Lonely Widow's First Kiss

Valentine's Day ~ the day for lovers. But how would you feel about that first kiss after being widowed for more than a year?

I can tell you from experience, the event is both thrilling and terrifying!

Heroine, Rebecca Sinclair's response to the first kiss from her hero, Ray Jacoby may surprise you......

She lowered her gaze, and he lifted her chin with his finger and waited until she looked at him again. “I want to kiss you, Becca, here in the midst of Paradise,” he whispered, his lips covering hers with devastating tenderness.

Rebecca heard his primitive grunt of satisfaction when he let go of her hands and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer. An answering purr escaped her as tiny pinpoints of pleasure bathed her senses with light and color. Never in her life had she felt so alive, so consumed with sensations.

Whether a moment or an eternity, she had no idea how long they stood there, his mouth in sweet possession of hers. All she knew was that when the kiss was over she was plastered against his hard body, her breathing was sharp almost painful and her fists were clenched in his thick, sandy-colored hair. Appalled at her wanton response and the needy way in which she clung, Rebecca flung away with a startled cry of distress, and began to run.

Find out more about Rebecca and Ray's story in my novel, The Inheritance, available now from White Rose Publishing in Ebook and Print!

Pamela S Thibodeaux
"Inspirational with an Edge!" (tm)
http://pamelathibodeaux.com/
http://pamswildroseblog.blogspot.com/

That First Kiss by Gina Ardito

It can be magical. It can be sweet. It can be disastrous. But when that first kiss happens, it's always memorable. Men don't always get how important that first kiss is for a woman. Which is probably why I spend so much time crafting my first kiss scenes in my books. For example, the first kiss between my hero and heroine in my upcoming release from Avalon Books, Nobody's Darling, occurs over a game of Parcheesi with a glass of wine. Take a peek:

“Boys will be boys.”

By God, he was no boy, and he wouldn’t allow her to mistake him for one. For the rest of this game, he planned to use every trick in his arsenal to fluster her and keep that blush burning in her cheeks.

He began slowly. A long sip of red wine while his eyes focused unblinking on her lips the entire time. When he gave her a slow wink over the tip of the glass, her blush deepened and spread to both ears. Ah, sweet victory.

Hiding a smile, he picked up his cup of dice and rolled them onto the board. A three and a four. He licked his fingertip and traced it along his lower lip before moving one of his men the requisite seven steps.

The blush moved across the bridge of her nose, to the very place his lips had touched only seconds ago. Satisfied, he picked up his dice to return them to his cup, but accidentally brushed against her wrist as she reached for her own cup. At the simple contact, her mouth opened in a wide o. He couldn’t stop the idea that came to mind.

One quick sip of wine, and he pressed his mouth against hers, transferring the warm, spicy liquid into her mouth. She yanked away from him so quickly the game pieces scattered across the board and onto the floor. While he bit back his laughter, she stared at him aghast, her eyes tearing.

“Swallow it, silly,” he ordered.

Her neck bobbed when she did as he instructed.

“It’s good, right?”

“Mmm-hmm,” she said, doe eyes fixed on him in wonder.

“There, see? I told you that you didn’t know the proper way to drink red wine.”

She gave no reply. She merely sat across from him, her hand holding an empty dice cup, transfixed.

The moment Jeff’s lips closed over hers, a whoosh roared through April’s ears. Then a sweet pungent liquid filled her mouth. Blood? No. As the liquid danced and fizzled over her tastebuds, she realized he’d transferred the wine in his mouth to hers. The idea left her breathless.

As awareness filtered into her senses, panic seized her, and she pushed away with all the force her limp body could muster. She wanted to gasp, but the wine inside her cheeks prevented her from forming a sound.

“Swallow it, silly,” he’d said and so she had.

Unlike the sweet White Zinfandel April normally sipped, this wine had a stronger aftertaste and a thicker consistency. But she couldn’t deny she liked the taste. Or did Jeff’s bizarre method of exchanging the beverage add to the flavor? No answer came to her.

Confusion muddled her thoughts. All she wanted now was escape, a quick retreat before she surrendered.

“Excuse me,” she murmured and fled the room.

Everything I Needed to Know, I Learned From Romance

Hello everyone! And happy almost Valentine's Day!

