by Violet Blue
Table of Contents
Title Page
Acknowledgements
Introduction
JUST WATCH ME, RODIN
READING TO HORST
THE UPPER HAND
SPIKE
UTTERLY NONDESCRIPT
ANOTHER ASSIGNATION WITH CHARLES BONNET
THERAPY
FULFILLING MEGAN
THE ARRANGEMENT
HEAT
CONSUELA
A SPANKING GOOD TIME
BUSTED
TEXTUAL INTERCOURSE
IN SNOW
VICARIOUS
PAID FOR THE PLEASURE
CRUISING
DEAL
FOUR ON THE FLOOR
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Copyright Page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, thanks, love, and sincere gratitude go to Frédérique Delacoste and Felice Newman for the opportunity to become a part of the fun, sexy, and provocative Best Women’s Erotica legacy. It is a deep honor and a pure pleasure, in every sense. Thank you for choosing me, encouraging me, inciting me, and nurturing me.
Hugs and smooches to Chris Fox and Diane Levinson for all the support a girl could want, and for being an excellent resource for everything an author needs, plus jokes and smiles a-plenty.
I would be nothing without friends and family. Deepest love goes to Survival Research Laboratories and the Extra Action Marching Band. Special affection and thanks go to the head of my family, Mark Pauline, and my dearest friend, Jonno d’Addario.
And to my true love Courtney: thank you for everything you give me, even when we’re apart. Everything, always.
INTRODUCTION:
BUTTERCREAM FROSTING EROTICA
This collection of the best erotica written by women, for women, is meant to be read nice and slow, like a slippery hot afternoon fuck on sweaty sheets, when you don’t want to eat… food. The stories are to be carried with you for days after you read them, like sense memories. While compiling this heady collection of hot erotica, I purchased a container of buttercream frosting body butter and wore some behind my ears throughout. Like the delicious sweetness of a warm, fluffy cupcake, a whiff of a particularly memorable story would catch up with me while waiting at a crosswalk for a light to change, or in a quiet moment between kisses. While reading the submissions, I often wished I was in each of these stories; usually I would have to fold up my iBook and flee whatever café I had been working in, too aroused to sit still.
Too much information? I thought it was a sign that I had many good stories to choose from, and San Francisco isn’t a bad place for meandering from wi-fi to wi-fi with a laptop, among Victorians and community gardens, with visceral, delicious erotica freshly coursing through my veins. It was a dream come true to become the editor of a series that had been part of my erotic upbringing and an important part of my generation’s emerging dialogues on sex. The responsibility loomed, and yet I felt just a little bit punk coming into it as a sexually articulate young woman who had a few unconventional ideas about what she’d like to see in a collection that so boldly proclaims to be the best, the hottest, for women—now. Not that all of the hundreds of stories I received in my call for submissions were sublime; I did reach a point of frustration when I read the twentieth story that started out hot and sweet, then had a breakup, or a death, or a depressed main character. I kept thinking, What the fuck? It’s a head-scratcher. Do some people think that “women’s erotica” needs to be dark or drama-filled in order to be taken seriously?
I don’t think that “literary” erotica, especially women’s erotica, needs to be qualified by sadness, anguish, pain, or suffering (unless you mean a tidy spanking). I think that’s a holdover from those who believe that because the writing is about sex, it needs to be something more, or less, to be taken seriously as literature.
Together we deliver a message to the publishers, editors, TV writers, and filmmakers who imbue the hot fuck with a moral: you’re not relevant anymore. Our erotica is alive. For girls like me, emotional pain and gender stereotyping hinders our hot fucks. We do crazy things and get off like screaming tattooed banshees doing them. We get hard-ons. We suck, we lick, we conquer, we cut and bleed, we cuddle. Our erotica is edgy, yes, but it is joyful. You can wank to it. You want it to happen to you. Its edge comes from authenticity of experience. I get the feeling that a lot of erotica editors try too hard to capture that hunger, that drive that comes from being a real woman on the street, feet on the ground, looking for sex with lips like sugar and a view of the world that’s slightly askew, like a familiar puzzle all rearranged to make a new picture. It’s a feeling that you experience and can’t fake, like a sweet scent you can almost taste, that reminder of your very first warm cupcake.
