I am delighted to welcome the fabulous KD Grace
talking about her latest book.
It’s not
Always a bad thing when Sex goes pear-shaped
Thanks so much for
inviting me over, Jennifer, to celebrate my new release, The Tutor. It’s such a pleasure to
be here. Have you had your five-a-day? While fruit and sex can be linked in a
kinky sort of way, let’s face it, most of us aren’t thinking nutrition when
we’re about to get some – sex, I mean, not fruit. In fact I’d go so far as to
say that most of us who write erotica and romance aren’t thinking about fruit at
all when we pen our sexy stories. But inspiration is a strange and wonderful
thing, and what inspired The Tutor was not only strange and wonderful, but very
fast acting.
The Tutor
has a very special place in my heart because of its whirlwind beginnings. It
all happened last October at Smut
Manchester during Kay Jaybee’s
wonderfully wicked “trip to the supermarket” workshop on inspiration. In said
workshop, Kay assigned each of us an item from the supermarket shelf and then
told us we’d just been called over the loudspeaker to go to the stockroom. From
those two prompts we were to write the beginnings of a story about what we’d
find in the stockroom and what we’d do with our item once we got there. I still
remember the little smirk on Ms. Jaybee’s face when she handed me the slip of
paper that read ‘ tin of pears in heavy
syrup.’ I don’t even like pears, though I’ll admit I have made an effort to
learn to like them. But while I may not enjoy the taste or the texture I most
certainly can’t fault pears on their ability to inspire – especially not when
they are liberally coated with heavy, sticky, sweet syrup.
I never imagined in my wildest dreams that before
the weekend was out, I’d have the seeds for an entire novel about a reclusive
and severely haphephobic sculptor, a writer who moonlights as a sex tutor and
the tin of pears that brings them together. What can I say? This was one of
those spot-on inspiring experiences from which the novel absolutely demanded to
be written and written immediately. In fact, the need to get it down was so
urgent that I signed up for NaNoWriMo — National Novel Writing Month, which
happens every November. The goal is to write a novel in one month. Not only did
I write the 95K word first draft of The
Tutor during NaNoWriMo, but I finished it with three days to spare!
By the New Year, I had the final draft polished and
ready to submit, and I sent it off to the fabulous folks at Totally Bound, who
snapped it up, with a print date of October 11, 2016 – almost exactly a year to
the day from that fabulous workshop of Kay’s and the amazing weekend at Smut
Manchester. This year on the 15th of October, Smut Manchester 2015,
I had a launch party, which felt a little bit like a christening party with so
many people present who had been there at The Tutor’s conception and had
laughed and joked and shared all of the inspirational moments from that
workshop and from that weekend. If ever there was a novel that was a group
effort, it was this one. While Kay Jaybee’s workshop and the input of the other
writers there played a major role in the birth of The Tutor, the whole weekend was full of the kind of inspiration
that opens a writer to her creative self, and it really was like coming home to
be able to stand in front of the lovely folks at Smut Manchester 2016 and read
a sexy excerpt involving a tin of pears in heavy syrup. Oh, and the excerpt,
well check out for yourself how pears can be sexy.
The Tutor Blurb:
Struggling writer, Kelly Blake has a
secret life as a sex tutor. Celebrated sculptor and recluse, Alexander ‘Lex’
Valentine’s, can’t stand to be touched. When he seeks out Kelly’s advice
incognito, the results are too hot to handle. When Kelly terminates their
sessions due to her unprofessional behavior, Lex takes a huge risk, revealing
his identity to her at a gala exhibition, his first ever public appearance.
When Kelly helps the severely haphephobic Lex escape the grope of reporters and
paparazzi, rumors fly that the two are engaged, rumors encouraged by
well-meaning friends and colleagues. The press feeding frenzy forces Kelly into
hiding at Lex’s mansion where he convinces her to be his private tutor. They
discover quickly that touch is not essential for sizzling, pulse-pounding
intimacy. But intimacy must survive the secrets uncovered as their sessions
become more and more personal.
AAAAAND! Here it is, lessons in Pears:
“Was this your idea or Dillon’s? Kelly asked,
hoping to relax him.
