I always feel guilty critiquing another's work, because the implication in doing so is that I'm just SO good at writing, I know what's best for someone else. In reality, any editor would have a field day with one paragraph of mine and a red pen.

But you asked, and it sucks that nobody else has replied, so I'll give you me honest opinions. I'll leave character development alone and just try to focus on the presentation of the story.

For one, you don't need to put quotations around "painting." The reader will understand it is a metaphor, so long as they're not stupid.

You've got some passive voice going on, which I and everyone seems to struggle with. It's the most immediate thing I think most writers can do to make their work seem less shallow. What I mean is, instead of saying "The people were walking," or "The ball was bouncing," say "The people walked" and "The ball bounced." You usually want to avoid words like were, was, is... and if you go through my stories you'll probably find me doing that a lot, too.

Watch out for using the same word twice. Such as when you say "The sun worshippers were resting... trying to soak in the last bit of sun..." You could maybe say "a few final rays," or something similar. One of my greatest issues with writing porn is that there are only so many ways you can say "thrust" and "tight." And I'd seriously give a large amount of money for five synonyms for the word "precum." This isn't to say you can't ever reuse a word, but doing so can make your writing come off stale.

You're using the construct "gave a ______" a little bit which gets repetitive.

Something like "affirmative nod" is redundant. Nods are, in their nature, affirmative. Economy of words is important in a story, and any time you can shed something unnecessary, even one word, it makes all the words around it more potent.

That's about all I can say for now. What you should do is go onto Writely with somebody, sometime, and have a live editing session. I couldn't love that program more if I wanted to, it's just so goddamn helpful!

Yah! At least its nice to see that someone is actually giving some form of critique instead of jumping right to the porn sections. And seeing as I am honestly trying to improve my ability.

I noticed even in my older and more recent works that I sit on a passive tone. Which, honestly, is just so easy to fall back on that I do it without knowing. Depending on the situation, though, I have this tendency to switch between passive and active.

I might look up Writely one of these days and give it a shot. Thanks for the insight.