Dillon Alexander doesn’t do commitment—especially not where his next-door neighbor and best friend is concerned. Alyssa Miller may want more than friendship from him, but she deserves a man who can give her the world, not someone who’s damaged goods. But when he realizes Alyssa intends to have a one-night stand on her vacation, he hauls ass after her to make sure he’s the one to scratch her itch. Neither of them expects their explosive chemistry to burn hotter than the lights on the strip. Maybe what happens in Vegas doesn’t have to stay in Vegas…
Claire Maddox is off to see the world, but first, she needs quick cash. A temp job at Anderson Auctions seems perfect, especially with the unexpected benefit of the hottest man she’s ever laid eyes—or hands—on. William Anderson’s military training makes him the perfect man to flush out the spy undercutting his family business, but no amount of time in the Marines could prepare him for the suspicious—and sexy—new temp. Desire lands them in bed…but duty may cost him his heart.
Life, and love, is too short to take seriously—a fact radio sportscaster Tate Grayson enjoys rubbing in uptight radio host Noelle Butler’s face. But when he tells his listeners men shouldn’t get married, she’s all too happy to call in and yank the silver spoon out of his over privileged mouth. Their heated on-air arguments are a hit, but when they’re forced to do a joint show for two weeks, they must pull the struggling radio station back from the brink or they’ll lose their jobs. Or worse, their hearts.
Dissatisfied with his empty life, Lord Anthony Thornton seeks a deep and lasting connection… and finds himself intrigued by the Ice Maiden of the haute monde. Undaunted by Phillipa Peppiwell’s aloof nature and her distaste for the idea of matrimony, he sets out to thaw the bewitching beauty by enticing her with adventures of the most sensual type. But both Anthony and Phillipa hide secrets revealing past scandals best kept buried… and if discovered, could rip them apart.
Anne Middleton never plays by the rules. She is willful when she should be obedient and unabashed when she should be decorous. Worse still, she can never resist a good wager. Michael Grey—the Earl of Thornhill—knows Anne is no lady of decorum, but her bold impulsiveness slips through his armor, and propriety is forgotten. Roused by heady desire, Michael tempts Anne in a way she cannot resist—a wager. Thus begins a game of chance, where coins have been replaced by a currency that is far more illicit. And the stakes of seduction are dangerous indeed…
Rafe de Vere, England’s most loyal and brutally successful soldier. is utterly weary of war and its impossible demands. Thankfully, his final task is the easiest: accompany a wellborn lady to London for Henry VIII’s perusal. Until he discovers she is the widow Lady Annabelle Benton-Hayes, the woman who swore to wait for him but married another. Rafe isn’t permitted to care, yet time hasn’t dulled their sizzling attraction and his orders are increasingly difficult to obey. To love her, he would have to risk all and cross his king to secure the ultimate prize—Annabelle’ s heart.
Sex Through the Ages──The Tudor, Regency, and the Victorian
Let’s talk about sex! The act of love has come a long way (if you’ll excuse the pun) and Scandalous authors Nicola Davidson, Lily Maxton and Stacy Reid are here to share the lingo, myths, crazy truth and more across the ages, from the Tudor, Regency and Victorian eras.
The Tudor, by Nicola Davidson
“Swiving anon,” said the bawde with a lascivious wink. “Do sample my guinea hens with the prettiest duckies in London!”
Oh, Tudor England, you sexy beast, you. Dark, dangerous, fraught with difficulties – and that was just negotiating the privy. Yet despite the raunchfests depicted in guilty pleasures like The Tudors, sex in Henry VIII’s time was a surprisingly stern affair. Sure, women wore no underwear, but the Church ruled the hearts and minds of most lovers and decreed that sex must remain within the bounds of matrimony, for the procreation of children and be undertaken only in the missionary position. Adultery and/or fornication could earn you a whipping – and not the good kind!’
So how did our lusty Tudor friends carry on without a wallet full of latex condoms or a daily birth control pill?
As I discovered in my information trawl, they had their ways and means. Popular (if relatively unsuccessful) methods included withdrawal and avoiding sex during a woman’s most fertile time of the month. A very small percentage of men used an early version of the condom – a sheath constructed of lamb’s gut if you please, but these were not widely available. Ladies were even luckier in their preventative options, with delights such as a chunk of wool soaked in vinegar or a homemade beeswax plug inserted before the critical moment. If that wasn’t enough to put one right in the mood, some chose alternatives like magical spells, herbal concoctions or objects such as weasel testicles around the neck. RAWR! Let’s get it on!
