Tying the Knot

Out now in the US is Alison Tyler’s second smutty anthology with Harlequin Spice, With This Ring, I Thee Bed. (Out in the UK very soon.) And as with AT’s Harlequin debut, Alison’s Wonderland, we have another stunning cover and a stellar line-up.

Authors taking it up the aisle in this erotic exploration of the highs and lows of married life include Janine Ashbless, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Portia Da Costa, Shanna Germain, Nikki Magennis, Sommer Marsden, Kate Pearce, Thomas S Roche, Saskia Walker and Kristina Wright.

My story, Seven Year Itch, is about a couple, Liss and Jim, celebrating seven years of marriage with a holiday in Paris. But all is not well. Theirs is a relationship in jeopardy, festering with resentments and dulled by familiarity, their once-kinky sex life now little more than a faintly embarrassing memory. However, Liss gets a renewal of energy when she narrowly escapes being hit by a bus when the two of them are out sightseeing.

The scene below takes place in their hotel room later that day. I tried to find a short, sexy excerpt to post here but the story is so full of conflict that I couldn’t find anything which worked as a stand-alone piece. So this is a longish (for me) short, getting-sexy excerpt.

Seven Year Itch

I don’t believe our failing is due merely to the ring on my finger or being shattered by parenthood (although exhaustion, admittedly, does tend to trample one’s libido). No, I believe love got in the way of us; plain, old love. Because once, when we cared less, our sex life resembled a crazed experiment with Jim eager to make me suffer and me hungering to surrender. We were gleefully abandoned, both thrilled to have found the yin to our yang. We invested in some odds and sods – cuffs, blindfolds and a rubber ball gag I’m now embarrassed to recall – but the real high was from the interplay between us, a connection so fluid and profound it was as if, in preparation for this moment in our lives, we’d been studying the shamed secrets in each other’s brains since the onset of adolescence. I felt I could show Jim everything and I did, and the compliment was returned a thousandfold.

But somewhere down the line, tenderness and affection smoothed away the rough edges of our dark delirium. The post-coital gentleness in Jim’s eyes was no longer merely post-coital. He loved me. I became more precious and therefore, to Jim, more fragile. Similarly, I lost the ability to cast him as a devilish bastard determined to have his way with me. He hurt me less often and with less intent until we were having what I can only describe as efficiently romantic sex where we frequently stroked and kissed, hoping to disguise the truth of what sex had begun to feel like: goal-oriented, mutual masturbation; happy and loving but lacking that head-spinning buzz. The arrival of the children served to bind us within the family unit, leading us to where we are now, so steeped in domesticity and familiarity that our marriage, with its sporadic fumbles under the duvet, is practically functional incest.

Seven years ago I’d said yes. Lying on that blank hotel bed in Paris, I ached to say no. I wanted to be someone’s whore, worthless and wanton, crying “No, don’t hit me,” “Stop fucking me, please,” and “I hate sucking cock, don’t make me, no”. And he would hold me down, snarling, “Whores can’t say no, it’s not their word, no such thing as no for a whore.”

A sense of abandonment flooded me as my mind span these nasty imaginings. My groin felt giddy and trifling, almost as if it were happy. Impossible, I know, but that’s how I perceived the sensation. We’d been in Paris for two days but, getting high on my desires, I felt we’d finally arrived. We were on holiday, normality suspended. I could taste freedom and it tasted precisely like that moment before the first sip of a cocktail at five in the afternoon.

“Jim,” I ventured. “Seven years ago today…”

“Christ, I know,” he muttered from behind his paper. “Young, weren’t we?”

I bit my tongue because even as I was thinking, well, what’s that meant to mean? I was agreeing with the sentiment. Marriage years feel like dog years, seven for every one (yet the kids grow so fast it’s as if they’re siphoning off our energy) and it seemed a lifetime ago we were united in joy. I knew I ought to count my blessings, be more grateful, but dissatisfaction had become my default, grumbling like a low-grade pain. Jim didn’t seem to care that the two of us simply ticked over but oh, I yearned for more. I wanted my happiness back and I knew something needed to change, either the situation or my perspective on it. The trouble was, which?

Well, I’d been grappling with perspective a while and it wasn’t damn well working. At home, I wouldn’t have dared do it but hotel rooms bring out the stranger in us all and that five o’clock cocktail was an inch from my lips. Summoning up my courage, I flung off my towel, rose from the bed and crossed to kneel naked at Jim’s feet. The curtains were open, our tall windows overlooking a narrow street whose shabby, folded shutters suggested permanent Parisian sleepiness. [...]

Jim tipped down a corner of his newspaper, eyeing me with puzzled curiosity.

