Copyright © 2013 by Rachel Kramer Bussel.
Foreword copyright © 2013 by Laura Antoniou.
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or online reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in the United States by Cleis Press, Inc.,
2246 Sixth Street, Berkeley, California 94710.
Cover design: Scott Idleman/Blink
Cover photograph: Celesta Danger
Text design: Frank Wiedemann
First Edition.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62778-025-4
CONTENTS
Foreword: No Bondage Please, I’m Kinky • LAURA ANTONIOU
Introduction: Cruel to Be Kind, and Vice Versa
Rope Dancer • KATHLEEN TUDOR
Behind the Door • KAY JAYBEE
My Own Device • RAZIEL MOORE
The Neckcloth • ANNABEL JOSEPH
Anyway • SOMMER MARSDEN
Eel • ANNABETH LEONG
No Strings Attached • JAMES MCARTHUR
Roping the Cowboy • TERESA NOELLE ROBERTS
Meeting • L. C. SPOERING
The Snake • JACQUELINE BROCKER
Clipped • LUCY FELTHOUSE
Tart Cherry • KATHLEEN DELANEY-ADAMS
Ring of Fire • MICHELLE AUGELLO-PAGE
Belted In • ROXANNA CROSS
Pegged • EMILY BINGHAM
Tight-Rope Walker • TILLY HUNTER
An Appreciation for Beautiful Things • GISELLE RENARDE
Mind Fuck • KISSA STARLING
Wearing Purple • ELIZABETH COLDWELL
Dual Mastery • RACHEL KRAMER BUSSEL
About the Authors
About the Editor
FOREWORD: NO BONDAGE PLEASE, I’M KINKY
Here’s a secret.
It’s a big one, so please, please, don’t go telling anyone, but just between you and me and this thing you’re holding—printed pages or backlit device—if we could just keep this hush-hush...
I’m not that into bondage.
No, wait, wait, come back, don’t just turn the page in annoyance! I know what you’re thinking. “What the hell, Laura? This is a book of bondage stories and you want to tell me why it’s not hot? I already think it’s hot, that’s why I got the book!”
You think I’m insulting your taste. I get it. But really—stick with me a moment.
Bondage is the most basic building block of kinky sex, isn’t it? Ask any random (consenting adult) person on the street what kinky sex is, and they’ll conjure up images of someone tied to a bed, maybe blindfolded, while someone else waves a riding crop around or intones dire threats concerning recent naughty behavior. It’s the very definition of Kink, the B in BDSM, the edgy sex act most likely to wind up illustrating an article on spicing up your sex life.
But it’s much more than that. The sensuous feel of soft fabric as it winds along your forearm, the sturdy security of a stiff leather band buckled around an ankle, the icy rigidity of steel around your throat. These aren’t just tools, toys or tokens.
These are signifiers.
Just look at the array of constricting tales before you—from hesitant experimentation to the long-plotted capture of an erotic trophy. Sinuous rope-play contrasts with a struggle between the human body and...a really tight jacket.
No, not that kind. But my point is, the bondage isn’t just a method, it isn’t just a kink—it is a definer of power, time and space, teasing ecstasy and agony. Here you have taunting, withholding tops, dominant and sneering in their superior position of freedom. But over there is the careful artist weaving a performance of pleasure, an act of worship or service cleverly disguised as control. The privacy of a bedroom or the empty, echoing hallways of a workplace are backdrops to a theater of captivity and torment or romance with a side order of discipline.
And yet, I tell you, I am not that into it. It’s a shameful secret, really. Because it’s so basic, so vital, so important, people travel all over the world to learn the secrets of bondage, whether they look to the Western cowboy styles or the Far East for Japanese techniques. They spend hours designing and testing restraints for the most wily escape artist and the most delicate of carpal-tunnel-endangered wrists. Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat down your door? Build a better chastity device and they’ll come charging with credit cards in hand.
But you see, amid all my kinks, the supreme one for me is that of authority and obedience. So in my twisted, delightful fantasies, telling someone to hold still is all the bondage one should need. Or, as I like to joke, I use bondage just to make sure they won’t run away when I hit them. Or worse. Cue rim shot!
And yet, I was delighted to read this collection—and many, many other stories containing physical bondage. And not just because I am a person of many tastes in reading.
You see, even though you won’t find high-tech bondage equipment in my closet (no room) or a manual on how to tie some knot I can’t pronounce on my shelves, I do love—and value—one vital aspect of restraint. And that’s the freedom it entails.
Yes, freedom. The freedom to let everything go and just know there is no way to escape the dastardly plans of the villainous noble/spy/kidnapper/inquisitor/masked intruder. The freedom to stand apart from my loves and whisper from behind them, and keep them in suspense until I am good and ready. The sheer luxury of relaxing into the velvet padding or straining against the suede straps and allowing the pure emotions and drives to come out to play.
This is why so many of the stories have a fantasy flavor to them, whether acknowledged or not. Sure, some of the characters will break out of their hot bondage-fueled beatings and sex, kiss and shower and head back to mundane lives and you will read exactly that. But in others, the question hovers...was this real? Or a pure fantasy? Would someone really want that, do that? Did they? Ever? Really?
