Desire

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  “I felt there was something sacred in sex; in fact, it was the only sacred thing. In woman and her beauty I saw something divine, because the most important function of existence—the continuation of the species—is her vocation. To me woman represented a personification of nature, Isis, and man was her priest, her slave. In contrast to him she was cruel like nature herself who tosses aside whatever has served her purposes as soon as she no longer has need for it. To him her cruelties, even death itself, still were sensual raptures. “I envied King Gunther whom the mighty Brunhilde fettered on the bridal night, and the poor troubadour whom his capricious mistress had sewed in the skins of wolves to have him hunted like game. I envied the Knight Ctirad whom the daring Amazon Scharka craftily ensnared in a forest near Prague, and carried to her castle Divin, where, after having amused herself a while with him, she had him broken on the wheel—” “Disgusting,” cried Wanda. “I almost wish you might fall into the hands of a woman of their savage race. In the wolf’s skin, under the teeth of the dogs, or upon the wheel, you would lose the taste for your kind of poetry.” “Do you think so? I hardly do.” “Have you actually lost your senses.” “Possibly. But let me go on. I developed a perfect passion for reading stories in which the extremest cruelties were described. I loved especially to look at pictures and prints which represented them. All the sanguinary tyrants that ever occupied a throne; the inquisitors who had the heretics tortured, roasted, and butchered; all the woman whom the pages of history have recorded as lustful, beautiful, and violent women like Libussa, Lucretia Borgia, Agnes of Hungary, Queen Margot, Isabeau, the Sultana Roxolane, the Russian Czarinas of last century—all these I saw in furs or in robes bordered with ermine.” “And so furs now rouse strange imaginings in you,” said Wanda, and simultaneously she began to drape her magnificent fur-cloak coquettishly about her, so that the dark shining sable played beautifully around her bust and arms. “Well, how do you feel now, half broken on the wheel?” Her piercing green eyes rested on me with a peculiar mocking satisfaction. Overcome by desire, I flung myself down before her, and threw my arms about her. “Yes—you have awakened my dearest dream,” I cried. “It has slept long enough.” “And this is?” She put her hand on my neck. I was seized with a sweet intoxication under the influence of this warm little hand and of her regard, which, tenderly searching, fell upon me through her half-closed lids. “To be the slave of a woman, a beautiful woman, whom I love, whom I worship.” “And who on that account maltreats you,” interrupted Wanda, laughing. “Yes, who fetters me and whips me, treads me underfoot, the while she gives herself to another.”

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "One of the guests shewed us how to make a Priapean fountain, or the proper way of sipping liqueurs. He got a young Ganymede to pour a continuous thread of Chartreuse out of a long-beaked silver ewer down on Briancourt's chest. The liquid trickled down the stomach and through the tiny curls of the jet-black, rose-scented hair, all along the phallus, and into the mouth of the man kneeling in front of him. The three men were so handsome, the group so classic, that a photograph was taken of it by lime-light. "'It's very pretty," said the Spahi, "but I think I can shew you something better still.' "'And what is that?' asked Briancourt. "'The way they eat preserved dates stuffed with pistachioes in Algiers; and as you happen to have some on the table, we can try it.' "The old general chuckled, evidently enjoying the fun. "The Spahi then made his bed-fellow go on all fours, with his head down and his backside up; then he slipped the dates into the hole of the anus, where he nibbled them as his friend pressed them out, after which he licked carefully all the syrup that oozed out and trickled on the buttocks. "Everybody applauded and the two men evidently were excited, for their battering-rams were jerking up their heads, and nodding significantly. "'Wait, don't get up yet,' said the Spahi, 'I haven't yet quite finished; let me just put the fruit of the tree of knowledge into it.' Thereupon he got on him, and taking his instrument in his hand, he pressed it into the hole in which the dates had been; and slippery as the gap was, it disappeared entirely after a thrust or two. The officer then did not pull it out at all, but only kept rubbing himself against the other man's buttocks. Meanwhile the cock of the sodomized man was so restless that it commenced beating a tattoo against its owner's stomach. "'Now for the passive pleasures that are left for age and experience,' said the general. And he began to teaze the glans with his tongue, to suck it, and to twiddle the column with his fingers in the deftest way. "The delight expressed by the sodomized man seemed indescribable. He panted, he shivered, his eyelids drooped, his lips were languid, the nerves of his face twitched; he seemed, every moment, ready to faint with too much feeling. Still he appeared to be resisting the paroxysm with might and main, knowing that the Spahi had acquired abroad the art of remaining in action for any length of time. Every now and then his head fell as if all his strength was gone, but then he lifted it up again, and—opening his lips—'Someone—in my mouth,' said he. "The Italian Marquis, who had doffed his gown, and who had nothing on but a diamond necklace and a pair of black silk stockings, got astride on two stools over the old general, and went to satisfy him.