Lilith

By Lisabet Sarai

He’s searching for God. She’s just looking for a fuck. But that’s not quite right. She knows, somehow, that you don’t have to seek God. God’s already there, inside. You just need to figure out how to open yourself and let divinity out.

For her, sex is the way, the consummate opening. When she’s writhing in a lover’s arms, the barriers crumble. For a few glorious moments, she can experience first hand the communion she normally has to take on faith. The bliss and the certainty are as brief and fragile as they are transcendent, She’s left with mere memories that fade the more she tries to clutch at them—scraps of joy, glimmers of magic. She’s learned over the years to let them go, the same way she releases her lovers when it’s time for them to move on. There are always new bodies, new hearts—new truths.

He doesn’t understand, thinks she’s been put there to tempt him him from his path of purity and righteousness. He’s not pure, though. He knows very well he’s not. If he were, he wouldn’t want her so badly.

She loves his youth, his shyness, his awkward innocence, his cleverness with words and with his hands. His intuition astounds her; the depth of his feelings humble her. When they meet for coffee and intricate conversations, she aches to touch him, but he’s armored in self-denial. The most casual brush of her hand makes him flinch away.

A veteran of many couplings, she can read his desire like the books he cherishes. It’s in his darting eyes, his flushed cheeks, the sweat she can smell, even across the cafe table. It’s more than lust. It’s like a prayer.

He stares into his coffee cup to escape her bold stare, even as he speaks of Japanese folk tales or dissects King Lear. In the fragrant and bitter dregs he reads his fate—an instant of forbidden indulgence then a long, hard fall. He vows to be strong, but her magnetism draws his traitor body. His stubborn cock is a pillar of iron between his tensed thighs.

Iron, and salt, the destiny of sinners.

Every Monday they come together to pace out the same steps in this dance of frustration. What can she do? Perfume and decolletage don’t dent his desperate resolve. If only she dared make a first move—but she knows terror and need will send him skittering away. She cares too much to cause him that distress.

She dreams of him, imagines the magic they’d create in connecting. He might be the one to finally set her free. No virgin, still she succumbs to the seductive promise of a soul mate. And if that promise fails, the mystery of opening remains, illusion vanishing like fog in the white-hot flare of pleasure, incandescent truth shining forth for a few seconds before the curtain falls. That’s what he craves, too, or so she believes.

But how to reach him? She ponders the conundrum as she twists and tosses on ocean-scented sheets, her fingers an unsatisfactory substitute for his maleness. His aspirations to holiness make her feel like a whore, but that doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except her need to wrap her legs around his waist and pull him inside her.

Finally, she writes him a story.

Reconnecting

by Jean Roberta

“Naughty” suggests childish misbehaviour. (The word was often used in the reality-TV series, Nanny 911, in which trained British nannies helped rescue American parents who felt their children were out of control. This program aired on Fox TV, 2004-2009.)

The appeal of “naughtiness” in sex scenes, IMO, is that a naughty adult is redeemable. The word suggests childishness or a temporary lapse in responsibility or consideration for others, but not a serious character flaw. A “naughty” person who confesses and accepts punishment is assumed to have been “corrected,” and is therefore as lovable as s/he was before offending someone else.



(Here is the cover of Spank, an anthology in which I have a story.)

In my most recent story (“A Garden in Winter,” still under an editor’s consideration), Lady Elinor rules the castle since her husband, Sir Lionel, left with a small band of warriors to join the Crusades. Having read too many romances, the lady assumed her lord would be absolutely faithful to her, wherever he went, no matter how long he stayed there. Before he departed, he promised to keep his troth. He wasn’t considering his physical needs, or the temptations to be found in the lands of the Saracens.

A local wizard, Sir Theobald, has spirited Sir Lionel back to his own castle, at Lady Elinor’s behest, within a magic circle.

Sir Theobald and his (ahem) dear friend Robin Goodthigh have sought sanctuary after their castle was attacked, and Sir Theobald has not been able to summon enough power to banish the invaders. The wizard’s plan is to raise collective power by means of sex magic. For that purpose, he has asked Margaret, Lady Elinor’s (ahem) maid, to bring two more people into the circle to make a balanced group of six: three men and three women. All are skyclad (naked).

Lady Elinor was delighted to see her husband within the circle, as dirty and bewildered as he was, but she was aghast when he seemed to think she was some available wench that he met on his travels. In this scene, the wizard helps her get even.

Margaret explains:

In a moment, I thought, we will all descend to our hands and knees like four-legged beasts, and reconfigure the circle by entering each other’s mouths, cunts, and back passages with fingers, cocks and whatever else would serve (half-melted candles?). The image in my mind aroused me so much that I could have reached a paroxysm without touching myself at all, but in the spirit of mutual consideration, I refrained. My cunt felt very wet.

“My lord, you have acted unspeakably with women who do not deserve to be spoken of. Is this not true?” The lady wiped her eyes, and wiped her wet fingers on her hips.

“It is, my lady,” groaned Sir Lionel. He reached for her, but she stepped away from him. He scratched his beard, and looked deeply ashamed of his bedraggled state. “My love for you never changes,” he claimed, “but as a man, I have a lower nature which demands its due when I am in lawless places. My dearest, you cannot fathom my depravity, but you could save me from it. You may use me as you will.”

Stephen and Joan stared at our lord, who seemed so eager to abase himself.

“Lady,” said Sir Theobald, “he speaks truly.” Our lady still looked offended, but a gleam of joy appeared in her eyes.

