red wine and candle lit dinners

The Candle

by

Ben Hannigan

The candle flickered as the two girls ate, lit at the start of the meal they shared.  It was an anniversary, the candle a dark, rich red, unscented; the flame licking at the air as they shared the wine. The venison rare and rich, the dark chocolate truffles melting on the tongue as they talked into the night, the kisses they shared tasting of the meal and each other. One smoking a pipe the other content with the wine as they talked, the candle pressed into service to light and relight the pipe as the flame still licked at the air.

Neither remembered who kissed who first but they both remember that hunger and that pull as they moved from the chairs to the bed. The fire that pulsed through them and that heady arousal, Louise’s body a healthy tan -- that of an outdoor girl -- contrasting beautifully with Lara’s in the candlelight. Her body a squiggle of cream on the dark bedspread, her lover grinning to herself as the black silk ties contrasted against her pale wrists. Once she was bound and under her control, Louise began the slow, languid, torturous movements she favoured, nipping and licking from neck to ankles before her mouth nipping, licking, sucking and starting to devour the younger girl as some sort of dessert. The sounds her treat was making; a mix of heady gasps, whimpers and begging howls. She saw that candle still licking at the air and grinned, her hand snaking out of the bed to remove the candle from the heavy brass candelabra.

During the Raising of the candle all Lara could see was this floating tongue of flame dancing across the air, nervous and unsure what was to happen she watched from her position bound on the bed. Louise slowly, gently leaning the candle forward and they both breathless with anticipation watched the bead of wax drip off the candle. Almost in slow motion the wax hanging in the air before it splashed onto the younger girls breast, the red wax spreading and oozing before hardening. The flash of heat and pain stinging and causing indrawn gasps and whimpers of shock and desire through her, almost begging for more as the second drop landed. Her back arching and writhing as her teasing lover slowly worked the wax lower leaving a trail of redness splashed across her bare white skin. The candle moving closer, lower and lower moving inextricably towards her wetness the candle had half burned down as Louise presented what she had decided would be the last drop of wax. Lara laid there, her back arched, staring into her lovers eyes as she watched that last drop slowly fall towards her clit. The wax landing on her lithe body and engulfing her in a fire, the warmth sucking her up and into an explosion of lust and desire, as the wax cooled it bound her clit tightly in a vice-like grip squeezing her as she shook and spasmed with lust; craving anything, more, a touch, a kiss, anything to keep this going. Her mewling howls had startled Louise who smartly jerked causing the flame to splutter and die before she dived into her lover’s body peeling the now solid wax from her skin the tugging sending shudders of pleasure through Lara as she calmed.

Grinning, she dove  into the girl’s wetness once more as she begged for more, leaving her clit bound and imprisoned in this waxy tightness. Crawling up her body Louise ground into her as Lara begged for more. She whimpered with need as Louise rode her, their wet slits sliding  across each other. Testing the candle and finding it cool to the touch,  she used her weight to hold the girl down.  She pushed her virgin rosebud onto the candle, working it into her, feeling her contract and beg to be untied, beg to be kissed, and beg to wrap her arms around the woman she loved. Once, twice, three times she rocked and bounced into Louise and gasped again, screaming for more before it ended and she went limp, pressing gentle kisses across Louise’s throat, losing herself into a shaking mess of desire.

a lover's reflections

 Realizing Love

by 

Ben Hannigan

He lay there spent in my arms as I traced lines across his skin. His bare flesh warm and comforting. Sprawled on my bed displaying the body I adored and the scratches, the bites that I added. My own stamp on this work of art, he could be carved in stone or cast in bronze, his body so lithe and toned. He is physically perfect to me. I run my hand over his sleeping body and each time I explore I find something new.

He reaches for me in his sleep and I’m here, pulled close as he grips me.  All I can do, all I want to do is just hold him here close to me. The way he touches me when we kiss keeps me here.  The way he holds me through the nights, the way he promises me my dreams and desires. I don’t feel I’m enough for him, but when I challenge him he doesn’t argue.  Instead, he just states what he feels for me. The passion, that drive, and that confidence he is utterly right is enough. Is enough to calm my fears and my doubts and relax knowing I'm his.

