Weekend Writing Warriors for July 24

Welcome again to my weekly snippet for Weekend Writing Warriors (www.wewriwa.com) where writers share 8 – 10 lines of their work, for others to see and comment. Please follow and comment about others on the list.

My next book, The Artist,which is due out on August 8, is an historical erotic romance, based in England in the 1850s. Theodore (Theo for short) is the son of a Viscount, but has rejected the life of an aristocrat to live as a rather Bohemian artist. He has an eye for pretty girls, whom he likes to paint in the nude. Lizzie is a poor village girl who made a disastrous marriage, from which she has fled, and is destitute. When Theo asks her to be his artist’s model, she swallows her natural modesty and accepts. She also accepts his invitation to come and live at the house as his housekeeper. Theo is trying to resist seducing Lizzie until he has finished the painting, but he is finding it very difficult to restrain himself. (The snippet is slightly edited to fit the rules – with apologies to my Editor.)

 

Her body tingled when he was in close proximity, and a hot flush spread throughout her, and she was afraid of losing control should he try to touch her. What was even more embarrassing was the dampness she could feel seeping from her sex, and she would feel mortified if Theo were to notice or, even worse, comment on it. She moved her leg slightly to prevent this from happening, but he noticed immediately.

“You moved.”

He put down his brush and walked over to where she was lying; her embarrassment reflected in her increasingly reddening cheeks. He stood right in front of her, looking down with a strange and intense expression on his face before dropping his brush to the floor. His trousers were bulging once again, and when he spoke, his voice was deeper and more husky than usual.

“May I touch you?”

Lizzie could not speak but nodded in reply, although she was uncertain where he wanted to touch her. Usually when he wanted her leg in a different position, he simply moved it without asking first, but this time, instead of bending from the waist, he knelt down by the side of the couch before reaching out and slowly and gently running the palm of his paint-spattered hand along the outside of her thigh, and Lizzie could not stop her loud intake of breath as he did so.

It looks as though Lizzie is about to succumb to the intense sexual tension built up between them. Find out next week if she does. As I told you last week, this book will be published under my other pen name of Juliette Banks. Still no cover art, so here’s a little teaser I made myself.

Introducing Juliette Banks:

As if my life was not complicated enough, after discussions with my publishers we have come to the mutual agreement that my next book The Artist will be published under a different name – the aforementioned Juliette Banks. It may well be that subsequent books will also be published under this name too. There are a couple of reasons why they think a change might be desirable, one being the opportunities for mis-spelling of de Vine (e.g. Devine, DeVine, De Vine) that makes it harder for people to find me, and also because when I first published with them two years ago, such mis-spellings occurred at Amazon, and they feel that they have adversely affected my Amazon algorithms. I have no idea about this, but I will rely on their expertise and take their advice. I intend to keep the pen name of Rachel de Vine for now, and will continue to blog and write short stories under that name. So I will continue to be Rachel for the time being, and will work on establishing Juliette as an alternative brand. I just thought I would let you know so that if you see The Artist by Juliette Banks advertised, you will not think that some one has pinched my work!