“Hurt me,” I whispered.

“Liss,” he replied wearily as if being pestered by the kids.

He snapped his newspaper back. In truth, I think he was embarrassed. Well, so was I. Mortified, in fact. I knelt there, humiliated, alone, and seething with shame. I read a headline: ANGRY MPS HIT BACK. And another: SUNSHINE ADDS YEARS TO YOUR LIFE. My nipples were sharp, goosebumps prickling on my thighs, that anticipated cocktail thrown in my face and now dripping from my chin.

How can you know someone so well that rejection ceases to have meaning? Because wasn’t that it? My being turned down was on a par with Jim looking in the mirror and thinking, Hmm, hair could do with a trim, a rejection of his reflection who (what with them being so close) would fully understand. It appeared Jim and I were so enmeshed, he thought I was him; thought I was beyond being wounded by a snub.

Well, I wouldn’t stand for it. I snatched at his paper, the crash as it crumpled detonating in the silence, a bomb blast in the numbed contentment of our marriage.

“Hurt me!” I sobbed. “I nearly killed myself today. I could be dead right now. Dead! Or, oh God, maybe I am. Maybe… Hurt me! I want to know I’m alive! Fucking hurt…”

Jim stared. Perhaps he was contemplating how to hurt me but the delay of no more than two seconds infuriated me. So I knelt forward and slapped his face, another bomb. Stunned, Jim glared at me, the flush of my handprint rising in his cheek, a lick of displaced hair hanging over his freckled forehead.

For several seconds, the world was on hold. All the clocks stopped, traffic froze, birds hung in the air, poised midflight like picture-book birds, and the population of China didn’t increase. Then Jim drew breath, restarting the world with a jolt. His hand was flat and fast and he struck me hard across the face, knocking the room sideways and flinging my hair about the place. I heard someone laugh, a low, dirty, triumphant laugh, and realized it was me. The room righted itself and my cheek flamed, the buzz of disorientation percolating from my brain down to my groin.

Kiss My Ass

Hot off the keyboard is Kiss My Ass, the latest ebook from Alison Tyler, and – yup! – it’s all about anal. Kiss My Ass features six sexy stories from Jax Baynard, Sommer Marsden, Alison Tyler, Sophia Valenti and yours truly.

My story, ‘Strangers in the Bathhouse’, centres on two guys in an Istanbul hamam. Did I ever mention I like wet men? Well, this steamy piece of fiction features two of them getting it on. Metin is a cold, sneery top. Paul, my narrator, likes to sub. So it’s m/m – but really it’s just me with a dick.

I found it enjoyable and hugely interesting to write, in part because writing about male characters engaging in powerplay is very different from writing femsub, my usual. I found myself not worrying about how (or how much) to reassure readers that Hey, she’s fine, she likes it rough. My characters, as two men, start on a level playing field; they have gender equality. So I was freed of the anxiety that some readers might interpret the story as reaffirmation of women’s position in society; freed of the need to show, explicitly or implicitly, that these people are equals together, enjoying a kink where they play at being unequal. Basically, I could just get on with the fucking.

Here’s a snip:

The wing was empty, three marble basins on either side and one at the far end, their gold taps glinting in the haze of faint steam. Paul was heading for the furthest basin, not knowing what else to do, when the approach of plastic sandals made him turn. At the head of the wing, Metin emerged as if from a cloud of dry ice, a leanly muscled god of a man whose springy black chest hair was matched by a feathered line running from his navel down into his peştamal. The wrap, like the sandals, was standard hamam-issue and identical to Paul’s. At a distance of several feet, the two men faced each other. Their boners might have been hamam-issue too.

Metin hollered over his shoulder, his call met by another, then he vanished for a moment, reappearing with a plastic yellow A-board which he stood at the opening of the wing. So that’s how it works, thought Paul. That’s how you get privacy. Metin sauntered through the mist and gestured to the basin, again speaking words that went straight over Paul’s head. Metin’s meaning was clear though: he was ordering Paul to fill the basin.

He was ordering Paul.

Suddenly, the two men had a common language. Paul fixed the plug and turned the tap, blood pulsing in his groin as warm water plunged into the basin’s depths. Metin took a step closer then gripped Paul’s face in a hot, mean hand, pinching his cheeks as he glared. Words slid from his mouth, sadistic glee twisting his lips and sparkling in those petrol-green eyes. Paul didn’t understand the words but he knew what the man was saying. He was telling Paul what he was going to do with him, was telling him he was no-good scum, he was trade, filth, fucktoy, faggot and he was going to get down on that floor and suck Metin’s big, hard dick then beg to take it in his greedy rent-boy arse. Paul stared back into Metin’s eyes, his cock pulsing with the fury of lust. Metin edged closer, still snarling his obscene incantation, and Paul’s draped cock nudged his hip, and Metin’s nudged back.

