20 Women in Lust

Below are excerpts from all 20 stories in Women in Lust. AND I have 1 print copy to send out to someone in the U.S. who's willing to review it on Amazon.com (you must have an Amazon account you've made a purchase from, and I ask that reviews be posted within 6 weeks of receipt). Email me at rachelkb at gmail.com with "Women in Lust" in the subject line and your mailing address and the first person to request it will get it. I'm 3 reviews away from the magical 30 reviews (at which point, Amazon supposedly starts paying more attention to your book). Thank you! Also, "Queen of Sheba" by Jen Cross is one of my favorite stories of the hundreds I have published. I love the voice and the plot and everything about it.



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Introduction: Ladies Who Lust

Naughty Thoughts Portia Da Costa

“Are you having those naughty thoughts again, you bad girl? I can always tell, because your eyes start to cross.”

Terrence accompanies his accusation with a swirl of his hips, a move that nearly blows the top of my head off. It also nearly dislodges said naughty thoughts he’s accusing me of,. bBut not quite. They’re so naughty that I can’t seem to shake them, despite another virtuoso hip-swirl that makes me groan and claw his back.

“Back with us again, are we?” he gasps, laughing as he shags. He really is the most fabulous, fabulous fuck.

Guess Charlotte Stein

I know he’s there, because I can smell him. It’s that cherry lip gloss he knows I like, though god knows where he’s put it. On his lips? Too conventional. On his nipples? They’re small and perky and would look delicious coated in something slippery, but I doubt it.

I’m betting on his cock; undoubtedly on his cock. And while I’m lying here blindfolded and largely helpless, he’s going to make me taste it⎯that cherry-scented, cherry-flavored curve of flesh.

I can just picture him now, getting closer, with it bobbing between his thighs. His breath is unsteady, though his resolve seems to be holding, and every now and then I can hear him, moving in close. There’s just that hint of too close, like maybe he can’t quite help himself.

I think that sets me off more than the blindfold⎯that sense of his bucking arousal, trying to lunge at me.

Her, Him and Them Aimee Pearl

Her

On our first date, she says, “I already told you, I’m not into that S-and-M stuff.” She says it hard, with an edge of determined anger rather than annoyance or exasperation. My panties get wet from the tone in her voice, and that’s how I know she is lying.

We leave the restaurant and go back to her place. Soon, we are all over each other, fingers and hands dancing with buttons and hems. When her fingers are inside me, she instructs, “Don’t come yet.” Later she says, “Okay, now,” and I come for her on command, without hesitation.

Later still, with her inside me, she says, “If you’re gonna come, ask me first.”

Bayou Clancy Nacht

The heavy scent of river and sweet smell of flowers wafts into the open window, circling my silk robe around my body. I love this moment in the night; love the breeze from the fans, buffeting my skin with its soft caress.

I hear my lover behind me. The ice clinks in his glass. Scotch: I can smell it from here, but it never smells as good on the air as it does on his lips, from his breath. I let my white robe drift down from my shoulders, like a slow-floating cloud. It slips from my arms and down to show him the cleavage of my ass, the dark shadow meant to allure him.

His clothes shift, the chair creaks. His footfalls draw him nearer. I feel the heat of his body, the smell of his cologne. The stubble is hard on my shoulder as he looks out onto the Mississippi, his cheek against mine.

My building is so dilapidated, it’s crumbling from the inside. Bricks wake me in the night, loosening and falling down to the dusty floor.

But he is not crumbling, nor will he. He presses his highball glass to the lower part of my spine, and I whimper.

Smoke Elizabeth Coldwell

I really, really need a smoke.

I’m in the middle of yet another attempt at cutting down⎯not giving up. I’ve tried that and failed so many times, I know it’s never going to happen. Instead, I try to go as long as I can without giving in to my cravings. And I’d been doing so well, until now.

Two things are always guaranteed to make me want a cigarette. One is sex. My first instinct, once the last sweet waves of orgasm die away, is to roll over and light up. Not that I’m inconsiderate in these matters. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve wrapped a sheet around myself and padded out onto the balcony of the flat to smoke in satisfied postcoital solitude.

Bite Me Lucy Hughes

“So you’re a masochist,” she said.

He winced, squeezing his eyes shut tighter for a moment. “Technically, but I hate the word. The guy it’s named after was an asshole to his wife and wrote a really bad book.”

“I didn’t know.” She let her hand slide down from his hair to his chest, and finally hooked a finger through one of his belt loops. He might ask for odd things, but that didn’t interfere with her desire to tear the rest of his clothes off and run her hands and her tongue all over his beautiful mocha skin. “So give me some idea of the scale here. Do you want a little nibble here and there or…”

Ride a Cowboy Del Carmen

“I want to fuck you.”