As he wakes he reaches for me, I feign sleep because I don’t want to worry him.  Don’t want to admit I stay up to watch him at peace.  He kisses me greedily and I feel myself responding.  My body betraying me in a way I can't be angry about. His kisses flutter across my throat and shoulder, his teeth grazing my neck as his hand wanders lower.  He finds me waiting and wet as I arch towards him my morning nuzzles becoming more strained and breathy.

“Baaaby,” I cry begging, “God please, please just don’t ever stop.” I raise my hips meeting him as he fills me. I’m rolling up his length pulling him close, my lips tugging him into my embrace as I begin to howl.  He is working me. How does he know my body so well after so little time? 

He’s mumbling words I never catch but I feel the intensity of the emotions so well, I don’t need to. I hear his heart race and his breath catch and I know he’s close to that edge and I’m being pulled along behind by his youthful enthusiasm. 

“Come on baby please, I wont break.” This point is always where I take the lead, pulling him close, making him see its OK to want this, to want us as I pull him in deeper. Showing him, making him feel my impending crash and wanting to drag him with me.  He gets his confidence from me here, allowing himself to draw on me to lose himself, to let go.

I pull him close locking my ankles behind his back and allow him to lose his composure as I kiss his chest. And that’s the bit I love most.  That slow hitch of breath, that growl as he fires and the world contracts into just us, just this moment. He lets go and drives me with him as he melts into my body and we kiss. The world dissolves into mumbled words of love, sighs and some small tears as the guilt hits him and I have to be strong to reassure him that it’s OK, that enjoying what I give freely doesn’t mean he is Him. I stroke his back as we cuddle in this moment, realizing I have dealt with my past better than he has.  My years an advantage here and that re-forged determination to teach him and to help him see that this is not only OK, but great.

Oh the end is here, that sweet wonderful end where I’m pulled close and just held.  Where he and I kiss softly. 

“Morning sweetheart” I mumble as I am pulled into his warmth and just allowed to drift into dreams. Secure that I am not alone, not left wanting for at least one more day.

shouldnt really post this as it's drivel about how I write

Ever wonder what the author is thinking about when writing those steamy scenes? What's the difference between pornography and erotica? What distinctions do you make in your own mind? Ben shares a little from his heart on this matter.

 

Sex is something that is always special. Sex holds a power regardless of time, of space, sex can be gentle, sex can be rough, it can hurt, it can heal. Sex is something that I write about often but I would like to think that the focus of my work isn’t sex. Sex to me is something that is both beautiful and terrifying. It opens you up as a person in ways that cannot be foreseen; opening up to a lover in a kiss bares your soul in ways that simply talking will never do. To me if a lover is to cheat, taking them back if they confessed to fucking another would be easy but sharing a slow loving passionate kiss would be far harder and I take these views about what is meaningful into my writing.

The passion, the love, the desire I believe must come from more than sex, more than the simple act of making love. My characters have in my mind an image and a personality before they have their sexuality. In the piece that I am currently writing for this blog, I tried to create not only a plausible relationship but also create characters that are real and more importantly, can draw on the emotions of a reader. The erotic for me as a writer is more about the build-up to the act than the act itself. While the act is exciting; the moments of frantic thrusting, kissing, tasting, biting and the ultimate explosion of release, the teasing passionate build-up of anticipation, the lingering longing kisses and the slow gentle stroking are the things that keep me coming back to a piece, to an author. The foreplay and the lust have to intertwine in a deeper story. Simple sex has nothing in my view, it has no substance, no draw and no interest. If we use an analogy of food, crude hypersexualised writing that is concerned with the reproductive act and nothing more is a fast food hamburger, whereas the full piece focusing on the hunt, the chase and the challenge of courtship as well as the highs and lows of two lives colliding.

Sex without a reason to me isn’t interesting so I try to create a world for my characters. I want them to feel like people. Erotica that doesn’t have that feel of realism for me is similar to porn on the screen, it doesn’t feel quite right, it feels hollow and doesn’t have the same depth to it. For some reason, it doesn’t grab my attention and hold it. For me starting at “he was inside her deep, fast, rough, the sweat dripping down his back as he moved, driving his lover down into the silk”doesn’t appeal in the same was as starting at say, “they sat opposite each other at the bar table, she rubbed her bare foot over the younger girls thigh as their hands touched gently as they moved, reaching for the bread”. That’s not to say that the sex isn’t interesting or something that I want to read about, but it I think requires building up to it.

