Toni Sands Shares the Story Behind Traded Innocence

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As promised, another fabulous post from the nasty authors of Xcite Book’s new Secret Library series. Today’s nasty author is in between those sexy velvet covers with me and Elizabeth Coldwell in the Traded Innocence anthology. Please welcome the yummy Toni Sands  here to get sexily historical with the title story from this sizzling anthology, Traded Innocence. Welcome Toni! 

It’s thrilling to have my story snuggling alongside those of KD Grace and Liz Coldwell in the Traded Innocence collection. These are two very talented ladies and I can’t wait to curl up with this trio of novellas.

When Xcite Books asked me to write something for their new imprint, a tingle ran down my spine. The Secret Library is a fabulous, evocative title and when I read the criteria for authors, I knew I must embrace the challenge. Powerful – passionate -provocative: three words to encapsulate an alpha male hero, a feisty heroine to fall for him and a tempting setting. I’d like to explain how my novella emerged.

I’ve written on and off for years but back in the 1990s, began submitting stories. From memory, my first effort was about as effective as a dish of strawberries and cream left out in the rain but I got my act together to write and broadcast two stories for BBC Wiltshire Sound. After I became suddenly single, concentrating upon writing a novel (still in the drawer) helped me hugely. After a move to Wales and several short story successes, I joined a writers’ group and that creativity bug had its way with me at last. I enrolled on a degree course and when the word ‘dissertation’ dropped into the mix I kept seeing smugglers and a heroine who needed rescuing from a scheming male. I’d never written a historical before so for inspiration I took Wales’ awesome Gower Peninsula as background. Research included visiting some alleged smugglers’ coves, of course.

I gained my degree and drifted away from writing ‘nice’ to writing ‘raunchy’ but those characters hung around my hard drive until last year when I knew Rebecca and Jac, my hero and heroine, must seize their moment. Here’s the first sighting of my bad boy smuggler and the lovely young woman who captures his heart …

Excerpt:

On the golden crescent visible at high tide, a horseman cantered towards the headland. An emerald green bandanna tied back glossy black hair from his face. His white shirt ballooned as he rode, muscular thighs gripping the horse’s flanks.

Fingers laced, two young women giggled their way across the dunes above, to scramble into a sandy bowl, sheltered by swaying grass and sea thrift.

‘She’ll never catch us now,’ said Rebecca, fingers raking her copper curls. ‘I won’t let her spoil our fun.’

‘Biddy’s only following your father’s orders,’ said Catrin. ‘He wants you to make a good marriage.’

‘It’s not fair! Marrying me off to someone who’s a hundred years old.’

Catrin frowned. ‘He’s a wealthy lord.’

‘Born back in the last century. You do the sums!

When Rebecca spots Jac, she begins to dream, not just about being in his arms but calculating whether he can save her body and soul from her sleazebag of a bridegroom. She engineers a meeting with Jac …

The weather was changing. There was a distant growl of thunder. Jac gestured to some nearby rocks forming a natural sitting place and Rebecca noticed something that had slipped her attention before. The tip of Jac’s forefinger was missing. Instead of sitting down, she reached for his left hand and took it in hers.

She saw the uncertainty in his eyes and recognised his vulnerability. She felt a torrent of tenderness. He was beautiful, this twenty-one-year-old Irishman. She didn’t care about his chaotic lifestyle. All that mattered was the man. Slowly she raised his hand to her mouth. Her lips closed around the damaged forefinger and she began to suck. Gently and rhythmically her tongue licked Jac’s fingertip.

Blurb:

Sea, sky and smugglers’ coves – paradise for some – despair for beautiful Rebecca. Her father plans to marry her off to a tyrant. Intrigued by a soothsayer’s words, she tumbles at the feet of bad boy Jac, an apprentice smuggler, good with women and horses. Desire burns as powerfully as Rebecca’s determination to rewrite her destiny. Local witch Morwenna is Jac’s ex-lover. Can she be trusted? Midnight at Half Moon Cove sees scavengers and power-hungry barons struggling for supremacy. The lovers must face greater danger before innocence is traded for passion in the sandy cove where they first met.

My website is www.tonisands.co.uk

My Twitter account is https://twitter.com/#!/tonisands

Toni Sands is on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003739178570

 I very much hope you’ll enjoy reading Traded Innocence and its companions in the just-released collection. Thank you, KD, for inviting me along at this exciting time. Hold out your glass, everyone, and let’s break open the bubbly!

