Sex on the Beach

by Lynn Kiele Bonasia, guest blogger and author of Summer Shift

Warning: This has absolutely nothing to do with vodka and peach schnapps. But I suppose it could.

As the author of two books set on Cape Cod, I often wonder what it is about romance on the sand that captures the imagination, as epitomized in that immortal scene of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity. (Which you don’t have to be old to appreciate.)

Having lived in a coastal town for my formative years, the ocean for us was what might have been a reservoir parking lot or make out spot in the woods for others. The beach was our playground, offering solitude, dunes to hide behind and waters in which to skinny dip. But the allure goes beyond the mere convenience of having a huge stretch of sand at our disposal. I see it as something primordial.

I try to get at it here, in my first novel, Some Assembly Required. Rose and Simon barely know one another, and yet they’re swept up in the starlit night, high on a bluff overlooking the sea.

“…as long a he was with her, anything seemed possible, each kiss bigger than the both of them, the dizzying scent of her mixed with the damp musk coming off the ocean, the organic stew of salt and life and death, so powerful in its subtlety, elusive and ethereal.”

The brine permeates our flesh. The sand moulds to our bodies and coats our skin. Each wave brings a crescendo to our ears that works its magic on our inner rhythms. We shiver. The air is damp. In the shadow of the dunes, we huddle closer, as is the case with the two lovers in my recently released novel, Summer Shift…

“Mary and Dan lay flat on their backs looking up at the night sky. The air was warm and buttery, with a mist that left a slight stickiness on the skin…He draped his arm around her waist and she felt the weight of it. Her head rose and fell with his breathing. She imagined she was lying on the bow of a boat…Then Dan put his hand on the back of her neck and in one swift motion rolled them both over so that he was on top of her… His lips seem to melt into hers like warm wax, as though there was no longer any separation between them…they kissed in long, rolling waves.”

Elusive, indeed. But intoxicating, like a cocktail.

Lynn’s Bio:
Lynn Kiele Bonasia is the author of two novels set on Cape Cod. Summer Shift (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster), about a woman who runs a New England clam bar, was released on June 1, 2010. Her first novel, Some Assembly Required (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster), came out in 2008. Prior to getting her MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University, Lynn sold her soul as a freelance advertising copywriter. Now she lives and writes full time on the Cape, and just sold her first teen novel, Countess Nobody, which is expected to come out next summer.