By the Sea, Part 1
She swears she knew him then, back when life was full of dreams and promises, and cotton candy blossoms so big they smeared on her nose when she bit into them. Back when unicorns were real, and pain was not a word that exhausted her vocabulary in its bitter streak across her world, molding a quiet wake in the thin, wired lines that sprouted from the corners of her eyes.
But she didn’t.
It’s just that, in the touch of his hand now, in the way he closed it around hers and pulled her into the swell of his chest as he slid his fingers into her hair, it was too easy to forget she hadn’t. That Josh hadn’t always been there, watching, encouraging, and loving her. He’d heard it all, seen the scars that ran along her side, knew in the occasional manner she jumped when he walked too swiftly and surprised her how fiercely that life had embedded itself inside her. It had branded her even through the rosy smile on her lips, and the chime of laughter she regularly exhaled with him. It was for this she loved him, treasured how he drew her nearer, somehow pulling her close enough it felt like they could become one by the sea that swept onto the sandy shore, swirling around and between their bare toes as if promising to take them away with the current, into the wide open space of their love.
“Can I kiss you, Anya?” he asked.
Always, this question. Despite her gaze into his eyes, surrendering everything to him because it was so easy, so right. Josh took her chin in his fingers as she nodded fast, leaning up on her toes to try and fall further into him when their mouths met. His tongue and hers weaved like coils of algae drifting to and fro, in, between, around, lazily surrounded by the kiss of the tide. As the wind gusted around them, rustling the fabric of her dress, seizing her hair and whipping it around their faces, it was hard not to feel herself disappearing with him, fading into the night, into the sea.
“We’ve only an hour,” she whispered. But his lips covered her sigh, smothered the truth that kept breaking them apart. She was hers, he was his, and yet they weren’t. Still, this, too, was easy to forget as he kissed her with so much love. As the two of them dropped to their knees, oblivious to the grit of the sand digging into their skin, to the wind warning them beneath the moon that lit them up on the shore.
Josh did not stop kissing her as he pushed her back, his hands slipping up her skirt, trailing along the smooth lines of her legs and caressing the fleshy rounds of her thighs. His tongue stayed heated against hers as he tucked fingertips under the sides of the flimsy underwear she wouldn’t wear at home but had donned just for him. His breath came sweet on her cheek as he pulled the fabric down, pausing as she swayed her hips for him to work it over her bottom, then down past her knees. He discarded it beside their bodies on the shore, a crumpled ball of lace that might, in this wind, be blown away, carrying the secret that bound them as it tumbled to the water and drifted out to sea.
“I’ve missed you,” Josh said, and he kissed her once, hands slipping back up her thighs, pushing up her skirt, revealing Anya to the night sky. She loved his stare, torn between two views—that of her face, and the wetness waiting for him between her thighs. It was when he looked there that he slid two fingers against her, tracing the silky cleft only partially shown in the moonlight, but so clear to him as he eased them inside. This is when she moaned, craning her neck, her lips falling apart in more whimpers as his fingers sank so far within her. Josh cupped her knee with his other hand, pushing it aside, bidding the split of her thighs be visible to him, the truth of how they loved divulged once more. Behind him, the water swelled and rolled, but she was lost in the sounds that fell from her throat, in the surge of love for him. For this man who understood and knew her, who made her feel like the rest was nothing but a faded memory she didn’t need to revisit, despite the relentless hold it still had on her.
Josh slipped another finger inside, gliding all of them in, out, kissing her knee, staring into her face. When she reached for his shoulders, begging him to sweep into her, he wrestled down his pants to settle between her thighs. Anya weaved her fingertips around the side of his neck, urging him, and Josh rested against the heat he’d stirred up in her, asking again in his whisper if he could take her in the way they both loved.
