Category: The Writing

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Jinxed

I’ve been working hard on the new paranormal project, but I haven’t said much here about it.  I don’t want to jinx myself.  I certainly don’t want to leak the idea until I’m closer to submission.

Call it a feeling, intuition, a hunch.  I really feel like this is a big idea for me.  I have a very clear concept.  It fits my brand *perfectly*.  I was careful in setting this up to push all my personal buttons *and* still fit on the shelf… something I’m not always very good at (it’s only taken me 10 years to get to this point).  *rolls eyes*

There are also key symbols that could be used for marketing purposes, and I have a very solid idea for a trilogy plus more if it does well.  I’ve even found a stock image that I’m using as the background in Scrivener that gave me the central opening image, the color themes, and even mirrors the mythology.  It’s a dark, twisted, lush world that you haven’t seen before.  Or at least, I’ve never read anything like it.  Even the NAME of the series is catchy and unique.  A word I made up myself just for this series.

That’s why mum’s the word.

You see, I’m not always a very fast writer.  I can write fast *sometimes*… as I did with The Billionaire Submissive.  But other books are slower.  They can’t be rushed.  This one… I’m feeling my way through the opening scenes.  Molly’s the only one who’s seen what I have so far, and she gave me the thumbs up.  I’m not saying anyone would copy the idea – that’s not what I mean at all.  But there’s a weird kind of synergy sometimes where writers all over the world can dip into the Well and come up with very similar ideas without ever talking to each other.  The less I talk about it, the less I hope that can happen.  It’ll break my heart if someone beats me to market with a similar idea.

I want to get this first book done by the end of the year.  Once I have the first draft done and I have a feeling for how good it is, I’ll start sharing.  But for now, know that I’m working hard, and I’m in love with the idea.

I’ve cleared 10K for the month so far, just a little ahead of schedule.  My goal’s at least 30K.  Hopefully the PNR will pick up speed as I edge into Act 2.  Molly and I are still working on the collaboration too, a back and forth game that’s keeping us both hopefully engaged.  We’re not writing as fast as we were in July, but I’m really digging what we’ve got so far.

I booked the rest of my vacation for the year.  None in September (since I’m on call).  I’m also the primary night on call person next month (grooooaaaaaans) but I’m taking two days in early October for mental health.  Watch out November and December though.  I’ll be grinding through 112 hours of vacation, including a week off at Thanksgiving and Christmas, each.

I can’t wait!!

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Two Faces

I wasn’t getting very far plotting out the PNR.  I have a general premise and the world is pretty solid in my mind, but I wasn’t getting anywhere with the plot and I didn’t want to sit around twiddling my thumbs.  The idea is too cool to sit here spinning my wheels.  So I decided to just go ahead and start writing.  Sometimes I need the juices to flow and one thing leads to another and another.

So I was in the first section, feeling my way along.  The heroine is taking shape nicely.  She meets the character I’d planned for her to run into.  They sit down at a table.

And I suddenly realized he isn’t the character I thought he is.  In fact, he’s the hero, so in disguise that not even I recognized him.  I mean, I intended this story to break a few typical genre molds.  This hero is not a big mean alpha shifter.  He’s not even Dominant.  Yet he’s an extremely powerful, interesting man.

I just didn’t know he could do *this* too.

So my two characters Cooper and Dasan suddenly combined into Dasan Cooper and now I know he wears two different faces.

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August Totals

27,300 new words for the month on four projects:  finishing The Billionaire Submissive (including the synopsis), a follow-up to TBS still untitled, a little on the new PNR, and the Plantation story with Molly.  Not a huge word count, but not bad considering I polished TBS for submission and then also completed first-round edits on Lord Regret’s Price.

For September, I’d like to shoot for a minimum of 30K words.  The Evil Day Job is going to be tough this month, but I need to keep momentum.  I’d like to get the PNR under consideration by the end of the year.  If I’m really pushing goals, I’d like to get Mama C submitted by the end of the year too.

Here’s hoping for a productive month!

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Revising a Fast Draft

In reference to Usable Fast Draft one important thing I learned after Raelyn Barclay’s astute beta read:  I used “that” nearly 1K times.

*headdesk*

They were completely invisible to me.  But once I started looking for that, it was everywhere.  Sometimes I could delete the word entirely.  Other times, I reworded the sentence better.  Other times, I of course just left it because it improved readability.  I don’t know if Raelyn believed me or not, but “that” is usually one of those throwaway words that I have to add in edits sometimes at my editor’s recommendation.  I tend to leave certain freebie words out, like off of.  That bugs me.  I just say off.  Sometimes I leave that out too.

