For those of you of an older age, like myself, you remember the cowboy movies where the good guy would sooner kiss his horse than a woman. If he did find a woman to love, they merely rode off into the sunset together. Now, they're more inclined to ride off into the sunset, naked, while having sex on the horse. Things have certainly changed for that ol' cowboy.
The same thing has happened to our romances, as well.
When I first started reading romances in the late sixties, the heroine and hero never kissed until the next to the last page. This made selecting a romance much easier. One simply stood in the bookstore and flipped to the last two pages and read them to see if the nature of the chaste kiss was worthy of the read. The only heat level we had back then was sweet. No sex. No mention of sex. No body parts perking up when the love interest sauntered onto the scene. Then we moved into the arena of closed bedroom door sex and the ensuing pregnancy. Now? Well, now, we've got choices--and that's a good thing, don't you think?
I've written sweet and sensual, bordering on "hawt."
As a reader, I prefer hawt to kink. What are your preferences? How hot do you like your romances?