Fifty Shades of Grey thrusts erotica into the mainstream

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The Guardian“What is changing now is the audience, and I think that Fifty Shades of Grey, and the firestorm around it, has done that … Now it is OK to read erotica – in fact, it is cool,” said author KD Grace, whose book Surrogates has just been launched by HarperCollins’s new ebook erotica line Mischief Books. “Women almost had to be given permission to be open about it, to say, ‘I read erotica and so what?’, rather than reading in the closet.”

Read the rest of the article at The Guardian.

Surrogates, Garden Porn and Inspiration

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First of all, let me just do a little happy dance while I tell any of you out there who haven’t already heard me shouting about it (the ones who might have been in internet-deprived Outer Mongolia or just waking up from a coma) My new novella, Surrogates, is out! Rock on, garden porn! … er … should that be compost on, garden porn???

Garden porn! Ah yes, my favourite erotic topic. I’ve talked about the pleasure of getting my hands dirty before, and I’ve even discussed the many innovative uses for veg and garden implements. Surrogates is nothing if not creative with both. For those of you who don’t know what a dibber is, look it up, and I’m sure you can see where I’m heading – gently of course, gently!

My heroine, Francie Carter, is a master gardener who specialises in veg, or kitchen gardens, and she makes her living restoring walled kitchen gardens on large estates. You guessed it, Francie’s garden is a veg gardener’s wet dream come true. It’s a huge plot of postage stamp beds with grass paths in between. It comes with fruit trees, succulent beds of soft fruit, a large, heated, well-equipped greenhouse and  a state of the art staging area. All of that luscious yumminess is shielded and protected by a restored medieval wall. The garden Francie tends, on the estate of her kinky, neurotic lover, Daniel Alexander III, is my dream garden. Bet that comes as no surprise.

While I was writing Surrogates for Mischief Books and fantasising all the hot sex that would take place in the hot gardens, my husband and I were on the waiting list for an allotment. We had been on that waiting list for three long years and counting. Allotments, I figured, are about as close to a walled medieval garden on an opulent estate as I’m ever likely to get. Though, to be honest, after three years of waiting, I was beginning to wonder if my chances might be better with an opulent estate.

Just a week before Surrogates was released, we became the proud holders of a prime piece of allotment real estate, and suddenly our veg growing capacity went from whatever we could squeeze into our small back garden to a plot bigger than the whole property our house is on! Of course, like most allotments, the whole property is fenced in. Okay, it’s not a medieval stone wall, but it’s close enough for me. Though we don’t have a huge greenhouse like the one in which Francie partakes of some seriously hot sex with her two men, we have inherited a little blue garden shed, which I find very inspiring, indeed!

Unlike Francie, I’m no expert. I’m just a hobbyist, a hobbyist whose hobby suddenly got a whole lot more serious. My husband reckons we have about a half an acre! A half an acre, a little blue garden shed, a huge compost heap, and several kinds of mouth-watering soft fruit already planted. Be still my heart! It isn’t just that I’ll finally have space for lots of sweet corn and lots of peas, or that I’ll finally be able to put in that asparagus bed I’ve always dreamed of, but it’s the inspiration of it all. Even stories that are totally free of garden porn bubble up from the deep, filthy, romantic part of my unconscious when my hands are in the earth and I’m growing things to eat. A whole half acre of inspiration! AND a quirky blue garden shed. I shiver with anticipation!

And to celebrate the launch of Surrogates, here’s a steamy excerpt straight from the garden. Enjoy! (Be warned, this one’s a scorcher!)

Blurb:

DANIEL ALEXANDER III takes his marriage vows seriously. Until he gets the balls to ask his wife, BEL, for a divorce, watching each other masturbate is all he can offer his beautiful gardener, FRANCIE CARTER. But when Dan’s friend, SIMON PARIS, agrees to be his surrogate, affairs of the heart get complicated.

Excerpt:

‘Francie? Francie, are you there?’ Dan made his way around behind the jungle of runner beans, getting a shoe full of warm moist soil when he stepped off the path. As the grit infiltrated his dress socks, he would have cursed his clumsiness, but then he saw her on hands and knees, the swell of her hips slightly raised in her efforts to pull stubborn weeds. She didn’t have to do that. She was the head kitchen gardener, a goddess in her domain. He hired underlings to do the weeding, but fuck, he was glad she took the hands-on approach, especially at times like this. She had kicked off the silly blue plastic gardening clogs she always wore, and her bare toes curled into the soft earth as though the very touch of it was an irresistible pleasure. How could soil between toes be so goddamned sexy?

