Unedited Excerpt from WIP : Imperfection: Authorized

Authorized

 

My friend Ann tells me I like it too much. My admin thinks it’s awe-inspiring. My sister-in-law Organza thinks it is unnatural. My best friend Deborah won’t even discuss it. But I ask: What's wrong with desperately wanting your own husband? That sex with him becomes a goal each time we are apart? That he is my favorite smell and color and food? It is not all-consuming all the time. Instead, it is something that comes to me like a new idea, unexpected, quick, and completely inescapable. I want to worship at his temple. Then I want lightning to strike it.

This is the way it happens. It may be dead in the middle of summer, which around here means hot. He is showering in scalding hot water. I'm standing, wrapped in a white towel and combing my hair. I'm thinking of a song but it is fleeting and I don’t know what it is. I'm standing before the mirror even though I can't even see my hair to brush it right. The words and melody to this song elude me. I stand there anyway before the mirror. I'm not really brushing my hair. I am distracted by what I hear.

I am listening to the water streaming hot from its foggy nozzle, listening to him shift and move making that water splash and drizzle. I am sure the mirror is now opaque from condensation but I’m not looking at it. I'm glancing out the corner of my eye (as if someone can see me watching, as if there's something wrong with me watching) and watching the way his silhouette moves behind the blurred glass. In one of his hands I can make out the outline of something bulky, he's using the loofa he laughed for hours about me buying. He turns and I can see the line of his but curving down to well-muscled thighs. I hold the comb harder against the instinct to push the door back and squeeze him. I run it through my hair once more, though this time I bring it down and let its smooth spine slide down and over the top of my towel. I bite my lip. I put the comb down. He shifts again and I can make out his broad back. Suds slip down his backbone, down his legs.

He speaks but I don't, I am in the zone, his zone. Slowly, I slip my hand beneath my towel--it's chafing against me. I let my fingertips move along the offended skin. Then I let my hand slide further until I am holding my own breast in my hand. I let the towel slip down my body.

Startled by silence as he turns the water off, I suck in a deep breath. He pushes the glass door open. He turns and I know what he sees. He sees me standing, one hand grasping a towel dangling against my thigh, the other stroking breasts I know he remembers kissing. I also know what I see. I see smooth bronze skin and fine black hair leading its wet way down to circle him, the way I would circle him. I see eyes, whose color is not nearly as important as their intensity as they watch my hand. First, he smiles, and then he watches my hand. I smell heat and heat and Irish Spring and heat. He is dripping.

I step closer to him and I can feel it. The heat is reaching out from his body to mine. I let the hand he can't stop watching slip to my belly then to my thigh, then between. I drop the towel. His lips part. The shape of his mouth is lost to me, I can only think of what it can do. I bring the hand--the fingers he can't stop watching up to those lips tracing them. I lean up and kiss him salty.

Feather light touch on his wrist first, then a slow trail over his soft skin and hard curves all the way up over his shoulder all the way up to his neck. Caressing, holding there for a moment. His skin looking like buttered bread smells deep Good Lord. I don't dare glance at his face that would be too, too much. My lips now finding—no—having to find that same pleasure, more pleasure than can be sated with just my hands. He tastes good. Sweet and salty and good. Kissing barely satisfies me. My teeth sink slow into his skin that surrenders and his muscle that resists. Steam is still rolling over his hot shoulders and chest. I spy a droplet licking down his chest. Like a jealous guardian, my tongue is forced to capture it. Feeling electric hands on my back I shake, then shake them; electricity is distracting me from my purpose.

I want to devour him, I want to take him into me, make him part, make us whole. My tongue and teeth and hands are sucking him, biting him, touching him. Trying to get through his flesh to his soul. I slip my arms all the way around him, holding him close as I struggle to take him. I slip up and down, my arms rubbing him, my nipples gliding against the ridges of his abdomen. He tries to touch me again, but I bite his nipple softly and shake my head. I go lower, biting into his solid abdomen, watching fascinated at the muscles squeezing there, lower, until I flick my tongue against his navel. Lower until my cheek rubs against his swollen, hot penis, what I have been after all along. It is soft. It is hard. It is a darker bronze than rest of him. I am worshipping it and what it does to me. It slips in and slips out. It does it slow at first to make sure that I am open, then fast because I always am. It circles and pushes and when I know that he's fucking me, no longer making love to me, it makes me come.

I run my tongue down the length of him on one side then the other. I come from beneath and lick to the tip, fill my mouth and suck him in. I can feel his thighs swell, strong against my breasts as he clinches tight, trying to fortify himself against what I'm doing, but I am relentless, my jaw and tongue working. I let him go but dip below to take one testicle into my mouth, then the other I am always amazed at how the elephant skin there tightens. I tip my head up again to let his penis flip across my lips. I open my mouth wide and let it in again. It's loose between my lips and I let my tongue vibrate against it. Then I close my lips and suck in earnest. He draws in a rush of breath that sounds equal parts tenor and snort. My hand moves up over his strong thigh, then around to squeeze him tightly at the base as I work my head back and forth. His hand comes down to fix in my hair. He wants me to stop so he can take control. He doesn't want me to stop.

