You've been waiting for this one for a while and the wait is finally over -- today's Who Did It Better is part racist, part WTF, and a whole lot of this-is-why-romancelandia-is-awesome fun. Once again, we've got to thank Jen for taking one for the team!
Giddy-up!
Who Did It Better . . . On a Horse
I mean, does this post even need more of an explanation than the title? Probably not. So let’s get a few disclaimers on the table:
- This city girl has only been in the saddle one time and the closest I get to horses are the ones that clip-clop tourists around Michigan Avenue.
- A bunch of these books had super racist tropes about Native Americans and served as a good reminder of why no one should read romances written by white folks that are set in the Old West. Thank God for the Kindle search feature, y’all.
Let’s do this thing.
Savage Thunder by Johanna Lindsey
Add it on Goodreads [also, look at the old cover -- Oy]
Seeing the original cover and reading the blurb were enough to let me know this book was a hard pass. 1) Fabio was the original cover model on the 80s paperback, even though the hero is a Cheyenne man. 2) The hero is from the Cheyenne tribe and Johanna Lindsey is not. 3) The hero is a Cheyenne man named Colt Thunder, and therefore, the very title is calling the main character a savage. 4) In the blurb, the hero is called “a strange” with no noun after it? Tl;dr: this book is racist as hell and I literally refuse to read it. I did a keyword search to find the scene, which is at the beginning of chapter 38. They’re riding together for some reason and Jocelyn is asleep in the saddle in front of Colt. He unlaces her blouse moves his hand to her lap and starts fingering her. She wakes up and he turns her around to get astride him. She does climax three times during the scene, but that doesn’t make up for how gross even the most cursory interaction with this book made me feel.
Dishonorable Mention for Everything
This Fierce Splendor by Iris Johansen
Add it on Goodreads [another old cover]
Last fall, I wrote a post about new covers on old books, and joked there about how I should find a book I read where the couple had sex on horseback. I vividly remember my friend JP and I giggling about this scene in high school. Ainsley Wynter did internet sleuthing and found the title: This Fierce Splendor, originally published in 1988. Right away, this reread got off to a rocky start with me, because the plot is about these two white people, Elspeth and Dominic, searching for the list city of “Kantalan” in 1870s Arizona. Past Me growing up in a very white Ohio suburb had no idea what Aztlan was, but Present Me is giving some super hard side eye to that erasure. I must have reread this thing a bunch of times, because entire sections of the plot came roaring back to me---the Russian friend hanged for stealing a horse, Elspeth’s fear of snakes, Dominic attempting to rape her, and yet more racist shit about Indians. Because of all that bullshit, I couldn’t bring myself to actually reread the whole book. Some prodigious skimming and a few key word searches got me to the scene. Get this: they only reason they are on that horse is to fuck while riding. One night they had sex and went to sleep, and then Dominic wakes her up telling her they are going on a nighttime ride. HE GETS ON THE SADDLE NAKED AND SHE IS ONLY WEARING A BLANKET. Can you imagine the chafing? Elspeth wonders what he’s up to, and then Dominic turns her around to face him. She’s astride him, they’re astride the horse, and then he kicks the poor creature into a gallop. All the pounding from both the man and the horse--the word pounding is used several times!---bring her to a literal screaming orgasm. How did that horse not throw them off for this nonsense? If this was a mathematical equation, it would look a little like this: (Fond Memories - Racism) x Deliberate Intention =
Bronze Medal Sex on a Horse
Montana Sky by Nora Roberts
Thank God, a book set in modern times. In this one, three sisters inherit a ranch from their estranged father, but of course they each find love. In this scene, Tess and Nate, who are already lovers, are working with a young horse. Even though the horse isn’t saddled, they jump on for a quick ride around the corral. Tess is behind him and notices how much more intense it is to ride bareback (snort) because she can snuggle up to Nate’s back. Tess gets turned on and reaches around to feel Nate and wonders if he’s ever done it while riding. He’s aroused by the visual but tells her that the horse would get spooked and they’d break their necks. Even so, he pulls her around front “with a great deal of grasping and groping” and they just kiss for a while. He tells her he loves her and wants to marry her. Even though they don’t actually have sex on the horse, I’m awarding it the
Silver Medal for Knowing that having Sex on a Horse is a Really Dumb Idea
March 24th, 2019 Update:
Sorry. The author that was here is racist AF. Jen has removed her from the competition. Petty, but true.
Thx.
Sorry. The author that was here is racist AF. Jen has removed her from the competition. Petty, but true.
Thx.
Sam’s Creed by Sarah McCarty
Sam is one of the Hell’s Eight, a group of heroic dudes settling the American West (eye roll). One day, he runs into a burned out caravan and saves Isabella, a beautiful young woman trying to evade a local strongman who wants to marry her. Pretty soon after Sam saves her, Isabella decides to seduce Sam, deciding she should choose Sam to take her virginity, because once the bad guy catches up to her, nothing about her life will ever be pleasurable again. This book is 100% bonkers in every way, and there’s lots of sexy action on horseback. They make out and have their hands all over each other anytime they ride together, but then...there’s basically two scenes that even Cirque du Soleil-trained gymnasts would have difficulty pulling off! In the first, Isabella is sitting behind Sam in the saddle. Even though she’s never performed oral sex before, she somehow wiggles her face around into his lap and gives him a blow job. Isabella “leav[es] the responsibility of keeping her on the horse to Sam,” but I’d argue that the reader is acting as proxy for Sam: we are mentally keeping Isabella on that horse, not to mention keeping Sam’s manly parts safe from an unfortunate World According to Garp-style tragedy. AS IF THAT WASN’T CRAZY ENOUGH, later in the book, Sam and Isabella have p-i-v sex on a horse. This being the 1800s, Sam has been pulling out as a birth control method. However, Bella demands that he finish in her, and so he puts his dick right up her ass so he can finish inside of her without the risk of pregnancy. That’s right, it’s her first time having anal sex, there’s no lube besides what their bodies produce, and they’re on horseback. This is such epic WTFery that this book should be classified as fantasy instead of romance, but even I have to admire the moxie.
Platinum Medal Sex on a Horse
Yeaaaah, there's a reason most of us try to forget about those old western romances. Ugh.
Have you come across any other sex-on-a-horse -- or camel! Or any other animal-that-you-should-not-be-having-sex-on-WTF-people? -- scenes, let us know!
Enjoy!
Until Next Time,
1 comment :
There is a book I read in the late 80's early 90's that has sex on a horse at the end ofthe novel.
French hero (I think) nicknames the heroine Solange.
They don't finish on the horse, and nearly wind up hurting themselves. Horse gets really confused.
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