Intensity is the name of the game in this erotic collection of first-rate fiction centered on love and lust.
Women in Lust: Erotic Stories
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About the Author
Rachel Kramer Bussel is Senior Editor at Penthouse Variations, reads at packed venues, writes a featured column in SexIs, and formerly wrote the "Lusty Lady" sex column for The Village Voice. She has edited the Best Sex Writing series since 2008. A prolific erotica editor, her titles include Spanked, He's on Top, Yes, Ma'am, Crossdressing, and Bottoms Up. Visit her at www.rachelkramerbussel.com.
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Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
By Jean Roberta
Format:Paperback
This anthology of twenty erotic stories has an intimate tone, since each story is told by a female narrator. The authors are all women (or they fake it well), and most are popular and well-known in the field.
Most of the pairings in these stories are heterosexual, but otherwise, a spectrum of scenarios is presented, from complicated triangles to initiation stories to black-leather-and-steel BDSM scenes to cougar stories of middle-aged women getting their second wind with younger men. Several of these stories could be classified as "travel erotica," since the heroines discover new sides of themselves while visiting exotic locations.
This collection is not advertised as "true stories," but the first-person narrators give it an aura of authenticity. None of these stories seems strictly factual, but they all seem to express sincere lust, as the title suggests. The rising sexual tension in all the characters seems spontaneous, genuine and revelatory. "I never did this before" is one of the phrases that gets repeated like a mantra in several stories.
These stories are all competently written, well-paced and engaging. Finding favourites is hard to do, since they're all good. However, several are noteworthy for their playfulness and creativity.
In "The Hard Way" by Justine Elyot, a female solicitor in a British police station acts out her fantasy with a detective sergeant whose job is to interview suspects. She asks him to "interview" her and he is glad to oblige:
'His sorrowful smile looks so genuine. It always does. He always looks as if the felon's fall from grace is breaking his heart.
I jut out a lower lip. "I didn't do it, officer."
He takes my chin in a hand, leans down to kiss the lie from my lips.
"Yes, you did," he says. "I'm offering you a choice. We can do this the easy way or the hard way."
The frisson that sizzles from my throat to my groin is strong, very strong. I am wetter than wet; I want to moan with need, to throw back my neck and invite him to plunge down and take me.
I push back my shoulders, lift my chin, meet his eyes.
"Make it hard," I tell him.
He smiles, his eyes firing, his ego challenged.'
The detective proceeds to accuse the narrator of "stiff nipples" and various other signs of guilt, then he "punishes" her while pretending to do this in a courtroom full of gawking witnesses.
Several of the stories deal with disguises and guessing games. In "Guess" by Charlotte Stein, a blindfolded woman must guess what her boyfriend is touching her with and what he is doing; if she guesses correctly, he has to wear the blindfold. In "Strapped" by K.D. Grace, a woman with a gay-male friend ventures into a gay bar, disguised as a young man, and picks up another novice, a man who is bi-curious. This pickup segues into a threesome in which everyone is satisfied.
Several of the stories have unpredictable conclusions. In "Unbidden" by Brandy Fox, a married woman who has hit her sexual stride at age forty is approached by a married male friend at a party. She is tempted, but she resists him so that she can tell her husband about the encounter, and he responds with delight. "Rain" by Olivia Archer is a story about a married woman who finds that her best friend's boyfriend, Rain, is her soulmate, although her best friend ultimately grows tired of him. Will the narrator give up her current life to follow Rain to Las Vegas? The reader doesn't know until the last paragraph.
"Cherry Blossom" by Kayar Silkenvoice is one of the few lesbian stories in the collection, and any reader looking for a woman-on-woman scene will not be disappointed. This is not a male fantasy about two women who perform with each other before enabling him to reach nirvana. This is a detailed fantasy about a Japanese masseuse who is very familiar with female bodies.
Other contributors include the editor herself, Jacqueline Applebee, Del Carmen, Elizabeth Coldwell, Portia da Costa, Jen Cross, Shanna Germain, Lucy Hughes, Clancy Nacht, Aimee Pearl, Donna George Storey, and Amelia Thornton. Altogether, this is an outstanding anthology.
