So here’s a question for you, as part of my continued research for “Everything I Know About Love, I Learned from Romance Novels:” Where is the strangest place you’ve seen a couple in a romance novel have sex?
I’m not picky as to the specific sexual act (wow, could that get me into some fun trouble if taken out of context!), but I am curious which crazy or bizarre locations you’ve read about when the happy stiffy meets the eager recipient of said happy stiffy. Could be a lava-hot cavern of love, or another happy stiffy that’s tangling with the first happy stiffy – whatever. Like I said, I’m curious about location location location.
If I recall, and I still haven’t found this book so I’m not 100% sure it was a Susan Johnson novel, the strangest location I’ve read about a couple putting the love monkey in the love glove, was in a lake in England in WINTER. It had to be cold and slimy, and slimy, and COLD, but no, orgasms for all! Yeesh.
I’ve read sex in stairwells in space and on Earth, and often while the bad guys were after them (and you know when you absolutely cannot wait another moment to get your freak on, the bad guys will lose their sense of direction until you’re done), and I’ve read sex in carriages and wagons, in barns, underneath trees and, great shock of my life, in BED, but I’ve also read some very adventurous places.
What about you? Is there in your reading memory a sex location that, ha ha, sticks out?
An airport men’s room. I can’t remember the name, it was an old category romance I snuck from my gramma’s stash at the age of 10 or so. But one of them was leaving, the other showed up in the nick of time to stop them (obviously pre 9/11) and then they went to the men’s room to get it on in the handicapped stall. I remember thinking, couldn’t they at least have gone to the women’s room? I’d been in men’s rooms when my father took me to the restroom in public and I knew even then they’d have passed other men urinating on their way. Not romantic in the least. (Much later I would learn that a woman in the men’s room is hawt and a man in the women’s room is threatening. Whatevs, says ten-year-old me.)
I once read a Harry Potter fanfic (don’t judge!) that had Sirius Black hooking up with a woman in the Black family vault in Gringott’s on a pile of gold coins.
I know Harry Potter is fantasy, but that fantasy just sounds painful.
Marsha Canham’s “Across a Moonlight Sea”. They are on a ship at sea. She has just almost fallen head first off the top of the main mast because she lost her hold. He saves her and then they have sex while straddling the same mast. (He rips a hole in the crotch of her pants and his, to make this possible) When I read it at 16, I thought it was soooo hot. Now I think about it and giggle at both the scene and myself at 16.
Aside from the iconic Savage Thunder galloping on a horse sex….
I’d say Angela Knight’s Mad Dog Love, which features the couple having zero-G sex in the engine room of the heroine’s space ship. That’s like an America’s Funniest Home Videos just WAITING to happen.
And I was horribly amused by the heroine thinking that the hero “must have been a veteran of zero-gravity sex” – for some reason that just made me giggle.
Plus, I actually very much enjoyed that story.
Cherry Adair’s book Out of Sight with AJ and Kane (?) on the camel also sticks out for me. Kerensa- I believe the “motion” of the camel helped. But I was more concerned about the guys on the other camels! I think Adair’s other T-FLAC books have some other interesting places. One they are up against a tree in the jungle with bugs and snakes EEW! But I did like the heroine’s rant about him remembering to keep the gun handy.
I actually saw someone in real life doing the nasty on a jet-ski. It was especially nice because I was on a boat with my boss at the time.
BTW, I LOVED it when Jules and Robin went at it in the Limo. My favorite romantic line ever when Jules replied to Robin’s “I love you”, with “Gah”.
Tara Janzen routinely writes scenes in, or more to the point, on cars which are traveling in an exterior – as in visible from the street &/or other buildings – lift cage. Thank goodness her characters go for the classic muscle cars, cause I’ve seen the back seat of the current Challenger and there’s no way…
Oh, January 25 can’t come soon enough for me…
There are two places that stick in my mind. The first is in one of C. J. Cherryh’s SF books, “Rimrunners,” I think, where the hero & heroine have sex in a storage closet on a spaceship—a warship. Apparently the hero is shy about getting it on in the bunkhouse where all the other space soldiers can hear them.
Second, the beach. Any beach. It’s not romantic to me, it’s just … ew! The idea of sand in anyone’s lady parts (or manly bits) just squicks me out.
re: the camel—I honestly don’t see how anyone could have sex while riding on a camel. I’ve ridden one, and I just cannot picture it …
The only thing I remember from this book is the ending sex scene. The hero and heroine are having sex on horseback. As in he’s riding and she’s riding him… and all I could think of was “that poor horse”.
In a hot spring in a cave – with the laird’s army right outside standing guard. This was, umm… the second of the Moon werewolf novels by Lucy Monroe. She’s a deaf, virgin Sassenach trying to hide her deafness and he’s a werewolf Scottish laird.