“Yes,” she gasped, the sound so crisp in that night with the sudden thrust of him into her, in the movements of him inside her, and her movements with him. Anya dug her feet into the sand and lifted her hips to meet him, arching against his deep thrusts as she caressed his shoulders and he sighed her name. He heaved above her and she swayed with him, needing him in her, with her, part of her, for as long as she would be allowed. As his motions grew faster he brought his lips back to hers, kissing her as though she was his princess and he was her prince, as though they truly were familiar then, when those dreams existed. Josh curled one hand around her arm, and the other slid beneath her dress, clutching at the skin of her side and mindlessly tracing the scars that weaved down to her hip, where he gripped her tight to drive faster, deeper inside. And in all this Anya never hesitated, never stopped arching up to meet him, gasping for the seal of her cunt around him, for the pulse of her lust shaking her, filling her, making her desperate for him like she was and believed she forever would be.
“Anya…” he said, the name a bite on her cheek before his breath caught, a moan that echoed hers beneath him. Together they thrust, caving, coming, his love meeting hers as she shuddered around him, tucking her nails into the sides of his body as the feeling washed through her and lapped at her skin like the moist, salty air. The waves rolled on behind them, a whisper to the whish of their breaths, to the soft kisses they played on one another’s mouths.
In time, their hearts settled. Their breaths fell still. Josh swept his fingers back and forth over the skin of her thigh as he kept his forehead against hers and gazed into her eyes. They would lie like this as long as they could, treasuring each quiet minute until it was time for her to stand and leave him there. The perfect fairy tale of their love would be held once more, a story in their hearts as strong as the tide, as bright as their very own moon, and deep as the ocean they would drown in, together, if they could.
*
“By the Sea” is the first installment of a three-part series. Click here to read part two, “Driftwood.”
Interviewed on Inside the Erotica Author’s Studio!
The most exciting thing happened earlier this week—the lovely Rose Caraway of The Kiss Me Quick’s Erotica Podcast had me up to her studio to record an interview! Wow!
Rose Caraway is the editor of The Sexy Librarian’s Dirty 30, a collection in which I am lucky enough to have two stories, “The Bells” and “The Doll.” To celebrate the release of this book, Rose has been interviewing the contributors on her “Inside the Erotica Author’s Studio” series. The whole idea is to introduce you to each of us while finding out more about us and our stories. I could not be more thrilled to be a part of this book, and now to have had the privilege of talking with Rose in her actual studio—well, let’s just say the whole experience has completely boggled my mind.
We had such a great conversation about all sorts of things—you’ll find out about my tendency to try just about anything, how I write, thoughts on my stories, my experience with having an agent, and even an interesting date accident I almost had. Rose is positively one of the sweetest people on the planet, as is the amazing Big Daddy, so this interview made me feel right at home in their studio!
If you’d like to check it out, you can do so right here with the player below. Or, if you’d like to read Rose’s show notes alongside the interview, you can click on over to The KMQ’s. Either way, I hope you enjoy listening to us as much as I enjoyed my time hanging at The KMQ’s!
Also, don’t forget to check out The Sexy Librarian’s Dirty 30 in audiobook or ebook format. And if you’d like to hear some of my previous work narrated on The Kiss Me Quick’s, check out my story “Soundscapes,” or a poem, “Owned.” It’s been a privilege working with The KMQ’s, and now to be interviewed by them!
Thanks so much for joining us!
XX,
Jade
N.B. You can now listen to “The Doll” narrated by the fabulous Rose Caraway right here!
Poetry by Jade – My New Secondary Site!
Poetry, poetry, poetry—no matter what I do, I never stop writing it. This isn’t a bad thing, but it’s definitely a thing. On the side of the road, on the move, on the phone, in a bar…poetry pours from my head on a fairly regular basis, and has since my early teens.
I am primarily an erotica writer, and I’ve tried to keep the bulk of my poetry here on the erotic side—but the truth is that I write some things that don’t necessarily fit into that description. So, since I wanted to be able to post pieces as they flow for those interested in that aspect of my writing, I decided it was high time to create a secondary site. I’ve been prepping it behind the scenes for a little while, and I’m excited to announce today that Poetry by Jade is officially up and running!
If you are a lover of verse, please come by and visit. You can follow that site specifically if you’d like, and while I’ll post mostly erotic poetry there (with occasional pieces guest appearing here), that site will definitely carry the non-erotic work when it happens. In the meantime, this will remain my main site, hosting my full focus and majority of postings—from short fiction and musings to confessions and news.