“Father Pureblood,” suggested Stephen, “recommends whippings for adulterers.” He twitched with merriment.

“But who among us ought to lay on the stripes?” asked Robin.

“The one who is willing,” replied Sir Theobald.

“The one who was betrayed,” said Lady Elinor.

Sir Theobald pointed with his index finger to a heap of clothing, outside the salt circle, and a length of leather arose from his robe and floated through the air until he grasped it. “Anything may become an instrument of correction,” said the wizard. He held the strip of leather in both hands, stretched and twisted it. One end became a plaited handle, while the other split into half a dozen tails to form a flogger.

Sir Lionel knelt at his lady’s small white feet, bent his head and kissed her toes. “I so wished to be your hero, my dearest love,” he told her, “but I have disappointed you, and I am heartily sorry.”

“My lady, will you accept a gift?” asked the wizard. He sent the new flogger drifting through the air to her. When it nudged her hand like a cat that wants to be stroked, she grasped the handle.

“You are a rutting hog in the form of a man,” sneered Lady Elinor, and for a moment it seemed as if she were addressing all three men among us, including young Stephen, who clearly compensated for his physical innocence with fantasies and self-love. Sir Lionel remained in a crouch, his back fully exposed.

The expression on our lady’s face was truly frightening. She drew back her arm, and brought down the lashes on her lord’s buttocks. His skin was stretched so taut that all his bones were visible, and I was afraid she would leave her mark on him for life. Fortunately, Sir Wizard hadn’t armed her with a deadly weapon.

The lady struck again, closer to Sir Lionel’s backbone and ribs. Red marks appeared on his skin, and he groaned softly.

“My trust in you is gone! Do you understand?” screamed the lady, bringing the lashes down again and again. Her question didn’t seem to need an answer.

On the sixth stroke, Robin emitted the yawp of a dragon who has been unexpectedly awakened. [Note: Sir Theobald has been giving Robin a hand job.] I saw that his cock had gushed liquid like a fountain. His thighs and the floor beneath him were drenched with the slippery essence of life. “Beg pardon, Sir,” he muttered to Sir Theobald.

Our wiseman could not keep from smiling, and I was so amused that a loud laugh burst from me before I could stop it. “What a sorry lot is here,” remarked Theobald, glancing at each of us in turn. “Perhaps a good whipping all round is needed.”
-------------------------------------

However, Lady Elinor isn’t finished. After flogging her lord, she says she wants to ravish him as though he were a maiden in a conquered village. The wizard helps her by creating a small metal dildo for her to wear, nothing too huge, and Sir Lionel (who is discovering his submissive side) finds it irresistible. After that, the wizard reminds Lady Elinor that hypocrisy is not attractive in a ruler, and he invites Margaret to show Sir Lionel how she “serves” Lady Elinor at night, when they share a bed.

Sir Lionel is so moved by watching their “games” that he dismisses Margaret and takes her place to pleasure his wife. Both the lord and the lady are satisfied, and both forgive each other fully.

Margaret feels heartbroken when she sees her lady wrapped in her husband’s arms. Margaret realizes that Lady Elinor never felt a fraction of the love for her maid that she felt for her husband.

However, a jolly woman in the circle has been waiting patiently for Margaret to notice her. Apparently, Margaret’s naughtiness was not her devotion to her mistress, but her shortsighted inability to see what was going on around her. As she finds out, all’s well that ends well.

Not Pretending to Be Naughty

by Annabeth Leong

I feel like most people won't believe me when I say I never deliberately misbehaved as a child, but it's true. I was that terrified of displeasing others. To this day, there is nothing worse to me than the I'm-Disappointed-In-You tone of voice. I have always believed I would be caught.

I was fascinated by stories about naughty children—I used to beg my mother to tell me about "times when she was bad"—but these stories were entirely fiction to me. I could not dream of misbehaving myself.

Even as a teenager, when I did manage to rebel, I often did so in contradictory and guilt-ridden ways. Once a friend and I played anagrams with a religious sign in a churchyard, altering the letters from a typically anodyne Christmas message to a lewd phrase. I laughed with my friend and kept half the letters for myself—but a week later I slipped them into an envelope, typed a letter of apology, and snuck back onto church grounds alone to slip this package under the office door.

I have read enough BDSM fiction to know where this is supposed to go. I am supposed to have found freedom in BDSM play, to have become able to enact a drama of naughtiness, disappointment, love, and acceptance that heals this lifelong fear of behaving in any way deemed less than perfect.

That's not the story for me, though. I tried those games when I started practicing BDSM as an adult and they are potent for me, as in arousing and emotional. But they are also dangerous. In the years I've been exploring these things, I've learned that there are types of injuries I can get from BDSM besides bruises and blood. It takes me weeks to put myself back together after roleplaying about naughtiness and punishment. It's absolutely edge play for me, and most of the time I can't afford to play like that.

Considering how often naughtiness enters BDSM play ("Do you need a spanking, naughty girl?"), it took me a long time to figure out how to separate it from the sensation play I really enjoy. But what I do now is focus on the sensation. I don't like to roleplay. I don't like to imagine excuses for why someone might hurt me. Sometimes, a lover asks if I need a spanking and I just say yes.

I like best to do it as if why doesn't even exist. I lean forward across the bed and this wonderful person begins to administer pain. I know this is a hard job—physically demanding, emotionally taxing, requiring skill, requiring care for me, requiring self-care, requiring wisdom. I often tell them how great they are while they beat me.

