Erotique: Alex. Susan Lyons

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      The best inspiration for Alex Blake’s erotic novels used to be her forbidden—and unfulfilled—-lust for Lincoln Wolf. But years later Lincoln, and her muse, are long gone. To rekindle her imagination, Alex takes up an invitation to visit Erotique, a private sex club that guarantees anonymity…and a chance to act out one of Alex’s most ravishing desires. While Alex expects one fantasy, Erotique has another surprise for her: satisfying her ultimate fantasy of a night of passion with Lincoln himself…

       Jonathan bent his head, his breath warm through the silk of her camisole. He licked circles around her areola, plastering damp silk across her sensitive flesh, silk so thin she could feel the gentle abrasion of his tongue. Then he sucked her nipple into his mouth.

       “Oh,” Madeline breathed as delicious sensations rippled through her.…

      I lift my fingers from the computer keyboard. Sensations? No, that’s too vague. My readers want something more detailed, sensual, personal. What kind of sensations?

      Who the hell remembers?

      I slide a hand under my T-shirt and stroke my unconfined breast, then gently pinch the nipple. Nope, not much in the way of sensation.

      “Damn,” I say to the purple-and-cream phalaenopsis orchid on my desk. “How can I describe a sensation I haven’t personally felt in…” How many months has it been? Oh my God, it’s more than a year since I’ve had sex. Real live sex with a real live man.

      No wonder I’m having so much trouble describing it.

      The orchid, which I chose for inspiration because orchids are supposed to be sensual—after all, in Victorian England, women were prohibited from having them because they were thought to be too sexual—has recently proven to be no inspiration at all. It seems even my poor damned orchid has lost her eroticism.

      Sighing, I rise and cross my home office to the bookcase that houses the pretty display of my dozen published titles, along with the various foreign editions. Twenty countries, fifteen languages, and yes, I’m counting. It’s these beautiful babies that let me quit my job as a high-school teacher five years ago and become a writer full time.

      I pull down Pamela’s Passion, one of my favorites and one of the hottest—perhaps because when I wrote it I was in a relationship and actually having sex.

      No, of course I’m not going to borrow my own words. That would be cheating and besides, some reader would catch me since my readers seem to memorize the sex scenes word for word. Still, perhaps Pamela’s passionate adventures, and the memory of my own, can get me in the mood.

      I do have to wonder if it was the most brilliant idea in the world for me, with such a pathetic sex life, to write erotic romance. Yeah, sure, write your own fantasies, but at some point the fantasies—like certain body parts—tend to dry up.

      But back when I was twenty-two and wrote that first book, Elizabeth’s Ecstasy, I’d been in the grip of the most powerful lust I’ve ever experienced. Taboo lust.

      I’d been a student teacher, doing my practicum. And the male in question was Lincoln Wolf, a student in the grade-twelve English Lit class. Yes, he’d looked far more man than boy, and, at nineteen, he was close to my own age, thanks to growing up with parents who had roamed the world and hadn’t provided him with regular schooling. But he was a student.

      And I’d felt lust for him. I’d never have acted on it, but even feeling it was completely inappropriate. Yet, much as I told myself not to go there, my body flushed and throbbed with desire every time I looked at him. And every time he looked at me, because, yeah, I saw the same craving in his eyes.

      I was pretty, and barely older than many of the students, and it’s a rite of passage to lust after a teacher, so I got my fair share of horny gazes. But there was something different about Lincoln’s. He stared at me as if nothing existed in the world except the two of us.

      And I never felt the slightest bit drawn to any student other than Lincoln.

      My need for him was so powerful, I had to give it physical expression, and that’s what drove me to the computer to pour out all the forbidden things I imagined doing with him.

      If I could remember that vivid, intense feeling, I could write sex again. But Lincoln Wolf is ten years in my past, and real live sex is more than a year behind me, so all I’m left with is Pamela and her passion.

      I plunk back in my ergonomic desk chair and thumb through the pages to find the scene where Pamela, out for a ride on a sunny afternoon, comes upon Lord Vincent bathing in a lake. Naked. I read a page. Another. This is really well-written and to me it’s totally obvious I was having real live sex when I wrote it, but right now it’s not doing anything for me.

      “Yada yada and sex ensues,” I mutter. “Lucky Pamela.”

      If only I could find my muse and give Madeline some of that lovely sex. Better still…“I want what Pamela’s having, damn it,” I tell my orchid.

      My eyes drift from its blossoms to the classy engraved invitation propped against its pot. I pick it up and toy with it.

      It’s addressed to Desirée, my pen name, not to Alex Blake, the real—i.e., pathetic sex-life—me.

      We believe you are a woman of sexual discernment and adventure.

      We would like to offer you membership in Erotique, an exclusive private sex club that guarantees anonymity.

      Why don’t you visit and sample the delights Erotique has to offer? Please accept our invitation to enjoy Fantastique and satisfy one of your most ravishing sexual fantasies.

      Well, we’ve established that I, Alex, am not a woman of sexual discernment and adventure, only a sex-starved author suffering from writer’s block. But…one visit to this sex club might be exactly the thing I—and my muse and poor Madeline—need.

      I’ve heard of Erotique, otherwise I might consider this adventure too risky. At my last signing, I overheard two women whispering and giggling about the club. Was one of them responsible for putting my name on the invitation list?

      Who cares how I got invited. Desirée is going to accept. Writers get to do pretty much anything they want in the name of research.

      The card says I’m supposed to RSVP, so, before I can chicken out, I go online to the link they’ve provided. When I click, as instructed, on Fantastique, a screen comes up, and—“Oh. Oh, my.”

      Apparently Fantastique is one of the club’s special features, tailored toward fantasy fulfillment. And not only am I asked to provide the date and time I’ll be attending, but also the details of the fantasy I’d like to enact. There is no menu of options, only an empty box awaiting my words.

      Once more, my cursor is blinking on screen and I have no idea what to type.

      I’m not without sexual fantasies—ménage with two men, being taken prisoner by a sexy pirate, having sex with Daniel Craig—but to be honest, none have ever been as powerful as my fantasies about Lincoln Wolf back when I was twenty-two.

      My feelings for him had almost scared me out of being a teacher because I’d been afraid I’d get horny for other students, but, though I’d occasionally thought a male student was cute or interesting, I’d never again felt sexual attraction.

      So, is my fantasy to be twenty-two again, meeting up with the nineteen-year-old Lincoln in a setting where we’re not teacher and student, and sex is permissible?

      Yeah, right. Not even the ritzy Erotique will be able to provide me with that one.

      No, what I really want is what my heroine, Madeline, also craves.