And though I liked the book overall, it was a bit on the WTF scale for first sex scenes.
(captcha: nature84. Finding 84 places in nature to do what comes naturally)
As much as I loved the book, I always thought the scene in the Lisa Kleypas Lady Sophia’s Lover where they do it on the exercise horse thing in a house they are looking into buying was a bit wacky. I had to stop and think for a second to figure out how it would go down. And I remember a Meg Cabot notreallyromancemoreladyfiction novel where they have sex on a wine cask in his winery… which I thought was a little unsanitary. And one more- not so much the location but the situation as a whole- the Jill Shalvis book Out of This World. They decide it’s a good idea to get down to business when hiding in an attic from pirates who want to steal their supernatural powers and then murder them. With the pirates (who want to kill them) still in the house searching for them. And thus listening for them… just didn’t seem logical.
PS On the subject of Jill Shalvis- the book Caroline mentioned above is Aftershock .
Not a totally crazy place but a great situation.. I think it’s Moning’s To Tame a HIghland Warrior when he hikes up her skirt AND his kilt and they go at it in the snow. I remember having a dual reaction of “ack, cold!” and “….hot”.
How about in a gazebo?
And the Jill Shalvis that Caroline mentioned, I think it was a novella or else came in a bundle with other hero novels. I read it fairly recently. The heroine’s a real estate agent and was checking out the building when the earthquake hit? Then goes to Mexico and has the baby there? And the guy is a firefighter?
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Found it! Aftershock from the Feisty Firefighters bundle from Silhouette.
And yeah, that sex scene had me wondering a bit. Then the whole secret baby daddy thing generally turns me off.
On horseback. I’m pretty sure it was in a Johanna Lindsay. And I still can’t figure the logistics of that one.
i must really be twisted because i keep seeing that scene from The Duck Tales Movie where Scrooge McDuck is swimming around in his money.
Oddest place for me as a reader was sex in Winchester Cathredral in one of the alcoves. That just seems wrong to me. Impolite I guess is the way I’d describe my feelings for it.
As for the sex on horseback, I read a scene like that once and had the opportunity to question the author about it. I won’t mention who because she confirmed that what she described was more than possible and she knew it because… well, you get the idea.
I’m pretty sure I read a sex on top of a washing machine scene—on a 20-minute spin cycle, no doubt—in a Harlequin contemp. category.
Laurathelibrarian, I think that might be an Amanda Quick novel, but I don’t remember which one. I am almost positive, though, that she has one where there is a scene in the British Museum, on a statue, where the hero wears one of those 19th century condoms that ties onto his junk with a ribbon. I don’t know that it was in the very beginning of the book, but it was definitely in there.
And women complain men have trouble finding the clit when it’s visible!
Jessica Hall’s “Heat of the Moment” had the hero and heroine having sex going down the highway on a MOTORCYCLE going over 50 miles an hour. While I know plenty of people who have had sex in cars going down the highway at 65 miles an hour this totally threw me out of the story because it is so impossible. I know alot of guys who have motorcyles and they laughed themselves silly when I read them this scene in the book—although I did have one smartass offer to try it with me.
BTW, one of my friends always wins this when there’s a “weirdest place you had sex contest” at a party or get-together—she had sex with a college boyfriend in a freshly dug grave (yeah nothing says romance like being 7 feet down in a cramped dirty hole.)
Evidently I need to read a greater variety of romance, btw, cause these are hilarious.
Personally, I ‘m always puzzled by the couples who decide to consummate in the woods, on the ground, in the cold, whilst being pursued by rival clansmen/bandits/sundry villains.
@ Jessica: I remember that scenario. But I thought it was a Cherry Adair. Sure, rescued from terrorists and I’ll get it on with the SEAL who rescues me?? On the floor, in the sand.
True story. A friend in the ‘80s served in Germany. Tanks all cammed up in a wood next to a farmer’s field. Couple drive into field area and get it on in said field. Tank crew swivels turret and starts cheering. Well, they were bored and it just showed how well they’d cammed up. They even had a Polaroid to prove it took place.
i’m lmao @ dayle…
i’ve read on a horse and in a graveyard but the weird one(s) were two where they do it (mostly) in front of others. i’m awful with names but one was a knight/warrior in his men were listening to the fair kidnapped maiden being deflowered (and commenting) and another where the family was there to witness the virginity. yick!
and for the record…sex in a wheelchair is very doable, much like sitting on a regular chair.
I do remember being taken aback when the h/h in a Thea Devine work consummated their lurve in a caique boat on the Med Sea in a storm while standing up. (Hello Isaac Newton) I also remember the hold of a ship where the hero had been held prisoner for a month. There was dirty water, animals and not to mention the layers of filth and vermin on the hero…all together now EEEEEWWWW. Then there was the time in a mineshaft.