I don't like to use safe words, by which I mean I don't like to use code words. I can't remember or manage code when I go to that place, just like I can't handle roleplay. Reality seeps through. I need to stay in reality. So I talk about what I like and don't like. I talk about pain I hate and pain I love and how I sometimes want both anyway. I do not submit, I bottom—when I ask them to wait, or when I say no, I expect them to listen to me. I praise my top and my top praises me. We are being brave and bold together, and we both recognize that fact.

And I can't pretend it has anything to do with naughtiness, anything to do with punishment. It's about trust and love, and for me it has to be that way at every level or I am getting hurt in a way I don't enjoy.

(I am out of town at the moment and not really able to get on the Internet regularly, so I'm still scarce with comments and replies. I love you all, though, and look forward to catching up soon!)

Dear Special K

This is the second time I am writing you on this subject. You must be afraid of getting in touch with me back!

Among other things, (mostly bad) I’m taking this time to say that I have been enjoying your Special “K” “Protein” cereal for ten years. Or so. My wife and I found that with a little fruit and almond milk and a dash of cinnamon, it is quite a tasty and sustaining breakfast. Not many products nowadays have that kind of consistency yet.

Too bad you can’t say the same for your packaging.

Used to be, years ago, back then, that you always used to show a photo of a very pretty girl on the back (of the package. Not hers) always. Sometimes she was a blonde (my fave) but more often other-haired. And that was okay. She was usually depicted in scant ‘action’ attire such as tank tops, halters and clingy workout tights that showed off the girl’s rear end. (usually round and probably firm) That went along just fine for a few years when there was virtually nothing to complain about! Like what I said about the tastiness. Using some ordinary antiseptic, the empty boxes could last for weeks. That was a deal.  Remember that one redhead with the hairband who was looking back over her shoulder? Now that’s what I’m talking about.  She was really something. Luckily I cut one out of her! She lasted until a few years ago when it wore out. But that was back then!

And this was now!

Then you started showing just half a girl. But always from the waist up. Never the bottom half! What was with that? What are your advertising people thinking? Or was it a hint of something more sinister? Do you check out your photographers? Have your models made complaints?

The reason I’m reporting that, was, because, eventually; then; sometimes you started showing bare-chested men athletics in short shorts on the box! (I’m okay where you would also want to give the woman eaters (of your cereal) something hot to look at). But were all the lady models intimidated? Still more evidence of perverts in your advertising division? Did they scare off all those pretty girls? Do you do background checks on your sub-contractors?  I’ll bet the worst of them probably look for subs to contract for their own use.

And, now, finally, the last straw (for me at least) is that recently, from what I saw this morning, although you have upped the ante in one regard, giving us consumers two girls on the package (top half of one on the back and a cute little number down in front) they’re really tiny pictures and you have to get in real close to see anything at all. Okay, so the one on the front is crouching down tying her shoelace, and you can see where the material of her shorts hugs tight between her legs. But somehow that’s not going to be enough to make a guy want to do anything about it.

So.

Now I want to know what you are planning to do about these next several following and various important depart mental issues; I have been kind enough to point out:

Keep perverts off your staff.

Examine your human resources system for flaws in their hiring practices.

Check out every kinky sexual abuse in your entire corporate structure. (The kinkier the better.)

Finally, get better pictures. One’s with whole girls, in varying positions. (make them even larger even than when you had them before) (or maybe just a half-woman from the waist down) (for a change.) (But still make it big!) Maybe you could even make a cool promotional deal with that kinda thing. Like a “Collect All the Girls on the Cereal Boxes —The Challenge”! That could work.

You wouldn’t even have to pay me much for the idea.

This must stop!

Thank you,

Daddy X

A Milder Shade of Naughty by Suz deMello

I'm quite debauched tonight.

I made pot brownies and licked the bowl.

I drank red wine and ate Spanish cheese with walnuts.

The brownies are out of the oven, their aroma infusing the house. Irresistible. Their destiny and that of the mint chip are intertwined.

I will leave lights on. I will read a Regency romance.

Seafood Cocktail with Naughty-Sauce

Sacchi Green

Naughty for me implies a certain level of humor, a mocking of convention but not hardcore transgression. Sticking one’s tongue out is naughty; sticking one’s tongue in might be naughty or might be seriously erotic, depending on the context and the reader’s (and writer’s) taste in such matters.

All of which reminds me of a story published in Wet: More Aqua Erotica (an actual waterproof book) edited by Mary Anne Mohanraj way back in 2002, and reprinted in Alessia Brio’s biracial anthology Coming Together: at Last (v. 1) in 2010.

There’s an intriguing anecdote connected with this story, but I’ll save it to post in a comment. The story itself is far too long already. (I may even have posted some of it here before, but I’ve been looking and not finding it, so if anyone notices that it’s a repeat, let me know and I’ll replace it with something not quite as clearly naughty, but close enough.)
__________

Seafood Cocktail
Sacchi Green

     He emerged from the sea like the incarnation of some primal god, wet, powerful, gleaming like dark polished rosewood. When he spoke his voice was deep as thunder, smooth as rain.

     "Hey, Lexie, where do you think they've hidden the cameras?"

     I rolled out from under the boat's inverted hull. "Come on, Max, you think they could fake a storm like that? Even if the technology existed, they wouldn't pay for it. The beauty of reality shows is the low overhead."

     "You're probably right," he admitted, turning away to block a full frontal view, oddly shy for someone who'd signed away all rights to privacy for a chance at fame and fortune.

