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...okay, not quite A/B/O, but there is going into heat and knotting.
So, several weeks ago, I was scrolling through the Brooklyn Public Library ebooks section looking for SF/F books I hadn't read yet, and came across a paranormal romance novel about a part-wolf super soldier who'd been genetically created in a lab, and the evil scientist's daughter who falls in love with him. Since I like super soldiers (obviously, or I wouldn't write Captain America slash fic), I checked it out. A couple chapters in, the first sex scene came up, and I thought to myself "If I were reading a slash fanfic about a part-wolf character, I know what would be coming up next, but this is a published romance novel, so it'll never happen here."
And then, lo, there was knotting. And both characters went into heat from pheromones that were transferred from the wolf-guy to his "mate" via kissing (and also semen).
After the "mating heat" commenced, neither character could have sex with another man/woman, because thealpha male character could only get it up for his mate, and the omega female character found the touch of any man other than her mate physically painful. Also, not having sex with one another is physically painful. And the "mating hormone" has an individual taste that differs for every "Breed" (which is what the genetically created part-animal super-soldiers are called in this 'verse). This book's hero tasted like chocolate. No, seriously. His kisses taste like chocolate. Also, each mated couple has a dominant and a submissive partner, and these roles are biologically determined. The dominant ones are called "men," and the submissive ones are "women." And the mating heat is much more painful for the omega woman.
Which would usually have been the point where I turned the book back into the library and avoided further books by the same author, because male dom/fem sub isn't my preferred het kink, but you see, her part-animal super-soldier series also featured cat-people, and since she'd already included knotting for the wolf-people, I just had to read one of the cat-people books and see if she'd go all the way there as well and include the penis spines.
Sadly, she did not. The lion dude had a sort of extra fleshy bit that extended from the end of his equipment once he was inside her that was called a barb, but wasn't actually one. Also, the author at one point has the hero state that lions mate for life (at least RL wolves, while also not mating for life, generally have one mate at a time - RL lions have an entire harem), and says that protective instincts toward children are wired into the Breeds as part of their animal genetics. At which point I remembered the several documentaries I've seen about lions and rolled my eyes. (Male lions, for those who don't know, regularly kill the cubs of other males. Even un-neutered male house cats have been known to occasionally kill kittens). Personally, I'd have had the character think of male lion breed's protectiveness of children and monogamy/mating for life as proof of their humanity, since both traits are a lot more human than they are feline.
I'd also have had the twin feline-breed brothers, who each get their own mate in canon, end up mated to the same woman, because male lion siblings will sometimes share a pride of females IRL. (The possibility is briefly raised, because they're genetically identical and the mating heat is supposed to be based on genetics and hormones, but is of course shot down, because Lora Leigh might do knotting and spanking and anal, but she apparently doesn't do threesomes).
There were also coyote people. By this point, trainwreck syndrome had taken over, and I had to know what kind of cocks they had. I was hoping that the author had come up with a new, third kind of WTF anatomy for them, but they just turned out to have knots the same as the wolf-people. Coyote-book also featured one of the most annoying and asshole-ish alpha male characters of all (okay, he wasn't actually any worse than any of the other male leads, but early on he mentally refers to the heroine as a "woman-child," and I never quite managed to get over that), but pleasantly surprised me by having a heroine who actually reacted to this whole mating heat business like a rational human being - by freaking out and feeling violated. Even the overly-domineering, I=-decided-you-were-the-woman-for-me-when-you-were-18 guy felt violated by it. Though not violated enough to stop being a dick to the heroine, of course. (It passed Bechdel, though, which also pleasantly surprised me. Paranormal romance novels are sadly not known for having heroines who have close relationships with other women, but the heroine of Coyote's Mate has several close female friends. There's also h/c. I voted it the best of the lot, while Harmony's Way, which has a female character being "tamed" by getting pregnant and a Native American guy who can hear mystical voices on the wind, gets my vote for "If het knotting is relevant to your interests and you wish to read these books, do not start with this one.")
At least one book also had het anal, maybe more than one, but all four-five of them have sort of blended together in my head into a mass of "mating hormones" and over-protective, vaguely stalkery men. And spanking. There's also spanking, and the books that don't actually feature spanking have the guys threatening to do it a lot.
There are also several books in the same series featuring cat-girls and normal human guys, but sadly for me (though not for people who like fem-sub), the Breed women don't go are rar-caveman dominant over their mates the same way the men do. Instead, the human guys go a alpha male over them, while they find that super-hot and go all submissive. One of the heroines even speculates that the creepy evil scientists who created the breeds must have programmed the women to be submissive to their sexual partners, an idea that neither she nor the author seemed to find as squicky as I did.