Take for instance Cate Robertson’s “Just Watch Me, Rodin,” in which a young woman makes her rent by posing nude for an older male artist who pushes her sexual boundaries, until one day she proves his pushing is no match for her appetite. Slip into the lyricism of Sydney Beier’s “Reading to Horst,” in which a female American tourist picks up a handsome stranger in a German café and discovers that erotica really is the language of lust. In “The Upper Hand,” by Saskia Walker, watch how one clever woman gets the best of the cute young male neighbors who’ve been spying on her. Rachel Kramer Bussel’s “Spike” gives us a comeuppance of a different kind, when a young goth girl shows a pushy “man’s man” who wears not just the pants, but the spike-heeled shoes.
When a woman has had enough of the sexual constraints put on her by her lovers and her own ego, she might become her most taboo fantasies (while maintaining a daytime persona that hints at nothing), like the woman in Geneva King’s “Utterly Nondescript.” Or she might literally push her heightened senses into her headiest sexual fantasies, as does the protagonist in K. L. Gillespie’s “Another Assignation with Charles Bonnet.” But if she seeks out relief in the manner of Donna George Storey’s “Therapy,” all bets are off on the outcome of any sexual revelations she might have in store for her hapless therapist.
We go to great lengths to get satisfaction, but if you’re like the girl in “Fulfilling Megan,” by Bonnie Dee, you’ll do whatever’s necessary to get off, even if it means making your boyfriend have sex with a stranger for your own gratification. Some couples wind up making strange bedfellows with…fellows, such as the sexually rapacious lesbian couple in Jean Roberta’s “The Arrangement.” Mired in conflict with a mean (but sexy) boss, any girl is bound to do as the heroine in Elizabeth Coldwell’s “Heat,” and turn the boiling point of conflict into pure fire. And should the heat become too much, try eating ice cream like the title character in “Consuela” by Alicia Wag, who seduces a young female student and gets her involved in one sticky sexual encounter after another—including one with the male lover she’s kept secret.
If you’re the kind of woman who pokes around where she shouldn’t, especially when it comes to sex, you’ll find yourself feeling sympathy spanks for the naughty girl in Eva Hore’s “A Spanking Good Time.” Or maybe you’ll enjoy the predicament in “Busted,” by Jordana Winters, where uniform fetishes and public sex collide in one intense, sweaty encounter. Magenta Brown’s “Textual Intercourse” goes beyond an adult text operator’s sexual clichés and into reality, putting a neat twist on all those “pizza delivery” fantasies. And Teresa Lamai’s “In Snow” beautifully blends searing sex and the intricacies of intimacy, culminating in a ballerina’s most memorable performance.
Get a taste of several virtual sexual thrills as seen through the eyes of a politically powerful man tired of living through the trysts of others in Lee Skinner’s clever “Vicarious.” Also tired
of wondering if the grass is greener is the woman in “Paid for the Pleasure,” by Adrie Santos, who takes a plunge into the world of anonymous ads and allows a man to pay her for his—and her—pleasure. A step further into someone else’s sexual world is where L. E. Yates’s “Cruising” goes, as a woman who gets off haunting gay male cruising spots gets more than she bargains for when she meets one of her own kind. Turning the tables once more, a dancer takes—and gets—exactly what she wants from the men at a bachelor party in an incendiary group sex scene in “Deal,” by Emerald. At the end of it all is Alison Tyler’s “Four on the Floor,” a triple-X tale of the snarky lovers who hunt for and conquer other couples.
I hope you enjoy the results of me running totally sexually amok putting together the stories in Best Women’s Erotica 2006. I filled it with erotica that turns my head around and makes me want to fuck, or at least thrust a few fingers in my panties for a little squeeze. Erotica like a stolen fingerful of frosting. Erotica for girls like me.
