TANTALIZING TUESDAY

Bound into Spring

First, I want to thank Carrie, Gracen and Margay for inviting me here to guest blog. I’m thrilled to be at Moonlight, Lace and Mayhem today. I’ll start off introducing myself. My name is Michelle Polaris and I write erotic romance, both futuristics and fantasy, for Ellora’s Cave. My novels are kinky and not for everyone, but they allow me to do two things I love best, explore the human heart and soul as it’s tied to sexuality and dive into complex world building. I’ll let readers get a taste of my recent work with an excerpt and blurb at the bottom. For now I want to talk about a common theme in my stories--hope.

March means spring, my favorite time of year. Well, at least the promise of spring. I’m from New England, and spring is never a sure bet. Birds start to nest, bulbs start to pop, and then a new layer of snow falls down to drag on the winter blahs. But putting aside premature seasonal shifts, what I love most about spring is how it represents hope, rebirth and Mother Earth awakening from her slumber. What I write is usually darker in tone. My characters tend to have well developed internal conflicts mired by past traumas. Some readers prefer to keep it light and choose books that provide a lift from an already stressful world. But what really does it for me is to tell stories that take characters in dire circumstances and deliver on the promise of growth, happiness and healing through help from their lovers and their own paths to self-acceptance. I want my characters to feel hopeful, about their lives and their hearts. I want them to feel the new possibilities despite the drama of their lives. That’s what spring does for me and what a great novel, in my estimation, also does. It recognizes that in many moments life is plenty hard, but that despite this we can continue on and find joy and laughter and love.

Hope of this is what keeps the human animal going through the darkness. I hope (grin) I’m not scaring anyone away with an overabundance of angst. Let me talk a bit about my recent release, Bound Odyssey, and then about my favorite character in that book.

Bound Odyssey is a futuristic, post-apocalyptic, ménage BDSM love story. A mouthful, I know. Here’s the blurb:

The year is 2067 and Earth is self-destructing from environmental cataclysms. A portal to a new world is ripped open and refuge there is Earth’s only hope. Enter Jace, cowboy diplomat, who is preparing for the negotiation of a lifetime. A sexually conflicted alpha male, he hates everything with a cock, especially himself. The last thing Jace expects is to fall in love with both a woman and a man.

His dark history presents the ultimate challenge to Mira and Roman, the sexual Dominant team hired to prepare Jace for the female-dominant culture of the new world. Tragedy has made Mira distrust her Mistress abilities. Survival is her priority, and she resists her deep attraction to Jace’s haunted eyes and sculpted body.

Roman, however, falls hard and fast for Mira and Jace, ready to honor Mira as his Mistress and force Jace to recognize him as Master. Bound in one another’s chains and pushed to the limits of arousal and pain, they must outrun sabotage and conspiracy to find salvation for their bodies, souls and hearts.

I’ve been lucky enough to get some great reviews including comments that the plot was intense and satisfying enough even putting aside the sex. One reviewer said it was the best erotic book she’d ever read. Now that I’m done stroking my ego, the basic reason I wrote this book was for the characters. Their story screamed at me to be written and they were all so vibrant and wonderful they deserved a happily ever after.

My favorite character from my novel is one of my heroes, Roman. He’s lived through tough times. He grew up in the North Carolina Appalachian Mountains in a large, loving family who forced him out the door because they realized his sexual identity made him a bad fit for the place. They loved him enough to make him move on to a part of the country he could learn more about himself and gain some polish. He’s a mess of contradictions. A fun, loving, loyal, sophisticated hillbilly who is comfortable with his need to submit to a woman, won’t sacrifice his own urges to dominate the other hero, alpha enough to give anyone a run for his money in a bar fight, and willing to acknowledge that even as his world is self-destructing around him, he wants to build a future and grab for the hearts of the two people he loves even if they go kicking and screaming into the relationship. He’s intelligent, tough and figured out a way to heal his own traumatic losses from his past. Even now my heart is pitter-pattering writing about him. He’d be first on my list to invite to a cocktail party at my home. But since he lives in 2067 post-apocalypse New Denver, I’ll have to delay the invite for a while. Circling around to my topic, what I love best about Roman is that he has a natural talent for hope. Yes, I think it’s a talent. Not everyone is equally capable of seeing the clichéd light at the end of the tunnel. But he is determined to do so, without being sappy about it. Roman is my quintessential spring.

Here’s an excerpt from early in my novel, the first time you meet Roman and when he’s coming face to face with his attraction to Mira, my heroine and the Mistress with whom he falls in love. After, stay tuned for some links to learn more about me and take a further look at Bound Odyssey.

Excerpt:

“Over here, Roman.”

Sweet Lord, even the sound of Mira’s everyday conversation had Roman fighting off an erection hard enough to make a Carolina fir tree proud. Her voice was smooth over a hot kick, like butter and jalapenos, and it drove him crazy. Had for the last two weeks since he’d met her. If their trainee didn’t hurry up and skedaddle his way to the institute to begin the waltz Mira had planned for the three of them, he was pretty sure he was going to shoot himself to stop the misery.

Instead, he sauntered over to where Mira stood on a stepstool, examining a pair of leather cuffs dangling from a chain anchored into the ceiling. A pulley system allowed them to raise and lower the chain to different heights. Slowly, they’d put together the equipment needed for this job. Their suite was in an old, high-end hotel converted for the institute, a stone’s throw from the state house in the heart of the new capitol. Top floor, probably to segregate them and their “shady” business from the other employees. Plus, the walls needed repainting, and the Persian carpet was well past its day. But the kitchenette came in handy. Lots of space in the main room too.

