Smut by the Sea, edited by Lucy Felthouse and Victoria Blisse

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Smut by the Sea

Light hearted, sexy fun by the sea is the theme of this erotic anthology, edited by Victoria Blisse and Lucy Felthouse.

From the sun soaked bays of Australia to the rainy coastal towns of England, Smut by the Sea has it all. Whatever your interpretation of naughty seaside fun, there’s something nestling between the covers for you. Surfer boys, sea creatures, pirates and the fairground abound in this exciting collection of stories from erotica’s finest authors.

 

eBook:

Amazon UK
Amazon US
All Romance eBooks
iBooks
Barnes & Noble

Print:

Amazon UK
Amazon US

Excerpt:

Dodging
By Lucy Felthouse

The thrum of anticipation had been rushing through my body ever since we’d set off that morning. By the time we passed the sign welcoming us to Hunstanton and made our way into the long stay car park, I was almost delirious with excitement. The worst part was, I had to hide it from my friends. As far as Sophia and Chloe were concerned, we’d just come for a nice, fun, girly day out at the seaside. They had no idea about my ulterior motive. And I didn’t intend to tell them. Until afterwards, maybe. I didn’t want to risk them ruining my master plan, or trying to talk me out of it.

So far, it seemed like everything was on our side. The traffic had been light, we’d got a parking space with no trouble, and the sun was shining. It was a perfect day, and I had every intention of putting a cherry on top of all that perfection. A very sexy cherry.

Sophia parked the car, then hopped out to go and get a parking ticket. Chloe and I got out too, stretching our limbs after being cooped up in the car for a couple of hours.

“So,” I said, tilting my head back to catch the rays of the sun on my face, “what’s the plan then?”

“I dunno,” Chloe replied. “I’ve never been here before, you have. What do you suggest?”

“Well, there’s the beach, obviously. There are amusement arcades, mini-golf, the Sealife Centre, a few shops, the old village…”

I deliberately didn’t mention the funfair. That was my destination, and I wanted to go alone.

Sophia rejoined us and put the ticket in the windscreen of the car. “Got everything, girls?”

Chloe and I nodded, and she checked for valuables before locking the doors. “So, do we know what we’re doing yet? I guess we’ll be led by you, Abigail, since you’ve been here before. Did you say you’d visited with your parents, or something?”

I moved away from the car and started to walk down towards the seafront, though purposely leading the girls in the opposite direction to the funfair. They followed without question.

I nodded. “Yeah. We used to come here all the time for family holidays when I was younger, but now we mostly come on day trips. We last came a month or so ago. I was just telling Chloe what there is to do. There’s the beach, amusement arcades, mini-golf, the Sealife Centre, a few shops, the old village…”

“Ooh,” Sophia said, doing a little jump, “I love mini-golf! Do you fancy a game of that before it gets too hot, then we’ll go from there?”

Chloe nodded her agreement, and I said, “I’ll take you there, ladies, but I can’t play.”

“Why the hell not?” Sophia asked. “It doesn’t matter if you’re crap. I’m crap at it too, it’s just a laugh.”

“No, it’s got nothing to do with being crap, Soph. I have a bad back and swinging a club around and doing all that bending is just going to make it worse.”

It was a blatant lie of course. There wasn’t a thing wrong with my back, and I was actually a little gutted not to be having a go on the best mini-golf course I’d ever played on, but missing out was a necessary evil if I was to go through with my devious plan. If it came off, then the result would be a great deal more fun than a round of mini-golf, anyway.

*****

Lucy Felthouse: http://lucyfelthouse.co.uk

Victoria Blisse: http://www.victoriablisse.co.uk

Pyritic Ammonites and Dino-Poo

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Pyritic ammonites – I found the first one by accident. We were at Charmouth on the Jurassic Coast. We’d just had lunch at the Heritage Centre Café and crossed the bridge heading up the beach toward Golden Cap. The mountain of mud rose up above us on our left and the sea on our right. Raymond, in his goggles, with hammer in hand was ready to find the pterodactyl we were sure we’d find.