The thin summer skirt she wore barely covered the heart-shaped roundness of her bottom, hugging her and clinging in the heavy summer heat to the delicious juncture where her thighs met. There were clearly no panty lines. She gardened in skirts, like she wanted to expose herself, like the act of planting and digging and cultivating made her a naughty bitch, who couldn’t get enough. But then that was the way he saw her in his fantasies, and oh shit, did he have fantasies about her! His cock jerked with insistence that nearly took his breath away. ‘There you are,’ he breathed, fingers already fumbling at his fly.

‘Go away. I’m busy,’ she said, giving some unfortunate weed an angry tug, an act the made the thin skirt quiver, made the firm muscles of her buttocks beneath clench and release. And his balls surged sending a testosterone buzz clear to the crown of his head.

He ignored the anger in her voice, well he didn’t actually ignore it. Her saucy temper made his cock even harder. ‘It’s all right, darling, you keep on working. Just lift your skirt for me.’ He grunted softly as he released his cock into his hand.

‘Lift it yourself. I said I’m busy.’

‘You know I can’t do that, sweetheart.’

She growled something particularly feral under her breath. He figured it wasn’t fit for polite company, which made him wish all the more that he’d heard it.

‘I’ve got such a load for you. I’ll come all over it if you don’t lift it for me,’ he said.

‘I have other skirts, Daniel.’ She only called him Daniel when she was really angry. ‘Why do I care where you come?’

‘Because you know where I really want to come, darling, and you have to know how badly I want it.’ He moved slightly to one side, not so far that her magnificent bottom wasn’t the centre of his attention, but far enough that, in her peripheral vision, she might catch a glimpse of him stroking his cock. Even if she couldn’t, she knew what he was doing, and he had no intention of being quiet about it. He lifted his balls free from his boxers and groaned at the feel of himself so full, so heavy for her.

She gave another angry yank at the offending weeds, and the resulting squeeze of her buttocks nearly sent him over the edge.

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Elizabeth Coldwell is Cooking Up Trouble for The Secret Library

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As I promised, more fabulous posts from the nasty authors of Xcite Book’s new Secret Library series. Today’s nasty author is in between those sexy velvet covers with me and Toni Sands in the Traded Innocence anthology. Please welcome the lucious Elizabeth Coldwell here to tell you a bit about her sizzling story, Cooking Up Trouble. Welcome Liz!

If there was one thing I’d put on my list, should I ever decide to compile what makes the perfect man, it would be an ability to cook. Much as I love demonstrating my own culinary skills, there’s something incredibly attractive about a man who knows his way round an omelette pan. And if he can do that flash style of chopping that reduces an onion to tiny dice within seconds, so much the better.

A man who loves food is a man who loves sex, or so it’s been claimed. That’s why I decided to set Cooking Up Trouble, my story in The Secret Library’s Traded Innocence collection, in the world of the TV cookery show. There have never been more chefs demonstrating their skills on our TV channels, whether that’s Heston Blumenthal doing something complicated with Gruyere cheese and dry ice, or the Hairy Bikers trading wisecracks while whipping up a soufflé on a tiny camping stove. Chefs have huge egos – at least the best ones do – which makes them perfect alpha male hero material, just waiting to meet their match in a feisty heroine who won’t sit back and meekly adore them, however gorgeous and talented they might be.

Scott Harley, who takes centre stage in Cooking Up Trouble, isn’t based on any one particular chef, though I did base his restaurant, the Ludgate Chop House, in Clerkenwell, a part of London I know quite well, and one where I’ve had my share of memorable meals over the years. He’s the kind of man who’ll pose naked to promote himself (while aiming to raise awareness of a charitable cause at the same time), and he won’t hesitate to insult any or all of his fellow chefs in the process (sound like anyone you’ve heard of?). Which is where Morgan Jones comes in.

Morgan is the new kid on the TV chefs block, a Rubenesque girl from the Welsh valleys who’s been on the end of Harley’s whiplash tongue before now. And that makes her more than a little wary of working with him when they’re chosen as the new presenting team on the long-running Saturday morning TV show, Cook’s Treat. She’s the queen of gooey desserts and sumptuous baked goods, the vice to Scott’s virtuous style. What neither she nor Scott expects is that when they finally meet in the flesh, their attraction will be instant and too hot to ignore, try as they might. The show’s ratings soar, propelled by their obvious chemistry together. But what will happen if their on-screen relationship moves to the bedroom – will they be able to stand the heat?