Violet Blue
August 2005
JUST WATCH ME, RODIN
Cate Robertson
As he has instructed, I knock and enter.
Glancing up from his cluttered, battered old desk, he impatiently motions me in.
“I wish you could be on time for once, Camille,” he says wearily. He doesn’t want to know why I’m late because he has no interest in me as a person with any kind of life beyond the walls of this sky-lit loft.
I know better now than to protest his calling me Camille. I undress in a corner while he watches me from his desk. Unlike some other men I’ve worked for, he offers no screen or private space for this part of my job, and undressing in front of him always feels provocative, like stripping. He mentioned once that watching me peel off sparks his muse.
I try not to shiver. It’s not that he can’t afford to heat the place. No, I’m sure he keeps it cold deliberately, to make my nipples stick out hard.
He points to the bench, sleek brushed steel and buttoned-down black leather, the single piece of decent furniture in this bright but spartan space. “Do you remember the position? On your back,” he says quietly.
How could I forget? Last week, after several sessions of sketching me in an exhausting variety of positions—on, over, around, and even under the bench—he’d finally settled on a conventional fetal pose because, as he said, “It makes your cunt look like a split peach.” Besides, any pose must be comfortable enough to hold for forty minutes or more without a break.
I’m just not very comfortable with it right now, hunched here with my forearms clasped lightly around my shins and him stalking around the bench, staring. He goes to the easel, tilts his head; narrows his eyes at me, then at the canvas; then returns to adjust a wrist or thumb here, spread a knee there, untuck the fullness of my left breast from my upper arm.
His fingers on my skin convey energy, like a current or a hum.
He pushes a lock of hair off my forehead and smiles down at me. “Very good, Camille.”
By the time he settles at the easel, my cunt is aching.
The canvas is larger than life, four feet high by six feet wide. He paints actively, jabbing and diving and whirling, dancing with it, teasing it, flirting with the paint and the surface. He’s all art. Me, I’m just raw material, ore. The diamond-hard point of his gaze drills into me and extracts my essence, claims it for himself, pours it out in an image.
Of me. The way my arse tilts up. He’s painting me wide open. I wonder what possessed me to take this job. This is what I get for dallying in a bar with a cute older guy who turns out to be a big-shot artist. “I need a model,” he said. “Want a job, Camille?” Fuck. In for a penny, in for a pound.
The odd thing is that when I close my eyes, I feel the touch of his paint-laden brush on my flesh like a caress. He sees and traces it all, the incurve of my cheek, the contours of my petals, the puckered vortex of my anus. I’m squeezing inside just thinking about it.
Finally, he swirls his brushes into the water: “Time for a break.”
In a kitchenette at the back, he makes coffee while I walk around, bend, stretch, jog on the spot, try to dislodge the yawning ache in my cunt. Four times I’ve been here, naked all afternoon, and he’s never offered me a blanket or robe. He brings the mugs and sits beside me on the bench, leaning back, long legs stretched out straight.
I glance at his length, feel his energy close. Clench gently, dewily. Pray that I’m not wetting the leather, or maybe that I am.
He nods at the easel. “Go on. Have a look. It’s almost done.”
No photo-realist, he’s made the splayed, upturned cleft between the creamy thighs fill the canvas with brash, wild color. At first glance, you’d hardly be able to tell that it wasn’t the gash of a pitted peach, dripping with juice. Look again, and it’s wet, throbbing, joyful, and oh so in your face. My cunt.
For once, I’m speechless. He chuckles. “You like the first in my new series?”
“Series? There’s more?”
“Oh, yes. I thought I told you. This is just the beginning. Each painting in sequence will go deeper into eroticism. Here, you simply display yourself. In the next one—” He pauses. I hardly dare to breathe. “In the next one, you’ll touch yourself. And so on.”
I try to swallow but my mouth is dry because I’m picturing myself masturbating in front of him. “How many paintings will there be?”