Instead, I found a tiny pyritic ammonite. At first I thought someone had lost a charm off an earring or a bracelet. The ammonite was shiny and metallic, but it was a fossil, no bigger than a five pence piece, and perfectly formed. Pyritic ammonites, Raymond told me, were formed when the shells of the ammonites were gradually replaced in the fossilization process with iron pyrite.

A very helpful gentleman walking his dog on the beech told us that we needed to look for

the black places in the sand. That’s where the mud had washed down with the last tide or last night’s rain. Raymond put the hammer away, took off the goggles and the ammonite hunt was on.Lesson number one: Look for the black wash-outs in the sand. That’s where the mud has washed out from the Jurassic mud mountain.

Lesson number two: Look for the dino-poo. Okay, it’s probably really ichthyo-poo, but you get the picture. We discovered that once we found the mud wash-outs, then the best places to look for the pyritic ammonites were the places where we found coprolites. Yep, that’s right, fossilized poo – which was also pyritic.

Why on earth am I telling you about dino-poo, you may wonder. Well because of the way the pieces fit together. You know, the pieces of any puzzle, what has to happen in order to see the whole picture. First we looked for the dark spots in the sand, then we looked for the fossilized poo. Then we found those exquisite, pendant perfect pyritic ammonites.

Somehow our eyes got used to finding the mud then the poo then pulling back just enough to see the delicate curved edges sparkling in the sand. It was sort of like playing the slot machines in Vegas, just one win could keep you going for ages. Just one little ammonite could totally focus our attention for however long it took until we found the next one lying round and perfect and bright amid the coprolites. And then we were off to look for the next one until the tide came in and we had to retreat, always shaking our heads, always thinking about all those loveley ammonites washing out to sea.

They were all tiny – every pyritic ammonite we found. A low-tide beach combing would net us less than a palm full and yet they were exquisite, perfectly formed, looking like they’d come from a jewelry store rather than just washed out of the mud with the fossilized poo.

I can’t stop thinking about it, treasure in strange places. Not just treasure, but ancient treasure, and we carried them back to our cottage in the palm of our hand, feeling the weight of them pressed like coins in a child’s clenched fist. Our week in Lyme Regis was amazing. There were so many good things; laughter and friend and writing and fish pie and good ale in local pubs, but it’s the pyritic ammonites I’ll remember most, and the delightful treasure hunt of finding them.

Dare By Kacey Hammell

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DareLegal secretary, Olivia Warner enjoys being single and, aside from her closest gal pals, usually keeps to herself. But the night of her thirty-fourth birthday, she and her friends spend a fun-filled evening at a local bar where her friends dare her to approach a man, and spend the night with him. Olivia’s not one to turn down a dare, especially from her old college pals. She only hopes the man in question is in for some good conversation, because that’s all she’ll give him.

Darren “Dare” Shalvis has given up on women. He’s tired of being chased for his money, good looks, and prowess in bed. He prefers to meet a woman who, for once, wants nothing more from him than mere conversation. If only the woman asking him to spend the night with her wasn’t his favorite legal secretary.

Accepting a dare has never been so tempting…

 

Available from:

Evernight Publishing
Amazon US
Amazon UK
All Romance eBooks
Omnilit
BookStrand

*****

Excerpt:

She gave a small laugh and lifted the glass for a drink.

Dare watched her lips as she drank. He wondered what they’d taste like. It was something he’d considered many times lately.

He was drawn to her, but unsure he’d ever act on it.

Her whole demeanor said ‘hands off.’ And he wasn’t sure he was ready for the challenge.

“Tell me about it.”

“I’ll cut right to the chase.” As he turned on the stool, their knees brushed. Neither moved.

He thought he saw her eyes lit up. Perhaps Ms. Warner wasn’t as immune as he thought.

“My friends brought me here tonight for my birthday.”

“Happy birthday.”