     I still got the benefit of his muscular butt. Droplets of seawater trickled over its curves, forming jaunty question marks. Several intriguing answers occurred to me.

     "You'd think they'd still cover all the bases," he said over his shoulder. "Including any island we might get ourselves shipwrecked on. Otherwise, why let us have a boat, even a chicken-shit one like that?"

     He might have a point there. Besides the one he was keeping out of view. "I just hope they know this sand spit exists," I said, peeling off my sodden T-shirt and shorts and spreading them next to his on the hull to dry. "You can search for cameras all you like--I'll even help after I wash this sand off. But our first priority should be figuring out how to survive until they come to get us."

     I walked into the whispering wavelets of the lagoon, feeling his eyes on me, and feeling my body move in ways subtly different from the strides I would have taken under the gaze of another woman.  A tingle spread across my ass and around to my belly and upward to my breasts; it had been a long time since a masculine presence had had that effect.

     I swam out until the water was smooth enough for me to float on my back. Images of last night's chaotic storm coiled into and out of each other, like oil on the surface of a whirlpool. The one clear memory was a sexual current intensified by fear. Max and I had huddled through the night under our meager shelter, bodies pressed so tightly together that our clothes, saturated with rain and sweat and sea water, were no barrier to the pounding of each other's heart. But Max, in spite of the arousal his wet jeans did little to conceal, had done nothing to take it any farther.

     I had a pretty good idea why. He had witnessed my girlfriend Tonya's explicitly steamy farewell at the plane and drawn the obvious conclusion. But Tonya had known perfectly well that potential sex was written between the lines of the show's contract, and she'd still pressured me to sign it.  I'd only agreed to do the "Marooned" show for my indie-producer girlfriend's sake. If I could get a bit of notoriety, she figured, she'd have a better chance of getting backers for our films.

     But last night, while the pounding rain made our shelter into an impenetrable cave, Max's arms around me and mine around him had seemed absolutely right. The lightning flashes outside had built an electric tension deep inside me until I'd been at the point of jumping him myself--when he'd started snoring.

     Men! But he'd saved my life more than once in the last few hours, maybe even a time or two more than I'd saved his. Instead of interrupting his exhausted sleep, I'd amused myself with working my hand gently, gently between jeans and skin and teasing his heavy balls and straining cock just lightly enough to make him writhe and groan in his dreams, until, ultimately, his pants were soaked with something thicker and sweeter than sea water. And all without waking up.

     I drifted onward in the lagoon, savoring a gentler tension. Unless Max had more reason for resistance than figuring me for a hard-core dyke, being marooned was going to get very interesting, very soon. I swung upright, my toes just touching the sandy bottom. I looked around and saw I'd drifted close to a tiny islet near the center of the lagoon.

     A maze of underwater rocks suggested mysterious, lurking creatures, maybe octopi. I could see, too close to pass up, clusters of what I was pretty sure were oysters. I wished I had pockets; my built-in ones winced at the thought of rough oyster shells, but I dived and grasped a large one in each hand.

     Back on the beach I loped up the slope to where Max knelt. He was piling palm fronds under a lean-to built with the boat and some pieces of driftwood.

     "Hey, Max," I called as I ran; he turned and got the maximum effect of my jiggling breasts. It wasn't wasted on him.

     "What's up?" he said, and turned quickly back. I resisted commenting on the obvious.

     "I found an oyster bed out there. Might be a little hard to get them down raw without lemon or Tabasco, but better than starving. And better than the rats they're eating back at the base." I tossed my prizes on the sand.

     "I guess," he said, clearly not really focused on eating of that kind.

     I pressed my thigh against his shoulder. "I don't suppose we'll be here long enough to starve, anyway. But there are things I'd really, really like to fit in while we're still here. Alone."

     He'd pulled his shorts back on, but not his shirt. I leaned on his broad back and nuzzled his neck. He knelt, unmoving, supporting my weight, until I began chewing lightly on his muscular shoulders. "Did you know that oysters can switch their sex?" I murmured against his rigid jaw.

     "Lexie," he said, his deep voice getting even deeper, "What do you think you're doing?"

     "If you can't tell, I must not be doing it right." I brushed my hardening nipples across his back.

     "But I thought..."

     "I know what you thought. And I know what you're thinking now. Drives you crazy, doesn't it, envisioning what women do with each other." I reached around his chest to flick his nipples; they sprang to attention. An interesting effect on hard muscle instead of soft curves.

     "If it didn't before, it does now," he muttered. I worked one hand down inside his jeans, over the bunched muscles of his buttocks and then in between; suddenly he twisted under me and ended up on his back with me astride. "Damn it, Lexie, you'd better be going somewhere with this!"

     There's something about a deep, deep masculine voice. A woman's voice can stroke like a warm, wet tongue, but Max's voice set up reverberations that seemed to liquefy my bones.

     "Trust me," I said. "I never met an erogenous zone I couldn't appreciate." I rode the huge bulge in his pants, appreciating the hell out of it. "Check me out, if you need proof." I lifted myself just enough for his hand to test my natural lube. His digital enthusiasm was touching, if a bit clumsy, but I pursued other interests, sliding backward until I had his zipper far enough open to insert two fingers, then slowly, slowly widening the gap until my whole hand curved around his hot, hard cock, still trapped by the pressure of his belt.

     His hips rose, his hands scrabbled at the belt buckle, and I caught the tip of his cock in my mouth as it jerked free.