All that said, I will be posting a brand new erotic poem over at the new site a teeny bit later today—so I hope you’ll please come join me for the adventure. 🙂
XX,
Jade
Mojo Lost, Mojo Found
It has been an insane seven months. I’ve had more stress happening in my life than is reasonable, most it fueled by big drama that I don’t care to get into and that I’d say is only half resolved, but that—I will finally admit—did, in no uncertain terms, zap the shit out of my writing mojo.
Now, for those of you following along, you may have picked up I’m a bit hard on myself. I am part masochist, part perfectionist, part over analyst, part wannabe superhero, and part head-in-the-sand ostrich, so when you mash all this together, sometimes it takes a bad turn. I’m freakishly good at putting on a big smile to cover whatever the hell is going on, ignoring when things are bad, and pushing through insane amounts of pain. On top of that, I am so optimistic (I’m of the “fuck half-full, I have a glass!” ilk), I can convince myself things aren’t as bad as they seem, all while crying about it at the same time.
Take a chill pill already!
Awesome!
Not.
So here’s the deal…I was working on this book for the last, oh, ten or so months. I was excited about it and the vision I had for it—except I kept ignoring how stressed out I was. Well, okay, that’s not entirely true. I was admitting how stressed out I was, but ignoring how much it was affecting me. Insomnia? Whatever. Excessive oversleeping when given the chance? No biggie. Hours spent watching TV to try and soothe my head, chiding myself the entire time because I should be writing? Whatever. Dragging myself into my desk chair and trying to figure out why the hell I couldn’t focus on the words in front of me, not because I needed a muse, but because day after day I had a bizarrely “fuzzy head” that was, honestly, starting to make me feel physically ill? P-shaw. I mean, the list of symptoms went on and on—but despite all these warning signs, good friends telling me to give myself a break, and me telling me to give myself a break (ha ha), I just kept going. And perhaps as no surprise, the book suffered massively because of this.
There’s good news, though, I promise! First, I had a huge meltdown (no, I swear, this is good). Malin James and I often talk about how some people run like sports cars—we run really hot, crazy fast, and super flashy…and then one part flies off on the track and shit hits the fan and our machine needs major repair. This is complicated and expensive, but damn, does that baby run better once it’s fixed. That said, I am certain I was a BMW in a past life, because, holy shit, did this little car have a break down. In the middle of it, my amazing beta babes kindly (and firmly) took the book out of my hands and suggested a break.
Break? Me?
I circled the track a few more times. Was I really going to break? Would I come back on the track speedier and flashier than ever if I did?
I won’t lie—this part was scary and fucking hard. I have an ingrained fear of doing what I did long ago, something I talked about in my interview with Molly Moore about my adventures between writing as a teen and not coming back to it seriously until about five years ago (and only because I was grounded after a major injury): wandering away from my passion for way too long of a time. I consider myself a Jill of all trades—not amazing at anything but pretty good at a lot of things—and sometimes these side things consume me. (Did I mention earlier I’m also part obsessive? Yeah, that too.) Working Renaissance Faire, becoming a seamstress, becoming an aerial acrobat—these things were passions of mine that I dove into with everything I had, forgetting all the while how deep my true passion, writing, ran in me. When I found that drive again a few years ago, it was so hot, so amazing, so why-the-fuck-have-I-been-away-from-you-for-so-long?, I guess whenever I do cut myself some slack, there’s this tick of worry that I’ll be seduced away in some schmaltzy love affair that might distract me, again, from the real deal.
But that’s not what happened. I’m older, and I understand now how much I love writing…so I went ahead and did it.
I gave myself permission to break.
For a few weeks after the breakdown, I tinkered—and then I just threw up my hands and walked away. Other than a few poems and some blog posts, I barely wrote. Then I took it a step further and took an entire week off to do absolutely no writing or editing or thinking about writing at all. I picked up my niece for a couple days and took her Great America (so fun!), I read some books, I cooked, I slept, I watched a lot of movies, and then I woke up one day and…
BOOM.
There it was, cuddling up beside me—this great big urge to sit in front of the computer and write again.
