Rape is only incidentally about sex; it's much more about power and control. Many a past romance novel â and a few current ones â excuse a violent or coercive hero by saying that love for the heroine drove him to his actions. But today's authors â whether they are writing historical or contemporary stories â must think carefully about whether the action they are portraying indicates love or abusive control.
Just to show the wide range of love scenes and story types, here are a number of love scenes from various categories and kinds of romance novels, starting with the least explicit (inspirational) and moving to the most explicit (erotica).
These scenes are examples, not illustrations of what a particular category of love scene should be. Not only do the types of books differ in their sensuality, language, and approach to lovemaking, but each author within a category or type of romance will make her own love scenes unique.
In her historical inspirational
Chloe
, Lyn Cote shows a heroine who's not only personally inexperienced but also lacks general knowledge about the whole subject of lovemaking:
The mystery of what intimacies a wedding night entailed loomed before her and uncertainty sluiced through her like ice water. “Theran ⦔
He came up behind her and wrapped his strong arms around her, nuzzling her neck. “Don't be afraid of me, Chloe. I'd never hurt you.”
“I know that.” But her voice sounded low and slid over her throat like splintered wood. “I'm going to lie down and turn my back to you. ⦠I'll be waiting, dearest, but take your time.”
A problem presented itself. Her mother still insisted Chloe wear an old-fashioned corset that laced up the back â she said it was the mark of a lady to need a maid to dress herself. But ⦠there was only Theran.
Like a naughty child, she tiptoed over to the side of the bed where he lay. “Ther-an,” she whispered, “I need you to loosen my corset laces.” Her face burned. She was afraid he'd say something bold and embarrassment would kill her.
He said nothing. But the bed springs creaked as he sat up behind her. Then he tugged her gently and made her sit down on the bed. ⦠She felt him untie the laces and then slowly stretch them, crisscross by crisscross, his fingers brushing her spine. ⦠Before she could rise, Theran kissed the back of her neck and drew her back against him. “Don't go away, my sweet bride,” he murmured. “Stay with me.”
She didn't move, her breath suddenly difficult to find. As he kissed her neck and held her spine to his chest, she felt their skin touch and she quivered with the sensation. Slowly, he turned her and drew her up beside him â so close she could hear his heart beating. Or was it hers?
“Trust me,” he whispered and she put her arms around his neck and sighed with his kisses.
Cote uses the corset as a metaphor for Chloe's release from the constraints of girlhood to the freedom of a married woman, through the loving help of her new husband.
In her contemporary inspirational
Promise of Forever
, Patt Marr shares a simple kiss from the point of view of the hero:
He touched her face, and she leaned her cheek into his hand, closed her eyes and rubbed the corner of her mouth against his palm. It was such a little thing, but it gave him the courage to take her face in both of his hands. “Sometimes I wonder⦔
“You wonder â¦?” Her eyes were on his mouth.
“I wonder what it would feel like ⦔ He lowered his face towards hers slowly, giving her plenty of time to push him away.
But she didn't. She held his shoulders and raised her lips to meet his.
The touch of her mouth on his was as sweet as he'd dreamed of. It was just one soft touch, then another. Her arms stole around his neck, and she touched her cheek against his jaw before sliding her lips back to his mouth.
He'd known what it was like to be married and loved, but had he ever felt quite like this?
In this example, a kiss isn't the start of something hotter â but this kiss changes the hero's view of his life.
Inspirationals tend to have virgin heroines and very little physical expression of love between the characters, often confining the hero and heroine to a chaste kiss in the last few pages. Heroes and heroines in inspirationals do not make love, or even seriously contemplate making love, unless they're married. Even when heroes and heroines are married, love scenes are not described in detail.
In this selection from my sweet traditional
The Corporate Marriage Campaign
, I show a heroine who has made a rational decision to make love with the hero despite her belief at that moment that their relationship â though special â is not a lasting one and will not lead to marriage:
He curved an arm around her waist, pulled her down onto his lap and kissed her long and deeply. She had practically melted by the time he was finished, and any doubt she'd had about the rightness of what she was doing had faded into oblivion. Tomorrow, next week, or in ninety days â when it would all be over â she might regret this. But not now.