Should you?
And in between all the careful, loving partners checking in with each other, issuing safewords and kisses of reassurance, there are the harder edges that dance on precipices like coercion and humiliation, threats of abandonment or debauchery and maybe those stories sound less real, and yet...
They are made possible because of the bondage. Because...what could you do? What could anyone do, if he or she were helplessly tied up, secured to that infernal device?
That’s the freedom bondage offers. And you will find it here. Freedom to enjoy the romance of longtime lovers familiar with their drives and desires, or newfound playmates negotiating surrender and force in a dance of seduction. In privacy or with an audience, even virtual bondage gets a turn in this something-for-everyone tasting menu of all things constricting.
So, don’t pity me, because I only know two knots and one of them laces my sneakers and the other arranges my necktie. Just enjoy the delicious freedom of restraint offered in this book and indulge yourself in some vicarious pleasure, as I did.
What you do next is entirely up to you. Unless someone ties you down first.
Laura Antoniou
INTRODUCTION: CRUEL TO BE KIND, AND VICE VERSA
One of the joys of editing erotic anthologies is marveling at the diversity of the authors’ imaginations. While this is my fourth year editing the Best Bondage Erotica series, it’s always a surprise to me when I start reading stories and seeing just how many ways someone can be tied up, strung up or otherwise restrained.
What you’ll read in Best Bondage Erotica 2014 isn’t a how-to man
ual, but rather a taste of twenty hot bondage tales that don’t skimp on the sadism, masochism or sexiness of the encounters. These writers show and tell exactly what it means to wield the special power of being in charge of someone else. In “Pegged,” Emily Bingham writes, “It’s his turn to be small and defenseless for an evening. I want to be so kind to him that it becomes cruel.” Sometimes pop culture portrays kinksters and bondage fans as all cruel, without a shred of kindness. The dirty little secret is that these characters are, in fact, both; they manipulate rope, handcuffs, leather straps, a St. Andrew’s cross, a chair, and, in Raziel Moore’s “My Own Device,” a special contraption crafted just for bondage, with the ultimate aim of pleasing their partners—when they’re done having their fun, teasing them, hurting them, screwing them and generally making them writhe, squirm and indulge in the delight of helplessness.
I’m delighted to present this latest edition of Best Bondage Erotica, which I hope will delight those who know exactly what it feels like to be at someone else’s mercy (or have someone else at your mercy) as well as those who simply want to picture the joys of being bound in vivid, elaborate, beautiful, cruel and kind detail.
Rachel Kramer Bussel
New York City
ROPE DANCER
Kathleen Tudor
Emily was gorgeous, of course, but when it comes to the performing arts, gorgeous girls are a dime a dozen. It was the rope that truly drew my attention, and her beauty only ensured that the hook was well and truly set.
The circus show was a publicity ploy at my favorite local bar, and I decided to pay the fifteen dollars for a ticket to sit in on it since they were crowding out my Friday night watering hole, anyway. The clown, who also served as prop master and rigger, was amusing, mostly because his actual job was so transparent; the belly dancers were a tad on the old side and out of shape and the hula hooper was great until she accidentally sent one of her hoops flying into the crowd like a chakram.
There was no question—the real gem of the night was Emily.
By the time her finale was announced, I was tired and torn between pity and irritation at the crowd, the noise and the amateur show. Emily stepped out from the curtained-off “backstage” area, let one hand slide up the thick rope in the center of the room and threw her head back, falling still for the seconds until the music started. Then she levitated.
I know she didn’t really levitate, but that’s how it seemed. Her other hand joined the first on the rope, and then she slowly floated upward until she was hanging upside down. I was impressed, but not caught. Not until she started to wrap her body around the rope and the rope around her body.
The way she moved was like magic in the air, steady and graceful, never hurried, with a serene look of peace on her face. I forgot all of my irritation and my warm beer, and focused on the way that thick rope slid over her skin, into and out of poses that showed off her flexibility and strength. She used the rope like it was another part of her body, always highlighting the beauty and never awkward, out of place or in the way.
She glided from upside down to right side up, and I stared at the way the colored lights made her blonde curls glisten green and red and blue. When she performed a dramatic drop, falling several feet before catching herself on a clever knot, my heart jumped into my throat.
And then she would shift, twist her body, reach up for the rope, and those clever knots would fall away, the rope hanging straight and true, waiting for her next cunning wrap or daring drop. It terrified me, those knots-that-were-not-knots, the way that they could hold her plummeting body in one moment, and then fall away to nothing in the next.
When she turned upside down at the very top, hooking one leg, passing the rope behind her, and sliding slowly to the ground, it took me a long moment to realize that the fact that she was now resting flat on her back on the floor meant that the show was over.
I exploded to my feet with applause, as did most of the other patrons of the bar, and clapped even as I glared when the rest of the cast came out to share in the glory. The show had been carried by that little golden girl with the bouncing curls. I had to meet her.