- Jean Roberta (writer and reviewer)
Most of the pairings in these stories are heterosexual, but otherwise, a spectrum of scenarios is presented, from complicated triangles to initiation stories to black-leather-and-steel BDSM scenes to cougar stories of middle-aged women getting their second wind with younger men. Several of these stories could be classified as "travel erotica," since the heroines discover new sides of themselves while visiting exotic locations.
This collection is not advertised as "true stories," but the first-person narrators give it an aura of authenticity. None of these stories seems strictly factual, but they all seem to express sincere lust, as the title suggests. The rising sexual tension in all the characters seems spontaneous, genuine and revelatory. "I never did this before" is one of the phrases that gets repeated like a mantra in several stories.
These stories are all competently written, well-paced and engaging. Finding favourites is hard to do, since they're all good. However, several are noteworthy for their playfulness and creativity.
In "The Hard Way" by Justine Elyot, a female solicitor in a British police station acts out her fantasy with a detective sergeant whose job is to interview suspects. She asks him to "interview" her and he is glad to oblige:
'His sorrowful smile looks so genuine. It always does. He always looks as if the felon's fall from grace is breaking his heart.
I jut out a lower lip. "I didn't do it, officer."
He takes my chin in a hand, leans down to kiss the lie from my lips.
"Yes, you did," he says. "I'm offering you a choice. We can do this the easy way or the hard way."
The frisson that sizzles from my throat to my groin is strong, very strong. I am wetter than wet; I want to moan with need, to throw back my neck and invite him to plunge down and take me.
I push back my shoulders, lift my chin, meet his eyes.
"Make it hard," I tell him.
He smiles, his eyes firing, his ego challenged.'
The detective proceeds to accuse the narrator of "stiff nipples" and various other signs of guilt, then he "punishes" her while pretending to do this in a courtroom full of gawking witnesses.
Several of the stories deal with disguises and guessing games. In "Guess" by Charlotte Stein, a blindfolded woman must guess what her boyfriend is touching her with and what he is doing; if she guesses correctly, he has to wear the blindfold. In "Strapped" by K.D. Grace, a woman with a gay-male friend ventures into a gay bar, disguised as a young man, and picks up another novice, a man who is bi-curious. This pickup segues into a threesome in which everyone is satisfied.
Several of the stories have unpredictable conclusions. In "Unbidden" by Brandy Fox, a married woman who has hit her sexual stride at age forty is approached by a married male friend at a party. She is tempted, but she resists him so that she can tell her husband about the encounter, and he responds with delight. "Rain" by Olivia Archer is a story about a married woman who finds that her best friend's boyfriend, Rain, is her soulmate, although her best friend ultimately grows tired of him. Will the narrator give up her current life to follow Rain to Las Vegas? The reader doesn't know until the last paragraph.
"Cherry Blossom" by Kayar Silkenvoice is one of the few lesbian stories in the collection, and any reader looking for a woman-on-woman scene will not be disappointed. This is not a male fantasy about two women who perform with each other before enabling him to reach nirvana. This is a detailed fantasy about a Japanese masseuse who is very familiar with female bodies.
Other contributors include the editor herself, Jacqueline Applebee, Del Carmen, Elizabeth Coldwell, Portia da Costa, Jen Cross, Shanna Germain, Lucy Hughes, Clancy Nacht, Aimee Pearl, Donna George Storey, and Amelia Thornton. Altogether, this is an outstanding anthology.
- Jean Roberta (writer and reviewer)
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.2 out of 5 stars
27 reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
We Like Lust
July 3 2012
By Extinct Flightless Arts Collective
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
There are some very funny moments in this collection of 20 stories; it's not just fodder for dithering, though of course it is that. There are quirky insights into varied womanly perspectives -- how they view male body parts (including the oft-underappreciated male rear); how they view their own bodies; how they experience desire and relationships and orgasms.
RKB writes in her introduction, "we embrace our lusts even when they are maddening, even when they make us do things we might otherwise consider reckless." There is recklessness in this book -- encounters with strangers and with duct-tape and with nettles (brrr) -- though there are also prophylactics and conversations and solicitations of consent. There are "zipless" encounters as per Erica Jong, and hilarious self-aware interior monologues akin to Jong's own prose.