But not in The Billionaire Submissive, evidently!

So no matter how great and clean you think that fast draft is after the first-pass edits, it’s definitely worth a second set of eyes to help you see through all the wonderful trees and find those insidious creepers silently obscuring the view.

A weekend of revisions and The Billionaire Submissive is off my desk to Tera.  Just in time for edits on Lord Regret’s Price to land!  I’m also back to work on the Plantation with Molly as well as more worldbuilding and plotting my new PNR.  It’s going to be a busy end of the year!

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Scrivener Update

I’ve blogged before about my struggle on switching over to Scrivener.  I’ve always loved the idea of what I could do, but I was having a seemingly hard time embracing the reality.  Every project I started in Scrivener stalled and I wasn’t sure if it was the project…or Scrivener itself.

I finally drafted Lord Regret’s Price wholly in Scrivener.  It was a very slow project, taking me months longer than I wanted to finish.  But I don’t think it was wholly Scrivener’s fault.  I didn’t skip around with the plot but wrote mostly linearly all the way through.  I had the whole thing fairly well plotted out, using folders Act 1, Act 2, etc. to split things out and high-level scene notes for where I wanted to go.  I even used color-coded index cards to mark expected POV shifts.  It was great for holding all the research and worldbuilding notes in one place.

Drafting was very slow, though I think it was mostly a mental thing I just had to work through.  I would have had the same issue in Word.

I also drafted The Billionaire Submissive wholly in Scrivener – and it went lightning fast.  This time I didn’t have a plot at all and I did skip around a little.  I didn’t use any color coding, synopsis notes, or character/research notes.  But Scrivener makes skipping around VERY easy.  I could see my files at a glance and shift them around into a new order if I wanted.  Renaming them to agree with a new order (I named them 001, 002, etc.) was also very easy.  In this kind of writing, Scrivener definitely shines.

What I still haven’t been able to really get the hang of, though, is EDITING in Scrivener.  I can reread the previous scene easily, but I don’t get the overall “feel” of the piece as easily as when it’s a single Word file.  I think I probably need to use a different view if I’m trying to edit inside Scrivener, rather than a file by file view via the outline.  I’ll play with that next time.

For now, I use the compile feature to build the .doc file, and then I use Word to actually do the read through and edits.  Of course that means if I’m not completely done, I have to flip over to Scrivener, locate the individual file, and make the change there.  So editing is definitely much easier to do in one pass rather than daily.  Again, I’m sure there’s a view inside Scrivener that will create a seamless single “file” that would make this a lot easier.  I just need to play around with it.

In my free time.

Snort.

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Usable Fast Draft

Or how I wrote a 76K book that doesn’t need a ton of revision in 33 days.  In fact, I fully expect to submit this book by the end of this month, maybe sooner.

These notes are for me as much as anyone else – I love posts about writers’ various processes.  One thing I’ve learned over the years is that no book works exactly the same as any other.  Even though I’ve been at this writing gig for ten years this September, I’m constantly surprised.  My writing process changes from book to book depending on what I need and how I’m growing.

Please note, too, that I had a dismal few months of writing this year and so I was totally due for a breakout writing period.  I’m sure that helped create the perfect storm that hit me in July and let me write The Billionaire Submissive so quickly.

I broke all my personal rules for writing/plotting this story.

  • I still don’t have a picture of either the hero or heroine (usually I create a character cast) though I hunted down a picture of Lilly’s red stilettos at the very beginning (and pray to God they end up on the cover).
  • I never jotted a single note about their background.  I do not have a profile or even a few words ANYWHERE about them.  Boom, they showed up as they are.  Hello, so nice to meet you Lilly and Donovan!
  • I wrote the blurb first (so I had a very strong premise).
  • I did no advance plotting.  I started writing scene 001 with no outline, no plan, nothing.
  • I didn’t even jot down ideas for future scenes until I paused around scene 017 (the end of the first night where Lilly and Donovan were fully together on page from that point forward).
  • I skipped ahead and wrote the ending scenes of the book at that point (030-032).
  • I created scene layouts for what I wanted to happen in between – just a few lines – starting at scene 020-024.  Basically the last 1/3-1/2 of the book.  Those 4 scenes morphed into 18 scenes!
  • I never had a playlist for this book.  I finally added one song around scene 020e/020f but it totally led me in the wrong direction and I had to rewrite the scene 3 times before I finally got it right.  Those are the only two scenes I struggled with/had to rewrite before I was happy with them.
  • I didn’t write any of this Dark and Early, but rather Dark and Late, staying up until midnight or even 2 AM several times.  (I have to get up at 6 AM for work, but the story wouldn’t let me rest.)