Rita didn’t know who was more surprised. She at the words that came out of her mouth or Nate, who looked at her like a steer caught in headlights.

“What?” he asked.

Rita pretended the last minute hadn’t happened. She waved her pad at him. “What would you like to order?”

Nate lifted an eyebrow, a knowing look in his eyes.

She steeled herself. Hopefully whatever cut he gave her would not be loud enough for the other diners to hear. The last thing she needed or wanted was the town gossip mill looking in her direction. “I’ll take the blue-plate special,” he said, “the steak medium well, heavy on the gravy, four biscuits. Coffee. Black.”

Rita wrote furiously and reached for his menu.

Queen of Sheba Jen Cross

You really wanna know about the best time? Well, there was this one guy, back when I was in school. But you have to promise you won’t tell Max. Okay?

At first, I thought Jimmy was just really into foreplay. He’d say, “Can I touch you?” And before I was done nodding, he’d have reached out a calloused hand to my body, maybe resting it on one of my thighs or against my belly for a second, but he was always only interested in my pussy. His eyes would glaze a little, he’d moisten his lips and get focused like a cat.

When Jimmy really got going, my pussy would feel like it was molten, you know? All melty and hot, like—well, I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Hot for Teacher Rachel Kramer Bussel

The sad truth was that she couldn’t remember being as raw, as wet, as wanton as when she’d been with Clay. Until now. Her professor was far from a Clay-like bad boy, but still, he did something to her that made her want to either be the best student he’d ever seen, or the worst, if it meant detention and the chance to get properly punished. She bit her lip as a highly irrelevant, not to mention irreverent, giggle threatened to burst from her lips as she pictured herself in a schoolgirl skirt, white cotton panties, white kneesocks and pigtails with red ribbons. It was not an outfit she’d ever come close to wearing, and that’s why it appealed to her. She’d never had a chance to play at being a bad girl, to try on that persona or any other besides young mom, really, followed by older and now middle-aged mom.

She was the oldest student in the class, and as such, was supposed to be some kind of role model. She could tell by the way the others gave her a wide berth, smiling politely at her but otherwise treating her as if age itself were contagious, or like she was going to tattle on them for misbehaving when the last thing she cared about was their grades or potential offenses. The others could spend all of class texting and flirting and passing notes, but Meredith, even if she didn’t understand every concept, wanted points for paying attention, for disrupting her previously boring but safe life to perk up her mind. She hadn’t known her pussy was going to follow along as easily.

Unbidden Brandy Fox

When she hit forty, a raging libido blindsided Brooke. One day she was juggling a family life, giving in to the bloating of age and the exhaustion that hit the minute the kids were in bed. The next, she was sizing up every man between the ages of twenty and sixty, looking them over as meticulously as she did the fruit and vegetables at the market: men in cars waiting at stoplights, grocery store clerks, fellow PTA parents, the carpet cleaner and plumber. Sure, she’d always admired a handsome man. But now it wasn’t just looking; it was sweaty, heart-pounding visions of his naked body thrusting away at hers.

Sometimes it didn’t even take the sight of a man to turn her on. She could be washing a carrot, hurrying to finish a casserole before meeting the school bus, and her hand would linger along the length of its unusually wide girth. Suddenly she’d be on the kitchen floor, thrusting that carrot into her G-spot. Fantasies whipped through her mind unbidden, sending her to the bedroom at all hours of the day⎯sometimes when her children were in the next room—overwhelmed with the urge to fondle and fuck herself into oblivion.

“Wow,” her doctor friend said, when Brooke confessed the change. “That’s your testosterone talking. Now you know how men feel.”

“Not men,” Brooke corrected. “Boys. Fifteen-year-old boys who haven’t yet learned how to tame their hormones. A middle-aged mother is not supposed to be acting that way!” Especially with carrots, she thought.

“Consider yourself lucky,” her friend said. “Most women who come to my office complain about their lack of libido. Embrace it while you can!”

Something to Ruin Amelia Thornton

I could feel the soft scratchiness of the grass tickling my cheek as my face pressed closer to the ground, my eyes adjusting to focus on the depth of green and the pair of tiny ladybugs delicately crawling along in front of me. I had never quite noticed before just how vividly red they could be, like little droplets of blood against towers of emerald, and I wondered why it took having my face crushed into the earth to really appreciate nature like this.