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  “Oh, you have already paid me,” he said, with a tormented smile, refusing her offer. Before he left, he secretly opened his portfolio, and let me look inside. I was startled. Her head looked at me as if out of a mirror and seemed actually to be alive. “I shall take it along,” he said, “it is mine; she can’t take it away from me. I have earned it with my heart’s blood.” * * * * * “I am really rather sorry for the poor painter,” she said to me to-day, “it is absurd to be as virtuous as I am. Don’t you think so too?” I did not dare to reply to her. “Oh, I forgot that I am talking with a slave; I need some fresh air, I want to be diverted, I want to forget. “The carriage, quick!” Her new dress is extravagant: Russian half-boots of violet-blue velvet trimmed with ermine, and a skirt of the same material, decorated with narrow stripes and rosettes of furs. Above it is an appropriate, close-fitting jacket, also richly trimmed and lined with ermine. The headdress is a tall cap of ermine of the style of Catherine the Second, with a small aigrette, held in place by a diamond-agraffe; her red hair falls loose down her back. She ascends on the driver’s seat, and holds the reins herself; I take my seat behind. How she lashes on the horses! The carriage flies along like mad. Apparently it is her intention to attract attention to-day, to make conquests, and she succeeds completely. She is the lioness of the Cascine. People nod to her from carriages; on the footpath people gather in groups to discuss her. She pays no attention to anyone, except now and then acknowledging the greetings of elderly gentlemen with a slight nod. Suddenly a young man on a lithe black horse dashes up at full speed. As soon as he sees Wanda, he stops his horse and makes it walk. When he is quite close, he stops entirely and lets her pass. And she too sees him—the lioness, the lion. Their eyes meet. She madly drives past him, but she cannot tear herself free from the magic power of his look, and she turns her head after him. My heart stops when I see the half-surprised, half-enraptured look with which she devours him, but he is worthy of it. For he is, indeed, a magnificent specimen of man, No, rather, he is a man whose like I have never yet seen among the living. He is in the Belvedere, graven in marble, with the same slender, yet steely musculature, with the same face and the same waving curls. What makes him particularly beautiful is that he is beardless. If his hips were less narrow, one might take him for a woman in disguise. The curious expression about the mouth, the lion’s lip which slightly discloses the teeth beneath, lends a flashing tinge of cruelty to the beautiful face—

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  “Quite simply, my father was an intelligent man. From my cradle onward I was surrounded by replicas of ancient art; at ten years of age I read Gil Blas, at twelve La Pucelle. Where others had Hop-o’-my-thumb, Bluebeard, Cinderella, as childhood friends, mine were Venus and Apollo, Hercules and Lackoon. My husband’s personality was filled with serenity and sunlight. Not even the incurable illness which fell upon him soon after our marriage could long cloud his brow. On the very night of his death he took me in his arms, and during the many months when he lay dying in his wheel chair, he often said jokingly to me: ‘Well, have you already picked out a lover?’ I blushed with shame. ‘Don’t deceive me,’ he added on one occasion, ‘that would seem ugly to me, but pick out an attractive lover, or preferably several. You are a splendid woman, but still half a child, and you need toys.’ “I suppose, I hardly need tell you that during his life time I had no lover; but it was through him that I have become what I am, a woman of Greece.” “A goddess,” I interrupted. “Which one,” she smiled. “Venus.” She threatened me with her finger and knitted her brows. “Perhaps, even a ‘Venus in Furs.’ Watch out, I have a large, very large fur, with which I could cover you up entirely, and I have a mind to catch you in it as in a net.” “Do you believe,” I said quickly, for an idea which seemed good, in spite of its conventionality and triteness, flashed into my head, “do you believe that your theories could be carried into execution at the present time, that Venus would be permitted to stray with impunity among our railroads and telegraphs in all her undraped beauty and serenity?” “Undraped, of course not, but in furs,” she replied smiling, “would you care to see mine?” “And then—” “What then?” “Beautiful, free, serene, and happy human beings, such as the Greeks were, are only possible when it is permitted to have slaves who will perform the prosaic tasks of every day for them and above all else labor for them.” “Of course,” she replied playfully, “an Olympian divinity, such as I am, requires a whole army of slaves. Beware of me!” “Why?” I myself was frightened at the hardiness with which I uttered this “why”; it did not startle her in the least. She drew back her lips a little so that her small white teeth became visible, and then said lightly, as if she were discussing some trifling matter, “Do you want to be my slave?”

