This HaBO is from Ellie, who was inspired by a previous request to submit theirs:
I’ve been thinking about submitting this book as an HABO forever, but was a little hesitant until seeing Jennifer’s Little Jizz on the Prairie request. But now that I know I’m not the only freakish person with little memory of a book other than a masturbation scene that nearly made my thirteen-year-old head explode, here goes.
I would have read this in middle school, so early 90s. It took place in the old west, and I’m fairly sure the hero was Native American or partly so. He and the heroine were traveling together because… idk, Reasons. The sexual tension was running high, so the hero stomped off to go bathe in the river. The heroine either stumbled upon him, or perhaps followed him, but nonetheless is watching. He knows it and starts putting on a show for her that ends with him wanking.
I don’t remember much else, although there might have been a secret baby at the end. If the secret baby is in the same book, the hero had abandoned the heroine because he “wasn’t good enough for her” or some bullshit and then she found out she was pregnant.
The cover would have been the standard zebra/avon old school clinch, possibly with the heroine wearing yellow. (I thought once I found it when I stumbled across a copy of Martha Hix’s Wild Texas Rose, but the hero in that seemed to be White. I don’t know if the cover of the book I’m looking for actually has the heroine in a yellow dress or if I just remembered that cover from having cribbed it from my friend’s mom as well).
I know this isn’t a lot to go on, but hopefully the Bitchery can help!
I love it when a HaBO inspires another!
Authors who were writing Old Skool western romances, as I recall, were Shirlee Busbee, Rebecca Brandywine. Their stories were all over the place. Another one whose name escapes me wrote lots of historicals, contemporaries, westerns… Forgive me I had my 2nd covid shot yesterday and I am feeling. Better than having covid though… anyway the author I am thinking about wrote an infamous line “You rode my finger to the rhythm of my horse. Now ride me.”
I love these early romance reading memories. I’m actually impressed when people remember anything other than “THEY HAD SEX” about their first romance reading as a tween / early teen.
I remember a lot about the book that made my head explode when I was 14, but not anything useful like names or titles or even plot. Just that there were spreading thighs and thrusting hips and OMG, 14 year old me had no idea.
I’m so proud that this is my legacy
This sounds like one of Linda Howard’s Western Ladies books. I can’t remember which one: A Lady of the West, Angel Creek or The Touch of Fire.
Could it be “An Englishwoman’s Guide to the Cowboy” by June Kearns? I’m sure the hero is partly Native American…
“Jane Austen meets Zane Grey
The American West, 1867. After a stagecoach wreck, well-bred bookish spinster, Annie Haddon, (product of mustn’t-take-off-your-hat, mustn’t-take-off-your-gloves, mustn’t-get-hot-or-perspire Victorian society) is thrown into the company of cowboy, Colt McCall – a man who lives by his own rules and hates the English.
Can two people from such wildly different backgrounds learn to trust each other? Annie and McCall find out on their journey across the haunting, mystical landscape of the West.”
My first thought was an early Elizabeth Lowell
This feels like Comanche Moon by Catherine Anderson
I don’t have the answer, but I remember that book!! I “borrowed” it from my mom as a middle schooler and read it, and that scene is one of the first bathing scenes like that I remember reading. I know there was a secret baby at the end and that he didn’t feel good enough for her. I think he didn’t feel good enough because he was partially Native American or maybe because he had a scar on his face or something.
I feel like the name of the book is right on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t get to it, even though I looked around on Goodreads for a little bit.
Maybe *Fires of Paradise* by Brenda Joyce (1992)? I haven’t read that book in 20 years and I don’t clearly remember a wanking scene, but I do remember the hero is part Native American, and they were stuck traveling together, and a river. No memory of the secret baby, but definitely a “I’m not good enough for you” separation in the 2nd half.
And I’ve now talked myself into rereading this!
Really sounds like Elizabeth Lowell to me too!
Could it be from Pamela Clare’s MacKinnon Series? I loved that series❣️
Could it possibly be Savage Thunder by Johanna Lindsey? That scene sounds very familiar and I did do a recent re-read of some of Lindsey’s novels after she passed away last year.
“Sun God” by Nan Ryan?? One of the first romances I ever read. Fuzzy on if there was a jerk off scene, but I do have a vague memory of some waterfall shenanigans. It’s old western, and he’s described as half Aztec, half Spanish.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2089154.Sun_God
@Cheryl McInnis, thank you. Johanna Lindsey is the author I was thinking of and could not remember it.
Would it be a ridiculous, too much, calm-down-horny-girl, kind of request if I asked for a post that did recommendations for romance books where the woman watches the hero masturbate? I feel like this is clearly a happy catnip for a lot of readers (and by readers I mean me).
Thanks everybody! I’m glad at least one person out there remembers this book, and that I am remembering the secret baby part correctly. I’m looking at the blurbs of the recommendations here. It could potentially be Joanna Lindsay or Catherine Andersen. I don’t think it is the fires of paradise by Brenda Joyce, because I don’t remember anything about Cuba whatsoever. I don’t believe they ever left the frontier. An English woman’s Guide to the Cowboy looks super cute, but I think it is too new. Still investigating the others, but I will keep y’all posted!
PS – @Rachel I mean, I’m here for it, but that’s probably expected given this is my HABO.
Dancing on coals !
Could this be Honor Bound by Erin St. Claire/Sandra Brown? It’s been so long I don’t know if there was a wanking scene, and I think it’s more or less present day but there’s definitely Native American/I’m not good enough/secret baby tropes galore and an school clinch intimate moments cover.