I couldn’t see him, but I knew he was still there, calmly positioned on the comforting softness of the picnic blanket, surveying the sight of my bottom presented to him, my knees tucked neatly beneath my torso, arms stretched out in front of me. I had done as he’d asked and worn “something to ruin,” meaning a plain white sundress with a cornflower-blue print I’d picked up from the secondhand shop. “Something to ruin” always meant trouble.

“Come here, Susie.”

Guitar Hero Kin Fallon

He picked up his guitar and strummed it, idly at first, casually. She watched his thick, heavy hands moving across the board in wide strokes. It was hypnotic, restful, and she began to relax. He changed to a beautiful melody, picking each note with a finger or thumb. Anoushka watched his fingers, marveling at how fast they could work, at how delicate and precise the tips of thick fingers of rough hands could be. She felt herself sinking in the rhythm and wondered how her boyfriend didn’t get lost himself, how he could think fast enough to move from string to string so seamlessly, so accurately.

Looking to Mark’s face, she saw his half-open gray-green eyes, as distant as the stars, as close as her pulse. Lost in his own way, she thought. It wasn’t concentration keeping him in tune but a flow, a deep sensual memory that called the right fingertip to the right string at the right time. He was truly in tune with his guitar, one with it inside the strings’ music, their vibrations, their changes and movements, rises and falls.

Mark was most beautiful when he was like this. He picked up the speed to a desperate rhythm, fingers flickering back and forth, seeming sometimes to bring out two separate sounds that quickly dissolved into a single one, rising and falling again. The tempo increased another step change and furiously reached a peak of high-pitched, longer-waving wails.

Ode to a Masturbator Aimee Herman

I am leaving in three weeks and I don’t even know your name. I am going to miss the sounds I have created in my mind for the music your palm makes when it mashes against your erect dick. You are tall, even when tilted against your wall, which I believe is painted white or some pale color. Your hair is dark like soil and long, always pulled back in a ponytail. If I had courage or confidence, I might talk to you. I know where you live, where you work, what you drive.

I am thirty-one years old and currently work as a server at an all-you-can eat Brazilian steakhouse. Most of my shift is spent watching various-sized humans devouring as much protein as they can, in the form of meat brought to them on skewers, which is then sliced thinly and placed into salivating mouths, chewed enough times to get through the gristle and blood and then swallowed. The competing scents of meat from various animals and limbs has caused me to become vegetarian. It is just too much to take sometimes. However, the pay is good and I met my boyfriend here. We don’t have to mention him, though; it doesn’t seem fair to either of us.

I know you have a wife. She is blonde with enough curves to appear like a cursive lowercase q. Her tits are swollen like flesh-covered marshmallows swelling out of her tops. My tits are small and unclaimed by bras or cleavage. But maybe you need change. I have less to hold and play with, but my nipples are hard like thimbles. They are expressive and overdramatic. One boyfriend even called them challenging. I don’t know your wife’s name or what she does for a living, but I know that she holds your ears when you eat away at her cunt and scratches at your head when she is just about to come.

Orchid Jacqueline Applebee

“I think I have the hots for Viktor.” I adjusted my stockings and stepped out of the toilet stall. My best friend and fuck-buddy, Peggy, gawped at me. “The new guy? Viktor from Accounts?” I nodded. “Viktor with the long brown hair?”

I sighed. Viktor had glossy hair and bright green eyes. He was a beautiful man.

“Hang on.” Peggy dried her hands. “You cannot have a crush on Viktor. He’s, you know…”

“He’s Russian?”

“Not that.” She poked me. “He’s vanilla!” she finally blurted. “Wendy in Personnel dated him when he first started here. She told me all about him. Face it, Katie. He’s vanilla, and you’re a slutty submissive bottom.”

“I know,” I said with a sigh. “But vanilla folks need sexing-up, too.”

“You can’t date a vanilla guy, Katie. It’s not natural.”

Cherry Blossom Kayar Silkenvoice

I bumped into her in my ryokan in Kyoto. I smelled her exotic scent just milliseconds before my sleep-fogged brain registered the ledge I was supposed to step over in order to leave my suite⎯too late, of course. I tripped and fell to my knees like a penitent worshipper, one hand clutching the belt of her kimono, the other pressing down onto her foot. She staggered slightly, from surprise or the impact. I couldn’t tell which, but I feared the latter.

“Gomen nasai. Daijoubu desu ka?” I stammered. I’m sorry. Are you all right?

My partner had taught me that phrase early on in the trip, after he tired of apologizing on my behalf to all the people I bumped into. And I bumped into a lot of people as I was constantly staring upward in astonishment at the cherry blossoms that seemed to adorn all of Japan.

