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.

Just Released: a new Fairytale Fantasy...

Sex and the Single Princess is the fourth of the Fairytale Fantasies co-written by Bonnie Dee and me, and it was released by Samhain Publishing on Tuesday! Hoping you'll rush off to buy a copy! To encourage, you there's an excerpt after the blurb and buy links :)

SEX AND THE SINGLE PRINCESS
By BONNIE DEE & MARIE TREANOR
Out Now from Samhain Publishing, Amazon and other etailers.


Behind every beautiful shoe is a sexy shoemaker. 

A Fairytale Fantasies story.

Will Shoemaker works his fingers to the bone to make quality footwear worthy to grace the feet of the king’s six daughters. But recently his one-of-a-kind creations have been coming back to him in tatters.

Determined to find out what is destroying his shoes—and threatening his position as royal cobbler—Will follows the princesses and discovers they’re dancing their nights away in a fairy world. The princess with the fastest feet is Iris, whom he has long loved from afar.

With an arranged marriage looming in her future, Iris wrings as much pleasure as possible out of her last days of freedom. Yet even as she whirls in the arms of an elven prince, she dreams of the lowly cobbler and fantasizes that it’s his work-roughened hands on her delicate skin.

In a magical realm where anything is possible, Will and Iris shatter all barriers between them and find the ultimate fantasy—love—in each other’s arms. But there’s betrayal and treachery afoot...and it’s poised to destroy everything on both sides of the veil. Including any chance of happily ever after for Iris and Will.

*

“Will you try them on?” Will said.

Wordlessly, steeling herself not to wince if he touched any of the cuts and abrasions acquired last night, she lifted her right foot, and Will took her heel between his finger and thumb. His grip was firm yet so gentle that even if he’d touched a sore bit, she was sure it wouldn’t have hurt. She’d have liked it just as much.

Had his touch always affected her this way? Had there always been this tingling, electrical lightning spark  that sizzled up her whole foot to the top of her leg, and to the secret center of her sensuality? Or had she just grown so depraved in her nighttime adventures that any man now affected her as Hadriel did?

Delicately, almost lovingly, Will guided the shoe onto her foot before setting it on the ground. Once there, he caressed around the toes with his fingertips, then slid his hand around the whole shape of her foot, presumably to check that the fitting was snug without being too tight.

Iris found she was holding her breath. The warmth of his fingers soaked through her stockings into her skin. She watched his face, taking in the frown of concentration, the upturn of his mouth into something approaching a smile, as if his shoes on her feet gave him pleasure. A serious, talented man who took pride in his work, who worried over trifles yet was not without a sense of humor. It came out occasionally in a quick riposte to her teasing, or in a half-hidden smile at someone else’s words.

Will. He wasn’t like any other man of her acquaintance—her father’s gallant courtiers or the stern politicians. Certainly not like Hadriel or the other beautiful men of the elven world.

“Have you always been a shoemaker, Will?” she asked.

“Yes. And my father and grandfather before me.”

“Did you never want to do anything else?”

“No,” he confessed, releasing her foot with apparent reluctance. “But then, there was never really a question of anything else. Shoemaking has always been the family business, and there was no one but me to inherit it.”

“Did you rebel?” she teased.

He took her left heel between his fingers and began to slide on the second shoe. “No. I love making shoes—as neither my father nor grandfather did, to be honest. I love to create beauty in this way, whether for men or women. I try to put something of the owner’s character into each shoe, to make it unique and lasting.” His lips twisted, perhaps with embarrassment at having said so much. “Although I never quite seem to have managed the ‘lasting’ since I came to court.”

“The boots and the walking shoes have lasted,” she assured him. “It’s only the dancing shoes that wear out, and that truly isn’t your fault.”

He glanced up at her, his fingers absently stroking along the side of her foot. She shivered. His expression was unreadable—carefully so.

“Will you tell that to the king?” he asked.

“I might drop it into the conversation,” she said airily, “but that isn’t what will get you your job back.”

He seemed to suddenly realize what he was doing, and his fingers stilled. He checked the heel a little more perfunctorily and stood. “Do they feel comfortable? Would Your Highness care to walk in them?”

Iris rose with such alacrity that she took both of them by surprise. She was too close to Will, almost as close as she’d been to Hadriel last night. What would it be like to dance in the strong arms of the unsophisticated shoemaker? The thought excited her, and she wondered if it was merely the forbidden that always affected her like this—the elven realm, the common man. It was a lowering thought in some ways, yet she couldn’t resist teasing him.

She touched one downturned corner of his finely shaped lips and pushed it gently upward. “Do you know, the only time you smile is when you’re looking at shoes? What would Mrs. Shoemaker make of that?”

“There is no Mrs. Shoemaker,” he said. Color seeped under his skin, but to her surprise, he didn’t move away from her touch.

“I know that.” Had she known that? Had she cared, when she’d teased him almost to the verge of flirtation? The truth was, he was so far beneath her that there was no point in even considering the existence of a wife.

Again it was she who became the more flustered. She dropped her hand and brushed past him in order to walk across the room in her new shoes. His body felt hard and unyielding as she bumped against it, causing her womb to clench with hot, unexpected desire. Fortunately, before she could do anything insane, like turn back to him, she became distracted by the amazing shoes. They hugged her feet securely yet seemed to ease rather than hurt the sore places on her soles.

“Why, they’re delightful! So soft and comfortable and light on my feet. I could dance forever in these!” To prove it, she twirled around the room. As she came to rest, she saw that he was watching her, a faint smile on his face, belying her recent accusation. Or perhaps it wasn’t she but her pleasure in his shoes that made him smile.