• From Sexual Politics (1970)

  And I could feel her beginning to come. The doubt in me had tipped her off, the adjuration to be quiet had thrown the bolt. She was a minute away, but she was on her way, and just as if one of her wily fingers had thrown some switch in me, I was gone like a bat and shaking hands with the Devil once more. Rare greed shone in her eyes, pleasure in her mouth, she was happy. I was ready to chase, I was gorged to throw the first spill, high on a choice, like some cat caught on two wires I was leaping back and forth, in separate runs for separate strokes, bringing spoils and secrets up to the Lord from the red mills, bearing messages of defeat back from that sad womb, and then I chose-ah, but there was time to change-I chose her cunt. It was no graveyard now, no warehouse, no, more like a chapel now, a modest decent place, but its walls were snug, its odor was green, there was a sweetness in the chapel, a muted reverential sweetness in those walls of stone. “That is what prison will be like for you,” said a last effort of my inner tongue. “Stay here!” came a command from inside of me; except that I could feel the Devil’s meal beneath, its fires were lifting through the floor, and I waited for the warmth to reach inside, to come up from the cellar below, to bring booze and heat up and licking tongues, I was up above a choice which would take me on one wind or another, and I had to give myself, I could not hold back, there was an explosion, furious, treacherous and hot as the gates of an icy slalom with the speed at my heels overtaking my nose. I had one of those splittings of a second where the senses fly out and there in that instant the itch reached into me and drew me out and I jammed up her ass and came as if I’d been Rung across the room. She let out a cry of rage.17 The foregoing is a description of heterosexual sodomy from Norman Mailer’s An American Dream. The practice is not only one of the book’s primary attractions, but so central to the action that one might even say the plot depended on it. Mailer’s hero, Stephen Rojack, has just finished murdering his wife and is now relieving his feelings by buggering his maid.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "Nothing is a greater incentive to pleasure than a fight. A short tussle with some tingling slaps and a few cuffs will set any man aglow, whilst a sound flagellation will rouse the blood of the most sluggish old man, better than any aphrodisiac. "The struggle excited her as much as it did me, and yet no sooner had I stretched her down, than she managed forthwith to roll down all in a bundle on the floor; but I was up to her tricks and over her. She managed, however, to slip like an eel from under me, and with a bound like a young kid, made for the door. I had, however, locked it. "A new scuffle ensued, I was now bent upon having her. Had she yielded tamely, I should have ordered her out of the room, but resistance rendered her desirable. "I clasped her within my arms, she writhed and sighed, and every part of our bodies came into strong contact. Then I thrust my leg between her's, our arms were entwined and her breasts were palpitating against my chest. During all this time she belaboured me with blows, and each one as it fell seemed to set both her blood and mine on fire. "I had thrown off my coat. The buttons of my waistcoat and trousers were all giving way, my shirt-collar had been torn off, my shirt was soon in rags, my arms were bleeding in several places. Her eyes were glistering like those of a lynx, her lips were pouted with lust, she now seemed to struggle not to defend her maidenhood, but rather for the pleasure the fight gave her. "As I pressed my mouth on her's, I felt her whole body quiver with delight, nay once—and once only—I felt the tip of her tongue thrust slightly within my mouth, and then she seemed maddened with pleasure. She was in fact like a young Mænad in her first initiation. "I actually began to desire her, and yet I felt sorry to sacrifice her at once on love's altar, for this little game was worth being rehearsed more than once. "I lifted her again in my arms and put her on the bed. "How pretty she looked as I held her down. Her curly and wavy hair dishevelled by the fight was strewed in locks all over the pillows. Her dark lively eyes, with their short but thick lashes, were twinkling with an almost phosphorescent fire, her face all aglow was bedabbled with my blood, her parted, panting lips would have made the soft phallus of some old worn-out monsignore leap with renewed life. "I had pinioned her down and for a moment stood over her, admiring her. My glances seemed to irritate her, and she struggled once more to be free.

• From Manhunt (2022)

  We have some shit; I shouldn’t make it your problem.” “We’re not even really, like, together.” “She know that?” Robbie blushed. “We haven’t talked about it.” Wind flattened long grass against their legs as they walked along a sandy ridge, loose earth sliding downhill in their wake. Behind them the camp was a dark blot interrupted only by the pinprick illumination of coffee-can fires and faltering solar lights. “You should just let her do what she wants,” said Beth. She turned into the breeze and let it run its fingers through her sandy hair. A tear ran down her scarred cheek, its trail glistening pale gold in the last light, a buttery brushstroke of yellow over the treetops. “If you make her look at herself, she won’t love you anymore.” Sophie’s bed was a vast lake of cool golden silk. Fran breathed in the smell of milk and lilacs. She ran her fingertips over her own face and felt the smoothness of her skin, the faint lines the wind and sun had etched into the corners of her eyes and mouth. She laughed and thought how beautiful it sounded, how good and perfect her voice had become. It sounded like bells. Like wind chimes. She loved it so much she laughed all over again, staring up in ambiently horny wonder at the ceiling, where soft recessed lighting glowed from the black marble facade. The room was an adult’s, sumptuously minimalist and dark, boring in a way only money and confidence could allow for, but within it was a half-grown teenager’s tightly curled sanctuary. Beaded curtains shimmered, strung between the bed’s high posts so that when Fran moved her head from side to side she saw her cloudy and uneven silhouette slide over the little spheres of polished brass. Through the curtains she could just see posters tacked to dressing screens and bureaus, armoires and freestanding sculptures. Lana Del Rey. Mitski. One Direction. A flatscreen hulked atop a faux Ionic column at the foot of the bed. Something bright was playing on it, but the sound was off. And then Sophie was there, straddling Fran’s hips and leaning so close that her silky peroxide-blond hair tickled Fran’s nose. Sophie was drooling a little. “Do you top?” Fran shook her head, blushing. She reached up to touch Sophie’s hair. It slipped like water through her fingers. “You’re so beautiful. I wish I looked like you. I love looking at you.” Hugely dilated pupils narrowed to black pinpricks in twin seas of china blue flecked with motes of green. Warm drool on Fran’s chin. “Do you wanna eat me out?” Slippery velvet cunt. Sticky. The zipper’s hiss as it bared flat white belly and shaved mound. Black fabric slithering over pale skin. Pooling on the silk. Long nails stroked her scalp.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  I have, I believe, somewhere before remarked, that feel of that favourite piece of manhood has, in the very nature of it, something inimitably pathetic. Nothing can be dearer to the touch, nor can affect it with a more delirious sensation. Think then! as a love thinks, what must be the consummate transport of that quickest of our senses, in their central seat too! when, after so long a deprival, it felt itself re-inflamed under the pressure of that peculiar sceptre-member, which commands us all: but especially my darling, elect from the face of the whole earth. And now, at its mightiest point of stiffness, it felt to me something so subduing so active, so solid and agreeable, that I know not what name to give its singular impression: but the sentiment of consciousness of its belonging to my supremely beloved youth, gave me so pleasing an agitation, and worked so strongly on my soul, that it sent all its sensitive spirits to that organ of bliss in me, dedicated to its reception. There, concentering to a point, like rays in a burning glass, they glowed, they burnt with the intensest heat; the springs of pleasure were, in short, wound up to such a pitch, I panted now with so exquisitely keen an appetite for the eminent enjoyment, that I was even sick with desire, and unequal to support the combination of two distinct ideas, that delightfully distracted me: for all the thought I was capable of, was that I was now in touch, at once, with the instrument of pleasure, and the great seal of love. Ideas that, mingling streams, poured such an ocean of intoxicating bliss on a weak vessel, all too narrow to contain it, that I lay overwhelmed, absorbed, lost in an abyss of joy, and dying of nothing but immoderate delight.