Cool hands cupped my cheeks and tilted my head backward. Dark eyes peered into mine, eyes so dark I could not distinguish the pupils from the iris.

Rain Olivia Archer

My husband is too lost in a rant about the upcoming election to notice the rigid set of my body as I watch my best friend kick off her shoes and place her legs in the lap of her latest boyfriend, Rain. She waggles her red manicured toes and asks for a foot massage. As Rain obliges, I imagine that I can hear the rasp of his rough fingers rubbing her skin. Or maybe I can feel them touching me⎯the way he did last Tuesday, the first time we fucked.

The four of us are finishing liqueurs in our living room; my lover is directly in front of me. His dark, curly hair and the curve of his ass in those jeans tempt me, but I stare through him, into the empty fireplace.

When I get up and clear some of the leftover dessert carnage from the side tables, this gesture brings an end to the evening. Marcy gathers her exquisite belongings, casually thrown on the counter. I watch them go while standing in the foyer of our so-called perfect little house. It took twelve years of our lives to achieve this level of mind-numbing comfort. Normally summer is my favorite season, but the warm night air wafting in doesn’t provide its usual comfort. Instead, I’m reminded that the hillside surrounding our house, once verdant, is now parched and highly combustible, ready for a stray spark to set it ablaze.

The Hard Way Justine Elyot

“I’m offering you a choice,” he says, and I know exactly what comes next. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

The script is so familiar. In my three years as duty solicitor at the Maiden Street police station, I’ve heard Detective Sergeant Blake utter this phrase countless times. Sometimes whichever random villain I’m representing will choose the easy way⎯he or she will spill the beans, confess all, finger the Mr. Big behind the operation, and then Blake will smile his earnest smile, reassure them that it will be okay, pat them on the shoulder while they gibber about witness protection. Far more often, they plump for the latter option, in which case Blake has to bring out the big guns. Of course, I don’t mean that literally. Blake’s arsenal is wholly psychological, but it is no less deadly for that. An implication here, a tut and a shake of the head, a casual mention of a family member or acquaintance⎯I have seen all of these reduce a strong man to a crumpled, tear-stained wreck. He has mastered the art of being both good and bad cop simultaneously, and I cannot help admiring him for it. More than admiring. Desiring.

So which will it be? Easy or hard? The rules are a little different tonight. I do not preside over some sulking youth in a hoodie; there is no set of tattooed knuckles next to mine on the table. Indeed, there is no table. There is Blake and there is me, and we are on a bed. The situation has changed, as has the dynamic, but the question remains.

Strapped K. D. Grace

When I see him eyeing me from across the room, my stomach drops to the floor, and I wonder if he knows. Will he betray me if he does? If so, will he do it quietly, or will he make sure everyone knows what I’m up to? I contemplate leaving quietly by a side door, but before I have a chance, he sidles up to the bar next to me. I stand frozen to the spot, close enough that his arm, hard muscle beneath soft cotton, brushes mine, even though the bar isn’t crowded.

My pulse is a drumroll hammering against my throat. Surely he must see it. In the mirror behind the bar I can see his sideways glances taking me in. I try not to squirm, while I take a mental inventory: jeans, loafers, tits strapped tight beneath my oversized shirt. My best friend, Alex, coached me. He says I’m good. He says my disguise is flawless. But then he never thought I’d actually go through with it, and it certainly never occurred to either of us that I might have to make a run for it wearing a strap-on.

Beneath My Skin Shanna Germain

“I’m afraid.” The words coming from my lips are barely audible. My face is pushed into the sheets. My chest is, too, so that only my ass is in the air before him, raised and blooming with red handprints. Kade’s handprints. No one else touches my ass. This is the deal we have.

“You should be.” His voice is gravelly and deep, but not mean. Never mean. Even as he speaks the words that make my stomach feel cold, the rest of me is hot. My face prickles with a nervous, excited blush, even though it’s mostly hidden by my tangled hair. My palms sweat their heat into the sheets. Even the little folds behind my bent knees are growing slippery. And the space between my thighs⎯which he’s teasing with one finger, soft strokes that belie his eventual plan⎯that space is the hottest of all, opening around his cool fingertip, liquid and lava.

His other hand circles the curves of my still-warm ass. The skin pulses beneath his touch, each passing stroke over the tender skin pulling my breath back into my mouth. I push my face harder into the sheets, biting at the fabric to muffle my gasps.

“No,” he says, and he stops touching. Just like that. I know why⎯he likes to hear me, likes to listen to the groans and moans and the cries that erupt from my mouth when he pleases or teases me.

