*Blush* Writing the Love Scenes

Image Credit: Red Legs in Soho

So far, the most difficult part of my manuscript has not been pacing or plotting or character development. It's been the first bedroom scene.

Why is it that I literally turn red and get all embarrassed just typing out a physical expression of love between my beloved fictional characters?

I mean, I know I'm new at this. But does it get easier? I never thought I'd say that a non-fiction business management textbook would be less difficult to write than a romance, research and all, but that just shows what I know.

Once I'm over that initial blushing virgin behavior (silly, since I've been married for nine years and have a great sex life), those scenes are kind of fun to write. I'm just so awkward, and I'm afraid I'll come across that way on paper! Well, a little awkwardness is okay, since my heroine has a streak of that in her personality, but you know what I mean. But closing the bedroom door on things in this story would, I think, weaken the relationship development of my characters and wouldn't fit the no-holds-barred, rapid fire pace of the book itself.

Any ideas on how I can get over my case of the prims and prisses? Ha, drink a beer and play some Barry White? Or does the thought of giving me advice on how to write a love scene make you horridly uncomfortable? That would at least make me feel better!

Here's an excerpt from yesterday's writing progress on Lucky in Love. Not the whole scene, though, since my mom might be reading.

Maybe when this was all over, I’d tour the country and stay in fancy hotel rooms for a month, just because. I could take Addy, since I was sure she’d be tired of Jack in a month or less, and we could stay in a Hilton, a Waldorf, a Hyatt… I was trying to think of more extravagant hotels when the bathroom door opened and I almost choked on my brownie.

Chance stepped out, wrapped only in a towel. All of his old awkward planes and angles and had been chiseled away and hardened in the last decade and he looked like a battle-scarred warrior, which I guess wasn't too far off the mark, really. Skin burnished bronze, probably in an Afghani desert somewhere, stretched over the taut muscles in his chest, powerful shoulders and forearms, and tight abdominal muscles – in six-pack formation, no less. All of that mouthwatering maleness was dusted over lightly with dark hair that arrowed down to disappear into the snowy white towel that was tucked around his hips and thighs. Which, of course, drew my attention to the sizeable bulge beneath that towel that got more intriguing the longer I looked at it. A flush burned in my cheeks as I quickly looked up at his face and all of a sudden, it was really hard to catch my breath.

This couldn't be Chance. This was some pinup that fell out of the pages of a hot firefighter calendar. He was a conglomeration of all the things women fantasized over: that body, those thick-lashed eyes that gleamed deep green with a hot glow, smooth-shaven cheeks, firm lips that could twist in a cocky grin as easily as they pressed together in determination, and that short, dark hair that I already knew was silky to the touch. This man was the stuff dreams were made of.

I wanted to make a snarky comment or look back toward Fred and Ginger, still twirling around on TV - anything to break the charged moment - but my sarcasm skills had temporarily failed me and I couldn’t look away. And then he was coming toward me with lithe steps, despite his size, his feet making no sound on the carpet. That brought my eyes level with his navel, an interesting little dip that I abruptly wanted to lap my tongue into. Instead, I looked up.

“Dessert?” Chance reached up and brushed his thumb across the corner of my mouth.

“Brownie,” I replied stupidly, my tongue darting out to catch any frosting he might have missed. I definitely did not want to be sitting in front of this gorgeous man looking like a toddler that had just gone buckwild on a birthday cake.

See, just posting that excerpt got my armpits all sweaty with nervousness. Probably erotica's not in my future... I'd give myself an mortification-induced heart attack first.