Today's guest is Alyssa Aaron talking about traveling, flying, and her release,
His Perfect Submissive. Please join me in welcoming Alyssa!
Traveling With Alyssa Aaron
I’m not a huge traveler. I don’t like to fly. So most of my travels are road trips and that suits me just fine. I love taking road trips.
I like to take my time and ponder the things I see along the way. I like to stop here and there to take pictures of flowers and trees and dilapidated buildings or a lonely stretch of road or a mailbox with an interesting planting of flowers around it.
I like to allow my writer’s mind ample time to kick in and gather pieces for some future story that I’ll write someday in the distant future when I’ve exhausted the hundred plus novel ideas already spinning in my mind.
When I travel I may be drawn to the house on the left which is gray with age, has a sagging porch, and missing windows. I’ll notice the front porch with its turned columns that were once a cherry shade of white and I’ll reflect that it was once someone’s home. I’ll think that generations may have been born there, matured there, perhaps even died there. I’ll connect with the children playing in the yard that I conjure in my imagination. I’ll wonder who they grew up to be…who they married…what troubled spots the marriages endured.
There is no telling what story will come out of my quiet ponderings as I wander around snapping photos, letting my muse run wild. My muse may dart after the little girl in the pink polka dot dress with the long blond tresses whose best friend disappeared from the school bus stop last week. I may think about the role that experience has on the little girl as she grows up, matures, has children of her own. Or the thoughts may take a different path and focus on the missing child…who took her…where is she now…will she survive her ordeal…how will it impact her life in the future? Or my thoughts could dart to the parents of the child. How will the kidnapping affect them? What strains will it put on their marriage?
Travels for me are wonderful times of slowing down physically and mentally so that my writers mind can kick in, play, and gather the bits and pieces that may someday form the foundation of another story…or perhaps just a piece of a story already coalescing in my mind.
I like to travel to areas where there is an interest in quilting. There are several Amish areas with that interest within driving distance of where we live in Indiana and I’ve enjoyed travels to several of them. Often Amish areas have restaurants in which the décor includes wonderful quilts hand-pieced and hand-quilted within the community. I love to dine at places like that as I like to see what other quilters have done with fabric, batting, and their own imaginations. It feeds my muse. It excites me. It makes me yearn to play with my own scraps of fabric and to gather more.
I love visiting new quilt shops on my travels as well. My quilting muse is perhaps not that different from my writing muse in that it too likes to run free darting here and yon looking for tidbits, snippets, scraps. My muse may find a perfect yellow solid to go with something I am working on at home…or it may find a series of things that form the inspiration for a whole new quilt which will be made either as a gift for a family member or friend or for a quilt that will be donated to a child in need somewhere in the world.
My travels are usually adventures in gathering…pieces for stories…pieces for quilts…interesting photographs that may one day find their way into a blog template, greeting card, calendar, or other project. The thing that I like most about traveling is the opportunity to allow things to freely associate. A child who flows into my imagination while I’m snapping pictures outside a dilapidated house may one day become the child version of the heroine in a book that’s coalescing in my mind as happened with Kara in
His Perfect Submissive. A yard of fabric with pictures of bunnies nibbling flowers may one day become the focus fabric for a quilt for a child recovering from surgery in a third world country.
As I travel I don’t always know where the pieces that my muses gather will end up. This is true whether they are story ideas, fabrics, or interesting photographs, but I welcome them all because I believe that one day each tidbit will find its rightful place in a story, a quilt, or in a blog template, calendar, greeting card or some other project.
Kara was the victim of a brutal rape that occurred when she was seven. The event destroyed her family and left her fearful and distrustful of men.
When Kara's brother embezzles $30,000 from Slade's company, Kara goes to Slade’s office determined to talk him out of going to the police.
Slade wants a peaceful, obedient, submissive with whom to share his life and in Kara he glimpses what he wants. He seizes the opportunity and makes Kara an offer she can't afford to refuse. The only way she can save her brother from certain prison is to accept Slade's marriage proposal and become his submissive.
Kara faces her wedding with anxiety. She can't tell Slade she can't submit sexually without risking her brother's freedom, yet she doubts she'll be able to keep her promise to be a submissive, obedient wife.
This romance explores the role of trust in even the most mismatched of partnerships and explores the complex connections between dominance and submission while it demonstrates the power of real love to heal even the deepest wounds.
Excerpt:
“Are you feeling better? Is talking helping?” he asked as he maneuvered the SUV off the exit ramp.
At the bottom of the ramp he turned right and followed the sign that advertised several restaurants in that direction.
“Yes it’s helping. I don’t feel quite as scared. I still feel—” he cast a sideways glance at her, mesmerized by the tangle of emotions that played over her expressive face as she searched for the right word.
“Uncertain?” he supplied. “Steak okay?” he asked as he turned the car onto the frontage road that served several fast food restaurants and a steak house.
