Sex Magic, or Why Witches Are My Favorite Heroines by Teresa Noelle Roberts

I didn’t set out specialize in writing erotic romances about sex magic. It just happened. Maybe it’s because in real life, I’m a pagan and sex has a spiritual dimension to me. One well-known pagan prayer, “The Charge of the Goddess” contains the words “behold, all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals.” If making love can bring you closer to the divine, then eroticism is obviously a powerful force. Modern pagans are far from alone in recognizing this. While I don’t claim to understand Tantra well, this yogic tradition uses the harnessed power of sexuality to bring you to awareness of the oneness of all things—a kind of magic, if not the flashy Harry Potter sort. Many ancient cultures advocated having sex in the fields to spur a good crop. (Beats human sacrifice!) Heck, you don’t need to be a pagan or a yogi to realize good sex changes your consciousness temporarily. Your boundaries dissolve, colors get brighter, your sense of time and space get weird. It’s as close to magic as most of us are likely to experience.

From there, it’s not a big stretch of imagination for a writer with a love of the paranormal to see plot potential. What if you could use your sexual energy and your will to effect change not just in your and your partner, but in the world around you? What if you could harness the immense energy created by sex and use it to create and heal—or to destroy? I’ve written several short stories, both erotica and classic fantasy, that involve sex magic. A romance novella published last year by Phaze, Rain at Midsummer, involved both rainmaking and healing through sex magic as an escaped slave woman discovered her own power and awakened an over-educated nobleman to his.

But in my new Samhain release, I get to go to town with all the ramifications of sex magic. Elissa, the heroine of Lions’ Pride, uses red magic—sex magic—to boost her powers. As a witch who specializes in agricultural magic and the magic of hearth and home, it works well for her—until her beloved husband is captured by a government black-ops agency. Without him to help boost her magic, how’s she going to rescue him? If you think this sounds like a set-up for a ménage book with two hot heroes, you’re absolutely right. And did I mention the heroes are feline shifters? Or that shifters (called duals in my universe) are especially good partners for sex magic because they’re so focused and yet so hedonistic? Or that both the heroes are bi? Or that when they’re not having crazy magical sex, the main characters are fighting desperate magical battles?

I had so much fun writing about all the sex magic and all the hot duals that I have another Duals and Donovans story underway and plans for more. Witches are my favorite heroines now—although in the next installment, the witch is the hero…

Enough rambling about the theory of sex magic. Here’s the blurb for Lions’ Pride!

To save the one they love, they’re going in with spells blazing…

Duals and Donovan: The Different, Book 1

Elissa Donovan is a real green witch—when she and her lion-shapeshifter husband have sex, the blazing heat is recycled to warm their house. Now her beloved Jude has been kidnapped by a shadowy government agency, and the last place she can turn for help is her high-powered family, who considers her magic mediocre.

When Rafe Benedict gets Elissa’s call for muscle to back up her magic, he risks his law enforcement career to answer. He’s spent a lifetime hiding his Dual ability, but something about Elissa and Jude’s magic awakens the cougar within him.

Tempting, bronzed Rafe is the perfect fuse for Elissa’s sex-fueled magic. Danger lies in breaking her vows; joining with anyone other than her true mate could not only send her marriage up in flames, it could burn out her powers in a last, all-or-nothing explosion. But Jude is worth the risk. And for Rafe, potential heartbreak is nothing next to the chance to help the two people he’s coming to love.

First, though, Rafe needs a crash course in Cougar…

Warning: This title contains evil fae, guys with guns, shadowy government conspiracies, a snarky ghost, and smoking-hot, three-way sex.

EXCERPT:

(For a little setting, Jude has been captured by the bad guys and shot up with a dangerous experimental drug that's affecting the bond between his human and lion sides. Elissa's managed to pull them all into the spirit world so she can heal his damaged spirit via sex magic.)

Elissa's lips tasted of green and cinnamon, of life itself burgeoning, and his cock swelled in response. But there was an undertaste, one hauntingly familiar but not right.

Pine and forest smells, like the air around them, amber and male feline musk. For all it didn’t belong around his woman, let alone on his woman’s lips, it went straight to his cock and balls, adding to his desire. He ached sweetly for things he hadn’t known, had barely dared to imagine.

A hand gripped his shoulder, large and heated and firm. Not a threat, but a gift, he sensed. The scent of sage, already on the wind, already on Elissa, grew stronger.

Reluctantly, he turned from Elissa.

Into Rafe’s waiting arms.

Rafe stood, fully human, naked as Jude himself. He was shorter than Jude, but strong, muscled. Perfect copper abs tapered to narrow hips and a cock Jude felt hard against him, but didn’t dare to look at.

Instead, he met the other man’s eyes and saw the cougar, tawny and alert and curious, in the same spot where the human-seeming Rafe stood. The lion responded as he would to a beautiful lioness, or to the lioness the lion perceived Elissa to be despite her human body.

All kinds of questions rambled through his head, too many to ask.

“We’ve found you,” Elissa said. She pressed against him, her arms around his waist, her breasts soft against his back. “We’re going to get you out, my heart. No matter what.”

“Elissa…” He tried to turn, to look into her eyes, to tell her not to risk herself. That he’d be fine—even though he had no idea how he would be, poisoned and imprisoned and in the kind of pain that would eventually break his mind.

Rafe had left his hand resting on Jude’s shoulder as if it was the most natural thing on earth. He placed the other over Elissa’s on Jude’s hip, so his fingertips brushed Jude’s skin, the sensitive low belly, perilously near Jude’s swollen dick.

His cock felt huge, treelike. On fire with need. Wrong, yet so right. Elissa’s cunt was its natural home, but he felt an equal pull toward Rafe’s lush mouth and firm, elegant ass.

The air throbbed with the smell of herbs and pears and pine and fur, of male and female musk. Jude closed his eyes, trying to shut out some of the stimuli, but this was a dream and the sight of Rafe, of Elissa, of the two of them touching him and each other, burned through his eyelids.

“Rafe, what are you doing in my dream?” Jude finally stammered. He’d meant it to sound accusing, but it came out plaintive and eager, as if he’d been yearning for Rafe to be there for so long he’d given up hope.

“This,” Rafe said, and reached up to kiss him.

Thanks for joining me. To celebrate the release of Lions’ Pride, I’ll be giving away a PDF of the book and some random goodies to someone who comments on this post. Don’t forget to leave a way to contact you!

Thanks Teresa for joining us today! ~~ Jeanne