Typical Fast Draft rules I broke

  • I reread daily, almost constantly in every free minute I had, if I wasn’t writing new words.  I used Scrivener’s compile and dropped the file into Dropbox each night.  Then during the day if I was stuck waiting to pick up Princess from band camp or driving around in the car or watching some boring TV show with That Man before he went to bed, I was reading my book, start to finish, over and over and over.  I’ve read it 3 times at least since I finished it too.  It just keeps sucking me in.  I’d say all in all I’ve probably read the whole thing 10 times already.
  • I made revisions as I went.  When I read, I made mental notes of things I wanted to fix and that was my chore for later that evening before I could go to bed.
  • As I reread at night on the computer, I would do line edits too, so each time I reread, the story was markedly stronger and cleaner every single day.
  • I rewrote the trouble scene over and over until I was happy with it (I didn’t skip it).  I didn’t let it stall me though – I’d already skipped ahead and written the end by that point, so I knew I could get there.  I just had to work through that problem scene.

Overall, I think these were a few of the key components that fed the perfect storm and helped me finish so quickly.

  • I had a strong premise from the very beginning that tickled my fancy, intrigued me, and made me smile/giggle every time I thought about it.
  • Writing hard and fast kept me in the zone constantly.
  • Rereading and editing as I went made the story constantly better, which helped keep me in the zone and kept the words coming fast and furious.
  • I wanted to know what was going to happen as much as the reader hopefully will.  No plot meant everything was a surprise and delight as it unfolded, although I already had the ending written fairly quickly.  (That pesky middle had lots of surprises.)
  • Because it’s a separate book from my other series, I was free of expectation.  I had zero expectation for this book.  It’s new, fresh.  I didn’t have to reread anything to remember some quirk about a character I mentioned 2 or 3 books ago.  I didn’t have to worry about disappointing anyone (other than my family who’d be shocked at the language and content in this book!) because the world, story, and characters are completely brand new.

I wish I could deliberately set up every book like this, but alas, I know that will never happen.  Some books need to marinate in my brain for long periods of time.  Some parts will fly and others crawl.  I think it’s important, too, to get it out of our heads that A). fast-draft books must be crap because they were written so quickly aka carelessly or B). that slow books are better and more intellectual or C). if I struggle to write the scene/book then it must be bad or wrong somehow.

I’ve written crap slowly.  I’ve written crap quickly.  It’s still crap.  I’ve plotted and written a 40 page outline with 3 spreadsheets and then threw the whole thing out, so a slow/intellectual approach isn’t necessary “best” either.  And I’ve been assured by my most trusted readers that even though I personally struggled with many scenes in Lord Regret’s Price and it seemed like it took forever for me to write it, that it doesn’t read like it was a painful slog.  (It’s been accepted but I haven’t seen my editor’s revisions yet.  Hopefully Tera agrees it wasn’t a slog or she wouldn’t have accepted it!)

It’s all about where I am in the journey at that moment.  Lord Regret was teaching me some things I wasn’t prepared for.  That road was dark at times, slow and lonely, but I still had to make that trek.  I can see it now in how easily Lilly and Donovan pulled off their story.  I couldn’t have written it if I hadn’t been in that dark place with Sig.  I couldn’t have written Sig’s story if I hadn’t already been whipped by Lady Blackmyre in Her Grace’s Stable.

And now that Lilly has beaten some sense into me, I think I’m fully prepared to face Mama C and Mal too.

But I’m not done with Lilly yet either.  Just last night she was whispering a very naughty idea to me for what the next book in her world should be.

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First Draft and First Pass are DONE

It’s been a long week at the Evil Day Job, so when my boss offered to let me shut down a little early yesterday, I closed the work laptop off at 3:30 and opened my personal laptop.  I knew I was close to finishing The Billionaire Submissive — I only had 3 sketched out scenes to go.  In the end, I managed to combine two of them into one for double duty, smoothed out the connection (since I already had the ending written), wrote the epilogue, and YAY SNOOPY DANCE!!!

The first draft was done!  75K.

