Jonathan bent his head, his breath warm through the silk of her camisole. He licked circles around her areola, plastering damp silk across her sensitive flesh, silk so thin she could feel the gentle abrasion of his tongue. Then he sucked her nipple into his mouth.
âOh,â Madeline breathed as delicious sensations rippled through her.â¦
I lift my fingers from the computer keyboard. Sensations? No, thatâs too vague. My readers want something more detailed, sensual, personal. What kind of sensations?
Who the hell remembers?
I slide a hand under my T-shirt and stroke my unconfined breast, then gently pinch the nipple. Nope, not much in the way of sensation.
âDamn,â I say to the purple-and-cream phalaenopsis orchid on my desk. âHow can I describe a sensation I havenât personally felt inâ¦â How many months has it been? Oh my God, itâs more than a year since Iâve had sex. Real live sex with a real live man.
No wonder Iâm having so much trouble describing it.
The orchid, which I chose for inspiration because orchids are supposed to be sensualâafter all, in Victorian England, women were prohibited from having them because they were thought to be too sexualâhas recently proven to be no inspiration at all. It seems even my poor damned orchid has lost her eroticism.
Sighing, I rise and cross my home office to the bookcase that houses the pretty display of my dozen published titles, along with the various foreign editions. Twenty countries, fifteen languages, and yes, Iâm counting. Itâs these beautiful babies that let me quit my job as a high-school teacher five years ago and become a writer full time.
I pull down Pamelaâs Passion, one of my favorites and one of the hottestâperhaps because when I wrote it I was in a relationship and actually having sex.
No, of course Iâm not going to borrow my own words. That would be cheating and besides, some reader would catch me since my readers seem to memorize the sex scenes word for word. Still, perhaps Pamelaâs passionate adventures, and the memory of my own, can get me in the mood.
I do have to wonder if it was the most brilliant idea in the world for me, with such a pathetic sex life, to write erotic romance. Yeah, sure, write your own fantasies, but at some point the fantasiesâlike certain body partsâtend to dry up.
But back when I was twenty-two and wrote that first book, Elizabethâs Ecstasy, Iâd been in the grip of the most powerful lust Iâve ever experienced. Taboo lust.
Iâd been a student teacher, doing my practicum. And the male in question was Lincoln Wolf, a student in the grade-twelve English Lit class. Yes, heâd looked far more man than boy, and, at nineteen, he was close to my own age, thanks to growing up with parents who had roamed the world and hadnât provided him with regular schooling. But he was a student.
And Iâd felt lust for him. Iâd never have acted on it, but even feeling it was completely inappropriate. Yet, much as I told myself not to go there, my body flushed and throbbed with desire every time I looked at him. And every time he looked at me, because, yeah, I saw the same craving in his eyes.
I was pretty, and barely older than many of the students, and itâs a rite of passage to lust after a teacher, so I got my fair share of horny gazes. But there was something different about Lincolnâs. He stared at me as if nothing existed in the world except the two of us.
And I never felt the slightest bit drawn to any student other than Lincoln.
My need for him was so powerful, I had to give it physical expression, and thatâs what drove me to the computer to pour out all the forbidden things I imagined doing with him.
If I could remember that vivid, intense feeling, I could write sex again. But Lincoln Wolf is ten years in my past, and real live sex is more than a year behind me, so all Iâm left with is Pamela and her passion.
I plunk back in my ergonomic desk chair and thumb through the pages to find the scene where Pamela, out for a ride on a sunny afternoon, comes upon Lord Vincent bathing in a lake. Naked. I read a page. Another. This is really well-written and to me itâs totally obvious I was having real live sex when I wrote it, but right now itâs not doing anything for me.
âYada yada and sex ensues,â I mutter. âLucky Pamela.â
If only I could find my muse and give Madeline some of that lovely sex. Better stillâ¦âI want what Pamelaâs having, damn it,â I tell my orchid.