“That depends on you, Camille. How far you can go.” His voice is quiet, and he’s looking at me now without a trace of a smile.
Yeah, well, you just watch me, Rodin.
After I strip, he says, “No painting today, Camille. Just drawing. Get on the bed. Sit cross-legged. Face the camera.”
The bench has been pushed aside for a king-size platform bed made up with a fitted sheet and a pile of pillows in a soft rose pink. I want to question him about the video camera on the tripod, but I keep my mouth shut. He doesn’t pay me for small talk.
Bracing his sketchbook on his thigh, he sits on a high stool at the foot of the bed and puts me through several poses, his eyes glued to me, his hand moving as if by remote control, charcoal pencil scratching rough paper.
First, I must throw my head back, cup my breasts and draw out both nipples between thumbs and forefingers. He wants them very erect and red.
“Pinch. Pull harder. Harder,” he murmurs. When I wince, he seems pleased.
For the second pose, I lie back on a pile of pillows with my knees bent and spread. On command, I draw my lips apart. I rub and knead. I insert two fingers and then three. I circle and expose my clit rhythmically. He draws nonstop, in patient detail.
I gradually become engorged and very wet. When he stands, I notice the ridge in his jeans and the wet spot just below his belt.
He says, “This last pose may be difficult. If you don’t want to do it, I can get someone else.”
No damn way, Rodin. “I can do it.”
On all fours, I have to present my arse to the camera and press my chest against the bed so that my back is uncomfortably up-arched. Quite the view.
“Spread your thighs,” he says quietly. “I’m going to touch you.”
With one knee on the bed, he dips his fingers into my cunt and strokes the juices slowly up my crack behind. I swallow to keep myself quiet, hoping against hope that he’s going to fuck me now.
But—“Give me your hand.” He slips my middle finger into his mouth and sucks it. The one I had up my cunt. Can he taste me? Can he smell me? Then he pulls my arm back at an awkward angle and places the tip of my wetted finger on my anus.
“Press,” he says, showing me how. “I want your finger inside up to the last knuckle. Your other fingers should splay against your cheeks like a starfish.”
My anal ring tenses, then relaxes at my finger’s intrusion. I slide in all the way. I’m breathing so hard that he says, “Move it if you need to, but only slightly.” I rock imperceptibly and work my clit with my other hand until my ooze dribbles cool do
wn my inner thighs.
How can he hold back when he sees how much I want it?
But he does. He draws endlessly, while I squirm in misery. Then I hear him get up. Does he move away? I can’t tell. With my face in the pillows, I’m not sure where he is, but I sense his presence, and if he’s not drawing, what the hell is he doing?
I hold the pose because this is what he pays me for. My thighs are trembling.
In a few minutes, his voice slices through my tension. He sounds breathless, almost winded. “That’s enough. Enough for today.”
When I know he’s gone to make the coffee, I bring myself off hard right there, convulsing with a hand in front and my finger plunging behind. I don’t care if he hears my moans.
He brings the mugs. His erection is gone. He clicks the camera off and smiles pleasantly at me.
“You were good today, Camille.”
I hope he wanks himself blind when he watches that video.
I almost didn’t come back. When I got home and thought about how he made me masturbate in front of him and then jacked off secretly, I was hopping mad. But he sent flowers, no less. With a note on his letterhead. Inside, five twenties. Five times what he pays me per hour. He wrote: Camille, if I pushed you too far, I apologize for any embarrassment I caused you. Please accept the enclosed as extra payment for the video. I was remiss in not paying you for that up front.—R.
How could I not come back after that?
I’ve arrived on time this week. When I hold up my hair behind so he can buckle the velvet choker around my throat, I feel his breath. I swear he caresses the nape of my neck, but maybe I just want it to be a caress. His nails strike sparks off my skin.
He’s produced two paintings from the video session, for which I am to pose briefly for final detailing. So I’m here on his bed, reclining into pillows with my clit caught between my right fore- and middle fingers, and my left thumb and forefinger “offering”—that’s how he describes it—my right nipple.
