Wednesday Women: The ladies of Uncommon Romance by Jove Belle

The Wednesday Women are BACK! I'm happy to welcome Jove Belle to get this party started with her new release Uncommon Romance. First things first though: Jove has generously offered to give away an e-book of Uncommon Romance to a lucky winner. To enter, you simply have to leave a comment on this post, including your email address, so we can locate you in case! You have time to comment until Tuesday, Jan 14th, noon EST, but first--enjoy! (It's a record cold winter, so I'm more than happy to start on a hot note. Not entirely safe for work).

Thanks Jove for being my guest! Have fun everyone and don't forget to comment, and check back next Wednesday for R.E. Bradshaw and Rainey Bell.

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Happy 2014, everyone! I’m super excited to be a guest here, so big thanks to Barbara Winkes for inviting me and big thanks to y’all for checking it out!

I have a new release out this month called Uncommon Romance. It’s a bit different than my regular work in that it’s a collection of three novellas, rather than a novel. This format is a bit of an experiment for me, and I have to say, I had a lot of fun writing it.

One other heads up about the collection for you: it’s erotica. I love writing romance, and I’m not a stranger to sex scenes, but this is the first time I’ve written something that I would classify as pure erotica, with sex, rather than romance being the driving force of the story.

 (Cover graphic provided by author)

The first story in the collection is called Raw Silk. It’s about a young executive, June, and her wife, Ash. This is by far the most romantic of the three stories. The women are young and ridiculously in love with one another. They also enjoy bringing a third person into their bedroom from time to time. So, yeah, Raw Silk is about the sexy good times that happens when they invite one June’s clients home to play.

Here’s a short excerpt from that:

Raw Silk - Excerpt

“The client hit on me. A lot.”

Ash swallowed hastily, her eyes narrowed and heated. “Bastard. I’ll kill him.” Jealousy made Ashlyn forget details.

“Her. The client is a her, remember? Katerina VanderVort.”

“That’s right.” The flash of anger was replaced by a curious, if not a little devious, smile. “Katerina?”

“Yeah, she told me to call her Kat.” June pushed her salad around with her fork. She wasn’t nearly as hungry as Ash, but she’d remain at the table for as long as Ash did.

“Kat?” Ash laughed lightly. “Is she hot?”

June nodded reluctantly. Ash was laughing now, but she didn’t want to give her wife any cause for genuine jealousy, either. “She is. She’s dark, like Mediterranean. She doesn’t match her Scandinavian last name at all.”

“Did you ask her why?”

“No, I was too busy trying to get her to stop touching me.”

“Wait, she touched you?” The jealousy June feared threatened to surface again.

“Sort of. She sat really close, like close enough for our legs to touch.”

Ash smiled again, then slid her chair closer to June. She stopped about a foot away. “Like this?”

June shook her head. “Closer.”

Ash shifted again but stopped before they touched. “Like this?” Ash leaned in intimately close and spoke directly into June’s ear. Her hot breath puffed against June’s skin, and she almost forgot what Ash was asking.

“Closer.” Her answer came out hushed and secretive.

Ash moved until her chair touched June’s and their legs touched from floor to knee. She slipped her bare foot over the top of June’s and caressed it.  “Like this?” Ash whispered the question with her lips pressed to June’s ear.

June nodded, but she couldn’t force herself to speak. The words were trapped in an emotional bunch in her chest.

“And you liked it.” Ash worked the buttons on her blouse open in the middle until she was able to reach her fingers in and touch skin. June jumped at the contact. Ash rolled the backs of her fingers over June’s abs, tickling and teasing. “Didn’t you?”

June gasped and found her voice once again. It was shaky and uncertain, but it worked. “I did.”

Ash pulled her shirt free from her skirt and smoothed her palm flat against her stomach. She draped her other hand over the back of June’s chair and played her fingers through the ends of June’s hair. She pushed the hair out of the way and bent her mouth to June’s neck. Her kiss was hot and open mouthed, and she sucked hard on the skin where neck met shoulder. “Did she do this?”

She moaned and reflexively clutched Ash’s head to hold her close. She held her body tense and perfectly still. “No.”

Ash worked her way up until her mouth was once again upon June’s ear. She sucked the lobe into her mouth and breathed hot air over the wet skin. Excitement rushed to the surface and June groaned.

“You want her to.” Ash massaged her hand through June’s hair. The touch was rhythmic and lulling and robbed her of her ability to focus on anything but Ash’s fingers against her skin and in her hair. Ash nipped the sensitive skin behind her ear. “Didn’t you?”

Right, so, yeah, did I mention it’s erotica? That’s one of the more tame bits.

The next story in the collection is called On Her Knees. As sweet as Raw Silk is, this is on the other end of the spectrum. None of the answers come easy for Abby and Simone. They have all the left over angst from their high school years to break through before they can find a way to be together. Of all the couples in this collection, these two are the ones I’m rooting for the most.

Simone is driven and obsessive and so very angry about everything. When she sees her high school nemisis, ten years later, at a holiday party, she’s forced to evaluate the carefully constructed façade of her adult life.

Here’s an excerpt from that:

On Her Knees - Excerpt

Simone poured herself a glass of wine and sat on the sofa sipping it. Either Abby would show up and be impressed with the wine selection—it was a damn fine bottle—or Simone would move from sipping to gulping and finish off the damn fine wine by herself. Nothing pathetic about that. Not at all.