She smiled. “Thank you. The jury’s still out whether it’s happy or not. My friends decided that as a present they’d get me a man.”  She blushed and reached for her drink.

“Go on.” Intriguing.

She set down her glass and continued, “They dared me. Dared me to find myself a man and spend the night with him.”

Women…who understood them? He’d only ever participated in dares when he was younger. He didn’t think anyone took them seriously anymore.

“And you need my help, how?” Dare’s heart rate accelerated. She wasn’t asking him to…

She stared up at him, her gaze steady. “I need you to spend the night with me.”

If he hadn’t heard it with his own ears, he wouldn’t have believed it. This night was the strangest he’d had in a long time. It was as if he’d been offered a million dollars on a silver platter.

Of course, he wanted to spend the night with her. He’d fantasized about it many times. He just wasn’t clear on what exactly she was asking. He didn’t want any misunderstandings. “Are you asking me to spend the night with you to…” Dare cleared his throat. “…be with you?”

“Oh! No, yes, I mean no. Dammit, I’ve screwed this up.”

“Relax.” He put a hand on her knee. “It’s okay. Let’s try this—do you want me to have sex with you?”

Olivia groaned. Dare love that sound, and heat filled his groin.

“No. Not to have sex. God, this is mortifying.” Olivia placed her hand over his where it still rested on her knee. “Just to spend the night together—a movie, hang out, whatever—until eight a.m., when the dare is over.”

Dare laughed. She talked so fast he could hardly keep up. He’d never seen her so animated before. He liked her flustered and breathless…a lot. He wondered if she looked and sounded like that during sex.

He couldn’t go that route. Not now.

“Okay, so let me get this straight. You want us to spend the night together—with no sex—until morning? All because of a dare? Why didn’t you just say no?”

“I can’t. In college, the five of us made a pact—in blood, for God’s sake—that we’d always be friends and never back down from a dare. Trust me, right now, I wish I’d never made it.”

He chuckled. “Yes, I can imagine how you feel.”

“I’m so tired after the day we had. This was the last thing I needed tonight.”

“Yeah, when I stopped by the office today you seemed a bit irritated.”

She sighed and ran her fingers over his hand. Dare was surprised how comfortable it felt to have their knees and hands touch. He didn’t think Olivia was even aware she caressed his hands…or wreaked havoc on his libido. If her innocent touches could send him into overdrive, he wondered what would happen if she put all she had into it.

“It was the day from hell. I just wanted to meet the girls for a few drinks, then head home to soak the day away.”

Dare grit his teeth and tried not to think of Olivia in a bathtub—water floating around her body, relaxed, languid. The image could send him over the edge.

“Well, you’re in luck. I’m your man for the night.”

Olivia smiled and her eyes danced.  “Thank you. I really appreciate it. The last thing I wanted to do was have to pick up some random guy. I’m so glad you were here.”

Pleased he could help her, Dare grinned. He realized he wanted to anything to put that carefree smile on her face.

“So.” He took a sip of his beer. “What do you want to do?”

She scowled. “Well, we could go back to my place. I have a spare room that you can crash in if you want.”

Surprised, Dare took in her flushed face. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “Yeah. We don’t exactly have to stay up all night. It’s still spending the night together, right?”

He chuckled. “Yeah, in a manner of speaking. Your friends weren’t specific.”

A smug smile crossed Olivia’s face. “No they weren’t. Which is a testament to how much they thought this through. I would have made a list of do’s and don’ts.”

They both laughed. Olivia had a naughty streak and he liked it. Liked it—and her—very much. A night with Olivia Warner wasn’t what he’d expected.

Sure, he’d thought of her in his bed often, writhing and moaning with passion, but he never thought fantasy would become a reality. He couldn’t let the opportunity go.

His buddies didn’t call him Dare for no reason. He could never resist a challenge.

He placed both hands on her shoulders, drew her gaze from her glass, and put his cards on the table.

“What if we have an agreement?”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“For us to spend the night together, we should have some ground rules.”

“Ground rules?”

