I’m delighted to welcome my dear friend, Kd Grace, to my site today!!
Over to you Kd,
Giveaway: To help me celebrate the launch of Landscapes, I’m giving away a $30/£20 Amazon gift voucher. Enter via the Rafflecopter for chances to win!
Vampires and Consent
Thanks so much for hosting me, Kay, on Day 6 of my Landscapes blog tour and giveaway! It’s always a pleasure to spend time at yours, talking writing and characters and scheming world conquest. Today I want to talk about vampires who AREN’T safe to cuddle – one in particular.
In Landscapes, dubious consent is intrinsic to the tale I’m telling, and it’s definitely uncomfortable for some readers. It was uncomfortable for me to write. That Alonso’s strange method of courting and seducing mortal Reese Chambers is disturbing is crucial to the story. How could it be otherwise when Alonso is a vampire and his familiar and best friend is a succubus? I’m always a bit stunned with vampire stories in which the mortal and the vamp fall right into a relationship like two humans would – no biggie that one of them is an alpha predator in a seriously huge alpha way. Isn’t that a bit like walking into a pride of lions with the idea of joining the dinner party – as something other than the main course, I mean?
I don’t mind that vampires vary widely from Bram Stoker’s original to Ann Rice’s Lestat to Buffy’s Angel, to Let the Right One In, to J. R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood. What I do mind is the defanging of vampires, the “cozy-noveling” of vampires – sorry, but making them sparkle doesn’t do it for me, making them nicey-nice is a contradiction of basic character. Attraction to a vampire, in my opinion, is a bit like that attraction we all have to lions or wolves. Yes! They are beautiful, they’re gorgeous, but they ARE predators. Yes! We want to touch them, to have them touch us! But are they safe and cuddly? Hell no! And if they turn their attention fully on us mere mortals, our natural response, like any prey to predator, is to either freeze like a rabbit in the headlights or to run like hell. Alonso knows this, and the one thing he doesn’t want is to give Reese any reason to run. I’ve been scratched and bitten by cats I adored. I’ve nearly had my arms scratched off trying to flea bathe a small fluffy kitten. Yes! Predators are dangerous and the bottom line is that’s part of what draws us to them. It’s a part of what makes the vampire, the werewolf, and the demon so attractive in literature and in entertainment. Yes, we love them and want them, but how could consent ever be anything but dubious where a paranormal being is concerned?
The truth is, we don’t want to tame them. The truth is we want to somehow experience them and their world without completely losing our own. The other side of that truth – certainly in Alonso’s case, is that the tenuous connection to another mortal, who might easily be lunch, is a connection to his lost humanity, one he holds very dear, one he doesn’t fully trust. That being the case, he sends out his familiar, the succubus, Talia Zephora, to make love to Reese in his stead and to bring back that experience for him to relive when he makes love to her, when he shares blood with her. Then, in turn, he sends Talia with her experience of him back to make love to Reese. Of course Reese doesn’t know any of this, and the price of the lie will cost Alonso dearly.
The story I wanted to share was a story in Landscapes is the tale of a being who doesn’t trust himself with his own feelings, a being who has withdrawn enough from the world that to interact on the level of getting to know someone, of courting someone — as he would see it, to interact with the idea that the resulting connection might lead to sex, that it might lead to even something more, is simply out of his realm of imagining. For him it’s been that long since he’s connected with that level of intimacy. And yet, at the end of the day, Alonso Darlington is a hopeless romantic. There’s something he senses in Reese Chambers that aroused needs in him that go much deeper than a good hard shag. There’s something instinctual that tells him Reese Chambers just might be a kindred spirit. His desire to know the man is just too much to resist, so he sends Talia to an unsuspecting Reese in order to keep him safe.
Landscapes Blurb:
Alonso Darlington has a disturbing method of keeping landscaper, Reese Chambers, both safe from and oblivious to his dangerous lust for the man. But Reese isn’t easy to keep secrets from, and Alonso wants way more than to admire the man from afar. Can he risk a real relationship without risking Reese’s life?
Buy links: http://kdgrace.co.uk/books/landscapes/
Landscapes Excerpt:
It was nearing dawn when Talia returned to our accommodations smelling of sex, as I knew she would if she were to obtain for me what I wanted. By then my blood burned in my veins, and my body felt too close to me, as though the flesh that I dwelt in suddenly conspired to crush me with its demands. And though I knew that Reese Chambers could not have refused her even if she had come to him as a toothless, foul-smelling hag, I hated her that he had poured himself into her body while I had been left with only my fantasies kindling my lust to an inferno.
Though my need was such that my flesh was fevered and my cock an insistent throb, until she returned, I held myself contained within skin that felt too thin. When she saw the state that I was in, she pulled the heavy drapes with an efficient tug, then with a nod of her head, motioned me to follow her down into the basement room that had been prepared for me. When she turned to me at the foot of the bed, before she could opened her kiss-bruised lips to speak, I took her mouth, starving for the first taste of him, the taste of his saliva, the taste of his blood, mixed with hers. She’d bitten him; he’d bitten her back. He was rough, and he liked to be treated rough, but he kept that to himself. He was embarrassed by it. His lips were slightly chapped from so much time in the sun and wind, and they’d slid against hers, suckling and stroking and pressing until her mouth opened to his. With ravenous laps of my tongue, I tasted him in her mouth, and she held back the moan of response, so I could hear the echoes of his groans, heavy with need he’d not satisfied in awhile, and I felt kinship in my own unsatisfied needs. Images of him flashed through my head. Christ, his eyes were green, dark green like the evergreen forests of the north, and he kept them open when he kissed her, taking her in with his eyes.