Comfort Food Donna George Storey

One bite of that butterscotch pudding and suddenly I knew everything was going to be all right.

If one of my more sensible friends had been sitting at the table with me, she would have told me the pudding had nothing to do with it. The new buoyant sensation in my chest was the natural outcome of a relaxed vacation by myself at a charming country inn. The crazy grin on my face, the almost sexual quickening of my breath, were but a long-delayed visceral understanding of all the work I’d done in therapy over the last year. There was no need to wallow in misery any longer. Dylan’s affair and my subsequent decision to divorce him were only symptoms of our buried grief for the real death of our marriage years before. It was time to move on.

However, since I was alone and had no need to be reasonable, I knew the epiphany was all in the pudding. Perhaps it was the creamy smoothness caressing my tongue like satin? Or the bottomless depth of flavor: caramel, tropical vanilla and an almost floral sweet cream, all mixed together with something else mysterious, alluring, even addictive?

Whatever the reason for the magic, at that moment, I was very glad to be alive.

Ladies Who Lust

Lust. It’s one of those four-letter words that trips off the tongue. When I say it out loud, it makes my lips want to curve into a smile. Lust is more than simple arousal; it is the force that makes us not just turned on, but craving a certain person (or people).

I used to write a sex column called “Lusty Lady,” named after the famed strip club, but somehow lusty, rhyming as it does with busty, sounds a bit like a joke, an added bit of humor, which is how our culture often treats sex. Lust, though, is different; it’s intense, overpowering. While in real life we may not always act every time lust calls to us, in fiction, we can abandon the safety of propriety and seek out lust and sex wherever we find them.

The characters in Women in Lust may vary in the objects of their lust, and how they go about acting on their urge, but what connects them is that pure impulse for a lover. Sometimes he is someone she knows well, is married to or dating; in other stories, he is a stranger, and is sexy precisely because he represents the unknown. Women also lust after other women here, as in Kayar Silkenvoice’s Japanese happy ending massage story, “Cherry Blossom,” and while we only hear one side of the story, I’d like to think the working woman is doing more than just her job. In addition to the culture clash, there’s the joy of throwing caution to the wind while on vacation, using travel to broaden one’s sexual horizons. Whether watching a lover playing guitar, using a webcam, going out for a smoke or simply embracing a chance encounter, these women seize the opportunities presented to them, and savor the lovers who teach them about themselves and help them open up to new sensual possibilities. Sometimes that means looking at the man they live with in a new light, and other times that means something much naughtier. Either way, their lust is a valued part of their lives, not a pesky afterthought or to-do list item on “date night.”

The objects of their lust are not always the “right” person. In “Rain,” a woman falls for her best friend’s boyfriend, one of the ultimate dating taboos, but she goes for it. Sometimes the desire itself, the way it can be used to tease and taunt, as in Charlotte Stein’s “Guess,” is maddening, but we embrace our lusts even when they are maddening, even when they make us do things we might otherwise consider reckless.

For every woman here who can locate her lust on the map of her body, who zeros in on her target and goes for it, there is another who is opened up to her lust by a lover, whether it’s Jen Cross’s narrator pondering what it was, exactly, her orally generous long-ago lover got out of being between her legs. The first words of Shanna Germain’s powerfully kinky “Beneath My Skin” are “I’m afraid,” to which her lover, Kade, responds, “You should be.” Fear can be a powerful motivator and, crossed with lust, can lead to explosive results. Whether discovering the joy of a younger man, not to mention some delicious pudding, in “Comfort Food,” by Donna George Storey, or taking sex and bondage into the great outdoors in “Something to Ruin” by Amelia Thornton, these women indulge in new ways of getting off and pushing the limits of their lust. Thornton writes: “Despite my longing, there was still part of me that wanted to protest, to tell him to cut me loose, to run wildly through the forest back to the safety of our picnic blanket, but to me that is the beauty of rope: to desire escape but to willingly be imprisoned, to feel the pressure of something that prevents my movement, yet to know there is no place that I feel safer than when trapped like this.” She captures the excitement of giving in to a dominant lover, even when there is a small part of the narrator that is unsure, for that is precisely the part that fuels her desire. This story captures the true power that lies in submission and the many joys it can bring. In “Her, Him and Them,” by Aimee Pearl, the narrator submits to various lovers who question her and push her not only to be the best sub she can be, but to figure out why, exactly, she likes the thrill of submission and service.

I hope these stories inspire some lusty days and nights for you, as they have for me.

Rachel Kramer Bussel
New York City