PS: In case you are wondering about the first sentence, a silver-tongued pimp is encouraging passerbys to get their sex here – with the prostitutes possessing the best breasts in town!
The Regency, by Lily Maxton
The Rgency was the age of contrasts—from Jane Austen’s decorous gentry to “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” Lord Byron. Not as publicly salacious as the former era but not as tightly laced as the later Victorian era, either.
In my Regency set novella, The Wager, Anne Middleton reads a fictional novel called Confessions of a Courtesan, which introduces her to some racy stuff. By the Regency period, a few erotic novels had indeed been published, so it isn’t too far-fetched to think an intrepid woman like Anne might be able to get her hands on one.
Perhaps the best known English erotic novel was Fanny Hill, which was published in the mid 1700s and almost immediately banned (though this didn’t stop its circulation—by the end of the 1700s there were an estimated 20 different versions in English alone, never mind the translations). In the novel, Fanny falls into prostitution, and has a lot of sexual encounters with a lot of people, including another female prostitute who initiates her into the world of pleasure: “her lascivious touches had lighted up a new fire that wantoned through all my veins, but fixed with violence in that center appointed them by nature…”
To close, I’ll leave my linguistically-oriented readers with a few bizarre sexual terms from another book I researched for my novella (one of Anne’s favorite books, in fact), the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, which is a collection of street slang (the classic “to tup” is also in the Dictionary, FYI):
“Riding St. George: The woman uppermost in the amorous congress, that is, the dragon upon St. George.“
“Three-Penny Upright-A retailer of love, who, for the sum mentioned, dispenses her favours standing against a wall.”
“Mutton. In her mutton, i.e. having carnal knowledge of a woman.” (Author’s Note: Mutton, really?)
The Victorian Era, (1837–1901) by Stacy Reid
The Victorian society was highly straitlaced and where many people gladly embraced sexual propriety. However, the apparent prudery of Victorians overlaid a huge level of hypocrisy. Prostitution in many forms was rife, and although homosexuality was illegal, many leading figures lived a very different life in secret to that of their public utterances. While the society was encouraged to use morally upright and prudish euphemisms such as “limb” instead of “leg” (saying leg was highly scandalous and improper!), Prince Edward himself was embroiled in several scandals including sleeping with married women. Many sex scandals surfaced in the scandal sheets and several erotic literate emerged in this period!
My Scandalous House of Calydon series is set in this era and when I write about sex in my books I try not to make it as prudish as how the period suggests. There are some who believe that Victorians were not as scandalized by sex and desire as how it was posit, and I support such thinking and aim to make my sex scenes sensual, emotional and evocative.
But I digress…I wanted to entertain you with my favorite words and phrases that Victorian gents and ladies used for sexy speak….they were used by the lower class, which were certainly freer with their sexuality, the middle class, and even high society men that had mistresses.
As authors we use the term mistresses and paramours so freely in our novels, while society men of Victorian times used other words! Such as, one’s convenient, wife in water colors, and left-handed wife.
A woman’s private was referred to as—fruitful vine, madge, muff, quivering quim, notch, cunny, crinkum-crankum (I cannot even imagine one of my heroes saying, “It had felt so good to be in her quivering quim.” Bawhahahaa. I also spent a few minutes well wondering about crinkum-crankum)
Breasts were called—dairy, bubbies, dugs, kettle drums
A man’s privates was called— ballocks, lobcock (for a large one!), plugtail, tallywag, twiddle-diddles, whore pipe. (I absolutely cannot get over the whore pipe. I so need to have a future heroine gasp and say “I am not touching your whore pipe.”)
Making love was referred to as—beast with two backs (couple in the act), to join giblets, prigging, roger, wap, tip the velvet (oral sex on a woman), mutton mongering.
So let me wrap up all these treasure trove of phrases in a short tale of a young gent on his way to visit Penelope, his mistress…errrm I meant his wife in water colors.
Lord Pumperdink was eager to see Penelope, as it had been weeks since he had last seen her, and Pumperdink desperately wanted to join giblets with her. He could just imagine how her kettle drums would feel under his hand…soft and supple, and the clasp of her crinkum-crankum would be divine as he slid in his whore pipe.
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