     I savored it with just enough in-out action to keep him breathing hard without rushing things. Then I hitched my body along his until my knees clutched his hips. My own hips moved as my cunt lips slid back and forth over his swollen, eager cock. Too bad, I thought, that our sense of taste is limited to the mouths we eat with. And a taste was all I was going to get.

     "Max," I said, "you wouldn't happen to know what the Swiss Family Robinson used for condoms, would you?"

     "No, damnit," he said. "They must have cut that part from the movie to get a 'G' rating."

     "Don't worry." I played him with my hand, stroking from the root of his balls all the way up his shaft. "Just lie back and let me run this fuck."

     "You're the boss," he said, his voice rising into a gasp. I had pressed my knuckle firmly below his scrotum and was working my thumb back toward his asshole.

     "I'll bet you'd like something really kinky," I teased, "to tell your grandchildren."

     "I'll bet you have inside information," he said, not too steadily, "about what Robinson Crusoe used for sex toys!"

     "Is that a challenge?" I watched a gleaming pearl of pre-cum form at the slit in his cock. "If so, I accept."

     I yanked the belt from his shorts; he lifted his head in alarm. His expression went from apprehension to horrified awe as I leaned over to grab an oyster.

     The belt buckle was just the tool for prying open the tough shell. "No pearl in this one," I said, bringing the opened bivalve close to his erection. "Maybe you could share." I tapped his cock; it jerked. I just managed to catch his dewdrop on the oyster, while some of the liquid cupped in the shell dripped onto his balls. I bent to lick it off, then touched my tongue to the glistening shellfish.

     "Hmm, needs more sauce." I slid the oyster into my mouth and held it there, excitement balancing revulsion, while I worked Max hard, inexorably, with both hands. At the penultimate moment, when his deep moans rose in pitch and nearly flowed together, I worked my full mouth down over his cock. I barely managed to keep the slippery oyster from being rammed down my throat until Max's storm of cries rattled my bones and the hot flood of his coming burst over my tongue.

     Swallowing had never been quite like that before.

     Finally Max regained enough breath to speak. "Lexie," he said, "it's your turn..." He was trying not to look at the remaining oyster. It was a very large, very juicy oyster. I plucked it from its shell. Liquid dripped between my fingers into my lap and seeped downward to mingle with my own juices.

     I leaned back and spread my legs. The oyster was cold against my tender heat, but I kept pushing. Between its slippery coating and my own wetness it slid in easily. My cunt tried to grip the slick, yielding pressure, and the teasing subtlety of the stimulation began to drive me crazy. "No, it's your turn," I said, gasping, "so eat!"

     "Well, considering the gourmet dipping sauce..." And he ate, his willingness to learn exceeded only by the length of his truly phenomenal tongue. It was a long time before I realized that the throbbing sounds filling the air weren't all coming from me.

     "A search helicopter," Max said, and wiped his mouth.

     "Damn!" I groped for the belt buckle and rolled over until I could reach inside the prow of the boat. I started gouging the splintered wood around what seemed to be a bolt; then Max's large, dark hand took the buckle and finished the job.

     "How long have you known it was there?" he asked, when the tiny camera lay at last cupped in my hand.

     "I noticed it when I woke up," I said. "Want me to send you a copy of the tape?"

     "You'd better," he said. "Not that I'm likely to forget any of it."

     "Not as long as there are oyster bars in the world," I agreed.

     "I don't think I'll be eating any more oysters," Max shouted over the increasing noise, "unless that special sauce comes with them."

     "Sauce for the goose as well as the gander," I called, but my voice was swallowed by the roar of the rotors. The chopper was so close now we could feel the wind. I scrabbled for my clothes.

     From high above, the little crescent of sand and rock seemed to smile in the liquid embrace of the ocean. I shifted in my seat in the helicopter, new waves of tingling overlapping the residual glow between my legs.

     The camera was in my pocket. I knew where I could hide the tape later, if I had to, to get it home; I might even manage the whole miniature camera, if only briefly. I grinned to myself. Max probably thought I was thinking of him, but I was really filled with images of how Tonya would get the most out of a cuntcam.

     It was a damned shame, though, that she was allergic to seafood.
       
                 

What's Naughty To You?

Naughtiness is such a broad topic to cover. I wasn’t certain where to start with it, so I went back to basics.

I decided, as I often do, to look up the actual proper meaning of the word “naughty”, and discovered that the earliest recorded use of the word was to mean “possessing nothing”. Having “naught” to one’s name. Only later was it used in the sense of “wicked”. And the current meaning is essentially a vastly watered-down version. Disobedient or mildly rude behaviour.

As often happens, tweaking my knowledge got me thinking in circles.

The stories I write are all currently in the erotic romance genre. There’s often comedy thrown in. They are essentially rom-coms with the door left wide open. Naughty, right?

Yeah… about that…

Thirty years ago, or more, the stories I write could arguably have been downright wicked. I don’t hold back within my genre and things get quite fruity–and I mean that (rather euphemistically) in the sense of “sexually suggestive” rather than in the “relating to or associated with homosexuals” sense—just because I really haven’t written man-on-man yet.

But it’s more about where my genre sits in the scheme of things. It’s naughtier than most of the “…for Dummies” books, but considerably less so than most of the best-selling dark romances.

I’m in a few online groups, on Facebook and Forums (Fora?), where people are crafting some devilish and dark tales of erotic romance. Knife play, kidnap/rape fantasy, dubious consent, tentacles, dubious consent with tentacles (or “dubious consentacles” as I just decided to call it) and more. Even the current trend of step-incest is inherently naughtier than my own works, even when it’s a sweet romance. Because it’s taboo booty. Tabooty.