It's hard to *review* erotica; I didn't love every story, and some of that was due to the It's Not You, It's Me factor (Lucy Hughes' "Bite Me": it doesn't matter to Flightless what else happens once there is a naked razor blade in the unnegotiated bdsm scene; she is shielding her eyes and waiting for someone to tell her it's safe to look again. It turned out it was safe for most folks to look all along, but I had to go for a walk). There is also a knife-play story, "Beneath My Skin." Unlike "Bite Me," "Beneath My Skin" is female-submissive, as are about half the stories in the collection. Oh and it also has spanking in it, as do at least 1/4 of them. (Did we mention that RKB likes spanking?) Let's see, approx. 1.5 lesbian tales, one male masochist, one hot strap-on pegging scene, and three threesomes (all M-F-M). Several protagonists are over 40 and several of their lovers are younger men, which our aged Collective members quite liked.
There's even one story ("Unbidden" by Brandy Fox; do we think that's her real name?) that ventures wonderfully into seldom-charted territory -- this reader can remember only one other story, by Michael Chabon, that dared to do this: it describes hot, intimate, passionate sex between two people who are married -- to each other.
I don't know how anyone manages to write erotica without any terrible porny cliche phrases, but (as with the other RKB anthologies I've read), this one did its darnedest. (Apologies to "Ride a Cowboy," but I cannot read the phrase "balls deep" without thinking of Helms Deep and wondering whether they've ever done a sequel to Bored of the Rings.) At least two stories -- "Queen of Sheba" and "Ode to a Masturbator" -- had interesting enough prose that I'd recommend them even on non-prurient grounds, although the latter did take me out of the moment with lines like "She is blonde with enough curves to appear like a cursive lowercase q." It turns out that I have no idea how one is supposed to make a cursive lowercase q, and never did.
There are a few gorgeous descriptions of male bodies here (thank you, Elizabeth Coldwell's "Smoke"!), but I wanted more. Many of the men were invisible ("I hear his zipper, the rustle of fabric") or were merely their penes and hands, while female narrators lingered over descriptions of their *own* bodies. Sure, that hyperawareness stems from our society's relentless depiction of female bodies as objects of desire, decorative rather than sensory, but I had hoped to get away from that for a bit. But we all bring our brains with us, and one of the most winning aspects of this anthology for me was the moments when it does get intimate with women's squirmy gray matter. I dug the whole sequence in Jen Cross's "Queen of Sheba" about being *looked at*, the uneasy and complicated feelings of a young woman when her male lover is gazing at her naked -- first her whole body, while she resists the urge to pull up the sheets, and then:
"...He wanted inside me and sure I know that as a whole person, I didn't exactly exist anymore when he got into that wet fleshy focus, but at the same time I knew in that moment that I was being revered." (Jen Cross, "Queen of Sheba")
The whole book is fun, though I do recommend getting an actual paper copy and not trying to crash through it in one sitting just because you have a blog post to write. You'll laugh, you'll quiver, you'll turn down page corners.
RKB writes in her introduction, "we embrace our lusts even when they are maddening, even when they make us do things we might otherwise consider reckless." There is recklessness in this book -- encounters with strangers and with duct-tape and with nettles (brrr) -- though there are also prophylactics and conversations and solicitations of consent. There are "zipless" encounters as per Erica Jong, and hilarious self-aware interior monologues akin to Jong's own prose.
It's hard to *review* erotica; I didn't love every story, and some of that was due to the It's Not You, It's Me factor (Lucy Hughes' "Bite Me": it doesn't matter to Flightless what else happens once there is a naked razor blade in the unnegotiated bdsm scene; she is shielding her eyes and waiting for someone to tell her it's safe to look again. It turned out it was safe for most folks to look all along, but I had to go for a walk). There is also a knife-play story, "Beneath My Skin." Unlike "Bite Me," "Beneath My Skin" is female-submissive, as are about half the stories in the collection. Oh and it also has spanking in it, as do at least 1/4 of them. (Did we mention that RKB likes spanking?) Let's see, approx. 1.5 lesbian tales, one male masochist, one hot strap-on pegging scene, and three threesomes (all M-F-M). Several protagonists are over 40 and several of their lovers are younger men, which our aged Collective members quite liked.