But then I was reading over it later last night and realized I had one scene penciled in (017B) that never got completed.  Boo.  I was working on it last night rather late, because Princess was going to be out late at a pool party.  I went to bed near midnight when she texted me that she was safely installed at her friend’s house for the night and went to bed.  I hadn’t finished the scene yet, and I didn’t have that killer last line I like to try and do for each scene or chapter, that little hook to keep pulling you along, but I was too tired to stay up.

Unfortunately, within an hour I was up again with the most brutal, wretched headache I’ve ever had.  Ironically, while lying there waiting for the spasm in the back of my head/neck area to stop, I got the hook/line I needed.  Since I couldn’t get comfortable anyway, I got up and sat on my heating pad for awhile and typed out the last few lines of that scene. 

[The headache is hard to describe but it’s definitely muscular, though not a typical muscle spasm.  It’s more the back of my head than my neck.  I didn’t pull anything and I don’t think anything’s out.  It just suddenly got tight and then went from bad to worse.  Very probably stress related and long hours on the story this week after hours didn’t help any.  And don’t suggest chiropractors because just the thought makes me want to throw up.  I can’t bear the cracking sounds and electric shock gives me the heebie-jeebies too.]

The heating pad didn’t help.  In fact, it made it worse.  I swear I could feel the blood pounding in my head.  So I tried an ice pack and eventually dozed off with ice on my neck.  I don’t know what time it was when I woke up and went back to bed, but I was stupid foggy enough I forgot to plug my phone in on the bedside table (something I do every night).

The headache is better this morning but the tendons and muscles on the back of my skull are sore and tender today.  My head still feels like a hollowed out egg shell.  So unfortunately, we cancelled the trip to the fair.  I just couldn’t face walking around in heat, trying to hold my head up.

I’ve sat here on my heating pad today and completed the first read through.  I’ve removed all the [notes], smoothed sentences, connected scenes, etc. and made myself cry.  *grins*  Always a good sign.

With the new scene from last night, the book is just under 76K.

Interested beta readers can drop me an email (joelysueburkhart AT gmail DOT com) if you’d like a first look before I do the final editing pass and send it to my editor.

Snippet:  These are the few lines I added last night to that missing scene while waiting on the headache to abate.

Donovan opened the back door of the Jag but she took one look at the leather seats and grabbed the dog’s collar before he could jump into the car.  “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

I can’t wait until she can grab and control me like that.  Donovan had to drag his gaze away with a brutal shake.  Idiot.  Jealous of a dog.  “Of course it’s a good idea. We’ll have a very very good time.”

She heard the thickness in his voice and her lips twitched.  “Are you sure?  Maybe I should just stay here and get to work on your design for the windows.”

“Don’t you dare tease me like that, Miss Harrison.”

“All right, Mr. Morgan.  But Hank rides in the front with me between my knees.”

Donovan muttered, “Lucky dog.”

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Final Tally for July

72,370 words.  Gulp, a new personal record!

The big thrashing scene is finally done.  I have another fairly major test to get through, and then a subplot with the stained glass window.  One scene to go back and fill in.  And then a little smoothing…  and she’s done!

Word count in The Billionaire Submissive is sitting at just over 67K.  I don’t think I’ll go over 75K unless my brain comes up with some new scenes yet again.

I’m so pleased with this story.  Very pleased.  I can’t wait to share it with you all

I wish I knew Lilly.  Hell, I wish I had half her courage, wit and sensual charm.  She’s hilarious.  She’s funny, passionate, sexy as hell, and she knows it.  She curses like a sailor – in fact, it’s become a major plot element.  Donovan is endearing and annoying at the same time.  He’s so arrogant and stuck up, until Lilly brings him to his knees.  He cares about her so much, doing all the little things for her that just doesn’t even occur to her.  That’s true love in my book.  A man willing to pay attention and step in and do things for his woman to help and protect and care for her without her request.

Now he just has to convince her how serious he really is.

Snippet:  The morning after.

Donovan took one look around his bedroom and decided he’d better invest in a top-notch housecleaning company.  And probably an electrician, he added, noting the reading lamp.  It hung askew, dangling from wires out of a hole in the wall.

Also a furniture chain, because he’d bent the decorative bars of the headboard.

The comforter wasn’t salvageable.

The off-white carpet probably wasn’t either, because the cherry pie on the floor resembled a horrendous murder scene.