Without warning, Paul found himself being forced down. He struggled, stubbed his toe on the marble, unsure of the direction Metin was pushing him. Water flowed over the lip of the basin then the rippling pool was rearing towards Paul, gold tap flashing past his eyes, and he clutched the edge of the basin as the shock hit him in the face and his world went blurred and muffled. Metin kept a firm hand on the back of Paul’s head, holding him underwater as panicked bubbles streamed from Paul’s mouth.

Available now as a PDF download: £2.15 or $3.49!

Or kink up your kindle! (Rumour has it the kindle will be launched in the UK before Christmas.)

Horny Birthday Trollop!

Happy Birthday Alison Tyler! I fully intended to write ‘Happy Birthday Trollop’ but discovered I didn’t have enough P tiles. Fool that I am, I also thought the cat might lie fetchingly alongside the letters. The cat, however, had other plans.

Wishing you a wonderful day, AT, whenever it may be! KLx

Your Essential Orgasm Kit

So anyway, I decided to put my porn in alphabetical order (not really – there was an earthquake) and discovered among the cobwebs, The Cosmopolitan Bedside Book of Orgasms. It’s a freebie from 1998 and includes a section entitled ‘Your Essential Orgasm Kit’.

So whaddya think it is? What’s number one on Cosmo’s list of orgasm essentials? Go on, guess! Try! What have you got? A pair of cuffs? Some filthy porn? A ten-inch vibe?

Nope. It’s …

an ostrich feather.

For real! An ostrich feather! This is how women climaxed ten years ago. There are eight items in the kit-list, plus an additional eight for ‘If you’re feeling particularly sexy …’ One of these additional items is ‘bright red lipstick (go glam)’.

So, yeah, it’s Cosmo, it’s mainstream, it’s a decade old. But really, if you’ve ever had an ostrich-assisted orgasm while wearing red lippy, please tell me about it. Other than that, I’ll give a prize of something hot from my top shelf to anyone who can guess two more items from Cosmo’s list of 16 – excluding a vibrator (which is no. 5 on their list! Five!) and massage oil (no. 3). I’ll even throw in the booklet. (‘You’ll come and come and come again!’)

What’s that you say? Scented candles? Nope, they forgot that. An electro stim starter pack? Umm, let me check.

In other news, I got word that a story of mine, Boot Camp, has been selected for Maxim Jakubowksi’s Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 8 (published Jan 2009). Hurrah! Boot Camp, recently described by Forum magazine as ‘wonderfully original’, first appeared in Alison Tyler’s F is for Fetish. The story’s about a woman who gets off on polishing dirty army boots. Interestingly, among my earthquake cobwebs, I also found the very first Wicked Words anthology from Black Lace which includes my story, The Western Whore. It’s about a woman being subjected to an army-boy gang rape. (It’s consensual! Don’t fret!) So, hmmm, maybe I kink for army boys. And maybe those decades can be quite small after all.

Also in the joy department, I had a short accepted for Black Lace’s forthcoming vampire anthology, Lust at First Bite. The story’s called The Funhouse is Closed Mondays and centres on Simeon and Suzanne, two characters from my Lust Bites vamp novella, The Vampire’s Heart. Simeon and Suzanne, last seen in the Arctic, are now living in a derelict ghost train on Coney Island. This will be published in about 10 million years time. OK, November 2008 in the UK.

And, because I’m not here very often, let me also tell you I sold a story to Alison Tyler for her Sex and Coffee anthology from Pretty Things Press. This is my first PTP publication so I’m super-thrilled. This is actually 10 gazillion years away from being published but that’s fine. I’m being premature today.

So go on, take a guess. We’ve got vibe, oil, lipstick, feather. What else?

I am a hungry boot slut!

Well, not actually, technically me but the narrator in Boot Camp, my story in Alison Tyler’s F is for Fetish which has just received a fabulous review on Alt.com.

Pop over to Alison’s blog to read the full review of this ‘anthology of startlingly original and hot stories’. And for a sexy excerpt from Boot Camp, check out Alison’s latest posting on Trollop Salon where I am Mouth of the Month or something like that.

Don’t you just love that picture of Becks? It’s everything an image shouldn’t be – all that crap and clutter in the background, all those confusing reflections and tilting lines. And yet, ahhhh, it is perfect. I love Becks when he’s got that suburban aesthetic going on. He looks so cheap and rough and dumb, and so very, very hot. And he is wearing filthy army boots.