I have a high school degree, university degree, and I use Degree antiperspirant. (The last part doesn’t have much to do with education, I just want you to know that if we ever meet, I’ll smell nice.). School’s done a lot for me. I learned math and science, geology and anthropology, and I learned in a bind, regular potato chips broken into a bowl of macaroni and cheese can satisfy most of your daily nutritional requirements. But the wisdom that lasts, the stuff that’s stood the test of time, all that came from reading romance.
1) Equality—When it comes to the human experience, it doesn’t matter if the hero was a pauper and the heroine was a princess. In love and life, we’re all equal. It’s true, too. It doesn’t matter if you’re the C.E.O or the waitress, the flat tire is a pain, puppies will still make you smile, and being stuck in the elevator with the Know-It-All from Human Resources drives you crazy.
2) Beauty is Found Within—Romance is often criticized because the heroes and heroines are objects of perfection. What the critics don’t realize is that the novel is told through the eyes of the hero, who loves the heroine, and the heroine—who, conveniently enough—loves the hero. In love, we are all beautiful. To the one who adores us, we are the personification of perfection. Hey, I’m all for playing with make up and going nutty when in the stores and surveying the array of bright and shiny eye shadows, but at the end of the day (sorry, cosmetic companies), it’s not the make-up on the woman, it’s the woman under the makeup. The one who loves her, loves her for who she is, not what she wears.
3) Versatility—The dining table is good for more than just eating dinner. Romance makes us look at everyday objects in a different, slightly naughty way, and thank goodness. Between the cameras on the street, the auditors going over our taxes, and Santa Claus making his yearly list, we’re all doing our best to be good. It’s nice to have the freedom to be a little naughty.
4) Eccentricity—In school we had to conform. Same thing, sometimes, with business. On the outside, away from the school walls (and the bricks and mortar of our company building), eccentricity is the stuff of joy and laughter. From Janet Evanovich’s Grandma Mazur character to Vicki Lewis Thompson’s drool worthy (and deliciously nerdy) Jack Farley, it’s the people off the grid who add spice and flavor to this, the wild soup we call life.
5) Breathing—No matter how bad the Black Moment in the story, no matter how terrible everything looks for the hero and heroine, readers know to just inhale, take a breath because it’ll get better as long as we keep flipping the pages. Same thing with life. Just breathe. Make a choice and flip the page, and keep flipping until you get your happy ending.
6) Persistence—And speaking of which, Happy Ever After comes on the last page, not the first. The hero and heroine have to wade through struggle and turmoil, ask themselves some hard questions and get some harder answers, before they get their happy ever after. In other words, they have to persevere. So it is with real life. Happy Endings aren’t for sissies. They’re for the people who’re willing to stick through the ups and downs, and be persistent.
7) Humor—There’s nothing quite as sexy in romance as the hero/heroine with a kick-ass sense of humor. Laughter. It breaks tension, breaks down barriers, and relieves stress. It releases endorphins, massages your organs, and bonds us in a social network. In everyday life, nothing is quite as endearing as the person who makes us laugh. We look forward to seeing them. They light up a room and leave us glowing. A sense of humor will save our sanity and—depending on how fast we can think on our feet—save our job when our boss walks in and catches us doing a dead-on impression of his chicken-walk.
8) Honesty—A romance isn’t a romance until the characters have talked to each other, revealed their secrets, and accepted each other, as is. Life’s like that, too. There’s something releasing, something that opens up our inner-space when we find the honesty in ourselves and accept it in those around us. Sure, our mothers drive us crazy because they’re always offering (unsolicited) advice, trying to lend a hand…but sometimes, in those rare but glorious moments when we can step past our irritation and annoyance, we see their nagging for what it is: an expression of love, one human being reaching out to another and hoping for nothing but prosperity and protection for the children they love. Honest relationships are what give us security and courage, and when the world’s cruel and heartless, they’re what give us that soft place to fall.
9) Resilience—When it comes to romance, heroes and heroines always remind me of those clown toys from the 80s. Remember those? You’d bop ’em and they’d drop, but then bounce back. Romantic heroes and heroines are the same way. No matter the obstacle or the conflict, they recover and keep going. Every failure just seems to make them better, stronger people. Resilience. It’s the magic armor that protects us—not from failures or setbacks—but from the most defeating thing of all: giving up.
10) Love Matters—In the end, the heart wants what it wants, and as long as you follow your heart, good things happen. It’s a great philosophy, not just for romance but life, too. Follow your passion when it comes to work, to hobbies, to where you want to live, and who you want to live with. In the end, the sages were right: love is all you need.

www.natashadeen.com

Mmmm...first kiss

FIRST KISS. Mmm…just the thought of it makes your thighs clench tight. He’s the one you’ll never forget. What if he was your first husband, the one who rocked your world, the one you’re still not over? In Sleeping with the Lights On, Sandra is confronted with him eighteen years later, and he’s looking better than ever in his black cowboy hat, dripping his Texas drawl all over her. This Las Vegas country crooner is up to something and she should beware, but she can’t resist that first kiss eighteen years later.