I took it real easy at first, deciding there was no need to work on a large project, but rather, to write a bunch of small things. I needed to practice starting and stopping again, rather than [over]futzing with something too big to chew on just yet. I needed to simply have a good time writing whatever I felt like, no matter if it was good or bad or for any purpose other than to make me smile again. This was the deal I made with myself for the first two weeks I’ve come back—and, holy fuck, I’m a bit shocked at how much has poured out of me! In the first week I wrote six flash pieces, five shorts, a couple blog posts, and opened up documents or scribbled down notes for upwards of a dozen starter ideas or first lines for new things. I even revisited a character I wrote about prior to switching to erotica, and decided she may one day make it into an erotic series, who knows…but I wrote a flash piece about her to enter a contest.
Then came the best part: my amazing beta babes, Malin and Tamsin, sent me feedback for that book I mangled. The evidence that it was in need of work was clear, but guess what? It turned out there was hope in the thing. And instead of worrying about it, I read their feedback and smiled. Yes, there’s work to be done—but it no longer feels so foreboding and terrifying. It actually feels like it’s going to be pretty fun!
So, here I am in my second week of “play time,” and I’m starting to toy with ideas on what I’d like to do next. Fix the book? Likely. Work on other big things? For sure. But either way, I think it’s finally safe to say it.
I may have lost my mojo for a bit there, but, hot damn—that baby is found!
XX,
Jade
Pillow Talk Secrets: It’s Been a Year!
Hey everyone! Welcome back to our newest edition of Pillow Talk Secrets. Today, Tamsin Flowers, Malin James, and I celebrate our first year together as co-bloggers, and the lovely Tamsin leads us through more musings on all the sex and erotic topics we just love to talk about! This time we reflect on some of our favorite posts, and also consider the recent release from E.L. James, Grey. We hope you’ll join us!
As usual, I’ve included a snippet here with a link at the end for you to hop on over to our site to continue. Or, feel free to head there now to read the post in its entirety.
Thanks for reading!
XX,
Jade
Pillow Talk Secrets
Tamsin: Hello Jade, hello Malin, how are you both this afternoon?
Jade: Hello, lovelies! I’m well. How about you two?
Malin: Good morning / afternoon, ladies! I’m doing good – happy to be here with you!
T: Excellent! Yes, it’s been a little while since we all got together. But we’ve made it through our first year, so yay for us! How do you two feel about that?
It’s our anniversary so the cakes are on us!
J: Definitely a yay to that! I am tickled we’ve gone a year strong, and that it’s been such a fabulously fun year, too!
M: Agreed. I can’t believe how quickly it flew by! Our anniversary snuck up on me!
J: It was officially the 4th, yes?
M: Yep! So we’re already into our second now. We’re growing up!
T: It may only have been a year, but I feel like I’ve known you two for a lot longer! And I have to say, we’ve done some great posts during that time. Any favorites? Anything we’ve missed out on so far?
M: I think my favorite was the one we did on details in erotica, if only because there are so many ways of approaching and responding to description. But I also loved our taboo discussion. There’s so much there. It feels like we touched on a lot, but only scratched the surface.
J: I would have to say I’m torn between two – the taboo talk is definitely one of them. We covered a lot of interesting ground with what we did talk about, but I have a feeling we may need to go there again, big time. Also, I honestly really enjoyed our end of the year / New Year’s post. It felt very cozy. 🙂
T: I’m trying to remember our very first post – it was a little introduction to ourselves – and looking back at it, what a sweet gang of newbie writers we were!
J: Yes we were!
M: What about you, Tamsin? Any favorites or topics you’d like to get more of?
T: Early on we did a post on boys, alphas and Doms – it was fun! So maybe we should do a post about some of our favorite types of erotica heroines…I’m sure we’d have a lot to talk about on that subject. What about you, Jade?
J: I think that would pose some good ideas, for sure. I also think it would be interesting to talk about crossover things…how erotica merges with other genres and such. And perhaps word choices? There are just so many great avenues to explore when talking dirty, wouldn’t you say?
M: There’s an almost endless supply of topics, it’s true. I’d also love to talk about how sex can be used in fiction. Of course, there’s the obvious turn-you-on motive (nothing wrong with that!), but it can also deeply affect character motivations and further plot. Sex is powerful in writing. It would be fun to explore why and how.
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