Too Hot to Sleep, Volume 2
swimming pools, hot cocoa, and a threesome on a yacht
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The second volume of my “Too Hot to Sleep” stories contains three more tales, but only two are set on a hot summer night; one of them, “Bearskin & Cocoa,” explores a different setting in which hot conditions lead to an even hotter situation.
True Cornelia Quick fans may recognize the heroine in the first story, Zoe Chapelle. She’s mentioned in passing in Fan Service, which features fictional porn star Tommy Dare, and also in a sample from a work in progress that I put on Medium, also featuring Tommy. She may have been mentioned a time or two in other stories in the Cornelia Quick universe. In the work in progress, a spicy romance set on the set of a porn shoot, she’s a scrappy adult actress clawing her way up from tawdry straight-to-the-internet scenes to high quality adult films with actual budgets and sometimes even plots. “Caught in the Pool” takes place before the fateful meeting of Zoe and Tommy, when Zoe is still struggling to up the ranks but gathering fans. The night watchman who catches her in the hotel pool is clearly a fan before their meeting, and presumably an even bigger fan when Zoe’s done with him.
“Bearskin & Cocoa” shifts the action from the summer to the winter, but still gets the temperature high enough to cause trouble. I’ve had a few winter cabin experiences myself with a furnace that cranks out too much heat, especially if you’re up where the heat is rising. Alas, I’ve never had that experience when there’s a sexy Swiss man available to whip up some hot chocolate, much less invite me into a passionate embrace on a bearskin rug. But a gal can dream — that’s why I have this hobby/side hustle, right?
The third story, “Sea Legs,” was inspired in part by reading Hank Dolworth’s Freeuse Stowaway (which is why one of the male characters is named Hank), and in part by the “Below Decks” reality TV series (which is pretty dreadful, but also captivating).
Of the three, “Caught in the Pool” is the one that I most want to expand; I’ve plotted out quite a bit of the longer story that features Zoe Chapelle and Tommy Dare, and they’re characters I like. “Bearskin & Cocoa” may return in a modified form in a followup to "How I Won Spring Break,” in which Tiffany and her friends go on a ski trip — that’s still in the imagination phase, though, and may end up being a project for the dark days of winter.
