Welcome Bonnie Dee!

Today I'm delighted to welcome the very talented Bonnie Dee back to the blog. As well as being the author of a string of imaginative and passionate stories in several sub-genres of romance, Bonnie is my writing partner in the Fairytale Fantasies series at Samhain :). 

Fractured Fairytales of Erotic Education 

By Bonnie Dee

Fairytales aren’t just for kids anymore. Updated adult versions are becoming more popular for grown up girls. For many women, fairytales were their first introduction to romance stories. While we enjoy the sense of familiarity we feel when reading books based on those venerable tales, we now want them a little edgier and sexier.

Marie and I have enjoyed crafting several re-imagined fairytales over the past few years, starting with Cinderella Unmasked, the story of what happens to a disillusioned Ella after her happily ever after. Only a girl when she married Charming, the queen comes to some realizations about what love truly is and finds her real heart’s desire in an unexpected place.

Our collaboration, Demon Lover is based on the Rumplestiltskin tale with shades of the Persephone myth added in. What if the creature who bargains for the queen’s child isn’t a gnarled gnome but the King of the Underworld, who has a good reason for taking the child? And what if the mother wouldn’t allow her baby to be snatched away, but went along to the Underworld to try to win her back?

AwakeningBeauty continues our theme of “what if” things were just a little bit different from the original fairytale. Aurora awakens in modern times, not with a kiss but with a hard shake given by a “prince” of industry who has reached a crossroads in his life. The unlikely pair feels an instant connection which the cynical hero can’t quite believe in…until that bond becomes paramount to their survival.

Our newly released story, Sex and the Single Princess, is based on one of my personal favorite fairytales, The Twelve Dancing Princesses aka Girls Gone Wild. In the original tale, the king is incensed by the way his daughters wear out their dance slippers and sends a poor soldier to track them and find out where they go at night. Marie and I didn’t change the original tale as much as we have others, except we made the soldier into Will Shoemaker, the court cobbler.

We really enjoyed writing princesses with feminist ideas about taking charge of their own destinies. Princess Iris struggles between her duty to her country (ie. marrying to strengthen relations with a foreign nation) and her desire for personal freedom, represented by the fairy world where she can dance with a handsome elf lord every night. Lower class Will struggles simply to get by in this world and tries not to dream of a woman who could never be his. I’m a huge fan of romance bridging a vast economic chasm and Will and Iris’s story was a sexy, fun and interesting one to write.

If you enjoy the Once Upon a Time TV series, you may like our fairytale fantasies. Marie and I certainly hope you’ll give one a try. I’d like to give away any one of the tales from our fairytale fantasies collection to a random winner drawn from those who comment today. Let me know in your comment which fairytale you would like to see rewritten with an adult slant. The lesser known the better!

Excerpt from:

Sex and the Single Princess by Bonnie Dee and Marie Treanor.

Available Now from Samhain, Amazon and other e-tailers

Iris sponged at the spreading stain on her dress with a handkerchief dampened in water from a fountain. She didn’t know what tremor had caused her to spill the wine but was glad of the distraction and a chance to breathe fresh air. Her encounter with Hadriel was growing increasingly heated, and she didn’t want to go too far.

If you play with fire, you can’t be surprised when your fingers get singed, Lady Lambert’s voice nagged her.

Iris sighed. Hadn’t she decided earlier today she’d take advantage of this opportunity to satisfy herself with Hadriel? She’d sworn she would have one sexual fling to remember when winter nights in an old man’s arms grew too unbearably long. Yet here she was, dithering again. For heaven’s sake, she was as scatterbrained as Pansy, blowing this way and that on a whim. But something inside her was telling her that having sex with Hadriel would be a mistake. For it wasn’t him she wanted.

“Piss!” she threw the stained handkerchief on the flagstones where the breeze caught it, and it tumbled like a little white ghost across the terrace. Iris sank down on the nearest bench.

This should be so easy—enjoy a strings-free night of passion with a passionate prince from a magical realm—but she couldn’t relax and totally surrender to the experience. Thoughts of Will continued to distract her. She pictured his furrowed brow if he knew what she was up to, and she had no idea why his opinion of her behavior mattered so much to her.

