Bottoms in Love, synopsis and excerpt

Bottoms in Love by Gregory Allen, a novelette published by 1001 Nights Press

Synopsis:

Nothing gets Carter hotter than the thought of his wife in charge -- submitting to her desires in the bedroom. And Lindsey can be the perfect dominatrix: demanding, knowing, pushing all the right buttons. The problem? She's submissive too. Her idea of the perfect place is at the feet of a commanding husband.

Lindsey and Carter think they've solved the apparent problem with the toss of a coin, an impartial system to randomly determine who's on top -- this time. But a string of the coin coming up heads leaves Carter particularly whiny about having to dominate his wife for an evening. He manages to quell his jealousy and give Lindsey some of the punishment she craves, but when the coin comes up tails the next time, his wife decides to show her husband a real punishment.   

Excerpt: from part one, Heads

The dime sat tails-side-up, centered on top of her left hand, the shimmer of the fresh coin dulled by the diamond close by. “Now, don’t look glum,” Lindsey said. “Fair is fair.”

Carter nodded and smiled. He picked up the dime and dropped it into his shirt pocket, took his wife’s hands in his, and leaned in and kissed her. “Are you ready to go?”

She frowned. “Are you?”

As he rose and stood next to her, her expression changed. Her lips parted, her chin dropped down, her eyes brightened. He motioned for her to rise, and she, quickly and gracefully, slid her chair back, swung her touched-together knees toward him, and pushed up. She slipped against him, feeding her arm between his hip and the nook of his elbow.

He led her.

She remained just a fraction behind, drawing brief stares from men sitting with their dates at the dimly lit tables along the way. Her purple skirt wrapped around her legs, falling just past her knees. The white of her shirt, pressed forward by her breasts, emerged in his periphery even as his gaze stayed forward. She loved to play the part of his eye candy to tease him, but he knew better.

The dime had come up tails four times in a row. The odds quickly popped into Carter’s mind: one chance in eight. He shuddered. Of course, the streak wasn’t that unusual, and had it been the fourth time in a row that the coin landed heads up, he would have been perfectly pleased with the result. Lindsey seemed to know what he was thinking, and she squeezed his arm, bolstering his resolve.

A hostess opened the door and smiled good night to them. Carter said goodnight in return, letting his wife out ahead. She waited, just beyond the threshold, giving the hostess only a nod, and slipped beside her husband again. He walked the length of carpet under the canopy outside the restaurant’s doors  and handed a ticket to the valet. The city lights were brightening under the arriving dusk.

The rarity of an evening out allowed them to splurge on an overpriced dinner and expensive wine, though a night at home alone, with the kids at her parents’, was the real treat. Tempered only by the unfortunate flip of a coin. The car pulled around and Carter walked his wife to the passenger side. She slipped off his arm as he opened the door and sat in the leather passenger seat, smoothing her skirt, which had ridden up, and letting her hand trail down her knee.

Carter tipped the valet and got in on the other side. He gripped the steering wheel and exhaled a desperate breath. “Can we do two out of three, please?”

“Could we if I had won?”

Carter put the car into drive. “No.”

Lindsey crossed her right leg over her left and squeezed against her husband as he pulled out of the lot into the street. “I always take my turn without complaint.”

“All right. Fine.”

The firm tone of her husband caused Lindsey to straighten and sit up. “Ooh, are we starting?”

“I guess.”

“You can’t guess, if we’re starting.”

Carter glanced down at Lindsey’s knees lightly rubbing together. “Lift up your skirt.”

She slid her hands down the sides of her thighs, keeping her knees touching, acting coquettish. Bunching the skirt, she drew the material halfway up and stopped.

“Farther. Show me your panties. If you’re even wearing any panties.”

“I am.” She obeyed, raising the skirt higher. She slunk a bit in her seat, and the white strip of her underwear emerged, her pussy tightly encased within. “See? I told you I was wearing panties.”

“Watch your tone. You know what will happen.”

She wriggled under his glare. The band of her seat belt pressed between her breasts, pinning her blouse tight and accentuating the pertness of her nipples, which even through her bra showed hard at her husband’s strict demeanor. He returned his attention to the road, but surprised her by taking swift, firm hold of her thigh. A sharp intake of breath preceded a lengthy sigh, and Lindsey slunk down further in her seat. Her skirt bunched around her waist, and she nudged her panty-covered pussy toward her husband’s hand, but he kept her at bay. His eyes remaining on the road, he stroked her thigh without allowing her grinding lap the touch she craved.

