Guys have such an intriguing way of interacting with their buddies, giving each other advice and expressing emotions in ways that sometime seem utterly foreign to women. From dealing with high-pressure situations to frustration at not getting laid to the number and quality of female orgasms, a good wingman is essential for any hero worth his bro. These are some of my recent favorites with heroes demonstrating how they deal with a variety of manly situations:
The Edge of Trust by KT Bryan: Men have an oblique way of showing they've got each other's back. Here, two soldiers are on a difficult mission, with one of them sneaking into a drug dealer's house while the other is giving him assistance remotely via headset. They keep each other grounded during the tense moments by talking about non-mission-related things:
He unhooked his Ka-Bar from his belt, and in one continuous motion, cut the seal around the base of the skylight. After lifting it aside he unhooked the rope. He really needed to hurry. “Jake, time hack.”
“Thirty-two minutes.”
The theme song from Mission Impossible, whistled pitch perfect, came over Dillon’s headset. “Ha, ha. If you’re comparing me to Ethan Hunt, fine. Great, in fact. But if you have Tom Cruise in mind, I’m going to have to kill you.” With a quick loop and a knot, Dillon fastened the rope around the base of the chimney.
“Well, you are all in black. Minus the ever present, very chill, always explosive sunglasses, of course.”
“Don’t forget the oh-so-realistic flying motorcycles.”
“Good point. Much cooler.”
For those who are “erotic-romance curious,” there is an incredible selection of books from which to choose nowadays. And those do include erotic romances with humor.
The first kiss is such an important milestone for romance couples. Most of them have been fighting their attraction to each other, or maybe even fighting with each other. When that first kiss finally occurs, it rocks their world, and often detours their plans for the future.
Cath Talarico knows a mistake when she makes it, and God knows she’s made her share. So many, in fact, that this Chicago girl knows London is her last, best shot at starting over. But bad habits are hard to break, and soon Cath finds herself back where she has vowed never to go...in the bed of a man who is all kinds of wrong: too rich, too classy, too uptight for a free-spirited troublemaker like her.
Every romance couple has challenges, but some of them have major ones—things that make it seemingly impossible for them to connect, let alone make it all the way to a HEA. These are the couples that make you wonder why nobody jumped up during the ceremony when the minister said, “If anyone has any reason why these two should not be married. . .”
The “moment after,” when the hero and heroine have finally done it, is one of the most pivotal moments in a romance. There has typically been a lot of buildup and tension before they get to this point, so it’s expected things will change dramatically once they leap into intimacy.
If a book has the words “
I don’t really like motorcycles. For starters, they’re noisy, obnoxiously so if they have those big pipes that amplify the sound. They can be smelly too, especially when the exhaust fumes get sucked into your air vents. I know I can’t be the only one who gets irritated when motorcyclists weave in between all of us cars stopped on the freeway while they’re zooming towards freedom.
We’ve seen zillions of those proposals with the hero on bended knee, the heroine’s eyes filled with tears as she listens to his declaration of love. It doesn’t even faze us anymore when someone proposes via a baseball scoreboard, or by hiding a ring in a romantic dessert. 
Baseball is celebrating its All Stars right now, and it made me think we should do the same with romance heroes. I’ll toss out the first pitch, with a few of my favorites that deserve to be on the team.
Ahh, the noble hero. How can you not love a man who is selfless, stoic, and self-sacrificing...well, at least until he tells the heroine The Big Lie, the one that starts out, “You’re better off without me.”
It’s not just 
When I first started reading romance, most of the heroes were dark, brooding, angst-filled men. But there was one out-of-the-ordinary hero who instigated a lifelong love affair, not only with him, but with others who share his literary DNA.
Tattoos can be very sexy, so it's no surprise many romance heroes sport them, and in a variety of intriguing bodily venues. They can also demonstrate something about the hero's personality, whether it's the rebellious mark of a contemporary bad boy, or a symbol of the suffering endured by a historical hero.
Maybe I'm just nosy, but I love to hear how couples meet, especially if they seem mismatched. “Cute meets” are the most fun of all because the characters are going about their business, and then boom! They encounter, in a major crazy way, the person who will completely change their life forever.
The first Gothic romance I encountered was by Mary Stewart, and what an introduction! I was a suburban high-schooler, and had never even come close to a dark, broody man, let alone one with an exotic name like Raoul. How could I resist?
When we read romance, we expect a happily-ever-after ending. It's actually part of the unwritten contract, one we enter into with each romance novel: “I, romance writer, do solemnly swear to provide characters a happily ever after (hereinafter “HEA”) so that you, romance reader, can willingly endure the torment you are about to experience with said characters.”
A hero who brandishes his well-developed sense of humor makes me swoon more often than the one with bulging biceps. Any hero worth a swoon, in fact, knows that humor is disarming.