• From Manhunt (2022)

  Indi heaved a sigh, settling back into the threadbare seat. “So, you slept with him?” Fran nodded, tears welling in her eyes. “There’s beer from Jae and Dana under the sink. Go and get two, will you?” When she came back, Indi had her feet up on a little three-legged ottoman. They were as dainty as her hands, though swollen from a day spent standing. She took her beer and looked up piteously at Fran, batting her thick eyelashes. “Rub my feet and I’ll diagnose your boy problem?” Fran sighed, lifting Indi’s feet and sinking down onto the ottoman before letting them drop back into her lap. A ripple ran through the other woman’s body, which filled the chair’s seat like pudding in a cup, and Fran made herself not stare. She knew it was wrong to look at Indi that way, to observe her like unseasonable weather or a strange but captivating painting. She dug her thumbs into the arch of her right foot, pressing as hard as she could. Indi exhaled, her rounded shoulders slumping. “He’s afraid of you.” Fran looked up sharply. “What?” “Keep rubbing.” Indi waved a hand at her, then took a long sip of beer. She balanced the dark bottle atop the shelf of her belly, between where her breasts sloped to its sides. “He’s afraid of you, Francine. He’s afraid to be close to anyone. You said you found him shooting men in the middle of the woods; not exactly a group activity. How long do you think it’s been since he touched another person?” Fran blushed, still kneading the sole of Indi’s foot. She bent down so that her hair would hide her burning cheeks. “I didn’t ask. I guess I figured—” “Yes, you figured.” Indi leaned back against the chair’s headrest, closing her eyes. “You guessed. You assumed. You see what you want and where you’d like it to come from, not what’s in front of your nose. If you want that boy to keep fucking you, if you want him to follow us out of here, you’re going to need more than him feeling guilty for getting you and Beth stuck in the middle of a feeding frenzy. You’re going to need to take care of him, at least a little. If he’ll let you.” She switched feet, feeling the muscles in Indi’s arch spasm at her touch. “I’m not moving too fast?” “Oh, honey.” Indi settled deeper into the chair, shifting back and forth inside its confines. “The world is over. Who cares how fast you go?” He was halfway across the yard before she called his name, her voice soft but carrying clearly in the cool night air. “Robbie.” He turned. She stood by the moldering woodpile in nothing but a white satin nightie, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette.

• From Sexual Politics (1970)

  Women in Love is commonly accepted as the book of Birkin-Lawrence’s marriage, but it is actually the story of Birkin’s unrequited love for Gerald, the real erotic center in the novel. Ursula (or Frieda) is worn past interest by now-hence the need for another couple, Gerald and Gudrun, to liven things Up.105 The plot is triangular. And since triangles are actually diagrams of power in sexual politics, it might be worthwhile to recall what classic triangle situations involved before we embark on the innovation which Lawrence introduced. The courtly triangle featured a lady at its apex, the prize between two rivals, her husband and legal owner, her lover and true possessor. Despite the dangers she endured from the former, she was still given the choice of accepting the latter. The Continental triangle, which is the staple of French and Italian bourgeois literature, has a male at its apex, who represents the ego or center of interest in such fiction as the wife or lady never did.106 At the bases, vying for his favors, are wife and mistress. His position is one of very considerable power, both social and economic, and is the perfect expression of the double standard. Lawrence invented a new triangular situation, again with ego, or the masculine consciousness, generally Lawrence himself, at the center or apex. At one comer stands the woman, hereafter generally the wife, soliciting his rather patronizing attention; at the other is a male whom ego courts. This triangle affords even greater power leverage than earlier ones, for the ego at the apex has the choice not of two women, but of a man or a woman, the former often a glamorous or important public personage. The female who is granted ego’s favors must now struggle with a male for what is left of the hero’s time and interest. There is a strong new double standard built into this, for the wife is allowed no other distractions, either hetero—or homosexual, while the male ego is permitted to enjoy himself in both these directions. While deploring marital infidelity, Lawrence did not consider love between males adulterous. The old rivalry of wife and mistress might have been transformed under feminist pressures into an entente, and Lawrence has a bitter dread of female alliances of any kind. The most feasible explanation of his hatred for female homosexuality or even friendship seems to be political distrust. Again this is a double standard, for male homosexuality and friendship are one of the great interests of Lawrence’s life. Females are pitted against each other, but outside the triangle, where their energies are spent in fighting each other over the hero. Hermione, Birkin’s former mistress, and Ursula, his new one, are prevented from forming any dangerous female alliance by what Lawrence rather hopefully assures us is the natural repugnance of women toward each other.