The Random Number Generator chose entry #15! Congrats, Melissa Porter!
Send me an email to arrange delivery of your prize!

* * * * *

I’ve written quite a few short stories. I like the fact I can write one in just a couple of days. When I’m experimenting with a genre, a quick 4,000-words is enough to let me move inside another world and try it on. Some of them I sell to publishers who need short stories like Cleis Press or for one of the Mammoth Books. Not everyone will run to buy a collection of short stories just to see what I have written, so I am starting to pull those shorties together into their own collections. This was my first collection. I’ll release another, hopefully next month. Enjoy this snippet from another of my “experiments.” Can you guess what my naked man from the sea really is?

If you post a comment today, you’ll be entered to win
a free .pdf of this book!

From National Bestselling Author, Delilah Devlin, comes a naughty collection of seven bedtime stories for a week’s worth of nighttime reading pleasure —a little “som-som” to inspire sexy dreams or a one-handed orgasm, or to be read to a partner and enjoyed together.

Witness one woman’s desperate attempt to seduce her busy husband in “Lily’s Last Stand”. In “Nip ‘n’ Tuck” follow a shy seamstress’s adventures with an online suitor that doesn’t go quite as planned. Dive into “Dreaming by the Sea” where a woman with a mysterious past is surprised by a lover who strides naked from the ocean to claim her. An adventurous Victorian nurse learns the pleasures of steam-driven technology in “Dr.Mullaley’s Cure”. A New York commuter shares lustful daydreams of with another subway passenger in “The Morning Ride”.  A woman finds the limits of her inhibitions tested in a one-night stand in “All About Me”. In “The Obedient Wife”, find out what really happened between The Beauty and the Beast. Hint: It’s not your children’s fairytale!

From “Dreaming By The Sea” from Strokes

Sea foam lathered the jagged rocks along the shore, each lap sounding like a soapy caress. A sensual sound that fired my imagination to think about things I hadn’t since…well, in a very long time.

Frustrated with the elusive memory, I turned my face into the wind and enjoyed the way it whipped at my hair and the nightgown I’d thrown on over my underwear before making the trek down to the beach. The way the light played at the edge of the horizon had proved too much temptation for me to stay inside the cabin hugging the side of the cliff.

The air was cool with an underlying note of humid heat. Cloying enough to make the silk stick to my skin, but I didn’t care. No one was there to see my slinky nightgown mold my body. I hadn’t wanted to dress since I rose from bed that morning. One of the perks of being a writer. I’d worked without a break all day, but now needed to clear the cobwebs before I headed back into my story.

I strode beside the water, jumping back to avoid the tidal fingers that seeped between the rocks lining the shore to rush across the sand. I headed to the small pool the ebbing tide left every day to see the treasures the sea deposited for me to admire.

Or so I liked to think. Not that I ever took them home. I hadn’t the courage to wet my fingers in the brine. An old phobia—one I wasn’t sure where it started.

Tall, sharp-edged boulders framed the opening where the water rushed into the pool. Peering into the water, I lay on my stomach on a flat rock above the pool. I edged closer and closer, tempted to trail my fingers in the silky saltwater. An orange starfish, bits of broken shell, a long thin strand of seaweed were all that filled the pool. Still, I stared, wishing I were braver.

“Do you always whimper when you stare at starfish?” Read the rest of this entry »