Anyway, to sum up:
Lora Leigh's Breed series contains: het knotting, mating heats, people's kisses canonically tasting like honey and chocolate, het anal, and spanking.
I know this is relevant to someone out there's interests.
So, several weeks ago, I was scrolling through the Brooklyn Public Library ebooks section looking for SF/F books I hadn't read yet, and came across a paranormal romance novel about a part-wolf super soldier who'd been genetically created in a lab, and the evil scientist's daughter who falls in love with him. Since I like super soldiers (obviously, or I wouldn't write Captain America slash fic), I checked it out. A couple chapters in, the first sex scene came up, and I thought to myself "If I were reading a slash fanfic about a part-wolf character, I know what would be coming up next, but this is a published romance novel, so it'll never happen here."
And then, lo, there was knotting. And both characters went into heat from pheromones that were transferred from the wolf-guy to his "mate" via kissing (and also semen).
After the "mating heat" commenced, neither character could have sex with another man/woman, because the
Which would usually have been the point where I turned the book back into the library and avoided further books by the same author, because male dom/fem sub isn't my preferred het kink, but you see, her part-animal super-soldier series also featured cat-people, and since she'd already included knotting for the wolf-people, I just had to read one of the cat-people books and see if she'd go all the way there as well and include the penis spines.
Sadly, she did not. The lion dude had a sort of extra fleshy bit that extended from the end of his equipment once he was inside her that was called a barb, but wasn't actually one. Also, the author at one point has the hero state that lions mate for life (at least RL wolves, while also not mating for life, generally have one mate at a time - RL lions have an entire harem), and says that protective instincts toward children are wired into the Breeds as part of their animal genetics. At which point I remembered the several documentaries I've seen about lions and rolled my eyes. (Male lions, for those who don't know, regularly kill the cubs of other males. Even un-neutered male house cats have been known to occasionally kill kittens). Personally, I'd have had the character think of male lion breed's protectiveness of children and monogamy/mating for life as proof of their humanity, since both traits are a lot more human than they are feline.
I'd also have had the twin feline-breed brothers, who each get their own mate in canon, end up mated to the same woman, because male lion siblings will sometimes share a pride of females IRL. (The possibility is briefly raised, because they're genetically identical and the mating heat is supposed to be based on genetics and hormones, but is of course shot down, because Lora Leigh might do knotting and spanking and anal, but she apparently doesn't do threesomes).
There were also coyote people. By this point, trainwreck syndrome had taken over, and I had to know what kind of cocks they had. I was hoping that the author had come up with a new, third kind of WTF anatomy for them, but they just turned out to have knots the same as the wolf-people. Coyote-book also featured one of the most annoying and asshole-ish alpha male characters of all (okay, he wasn't actually any worse than any of the other male leads, but early on he mentally refers to the heroine as a "woman-child," and I never quite managed to get over that), but pleasantly surprised me by having a heroine who actually reacted to this whole mating heat business like a rational human being - by freaking out and feeling violated. Even the overly-domineering, I=-decided-you-were-the-woman-for-me-when-you-were-18 guy felt violated by it. Though not violated enough to stop being a dick to the heroine, of course. (It passed Bechdel, though, which also pleasantly surprised me. Paranormal romance novels are sadly not known for having heroines who have close relationships with other women, but the heroine of Coyote's Mate has several close female friends. There's also h/c. I voted it the best of the lot, while Harmony's Way, which has a female character being "tamed" by getting pregnant and a Native American guy who can hear mystical voices on the wind, gets my vote for "If het knotting is relevant to your interests and you wish to read these books, do not start with this one.")
At least one book also had het anal, maybe more than one, but all four-five of them have sort of blended together in my head into a mass of "mating hormones" and over-protective, vaguely stalkery men. And spanking. There's also spanking, and the books that don't actually feature spanking have the guys threatening to do it a lot.
There are also several books in the same series featuring cat-girls and normal human guys, but sadly for me (though not for people who like fem-sub), the Breed women don't go are rar-caveman dominant over their mates the same way the men do. Instead, the human guys go a alpha male over them, while they find that super-hot and go all submissive. One of the heroines even speculates that the creepy evil scientists who created the breeds must have programmed the women to be submissive to their sexual partners, an idea that neither she nor the author seemed to find as squicky as I did.
Anyway, to sum up:
Lora Leigh's Breed series contains: het knotting, mating heats, people's kisses canonically tasting like honey and chocolate, het anal, and spanking.
I know this is relevant to someone out there's interests.
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I had no idea mainstream het romance contained this much WTF.
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