Cookbook romance from Berengaria Brown’s, “Terracotta Warriors”

Recipe: Terracotta Baked Potatoes

Ingredients
1 1/2 lb small new potatoes (approximately 24)
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon water
1/2 teaspoon salt

How to make Terracotta Baked Potatoes
1. Wash the potatoes carefully, trying not to damage the skin which must remain on, and place them in a casserole.
2. Strip the rosemary needles off the sprigs and add them to the potatoes. Sprinkle the lemon juice, water and salt over, put the lid on and shake the pot well.
3. Place in a preheated oven and bake for 60 minutes. Test the potatoes at the end of the cooking time, they may need a few minutes more. Serve hot.

Food flashfiction:
The head waiter, Harry, saw Branden arrive and snapped his fingers for the barista to make Branden's favorite cinnamon mocha latte. The barista just nodded.

Everyone was well aware of Mr. Verwendahl's almost-addiction to coffee. But no one would ever tease him.
He was much too good a tipper.
Branden noticed all this byplay as he was led to his reserved table. I suppose I should cut back on my caffeine intake. But not today.
Sloan arrived at the same time as Branden's coffee, so the server just nodded, raised an eyebrow, and said, "And one for you too, sir?"
"Long black, please."
Branden let his hand rest lightly on Sloan's. The man's hand felt warm and strong and wonderful to his jittery nerves. "If you don't like her, if you don't want this, no pressure. I love you very much. Want you. Want us," he said quietly.
"Relax, I understand. I can't be happy if you aren't happy. I get that you need both. Shh now."
Branden picked up his coffee and sipped it, loving the soothing taste of it sliding down his throat, his gaze moving to the doorway. There she stood. Five foot eight and one hundred percent woman with lush curves -- generous breasts, ample hips and a nicely rounded ass.
God, she made his dick harder than a spike. No other woman ever had that effect on him. He put down his cup to signal her, but she'd already seen him and was walking toward them, her blonde hair bobbing on her shoulders, her gray eyes dark and worried.

“Terracotta Warriors” Blurb
Naomi has a casual sex-buddy relationship with Branden, a bisexual man. When she loses her job Branden offers her a short-term position in the Museum of which he is a director, but more than that, he wonders if she could be the solution to his sexual problem. He and Sloan are very happy together, but Brand needs the softness of a woman as well as the harsher, more animal mating of two males together.
Sloan and Naomi join Branden on a business trip to Xi'an. Will adding Naomi to the mix be a disaster -- or the solution to all their needs?

Naomi called her boss a f**ing idiot. In the lunchroom. Oooops. A Story Excerpt from “Terracotta Warriors”.

"Only a f**ing asshole like Shannon could imagine for one moment that we'd be able to do a brand new test without spending several days running trials and recalibrating the equipment," said Naomi to her best friend Alison in the lunchroom at the scientific laboratory where they both worked.

The usual noisy chatter of the lunchroom had dropped to deathly silence as Naomi spoke, and now that hush was broken by multiple gasps, snorts and sniggers. Alison's mouth was hanging wide open, her eyes filled with horror.

"What's wrong?" asked Naomi.

Alison rolled her eyes and worked her jaw until it finally closed.

"Would you care to retract that comment, Miss Hunter?"

"Oh shit!" Naomi spun around and there in the doorway was Shannon himself. Mr. Shannon Charles, Head of the Organic Chemistry Division of PVT Chemical Industries -- and everyone in the room's boss.

Her head spun, her cheeks blanched and her gut churned, but Naomi knew what she'd said was correct.

Incredibly stupid to say at work, but nonetheless accurate.

Pulling her shoulders back and her spine ramrod straight, Naomi took a deep breath, and then very deliberately threw her job away. "No, sir. I will not retract what I said. As you know perfectly well, I am one of only three people in the state qualified to sign off on the tests we do, and these new samples will not be accurate enough to pass the annual audit unless we spend several days doing trial tests and calibrating the machines properly. Our reputation for accuracy will be in the toilet." Like my job.

Shannon pulled his cell phone from his blazer pocket and clicked through his address book. "Julie, make up Miss Hunter's pay sheet right now. She's leaving us." He clicked again and said, "John, get to the lunchroom now."

