On the subject of romance … If you’ve read my other series, you might notice the love scenes in this book were rather more spicy! The Counterfeit Contessa books are the first I ever finished writing and I was very much conscious of people I know reading them, so I kept things a bit tamer than I might’ve.

I also hadn’t discovered that there are all these other readers like me who also love the adventure and the romance, including the sexy times that can involve.

Nowadays, I know I’m not alone in that. In fact, I’m one of the admins over at Romantic Fantasy Shelf, a Facebook group for readers who love romantic fantasy, fantasy romance, and fantasy reverse harem. In the group, we are non-judgmental about heat levels and there are those who like it sweet as well as plenty who like it spicy. You could say, I’ve found my people! (If this sounds like your cup of tea, you can join us here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/romanticfantasyshelf/ )

As for BBS … When I started writing, Vice really jumped off the page as quite a sexual person (and I think in general there’s that angle to pirates—they live by a very different set of rules from the average person in their era).

I always knew that things between Vice and Knigh would simmer right from the start, with the tension building to boiling point … But with how opposite they are in a lot of ways, I also knew it wasn’t going to be easy for Knigh to act on his feelings and desires. He isn’t the sort to dive in for a quick kiss in an alleyway (or book shop) on a whim. (And Vice, tempted as she is, is too wrapped up in the fact he’s a pirate hunter to make her move as early as she normally would.)

By the time I got to the battle on the Covadonga, I knew that when Knigh cracked, he would crack completely—kissing, sex, all of it at once.

But when I reached the glow-worm cave, I was really torn. I wasn’t sure where to pitch it in terms of explicitness. Did I stick with the shorter scene with sensual terms and soft focus I’d already used in A Thief & a Gentlewoman and A Sleuth & a Charlatan?

I’m a believer that sex scenes are a great opportunity to reveal a lot about characters and their relationships, so I knew I didn’t want to cut away (and I felt like I’d be cheating you guys after all that hot tension). Also, with the way things had bubbled between them for so long, fading to black would have been incongruous.