There's even one story ("Unbidden" by Brandy Fox; do we think that's her real name?) that ventures wonderfully into seldom-charted territory -- this reader can remember only one other story, by Michael Chabon, that dared to do this: it describes hot, intimate, passionate sex between two people who are married -- to each other.
I don't know how anyone manages to write erotica without any terrible porny cliche phrases, but (as with the other RKB anthologies I've read), this one did its darnedest. (Apologies to "Ride a Cowboy," but I cannot read the phrase "balls deep" without thinking of Helms Deep and wondering whether they've ever done a sequel to Bored of the Rings.) At least two stories -- "Queen of Sheba" and "Ode to a Masturbator" -- had interesting enough prose that I'd recommend them even on non-prurient grounds, although the latter did take me out of the moment with lines like "She is blonde with enough curves to appear like a cursive lowercase q." It turns out that I have no idea how one is supposed to make a cursive lowercase q, and never did.
There are a few gorgeous descriptions of male bodies here (thank you, Elizabeth Coldwell's "Smoke"!), but I wanted more. Many of the men were invisible ("I hear his zipper, the rustle of fabric") or were merely their penes and hands, while female narrators lingered over descriptions of their *own* bodies. Sure, that hyperawareness stems from our society's relentless depiction of female bodies as objects of desire, decorative rather than sensory, but I had hoped to get away from that for a bit. But we all bring our brains with us, and one of the most winning aspects of this anthology for me was the moments when it does get intimate with women's squirmy gray matter. I dug the whole sequence in Jen Cross's "Queen of Sheba" about being *looked at*, the uneasy and complicated feelings of a young woman when her male lover is gazing at her naked -- first her whole body, while she resists the urge to pull up the sheets, and then:
"...He wanted inside me and sure I know that as a whole person, I didn't exactly exist anymore when he got into that wet fleshy focus, but at the same time I knew in that moment that I was being revered." (Jen Cross, "Queen of Sheba")
The whole book is fun, though I do recommend getting an actual paper copy and not trying to crash through it in one sitting just because you have a blog post to write. You'll laugh, you'll quiver, you'll turn down page corners.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A broad look at Lust from an expert in erotic story anthologies
Nov 3 2011
By Jvstin
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
What is Lust?
Lust is one of the Deadly Sins.
Lust is one of the precepts that Buddhist practices abjures.
Lust is an intense longing, not necessarily sexual, but often categorized as such.
Lust is one of the most powerful of the emotions. Women in Lust is an anthology of erotic stories edited by Erotica anthology impresario Rachel Kramer Bussel exploring the idea, consequences, motivations and geography of lust, specifically from a woman's point of view.
Lust makes people do dangerous, reckless, even trangressive things.
Women in Lust is an anthology that embodies those principles in 20 stories, many of them veterans of Bussel's anthologies before. Bussel herself has a tasty story, anthologist's privilege, you bet, in "Hot for teacher". No laws are broken in this story, but it does play with that very classic trope and plays with it well.
Speaking of tropes and themes, while the overarching theme of lust might not give you a clue as to what truly is in store, I discovered a variety of scenarios, kinks, motifs and interpretations of the theme. The stories range from a pretend interrogation ("The Hard Way" to a dominance and submission themed threesome ("Her, Him and Them") , There is even, much to my surprise, a knifeplay story, "Beneath my skin".
What was the strongest story for me, you might ask? Besides Hot for Teacher, which pushed my buttons in all the right ways? Probably the "anchor story", Donna George Storey's "Comfort food". Yes, the story involves food, but nothing as simple or straightforward as using food in kinky ways.
The thing that detracts from the anthology, and it's a strength nearly as much as a weakness, is that with such a broad theme and such a variety of participants, the anthology is extremely broad and shallow in terms of the types of stories here. Although Bussel has curated anthologies like this before, in this case it seems especially spread out. This means that while your kink is probably guaranteed to be here in some form or another, it also means that the lack of overlap in that respect of the stories in the book might make you think the book has less value than it truly does. I think the stories could have been a little tighter together.
Women in Lust is a well written anthology, don't get me wrong. I don't think it is quite the best collection Bussel has put together, but I've never been disappointed in one of her anthologies, and Women in Lust is no exception.
Lust is one of the Deadly Sins.