“I will spend the night with you. More than eager to do so, except one thing.”

“What’s that?” she whispered. He barely heard her but saw her lips move.

He wanted to taste them, desperately.

“I don’t want to sleep in any spare room.”

“You don’t?” She gawked at him.

Her expression was comical but Dare didn’t feel like laughing.

“No. I want to spend the night in your room.” Dare had her full attention. She stared at him, eyes wide. “In your bed.”

*****
The writer: Kacey is a multi-published erotic romance author who was encouraged to write by her beloved husband and quickly found herself writing fast and furiously. Not that she’ll ever tell him those three dreadful words that he longs to hear…”You were right.”  Kacey is a true romantic at heart.

The Wife and Mom: Born, raised and still living in her hometown in Ontario, Canada, Kacey found true love with her husband.  As a Mom of three, Kacey has made certain that each of her children know the value of the written word and the adventures they could escape on by becoming book-a-holics in their own right.

Readers can learn more about Kacey’s books and contact her via …

http://kaceyhammellkreations.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002653925340
http://twitter.com/#!/KaceyHammell
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002BLQ3UM
http://www.goodreads.com/kaceyhammell

Starla Kaye Tells the Story Behind The CEO and the Cowboy

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It’s my pleasure to welcome Starla Kaye to Hopeful Romantic to share the story behind her hot new novel, The CEO and the Cowboy. And Starla is offering an exciting contest as well. Leave a comment with your email address for a chance to win a copy of either MAGGIE’S SECRET WISH or STARTING OVER from Decadent Publishing and a special gift: a Spurs auto coaster. Contest ends October 6.

I live in the mid-west and tend to write most of my stories somewhere in familiar territory. Kansas City is one of my favorite places and I especially love the Country Club Plaza area. There are some really beautiful houses along Ward Parkway and I couldn’t resist having my CEO hero, Daniel Patterson, living in one of them. The cover even has a cityscape of the Plaza area, which is perfect.

My other hero, the cowboy Calhoun Cordell, has a ranch in the Flint Hills near Manhattan, Kansas, which is another area of Kansas that I am familiar with. His ranch doesn’t actually play much of a part in this story. But I will be writing a sequel and the ranch will have a bigger role in it.

THE CEO AND THE COWBOY is my second m/m romance for Decadent Publishing. It is another story of two heart-wounded, struggling men trying to make sense of their lives and stumbling into an unexpected romance. Although my main romance writing is m/f, I am enjoying writing these special stories. Everyone deserves to be loved and to love someone. All that matters to me is that my characters are in need of finding that one special person who makes their life complete.

Since the biggest percentage of my 50 some published stories involve cowboys, I wanted to write a story about a rancher, and I enjoy writing stories with businessmen as heroes. So I had my two basic characters in mind and a general location, then all I needed was a way to get these two men together. Who knew they would both show up at Calhoun’s ex-fiancée’s wedding! I certainly didn’t when I sat down and started writing the story.

That’s how I tend to write my stories. I come up with a title first, character names and a basic idea of what they look like next (I use photos from somewhere to refer to as I write occasionally). Then I come up with what in their backgrounds or current life might be a conflict between them. Sometimes I have a really loose idea of plot points to aim for, but I don’t outline. I’ve learned over my dozen plus years of being published that outlining in too much depth ruins the story for me. I feel like I’m finished with it after putting so much work in an outline. And my characters usually hate the outlines, too. They become “real” people (to me) and they want to follow their own paths in life, make their own mistakes, run into their walls and have to figure out ways around them. They take me along for the ride. I love working this way and I love the unexpected twists in the story telling.

THE CEO AND THE COWBOY has one such unexpected twist after Calhoun and Daniel have this sort of falling out. I wouldn’t have guessed they would do this (and I’m not telling you what happened), but it fit them and the story. So basically I’m a go-with-the-flow kind of writer.

