Menage Me This…
When I first started writing, I never conceived that I would
cross any of the invisible lines I
had set up for myself. You know the lines I’m talking about right? The first
line was…oh, I could never type P-U-S-S-Y…nope neeeever!! Okay, three weeks
later you find yourself looking out of one eye doing that very thing. Then you
think, oh, I could never put her on her knees in front of him---eeekkk!! That’s
just too close to that line. Before
you know it a few weeks later you’ve not only got her on her knees but her
hands are tied behind her back and they’re playing oxygen deprivation games.
Gee, what’s left right?
Plenty apparently. There are whips and floggers and
blindfolds. And crops and anal plugs and spreader bars…oh, yeah. Plenty. It
took me all of less than a half-dozen releases to cross over into the realm of
BDSM. I had arrived. What else was there? I felt like singing along with Peter
Gabriel…Big Time!! Then wouldn’t you know it, my characters once again became
restless…I gritted my teeth and held off. They are not winning. I kept telling
myself that like it was a mantra. I would shout at this newbie muse that had
arrived.
“Go away, Bronwyn!! Arwen and I were perfectly normal until YOU got here.”
Then my hands would
go over my ears and I’d stomp away only to look up and the little vixen would
be standing right in front of me with an e-veel grin.
“Damn it! What do you want now? I’ve beat my characters,
I’ve tied them up, I’ve mindfucked them until they are probably afraid to
surface around here. Now what?”
“They need more players.”
“’Scuse me?”
“They. Need. More. Players.”
Was she actually demanding I cross another freaking line?
But of course she was. Constantly luring me, taunting me to leave my comfort
zone. Fine! After a few more of her pokes and prods, she won. I wrote a short
story ménage piece.
“Satisfied, Bronwyn?”
“For now.”
I went back to life as normal. General contemporary romance,
some erotic, and of course a steamy BDSM piece. I was really beginning to like
that stuff. Then wouldn’t you know it…Bronwyn started tapping her little booted
foot again. Ga-reat! What now?!
“There’s this woman named Zoey, yeah, and she has it bad for
her three best friends from childhood…yeah, Dane, Jack and Ryan….”
I used to think I had all these invisible lines, and I would
NEVER cross them…so much for lines. After I submitted Three for Keeps to
editing, I went back to Assumed Identity, an unfinished WIP, and lo and behold,
Bronwyn started pushing me toward another one. You won’t get any same sex
romance in that one, but don’t hold your breath for future works…she’s really
pushing her luck…
Zoey Matthews is in love. She’s been in love since the day she was
dropped off by a social worker at yet another foster home on a back country
road miles from nowhere, Missouri. At age ten, she met the men of her dreams.
Over the course of sixteen years, Dane Cardwell, Jack Devereux and Ryan Wilkins
fell in love with her, too. They’ve each told her they love her, they’ve shown
her and each man has gone so far as to ask her to marry him. But what they
don’t know is Zoey loves them all.
Her game of kiss and not tell all comes crashing down around her the night of her graduation from veterinary school and Zoey runs for the mountains. Of Colorado. Hoping to outrun her obsession with three men and forget them all together, she stays gone for ten years. But the wound has never healed. In fact, it's done nothing but fester. Needing to clear the air, Zoey agrees to spend a few days back home with the boys never imagining it would turn into a week filled with comparison sex as Dane, Jack and Ryan each try to get Zoey to choose between them and their varied tastes.
When she finally tells the truth, a truth only one of them has known all along, Zoey fears the foursome will never be able to make a sharing relationship work. After all, aren't there just too many personalities and desires to sort through? Add in the kink factor and things get really complicated. Zoey’s not convinced the truth has any merit, but there's one thing she knows for sure…this time she's playing for keeps.
Her game of kiss and not tell all comes crashing down around her the night of her graduation from veterinary school and Zoey runs for the mountains. Of Colorado. Hoping to outrun her obsession with three men and forget them all together, she stays gone for ten years. But the wound has never healed. In fact, it's done nothing but fester. Needing to clear the air, Zoey agrees to spend a few days back home with the boys never imagining it would turn into a week filled with comparison sex as Dane, Jack and Ryan each try to get Zoey to choose between them and their varied tastes.
When she finally tells the truth, a truth only one of them has known all along, Zoey fears the foursome will never be able to make a sharing relationship work. After all, aren't there just too many personalities and desires to sort through? Add in the kink factor and things get really complicated. Zoey’s not convinced the truth has any merit, but there's one thing she knows for sure…this time she's playing for keeps.