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  You are cold, while you yourself fan flames. By all means wrap yourself in your despotic furs, there is no one to whom they are more appropriate, cruel goddess of love and of beauty!—After a while I add a few verses from Goethe, which I recently found in his paralipomena to Faust. TO AMOR “The pair of wings a fiction are, The arrows, they are naught but claws, The wreath conceals the little horns, For without any doubt he is Like all the gods of ancient Greece Only a devil in disguise.” Then I put the picture before me on my table, supporting it with a book, and looked at it. I was enraptured and at the same time filled with a strange fear by the cold coquetry with which this magnificent woman draped her charms in her furs of dark sable; by the severity and hardness which lay in this cold marble-like face. Again I took my pen in hand, and wrote the following words: “To love, to be loved, what happiness! And yet how the glamour of this pales in comparison with the tormenting bliss of worshipping a woman who makes a plaything out of us, of being the slave of a beautiful tyrant who treads us pitilessly underfoot. Even Samson, the hero, the giant, again put himself into the hands of Delilah, even after she had betrayed him, and again she betrayed him, and the Philistines bound him and put out his eyes which until the very end he kept fixed, drunken with rage and love, upon the beautiful betrayer.” I was breakfasting in my honey-suckle arbor, and reading in the Book of Judith. I envied the hero Holofernes because of the regal woman who cut off his head with a sword, and because of his beautiful sanguinary end. “The almighty Lord hath struck him, and hath delivered him into the hands of a woman.” This sentence strangely impressed me. How ungallant these Jews are, I thought. And their God might choose more becoming expressions when he speaks of the fair sex. “The almighty Lord hath struck him, and hath delivered him into the hands of a woman,” I repeated to myself. What shall I do, so that He may punish me? Heaven preserve us! Here comes the housekeeper, who has again diminished somewhat in size overnight. And up there among the green twinings and garlandings the white gown gleams again. Is it Venus, or the widow? This time it happens to be the widow, for Madame Tartakovska makes a courtesy, and asks me in her name for something to read. I run to my room, and gather together a couple of volumes. Later I remember that my picture of Venus is in one of them, and now it and my effusions are in the hands of the white woman up there together. What will she say? I hear her laugh. Is she laughing at me?

• From Manhunt (2022)

  Robbie, looking up at last, spoke through a mouthful of pork and bread. “The bunker brat?” Indi nodded. “She wants an in-house doctor, someone who knows how to isolate estrogen, cover primary care and routine surgery. I was a fertility specialist before this and I also understand she wants to be a mother, so.” She shrugged. “It would mean relocating to just outside Exeter. To the bunker.” “I’ve seen their hunting parties,” Robbie said shortly. “Lot of guns.” He returned his attention to his wrap. “There’s a place for you and Beth, if you want it.” Indi was fiddling with the lace trim of the stained floral tablecloth. It had been her parents’, Fran knew, like most of the house’s decor. “I didn’t mean to bury the lede.” Fran sat there for a minute, listening to Robbie chew, trying to decipher the mixture of anxiety, anger, hope, and guilt in Indi’s expression. “When would we go?” “Tomorrow. She’s sending a van.” Afterward, Fran and Indi washed dishes while Robbie worked the pump in the kitchen sink. Beth had rigged it up as an apology after a nasty fight over something Fran couldn’t remember. That had been years ago, right after they started working together, but Indi kept it oiled and it still moved smoothly. Fran tried not to let the play of the candlelight over Robbie’s muscles distract her. He worked the pump with easy, fluid confidence, the same way he’d fucked her the night before. The same way his spit-slick finger had slid in and out of her. Why was he so tongue-tied now? He didn’t ask to sleep with her when they were through, the candles burning down to stubs of molten beeswax. He asked Indi if he could stay and she said yes, of course, and showed him to one of the first-floor guest rooms. He didn’t look at Fran before he left. For a moment she wanted to slap him, to drag him back into the kitchen and make him fuck her, hard, against the countertop among the remains of supper, under the twine-wrapped bundles of herbs drying on the ceiling. In the living room she curled up on the sagging, scratchy couch and waited there until Indi reemerged from the back hall a few minutes later. The other woman sank into the ratty armchair opposite her, knees popping audibly, and let out a long, tired sigh. It was a small room, the furniture worn, the low coffee table scratched and splintering under its sedimentary layers of books. Peeling posters for the disgusting French movies Fran had never been able to sit through without getting nauseous stared down at them from the walls. Inside . Trouble Every Day . Eyes Without a Face .

