As a romance writer of over a decade, I’m happy to confirm that your fascination with the realities of our IRL sex lives is completely justified. I get the intrigue—are we living out your every fantasy in search of source material? Or are we all secretly sex-starved virgins holed up behind keyboards in our pajamas? Either way, are we getting as wet writing this stuff as you are reading it?
I may not be able to answer for all my fellow romance novelists, but I can assure you my sex life definitely hasn’t been boring. Certainly not when my husband of ten years, Drew*, looks like someone who walked straight out of a BookTok fantasy. Six-foot-six with dark wavy hair and stubble to match, I certainly wasn’t the first woman to fall for his charms. It also doesn’t hurt that he’s hilarious and blessed with a tongue that’s good for more than just witty banter.
But while sex with Drew may have fulfilled my every fantasy, whatever went down in our bed happened in its own world, one completely separate from whatever one I was crafting in a Word doc. My work was work, necessary for the character’s fulfillment and not always my own. So I enjoyed the best of both worlds—two sex lives that never really collided. One was serious sexual work, one was playful, personal pleasure.
But separate lives don’t always stay separate.
With my latest book I’d been doing my usual yapping to Drew about the process, using usual pillow talk time to complain when I was blocked or celebrate when it was going well.
The heroine, Charlotte, took no shit, while the nerdy accountant hero, Rich, (justice for sexy nerds) was not quite the sensitive type she was used to easily pushing away.
“Do you think there’s a little bit of you in there?” Drew asked one night after I regaled him with the tale of my protagonists’ first encounter.
“Excuse me?”
He kissed my forehead. “You know, always wanting to be in charge.”
I scoffed. Me? Sure, I had that Aries tendency of needing control—but I could let it go if I wanted to, couldn’t I? I could be a certified pillow princess when I wanted to (even if it was only on my own terms). So no, Charlotte wasn’t me.
I put Drew’s suggestion out of my mind as the writing process sped along. From emails to meet cutes, I wrote it all from my desk overlooking our garden. And as the English weather changed from sunny to grey and back again outside the window, I lost myself in the sex lives of other people.
Charlotte’s first time with Rich was supposed to be a standard sexual encounter, one that would satisfy the reader and move the story along. But sometimes husbands and even characters of your own making can surprise you. Just as Drew predicted, Charlotte’s hard front wasn’t without a chink that her hero could (and would) breach
The scene seemed to stream from my fingers as I found myself placing my characters in an unexpected position. It seemed Rich wasn’t going to take any of Charlotte’s avoidant tendencies today. I wrote about the way he managed to silence her with a look, applied gentle pressure to her neck, told her what a good girl she was for giving into the pleasure he was providing. I barely felt any level of control over every dirty word of praise he whispered in her ear, every drop of sweat breaking out on her skin as he slipped a finger inside her, every bite of her bottom lip that tried to silence her moans.
Finally, Charlotte came with a satisfied disbelief at what she’d allowed herself to do—letting someone else take the reins as she relinquished control.
I was just managing to calm my own racing heart when Drew came home from work. He may not be an accountant, but he was wearing his usual polo shirt and lanyard just the same.
“What are you doing?” he asked, walking in to find me trying to tidy up the snack wrappers that had found their way onto my desk amid the nearly out-of-body sex writing that had taken over my afternoon.
“Nothing, why?”
“You look guilty.”
Did I?
I waved in the vague direction of my computer screen. “It might have got a little X-rated between these two,” I admitted.
His facial expression barely changed as he dropped his bag and moved behind me to look at the screen.
I felt the air in the room grew thicker, as it often does when I’m near this man and have been thinking about sex. I glanced up at the dark hair on his chin, so different from the clean shaven man I’d written on the page.
What was he reading? Maybe the part where Rich refused to let Charlotte move until she gave over her control to him. Maybe the parts where he whispered words of praise in her ear.
He cleared his throat. “Did you enjoy writing it?”
I couldn’t help my nervous laughter. “It was okay.”
His voice lowered near my ear. “Because your cheeks are a little pink.”
A familiar hand touched my flushed face and my entire body tensed.
I stood from my chair but he gave me no space to move. My breath caught in my chest as he looked at me in a way I recognized all too well, my warm thighs bumping against the table.
“Are you ready to admit she’s a little bit like you?”
With my throat dry and my shorts wet, I had no idea how to respond.
“Does that make you like him?” I asked, leaving the subtextual, willing to take control? somewhere unsaid in the thickening air between us.
I barely had time to glance between his eyes and lips before my body knew what it had to do. Suddenly a polo shirt and lanyard had never been so sexy as I grabbed his collar and kissed him like it was the first time.
I clung to him in breathless anticipation, knowing that those big hands gripping into the top of my hips and searching for bare skin beneath the hem of my t-shirt were capable of making this as quick or as torturous as they wanted.
“Get upstairs.”
I barely heard his demand over the sound of my own desire but found myself obeying as if by instinct.
Most of our clothing was already gone by the time we reached our bed, but it looked like Drew had taken whatever he’d read on the screen to heart and was about to make me work for it. It felt like a lifetime of letting me squirm until he finally gave in to touching me.
His sudden air of dominance left me confused about what my body wanted to do first. As he buried his face between my breasts in a way that sent my mind blank, I wrapped my legs around his waist in an attempt to hang on. Domineering hands applied gentle pressure to either side of my neck and I arched on instinct, every damp spot south of my hips grinding into him.
I felt his smirk against my chest as he pinched my skin between his teeth and suddenly realized I was losing. This was exactly what he’d wanted, exactly what I’d spent the afternoon writing about.
While I’d never said no to being lavished in pleasure, usually it was on my terms. Now, much like Charlotte, I was no longer in control. As much as I wanted to give in, a part of me wanted to fight back against it. To see how far I could push it.
My nails found his back—his weakness in the same way he knew all of mine. The moan that escaped his lips as I dug my fingers into his ass and dragged them across his skin made my eyes roll back in my head. I dug in hard again and the sound rippled through me like an orgasm.
This was a game I was not going to win.
All I could do was tighten my legs around his waist and hold on for dear life as he nibbled my ear and praised me for finally giving in.
I’d lost all control of what exactly was touching where, every sensation mingling together until all I could hear was my own panting. Our skin stuck together, I was filled more than ever before. Fingers, a dick—I’d gone past the point of caring.
Fortunately, I didn’t need to focus as Drew continued to take control, tilting my head back with a thumb under my chin, giving himself just the right angle to murmur in my ear and tell me how well I was doing. He took what he read on that page and ran with it until I let myself go and came hard under his total control.
With what power I had left I forced a few more moans from him, storing them away in my memory bank for later, each one causing me to gasp again and again as I held him close between my thighs.
Finally, with a moan that echoed between our kisses, he came too. A sudden wash of accomplishment surrounded me—a feeling of sexual satisfaction rooted not in anyone’s orgasm, but in the realization that I had given him what he wanted. Drew had been right all along—turns out I was a little like Charlotte after all. And being proven wrong had never felt more right.
*Name has been changed.
