Why are there so many sex scenes in your books? Must they be so graphic?

 

I get this question all the time, and to be honest, I’m still a bit baffled by it. When I’m reading great fiction with well-developed characters I’m genuinely invested in; I’m thrilled when I get to the sex scenes. Like real life, nothing reveals the truth of a character like sexuality. From the moment the first button on the first shirt gives way, we see what she’s not showing anyone else.

Here’s an example. In my first novel, Kate is a young lesbian who escaped alone from an FLDS polygamous cult in Utah. When she flees to Ireland (literally the next plane out of the country when she gets to the airport), she meets Branagh, a tough Dublin detective. Until later when they first sleep together, she’d never been intimate with anyone, even herself. Sex was a way of controlling women within the cult, and until we see her respond to Branagh, we don’t fully understand how much it took for her to allow herself to be vulnerable. In the excerpt below, they’re talking about a kiss they’d shared a few weeks prior that Branagh had abruptly halted before it went further:

“I wanted you, Kate,” Branagh said, staring into the fire as it painted warm gold light onto the walls.  “It was all I could do to stop, and frankly I’m surprised I did.”

I kept my eyes on the flames while I answered. “So why did you?”

“The more I learned about your past, the more I realized the women on the compound never get the chance to decide what they want for themselves.” She looked over at me and held my eyes. “I didn’t want to do the same thing to you.”

“You didn’t, Branagh,” I said. “Not even close.”

The fire was the only light in the room and the thick snow falling just outside the windows made the silence feel dense. I got up to throw another log on the fire and watched her as she sat back on the couch, her eyes locked onto mine. It was a long moment before she spoke.

“Come here.” Her voice was as soft as steel.

I drank the rest of the wine in my glass and set it on the mantle before I walked over and sat beside her. She laid me back on the couch with one motion, covering my body with hers, pulling my hands smoothly above my head and holding them there.

“If you want me to stop, just squeeze my shoulder.” Her face was inches from mine, her voice low and soft. “You don’t have to have a reason.”

She waited until I nodded, then slid her hand around the back of my neck and kissed me with a slow heat that melted my body under hers. She kissed down the side of my neck while she unbuttoned my shirt, pulling my hands back up over my head and holding them there under one of hers. When she’d undone the last button, she kissed every inch of my skin, touching me first with just her breath, then the slick heat of her tongue before she opened her own shirt, letting it fall off her shoulders in the copper firelight. There was something quietly powerful about Branagh; a wordless contrast to the lean curve of her breasts and the gentleness of her hands as they moved over my skin like water. The strong lines of her body were intense, almost too much to look at, and I closed my eyes as I felt her unbutton my jeans. She moved us to the floor beside the hearth, the firelight throwing shadows onto skin as she slid the last of my clothes off my body. When I was naked underneath her, she locked her eyes onto mine.

“Tell me how you feel.” 

She asked this as she pulled my nipple into her mouth, swirling her tongue around it, scraping it gently with her teeth as she let it go. She paused when I didn’t answer and met my eyes. I knew she was waiting, but all I could do was wrap my hands hard against the bare skin of her back and whisper for her not to stop. Her fingers slid down my hip, lifting my knee up beside her and sliding down the back of my thigh. Her breasts grazed mine as she leaned down to me again, and I felt every brush, every heated inch of her skin.When she spoke her voice was deeper than I’d ever heard, the rough scrape of wood against concrete.

“Can I touch you?”

I didn’t know what she meant until I felt the heat of her hand low on my stomach, waiting.

“Branagh,” I said, more breath than words, “I’ll die if you don’t.”

Then she was kissing me, her hand sliding down until her fingers slipped into the wet heat of my body and I raised my hips to meet them. I’d never felt so much at once; her legs holding my thighs apart, the slick stroke of her fingers inside me, her thumb sliding higher, the sensation so intense it stole my breath, leaving only enough for one word. “Wait.”

She stopped before it was out of my mouth and reached to pull the plush throw from the couch to cover us. She laid beside me, her palm warm and flat on the center of my chest, rising and falling with my breath until I found the words.

“It was so …intense.” I didn’t know how to describe it. “Like falling.”

She smiled, pulling me closer into her arms. “Was it a good intense, or a bad intense?”

“Beyond good.” I hesitated. “It’s just that it felt  …big. Like stepping over a cliff.”

She held me until I relaxed and my breathing slowed.

“It can feel like that,” she said, tracing my bottom lip with her thumb. “You just have to relax into it and trust me to catch you.”

I nodded, and she moved her body over my mine again, slower this time, her fingers high and slick, stroking me until I heard myself whisper for her not to stop, over and over, then suddenly, she was inside me. She pulled all of me tight against her, held my eyes until I couldn’t keep them open, couldn’t stop myself from falling, and she was there to catch me the second I left the ground.

 

So, what do we see here that only intimacy reveals?

For starters, the amount of trust between them is evident after this scene; queer sex was a sin punishable by excommunication or worse in Kate’s culture, so to toss that aside and explore her feelings reveals a powerful connection to Branagh. What’s also clear, and for me this the most important aspect, is the level of respect Branagh has for Kate. Despite Branagh’s knowledge of the abuse in Kate’s past, she doesn’t treat her like a victim. In fact, quite the opposite. Although she’s careful to make sure Kate knows she can stop for any reason, Branagh takes her at her word when Kate says she’s ready and trusts her to make her own choices.

So to answer the question: Yes. Every sex scene drives the story forward and reveals the characters.
And they’re just hot. There’s that too.