He held her an inch away from him. “Maybe I should ask ⦔ He sounded breathless.
She looked straight at him. “Yes, Trey, I really want to make love with you.”
“Good. I'm glad to hear it. But that wasn't what I wanted to know.”
She felt just a bit dizzy and she was having trouble sitting up straight. “Fine time to get curious. What is it?”
“I just need to know if you're being a praying mantis or a black widow spider.”
She smiled. “Neither. You said yourself I'm a rattlesnake.”
“Well, that's a relief â since rattlesnakes don't consume their mates after making love.”
“Though I suppose there's a first time for everything,” she murmured.
“Then I guess I'll just have to make sure you're otherwise satisfied.”â¦
He carried her into the bedroom, and Darcy stretched out luxuriously on the bed and reached up for him as he shed his jeans and disposed of her T-shirt. “I have to tell you, Trey, that wasn't much of a chase you led me on there.”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn't want you to be too exhausted to catch me.” He slid under the sheet next to her. “Or, for that matter, in need of nourishment afterward.”
And then the silliness gave way to tenderness and nurturing, to exploring and enjoying, and finally to soaring and crashing on the tide of passion.
In a sweet traditional, the focus of the love scene stays above the waistline (some would say above the neck). Though heroes and heroines can make love without being â or expecting to be â married, they do not do so without a sense that the relationship is very important. When included, lovemaking scenes are not explicitly described and are generally limited to intercourse.
In this section from her long contemporary
Almost a Family
, Roxanne Rustand shows a slightly more explicit style of love scene, with more details and a wider range of actions for the lovers:
Erin savored the exquisite pleasure of Connor's mouth on hers. The sensual slide of his hands on her back. The way he cradled her head to angle in for a deeper kiss that sent shivers skipping down her spine, and made her feel empty and wanting in her most intimate places.
And he didn't rush to the next step as if he had a plane to catch. In wonderment, she felt him hold back, explore, his eyes hot and dark and possessive as he groaned with pleasure at her own rising response. And he talked to her ⦠whispering hot, sexy words in her ear, making her feel as if she were the most desirable woman he'd ever known, until she was nearly engulfed in white-hot desire, wanting more, needing more.
When he finally drove into her, everything inside her turned to a fire that consumed her, body and soul. “Connor,” she breathed.
And then an exquisite rush of pleasure swept her away.
Though the long contemporary has room for more development of the sexual side of the relationship, lovemaking is still not described in explicit language. Notice that though Rustand says the hero is whispering hot and sexy words, precisely what he says isn't included, and in this case body parts aren't named.
In
The Desert Virgin
, Sandra Marton shows her hero satisfying the heroine in alternative ways:
She tilted her chin up. Her lips parted. Her mouth clung to his and he felt his blood thunder in his ears.
“I'm going to bathe you now, Salome.”
⦠Gently, he lifted her from his lap and stood her between his legs. Then he reached for one of the washcloths stacked on the tub's ledge. â¦
“First your face,” he whispered. “And your throat.” She closed her eyes. ⦠Slowly, he ran the cloth over her breasts. He felt her tremble. He was trembling, too, as he took the cloth lower, over her belly, lower, lower â¦
The cloth fell from his fingers. He bent his head, kissed her breasts as he slipped his hand between her thighs. She whimpered and his touch lingered, centered on that one forbidden place.
“That feels ⦔ Her head fell back “That feels ⦔
“Does it?” His voice was raw. His body was on fire. “How does it feel, Salome?”
She sighed. He increased the friction. Warned himself that this was only for her. For her. Not for him. Not for â
Her cry rose into the night. Pleasure, fierce and elemental, rushed through him. He had done this. Given her this.
A feeling so deep, so intense it terrified him shot through his heart.
Quickly, he got to his feet. Lifted his golden dancer in his arms. Stepped from the tub with her clinging to his neck, with his mouth drinking from hers. Gently, he set her on her feet. Wrapped her in an enormous towel.
Then he kissed her again, lifted her again. Carried her from the bathroom to the bed, where he laid her down as carefully as if she were the most precious treasure in the universe.
“Don't leave me,” she whispered.
Never, he thought fiercely. He would never leave her again.
