LUSTY LADY: November 11: FREE cupcakes for my 35th birthday and <i>Passion</i> reading

Please join me, and if you can't, please tell your NYC friends to join me as well as my authors who are coming in from Berkeley, California and Washington, DC, to celebrate my 35th birthday with free cupcakes and a steamy, sensual reading from my brand-new anthology Passion: Erotic Romance for Women!

November 11, 7-8 pm
Passion reading and Rachel's 35th birthday celebration
Join Passion: Erotic Romance for Women editor Rachel Kramer Bussel and contributors Wickham Boyle, Emerald and Donna George Storey at Greenpoint, Brooklyn indie bookstore Word for readings, discussion, signing and free cupcakes to celebrate Rachel turning 35. Free Passion buttons will be given out to all attendees.
Word, 126 Franklin Avenue, Greenpoint, Brooklyn (G to Greenpoint Avenue)

Facebook invite - pass it on! Free cupcakes!

Table of Contents

Introduction: Getting Passionate

Big-Bed Sex by Donna George Storey
My Dark Knight Jacqueline Applebee
Dear in the Headlights Angela Caperton
The Cherry Orchard Wickham Boyle
Autumn Suite Suzanne V. Slate
Contentions Isabelle Gray
The Silver Belt Lana Fox
Five Senses Rachel Kramer Bussel
The Arc of Triumph Monica Day
Crave You Close A.M. Hartnett
Any Easy Guy to Fall On Annabeth Leong
Lingua Franca Justine Elyot
Third Time’s the Charm Charlene Teglia
Riding Wild Things Lizzy Chambers
No Risk, No Reward Saskia Walker
If Emerald
Getting It Right Teresa Noelle Roberts
The Morning Ride Delilah Devlin
The Efficiency Expert Portia Da Costa
Rekindle Kathleen Bradean

Introduction: Getting Passionate

Passion. It can mean greed, desire, affection, love or simply, emotion. You will find all of those and more in the stories contained herein. As you read these twenty stories, you too will be swept away by passion as you travel to Paris and Greece (and Beverly Hills). You’ll get stuck in an elevator, take a bubble bath and a bus ride (not to mention some subway foreplay and flirting) and explore nature in some very intimate ways. You’ll find couples, and couplings by men and women looking (whether they know it or not) to spice things up in the bedroom.

Here, couples at all stages of their relationships (including the very beginning) kindle their passion in various ways, from exes who reunite to young marrieds on a naughty nature walk to those who mix business with pleasure. When Krista in “Crave You Close” by A. M. Hartnett tells Nicky, “I’m so used to having to hold my breath,” she is saying so much about their usual erotic m.o. At night, outdoors, she is free to make as much noise as she wants to.

These couples explore getting kinky, precisely because they feel intimately connected to each other. They go places, literally and figuratively, they wouldn’t dare without the other. They revisit old flames and nurture new ones; indeed, sometimes the men these women crave, such as Maya does in “The Silver Belt,” are not their husbands at all, but someone else, someone special, someone who is seeing them in an entirely new light. Those stories mingle with other tales of longtime lovers ignited to fiery scenes within these pages.

Passion can mean so many things, from the sexual submission of a caning to exploring new bodily territory--sexual experimentation, trying something you’ve fantasized about. It can mean makeup sex or role-play, a change of scenery or simply a change of thinking. It can mean looking at a lover, a husband, a boyfriend or a new boy toy with fresh eyes, sizing him up, baring yourself, daring him to come and get you.

Just as in real life, there are lovers’ quarrels within these pages, slights real and imagined, as couples find tender, erotic ways to heal their hurts and become even closer. There is an element of real, raw emotion in the way love and desire can as easily tear us down as build us up, that makes us appreciate each expression of romance all the more, because we know how truly special it is. I’m grateful these authors skip from playful romps to relationship-saving sex to tender memories to scorching sex scenes, together creating a book that will likely make you blush and make your heart swell.

As the narrator in one of my favorite pieces, “My Dark Knight” by Jacqueline Applebee, says, “I’m a not-so-hopeless romantic. I believe that chivalry still exists, I hope to find quiet nobility in the most random of places, and I believe that people who love each other can live happily ever after.” She finds a dark, very sexy knight who she rescues, seduces, and then… But you’ll have to read the story to find out.

Rachel Kramer Bussel
New York City

Passion excerpts:

"The Cherry Orchard" by Wickham Boyle

We drink champagne from singing crystal glasses and each clink proclaims our love and gratitude for sleeping babies, long friendships, big dicks and sucking cunts. We gorge on food whose slippery countenance mirrors my own slip and slide. The salmon is like slices of cool sex, squeezed between our fingers and popped into each other’s gullets. The butter, sweet and creamy, tops bread that follows the orange fish down to our molten centers. More bubbles, more kisses, and the room revolves with candlelight and sweet confusion. Nothing is cleared and the whipped cream appears with strawberries quick on its heels. The cream is heaped in peaks in a wide-mouthed bowl and we suck and dip from finger to mouth. Yes, a cliché meal, but one fit for a final night in a treasured house. I am now so ready for my gob to be crammed with the solid force of a dick that will not melt and disappear.