“It was mine, after Andy told Dillon and
he told me. I thought it was something that I …” The muscles along Lex’s jaw
looked as though they were made out of iron, and a fine blush crawled up his
neck tinting his ears bright pink. “I’ve never touched a woman … in that way.”
He forced a laugh. “Obviously. I’ve …” the blush deepened and he avoided her
gaze. “I’ve put lube on some of the sculptures – you know — down there, but I …
well it isn’t the same.”
“The pears won’t be either,” she said,
her heart suddenly aching at the physical isolation this man endured on a daily
basis, and it wasn’t just her heart that ached, she felt his lack deep in her
core. It had been easier with Andy. She had been almost flippant with him. She
was sorry for that now. She spread one of the towels on the Queen Anne chair
across from him and settled herself onto it so they were facing each other.
“The texture will be different and with the pear there’ll be less give.” She
dipped her fingers in the bowl and rubbed the heavy juice between her index
finger and her thumb. “If you touch a woman, she’ll be much warmer.” She gave
him a conspiratorial smile. “You’ll be amazed at how warm and how soft she’ll
be down there when she’s ready to be touched. With Andy, this,” she nodded down
to the pears, “was improvisation, this was the best I could do under the
circumstances, but a woman, well a woman feels like nothing you’ve ever touched
before.”
He was no longer avoiding her gaze. His
eyes were locked on her, and he was struggling to keep them on her face, she
knew that; she understood the urge for him to drop his eyes to the place of
which she spoke, the place with which she was so intimate, the place that
couldn’t help but respond to the topic, to the situation, to the strange
intimacy they had shared almost since the moment they’d met. “You can look, if
you want,” she opened her legs so that he could see the place in between
clothed in black denim, completely disguised and yet so very obvious. “And I’ll
look at you too,” she nodded down to his own jeans straining to contain him
already. “It’s what men and woman are naturally inclined to do when there’s a
sexual attraction.”
With her heart hammering in her throat,
she took one of the pear halves into the cupped palm of her left hand, then she
brought it down between her spread thighs, feeling the juice of it run over her
fingers and drip onto the towel as she spread her legs a little farther and
held her pam to mimic the position of her vulva. “Touch it like a woman would
touch it, and you’ll always get it right.” She drug her index and middle finger
up from the bottom of the pear to the center and felt her own body respond in
empathy. “The pear has no folds, no secret valleys, no swollen flesh to be
teased open, so you’ll have to use your imagination with that.”
Lex gave a little moan soft and deep in
his chest as he shifted to make himself more comfortable. “I know the anatomy,”
he said. “I’ve watched porn and I’ve studied drawings. I know how it looks like
it might feel. I know the response it elicits.” His tongue flicked nervously
over his upper lip. “Of course that’s just acting, isn’t it?”
“Porn is about fantasy, about voyeurism,
and it doesn’t matter if it’s real if it gets you off. But when it is real,”
she spread her index and middle finger up the sides of the pear’s central
opening, “if you’re good, if your sensitive, you’ll feel the spasms of your
lover’s orgasm, even see them if you’re using your tongue; and you can feel
them gripping at your cock when your inside her. If you’re paying attention.
“The clitoris,” she laughed softly, “Well
with Andy I used a Ticktack, but he’s a chemistry major. He likes charts and
graphs and periodic tables. You’re an artist, you live in your imagination, so
you don’t need a Ticktack. Some women like the thumb stroking and circling
while the other fingers work inside. Some women like to use their fingers.” She
demonstrated on the pear, and Lex groaned. “It’s always best to ask and be sure.”
“What do you like?” His words were a
labored rasp against the back of his throat, and Kelly found herself stunned by
the question, and way more aroused than she wanted to be. He shouldn’t have
asked. She should have answered. But she did.
“I like it this way.” She shifted her
hips and opened a little further so he could see her thrust and scissor, circle
and probe technique, and her body responded with the tight grip and release of
muscle memory.
“Jesus,” he whispered moving forward on
the sofa and leaning closer for a better look. “And when someone uses their
tongue?”
She caught her breath in a giddy laugh.
“Afraid I can’t tell you what I do since, sadly I’m not that flexible.”
“But you can tell me what you like.” His
voice had gone rough.