His fingers stilled, grasping my legs so the tips edged under the hem of my skirt. He brought his face so close I tasted his breath on my lips, sweet and wine soaked. I breathed in, intoxicated. “Carson what…”

He brushed his lips across mine lightly in a whisper “You, Sandra.”

I felt the words against my mouth more than I heard them. Our foreheads came together. The world beyond our touch had become so quiet I could hear the blood pulsing in my breast; could touch his warmth pressed against mine. My lips parted as the kiss became a gentle passion, inviting me to relish the moment of tempered desire, a brief taste, all the more covetous.

Do you have a first kiss, that’s not exactly a FIRST, but none the less memorable?

Brenda

Sleeping with the Lights On

First Kiss

Was your first kiss was a flop, and you don’t remember it, or it was hotter than the sun and you’ll never forget it. Either way, the first kiss for a woman/girl is always scary and nerve-racking. How could it not be?

First, you’re scared half out of your mind you’ll slobber all over the guy or that his breath stinks so bad it makes you want to gag. Last but not least, you don’t know how he is going to kiss you. Is it going to be a quick little peck or a long drawn out tongue thing?

In four book of my Running In Fear Series: Cupid’s Venom, the heroine, Cecil, experiences her first kiss at the age of twenty-one. How can she not remember her first kiss after being tortured for six years as a guinea pig for crazed scientists? Not to mention it’s by one of most well known Masters in the area, Tug. Who doesn’t want to kiss an all-alpha male whose whole purpose is to make your body burn with pleasure? I know I sure would!

This Valentine’s Day, how will your first kiss of the day be? Filled with passion or maybe just a teaser to get things started? Are you going to make him or her to want more? Is your kiss even going to be placed on the lips? There are many places one can kiss that will drive your partner crazy. What are you going to choose?

Trinity Blacio
http://trinityblacio.com

My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys

I grew up watching cowboys on TV. That might date me, but why try to hide it? When I was growing up, my siblings and I watched Roy Rogers every Saturday morning at my grandmother’s house. It was a huge treat for us (and for my mother, although I didn’t recognize it at the time). For years, we never missed an episode of Bonanza. Maverick? The Rifleman? Rawhide? I loved them all. To this day, I have a friend who still idolizes Paladin of Have Gun, Will Travel (you know who you are, Liz). Something about those Western heroes resonated with me as a young girl and still does.

The concept of “The West” has stirred the American imagination since we first became a nation. The West was a wide open place full of limitless possibilities—a place where a person could invent, or reinvent, himself. For better or worse, the realities of life on the frontier stripped away the veneer of civilization and exposed a man for who he really was.

The icon of the West in nineteenth century journalism and literature was the cowboy—lawmen and outlaws are just variations. These men were portrayed as stalwart, courageous, and true to their own code of honor, whether that code fell within the law or not. They were taciturn and independent to a fault. What a challenge for a strong woman!

Hollywood has brought us some of the best examples of the Western hero, but to appreciate the archetype you have to look back before the anti-hero of recent Western movies to the golden era of the ‘forties and ‘fifties. When you think “Western hero”, most people think of John Wayne, and many film critics have rated The Searchers as the greatest Western of all time.

But I never cared for the tortured character of Ethan Edwards. I much prefer the Duke in an earlier, lesser known film, Angel and the Badman, in which he plays a gunslinger who is nursed back to health by a Quaker girl and is ultimately forced to choose between the violence of his old life and his burgeoning love for her. It’s definitely the stuff of which great romance novels are made.