Lust is one of the precepts that Buddhist practices abjures.
Lust is an intense longing, not necessarily sexual, but often categorized as such.
Lust is one of the most powerful of the emotions. Women in Lust is an anthology of erotic stories edited by Erotica anthology impresario Rachel Kramer Bussel exploring the idea, consequences, motivations and geography of lust, specifically from a woman's point of view.
Lust makes people do dangerous, reckless, even trangressive things.
Women in Lust is an anthology that embodies those principles in 20 stories, many of them veterans of Bussel's anthologies before. Bussel herself has a tasty story, anthologist's privilege, you bet, in "Hot for teacher". No laws are broken in this story, but it does play with that very classic trope and plays with it well.
Speaking of tropes and themes, while the overarching theme of lust might not give you a clue as to what truly is in store, I discovered a variety of scenarios, kinks, motifs and interpretations of the theme. The stories range from a pretend interrogation ("The Hard Way" to a dominance and submission themed threesome ("Her, Him and Them") , There is even, much to my surprise, a knifeplay story, "Beneath my skin".
What was the strongest story for me, you might ask? Besides Hot for Teacher, which pushed my buttons in all the right ways? Probably the "anchor story", Donna George Storey's "Comfort food". Yes, the story involves food, but nothing as simple or straightforward as using food in kinky ways.
The thing that detracts from the anthology, and it's a strength nearly as much as a weakness, is that with such a broad theme and such a variety of participants, the anthology is extremely broad and shallow in terms of the types of stories here. Although Bussel has curated anthologies like this before, in this case it seems especially spread out. This means that while your kink is probably guaranteed to be here in some form or another, it also means that the lack of overlap in that respect of the stories in the book might make you think the book has less value than it truly does. I think the stories could have been a little tighter together.
Women in Lust is a well written anthology, don't get me wrong. I don't think it is quite the best collection Bussel has put together, but I've never been disappointed in one of her anthologies, and Women in Lust is no exception.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Women Freed to Seek Bliss
Jan 22 2012
By Erin O'Riordan
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
I don't love every single story in this collection, but there are a few VERY good ones. The opener, by Portia Da Costa, gives us Terrence, one of those yummy fictional boyfriends I like to imagine myself with. "Her, Him and Them" by Aimee Pearl is wonderful because it's pure erotica, all want and sensation. "Smoke" by Elizabeth Coldwell is another nice entry - I don't know why Dutch people are so sexy, but they certainly are (even if you're not a big fan of their cigarettes).
Editor Rachel Kramer Bussel contributes "Hot for Teacher," in which she deftly appropriates what was once a male fantasy for a self-confident 40-something woman. In fact, many of the stories in this anthology feature women in their forties, women who know exactly what they want and how to get it. I'm in my 30s, and I found this delightful. Self-confidence is incredibly sexy.
Another story that subverts the traditionally male fantasy is "Cherry Blossom" by Kayar Silkenvoice, which explores the intercultural (American-Japanese) fantasy and an all-woman version of the happy ending massage.
The closer is "Comfort Food" by Donna George Storey, which can only be described as pure and utter deliciousness.
It's wonderful to read about women in lust - women who are bold, free, shameless (in a good way), women who know how to reach satisfaction. It's nice to read a book full of heroines unburdened by guilt, with very few obstacles between them and their fondest desires.
Editor Rachel Kramer Bussel contributes "Hot for Teacher," in which she deftly appropriates what was once a male fantasy for a self-confident 40-something woman. In fact, many of the stories in this anthology feature women in their forties, women who know exactly what they want and how to get it. I'm in my 30s, and I found this delightful. Self-confidence is incredibly sexy.
Another story that subverts the traditionally male fantasy is "Cherry Blossom" by Kayar Silkenvoice, which explores the intercultural (American-Japanese) fantasy and an all-woman version of the happy ending massage.
The closer is "Comfort Food" by Donna George Storey, which can only be described as pure and utter deliciousness.
It's wonderful to read about women in lust - women who are bold, free, shameless (in a good way), women who know how to reach satisfaction. It's nice to read a book full of heroines unburdened by guilt, with very few obstacles between them and their fondest desires.
›
Go to Amazon.com to see all 27 reviews
4.2 out of 5 stars
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