It’s a situation that is, and will always be, in constant flux. Some of it comes down to exposure (heehee). On Australian TV, up until a few years ago, the word “fuck” was verboten. Now, as long as it’s after 8.30pm (I believe) it’s a free-for-all. Does that reduce the naughtiness of the word? Or does it simply anaesthetise us to its shared position at the top of the cussing tree?

The massive impact of the Fifty Shades books has resulted in enormous numbers of BDSM books flooding the market. A lot of them are very good, and are quite true to the lifestyle as I understand it. With all that heavier and darker work out there, does it reduce the naughtiness of sweet erotic romance?

I’d argue it doesn’t. What can make my gentler stories naughty is the intensity I try to imbue them with. There’s a lot of talk about “vanilla” sex. That, in fact, encouraged me to write out an idea I’d had for several years, discussing how vanilla sex is still damn naughty when it’s done right. No tools, no implements, nothing but two people who can’t resist the urge to turn their mental attraction physical. Two people who stand utterly naked before each other. Who, physically and emotionally, "possess nothing".

This is an (unedited) excerpt, which follows on from the hero (Douglas) mentioning to the heroine (Isabel) that in his home country “vanilla” is essentially used as a synonym for “boring”.

* * * *

“Yeah, well, that’s the other thing. Back home people talk about vanilla sex, too.”

Looking over her shoulder, she quirked her mouth and frowned. “You are having sex with vanilla?”

“No, no, of course not. But people say it, meaning, y’know…basic sex. One man, one woman. No…other stuff.”

“Other stuff?” Isabel raised a single eyebrow, becoming even more irresistible. Damn her.

“Yeah, like…extra people. Or toys. Or…different kinds of…” I trailed off. I really didn’t know her well enough to reveal how much I knew in this area. Or maybe how little.

“So…” She turned back away from me and ran her hands over the vanilla vine. “Your ideas are very strange, white boy.”

“Again, it’s Douglas.”

“You think you are so advanced because you are making everything bigger, and more complicated. That plain things — simple things — are beneath you. You dull your senses to the richness in life. In my vanilla. And you cannot see how intense sex can be, even when it is just, as you say, vanilla sex.”

“I told you it’s not me. Not my ideas, not my argument.”

“The ignorance is yours, yes?”

I shrugged, hoping it looked dismissive. “Okay, that’s mine. But even so, getting right back to what started this...it’s still not the same. I mean seriously, if you had to choose between sex and your precious vanilla...?”

She whirled on me with a deep fire in her eyes. “Why do you say that? Who have you been talking to?”

“What? Just you. And your brother, and Patricio.”

Her body loosened visibly and her expression softened into one of hope. “Then...you know?”

“Know? Know what?”

“Oh!” She folded her arms and shifted her weight onto one leg, jutting her rounded hip out to the side. “No...nothing. Do not worry.”

My gaze was drawn instinctively to the curves she’d suddenly emphasized. I swallowed heavily, unsure of exactly what I was doing. How had she sucked me into this argument? I had nothing, not a single thing against Isabel’s vanilla, nor did my country or culture need me to defend it against this one irritatingly sexy woman.

More importantly, how had the argument suddenly become about sex? Domingo had painted Isabel as some kind of virgin queen, untouched and untouchable, betrothed to Patricio, head of the local chapter of the I Love Patricio club. Now she’s throwing dirty ideas and sexy hips at me? 

* * * *

Surely naughtiness is still something we each decide for ourselves. It’s a willingness to step over a border, or taste something (or someone) forbidden, or the breaking of a personal rule. In our society, there’s a perennial sense that morals are eroding and standards are lowering and noboddie kan spel n e mor.

It hurt me so hard to write that last part of that last sentence. I had to break my own unwritten writing laws. Guess how that felt?

Defining Moments

by Giselle Renarde

A couple days ago, J.P. mentioned naughty postcards. Right away, I knew what I needed to write about. I had a similar experience, as a child. Not with postcards. With bits of a torn-up Playboy fluttering around the playground.

And then I realized... hey, wait a minute... I've written about this before. Not in a blog post, though. In a story called Defining Moments, which I will excerpt here:

***
There were certain conversations that never took place in the summertime. The sun might pride herself as the great elucidator, but winter was the season of humble introspection. When outside it was bitterly cold, what else was there to do but curl up in bed together? To kiss and touch and writhe in unison, then bask in the warmth of each other’s bodies?

When snowflakes like cotton balls fell from the sky, Devra wrapped her arms and a fleecy blanket around Priti’s shoulders and kissed her hair. Sighing, Priti rolled onto her back and gazed out the window. The streetlights made the falling snow glow bright white against a backdrop of blue.

“How did you know you liked girls?” Priti asked.

Devra was somewhat amazed the topic had never come up before. “You mean when did I first know?”

“Yeah. Did you have a Eureka moment where you were like, ‘Aha! I’m a lesbian?’”

She recognized it was meant to be a joke, but Devra ruminated nonetheless. “Not exactly. I mean, yes, sort of, but I wouldn’t have used those words at the time.”

“Why not?” Priti asked without waiting for an answer. “Because you didn’t want to be pigeonholed or grouped into somebody else’s narrow definition of sexual identity?”

Devra propped up her head with the palm of her hand. “No. Because I was five.”

“Five, as in years old?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow,” Priti replied. “You started early.”

“It wasn’t a matter of starting, and at the time it didn’t mean anything to me. It’s only in looking back that my selective memory has chosen that event as significant.”