Fortunately, the bar had no real stage, and although the cast had curtained off that small area in which to change, rest, and store their tools, there was no back way for her to modestly escape through. I asked Jolie, the bartender, if the girl had a regular order, then took the Long Island and a fresh beer for myself back to my table to wait.
When I finally saw her, she’d thrown on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that showed off her flat belly. She stopped to talk to someone, shifting until her back was to me, so I came up behind her and waited for the other person to move off. Then I reached around to hold the drink out in front of her, and whispered in her ear, “You carried that show.”
She jumped and turned to face me, and I held the drink up for her again. “Long Island? Jolie said you like them.”
She took it, wary, and murmured a polite thank-you, though I didn’t know whether she meant for the compliment or for the drink. I watched her eyes roam behind me, looking for her avenue of escape, and I knew I was losing her before I’d even caught her. It was time to go big.
“So, do you like all kinds of ropes, or just the kind you can hang from?”
That caught her attention. She looked startled as her eyes snapped back to me. “Pardon?”
“I was just wondering if you like the feel of ropes on your skin when you’re not the one in control.” I suddenly felt like a world-class idiot. She looked me up and down, buying herself time, I thought. I straightened, feeling foolish and wanting to gather my pride around me, but something in her eyes had changed.
“Maybe you should show me what you mean,” she said.
I laughed. “Have a drink. Decide if you even like me first. Are you from around here?”
I guided her to an empty table and she sat, waiting to make eye contact with Jolie and get a nod before she took a sip of the drink I’d brought her. I decided I liked that about her.
“Yeah, I moved here two years ago. The circus community is pretty good in this area, you know? Welcoming. Good for new performers who aren’t up to the big circus standards yet.”
“You seemed pretty damn good to me. A lot better than the rest of the troupe.”
She thanked me in a way that made it clear I’d made her uncomfortable. “I’ve been performing little gigs like this since just before I moved here, but I haven’t really been able to land anything bigger. Some people are just better at marketing themselves, I guess. You?”
“Live here? Yeah. I’ve got an apartment a couple blocks that-away.” I gestured with my beer, and she followed my hand with her eyes.
“Where you also like to play with rope?” she asked quietly.
“Well, I can’t say I’ve ever tied myself up.” I grinned. “I’m a fair hand with a knot, though.”
“Walking distance?”
“I’ll even carry your books.”
She didn’t have any books, but she did let me carry the heavy gym bag that held her rope and her costume. “I’m surprised you don’t snap in half under this weight,” I teased, but she turned to me and flexed sassily, and the muscles of her arms popped into definition, reminding me of the way she’d casually suspended, lifted and pulled her own body weight for a five-minute show. “Wow. That is insanely sexy.”
“Need some help carrying the big, heavy bag, you poor, weak little lady?” she teased back.
“Come to think of it, you could probably kick my ass handily. Fortunately for me, you seem keen on letting me tie you up and render you harmless.”
She laughed at that, and I led her up the steps to my apartment, gesturing to let her go first. I put the bag down with relief—the damn thing was actually really heavy—and casually shook out my burning shoulder before she could turn around and see.
“So what next?” she asked, turning slowly to take in my apartment.
“That depends. How much do you want to play? I could j
ust tie you up and let you go again, if you want, or I could tie you up and cut your clothes off of you.” She glared at me. “Or we could start naked and I could tie you up and have my way with you.”
“This was a remarkably stupid thing to do, wasn’t it?”
“Follow a stranger home and let her tie you up? Yeah, generally. I promise not to do anything you don’t want me to, but so would the creeps and serial killers.” I smiled gently, and got out from between her and the door. “If you want to leave, I understand. It’d be nice if I could get your number first, though.”
She looked at me, then the door, then at the door behind her that led into the bedroom. “This may surprise you,” she said, “but I’m sort of an adrenaline junkie.” She backed toward the bedroom, and my mouth went dry with desire as I followed slowly after her. She waited until she’d cleared the doorway before she hooked her fingers under the tight little baby tee and started to pull it up. “Let’s go with naked.”
She drew me like iron filings to a magnet. “I’m good with that.”
She wiggled her hips teasingly before she pulled her jeans down to stand before me in just a pair of panties and her lacy bra. I smiled encouragingly, trying not to drool, and moved past her to sit on the bed. She did one slow spin for me in her lingerie, then reached back and unhooked her bra to let it fall away. Tempting as it was, I resisted the urge to move toward her, waiting patiently as she displayed her breasts for me, touching and playing with them. My time would come...
I couldn’t do anything about the small moan that escaped me when she finally bent down to slip her panties off her slim hips, down her long legs and off. She flashed a smile at me, and then lifted one leg in front of her, grabbed her foot and straightened her leg up over her head. “Shall I strike a pose?”
“Not unless you intend to hold it for the next hour or so.” I’d never tied up someone this flexible before, and I quickly reviewed my repertoire and discarded a few bonds that were only effective because of the limits on normal human bendiness. I also had to discard the vivid mental images of what some of those poses from her show would look like while she was naked and in my bed.
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