On Writing Romance_ How to Craft a Novel That Sells - Leigh Michaels [86]
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—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.
Sweet Traditional
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—though special—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 thirty days—when it would all be over—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—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."...
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—or expecting to be—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.
Long Contemporary
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