“Steak sounds wonderful. No, not really uncertain, although that’s part of it I guess.”
He pulled the SUV into the Ned’s Steakhouse parking lot and parked. “So, if it’s not uncertain?”
“More like—lost—.”
“Uhm—Lost huh?” He pondered her choice of words, wondering what she meant by lost, what she still needed from him that he hadn’t given her. He killed the engine and turned in the seat so he could give her his full attention. “Talk to me about feeling lost Kara.”
She sucked in a deep breath and dropped her gaze to her hand that was still enclosed in his. He stroked her with his thumb.
“I feel like I don’t know anything.” Her voice was earnest. “I don’t know where I fit in this whole dominant submission thing. I don’t know anything about being submissive or what that means to you.” Her voice rose and caught and he thought for a moment she was going to cry. He longed to pull her against his chest and wrap her in his arms but she was too tense, her breathing too ragged and he knew that such a move would only make her pull away.
He knew she was used to knowing where she fit and that she was probably also used to feeling confident of her abilities. He hadn’t meant to, but he had taken that away and left her feeling uncertain and inadequate.
He wished he had it to do over again, and could take the time to make things right between them instead of rushing her into the marriage as he had, but he didn’t have that luxury.
“Dominance and submission is complex Kara. It’s different for every couple that does it. I cannot explain what it will become for us, partly because it will depend some on what you want it to be too. It’s the kind of thing you’ll have to experience to really understand.”
“Yes, but I’m afraid I’m going to mess everything up before I get there,” she sighed.
Her voice was so solemn that it cut at him. He stroked her cheek. “There is nothing to mess up Kara. I know I dumped a lot in your lap the day I asked you to marry me but really all I want from you right now is to earn your trust and get to know you better. The rest of it will fall into place over time.
Okay?”
She didn’t know how it happened or when she had stopped fearing him and had started trusting him, at least a little but his reassurance soothed her. He stroked her cheek and she nodded her understanding. Then his mouth pressed against hers. She tensed, anticipating the breathlessness and the terror as the memory of being held down, her breath cut off by someone larger and stronger teased the edges of her consciousness.
The kiss wasn’t like the ones that she remembered. This one was a gentle caress that coaxed more than it demanded. Slade’s mouth didn’t hamper her ability to breathe, didn’t cause her to feel dizzy or to black out.
She relaxed a little, bemused by the gentle stroke of Slade’s tongue along her lip and the command to open her mouth that he whispered against her lip.
She opened her mouth, unprepared for the soft stroke of Slade’s tongue as it teased her mouth. The unfamiliar intimacy sent a stab of heat to her center.
She was shocked by the warmth that filled her and by the lack of terror. There was no fear, no dizziness, no nausea, no panic attack. Only sweetness and the sense that she was okay, that Slade wasn’t going to hurt her.
She lifted her hands to his broad shoulders, liking the solidness of him beneath her hands. She didn’t protest as his tongue slid into her mouth, teasingnan intimate dance of liquid warmth in its wake.
Her mind raced. He’d been kind and gentle and matter of fact when he’d explained his feelings about dominance and submission and what he wanted from her. The whole day he’d treated her with kindness and respect. He hadn’t belittled her when he could have. He’d remembered her headache and gotten her medicine, he’d cared that she preferred Mountain Dew from the fountain rather than a bottle. It all combined making her feel soft and warm, cared for, and taken care of in a way that was completely new to her.
She clung to him feeling grateful to him for helping her brother and for trying to make her feel comfortable in this new marriage. His kiss deepened, his mouth urging hers to open more as one large hand slid up her back and beneath the curtain
of her hair to caress the tight spot at the base of her neck.
She opened her mouth, allowing his tongue to find hers again. His hand kneaded her tight muscles, easing the strain that had overwhelmed her. His tongue explored her mouth engulfing her in unfamiliar pleasure that made her open to him, admitting him, like a flower opens to admit the sunshine.
She felt his hand move as it slipped beneath her sweater. She shifted slightly, moaning a protest that was swallowed up by his mouth. “Um—please. Slade—no—” she murmured, twisting to avoid the touch of his palm as it slid up her rib cage toward her breast.
“Shhh Kara, I just want to make you feel good,” he whispered against her neck as his hand stilled. His other hand stroked her hair and her neck.
She heaved a sigh of relief, the knowledge that the hand beneath her sweater had paused that he was waiting for her permission to go forward eased her fear and made her feel more comfortable. The knowledge that he would stop if she insisted made her feel safe. His hand felt good where it rested against her rib cage. She both wanted him to touch her and wanted him to stop.
“Relax and let me make you feel good Kara,” he whispered in her ear as his hand began to slip slowly up her rib cage toward her breast.
She wanted to protest but her breath caught in her throat as his large, warm hand closed over her breast.
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