She’d debated waiting naked, but the possibility that Abby would be a no-show compelled her to dress. She’d rather have Abby take her clothes off than have to get dressed alone later when she was drunk on a bottle of wine she also drank alone. When she’d told Abby to get her ass to her place, Simone had felt brave. The sound of Abby on the verge of release, the heady power of knowing she’d caused the desperate way Abby gulped air, her breathing choppy and uneven, had made her overconfident. The longer she waited, the more foolish her demand seemed. An orgasm with the woman who twisted her insides, even via phone, was better than not having one at all. Wasn’t it?

She was on her second glass of wine when she heard a faint almost-not-there knock at the door. It was so soft she wondered if she’d imagined it out of desperation. A few seconds passed and she heard it again. Definitely not a hallucination.

Simone finished the glass of wine in a final gulp before opening the door. She needed the brief reprieve before she crossed the point of no return. When she opened the door, there’d be no turning back.

Abby looked as uncertain as Simone felt, like she wasn’t in complete control of the actions her body was taking, but she knew it probably wasn’t the smartest thing she could be doing at midnight on Thursday. Simone invited her in before either one of them could change her mind. Again.

“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

“Neither was I.” Abby clutched her long overcoat tight around her body. Her knuckles were turning white.

“You want me to hang that up?” Simone touched her fingers to the lapel of Abby’s coat, just let them rest there lightly for a moment. She’d demanded Abby’s presence so she could touch her with a lot more than just two fingers skimming along fabric, but the action still felt overly intimate to her.

Abby chewed her bottom lip. “Ummm…” She unknotted the belt slowly. “I think so.”

What the hell was the big deal? It was just a coat, for Christ’s sake. Abby’s hesitance confused and annoyed Simone. What did Abby think would happen when she took it off? She’d be trapped in Simone’s apartment forever?

Then Abby parted the front and let it slide off her shoulders and Simone was staring at breasts. And legs. Perfect breasts and legs that made her want to prostrate herself in worship.

Obviously, they don’t let their anger get in the way of a perfectly good opportunity to have sex. That would just be silly. J

The last story in the collection is called Hollis. It’s about a detective, Jude, who takes part in an FBI training camp on terrorism. It doesn’t take long for her to realize that the instructor, Hollis, have a lot in common, including some well orchestrated D/s scenes.

This story, in case you haven’t guessed by now, is by far the kinkiest. It was a lot of fun and it kinda makes me blush when I think about what these two got up to.

Here’s an excerpt from that:

“You waited.” Hollis’s voice adopted a warm, honeyed sweetness.

“Of course.”

The door clicked shut behind her, and then Hollis entered Jude’s line of vision. She closed the blinds before turning to face Jude. “I’m pleased.”

She still wore the same FB- issued slacks and shirt. She carried the jacket in her hand and slipped it over the back of her ergonomic office chair. It looked decidedly more comfortable than the one Jude was seated on.

“Do you know why I asked you to come here?” Hollis circled the desk and perched against the corner, her ankles crossed, hands resting on the edge of the desk. She tapped her index finger against the polished wood surface as she regarded Jude.

Jude nodded. She was absolutely certain why she’d been summoned and then left to wait. And the prospect of it made her light-headed and giddy. She loved this stage of a new encounter, one where boundaries were tested and established.

Hollis raised her eyebrow. “Well?”

“You wanted to see if I would come.” Jude chose her words carefully. She wanted to say everything, but not too much. Similar to Hollis. I want you in my office.

Hollis nodded, the fingernail tap-tap-tapping. “Yes, I suppose I did.”

It was clear at this point that Hollis liked words. She wanted Jude responsive and vocal. She’d watch carefully to see when that leeway ended.

“And you left me here as a test, to see if I would wait.”

Hollis smirked then, her lips raised without fully committing. “And you did.”

“I did.” Jude relaxed into the chair, the first time in the hours she’d been there. Yes, she was pushing, but that was the fun of it. “I’m hoping it was worth it.”

I’d like to say that I had some noble reason for writing such a kinky collection of stories, like there’s an underlying message about women finding their power through sexual liberation, but that’s just not the case. I wrote it because I wanted to have some fun. I wanted to push some boundaries and let my characters play for a bit.

I’m pretty sure some of what I wrote is going to make some readers uncomfortable. How do I know that? It made me uncomfortable at times, when I was writing it. I spent a lot of time questioning myself, trying to figure out how much of what I was writing was fantasy and how much was really possible. Would two women (sometimes three), in those situations, really act that way? Consistently, my answer was, “I really don’t know.”

I laughed at myself a lot. Some things, in my world, are just impossible. Like bringing a third person into my relationship? Yeah, that SOUNDS like awesome fun. It also sounds like a really good way to end my relationship. I don’t like to share. So…just…no.

But that’s the cool thing about fantasies. They are totally safe to have and it’s okay to recognize that they don’t always mesh with your reality.

Thanks again for checking out my blog here today. Barbara mentioned doing a giveaway and I’m all in favor of that. To that end, I’m giving away an ebook copy of Uncommon Romance. I’m not sure how Barb manages her giveaways. It might be something as simple as leaving a comment in the space below. Or it might be some elaborate process that involves hoops, monkeys and a small, bearded man named Raul. Either way, I hope you enter! Good luck, everyone!

If you want to learn more about me--and really, why wouldn’t you?--you can do that at my website: http://www.jovebelle.com. And if you want to buy my books--again, why wouldn’t you?--you can do that over at Bold Strokes Books. Here’s the link to my author profile there. http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com/Author-Jove-Belle.html. And, for those of you hanging out on facebook and twitter, you can find mere here https://www.facebook.com/jove.belle and here https://twitter.com/jovebelle. Stop by and say hi, okay? I’m all kinds of friendly and love when that happens.