Some Loretta Chase book (Mr. Impossible, I think.) Sex in a pyramid. This has always made me feel especially weird because of all the traps they put in there, and I just know that there is some dead guy’s bones right next to them.
A bed of seaweed that is floating out in the ocean. I don’t know how, but supposedly it can happen. One of Sasha Lord’s books.
No: not in the British Museum. AQ has various scenes set amongst antiquities, but in private collections, not in the BM.
AgTigress, that is entirely possible. But the book I’m thinking of is definitely Amanda Quick and there was a statue involved.
And now that I’m thinking of it, I’d love to know which book it was, because I’d like to read it again.
In C. E. Murphy’s Heart of Stone series I’m pretty sure she has sex with a flying gargoyle, while flying. In NYC. In winter. Yeah, right. Liked the series but that was way too much for me.
I forget which Megan Hart novel has them doing it in the bathroom at the back of a restaurant during business hours; it’s a dominant/submission thing and I thought it was seriously hawt.
And there were lots of “near misses” in Outlander, including the one at the camp after a raid when Jamie just can’t keep his hands off her, and the men politely turn their heads; something I actually found probably fairly realistic for his age at the time (23) and the historical period when things were way less private in general.
Hmmm. My security word is soviet85. I don’t know of any Russian weird sex scenes in books.
For truly amazing imagined feats of sexual gymnastics, the visual arts have it hands down over any written descriptions, especially in 19th-century erotica and pornography.
I recommend some of the hilarious (but very competent) watercolours of the Austrian artist Peter Fendi (1796-1842). You’ll find some of them on Google images.
🙂
There was a Regency novel in which the main characters had sex twice – once in a dark room and once outside – using old statues to help prop themselves up. lol
Definitely with Kaitlyn about Lady Sophia’s Lover by Kleypas—house-hunting couple gets it on, on the previous owner’s exercise equipment. Yeah.
I’ve read some memorable ones: on a billiards table, in a hotel linen closet, against a stone wall full of prickly vines in a garden (ow), on a kitchen countertop, on the hood of a car, on a bar—I always thought that one would have been perfect in Coyote Ugly. Haha!
KS, I’m not sure which one you mean, but statues, and museum galleries and storerooms containing antiquities certainly feature in quite a few of AQ’s Regency novels. But there are about 20 of them before she moved on into the Victorian period, and I haven’t re-read them for a while.
🙂
ah yes the Robards book -sex under a rock fall. Then there is Amanda Quick- one with sex in a cave- Ravished- is the title, she also had another one- title escapes me- sex in a storage room of a museum- both are keen on the history of a lost island culture.
There is a Potter fanfic with the two having sex under an avalanche of snow, in the Artic—to keep warm.
ISTR a Kinsale where the hero is doing the heroine behind a bookcase, someone walks in, and the hero’s head is visible while the rest of him is not—and he carries on a conversation with whomever entered the room while still doing the dirty with the girl.
And more than one author has done the “You’re leaning over a balcony and they can’t see me behind you” sex scene.
Sex in a fencing place while she’s pretending to be a dude! Best scene ever in 9 Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake..
There was a Jude Deveraux from awhile ago (probably my last Deveraux) where the h/h were being pursued and waded through a steamy swamp, waist-deep, for half the day. They got it on that night after setting up camp and after no bath/shower/cleansing being mentioned. All I could think about was the yeast infections that might occur afterwards.
Darlene, that bookcase scene is in Flowers from the Storm.
Joy, I’ve never been to South Carolina so I don’t know what your waves are like. But in the UK there are definitely days when it’s pretty easy to stand up in the waves. So unless it was a particularly stormy day, I wouldn’t have thought that was a problem. Though still salty and sandy and ewwww.
Sex in a cave during a storm has a very long pedigree; e.g. Dido and Aeneas in Virgil’s Aeneid. Still works well in a story.
🙂
Well, it wasn’t particularly weird (maybe because I have a friend in real life whose basically done it in any place possible), but Jenny Crusie’s Strange Bedpersons has part of the conflict between the conservative and wild character manifest in where they have sex: she wants it on top of a piano in an open house, the car, the pool, etc while he wants the bed.
I never understood the H/H running for their lives stopping in some abandoned building (or next to a dumpster, or in a cave, or…) and spending precious seconds having sex. In that situation I’d like to think I’m smart enough to actually complete my getaway before being overcome by passionate relief. [And actually, I never understand someone being overcome to have sex next to a dumpster whether their life is in danger or not. It’s hard to feel passionate when your trying not to gag from the smell or touch anything near it. I realize part of this is my OCD (worry about contamination) but ewwwwwwww.]
My understanding is its extremely dangerous (and probably uncomfortable) to have sex on a horse because the scent can trigger the horse into running/being aggressive and so they’d find themselves on the ground, stuck inside each other, probably with a broken bone or two.