Short contemporary is the most explicit of the category romances, allowing more freedom of language and alternative forms of sexual expression. Most short contemporary romances include at least one episode of sexual intercourse and often involve oral sex as part of an extended love scene. This scene from Marton's book ends without the couple actually having intercourse, but they stop short not out of reluctance but because they don't have a condom.
The chick-lit heroine is one of the more liberated heroines in romance fiction, and she's just as sassy about sex as she is about everything else, as in this example from Claire Cross's
Third Time Lucky
:
He eased into me, hot and thick and hard, even as I tried to catch my breath. He held me against the wall with his hips as I got used to the size of him, then impatiently tugged my nightgown over my head and chucked it across the room.
He looked down at me and smiled, his admiration unmistakable. “Beautiful,” he whispered. “And don't let anyone tell you differently.”
“Lots to love,” I said, trying to make a joke.
Nick shook his head. “Perfect.” He cupped one of my breasts in his hand, meeting my gaze, his palm fitted exactly around me. “See?”â¦
I'm not too clear how things proceeded after that, save that it's true what they say â all things do come in threes.
Including me.
Note that, despite her smart mouth, this heroine is uneasy about her body and uncertain whether the hero can really be attracted to her â this level of self-esteem is typical of a chick-lit heroine.
Some chick-lit is even less explicit, with love scenes like this one from Sophie Kinsella's
Confessions of a Shopaholic
:
Last night was absolutely â¦
Well, let's just say it was â¦
Oh, come on. You don't need to know that. Anyway, can't you use your imagination? Of course you can.
By not giving details, the first-person narrator invites the readers to give rein to their own fantasies, which draws them further into the story.
In
The Kitchen Witch
, Annette Blair shows a heroine who is liberated, experienced, and anything but passive, and a hero who's determined to make their lovemaking a special occasion:
“Oh,” she said, still focused on the nest of his arousal. “Just let me feel all that nice soft black cotton ⦠and everything.” She stroked him through the briefs, took him from his cocoon and into her greedy hands, and turned him into her submissive slave. She handled him with gentle reverence, kneading and nuzzling with fingers and lips, growing him, breath by gasping breath, stroking him against her cheek, nibbling with her lips, until he got so close to coming, he took her down on top of him.
“So much for making it last,” he said as he slid into her, in one fast, incredible thrust. â¦
She came almost at once, making him slick, easing his heaving way. When he caught his breath, when they both did, he rolled her to her back, still inside her, and rose over her. “That's one,” he said.
“More,” she said arching, pulsing tight around him as if to help.
“Greedy,” he said, rising to the occasion and going for two, pretty certain that giving her as many orgasms as she wanted, before his turn came, would about kill him.
Though single title romance can veer fairly close to erotica, as in this example, it doesn't necessarily include any explicit lovemaking at all.
In
One Wilde Weekend
, Janelle Denison pulls out all the stops, initiating her hero and heroine into the Mile-High Club in a steamy scene in an airplane restroom.
He skimmed his palms along the satin-soft skin of her inner thighs, letting the hem of her skirt pool around his wrists as he glided higher and higher toward his final destination. Once there, his long fingers delved between her nether lips, finding her hot and wet and ready for him. â¦
With her hips tilted at just the right angle for him, he slid his rod through her drenched curls from behind, found the entrance to her body, and with a hard, deep thrust, he buried himself to the hilt. Dana's mouth opened in a silent gasp, and though he knew he ought to be just as discreet considering where they were, there was no stopping the primitive male groan that erupted from his chest. â¦
As he plunged and withdrew in a building, gyrating rhythm, he swept her hair aside and nuzzled her neck with his lips, his ragged breathing warm and damp against her skin. He used one hand to caress her breasts and lightly pinch her nipples, while his other hand dipped low to where they were joined. His fingers stroked her cleft in that knowing way that never failed to make her come, and it didn't take long for her breath to catch in the back of her throat and for him to feel the clench and pull of her body around his cock that signaled an impending climax. Hers and his.
He drove inside her one last time, high and hard, lodging himself as deeply as he could get just as the plane rumbled through an air pocket ⦠she inhaled a quick breath then moaned softly, her entire body convulsing in a long, continuous orgasm that milked him dry.