Kissing for Good—The Snog for Sommer Blog Tour
It is my privilege to participate in the Snog for Sommer blog tour event to help support author colleague Sommer Marsden and her family as Sommer’s husband battles cancer. The blog tour features more than 50 authors who have posted snippets of their work featuring kissing in order to encourage financial support for Sommer and her family in the midst of their current and immense challenges.
You may recall a few weeks ago when I posted about Summer Loving, the anthology created to financially benefit Sommer and her family. If you missed it, feel free to take a look at my post that explains in a bit more detail why so many of us in the erotica and erotic romance author communities are aspiring to help Sommer and her family at this time. (The post also includes buy links, so feel free to pick up your copy of Summer Loving both to benefit Sommer and to read some lovely flash erotica.)
To participate in the Snog for Sommer blog tour, authors are asked to post a kissing-related excerpt on their blogs today. As I announced yesterday (see post below!!) my first single-author short story collection, If…Then, should be coming out later this month. (I don’t have an exact release date and will be sure to update when I do!) As it happens, there are a few kissing scenes in it. I’ve chosen to excerpt one from one of the two stories in If…Then that are original to the collection/not previously published. The following excerpt is from “Soft and Gray”:
Fighting the urge to turn around and reenter that which was familiar to him, Aaron turned left and set off across the foyer, bypassing the sweeping staircase for the hallway that ran behind it. He had no idea where Kate would be. Most of his visits to the Buchanans’ house had been formal, without much wandering of the countless rooms of the mansion. But the chances were just as good he would run into Kate as either of her parents, and he could always excuse himself if the latter happened. Finding her was more important than politeness.
He quickened his pace, then stopped as he heard a noise. He crept forward, passing a full-length mirror on his right before he came upon the open doorway to the billiard room. Kate was there, quietly pulling a bottle from the wet bar. The glass clinked as the bottle brushed one of its neighbors.
She looked up as he entered. He couldn’t see her eyes. Minus the backlight of the bar, there were no lights on in the room. He couldn’t tell whether she felt anger at his parading around the house trying to find her or relief that he had done exactly that.
He stopped just inside the doorway. Before he realized what he was doing, his hand reached behind him and pushed the door closed. Kate’s shadow didn’t move. When he heard the faint latch, he slowly took a step forward and moved around the pool table toward her. She set her drink down. As he got closer, the smoothness of her skin took on a glow in the faint backlight.
Bethany’s piano playing started up again. Aaron continued forward and slipped his arm around Kate’s waist before he could see her gray eyes clearly. If they looked as they had the last time he’d seen them, he knew he wouldn’t have the nerve to touch her.
To Aaron it felt as if her body tried to stiffen but was receiving mixed signals somewhere inside. He pushed his mouth to hers, suddenly breathless with wanting her. Grabbing her with both arms, he twirled her around and lifted her in one movement to the pool table where she sat with her legs wrapped around his waist as he kissed her with a desperation he couldn’t remember ever feeling. It didn’t have to do with her body, with fucking her. It was just her. Or him. Or both, he couldn’t tell. He just knew that the very act of touching her was like an orgasm. Their clothes were all on, his hands touching only her waist, and he felt like he was coming—like something was climaxing in him that wasn’t sexual but felt just as powerful, as though he couldn’t bear to stop touching her.
Kate’s lips were kissing him back, but it felt like a moment out of time, like something beyond their actual lives that he couldn’t necessarily count on to mean what he wanted it to when it was over. He had seen her body overtake her before, when it was as though it borrowed time from her mind.
It didn’t mean it wouldn’t have to be paid back.
-from “Soft and Gray,” a story in If…Then, forthcoming from 1001 Nights Press
Thank you so much for coming by today, and please visit the Snog for Sommer blog tour page to find links to all the other participants, as well as a link at which to donate if you feel so moved. Namaste, and be well!
Love,
Emerald
“Maybe you’re losing pieces of your heart, you have a world but it stopped turning…spare your heart, save your soul…and hey, now, let’s recover your soul…”
-Elton John “Recover Your Soul”
