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Today, we're turning our kink goggles (a term I just made up) to the free use kink. Which, like seemingly every other kink out there, is darn easy to explain.
What is the free use romance kink?
The free use romance kink is all about free use of a love interest's body. Sometimes, free use is agreed upon, and the character giving up their body verbally agrees to allow their partner/s to use their body. Sometimes, they give parameters, for certain sex acts in specific circumstances. The sex acts might be broad, as in "all holes but the bum" or "everywhere but the feet", the circumstances might be as general as "when I feel like it." Other times, they might just say "use me when you need me," "do what you want with me," or something to that effect, which implies consensual non-consent.
Other times, free use overlaps with the dubious consent kink, and the characters start out in a sexual relationship where one is forced to give their body to the other, but over time realizes they enjoy the arrangement, and they either verbally or nonverbally transition to a consensual free use relationship.
Are there specific sub-genres where the free use romance kink pops up?
You'll most often see free use in contemporary romance, though it does also appear in mafia romance, dark romance, fantasy romance, and sci-fi romance, too. And the books are always, always very steamy, if not straight-up erotic. A wholesome/clean/closed door free use romance is an oxymoron, and not what free use romance readers are looking for. They want the spice!
Does the free use romance kink often show up in combination with other kinks?
In addition to consensual non-consent and dubious consent, you'll often see free use kink romance books incorporate somnophilia, which is sex while one partner is asleep. The cockwarming kink, where one partner puts their penis inside the other not just for sex, also sometimes shows up in free use books. And the freeuse kink is often combined with the hotwife kink (when someone gives their wife consent to be intimate with other people, for the purpose of arousing themselves and/or their wife) D/s (dominant/submissive), breeding, and pregnancy kinks.
Does the free use romance kink often show up in combination with other tropes?
SO MANY. Tropes with interesting power dynamics, like age gap, reverse harem, boss/secretary, and professor/student, are classic freeuse pairings. You'll also see the billionaire trope, forced proximity group settings like sororities and fraternities, and a heck of a lot of Christmas free use stories (this is one area of romance that's lacking in other winter holiday representation).
Now, I have to make a small disclaimer about this kink. Because it is also associated with pornography (which is fine! porn isn't bad!), if you use the words free use in your book's title, subtitle, or blurb on the old 'Zon, there's a chance your book will be adult-filtered, or put in an erotica category even if it clearly follows romance beats. It's more likely to happen if you include dubious consent, but it's not a given. If you're worried, but you've got a free use story banging at the door of your creative kingdom and you need to write it, you can always publish it to Smashwords, which doesn't prohibit stories with dubious consent AND has the added bonus of actually following through with the categories you select for your books (which isn't always the case with the 'Zon).
Free use is one of the newer romance kinks out there, and I think it's going to continue to increase in popularity in the next year, so if this blog post has piqued your interest, choose some of the above tropes and start drafting (or go straight to writing, if that's your process)!
And until next blog post, happy reading and writing!