Years ago, Kathe Robin, the doyenne of Romantic Times reviewers, mentioned to me that the consummation scene in a historical romance was very important to her. The words stuck with me as I thought about why that was true, for true it certainly was.
Before I continue in this vein, I want to emphasize that I don’t think a romance has to have explicit sex to be a great romance. Some of my favorite romances never go beyond a kiss or a held hand, yet they pulse with yearning and emotion and romance. An example of those is Lady Elizabeth's Comet by Sheila Simonson, which I just finished reading for the fifth or tenth time since it came out in 1985. (The occasion of this reread was the delightful knowledge that the book is now available in e-format at Fictionswise http://www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/ebook66571.htm for a mere $5.99.)
To return to my meditations on the importance of a consummation scene: a romance is a dance of emotions and psychology as the characters clash, connect, and ultimately commit. Physical attraction is obviously part of the equation, but more than that, it’s one of the elements of the developing relationship.
(A quote from Lady Elizabeth’s Comet, since it shows that physical attraction existed even in traditional Regencies:
“How came I to feel so strongly? I had not loved Clanross when I poured laudanum down his throat. My feeling for Clanross was not an overnight flower. It had been growing for some time. When was it planted?
It happened, I reflected, after he started walking the grounds and bathing in the lake and began to feel better and look less wan and sleepless. It is a dreadful thing for a woman of intellect to admit so physical a criterion for love. I wanted to evade the fact but there it was. I was a mere animal after all, drawn by a bright eye and a healthy complexion.”
Sexual intimacy is about many things, including pleasure, power, and vulnerability. All of those play into the psychology of the developing relationship.
Since a great romance is about two unique characters whom we come to care about deeply, it makes sense that their sexual relationship is equally unique and reflects their individual natures. Looking at someone and thinking, “Hot, hot, hot!” is all very well, but it’s only one step—and not always the most important one.
Historically, society was much more aware of the potentially destructive power of sex. Procreation was essential to the race, but it carried the risks of death and disease. Smart women didn’t indulge in sex lightly. Men who wanted to be sure that their heirs were really of their blood wanted faithful wives.
So a historical heroine is not likely to allow sexual intercourse unless she’s safely married, or in the grip of overwhelming emotion. In a truly intense situation, she might weighs the pros and cons and decide to risk going ahead despite the consequences. Or, occasionally, she’s so innocent that she doesn’t quite understand what’s going on.
A marvelous example of this last is in Laura Kinsale’s The Shadow and the Star. The heroine is a suffocatingly innocent Victorian miss, raised by little old ladies. Leda Etoile has absolutely no idea of the mechanics of sex, but she does find handsome Samuel very attractive. In some ways, Samuel Gerard is as innocent as she—except that as a child, he was the victim of vile abuse, and has Huge Issues.
The story can be read as a treatise on the value of sex education classes, but it is also one of the most power, passionate, heartbreaking consummation scenes I’ve ever read. (Nor is this the only brilliant First Time scene Kinsale has written. Her characterization, sensuality, and wordsmithery are superb.)
Sometimes my characters are married when they first come together. With luck, it’s a marriage of convenience. <G> This is an enduringly popular plot set-up because it takes two people who may be near strangers and throws them together into the same bed, so they must negotiate an acceptable personal relationship. (The Bargain is a classic MOC.)
I’
ve had several of books when the characters are operating under powerful emotions and decide consequences be damned. In Thunder and Roses, for example, the hero is devastated because he blames himself for a mine collapse that killed a close friend. So the heroine decides to distract and heal him in the most compelling way she knows. My heroines are often lower in the class structure than my heroes, and that changes the dynamics some, but even so, sex is never done lightly.
I thought back to some of the more unusual “first time” scenes in my own stories. In The WIld Child, the heroine, Meriel, is considered mad and she has certainly lived in a way that makes her immune to social strictures, so she sets out to seduce the hero. Poor Dominic is an honorable man and has several extremely powerful reasons to resist her charms, so he fights his attraction, and Meriel, every inch of the way.
I quite like honorable heroes who don’t necessarily fall into bed easily. Honorable men also care about consequences, including the risks of intimacy to women they care about. In The Bartered Bride, the hero and heroine have their First Time under circumstances that offend his very soul.
I also have a fondness for ‘lost love regained stories, where a couple come together again after long separation. The combination of love, lust, anger, and fear make for an intense relationship as they try 
to resolve what separated them in the past. This intensity makes their intimacy fraught with emotional landmines. In Silk and Secrets, the hero and heroine married too young, and have been separated for a dozen years for reasons so painful that Juliet can’t even speak them aloud. He is on the verge of execution before they come together, not wanting to waste what precious hours are left. Since this is a romance, naturally they survive—and have to deal with the consequences of passionate intensity in a relationship that is as conflicted as it was before.
Two of my three contemporaries feature reunion scenarios (I told you I liked this set-up). In The Burning Point, there are huge trust issues that must be resolved. In The Spiral Path, the protagonists are in the process of getting a divorce when the heroine, who wants desperately to direct a movie from her own script, persuades her soon to be ex-husband to star in it so she can get the necessary financing. The movie bores into the white hot centers of their troubled souls, and the stress is so great that soon they are sleeping together while saying that it hasn’t officially happened because neither of them can bear to deal with the consequences.
A friend said that the wedding night in my Veils of Silk was the most different she’d ever seen, since the hero is impotent and their whole marriage of convenience is based on this fact. And that’s just the beginning of the complications! For me, these First Time scenes are very complicated to write because they take place on multiple levels of emotion, psychology, and physical reaction. How does she feel? How does he feel? Are there still conflicts and emotional barriers between them? Will one or both pull back emotionally afterward? Are their levels of commitment different?
And then there is writing the actual physical details. I’m not into extremely clinical, so I try to write scenes that are emotionally engaging and clear enough so that readers will know what’s happening. Too euphemistic can get silly, too purple and my fellow Wenches my revoke my Wenchly license <g>, and too pornographic will turn off a lot of readers. (The illustration at the left is one of the most graphic I ever had, since the hero is basically wearing nothing but the heroine.
Not surprisingly, I usually spend days writing and rewriting a consummation scene, layering in emotion and details and trying to make the result worthy of the characters.
And then there’s the bad-sex scene. One doesn’t see this often in romances, but it 
happens. (Jennifer Crusie’s Welcome to Temptation comes to mind.) More often, of course, we give our characters great sex. Why should we make our fantasies as clumsy and awkward as real life? <G>
So what are your favorite consummation scenes? Which struck you deeply? Did some go sailing into the wall? (No titles or authors, please. We’re a very polite blog.)
What do you think goes into making a great love scene, especially a First Time? I'd love to hear--
Mary Jo