I kiss my fine red-haired man, using the kissing to push him into a chair. I trail down his face and chest and pause to nibble his nipples, sucking them into tiny points, pencils sharpened finely by a simple tool. The tips glisten now and I continue my pursuit hotly until he tosses his head and moans, supine in the chair. My victim is pinned by lust in my lair, a willing subject waiting my ministrations, an imagined member of my seraglio coming to be serviced by the great sultana. I will oblige because without me he will ignite. And I take pity as his bright orange hair and fur shoot out from his body and remind me of the flames between us.

Wickham Boyle

"Five Senses" by Rachel Kramer Bussel

I sink into the water, surrounded by bubbles and that sweet scent. I scoop up a handful of fluff and blow it at Lawrence, laughing when he sneezes. At first I try to keep my head above water but he insists that I sink lower, massaging my shoulders again so I have no resistance. My lips hover just above the waterline and I shut my eyes. Like that, we could be anywhere, anyone, really. I sense him shut off the lights and I hear rustling. He takes my hand and presses it against his heart and we sit there like that, me deep in the water, inhaling the sweetness--“Vanilla,” he whispers at one point when he hears me sniffing--and letting the warmth penetrate my bones. This time, I don’t reach for his cock.

He kisses my forehead, long and tenderly, then down my nose and our lips meet. His tongue teases mine, coaxing it out only to shove it back in as his tongue claims my entire mouth. We both stand close to six feet tall--I’ve never been a shrinking violet--but when he kisses me, I do get smaller. Or maybe it’s just that his mouth is so much bigger than mine, it can capture mine in a moment. I can’t breathe with my mouth anymore, so I only use my nose, and now I smell him, pure Lawrence. He is kissing me and also not. His teeth are sinking into the area right around my lips, his saliva dripping onto me as I push back against the edge of the tub to press my head closer, give him more of myself. Just as I’m getting frantic, he pulls away again. “Don’t move.” I nod. His white shirt is drenched and he unbuttons it, giving me a view of his firm chest, the muscles not rippling but still so achingly clear, firm, just below the surface, that I clench down below.

He steps outside, dropping the shirt on the floor like I’d done with my clothes. I hear him take a few steps, then he’s back to slip a blindfold over my eyes. It’s padded, warm against my lids. He runs a little more hot water. The splash against my toes is louder with the blindfold on. He runs his fingers lightly between my legs, just a hint, before he walks off.

Rachel Kramer Bussel

"If" by Emerald

I closed my eyes and imagined Hayden finding me in the guest bedroom. I could almost feel his tongue circling one nipple, then the other as he pulled my clothes off before pushing me onto the bed and shoving my legs apart as I begged him to ram his cock into me hard.

I made myself come six times. As I got up shakily and headed for the shower, my eyes fell on the name tag still stuck to the dress crumpled on the floor. My insides twisted as I remembered that what had just happened with Hayden in my fantasies could remain only there.

Two weeks later I woke in the middle of the night. Blinking sleepily, I glanced at the moonlight penetrating the blackness out the window and didn’t bother checking the clock. I looked at Chris, his breathing even as he lay on his side, facing me, his hands balled into fists just under the edge of the blanket.

I had been thinking about Hayden alarmingly frequently in the weeks since I’d met him. It had been a bit surreal to feel something so encompassing that Chris had no idea about. I found the juxtaposition uncomfortable, and I had a sad feeling that Chris had no idea anything was wrong. Of course, while I knew that something was, I had no idea what. And it had been there, I knew, even before I met Hayden.

Emerald

"Big-Bed Sex" by Donna George Storey

I felt another stab of lust low in my belly. Why was this turning me on so much? I’d never buy a man, never take advantage of any power I might have in real life to obtain sexual favors. But something about this absurdly luxurious room, that waiting bed, brought out my sense of entitlement. Every woman who stayed at the Beverly Hills Hotel deserved a willing servant to cater to her most selfish whim.

“Believe me, young man, I’m going to make sure you work very hard tonight,” I replied with my new hauteur.

Will caught my eye and smiled then dipped his head modestly.

We stepped under the pounding spray together. I handed him the large bottle of body wash. “Spread this all over me. And remember that the dirty places need an extralong scrubbing.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, squirting a large blob of the viscous white cream onto his palm. With slow, circling strokes, he spread the soap over my shoulders, back and arms. The water washed it away as quickly as he applied it, but still he massaged me conscientiously, working his way down my back to my buttocks.

I turned to face him. “Do the front of me now.”

With a submissive nod, he squeezed out another generous mess of cream and set to work on my breasts. I arched back and moaned at the sensation of his slippery hands on my sensitive nipples.