My novel, The Pet Shop, is a modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast. The fairy tale and my retelling of it are both stories about seeing the true nature of a person with all their flaws and neuroses, and loving them anyway. They’re both stories about trusting someone enough to allow oneself to be loved in spite of those flaws and shortcomings. Tino/Vincent is both beautiful and beastly, and Stella learns to love both. But a part of Stella’s journey to love is also discovering and embracing her own dual nature.
A part of what makes humans both heartbreakingly beautiful and terrifyingly dangerous is the way we embody that dual nature. We’re not simply ‘a little lower than the angels,’ but we’re also the animal who once raced across the savannas of Africa. Our genetic make-up is not all that different from our animal cousins. And no matter how much we pretend otherwise, no matter how much we try to separate ourselves and tart ourselves up to be ‘more than,’ we can never be truly human unless we embody and balance both parts of that duality.
In the fairy tale, the beast is fierce and frightening, but I chose to add a bit of kink and make my beast a human Pet because there’s nothing that must be more trusting or more at the mercy of humans than a pet. And part of what we love most about pets is that we’re allowed to stroke the lion when our cat sits on our lap, and we’re allowed to walk with the wolf when we take our dog out for a romp. I think it’s more than just that brush with wildness that intrigues us so. I think it’s that the very ancient part of our nature resonates with that wildness and on a level almost older than memory, we still feel it.
Sometime in our history a taming occurred and wild animals trusted us enough to become our friends. In doing so, they tamed us a little as well. At some point in every true love relationship the same thing happens. We allow ourselves to be vulnerable enough to trust, vulnerable enough to truly reveal ourselves flaws and all. We allow ourselves to be tamed. The beauty of such a relationship is that we go willingly to that place of tameness, but we take our wildness with us because in a true love relationship, the wildness is as much a part of us as our willingness to lay with our head in someone’s lap. And it’s as much loved. That’s what I wanted to convey in The Pet Shop. The story is not just Beauty and the Beast, but it’s also beauty in the beast, the two in balance, both tame and wild, each necessary for the other, both essential for wholeness.
Blurb:
In appreciation for a job well done, STELLA JAMES 's boss sends her a pet – a human pet. The mischievous TINO comes straight from THE PET SHOP complete with a collar, a leash, and an erection. Stella soon discovers the pleasure of keeping Pets, especially this one, is extremely addicting.
Obsessed with Tino and with the reclusive philanthropist, VINCENT EVANSTON, who looks like Tino, but couldn’t be more different, Stella is drawn into the secret world of The Pet Shop. As her animal lust awakens, Stella must walk the thin line that separates the business of pleasure from the more dangerous business of the heart or suffer the consequences.
Excerpt:
She was halfway back to her car, feeling stupid and self-conscious, when a strong arm slipped around her waist, and a familiar scent filled her nostrils. She looked up into Tino’s dark eyes.
‘What are you doing here?’ It still came as a shock to hear Tino speaking.
‘I saw your picture in the Oregonian.’
‘So you thought you’d just drop in.’
‘You are Tino, aren’t you?’
He picked up the pace. ‘Tino’s not here.’ With his arm around her waist, he guided her away from her car to a waiting limo.’
She didn’t protest as he opened the door and helped her inside, sliding in next to her. Then he knocked on the privacy window and the driver took off.
‘Seems a strange vehicle to bring to a nature reserve,’ she said.
‘I didn’t bring it,’ he said. ‘But you can’t go back in what I came in.’
‘Then you have to be Tino, or you wouldn’t have --’
He covered her mouth in an insistent kiss. ‘What?’ He spoke against her lips ‘You think I wouldn’t notice the sexy English bird distracting me from the all the other birds.’ He teased her lips apart, sparring with her tongue, making her insides feel like warm toffee. She was relieved to hear no anger in his voice.
She came up for breath. ‘But how else would you -- ’
He nipped and tugged on her lip. ‘Tino’s not here,’ he whispered against her mouth, slurring his words with the flick of his tongue. ‘There’s just Vincent.’
‘What are you, schizo then?’ she let out a little gasp as he nibbled her earlobe then the hollow of her throat.
‘Didn’t you take psychology 101? We all have more than one person living inside us, Stella.’
He kissed her again, and his hand moved up the inside of her thigh and his fingers slid aside the crotch of her thong.
‘Did you wear these for Tino, hoping he’d take them off with his teeth?’ He raked the hood of her clit with a heavy thumb, sending a jolt of heat radiating out over her belly and down through her slit. ‘Because I won’t bother. I’m not here for your entertainment.’
‘I never thought that you were,’ she said, giving him an ineffective shove with the flat of her hand. But he took her mouth again, and the way his tongue invaded and withdrew and invaded again, the way his fingers teased and retreated and teased again made her stop thinking about… well everything, really.
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Bio:
K D Grace lives in South England with her husband and a back garden full of free-loading birds. When she’s not writing, she practices extreme vegetable gardening. The plan is take over the world with veg plots. It’s the veg plot plot.
She walks her stories, and she’s serious about it. This August she and her husband walked the Coast to Coast rout across England. For her, inspiration is directly proportionate to how quickly she wears out a pair of walking boots.
She believes Freud was right. In the end, it really IS all about sex, well sex and love. And nobody’s happier about that than she, cuz otherwise, what would she write about?
She has erotica published with Xcite Books, Mammoth, Cleis Press, Black Lace, Erotic Review, Ravenous Romance, and Scarlet Magazine.
Her critically acclaimed erotic romance novels include, The Initiation of Ms Holly, and The Pet Shop, both published by Xcite Books.
The first book of her Lakeland Heatwave trilogy, Body Temperature and Rising, is now available in all eBook formats. Available in paperback February 2012.
Website: kdgrace.co.uk She’s also on Facebook and Twitter.