You can find out by reading Cooking Up Trouble, part of a tantalising triple bill alongside Toni Sands’ Traded Innocence and KD Grace’s Migrations. Bon appetit!

Blurb:
The good news is that Morgan Jones has landed her dream job, co-presenting the Saturday morning TV cookery show, Cook’s Treat. The bad news is she’ll be working alongside the hottest celebrity chef in London, Scott Harley. Voluptuous Morgan has never forgiven Scott for trashing her cooking style and physical appearance in a magazine article, but when she meets him in the flesh for the first time her reaction is very different. The attraction between the two of them is mutual and undeniable, but she’s determined not to fall for his obvious charms. Their chemistry on the show disguises the tension behind the scenes – a tension that grows more sexual by the day. Can she stand the growing heat – or should Morgan get out of the kitchen?

Excerpt:

This can’t be happening, Morgan told herself. Of all the people to find herself so instantly, powerfully attracted to, why did it have to be him? Biting hard on the end of her ballpoint pen, she fought to keep the feeling buried. But as Lucinda began to outline the innovations she intended to bring to the Cook’s Treats format, hoping to gain an even bigger share of the Saturday morning audience than the show already attracted, Morgan found her thoughts wandering.

She pictured again the image of Scott naked but for the concealing saucepan, his magnificent body revealed for everyone to see. In her mind’s eye, he stood in exactly that same pose. Only this time, he moved the pan away from his groin, exposing a long, hard cock that almost invited her to touch it. She pictured herself unfastening the wrap dress she’d bought for the show. Her fantasy self wore no underwear, and, beneath the dress, Morgan’s body was a symphony of soft curves. Scott’s lips curved in a lustful smile at the sight of her full breasts, their nipples suckable peaks, and the fluff of dark hair on her mound, pussy peeking out between her rounded thighs.

Time seemed to stand still as they each eyed the other’s glorious nakedness, waiting to see who would make the next move. Then Scott took a pace forward, hand moving along his cock, pushing its velvety foreskin back so the head popped out from beneath it.

Morgan saw herself sinking to her knees before him, reaching out to take his thick shaft in her hand so she could feed the tip between her lips. His breath hissed out at the sensation of being enveloped in Morgan’s warm, wet mouth. Clutching him at the base, bobbing her head up and down so he almost, but not quite, fell from her lips with every pass, she licked and sucked till he couldn’t take any more. His warning cry gave her the opportunity to pull her mouth away. Instead, she held steady, gulping down every drop of his hot, salty …

‘So what do you think, Morgan?’

Swept away by her fantasy, it took Morgan a moment to realise the question was being addressed to her.

Find Elizabeth Coldwell here:

http://elizabethcoldwell.wordpress.com/

Traded Innocence is available from

www.thesecretlibrary.co.uk

Amazon UK
Amazon US
Waterstones
Xcite Books

Shshsh! It’s a Secret: Okay, Not Any More: The Secret Library and Road Trips

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There’s something about being in the closed environment of a car moving down a long stretch of highway, watching the landscape change right before your eyes that’s a little bit magical. One of the best parts of a good road trip is that everything is in flux. I’ve always found it hard to doze when it’s not my turn to drive because I know every second my eyes are closed, an amazing landscape is passing me by.

I was fresh out of Uni and had worked a year in a small market television station in Montana. It was my first holiday. I was sort of on again off again with my landlady’s son, Lynn. He was making a cross country move and invited me to travel along as far as Missouri, where my friends and family were expecting me, and where I had planned to spend my holiday. It seemed like a good way to save money and have a great time, so we headed off across country on a crisp May morning.

We were planning to drive straight through, but ended up having car trouble somewhere in Eastern Montana in the late afternoon. Help came from a truck driver, whose CB radio handle was The Weatherman. We never learned his real name. It was only a temporary fix until we could get to a place that had the part we needed for Lynn’s truck. Lucky for us, Lynn’s truck was equipped with a CB, and he was well-versed in the protocol. When we headed back down the highway, The Weatherman was keeping an eye on us.

We travelled with him, bantering back and forth over the radios almost like we were really travelling together. The three of us had dinner at a truck stop en route. I don’t remember anything we talked about now, and nothing specific about the Weatherman and his life outside the closed environment of his truck. We travelled on through the night, across South Dakota, cosily tucked in our separate vehicles, only the soft crackle and pop of the CB connecting us. Sometime in the wee hours, we stopped at some little all-night diner on the edge of an Indian Reservation for coffee and homemade cinnamon rolls. Just after dawn, The Weatherman left us at some town that had a decent garage and continued his journey. I don’t even remember the name of the place now, but I do remember our sojourn with The Weatherman. For the biggest part of a day, our travels paralleled each other, and we were companions on the journey. Then The Weatherman went on his way, and so did we.