“What event?”

“Nothing big. I’m surprised I even remember,” Devra began. “When I was in kindergarten, I had this useless blob of a teacher, Mrs…oh, I don’t know…Mrs Blob.”

“Are you telling me this is a significant figure in your life and you can’t even remember her name?”

“Give me a break!” Devra said. “I was five.”

“Okay, so you had a crush on Mrs Blob...”

“God, no. No, it was Mrs Blob who made me wish I wasn’t a girl. I had this growing awareness that when I grew up, I would be a woman. Mrs Blob was a woman, and damned if I wanted to look like that when I got older.”

“That is so mean!”  Priti gave Devra a playful kiss on the arm.

“No, it created some genuine anxiety for me. I didn’t want to grow up and be a woman if that meant looking like Mrs Blob.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense. What about your mom? She wasn’t a blob, and you knew her before your kindergarten teacher.”

Devra agreed. “And I had seven skinny aunties too, but at that age I didn’t recognize that they were women; mom was mom. I mean, some people think that way their whole lives: my mom isn’t a woman, she’s just my mom.”

“Yeah, seriously. So, you were five, your mom wasn’t a woman, and your blob of a teacher freaked you out?”

“Right, and then one day I found something that completely alleviated my little panic attacks,” Devra went on. “Some perv had torn pages out of a girlie magazine and left all these pictures of naked women blowing around the playground.”

“Oh my god!” Priti gasped, clenching her fist to her chest.

“Yeah, well, I picked one up and…” For a moment, Devra was lost. “I still remember her feathered blonde hair and her skinny frame, her perky tits…”

“And you wanted to look like her?”

Again, Devra reflected. “No, that wasn’t the thought process. I saw that naked playgirl and I realized for the first time that not all women looked like Mrs Blob. It’s not that I looked at this picture and I wanted to fuck the girl—I was five; I didn’t know what sex was—but it wasn’t a feeling of aspiration either. How can I explain it? I guess it excited me that there were women like that in the world. She was an image that represented something larger, something of myself.”
***

My favourite part of that excerpt is how it's winter.

Two years ago, my girlfriend convinced me to buy an air conditioner. I did it more for her comfort than mine, but every day this week she's asked me, "Aren't you glad you bought that air conditioner?"

Yes, ma'am...

Honestly, though, I would have melted if not for the A/C. Sometimes girlfriend knows best.

Anyway, now that you've come face to face with my experience of The Naughty, you probably want more. So I'll tell you that Defining Moments (the story excerpted above) appears in a FREE ebook called 6 Erotic Shorts, which has been around for a few years. But it's FREE. And, also, it's FREE.

Here are some places you can get it. For FREE:

All Romance: http://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-6eroticshorts-761731-166.html
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/143624
BookStrand: http://www.bookstrand.com/6-erotic-shorts

The Olive Grove

(Sorry about this.  I thought the topic was personal Demons)

The log snapped in the small warm blaze.  Mario stared into it, wondered a moment idly what caused that sound to snap, and looked longer with his eyes unfocused.  Looking beyond the hearth fire.  If he looked, if he looked in the right way, if he looked long enough, and empty enough as she had taught him, might he see something?

He focused his eyes and looked away.  That was what he did not want.

On the floor at his feet was a loaf of fresh bread.  He could not remember if he had put it there.  He looked at the loaf for signs of evil or strangeness, but it seemed like a perfectly innocent loaf of bread, except he did not put bread on the floor.  He turned his eyes away to the fire, which seemed to move strangely, as though alive.

He looked at the bread.

There were now four bright yellow eyes growing from the bread.  He grabbed it up and threw it in the fire.  If not there might soon be other things growing from the bread. 

The bread didn’t burn at first, which was worrying.  He picked up an iron poker from the stones near the fire and stabbed in at the bread.

 Teeth burst the crust fastened on the iron.  He let go of the poker before the teeth could pull him in. The bread blackened, caught, burned.

She's having another one of her bad spells, he thought.

He left the chair, glancing fearfully over his shoulder for whatever might be taking form there.  Glanced at the waving shadows, turned around once to be sure, and then crossed the room of the small thatched cabin into the bedroom.

They had loved this cabin in this obscure village in the Greek hills near the sea.  His grandfather had lived here with his ancient olive trees.  He was happy to walk among the long groves of painfully gnarled and twisted trunks and leafing branches.  He loved the trees.  He sensed the trees loved him if that was possible.  The world he moved and lived in with his wife Damaris was a world he loved and the world loved him back.  That had been before.

Now even the trees could be dangerous at night.

He pushed open the bedroom door and stopped, realizing he forgotten to bring a light.  And she was in there and he could not see her.

He closed the door and stepped back out of the room, holding his breath.  He listened, looking down at his shoes.  Listened.  Finally turned.

There was now a basket of olives on the floor by the chair.  The chair was near the fire and he would need a candle.  He gave the basket a wide berth, went to a shelf and took down a long white candle; thought again, reached in and took a black candle.  Again avoiding the basket, holding the black candle out in front of him he approached the fire, glanced at it, glanced at the basket, and quickly lit the candle at the flame.  He lifted it back and hot black wax fell on his fingers and hardened as he winced.

The olives continued to be olives.  Putting his back to the wall he crossed the room again, approaching the bedroom and gently pushed open the door.  He held the candle out into the dark.

"Agapomene mou?" he said.  "How are you feeling, dear?  Have you come back to me?"

