Helllooo, lovely readers! Hope you are all having a great summer so far! Mine is going well, though I haven’t been able to extract myself from my writer’s dungeon to go out and enjoy the sun nearly enough. Surrendering to Her General continues to do fantastic and the Facebook release party was a lot of fun.
I am dying to get back to work on the sequel in the Rise of the Sadecs series, but first I have to wrap up the WIP I started in February. (Sorry guys, WIP means Work In Progress and is not a whip. I know, I was disappointed when I learned that too.) I had planned to have it finished a while back, but it’s been a very busy year. I’d love to wrap it up by the end of the month though.
This book, which is almost finished, is a little darker in some respects. The romance is there, and the love interest is a decent guy, though infuriatingly stubborn about listening to her. The BDSM is mostly just spanking so it’s not harsh, but the situation around it is much darker.
I’ve been a bit secretive about this book idea. I’m not entirely sure why, except that it’s a theme I haven’t seen many people writing on in my genre, so I’d like to get it submitted before I give anyone ideas of their own on this topic. It’s natural for authors to share ideas and follow trends but it would be nice to be at the head of the curve too and some of them write a lot faster than I do— so forgive my vagueness.
I will give you one hint–none of my books have yet been normal contemporary novels so there is always some fantasy/sci-fi twist to the relationships.
The situation is that the love interest has a lot of power and influence over the main character, Amari. I like there to be at least quasi-consent in my books and, in this case, it revolves around a contract she signs in order to save her family.
She agreed to submit, in all ways, to whoever holds the contract until certain circumstances free her. She was tricked because the man she made the deal with made sure that those terms would never be met. He didn’t intend for her to ever regain her freedom.
Luke, the love interest, ends up owning her accidentally some time later. He’s not the first and she has a lot of built up resentment from being powerless because she’s not a natural submissive, at least not in this situation, but she likes him. Likes that he’s different.
Luke is a dominant and he likes submissive women—but he doesn’t like that she was forced into this situation and doesn’t want an unwilling submissive. If he had the ability to simply free her—he would, but he can’t. She needs his help with a process to get out of the life she’s stuck in and he’s attempting to do that, while trying to use as little of his unfair influence over her as he can. He’s falling for her, and it’s obvious he wants her, but he’s trying so hard to be a good guy.
When she attempts to seduce him at first, it’s because she wants to gain some influence over him, because even though he says he’s going to help her, she’s been burned before and doesn’t have much trust that he’ll follow through. He repeatedly turns down her advances because he feels it would be wrong to take advantage. But the more he says no, the more she wants him— even to the point of crawling into his bed naked in the middle of the night. So, you can see there’s some darker themes around consent going on here.
I’m enjoying showing a Dominant guy who sticks by his morals and doesn’t take just because he can and fleshing out his background, I think, shows why he’s so determined not to give in. Though writing him has been frustrating because of it. Like, hello can you please recognize she wants this so we can take things to the bedroom now?
I also like the twist that even though he’s the dominant man, she’s the one who keeps pushing for sex, because that’s rarely how it plays out. It’s not appropriate for anyone to keeping trying for sex after being told no, in real life, but in fiction, especially romance, it’s not an unusual trope. And I think her failure to respect his firm no is mitigated by the fact that she’s the powerless one in this situation and is desperate to control something.
His refusal infuriates her because even though she’s trying for ulterior motives at first, and she’s learned to use her body as a weapon, later it’s because she genuinely is developing feelings for him. As you can see their relationship is going to have some serious issues to overcome but I think it’s a unique plot and I’m hoping people will like it. Anyway, since I’ve been quiet about this current novel I felt like it was time to speak up and offer you a short teasing snippet from early on in the book. (slightly edited to hide a plot point)
So on to the spanking:
He put enough extra force into each slap to be sure that she was feeling it even through the jeans. There was a temptation to take them down so he could see her ass turning red, but there was also that need to make sure there was distance from anything that might be considered sensual. It had to be perfectly clear to her that this was punishment and from her reactions the lesson seemed to be sinking in.
“We have a new rule around here, Amari. I’m not going to give you a bunch of orders to dictate how you behave because I don’t want your unwilling submission, but any time you do something to me without my consent I’m going to return the favor with a nice long spanking. Maybe if you can’t sit comfortably, you’ll behave yourself until we sort this out,” he said. His voice had taken on that lecturing tone he always used when tutoring. It worked with students and hopefully it would work on her too.
He was spanking pretty hard, and her reactions made it clear she was feeling it. Her body had practically jack-knifed over his knee several times, forcing him to stop and reposition her each time, but there were no tears. He wasn’t necessarily aiming for it, but he’d half expected them. Even during play spankings, the pain and sting could trigger some tears, and he wasn’t being gentle with her at all.
It didn’t matter, his goal was to make a point, and he saw no reason to continue the spanking beyond that. When her surrender was clear from the way she stopped fighting the punishment, and promised not to do it again, he wrapped it up with a few more well-placed swats to her thighs and then stopped.
When she realized the spanking was over, she attempted to rise immediately, but his hand stayed firmly in place on her back, holding her there. “Before I let you up—are we clear on the new rule? I have no intention of taking advantage of you sexually, but I’m not going to let you walk over me, so you can expect this to happen again if you don’t behave,” he said. His voice was slightly ragged from exertion, but the tone was clear enough.
She cleared her throat and tried to sound unaffected by the punishment as she assured him that she understood. There was a slight pause as he weighed her words and finally decided they were sincere, and then he let her up. She jumped up from his lap like a scalded cat and her hands started to fly back to rub her stinging backside but froze halfway there when he laughed. Her arms dropped and she scowled at him silently.
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So what do you think? Is this going to be a hot one?
Musings of a Chaotic Mind 