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  She changed the tire and must have made some note of his raw good looks. He was some part Indian—we never figured out which tribe—black-haired and sharp-featured. His jug-eared grin reminded her of Clark Gable’s. Since she fancied herself a sort of Bohemian Scarlett O’Hara, the attraction was deep and sudden. I should also note that Mother was prone to conversion experiences of various kinds, and had entered a fervent Marxist stage. She toted Das Kapital around in her purse for years. Daddy was active in the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers Union. Whenever they renegotiated a contract—every two years—he was known as an able picket-line brawler. He was, in short, a Texas working man, with a smattering of Indian blood and with personality traits that she had begun to consider heroic. Out in Lubbock, Grandma was rolling a cobbler crust for Mother’s homecoming dinner when the call came that she had been detained in Leechfield. Grandma had prayed for her to make up with Paolo. She’d started auctioning Mother off to various husbands when she was only fifteen. Like some prize cow, Mother liked to say, fattened for the highest bidder. With a paid-for Ford and a ship waiting for him in the Gulf, Paolo had what Grandma thought of as the Ability to Provide. Plus he had dragged Mother out of New York, where God knew what-all went on, and relocated her in Texas. Grandma subsequently viewed my father as some slick-talking hick who had buffaloed her only child into settling for a two-bedroom tract house when she deserved a big ranch. In fact, Paolo was the only husband of Mother’s whose existence Grandma would acknowledge—other than Daddy, of course, and him she couldn’t very well ignore. She felt that Paolo’s story would teach me a lesson, the punch line of which was something like divorcing a salary man for somebody who punches a clock was bad manners. At least Grandma told me a few stories about Paolo. Pressing Mother for details of her past always led to eye-rolling and aspirin-taking and long afternoon naps. To Paolo’s credit, he didn’t give Mother up as easily as the others had. He chased her—so the saying goes—like a duck would a june bug. He sent yellow roses to her hotel room every week, and Daddy finally took to setting the boxes of chocolatecovered cherries that kept arriving for her in the common parlor of his boarding house, where his roommates ate them by the fistful. Paolo finally got up enough courage or desperation to appear there for a final showdown. For some reason, I picture Daddy stretched out on a narrow bed in a string T-shirt and boxer shorts, his eyes narrowing like a snake’s when Paolo, whom I imagine in the seersucker suit he wore for his wedding snapshot, ducked into the room with slanty ceilings. Mother was there to watch all this.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Phœbe, herself, the hackneyed, thorough-bred Phœbe, to whom all modes and devices of pleasure were known and familiar, found, it seems, in this exercise her those arbitrary tastes, for which there is no accounting. Not that she hated men, or did not even prefer them to her own sex; but when she met with such occasions as this was, a satiety of enjoyments in the common road, perhaps, too a great secret bias, inclined her to make the most of pleasure, wherever she could find it, without distinction of sexes. In this view, now well assured that she had, by her touches, sufficiently inflamed me for her purpose, she rolled down the bed clothes gently, and I saw myself stretched naked, my shift being turned up to my neck, whilst I had no power or sense to oppose it. Even my growing blushes expressed more desire than modesty, whilst the candle, left (to be sure not undesignedly) burning, threw a full light on my whole body. “No!” says Phœbe, “you must not, my sweet girl, think to hide all these treasures from me. My sight must be feasted as my touch. I must devour with my eyes this springing bosom. Suffer me to kiss it. I have not seen it enough. Let me kiss it once more. What firm, smooth, white flesh is here! How delicately shaped! Then this delicious down! Oh! let me view the small, dear, tender cleft! This is too much, I cannot bear it! I must! I must!” Here she took my hand, and in a transport carried it where you will easily guess. But what a difference in the state of the same thing! A spreading thicket of bushy curls marked the full grown, complete woman. Then the cavity to which she guided my hand easily received it; and as soon as she felt it within her, she moved herself to and fro, with so rapid a friction, that I presently withdrew it, wet and clammy, when instantly Phœbe grew more composed, after two or three sighs, and heart-fetched Oh’s! and giving me a kiss that seemed to exhale her soul through her lips, she replaced the bed-clothes over us. What pleasure she had found I will not say; but this I know, that the first sparks of kindling nature, the first ideas of pollution, were caught by me that night; and that the acquaintance and communication with the bad of our sex, is often as fatal to innocence as all the seductions of the other. But to go on. When Phœbe was restored to that calm, which I was far from the enjoyment of myself, she artfully sounded me on all the points necessary to govern the designs of my virtuous mistress on me, and by my answers, drawn from pure undissembled nature, she had no reason but to promise herself all imaginable success, so far as it depended on my ignorance, easiness and warmth of constitution.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  In the meantime, the extension of my limbs, languid stretching, sighs, short heavings, all conspired to assure that experienced wanton that I was more pleased than offended at her proceedings, which she seasoned with repeated kisses and exclamations, such as “Oh! what a charming creature thou art! What a happy man will he be that first makes a woman of you! Oh! that I were a man for your sake!” with the like broken expressions, interrupted by kisses as fierce and salacious as ever I received from the other sex. For my part, I was transported, confused, and out of myself; feelings so new were too much for me. My heated and alarmed senses were in a tumult that robbed me of all liberty of thought; tears of pleasure gushed from my eyes, and somewhat assuaged the fire that raged all over me. Phœbe, herself, the hackneyed, thorough-bred Phœbe, to whom all modes and devices of pleasure were known and familiar, found, it seems, in this exercise her those arbitrary tastes, for which there is no accounting. Not that she hated men, or did not even prefer them to her own sex; but when she met with such occasions as this was, a satiety of enjoyments in the common road, perhaps, too a great secret bias, inclined her to make the most of pleasure, wherever she could find it, without distinction of sexes. In this view, now well assured that she had, by her touches, sufficiently inflamed me for her purpose, she rolled down the bed clothes gently, and I saw myself stretched naked, my shift being turned up to my neck, whilst I had no power or sense to oppose it. Even my growing blushes expressed more desire than modesty, whilst the candle, left (to be sure not undesignedly) burning, threw a full light on my whole body. “No!” says Phœbe, “you must not, my sweet girl, think to hide all these treasures from me. My sight must be feasted as my touch. I must devour with my eyes this springing bosom. Suffer me to kiss it. I have not seen it enough. Let me kiss it once more. What firm, smooth, white flesh is here! How delicately shaped! Then this delicious down! Oh! let me view the small, dear, tender cleft! This is too much, I cannot bear it! I must! I must!” Here she took my hand, and in a transport carried it where you will easily guess. But what a difference in the state of the same thing! A spreading thicket of bushy curls marked the full grown, complete woman.