Lessons in Shadow: Neighbors, #2

By Kayleen Brookhurst

Approximate word count:  16,500+
Content warning:  Contains explicit sexual activity. For Adults Only!

Emboldened by her awakening body, a divorcee embraces unexpected intimacy with her new neighbors.

Erica is surprising herself.  Okay, she’s also dazed and confused, but a little confusion never hurt anyone, right?  And her new life is really taking shape.  Enjoying a fresh spirit, Erica continues to model nude for Julie, a talented artist, and starts a catering business as her relationship with Richard and Julie grows.

At her first catering event, Erica is simultaneously disturbed and thrilled by a revealing surprise from Julie.  Then, even more so by an exotic adventure of her own.  Delighted and bewildered by her sensual desires, Erica reevaluates everything.  And nurtures a newfound confidence.

But when Richard has to go out of town for a week, will the dark side of Julie’s brilliance threaten Erica’s tentative sense of who she is?  Or will Erica’s willingness to help her friend, by all means necessary, reveal a new truth?  And change things forever…

Book Two of the tantalizing trilogy, Neighbors, takes the relationship between Erica, Julie, and Richard to new depths, dark places, and pleasure in many forms.  Erica’s eagerness to embrace desires she never anticipated guides her journey of voyeurism and the shift to participation.  A shift from tepid to torrid, from closed to open, from stifled to wild… 

 Kayleen Brookhurst’s Lessons in Shadow carries you along as an ordinary woman tests her old life’s boundaries, letting her body tutor her extraordinary heart.  These hot new adventures will captivate you with pulse-pounding intensity and provocative pleasures.  Continuing the seductive tale of Erica’s re-emergence into the world beyond suburbia in Intro to Life Study, her further exploration of intensely sensual experiences will leave you breathless and aroused.  Don’t miss the next chapter in this carnal journey of steamy and sensuous characters, lustful activities, and stimulating stories.

Erica’s escapades with her new neighbors continue in Blending Techniques (Book Three), coming soon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kayleen Brookhurst
• Release date: Mar 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781540157836

Kayleen Brookhurst

A proud advocate of pleasure, Kayleen Brookhurst is fascinated by the evolving social/sexual standards of modern culture.  She’s intrigued by our ever changing and rearranging etiquette and rituals for intimate relationships.   And concerned that conventional attitudes too often shame a person’s authentic self.  To her mind, sexual gratification is an exquisite pursuit, in any form but especially on the page, as long as it is shared by consenting adults. Her writing explores a broadened scope of sensual adventure, following desire where it leads.  Finding love in unexpected ways.  Or not...  Remaining open to any path her characters choose, Kayleen’s work is surprising, provocative, and engaging. Take the journey.  Be seduced by vivid, stimulating stories.  And then come back for more.  This author’s adventure is just beginning.

Book preview

Lessons in

Shadow

NEIGHBORS Series

Book Two

Kayleen Brookhurst

This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, organizations, places,

events, and incidents are either

products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2017 Kayleen Brookhurst

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

To contact the author, visit her website.

Okay, enough staring at the ceiling! Some habits really never die.

Erica sat up. She’d been cooking for hours. Exhausted and covered in sweat, she’d stripped, letting her clothes fall to the floor, and flopped her damp body onto the bed for a few moments. Now she was ready for the shower. She didn’t have a lot of time.

Julie and Richard were expected for dinner in an hour. She had just enough time to shower, dress and put the finishing touches on her dining table before they arrived. And to open the wine!

Erica brushed her hair while the water warmed up in the shower. Since she no longer contained her curly mane in a bun or braid, she spent a lot more time brushing it out. And fighting tangles.

A little smile teased her lips. She was reminded of a day when Richard had helped untangle a particularly bad mess.

During one of Erica’s nude modeling sessions, Julie, a talented young artist, decided she wanted to play with images of Erica’s head poking out from under a sheet. They’d spent a few hours, laughing a lot, as Erica kept pulling the sheet over her head and then pushing her head back out from underneath. Julie had loved the photos she snapped. Erica’s hair had become a snarled mess.

Richard, wearing shorts and flip flops, had arrived with lunch during a break. Julie was reviewing the photos. Erica was wearing the short, silky robe she kept handy for breaks, fighting the snarls in front of the standing mirror. She was trying to hide it from Julie, but Richard had immediately understood her distress. Casually, he’d put the food in the kitchen, returned to take the comb from Erica’s hand, and gentle began working out the rat’s nest on her head.

I used to wear my hair long, he said. While he worked in silence, Erica imagined her handsome young neighbor with long hair. Long hair on men always intrigued her. Henry, her ex-husband, had always kept his hair corporate-neat. Went with the ever-present tie.

Wow. That’s pretty sexy, Julie said, breaking the silence. Erica blushed, reluctantly distracted from an imagined scene where Richard, wearing nothing but sweat, ran his fingers through his long silky strands before he twisted them into a ridiculously attractive man bun.

Do you miss your long hair? Julie asked her husband.

Not really.

What made you cut it? Erica asked.

Julie and Richard smiled.

I’m afraid I did that, Julie said. Convinced him we should cut each other’s hair short-short. I buzzed him first.

And I couldn’t do it to hers when it was my turn, Richard said. Women and their hair… Seriously dangerous territory.

Yeah. I cut it myself, but I couldn’t go all the way to buzzed. Too chicken. I wasn’t convinced it would look good on me, Julie said. Vanity, yuck! Of course, Richard looked great.

I wore it long for years. I like it shorter. Don’t miss all the maintenance, that’s for sure. Richard pulled the sheet off the love seat into a pile on the floor and guided Erica to sit on it, taking a seat on the small sofa behind her. Go ahead and lean back and relax. This is going to take a few minutes.

Yes, let the man do his work. He’s good at it. Helps me out all the time, Julie said.

Erica had allowed herself the pleasure of relaxing against the sofa between Richard’s knees as he continue to gently pull the tangles from her hair. Julie had gone to the kitchen and returned with lunch. The women had eaten while Richard worked. They’d talked about a TV show they were binge watching together, The L Word, an older show none of them had watched before. The sex scenes were so erotic and very convincing. The three of them joked about how real they seemed quite a bit.

Erica shivered as she remembered when Richard had finished with the tangles. Setting aside the comb, he’d run his fingers through her long curls and massaged her scalp. It had felt so good, so naughty somehow, that she’d felt herself get wet and finally had to go to the bathroom, afraid the scent of her titillation would give her away.

When she’d felt ready to return, she peeked out the door first. Sure enough, they’d gotten busy in her absence. Erica watched Julie licking Richard’s erect cock, sucking the head while he groaned softly. Unable to help herself, she watched until he came, then wiped herself again and