Finally, the pinky side of his hand grazed her, and the slight touch released her yearning breath into the quiet enclosure of the car. Carter remained stoic. She slid toward him, and his hand moved once again towards her knee. “Oh, please,” she said, in a whisper, but he only glanced down, smiling, and shook his head.

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The Bottoms are Back!

It takes a brave writer to admit to a mistake, but I'm not going to be brave. Instead I'm going to rationalize! But it's a rationalization I actually believe, if you can believe it. This is the second origin story about Bottoms in Love. The first can be found at the personal website of Sharazade, who would end up republishing Bottoms in Love with her publishing company 1001 Nights Press:

http://sharazade.com/?cat=78
 
I'll summarize it for anyone who doesn't want to click over. The Bottoms in Love originally published last year by OC Press of Oysters and Chocolate was conceived as a flash fiction idea. A man stops in the middle of spanking his wife to make her promise she'll give him a good turn next. "Yes, I promise! Just please spank me!" It sounded like something that would turn out well as a 500 word story. I planned to enter the home of a couple, pictures of their kids on the walls, and show somehow that these were rare opportunities for them to indulge in power exchange. Then describe a man giving a sexy punishment to his wife, letting it go on just long enough to make it seem like an enjoyable maledom scene before delivering the surprise twist ending.

That story sat on the back burner while I worked on something else. Then I opened, instead, with where Bottoms in Love opens now, with Carter and Lindsey enjoying a rare night out with the kids at Lindsey's parents'. They flip a dime, and Carter loses and has to dominate his wife. Just for fun, I began the story with Carter losing for the fourth time in a row, which leaves him just a touch whiny (okay, maybe more than a touch) as he gets started on their drive home.

I was happy with the story. I never felt anything was missing. The mystery of just how these couple of bottoms ended up married played nicely in the background. But that dynamic played out to the extent that I was playing with it. An opening scene came to mind of Lindsey exhausting Carter with her submissive desires, early in their courtship. Carter was spanking her nightly and getting blowjobs, but how much of that was he supposed to take? Not until he set dumping her in motion did he realize what he really wanted was a turn!

I intended to follow that moment with them working out the rotation of submitting to each other. Expecting to end the prequel with them celebrating their compromise over dinner and picking out from their change a shiny dime. Again, that stayed on the back burner while I worked on other things. Then OC Press and Oysters and Chocolate decided to move on and released their titles to the authors. OC Press had gotten Bottoms in Love to readers, which is something I'm always tremendously grateful to publishers for, so that was upsetting news, but Sharazade wanted to republish it at 1001 Nights Press. I told her about the prequel idea and then, in the email, mentioned moving the prequel scenes into Bottoms in Love as back story. My musings on just how those scenes would fit together were so vivid, I recall joking in the email that I guessed I'd started writing it!

Which puts me in a strange place, I suppose. Because I'm super excited for this latest and longest version of Bottoms in Love to go out to readers; although I still think the original version worked nicely, I guess I reached a point where that untold back story got so compelling, I felt compelled to tell it. (A part of me still longs for that 500 word flash fiction story that never came to be, so I suppose writers are just hard to please.) Here's a bit from Carter's POV:

“We need to talk. I don’t think I can do this.”

Lindsey’s bowed head lifted. Her downward gaze sharpened and pointed up at him. “Stop. Get my clothes.” She turned to the side and raised an arm to cover her breasts. Carter sat up. He rose and scampered off, gathering her clothing. He touched the balled up fabric softly to her back shoulder. She pulled it over. “If I am going to get dumped, I want it to happen while I’m dressed.”

“No one’s getting dumped.” Carter glanced at Lindsey’s naked back before turning around to let her dress privately. “I just don’t think... I don’t see why... I mean...”

He could hear her clothes coming on, faster than they’d come off. The hurried sound of limbs fighting roughly through folds. She sat and her shoes lifted off the floor. Carter turned. “Wait,” he said.

Lindsey looked up at him, no longer hurt. She looked angry and determined.

“It just seems like I should get a turn.”

“Oh, is that what this is about?” Lindsey shifted back slightly on the couch. Carter felt instantly vulnerable standing over her calm form. “You want a turn?”

A Counter argument to the idea that "forced femme" fantasies are misogynistic

Anyone familiar with my femdom erotica knows "forced femme" isn't a recurring theme. I actually worried when my publisher mentioned on the back cover of my first novel, Courting Her, a scene where Kimberly has Alex clean her apartment in a girly apron. I worried because I didn't want to mislead fans of forced femme. The apron was just one Kimberly happened to find lying around and, like a lot of aprons, it had some flowers on it. The scene didn't have much of a forced femme dynamic. I find forced femme titillating, but it's not an aspect of D/s that comes up in my stories.