No one in the room moved in the brief few minutes it took for John from Security to arrive. "Yes sir?" His hand was on his weapon as if he expected to have to break up a fight or apprehend a criminal.

"Miss Hunter is leaving us. Escort her to her desk and make sure she takes only her own possessions, then take her to Julie's office to get a printout of her salary entitlements and sign for them. That is all."

A few more gasps came from around the room, but Naomi marched through the door, head up, looking neither to the right nor the left as she set a fast pace to the Organic Chemistry Laboratory where her little office was. There she collected a large, empty cardboard box and packed her things by simply upending her desk drawers into the box, dropping the few personal items from the top of her desk into it, then balancing her potted plant and purse on the top of everything else.

Anger was burning through her at her own insanity at voicing the comment, and at the rightness of it. She snagged her jacket off the back of her chair, remembered to collect her log book, lab coat and safety goggles from the lab itself, then nodded to John who had stood well back from her, totally silent.

"Is that it, Naomi? None of your stuff in the bathroom or on anyone else's desk?" he asked carefully.

"No. I could delete my personal files off the computer but Shannon might say I took proprietary information. This way you are witness that I didn't touch it and I don't care if anyone reads my emails anyway," she replied, shrugging. Besides, her personal files were on her flash drive so it wasn't a big deal.

John nodded. "I'll carry the box for you. You take the plant."

When they reached Julie's office the paperwork was all waiting for her sign. Julie's face was alive with curiosity but Naomi simply said, "Goodbye" and "Thank you". She knew Julie would be on the phone to Alison as soon as she'd left.

John walked her to her car, loaded the box into the trunk for her, and she could see him still standing there watching her leave, as she exited the gate and turned onto the highway. She drove for a couple of miles toward her home, then pulled off into a side road, switched off the engine, folded her arms across the steering wheel, and burst into shattering sobs as the anger and tension exploded from her body.

“Terracotta Warriors” is part of the “Naughty Getaways: Eleven Sultry Stories” anthology.

BUY LINK: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072LWRC7W/

Berengaria Brown
Blog: http://berengariasblog.blogspot.com/
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Berengaria-Brown/e/B00541R3YQ/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/berengaria.brown?fref=ts
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BerengariaBrown

Why write ménage?

Readers often ask me why I write ménages, specifically male/male/female ménages.

I’ll answer that question in a minute. But actually I also write lesbian erotica and male/male stories and even one man/one woman stories. In fact, “Naughty Spice” produced by the Naughty Literati, has one of my lesbian stories in it, as well as my menage stories.

Now, why MMF?

Just think about it for a moment, ladies. If one pair of hands teasing up your ribcage feels good, how much better would two pairs of hands feel?
If one set of lips, kissing and sucking the tender skin inside your elbow feels good, how would another mouth feel on the other elbow?
If you enjoy running your hands down a muscular back and over a taut ass, how much better would it be with two taut asses to touch?
Romantic fiction is a step outside everyday life into what if. A woman’s most important sex organ is her brain. She can think, plan, imagine. Imagine what if not one, but two delicious hunks wanted you? Imagine how intense the passion could be in bed with two men. Four strong arms, two hard chests, two even harder…

Well, I’m sure you can see where my mind is going here!

“Jewel’s Menage Christmas”: Blurb: Jewel, Donovan, and Oscar live together but the excitement has gone out of their relationship. She makes holiday plans to spice things up. Jewel's thought of everything, but will Donovan and Oscar rise to the challenge?

“One Kinky Weekend”: Blurb: Logan and Zara have been married twenty years. Their sex life is boring. Dead boring. They love each other but they want more excitement in bed. The answer? Ask another couple to join them for a very dirty, smutty weekend of darkly naughty sex. Wicked fantasies and forbidden desires are shared. Girl on girl action? Double penetration? Every dark craving comes vividly to life for an orgasmic weekend.