However, my nomination for the ultimate Western hero is Gary Cooper as Sheriff Will Kane in High Noon. A man who has vowed to kill Kane is scheduled to arrive on the noon train. Tension mounts as Sheriff Kane tries to find someone in town to stand up with him against the outlaw, but one after another the townspeople fail him. Everyone tries to convince him to run away, including his lovely bride, Amy (played by Grace Kelly), but Kane refuses. We see the sheriff’s growing fear as the hours count down toward noon, but he refuses to give in. Will Kane is the embodiment of true courage—not the lack of fear but standing resolute in the face of it. And in the end, he’s saved by the courage of the woman who loves him. Amy conquers her own fears and acts against deeply held beliefs to save her man. It just doesn’t get any better than that.

Real Western heroes are strong, brave, and selfless. They’re grown-ups. I love charming rogues as much as the next woman, but when it comes to a hero, give me a cowboy. Whether your hero is a vampire, a cop, or a spy, there are few things sexier than a man doing what a man’s got to do.

What do you look for in a hero?

My latest release, Harvest of Dreams, explores many of these themes, and I think my hero can hold his own with the best of them. Here’s a brief blurb:

Alone on her farm in the middle of a blizzard, young widow Lisa McAllister labors to give birth to her first child. Help arrives in the strong hands of a stranger wearing a six-gun. Lisa has no reason to trust this man who makes a living by violence, even if he is on the right side of the law. Men and their guns have already claimed the lives of her father, brother, and husband, and she’s determined to protect her son at any cost.

Jared Tanner, a security agent for the stagecoach, has been on his own since he was twelve. Against his better judgment, his feelings of protectiveness toward Lisa and her baby turn to something deeper, and he is tempted by the possibility of a family of his own. Can their tender new love survive when an act of ultimate violence threatens to tear them apart?
Thanks for joining me today, and I invite you to visit me on the web at http://www.alisonhenderson.com/.

Oh, that Sweet First Kiss!

One of my favorite first kisses from any of my own books is in my newest release, “Flawless”. This novella is set in occupied France during the Second World War. Madeleine is a French Resistance fighter posing as a housemaid in a French Chateau taken over by the Nazis. The Nazi commander, General Klaus Dietrich, has his eye on the beautiful housemaid. Madeleine is terrified because she knows what happened to Dietrichs’s last lover; she was murdered when he found her rifling through his desk. Madeleine has told him she’s married, and even wears her mother’s wedding ring, but the General is not deterred. How is she to avoid being ravaged by the General before her mission is complete?

The mission is to steal back Le Coeur Bleu, the famous blue diamond. The Nazis stole the blue diamond and are planning to sell it to in order to finance their war efforts. The French Resistance, and the Special Operations Executive in Britain are determined that this sale not go through. The SOE sends jewel thief Hunter Smith to France to retrieve the diamond, with help from Madeleine. But Madeleine has reasons to distrust the arrogant American, and reasons for not wanting to kiss him. In this excerpt Hunter has just saved Madeleine from rape by convincing General Dietrich she’s his pregnant wife:

 “We’ll have to make it look good,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

He grinned at her.  “Our marriage.  The general won’t believe we’re married or that you’re pregnant unless we look like a couple.  We’ll have to spend time together, do things that married people do, like kiss.”

“Kiss?”  The idea was both appalling and strangely exciting.  “Don’t be ridiculous.  I’m sure that won’t be—”

“Shh!”

Hunter pulled her into his arms, covering her mouth with his in a hard, insistent kiss.  From the corner of her eye Madeleine saw a couple of housemaids approach the fountain.  She struggled for a moment, her hands pushing against his chest, but then something changed.  His kiss softened, sweetened, his hands gentling on her waist.  Her hands slid up his broad, muscled chest to his shoulders.  She reveled in the feel of his solidness, his strength.  The feel of his silky hair at the nape of his neck was unexpected.  So much of this man was hard, iron-like, that the silkiness of his dark, overlong hair came as a surprise.

One of the housemaids giggled, rousing Madeleine from her trance.  She broke away from Hunter, confused.  He was someone she should hate for what he’d done to Jean Philippe, yet he’d just saved her from being raped, maybe even saved her life.

And his kiss.  How could she explain her reaction to his kiss?

When she glanced into Hunter’s face, he looked as shocked as she felt.  The thought that she wasn’t the only one confused comforted her.  She took Hunter’s hand between the two of hers and turned to her co-workers with a smile.

“I want to introduce you to my husband, Jacques Lemay.”   

Thanks for dropping by! To read another excerpt from “Flawless” or any of my other books, please go to my website at http://www.janarichards.net And while you’re there, why don’t you enter my contest? For more information go to my contest page. 

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