On the bed, their once busy marital bed, Damaris was sitting up, looking vacantly into space.  She was still wherever she had gone a year ago.  Where ever that was, she was still sending - things - back from that place.

He feared for himself when he was alone.  But seeing her there, searching her face for signs of her own fear, he felt a great wave of sadness for them both.  This was not something either of them had asked for.  There was no way to know what life was like for her at this moment in that place known only to her.  He hoped it was being kind to her, but how would he know?

Yet somehow it seemed safer to be near her, to feel her own warmth than to be over in the other room with whatever briefly crossed the bridge that was his wife.

He moved close, sat on the bed and she sagged towards him. "Chokmah," he whispered to her.  "Spirit of wisdom, come back to me.  Don’t leave me.  Come to me."

In the light of the candle, he saw her eyes move.  Just a jig.  But life.

He ventured a hand to her face, gently brushed her cheek with his fingers.  "Agapomene mou?  My beloved?"  Touching her was like offering a hand to sniff to the nose of a very big and dangerous dog.  You could not show fear.  But the fear was there.  And the dog always knew.

This, the shell of her had not eaten for two days or defecated or anything at all.  Yet she was aglow with life from somewhere.

He looked out into the room with its sparse furnishings.

As his head was turned, she moved and blew out the candle.  They were in the dark.

"Come with me," he said.  "We will be together that way, whatever happens to us."

He led her from the bed into the center of the main room, still lit by the flickering fire.  Her lips moved silently.  The shadows jumped.

So powerful.  Even in her fog and delirium, so powerful.  Where was she in this moment? Locked away in some interior Hell?  Or Heaven?  He turned to her -

An empty moment.

And he was standing in the doorway. 

How had he gotten there?  He couldn't remember.  He turned and she was standing behind him.  Had she bewitched him at last?  Run out of mercy and cast a spell on him?

And then the breeze from outside was on him, in his skin.  All his skin, as he was picking himself up from the grass, feeling drowsy and dazed.  He was naked. He remembered nothing of how he had gotten here.

And she was in the field where the grass had been pressed down a moment ago and she was naked also and glistening with the night dew from the grass and something else. A light of awareness in her eyes.

When the first demon appeared - it wore his face.

At first it had been an awareness on the edge of his vision, as though the air had changed and thickened.  It was tall, male with his phallus erect as a pole.  But with his face.  And that face - the fear in that face.

The future, he thought.  What horrors are in this future?  Poverty.  Age. Sickness.  I will be alone and I am not prepared for any of it.  And then there is her, Amity.  When I am old how will I protect myself?  This is the face of the future.

Kill her.

No.

Kill her now.

No.

The only way.  The only way you'll be safe.

How will I be safe?  I must be safe!

She was looking at him, and she was nude, and those breasts whom he knew so well and had not kissed in so long.  But the demon wearing the mask of his face was breathing hotly on his skin.  The future would crush him and he could not bear it. 

He looked away from the demon, looked at Damaris.  Looked at her eyes, which were strangely fearful too.  Looked down at her calm breasts where no infant had nursed.  He fell to his knees, clasped his arms around her and crushed her to himself desperately and savagely.  He buried his face between her breasts, felt their swollen and flaccid warmth against his cheeks, closed his eyes to the dark and breathed in the scent of the wet grass on her skin.

"Damaris.  No."  He crushed her tight.  Felt her arms encircle him.

There is a weapon in her hands - she'll kill you!

No.  Not my woman, no.

"Damaris," he said, "You will not hurt me.  You will not."

The next demon appeared.  She wore his daughter's face.

She had died of a fever as he, a young husband without prospects had stood and watched.  Damaris had begun to study Hermetic magic from her own intuition and from her aunt who had a name for the dark arts.  Bargains had been rumored, but the girl had died all the same.  There had been a night like this Damaris had lead him to this field, when drought had made it brown and barren as his hopes.  She had made an altar with animal offerings.  And a prayer in an unknown language.  With a skill he would not have suspected, she seduced him, brought to the earth in the barren field and as he made love to her and in the moment of his cry of release she invoked a name he couldn't hear.  The field bloomed and filled with crops.  For three years they thrived.  And then it all stopped and she went away to some place only she knew and could not return. 

The face of his daughter.  And with that face, despair.  There was no hope.  Death came to the innocent and there was no goodness and no justice.  He felt himself stagger under weight of rage.

He held tight to his wife, let himself feel her warmth and beneath that warmth, the cool vacancy and something trying to get out.

And then he knew what he had to do.  He lay on his back, gentled her and rolled him on top of himself.  "If you're going to kill me I've made it easy for you," he said.  "I'll be your lamb.  But no other, no demon will touch us.  Only ourselves."

Her breasts dangled, brushed his face.  He raised his lips and kissed them, felt his cock fill and rise.  She reached between their bellies, found him warm and stiffened, widened her legs and slipped him in with a sigh.  The air trembled.  She sat gently, pressing him deep and rocked.

She rocked and rocked, dipped down and pressed her breasts to his face, to his lips.  Rocked and rocked and her sighs grew deeper and ragged.

The third demon appeared.  He never saw it.  But he knew if he turned his head, it would be a woman.

He pulled her down hard and let himself burst in her fullness.

The air flashed.  There was a shriek in his ears that startled him, but then he knew it was her.  Her sex clenched firmly over his, hugging his cock as her belly tensed and trembled over him.  Relaxed and hovered.

He caressed her and felt the ground move under him as though it were alive.

He looked into her eyes, and she was there, fully there, startled and alert.

"Welcome home," he said.