“Will, you’re ruining my night,” she muttered.

A small sound, the catch of breath in a throat, brought her head up with a jerk. But she saw no one in the garden other than a necking couple on another bench, sheltered from revealing moonlight by tree branches.

“Who’s there?” she whispered, peering into the darkness.

This time, she had no doubt that an unseen presence was nearby. She felt the heat of a body right in front of her, heard the slight creak and rustle of clothing as the invisible being knelt or perhaps settled on its haunches. The hair on her nape prickled, and she half rose from the bench.

“I’ll scream,” she warned. “Someone will be here in seconds.”

“Don’t scream. I won’t harm you.” The voice was a mere whisper. She might’ve thought it was the breeze, but air couldn’t form words.

“Who—or what—are you?” Her eyes scanned back and forth as if she could force this mysterious entity to appear.

“Who do you want me to be?”

“I don’t want you to be anything. I want you, whatever you are, to go away and leave me be.”

“Is that really what you want, Iris?” The voice was suddenly close to her ear, so low, so soft and so seductive that her initial panic turned into a different sort of agitation.

Her breathing quickened as did the beating of her heart.

Something warm settled on her arm, a hand—not gripping, just resting there light and easy. A roughened palm began to stroke her bare skin, sending chills through her body.

Iris didn’t pull away. She should be running from this unknown entity. Considering she was in the land of the fae, the creature could be an evil spirit, perhaps twisted and obscene in physical appearance. It might be trying to seduce her soul as well as her body. She should be terrified. But she wasn’t.

She was entranced as the hand slowly stroked her arm, lifting the tiny hairs with a charge of energy. Another hand settled on her knee as the unseen being knelt before her, and then a breath of air warmed her face as it—he—leaned closer. Lips touched the corner of her mouth in a gentle kiss.

“You are so beautiful.” Despite the quietness of the whisper, the voice seemed familiar. And the touch. Iris struggled to grasp why, but her senses felt clouded, perhaps from too much honeyed wine, and she couldn’t focus her thoughts.

“Why do you come here, Iris? What do you want?”

“I like to dance, and a handsome escort awaits me inside, so if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Invisible.”

“Wait.” His voice was suddenly commanding, and Iris found herself rooted to the bench. “Kiss me first. Just once.”

“Why should I when you won’t even show yourself?” she answered tartly.

“I can’t. I’m under a spell, but perhaps one kiss from you will set me free.”

His breath brushed her lips. He was so near she had but to shift a little and their mouths would touch. The idea of such intimate contact with a mysterious stranger was intoxicating, and a little voice in her mind—different from Lady Lam’s nagging—murmured that this was exactly the encounter she’d dreamed of having tonight. Not Hadriel but this man was the reason she’d come here.

Iris leaned in, and the warm softness of lips pressed against hers. She tasted the salt and sweetness of an unseen mouth. Her eyelids drifted softly closed, and she could forget she was kissing an invisible man. All she need do was surrender, and as his hands stole around her and his body pressed close, she felt she’d come home.

He pulled away, and she exhaled a little sigh.

“All right?” he whispered, and another wave of déjà vu swept over her. She’d been asked that question by that exact voice many times. She felt this mysterious man was no mystery at all but someone very familiar to her; yet she couldn’t see her way clear to who he was. He might have been shrouded by a spell.

She nodded and answered breathily, “I’m fine. Kiss me again.”

He did, possessing her mouth with a ferocious determination that swept her off her feet, though she remained seated on the garden bench. His body pressed between her knees, bunching her skirts and weighing them down, and his hands pressed firmly against her back. She could feel the heat burning through her bodice into her skin.

His kisses continued, fervent, desperate, like a man grasping for a branch that would keep him from tumbling down a cliff. He might not have Hadriel’s seductive technique, but, oh, he made up for that lack in pure ardor. This was what it felt like to be worshipped with kisses.


To enter Bonnie's contest for an ebook from the Fairytale Fantasies series, answer her question above - Let me know in your comment which fairytale you would like to see rewritten with an adult slant. Her contest will close at midnight tonight and the winner will be announced tomorrow on this thread.