Mira fingered the leather, rubbing the grain between the pads of her digits with a frown on her gorgeous triangle-shaped face. She had her shining brown hair pulled back in a ponytail hanging down to the small of her back.

“What can I do for you, Darlin’?”

She looked down at him, her eyebrows lifting over her rich chocolate brown eyes at his greeting. “You do know I don’t allow subs to call me by nicknames? You’re tempting fate, Roman. That Smoky Mountain twang of yours, as lovely as it is, won’t save you if I hear ‘darling’ out of that pretty mouth of yours once we’re on the clock tomorrow.”

“Of course, Mistress.” He dipped his head but didn’t hide his smirk. Not worth bothering. Mira saw through him easier than a hound dog spotted a hare hiding in the bush.

She dropped her gaze farther down to where his dick pressed tight against his jeans. Mira rolled her eyes at him and climbed those long legs down from the stool. She was five foot seven, above average height for a woman, and those inches were all leg. Curves in all the right places; a nice flare to her hips. Child-bearing hips, his folk called them. An added bonus. And wasn’t he a son of a bitch to be thinking about having kids in this world. But he knew what he wanted. He was a man used to listening to his gut. And his gut had plenty to say about this woman.

As she descended, Roman automatically lifted a hand to grasp hers, helping her down the last steps.

“A gentleman.” She nodded to his manners.

“My momma raised me right.”

She perused him again, eyes taking in all of his blue-eyed, wavy blond-haired, six-foot height. “It seems she did.” She angled her head in a motion toward the dangling leather. “Take a look at the cuffs.” She gestured him up the stool.

He appreciated the hand-tooled leather, a fine scroll design of vines winding their way around the cherry-stained cuffs. The leather was thick but supple. And lined with fine lamb’s wool. Mira brought a lot of the smaller equipment and tools from her private stock to the institute. That was not surprising. A Mistress or Master always invested in a variety of play items. That way, favorites were handy to work a slave at a moment’s notice. What did surprise Roman was Mira’s added hobby. She crafted the majority of the leather tools herself. How she laid her hands on the cured hide he hadn’t gotten around to asking.

Roman looked more closely at the cuffs. There, on the left manacle, a crack down the entire length of the leather. Pretty uniform. Enough to have the restraint give way under pressure. Like the pressure of a sub hanging from it during training.

“This crack wasn’t there yesterday.”

“I know,” she said.

He’d watched her compulsively check and recheck every piece of equipment in their suite. The institute provided them with supplies, but he and Mira put together everything. She hefted a mean hammer.

He examined the cuff again. “Someone’s been in here.”

He glanced down to where she stood frozen with eyes glazed. After a good thirty seconds, she shook out of it, reached to run her hand behind her neck in a quick massage. If he hadn’t been above her, he might have missed seeing the slight tremble, gone a moment later. He didn’t know what it was about, but that brief moment of vulnerability pushed his buttons, stirred a need to attack whatever ghost had his Mistress trembling. Because even though he’d known her a brief two weeks, he already knew this woman was his Mistress.

Roman was difficult to anger and he counted on that fact. But the violent protective urges he felt in Mira’s presence, and the desire to wrap his arms around her curves, sink to his heels and offer worship, confirmed his suspicion. He’d acted as a Dom for too long. The relief of his reaction to Mira lapped through his body, the soothing waves of the ocean along Carolina’s coast from his distant memory caressing his muscles, relaxing away his tension.

“Holy conspiracy, Batman,” he said with his best Robin impression. The distraction worked.

Her head snapped up and her face brightened, shadows fleeing. “You son of a bitch. You got into my boxes.” But she was smiling. It was like the sun had gone supernova in his chest and lit all the dark places.

“You sent me to find the extra buckles in your bedroom. I thought it was another box of supplies. But several hundred Batman comics?” He let out a long whistle. “Damn, Darlin’, a collection of comics in mint condition like that nowadays is impressive. Not to mention worth a fortune.”

She shrugged. “Most I got before the explosions. But I wouldn’t sell. Not that anyone interested is left with money to buy.”

He unhooked the cuffs from the chain and climbed down. He held out the leather. She hesitated but took them.

“Why collect the comics?” he asked.

“One of the signs I was a budding Domme was when I started fantasizing about Wonder Woman tying up Batman with her golden lasso, with me starring in the role of Amazon Princess. The Caped Crusader’s had a soft spot in my heart since then.”

He laughed. “I always imagined it was Batman tying up Robin. Thought Robin was the luckiest son of a gun around.”

Her answering smile, eyes a chocolate sunrise treat, started his palms itching. He ached to trace the lids with his fingers, travel them down to outline her cheek and jawline. He had no doubt if he tried without permission he’d be down on the ground, screaming uncle. And the idea of that revved him almost as much. Roman might be a sexual switch, a person ready, willing and able to play either Dominant or submissive depending on the circumstance, but his body responded to her as all sub.


If you liked what you read, feel free to check me or my book out further at my website, http://www.michellepolaris.com/, my blog site, http://www.michellepolarisblog.wordpress.com/ or at Ellora’s Cave at http://www.jasminejade.com/p-7702-bound-odyssey.aspx. I also blog regularly with the group at http://www.naughtyauthorchicks.blogspot.com/.

I have a great video book trailer for this story. You can find it on You Tube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwVFg01OaOY

So what brings you hope? Do you feel it in springtime? Does a good book bring you hope? Feel free to leave a comment. I’d love to hear.

Thanks once again to the Moonlight, Lace and Mayhem ladies. Happy spring!

Michelle