BLURB

The whole thing about relationships and feelings confuses the heck out of Calhoun. He’s a simple cowboy and he’d been planning to marry a long-time friend for a while. When he finally realizes it doesn’t feel right, he lets her go. He probably shouldn’t have gone to her wedding to another man, but she wanted him there. But that’s when he really gets confused. His eye is drawn to a seriously hot businessman…and that sure does unnerve him…and yet….

Emotionally burned by the last man he thought he’d loved, Daniel isn’t anxious to replace him. But there is something about the proud, bedroom-eyed cowboy who shows up at his friend’s wedding. The CEO isn’t even sure if the cowboy’s gay, although the heat firing between them makes him wonder….

What he does know is that he plans to find out.

Available from:

Decadent Publishing

Amazon US

Amazon UK

Amazon FR

Amazon DE

Amazon IT

Amazon ES

EXCERPT

Calhoun wondered what the hell he was doing in Patterson’s home, why he’d agreed to come here. From the second the man had asked him to see his Western art collection, he’d sensed there was more to it than that. The way he’d kept looking at him over his beer with such heat in his eyes…the strange way he hadn’t been able to look away…all of it unnerved him. Yet here he was, following him up the large, winding staircase, up to his bedroom, no doubt. Another guy’s bedroom! Holy hell.

Even more unsettling, he’d just been kissed. By a man! Damn! And it had felt…well, good. No, better than good. He’d even kissed him back. His chest pounded; his mind whirled with all the things happening to him, with myriad confused feelings spinning through him.

Patterson climbed the stairs in front of him, his long legs taking them two at a time. With each step the fabric across his ass pulled tight. For a city boy, a businessman, this man had a mighty fine butt. Another thought that unnerved him. He’d admired men for dressing well or acting confident and in charge, traits he identified with and appreciated in others. But he’d damn sure never spent any time admiring another man’s body.

“You okay?” Patterson moved onto the landing and glanced back at him.

He saw beyond the other man’s proud exterior, saw the hint of vulnerability in his eyes. It was clear Daniel had experience in what was happening between them, while he had only a very limited knowledge of such things. Daniel seemed…worried about him. The notion settled his nerves a bit.

“I’m hanging in.” That was as much as he could admit. Fact was, he still thought he should turn tail and run like the blazes in the other direction. He met his gaze.

Relief passed through his eyes, and he turned down a long hallway. With his first step, he passed in front of some kind of sensor because lights came on along the floorboards and ahead in a room Calhoun figured must be where they were headed. His bedroom. Never in his wildest imaginings would he have believed he’d be following another man to his bedroom. His gut tightened. Sweat beaded his spine and upper lip.

Patterson—maybe he needed to think of him on a first-name basis now—waited for him just inside a room big enough to sleep a dozen or so people, except there was only one bed. A hell of a bed it was, too. He’d never seen anything like the obviously king-sized—maybe bigger—bed with four thick columns for bed posts and a fancy carved headboard as tall as he was. A thick red and black comforter covered it. He gave the rest of the dark wood furnishings barely a glance. Mahogany, were they? It was the bed that caught and held his attention.

By the time he’d stopped gaping at the bed, Daniel had removed his suit jacket and tie. His white dress shirt was half unbuttoned. Through the slight opening, he noted a light dusting of dark, curly hair. His own chest was smoothly bare, a genetic thing from his long-ago Comanche great-great-great-grandmother. His mouth watered, and it surprised him that he wanted to touch that chest hair. He shouldn’t want to, shouldn’t even be thinking about it.

“We can stop right now.” He again offered him an out, although he sounded hopeful. “I’m going to tell you up front I want you. I’ve wanted to strip you out of your fine Western suit from the moment I saw you walk into the church.”

Starla Kaye

Family is extremely important to me. Life is far too short not to spend time with these special people in some way each day. My husband supports me in my writing craziness…always eagerly waiting for that million-dollar sale. (Dream on.) My daughter supports me in so many ways, including designing my website and fixing the many computer screw-ups I manage on an almost daily basis. And the rest of my family is there for me whenever I need them. I live for them all and love them with all of my heart. I laugh with them, too.