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  With this stripling, all whose art of love was the action of it, I could, without check of awe or restraint, give a loose to jay, and execute every scheme of dalliance my fond fancy might put me on, in which he was, in every sense, a most exquisite companion. And now my great pleasure lay in humouring all the petulances, all the wanton frolic of a raw novice just fledged, and keen on the burning scent of his game, but unbroken to the sport: and, to carry on the figure, who could better read the wood than he, or stand fairer for the heart of the hunt? He advanced then to my bed side, and whilst he faultered out his message, I could observe his colour rise, and his eyes lighten with joy, in seeing me in a situation as favourable to his loosest wishes, as if he had bespoke the play. I smiled, and put out my hand towards him, which he kneeled down to (a politeness taught him by love alone, that great master of it) and greedily kissed. After exchanging a few confused questions and answers, I asked him if he would come to bed to me, for the little time I could venture to detain him. This was just asking a person, dying with hunger, to feast upon the dish on earth the most to his palate. Accordingly, without further reflection, his clothes were off in an instant; when, blushing still more at this new liberty, he got under the bed clothes I held up to receive him, and was now in bed with a woman for the first time in his life. Here began the usual tender preliminaries, as delicious, perhaps, as the crowning act of enjoyment itself; which they often beget an impatience of, that makes pleasure destructive of itself, by hurrying on the final period, and closing that scene of bliss, in which the actors are generally too well pleased with their parts, not to wish them an eternity of duration. When we had sufficiently graduated our advances towards the main point, by toying, kissing, clipping, feeling my breasts, now round and plump, feeling that part of me I might call a furnace mouth, from the prodigious intense heat his fiery touches had rekindled there, my young sportsman, emboldened by the very freedom he could wish, wontonly takes my hand, and carries it to that enormous machine of his, that stood with a stiffness! a hardness! an upward bend of erection! and which, together with it bottom dependence, the inestimable bulse of ladies jewels, formed a grand showout of goods indeed! Then its dimensions, mocking either grasp or span, almost renewed my terrors. I could not conceive how, or by what means I could take, or put such a bulk out of sight. I stroked it gently, on which the mutinous rogue seemed to swell, and gather a new degree of fierceness and insolence; so that finding it grew not to be trifled with any longer, I prepared for rubbers in good earnest.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "Soon we were in his apartment. When we found ourselves in the small, dimly-lighted antechamber, he opened his arms and stretched them out towards me. "'Welcome!' said he. 'May this home be ever thine.' Then he added, in a low tone, in that unknown, musical tongue, 'My body hungereth for thee, soul of my soul, life of my life!' "He had barely finished these words before we were lovingly caressing each other. "After thus fondling each other for a few moments,—'Do you know,' said he, 'that I have been expecting you to-day?' "'Expecting me?' "'Yes, I knew that sooner or later you would be mine. Moreover, I felt that you would be coming to-day.' "'How so?' "'I had a presentiment.' "'And had I not come?' "'I should have done what you were going to do when I met you, for life without you would have been unbearable.' "'What! drowned yourself?' "'No, not exactly: the river is too cold and bleak, I am too much of a Sybarite for that. No, I should simply have put myself to sleep—the eternal slumber of death, dreaming of you, in this room prepared to receive you, and where no man has ever set his foot.' "Saying these words he opened the door of a small chamber, and ushered me into it. A strong, overpowering smell of white heliotrope first greeted my nostrils. "It was a most peculiar room, the walls of which were covered over with some warm, white, soft, quilted stuff, studded all over with frosted silver buttons; the floor was covered with the curly white fleece of young lambs; in the middle of the apartment stood a capacious couch, on which was thrown the skin of a huge polar bear. Over this single piece of furniture, an old silver lamp—evidently from some Byzantine church or some Eastern synagogue—-shed a pale glimmering light, sufficient, however, to light up the dazzling whiteness of this temple of Priapus whose votaries we were. "'I know,' said he, as he dragged me in, 'I know that white is your favourite colour, that it suits your dark complexion, so it has been fitted up for you and you alone. No other mortal shall ever set his foot in it.' "Uttering these words, he in a trice stripped me deftly of all my clothes—for I was in his hands like a slumbering child, or a man in a trance. "In an instant I was not only stark naked, but stretched on the bear-skin, whilst he, standing in front of me, was gloating upon me with famished eyes. "I felt his glances greedily fall everywhere; they sank in my brain, and my head began to swim; they pierced through my heart, whipping my blood up, making it flow quicker and hotter through all the arteries; they darted within my veins, and Priapus unhooded itself and lifted up its head violently so that all the tangled web of veins in its body seemed ready to burst.