmerizing notes of his songs and the sadness in his voice.”

And finally, a taste from an upcoming release, Aftershock, the sequel to the Holt Medallion winner, Joy Ride. This one was so inspired by lyrics from Amazed, by Lonestar.

“The smell of your skin

The taste of your kiss

The way you whisper in the dark

Your hair all around me

Baby your surround me

You touch every place in my heart”

Handling P.R. for Lightnin’, the newest light on the rock scene, was Sydney Alexander’s opportunity at last to prove herself and shake off her past. It was all business until she met Rick Trajean, Lightnin’s leader, and the sparks flew between them like, well, lightning. Even as the band exploded on the scene and the crowds and publicity took all her skills to manage, she and rick managed stolen moments where the scorched the sheets as hotly as the band scorched the music scene. But not everyone was happy and the backstabbing and vindictiveness so common n the business could easily destroy the band, the tour and the love they’d found in each other. Could they handle it? What would they do if and when it came crashing down on them?”

As I sat at my computer I could so totally visualize the scene between Rick and Sydney.

“Are you okay?” he asked. What would he do if she said no?

“Yes,” she whispered. “More than okay.”

She leaned forward and the silk of her hair fell around them like a dark curtain. She pressed her lips to his, rocking her hips gently.

“You feel so damn good,” he told her, amazed that he could say anything at all.

“So do you.” Her words were still no louder than a whisper, cloaked by her hair all around them.

Rick was torn. He could stay like this forever but the need to come inside her body was like a wild animal he needed to feed.

“Move with me,” he urged.

Releasing one hand he slipped it between them to find the hot button of her clit. Very slowly he rocked up to her until she caught the rhythm. His fingers stroked her as her body moved on him, so slowly that the restraint was excruciating. At that same time he didn’t want this to be over. Wanted it go on and on.

But the grasp of her cunt around his shaft was his undoing.

“Ride me, Sydney. Ride me hard.”

She took him at his word. Bracing her hands on his chest she rocked herself back and forth, increasing her pace as he moved with her. Captured in the exquisite shroud of her hair, her soft voice whispering things to him he wasn’t even sure she knew she was saying, he rubbed her clit harder. Faster, in cadence with the rhythm of their bodies.

“God, you feel so good. So tight. So hot. I could stay like this forever and never get tired of it.”

He thought she whispered Me, too, but he wasn’t sure.

He lifted his eyes to her face again, he saw only how lost she was in the rhythm of this erotic dance they were doing. Saw her breasts move with the action of her body. In that one moment the feeling he’d had from the beginning, that they were connected by something deeper and more intense than just body to body engulfed him. This was more than just the best sex he’d ever had in his life. This was a forever kind of feeling. It both excited him and scared him.

“Talk to me, Sydney. Tell me how you feel.”

“I feel—beyond anything I’ve ever felt before.” She whispered the words in the dark, her hair like a curtain surrounding them as she bent so her face was closer to his. “I feel special. Cherished.” She ran a small hand over the taut planes of his stomach down to where they were joined. “I love the texture of your body, your scent, the taste of your kiss.”

“Don’t ever stop feeling that way.” It was hard making his brain work when his body was screaming for release but he knew she needed the words as much as the physical contact. “You are so very special. I want this forever, Syd.” 

In the moonlit darkness the emotion between them was stark and real.”

So when you read my books (and I certainly hope you will!*grin*), play a little game with yourself and try to guess that song inspired the story. And donlt forget to leave your comment.