Please enjoy a short
excerpt:
“Why’d you get them?” he asked,
sweeping bubbles from the stallions racing across her hips.
“The horses?” Zoey rubbed a few left
over suds from her eyes.
“We can start there.”
“I spent a few weeks in South Dakota
one year helping out on a wild horse reserve. There was an epidemic that was
slowly killing the herd.” Zoey pulled her hair over her shoulder and squeezed
before twisting it in a knot at the nape of her neck. “That one is my tribute
to the horses we couldn’t save.”
Sounded just like her. Zoey had a
heart of gold the size of Texas. She felt things deeper and more fully than
anyone Ryan had ever known. When she hurt, she hurt to the bone and for a long
ass time. When she was happy you could see it all over her, the way she glowed,
the way her crystal blue eyes sparkled. Happiness was an almost tangible thing
within her. What did she look like when
she loved someone? Did that emotion also come to life? How big did her heart
expand when it was full?
“What about this one?” Ryan traced
the eagle’s feather on her right thigh.
“That same summer I practically lived
with the Lakota. One of their elders taught me their ways and showed me things
about animals you just don’t learn in veterinary school. Last summer he died,”
Zoey whispered. Ryan could see the pain of his loss ripple through her like a
wave. “That’s my tribute to him. My teacher. My friend.”
“You’re such a beautiful person. Do
you know that?” He moved in front of her and kissed her belly, ran his hands up
her sides before laying his cheek against the hummingbird. “I missed you so
much, Zoey. Does the bird have a story?”
“Yes, she does.” She ran her fingers
through Ryan’s hair. “I was at a rodeo in Oklahoma City. A hummingbird managed
to find her way into my horse trailer but couldn’t make her way back out. She
almost starved before I could get her to be still long enough to catch her.
They can do that you know? Starve quickly. How many people do you think get the
privilege of holding something that wild and free, Ryan? One of the bull riders
helped me feed her drops of honey water off the end of a straw until she had
enough sugar in her system to take flight again. He was the only one that
believed me because he’d seen it with his own eyes.”
Wild and free. Ryan knew that
privilege because he’d done the same thing when he took Zoey in his arms.
He took the soap again and lathered
his hands to wash the front of her legs and when he ran his palm over her left
thigh he stopped over the unusual tattoo just below the juncture of her hip. It
was a tree. And he was certain that it was their tree and Zoey’s pink tree
house was nestled in its big branches, but what the hell was that floating
above the tree. He looked closer then outlined the odd bit of artistry. It
finally occurred to him what it was exactly. One perfect heart was suspended in
the air and three more appeared to float around it, and they were tethered to
the first heart with barbed wire. Holy shit.
Ryan closed his eyes and swallowed
hard. He leaned his forehead against her belly and took a deep breath before
standing up. Zoey’s bottom lip was stretched so tightly between her teeth it
was nearly white and a pained look was etched all over her face. This was what
she looked like when she loved? Like she was in so much pain that it morphed
into a physical entity? His heart lurched and twisted at the thought that she’d
hurt that bad for so long. Ryan cupped her face in his hands gently and brushed
the harsh lines and angles with his thumbs, wanting to erase them.
“It’s us isn’t it?” he finally
rasped.
One fat tear made its way down her
cheek as she nodded and her breath visibly hitched.
“It’s why you left isn’t it? You love
all of us don’t you?”
Again she nodded as more tears sprang
from the corners of her eyes and streamed down her face to mingle with the warm
spray still falling over them.
“My God, Zoey why didn’t you tell
us?” Ryan asked, his heart ripping in two. They could have had her all along
had they known. Had they pulled their heads out of their asses and paid
attention. “Why? Why didn’t you tell us?”
Zoey remained silent and tried to look
away.
“Don’t,” Ryan told her. “Do not do
that, Zoey Christine. You answer me. Why?”
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To keep up with me you can find me at Realmantic Moments: http://lilamunro.weebly.com
3 comments:
I can totally relate, I felt the exact same way about that umm...P word. Don't know if I'll ever be able to cross as many lines as you, but I guess we never know what may lie ahead.
Hey, Mike! You'll pass boundaries you never knew existed after a while. One thing I tell new writers, practice saying the words out loud in a mirror--then it seems a lot easier on paper where you can't hear them coming out of your mouth. :)
TOO funny, Lila. I really think writing is half author half fate (or poltergeist?) M. S. Spencer
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