Naughty Spice Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078XCP2HB
Naughty Spice in Print: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1983472433
Amazon: http://a.co/1BfGSBz
B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble. com/w/naughty-spice-francesca- hawley/1127757320?ean=2940155437048
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ ebook/naughty-spice-2

Berengaria Brown

http://naughtyliterati.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Naughty Spice.mp4

Writing my 100th book

I was asked about the most exciting thing that had happened in my writing career and answered that it was the sale of my first book. That first sale proves that everything I thought about my ability to write was correct. I wrote a book and a publisher bought it. The icing on the cake is when readers buy it too. The second book sale confirms that the writer can write. It wasn’t just a one-time thing, or an acquiring editor with too many gaps in their schedule so they bought any old thing. Someone actually liked my books.

In fact, I sold three books in very quick succession. I began writing because I had nothing to read. I wrote a book and sent it off to a publisher, but while I was waiting to hear back from them, I still had nothing to read, so I wrote a second book and sent it to a different publisher. And again with a third. I read anything. All genres, all kinds of books, the back of the shampoo bottle in the shower…. So that’s why I wrote different genres, and sent them to several different publishers, publishers that specialize in a particular genre.

Anyway, all three books were accepted with a few weeks of each other and suddenly I was an author, with contracts to sign, artwork to choose, edits to do.

Time passed. I kept reading, kept writing, and before I realized it, I had a passel of published books and needed spreadsheets to keep all the paperwork in order, to keep track of my characters, to make sure I didn’t repeat any important places, names, ideas.

Some of my books had been on two-year contracts, which were renewed, one of my books, had been made into an audio book, and several of my books were turned into print volumes. My spreadsheet was getting complicated so I sat down to work out exactly how many books I’d written, and which ones were in multiple formats. Which was when I discovered I had more than one hundred individual books, and I wasn’t exactly sure which was my one hundredth book.

An author’s one hundredth book is supposed to be a big thing. Lots of authors hold giveaways, prizes, and parties. Mine passed unnoticed. Of course, I tend to write short. I don’t have many books over 40,000 words. I have a bunch of books 30-35k in length but my preferred writing length is 20-25,000 words. So having 100 books is not nearly as big a deal as for writers who prefer writing 75,000 for each book. But still, it’s kind of embarrassing not to be certain which book is my lucky 100.

I think it’s Book 2 of the Possessive Passion series, “Possess Me”.

Shiloah, a New Thimphu native, is envious of her friend Chevaunne's newfound happiness with her men and wants that kind of love for herself. She has enjoyed working with the luscious Stan and Goa on The Grandparents' Garden. But now the project is finished, so how will she see them again?

All four books in the series can be read as stand-alone stories, but to get a feel for the world and the people it’s better to read them in order. Book 1 is “Shared Possession”.

Chevaunne is abducted by three brothers who take her to a new world where brothers share one wife, who is their treasured possession. Jim, Sam, and Paul have waited years to find the perfect woman, and when they see Chevaunne, they know immediately she is the one for them.

Buy link for the series:
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=possessive+passion+series+berengaria+brown

It's also available in print: https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1619260239/bookstrand-20

Oh, and if you were wondering, I have recently finished writing book 149, and I will have party when I’ve written book 150.
Berengaria

Berengaria Brown’s links:
Blog: http://berengariasblog.blogspot.com/
Bookstrand: http://www.bookstrand.com/berengaria-brown
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Berengaria-Brown/e/B00541R3YQ/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/berengaria.brown?fref=ts
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BerengariaBrown

Emeralds to protect you

My birthstone is an amethyst. Amethysts are pale and pretty, but I’ve always preferred more vibrant colors. Sapphires, rubies, and emeralds. Especially emeralds. There’s no prize for guessing my favorite color is green.

A little while ago I wrote a series of three books, the Gemstone Romances. Each romance story featured a different gemstone which was pivotal to the romance. In the first book, “Courage and Comfort” the two heroes had to find an aquamarine to bring courage and comfort to Edmund’s tragically widowed sister, Mavis.

But in “Protecting You” the heroine, AJ, finds three stones right near the start of the book. The problem is, she’s hopelessly in love with a man already in a relationship with someone else, and she would never break up a relationship. AJ has the three stones she’s found, but can’t figure out the meaning of them.

One of the stones is an emerald. For hundreds of years emeralds have been considered to bring health and protection to those who have them. Because of their innate healing abilities, emeralds can protect the wearer from poisons, physical danger, and mental distress. By increasing a person’s innate psychic abilities, the emerald enhances their decision making powers and increases their energy.