“I like the flat of the tongue to part me
and then probe me, circle my clit and then kiss and suck.” She closed her eyes,
finding it difficult to meet his gaze when she spoke about something so
intimate, so secret. Come to think of it, she’d never had a man actually ask
her how she liked it. The few who had given a rat’s ass about her pleasure had
been happy enough to let her order them about, but never quite got the hang of
it.
It was the loud schussing sound that
caused her to open her eyes. Lex had moved the coffee table out of the way
paying no attention to the slosh of pear juice all over the towel V had spread.
His eyes were locked on Kelly as he fished out his own pear half and fell to
his knees in front of her. When she realized what the man was about to do she
dropped the pear she’d been holding with a little gasp of surprise and scooted
as far back in the chair as she could. He knelt low, holding the pear in the
cup of his hand, as she had, placing it against the edge of the chair between
her legs! She gave a little yelp and scrambled back in the chair still further,
spreading her thighs over the rise of the chair arms to keep from touching him.
He moved forward, the back of his hand so close to her crotch that she could
feel the heat of it, and he lowered himself still further until his hair nearly
brushed the insides of her thighs. Then, still looking up at her from his
position on the floor, he began at the bottom of the open pear half and ran his
tongue flat and undulating all the way up, flicking in just slightly in a
little circle at the top end before he closed his lips around the apex and she
could hear the slurp and suck of the sweet syrup.
“Oh! Lex! Ah!” And then she went
non-verbal, holding her breath, tightening muscles deep inside her body, the
only muscles she dared to move if she were to keep from touching him. She
raised both arms and fisted her hands in a suicide grip around the back of the
chair to keep from curling them in his hair. Her thighs trembled from her
efforts to keep her legs on the chair arms and not throw them over his
shoulders for leverage. She didn’t move. She didn’t breath as he licked and
nuzzled and suckled until pear juice ran down his chin and onto his tee-shirt,
until his face was damp and sticky, until his forehead was sheened with
perspiration, and still he held her gaze as though they were locked together in
each other’s orbit neither able to move without the other’s consent.
“Oh God, I’m gonna come.” She barely
managed a warning when his own convulsion brought him dangerously near her
body. He had stopped breathing, she was sure of it. She practically climbed the
back of the chair to keep from touching him as he lost control.
Then with a tremendous gasp of oxygen, he
straightened, let the pear fall from his hand onto the Aubusson carpet and
looked up at her.
“I’m going to pass out.” And he did.
Buy The Tutor Here:
eBook:
Print:
Voted ETO Best Erotic Author of 2014, and a proud member of The Brit Babes, K D Grace believes Freud was right. In the end, it really IS all about sex, well sex and love. And nobody’s happier about that than she is, otherwise, what would she write about?
When she’s not writing, K D is veg gardening. When she’s not gardening, she’s walking. She walks her stories, and she’s serious about it. She and her husband have walked Coast to Coast across England, along with several other long-distance routes. For her, inspiration is directly proportionate to how quickly she wears out a pair of walking boots. She loves mythology. She enjoys spending time in the gym – right now she’s having a mad affair with a pair of kettle bells. She loves to read, watch birds and do anything that gets her outdoors.
KD has erotica published with Totally Bound, SourceBooks, Xcite Books, Harper Collins Mischief Books, Mammoth, Cleis Press, Black Lace, Sweetmeats Press and others.
K D’s critically acclaimed erotic romance novels include, The Initiation of Ms Holly, Fulfilling the Contract, To Rome with Lust, and The Pet Shop. Her paranormal erotic novel, Body Temperature and Rising, the first book of her Lakeland Witches trilogy, was listed as honorable mention on Violet Blue’s Top 12 Sex Books for 2011. Books two and three, Riding the Ether, and Elemental Fire, are now also available.
K D Grace also writes hot romance as Grace Marshall. An Executive Decision, Identity Crisis, The Exhibition, Interviewing Wade are all available.
Find K D Here:
Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/KDGraceAuthor
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/KD_Grace
Pinterest:
http://www.pinterest.com/kdgraceauthor/
Thanks SO much for having me over, to talk about The Tutor with your lovely readers, Jennifer! It's always a pleasure to be on yours. <3
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