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  “According to practical maxims of life, I ought to boast of my birth, since I owe it to pure love, without marriage; but this I know, it was scarce possible to inherit a stronger propensity to that cause of my being than I did. I was the rare production of the first essay of a journeyman cabinet-maker, on his master’s maid: the consequence of which was a big belly, and the loss of a place. He was not in circumstances to do much for her; and yet, after all this blemish, she found means, after she had dropt her burthen, and disposed of me to a poor relation in the country, to repair it by marrying a pastry-cook here in London, in thriving business; on whom she soon, under favour of the complete ascendant he had given her over him, passed me for a child she had by her first husband. I had, on that footing, been taken home, and was not six years old when this father-in-law died, and left my mother in tolerable circumstances, and without any children by him. As to my natural father, he had betaken himself to the sea; where, when the truth of things came out, I was told that he died, not immensely rich you may think, since he was no more than a common sailor. As I grew up, under the eyes of my mother, who kept on the business, I could not but see, in her severe watchfulness, the marks of a slip, which she did not care should be hereditary; but we no more choose our passions than our features or complexions, and the bent of mine was so strong to the forbidden pleasure, that it got the better, at length, of all her care and precaution. I was scarce twelve years old, before that part which she wanted so much to keep out of harm’s way, made me feel its impatience to be taken notice of, and come into play; already had it put forth the signs of forwardness in the sprout of a soft down over it, which had often fluttered, and I might also say, grown under my constant touch and visitation, so pleased was I with what I took to be a kind of title to womanhood, that state I pined to be entered of, for the pleasures I conceived were annexed to it; and now the growing importance of that part to me, and the new sensations in it, demolished at once all my girlish play-things and amusements. Nature now pointed me strongly to more solid diversions, while all the stings of desire settled so fiercely in that little centre of them, that I could not mistake the spot I wanted a playfellow in.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Poor Louisa, however, bore up at length better than could have been expected: and though she suffered, and greatly too, yet, ever true to the good old cause, she suffered with pleasure and enjoyed her pain. And soon now, by dint of an enraged enforcement, the brute-machine, driven like a whirlwind, made all smoke again, and wedging its way up, to the utmost extremity, left her, in point of penetration, nothing to fear or to desire: and now, “Gorged with the dearest morsel of the earth,” (Shakespeare.) Louisa lay, pleased to the heart, pleased to her utmost capacity of being so, with every fibre in those parts, stretched almost to breaking, on a rack of joy, whilst the instrument of all this over-fullness searched her senses with its sweet excess, till the pleasure gained upon her so, its point stung her so home, that catching at length the rage from her furious driver and sharing the riot of his wild rapture, she went wholly out of her mind into that favourite part of her body, the whole intenseness of which was so fervously filled, and employed: there alone she existed, all lost in those delirious transports, those extasies of the senses, which her winking eyes, the brightened vermilion of her lips and cheeks, and sighs of pleasure deeply fetched, so pathetically expressed. In short, she was now as mere a machine as much wrought on, and had her motions as little at her own command, as the natural himself, who, thus broke in upon her, made her feel with a vengeance his tempestuous mettle he battered with; their active loins quivered again with the violence of their conflict, till the surge of pleasure, foaming and raging to a height, drew down the pearly shower that was, to allay this hurricane. The purely sensitive idiot then first shed those tears of joy that attend its last moments, not without an agony of delight, and even almost a roar of rapture, as the gush escaped him; so sensibly too for Louisa, that she kept him faithful company, going off, in consent, with the old symptoms: a delicious delirium, a tremendous convulsive shudder, and the critical dying: Oh! And now, on his getting off she lay pleasure-drenched, and regorging its essential sweets; but quite spent, and gasping for breath, without other sensation of life than in those exquisite vibrations that trembled still on the strings of delight; which had been too intensively touched, and which nature had so ravishingly stirred with, for the senses to be quickly at peace from.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "No, always for grown up men, for strong muscular specimens of manhood. I had from childhood a hankering for males of the prizefighter's type, with huge limbs, rippling muscles, mighty thews; for brutal strength in fact. "My first infatuation was for a young Hercules of a butcher, who came a-courting our maid—a pretty girl, as far as I can remember. He was a stout athletic fellow with sinewy arms, who looked as if he could have felled an ox with a blow of his fist. "I often used to sit and watch him unawares, noting every expression of his face whilst he was making love, almost feeling the lust he felt himself. "How I did wish he would speak to me instead of joking with my stupid maid. I felt jealous of her although I liked her very much. Sometimes he used to take me up and fondle me, but that was very seldom; one day, however, when—apparently excited—he had tried hard to kiss her, and had not succeeded, he took me up and greedily pressed his lips against mine, kissing me as if he were parched with thirst. "Although I was but a very little child, still I think this act must have brought about an erection, for I remember every pulse of mine was fluttering. I still remember the pleasure I felt when—like a cat—I could rub myself against his legs, nestle between his thighs, sniff him like a dog, or pat and paddle him; but, alas! he seldom heeded me. "My greatest delight in my boyhood was to see men bathing. I could hardly keep myself from rushing up to them; I should have liked to handle and kiss them all over. I was quite beyond myself when I saw one of them naked. "A phallus acted upon me, as—I suppose—it does upon a very hot woman; my mouth actually watered at its sight, especially if it was a good-sized, full-blooded one, with an unhooded thick and fleshy glans. "Withal, I never understood that I loved men and not women. What I felt was that convulsion of the brain that kindles the eyes with a fire full of madness, an eager bestial delight, a fierce sensual desire. Love I thought was a quiet chaffy drawing-room flirtation, something soft, maudlin and æsthetic, quite different from that passion full of rage and hatred which was burning within me. In a word, much more of a sedative than an aphrodisiac.' "Then I suppose you had never had a woman?"