AJ is psychic. She’s the one who knew finding the aquamarine in the first book would help Mavis. But she doesn’t understand the meaning of the emerald, the onyx, and the piece of amber which she has found herself.

The emerald AJ has found is at the heart of what her future will be. Only a stone as powerful as an emerald could be tough enough to deal with a strong woman like AJ.

“Protecting You” by Berengaria Brown:
AJ has psychic abilities and knows Drew is her soul mate. But bisexual Drew flits from partner to partner. At the moment he’s with Kristien, and Kristien is very much in love with Drew. AJ can’t bear the thought that the only way for her to achieve happiness is to break Kristien’s heart.
She invites them both to join her and her friends at the beach for a few days, hoping to get closer to Drew. A rocky wall calls to her, and when she climbs up, she explores a cave and is led to three stones—an onyx, an emerald, and amber.
What do they mean?

Buy Links: http://www.evernightpublishing.com/protecting-you-by-berengaria-brown/
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Protecting-You-Gemstone-Romances-Book-ebook/dp/B00KR2HG2G
ARe: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-protectingyou-1532693-145.html

Sometimes my characters just don't listen to me! They wander off and do their own thing instead of following my plot outline. "Protecting You" is part of the "Gemstone Romances" series. In fact, it's book 2. Both the first and third books are MM romances, but no, AJ is a woman and it appears it takes two men to protect her from what happens next.

The "Gemstone Romances", "Courage and Comfort", and book 3, "A Rainbow of Happiness", aren't my only MM romances. I have an MM story in the latest Naughty Literati boxed set.

Here's a taste of "Perfectly Presented" which is part of "Naughty Chances".
Excerpt, Perfectly Presented by Berengaria Brown

Blake stood and walked behind Xavier’s chair, resting his hands gently on Xavier’s shoulders, and then massaging them. Xavier felt his tight muscles loosen a little as Blake’s fingers dug into the tense tissues, working on the knots, Blake’s thumbs pressing and rolling into each bump.
Xavier rotated his neck and head, and then leaned forward, relaxing into Blake’s firm touch. “Hmm, that feels good.”
Blake moved his hands around, pressing and working all the stiff areas until there were no hard lumps left. His hands stilled momentarily before he slid them down Xavier’s back and up under his sweater and shirt. They glided over the taut back muscles, up Xavier’s spine and around over his sides, down, then up again. This time his fingers moved around to the solid chest wall.
Blake’s fingers stilled over Xavier’s nipples, the firm little discs already standing to attention.
Xavier stood, turned into Blake’s arms, and wrapped his own around Blake. “Maybe it’s time to move this party into the bedroom?” The two men were almost the same height, a mere fraction under six feet, so Xavier tilted his head to the side to kiss his friend.
The kiss was sweet and gentle, a brief butterfly touching of lips to lips, until Blake grabbed Xavier’s head and held it still so he could lick along the seam of Xavier’s mouth. As Xavier opened up, Blake’s tongue slid inside, teasing and tasting and testing. First along the insides of his cheeks, then behind his teeth, and finally to tangle and dance with Xavier’s tongue.
Blake’s fingers burrowed into Xavier’s black hair where it curled on his collar at the back of his neck.
Blake stroked the neck underneath the curls, angling the other man’s mouth more fully over his own, then sucked Xavier’s tongue into his own mouth.
When they finally drew apart, both men were panting, not just from lack of oxygen, but also from the power and passion of their kisses.
Blake pulled Xavier hard against him from hips to chest, his arms like steel bands around the other man. Their cocks rubbed against each other, two long, hard ridges, their heat obvious even through the layers of clothing. “Want you. Need you,” he whispered.
“Hell, yeah. I want you, too.”


Naughty Chances Buy Link: http://tinyurl.com/NaughtyChances

Berengaria Brown
Blog: http://berengariasblog.blogspot.com/
Bookstrand: http://www.bookstrand.com/berengaria-brown
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Berengaria-Brown/e/B00541R3YQ/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/berengaria.brown?fref=ts
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BerengariaBrown
ARe: http://www.allromanceebooks.com/storeSearch.html?searchBy=author&qString=Berengaria+Brown