The lady who’d created such a mess was sprawled sideways in his bed.  Her hair had driven him nuts, tickling his nose and getting in his mouth every time he rolled over.  She was a blanket thief and bed hog and slept like the dead.

And he’d never been happier in his life.

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Creeping closer to 70K

Long gone are the 6-8K days from earlier this month when the story was flowing hot and sweet.  I’ve been struggling to get 200-300 words the last few days, but I’m touching the story daily and working to get over the hump.  I truly do only have a few scenes left, but some of them are major.

Mr. Morgan still has to receive a true thrashing, though I’m leading up to that scene in tonight’s wordage.  *wicked laugh*

I can’t believe tomorrow’s the last day of July already.  I hoped to finish this month but I’m not quite going to make it.  I’m just too busy.  Princess has band camp this week (which means 4 trips back and forth to the high school each day), the two youngest are at my Dad’s, and school prep is in full swing.  I need to go supply shopping this weekend (you know my track record with finding all supplies in one store, hahaha) and we’re planning to go to the fair on Saturday.  It’ll be my first ever.  I’m still putting in longer hours than usual for work, but if I can at least touch the story each day, I’m hoping to keep that iron hot until I can find the time to just let the deluge sweep me through the last few scenes.

Hanging in there.  Just under 64K total in The Billionaire Submissive tonight and I’m going to try and write a bit longer even though I’ll pay for it tomorrow.

He paused a moment, dark eyes flickering toward her where she lay on his bed.  “Aren’t you going to do the same?  Mistress?”

She smiled, lazily kicking her foot back and forth off the edge of the bed.  His eyes followed the movement like a dog chasing a tennis ball.  “Eventually.  I’m having too much fun watching you.”

He took off the shirt, revealing the darkly tanned sculpted lines of his upper body.  Somewhere, he went without his shirt a great deal, and he did enough exercise or physical work to cover every inch of him in lean slabs of muscle.  Black hair curled across his chest, a nice mat that she’d have fun with later.

His hands went to his trousers, but he closed his eyes and breathed deeply.  Poor boy must be on the edge again.  This is going to be a night he’ll never forget if he’s ready to come just from me watching him take off his clothes. 

Relenting a little, she decided to ask him a few questions to distract him enough that he could get his pants off.  “You said you had limited experience.  How many scenes have you done?  How many Mistresses have you played with?”

“Casual stuff at a club, ten, maybe twenty times.”

Calmer, he managed to unbutton his trousers.  The black material slid down his thighs, revealing skin as tanned as his upper body.  He wore silk boxers, but she had a feeling he’d be tanned underneath too.  Yum.  Where did he do this deliciously naked tanning?  The same dark hair sprinkled his long, powerful thighs.  He kicked off his shoes and lifted each foot to pull off his socks.  God, he even had sexy, gorgeous feet, well manicured and perfectly shaped, almost as elegant as his hands.

“A so-called Mistress who wanted to do a strip tease for me in pleather boots and latex while waving a fake crop around?  Once.  I learned my lesson.  A real Mistress away from the club?  You’re my first.”

Oh dear.  No wonder he’s wound so tightly.  As a submissive, Donovan Morgan was pretty much a virgin.

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A Little Help From My Friends

I’ve never pulled on my own background as much as I have for this WIP (The Billionaire Submissive).  We lived in the Twin Cities area of MN for almost 5 years…13 years ago.  I’ve only been back once in the past five years.  Lots of things have changed, but there’s also a feel, a vibe, that you get only after being there in the city.

Donovan’s from the Twin Cities area but I wasn’t exactly sure where until I started exploring some of his past unexpectedly a few days ago.  He’s from an older, well established northern St. Paul neighborhood, but I hadn’t tried to pin him down until he dragged me BACK to that neighborhood.  Then I needed to know some streets, or at least a general idea of where exactly we were.  Was it North Saint Paul?  Maplewood?  What were the names of the streets in that area?  I honestly couldn’t remember.

Food plays a huge role in this book, and I remembered a bakery in that general area.  But where was it?  That Man thought it was Payne Ave but he couldn’t remember the name of it.  I thought it was off 7th.  I finally asked my friend Wanda for help, who still lives in the Twins.  It sounds like the Swedish bakery I’m remembering is probably gone, but it was on Payne.  That narrowed my general area down.  Then I used Google maps street view to finally pinpoint what I wanted.

I also needed a diner in the area, so I made up one based on the names that are close to that area (I didn’t want to use a real place).  Hopefully it’s enough to give a solid sense of place!  Thank you, Wanda!