The role of the author, I believe is to inspire and create a world that a reader can lose themselves in for as long as it takes them to read. To create a world that you can be lost in eagerly awaiting the next instalment. I draw my inspiration from conversations with other writers, friends, things I read or have seen. I start with an image and spend my time trying to put the ‘thousand words’ that image contains onto paper.

Aya's Inspiration - MSHP Blog Tour guest

Heya gang, 

I have been asked to introduce another writer today who is borrowing the flat while I am away touring the blogosphere,  a writer who though sharing the queer spectrum with me holds radically different views and speaks with a voice different to mine. 

I don’t wear my politics or group affiliations quite as strongly on my sleeve as she does and don’t generally subscribe to the views she holds about group-think, but this is what free expression is about -- the right of people to hold views that you disagree with and even championing their right to hold those views. 

Though in this blog, I will comment on others views in relation to mine, I wont cast aspersions on their character for doing so.  To this end, I am lending Ms Aya my place in the sphere to discuss not only her work, but her social politics as well… 

So without further ado I give you Aya Walksfar.

What inspired you to write this book? 

My murder mystery novella, Dead Men and Cats, actually grew from several different insights that were born from various opportunities I had to experience some unique situations.

One of the things I’ve had the pleasure of doing in my life is to act as a speaker for the Seattle police in a diversity training situation. Though this was years ago, I still recall how misinformed some of those young officers were about lesbians and gays. Some of them grew up in areas where anti-lesbian/gay sentiments prevailed.

It was my experiences with them, as well as my experiences in the lesbian community, that made the reality of hate crimes very clear to me, and how sometimes law enforcement--being comprised of real, live humans--can be impacted and, in some ways, hindered in dealing with hate crimes.

But it isn’t only the mainstream community who has members with anti-lesbian/gay sentiments. Growing up in the mainstream society, young lesbians/gays often have no role models (until relatively recently), and at times grow up hating themselves, denying their own sexuality and creating issues for themselves that can have long term, negative effects. I wanted to show how one young man deals with this internal conflict.

The fourth ingredient that helped create this book was my admiration of strong women. When I speak of strong women I am talking about women who are faced with difficult, and, sometimes frightening, situations but they persevere in spite of everything.

The two main characters in Dead Men and Cats are Megan Albright and Janie Sampson, a lesbian couple. In most ways, these women are ordinary: Janie owns a riding stable, Megan is a paramedic. They live together in a long term, monogamous relationship in a small community. How they deal with discovering a dead man and a live calico kitten in an old rowboat, and the violent events subsequent to that, is what marks them as strong women.

 

It was from these insights that Dead Men and Cats grew.

For those who would like to read my novella, Dead Men and Cats, it is available at http://www.amazon.com/author/ayawalksfar 

Folks can get to know me better by visiting my blog at http://www.ayawalksfar.com

or chat with me on facebook, http://www.facebook.com/ayawalksfar and http://www.facebook.com/AyaWalksfarAuthor.  
 I can also be reached through twitter @ayawalksfar.
Or shoot me an email at : ayawalksfar@gmail.com  

Born in a rougher section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, (and there were several of those when I was growing up, though I hear Pittsburgh has cleaned up very nicely over the past couple of decades. I haven’t been back in years.) I soon learned how to make myself invisible. If you tend to be on the smaller side, this is a very good talent to cultivate. As a result, I got to observe people in their myriad of attitudes and emotions. They fascinated me.

In self-defense against loneliness, I learned to read very young, and to write. My first story was written in pencil on those tablets for little kids with the huge spaces between lines. It was a story about a lost dog. Do you ever forget your first?

Ever since that day, I have been creating alternate realities.

Fortunately, my life has been anything except traditional, and therefore, I have never run out of stories to tell. I lived on the road for several years, have worked non-traditional jobs (and a very few traditional jobs), and have walked many dark roads and city streets.

Currently, I live on a 12 acre wildlife/wild bird/indigenous plant habitat that my wife of 25 years and I have created. During a single year, we host over 68 different species of birds, and many different animals.

When I am not either reading or writing, I love to hike, take photographs, work with my German Shepherds and Papillons, tend the land, horseback ride, travel, learn new things, and since I recently acquired a motorcycle, learn how to ride a bike. I am having a great deal of fun perfecting that skill! Whenever I have the opportunity, I also search for the perfect chocolate. There are many good chocolates in the world, but I am convinced that there is a “perfect one.” Have to eat a lot of chocolates while I am researching!