I never saw either of them again. Lynn settled in the DC area, where he had a job waiting. We stayed in touch for a while, then drifted apart. And who knew where The Weatherman ended up at. But for a little while he made our journey a whole lot more interesting.

The view from part of Val and Hawk's sexy road trip in Migrations.

The unexpected journey with The Weatherman is, to some degree, what inspired my novella, Migrations – that and a family trip from hell, which involved my mother, an adult niece and endless miles of whiny country music and audio romance novels. Somehow the two inspired one, steamy, romantic road trip of a novella, which is now in Xcite Book’s fabulous new Secret Library Collection in the Traded Innocence anthology. Each anthology contains three steamy, romantic novellas by some of erotica’s best authors. I feel very honoured to be included in such nasty, romantic, delisious company.

In the following few weeks as The Secret Library anthologies are released, I’ll be featuring some of the fabulous writers of those novellas on my website. The novellas are sexy and romantic and all done up in lovely discrete velvet covers. You can take them anywhere, and no one will ever guess your yummy little secret.

Here’s a little except from my novella, Migrations.

Blurb:

VAL HASTINGS, assisted by her do-gooder cousin, SALLY CLINE, is shanghaied into driving their AUNT ROSE across the US to visit her son. What begins as the trip from hell turns into a sexy adventure when they find themselves sharing the interstate with a mysterious, leather-clad biker. Aunt Rose and Sally are convinced he’s up to no good. But after Val catches him mid-wank at a rest area, and he offers her some steamy help to make her journey more enjoyable, she’s convinced he’s her nasty saviour.

Is HAWK, the biker, a murder, a free spirit, or something else? Whatever he is, animal attraction wins out over caution, as he joins the ladies for a cross country romp that keeps Sally and Aunt Rose nervous and Val hotter than her overheating engine.

Excerpt:

Val nipped the tip of Hawk’s thumb playfully and looked around at the feeding cranes. ‘Bon appetit!’ She called, uttering a startled gasp when he pulled her down onto the grass, his mouth covering hers as he engulfed her in his warmth and his scent.

‘Is this payment for what I owe you?’ She whispered when he pulled away.

‘Only the first instalment.’ He pushed the jacket off her shoulder along with the straps of her tank top and bra and bathed the sensitive hollow of her collar bone in warm kisses and nibbles, causing her to squirm against him.

‘It’s a big one then? The debt I mean.’ She was finding it more and more difficult to think in coherent sentences as he cupped and caressed.

‘You could be in the hotel room with your auntie and cousin watching movies on demand.’

‘Enormous then,’ she groaned, pressing up against him.

‘Mmm. I doubt if you’ll ever be able to fully repay it.’ He insinuated one knee between her legs and wriggled and nestled until his groin pressed against hers, until she could feel the hardness of him through the rub of jeans against jeans. Then he went back to work on her mouth, his tongue dancing over hers and lapping at her hard pallet, as they rocked and shifted against each other, until the friction was exquisite.

He pulled away enough to shove her tank top up until her belly was bare, then he  kissed her just below the waist band of her bra where her ribs came together, causing her to inhale in tight little gasps. He licked and nuzzled his way down to her navel, while he opened her zipper and slid a hand inside the low waist band of her panties, clearing the way for his hungry mouth. She arched up to meet his kisses, as he slid her clothing down over her hips.

It felt as though she’d been waiting forever for this moment, as he caressed and suckled the landscape of her, exploring with his fingers, with his mouth, with his eyes, like Lewis and Clark discovering a new land, like Darwin discovering a new species.

The little moan that escaped his throat against her clit might have been from the feel of her so engorged and open and receptive, or it might have been from the feel of his heavy penis pressing through his jeans. Whatever the cause, she returned the moan and curled her fingers in his hair holding him to her undulating groin. The cranes were all around them, so close she could almost touch a feathered neck or a slender leg. She felt their singleness of purpose as though it were her own, and Hawk felt it too, she was sure he did.

He nuzzled and nipped and licked at the split of her, burying his face in the warm wetness of her, caressing her fullness with deep, expressive lavings. And when she was practically in a frenzy with the want of him, he pulled away and looked up into her eyes, his face glistening with her juices. ‘I don’t want to play this time, Val. I want the real thing. I want all of you. I want to be inside you.’

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