1K+ tonight and finally moving a little through the slower scene.

I adore this snippet.  This is the first time Mr. Morgan really gets a taste of Lilly’s spirit.  Oh, she’s played him a couple of different ways already to get what she wants, but this time, she makes him regret being an arrogant idiot.  *grins*

Her patience was unraveling very fast.  “How exactly did you intend to blackmail me, Mr. Morgan?”

“I was going to threaten to tell everyone exactly what kind of business you’re running on the side.”

She nodded, her irritation rising.  “So you were going to tell people like my parents and friends and professional clients that I’m a whore.  Yeah, that’s a sure way to get a woman to agree to get into bed with you.”

He had the grace to squirm uncomfortably beneath her accusing glare.  “I thought—”

“Yeah, we’ve already been over what a boneheaded idiot you are.”  She stood up and snatched the contract off his desk.  Most of it had been crossed out anyway.  “This is what I think of you and your worthless contract, Mr. Morgan.”  Then she tore the papers in half, threw them on his desk, and stalked toward the door.

“Miss Harrison, wait.  Lilly!”

She heard him coming around his desk but she didn’t slow or turn to look at him.  She started to open the door but he flung up an arm and slammed it shut, pressing his weight against it to keep her from opening it again.

“Mistress.”

That got her attention.  She looked at him but didn’t soften her face or give him her words.

“I’m sorry.  I’m an idiot.  I was wrong.”

“Wrong to even thinking about blackmailing me?  Or wrong to think I would actually accept money in exchange for having sex with you?”

“Shhh,” he lowered his voice.  “I don’t know how sound proof this door is.”

Ha.  She could only hope the simpering Miss Wruthers was pressed against the door on the other side listening avidly.  That would serve him right.  “That’s your problem, Mr. Morgan.  Not mine.  You’re the idiot who’s bewildered why I’m furious that you keep trying to shove money down my throat along with your cock.”

“Lilly, please!”

“Please what?  Please forgive you yet again for trying to make me into your very own prostitute?  Maybe you thought I’d charge by the lash.  Drop your pants now and give me a grand.  I’ll see how many cracks I can get in before your secretary comes charging in to see if I’m killing you.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered furiously, his face so red it almost made her laugh despite her anger.  “Please.”

She at least stopped hurling comments back, but she didn’t unbend her stiffness or withdrawal.

“I was wrong.  Terribly wrong.  You ought to punish me.”

She let her shoulders relax and he sagged against the door in relief.  “I don’t know, Mr. Morgan.  You haven’t even answered my questionnaire yet so I know what implements to use.”

“Anything.  Anything you want.”  She didn’t have to drop her gaze to his crotch to know he was aroused again.  “Punish me any way you want.  I deserve it for insulting you yet again with my ignorance.”

Pretending to think about it, she shifted her portfolio to her other hand and then finally nodded.  “Meet me at Dmitre’s tonight at 7:00 p.m.”

“I can pick you up…”

She narrowed a glare on him and he raised his hands.  “Or not.  I’ll just meet you there.  But you will allow me to buy you dinner?  It’s the least I can do.”

“Very well.”

“And after?”  His voice deepened and he dared to touch her arm, just a light brush like he’d take her elbow and escort her to the elevator if she’d allow it.

She gave him a little nod, and he grasped her arm more confidently.  He opened the door and she was half surprised to see the secretary typing away furiously at her desk just feet away instead of hovering outside to eavesdrop.  “And after… dessert.”

“Your place or mine?”

His voice was such a rough growl that Miss Wruthers looked up, wide eyed with alarm.  Lilly smiled and waved goodbye to her, but she did lower her voice to ensure his privacy as much as possible.  “Yours.”

“Do I need to have any…equipment?”

The elevator dinged and the door slid open.  Ignoring whoever might be stepping out as well as the watching secretary, she reached up and dragged his mouth to hers for a hearty kiss.  “Just this, lover boy.”

Releasing him, she patted his cheek and stepped onto the elevator.  Before the door could shut, he blocked it with his hand.  Panting, he stared at her as if afraid to let her go.  His hair was mussed up, his tie crooked, and those poor tortured trousers would never be the same.  “Lilly?”

“Yes, Donovan?”

He cast his gaze down the length of her body to land on her favorite red heels.  “Wear these shoes tonight.”

She normally didn’t like to take such blatant orders from a man, but for him…  She smiled. “You got it.”