It surprised me to discover some women consider forced femme offensive. Because I'm not a woman, I thought very hard on those opinions, but the logic of the argument doesn't speak to me. I don't expect to convince any of them they're wrong, because I don't think they are wrong, I consider it a matter of personal opinion. I expressed as much and was told, essentially, that it's not a matter of opinion. I was told men who enjoy forced femme are misogynists, whether they know it or not.

I have a problem with someone else claiming to know what I think better than I know what I think. But my intention in posting about this subject isn't to argue with people who think differently from me. I'm posting this as a counter point to some of the posts I've found from dominant women. I know a lot of submissive men's first interaction with a real life, openly dominant woman is through these blogs. It can be pretty close to devastating to have a dominant woman tell a man who purports to esteem women that a fantasy he's been carrying around for years is "proof" that he actually hates women and just doesn't realize it.

The logic of the argument is hard for me to follow and so will be hard for me to summarize, but I guess the argument is that because being made to wear panties is humiliating for you, as a man, it must be because you feel like there is something despicable about being like the people, women, who normally wear panties. An analogy I've heard for this side of the argument is that it's like someone wearing black face and mocking African American people.

I thought of an analogy today, that I think works better. Two friends went to rival colleges. The two schools are comparable in every way. Neither friend truly believes his or her school is superior. Yet they brag about their respective alma maters. A big game comes up, and they decide on a wager. The graduate of the losing school has to wear the winning school's sweater out to a bar, buy a round, and toast the winning school. There is some playful humiliation in the loser having to toast the team he or she wished hadn't won.

Forced femme seems like that. We're talking about men who profess to love and revere women. But they aren't women, they're men. Men and women are different. Often those differences are what draws us to each other. Submissive men genuinely love women, they love them for those differences, but that doesn't erase the social influence that they aren't expected to do things mostly only women do, like sit when they pee, or wear panties. So when they submit to a dominant woman who "forces" them to wear women's panties, they don't feel humiliated because they're dressed like lowly women. They feel humiliated because they know they aren't women and are being made to wear something men, in typical society, don't wear.

To continue my analogy, there would possibly be some adamant fan of the winning school who would want nothing to do with a rival to his school wearing the clothes of his alma mater and toasting his school. That's fine. What I think wouldn't be fine would be if he told the winner of the bet that he must hate his school to let someone toast their school in jest. If someone finds that disrespectful, they're certainly entitled to not participate, but I think they're imposing their views if they tell others they should also find it disrespectful.       

Pictures of Me

My novella, Bottoms in Love, will be rereleased soon with a new publisher and with some added content, but I'll blog about that with more information in a few days. My new publisher asked for all my covers to put together an author photo. I was busy with other things, so I zipped them over to her without thinking much about it. Then I got a file back and opened it. Her designer had arranged the covers of my three novels and the new cover for Bottoms in Love and put them over a few different backgrounds and asked me which one I liked. I was completely overwhelmed. I wrote her back that I loved them all, and she agreed and said her designer did a fabulous job, which she definitely had, but what overwhelmed me was seeing what I might look like to someone else. I looked like someone who writes books. If that were anyone else, I might even call him an author.

This immediately led to critical reflection. What the hell is wrong with me? Do I have deep rooted self esteem issues, that it took someone else neatly arranging my covers for me to admit that I'm succeeding in my dream of being a writer? Who knows? Maybe. I tend to think no, though. Anything created, anything built, anything learned loses some of its magic after completion. When you contemplate it, humans walking on two feet and so easily maintaining their balance will fucking blow your mind. Yet most of us walk without ever thinking about it. There's no real mystery in writing a book. You do a little every day and eventually you're done. The possibility feels amazing but as you go you discover it's fun, it's work, and it's fulfilling. There's some mystery in a finished book, but when you wrote it that mystery is replaced by the wonderful memories from a string of writing sessions. As the author it's clear how you got from A to Z because you were there for every letter.

Satisfaction and fulfillment are different from amazement. I love writing and I love writing books. The intrinsic rewards are so incredible they easily make up for the almost complete lack of extrinsic rewards, but feeling fulfilled and satisfied and even proud aren't the same as feeling amazed. And for just a moment the other night I saw all my books in one picture and I was amazed. Then the feeling evaporated. I remembered that I simply wrote those books a page or two or three at a time, and I sat down to write a page for my WIP.