I shoved aside the silk of her low bodice exposing her breasts, breasts that his hands had cupped. My nipples peeked to sharp aching points at the feel of his calloused thumbs raking, pressing and releasing. I breathed in his scent on her breasts, burying my face in her cleavage, licking the taste of salty, slightly picante maleness, sniffing and tasting until I could stand it no more. In one violent jerk, I tore the dress all the way down and shoved it off her shoulders, away from the flesh he had licked and kissed and mounted. I cried out at the feel of him, weight on one elbow, knee spreading her thighs, fingers opening her heaviness, anxious to penetrate, anxious to relieve his need. And then, with Talia free of clothing, Reese Chambers’ essence filled the room. Talia’s panties were still wet with his semen mixed with her humid desire, and I tore them from her and forced her onto her stomach, onto her hands and knees, so that it was not her face I saw, but his that I imagined. With hands on her hips, I raised her bottom in the air and spread her still swollen, still slippery folds with fingers made awkward by my arousal, letting the scent of his hot bread and honey release intoxicate me. Then I buried my face in her snatch and, as I ate his lust from her, I knew him.
He was Cumbrian born and bred, and his accent was the soft lilting sound of the fells. He was a landscaper and a gardener by trade. His hands held the magic of the earth and his mind conceived ideas for beautiful outdoor spaces; those he liked best were patterned after Renaissance and medieval gardens. He was homesick and heartsick. He’d gone to Surrey to work with his father because the money was good. But his father had died recently and he had returned home to Cumbria. He didn’t care if he had to work in a pub or muck stables. He wanted to be home. He missed the people and he missed the fells. He missed the simpler, more honest rhythms of life. He was shy, even a bit reclusive. He read voraciously and widely, he liked astronomy and he was afraid of snakes, though it embarrassed him to admit it. He hadn’t had sex in a long time, and found it better to have a wank session than a meaningless encounter. The facts of him, the details of his life raced at me in a flood I consumed ravenously with each lap of my tongue.
As I ate Talia I felt the shape of his face, the curve of his chin, the rise and fall of his chest as he had done the same. I felt the soft tuft of bronze curls nestled between the hard rise of his pecs and the courser, deeper curls that caressed his testicles and his cock when it was at rest, but it hadn’t been at rest. How many times had he taken her? He was thick enough to fill her and the friction of him inside was delicious and maddening. The shape of him – I wanted to caress the shape of him, with my hands, with my mouth, and the taking of his essence from Talia was an act of ripping away something that should have been mine. As I bruised her arse with kneading fingers and, as I licked the last of his release from her, she managed a breathless moan. ‘Take the rest. God, Alonso, take the rest, and release me.’
About K D Grace/Grace Marshall
Voted ETO Best Erotic Author of 2014, and a proud member of The Brit Babes, K D Grace believes Freud was right. In the end, it really IS all about sex, well sex and love. And nobody’s happier about that than she is, otherwise, what would she write about?
When she’s not writing, K D is veg gardening. When she’s not gardening, she’s walking. She walks her stories, and she’s serious about it. She and her husband have walked Coast to Coast across England, along with several other long-distance routes. For her, inspiration is directly proportionate to how quickly she wears out a pair of walking boots. She also enjoys martial arts, reading, watching the birds and anything that gets her outdoors.
KD has erotica published with SourceBooks, Xcite Books, Harper Collins Mischief Books, Mammoth, Cleis Press, Black Lace,Sweetmeats Press and others.
K D’s critically acclaimed erotic romance novels include, The Initiation of Ms Holly, Fulfilling the Contract, To Rome with Lust, and The Pet Shop. Her paranormal erotic novel, Body Temperature and Rising, the first book of her Lakeland Witches trilogy, was listed as honorable mention on Violet Blue’s Top 12 Sex Books for 2011. Books two and three, Riding the Ether, and Elemental Fire, are now also available.
K D Grace also writes hot romance as Grace Marshall. An Executive Decision, Identity Crisis, The Exhibition, Interviewing Wade are all available.
Find K D Here:
Websites: http://kdgrace.co.uk/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/KDGraceAuthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KD_Grace
GIVEAWAY!
Make sure to follow the whole tour—the more posts you visit throughout, the more chances you’ll get to enter the giveaway. The tour dates are here: http://www.writermarketing.co.uk/prpromotion/blog-tours/currently-on-tour/k-d-grace-9/
Enter the giveaway here- http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/8b9ec5be164/
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Many thanks for dropping by on your tour today hun,
Happy reading,
Kay xx
K D Grace
Thanks so much for hosting me, Kay! It’s always a pleasure to be at yours!
K xxx
Kay Jaybee
Anytime hun x