Beyond my family, I enjoy traveling anywhere, at anytime. I’ve been fortunate enough to see so many interesting places over my life, places I’ve read about or heard about. All of my many adventures and observations of people and places help my writer’s imagination. I’m filled with ‘what ifs’ and ideas for yet more characters. My writing, too, leads me on many adventures. I dabble with romances of many sub-genres: contemporary, historical Western, medieval, sci-fi, paranormal, and Regency. As with never having enough of traveling, I will never have enough of writing.

Find Starla Kaye at:

Website: Starla Kaye

Twitter:  Starla Kaye

Facebook: Starla Kaye Writer

Pinterest:  Starla Kaye

 

Mud Mountains and Jurassic Treasures

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It’s a mountain of mud, Black Ven, constantly flowing and collapsing and being washed into the sea. It’s the largest mud slide in Europe. On one end, at a place called Church Cliffs, Mary Anning found her famous ichthyosaur fossil in 1811. It’s impossible to stand on the beach looking up at its towering black mass and not be a little bit weak-kneed.

Black Ven far left

The cool thing about Black Ven is that it’s not JUST a mountain of mud. Black Ven is a mountain of prehistoric mud, a mountain of mud filled with fossils. Raymond and I walk along the beach with the other fossil hunters beneath this intimidating wall of mud hoping we’ll get lucky and find something positively Jurassic.

Bright yellow signs warn fossil hunters to keep off the unstable mud cliffs, and even from a safe distance, occasionally we can feel the mud shifting beneath the sand and rock. Just a reminder that this is a landscape in flux.

We’re on holiday in Lyme Regis. We have our official goggles to protect our eyes from flying rock fragments, and we have our official hammers and chisels to create said flying fragments in search of the surprise in the middle. I keep my focus on the litter and debris under my feet, not just looking for fossilised treasure, but also to keep from falling on my butt.

Raymond’s beautiful Crinoid

The best find of the day is an exquisitely detailed crinoid Raymond finds while standing a little bit closer to the threatening mud mountain that I’m particularly comfortable with. But then after he finds it, I’m willing to risk a closer walk. A bloke from Brazil is there with his wife. He

The day’s treasures

points us to a right smorgasbord of belemnites closer. It’s like picking up small bits of pointed rock bullets, and the more we pick up, the more we want to pick up – even while we’re wondering what we’re going to do with a pocketful of belemnite bits.

A lot of the bigger rocks, the boulders too big to stick in our pockets and bring home are covered in trace fossils of

Ammonite in a boulder. Not Titanitus giganteus, but still very impressive.

ammonites. We take snapshots to remember how amazing they are, and we stand for a long time admiring their beauty and their size. While we eat our sandwiches looking out to the changeable sea, Raymond reads to me from the fossil book that some ammonites got to be two meters across. I’m stunned. He reads the name from the book –Titanites giganteus, which we both agree is a good name. Most died out before the Cretaceous, he adds.

As the tide begins to come in, we work our way back toward Lyme Regis and end up in the Pilot Boat Pub for a pint and some chips – our reward for the successes of the day. It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, and we’re told the worse the weather the more fossils wash out of Black Ven.

Now back home in our cottage, as we look over our stash and sip coffee, we talk about

Ammonite in boulder

what a perfect day it’s been, eagerly looking at other fossil hunters’ treasures and sharing our own, sifting through the rock that’s been washed from Black Ven by the sea and the rains, and experiencing the rush of finding bits of the ancient past before they wash out to sea and are lost forever. It was a good day. It’s supposed to rain tonight. Who knows what treasures will wash free from the prehistoric mud? Someday the whole mountain will wash into the sea, along with all of its secrets of the past. But as for today, we took home a few of those fabulously ancient secrets tucked away in the pockets of our walking trousers.

Some experiences have nothing to do with writing, and everything to do with widening and deepening my inner world so that I have something to write about. Finding Jurassic treasures that Black Ven has given up to the sea is one of those experiences.