Kneeling before my husband, both of my knees to the cold, wet, slippery linoleum, I slide them open and slide my free hand into my moist heat. I dip inside then out, flicking a finger against the throbbing flesh budding out of me. It’s thick, swollen and sensitive. A shock goes through me as I flick it again and suck him in. I can hear his breathing and his heart beating, punctuated by alternating grunts and whimpers. His thick veins pulse against my tongue and take him as deep as I can in my mouth and throat, in and out, the way my body wants. Then I relax my lips and let moisture pool in my mouth as I rapidly move my head back and forth. He moans. I strum, and pluck, and pierce myself in time. I become a study of ragged breathing, heart pounding, and soft mewls. I am engorged and throbbing as I rub furiously, trying to come and to make him come with me. He tries to pull away but I am on a mission and I know what he's trying to stop. His hand is pulling my hair too tight. His muscles are squeezing too tight. My mouth is clamped too tight around him until he jerks, and spurts heat into my throat.

My thighs are pressed against two drawer knobs. The edge of the counter is digging into my hip. My ribs press against the rim of the sink. My breasts lay inside against the cool porcelain. He does not enter me slow. He doesn't care that the water's still running or that it's too soon now. His dick is still hard. My head is in the sink. And he loves me, but he's going to fuck me now.

The first stroke slams me against the sink. The knobs dig ferociously into my legs. My elbows slip outward on the counter and water from the sink runs over my cheek and nose; the faucet is near my ear. I can already feel my own come running down the inside of my thighs. I try to slide forward so that I am more comfortable and my body is resting against the sink. He holds my hips steady and will not let me. This time when he slams into me, my feet leave the floor and my neck curves deeper into the sink. I scream from the pressure inside me. He's found my spot. I don't put my feet back on the floor. I hook them around his thighs so that all my weight is resting right there on his dick. I raise my arms up to circle the faucet, but I keep my head down under the cold stream. He rams into me again and this time I scream. But water filters into my mouth and nose and for a moment I am sputtering. Then I am choking. His hands are in my hair again to keep my head under water. There's a pain in my neck and I am wracked with coughs. He lets go, but I do not raise my head and cannot stop the powerful coughs causing my body to tremor. He is still fucking me in earnest.

His hands come down to spread my legs wide out to the sides so he can easier speed up the pumping. I feel like I have to pee, but I know I don't. He's going so fast that I know my pussy is weeping. I take a gulp of air and squeal. He pulls my hair and my whole body up. My back is against his damp chest. My knees are spread wide on the sink now. The fingers of his other hand pinch my nipples in gratifying torture. He thrusts up into me faster and faster and his grip on my hair is tight and uncontrolled. I feel dizzy. My pussy is quivering because I've been coming since the first moment he pounded into me. My chest is tight and I'm wheezing, I start to cry and arch my back, tilting my ass up more so he can fuck me harder; as hard as he can. Finally, he lets out a sharp wail that sounds as if it could have come from a wounded wolf. He pushes me harshly forward so that I must catch myself against the mirror. Then he sinks down onto the toilet seat and drops his face in his hands. I climb down off the sink and just stand in front of him. He always takes a moment to recover.

I think about the places I'm likely to have bruises and even though they don’t show up so well on me, I decide that I will wear a turtleneck and slacks to work.

He looks up at me. His face is back to normal. His penis lies limp and retracted between his legs. "Pete told me he bought Ann a car," he says.  My husband is sometimes prone to gossip.

"He can't bribe her to stay," I smile.

"He seems to think so."

"Well..." I say—I’m just as prone to gossip as my husband—and we talk in the bathroom, orbiting each other like affectionate planets, smiling at each other's reflections. We leave the bathroom starting yet another day in our imperfect lives.

Imperfection is a novel about Candace and JB Sullivan, a seductive and charming couple nearing their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. Candy works to meet deadlines, JB tries to find the perfect side gig, and they both try to weather the storm that is their daughter Shannon. Still, word on the street is that Candy and JB have the most fulfilling sex life of anyone in the neighborhood. And they do.

Often poignant and hilarious, Candace guides the reader on an intensely erotic, explicitly sexual odyssey infused with nuance, emotion, and palpable romance. These stories include frank discussions of first sexual encounters, the fight that nearly ended the relationship, and an incredibly sexy not-to-be-believed anniversary present. The title highlights that these characters are real, not perfect, yet they find an absolutely perfect love for each other.

In my writing and specifically in this novel, I explore an authentic, familiar side or eroticism. Imperfection illustrates the possibility and beauty of wild, incredible sex between people who know each other, like each other, who accept each other’s flaws, are not twenty-somethings, and who fall in love with each other over and over again. This novel will appeal to readers who like erotica as well as romance and truly want to fall in love with the characters.