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 Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  10 Letter from a Buddhist Priest telling his Friend that his Lover comes to him D EAR FRIEND IN THE TEACHING OF BUDDHA: The cherry trees in flower at Kyoto so troubled me that I left the capital last spring. I send you this letter by a man who is going to visit the city. I hope that you are zealous in our religion at your temple, and without disturbance. My hut must have become the resort of mice and rats since it has been unoccupied; though there is not a single piece of fish left there for such guests to enjoy. You may laugh at my poverty, dear friend. No one will regret the chrysanthemums when they fade in my garden. But if by chance you should be passing near my hut, enter, and, since I have given you the key, let the weary passers-by come in. I buried some nuts and potatoes under the north door: use them, for otherwise they will be spoiled. Takenaka sent me these provisions, and I do not like to waste them. And now I shall speak to you of myself. As you know, my eternal and incurable weakness is to fall in love with some pretty boy; and I confess to you that I have an affair here with an entrancing lad, and I hesitate to return to Kyoto. Last year, on leaving the capital, I went to my friend at Okayama in the Province of Bizen. He received me very hospitably, but I quickly grew weary there; so I went by boat to the Province of Higo, where I have a friend who is a poet and a priest of the temple of Kiyomasa, and I lived with him. One evening I was in his wonderful garden, enjoying the fresh breeze after a hot day. An artificial Stream flowed between fanciful rocks and grass-covered hillocks which had been built up there. The effect was as the dwelling of some mountain hermit, delighting in spiritual beauty and the pure pleasures of the soul. The faint song of a cuckoo rose from the density of the mighty pines behind the temple, so poignantly pure that I thought I had never heard such beautiful song in Kyoto. I thought that a cuckoo, singing in the evening in so sacred a place as the temple of Kiyomasa, would make a fitting subject for a poem. I began to compose a poem in my head, and was thinking out the rhymes and the arrangement of the syllables. Then there came out of the temple the whole of the High Priest's train. Amongst them walked a very beautiful page, about sixteen years old, so lovely that I thought I had never seen such charm and elegance even in the flowering capital. I was indeed surprised to see so beautiful a page in such a remote district as the Western Province of Higo. I was greatly troubled by him.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  A constant stream of aspiring young actors, writers, and directors came to Hollywood with common dreams, trying to leverage whatever ability or looks they might have in a market already overwhelmed by beautiful and talented and chronically unemployed young people. Many of them were rather poorly educated—they had left school to gamble on stardom—but they were smart, talented, and desperately ambitious. Scientology promised these neophytes an entry into the gated community of celebrity. The church claimed to have a method for getting ahead; just as enticing was the whispered assertion that a network of Scientologists existed at the upper levels of the entertainment industry eager to advance like-minded believers—a claim that never had much to support it, but was not entirely untrue. Scientology was a small but growing subculture in the Hollywood studios. Kirstie Alley was an aspiring actress from Wichita who left the University of Kansas in her sophomore year, then struggled with an addiction to cocaine. She says that a single auditing session cured her habit. “Without Scientology, I would be dead,” she declared. The testimonials of such celebrities would lead many curious seekers to follow their example. Posters with the faces of television and movie stars were placed outside Scientology churches and missions, saying, “I AM A SCIENTOLOGIST ... COME IN AND FIND OUT WHY.” In the Hollywood trade magazine Variety, Scientology offered courses promising to help neophyte actors “increase your self-confidence” and “make it in the industry.” Scientologists stood outside Central Casting, where actors sign up for roles as extras, passing out flyers for workshops on how to find an agent or get into the Screen Actors Guild. Courses at the Celebrity Centre focused on communication and self-presentation skills, which were especially prized in the entertainment industry. The drills and training routines would have felt somewhat familiar to anyone who had done scene work in an acting class. Many actors, at once insecure but competitive by nature, were looking for an advantage, which Scientology promised to give them. The fact that anyone was interested in them at all must have come as a welcome surprise. Others who passed through Scientology at the same time as Paul Haggis were actors Tom Berenger, Christopher Reeve, and Anne Francis; and musicians Lou Rawls, Leonard Cohen, Sonny Bono, and Gordon Lightfoot. None stayed long. Jerry Seinfeld took a communication course, which he still credits with helping him as a comedian. Elvis Presley bought some books as well as some services he never actually availed himself of.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  The meeting started, and we had to stop. But my mind continued. I started compiling a list in my head of authors that I could try to use against her. I wasn’t about to lose this easily. I paid attention to nothing that was said during the meeting. A passing mention was made about my return, I think. But my mind was occupied. As soon as we got out into the hallway and started our walk together to our classes, I picked up again where we had left off. “D.H. Lawrence?” “Lady Chatterley’s Lover. I read that in high school because I thought it would be particularly scandalous. It wasn’t what I expected.” “E.M. Forster?” She actually stopped when I said his name. “Any person worth a damn has read Howard’s End. Fact.” I glanced around quickly to make sure no one was around to hear the damn. Thankfully, no one was on our end of the hallway. “Less casual swearing in the hallway, ma’am. You don’t want to get fired before you even get hired.” “Are you going to turn me in?” she asked, and I could have sworn she batted her eyes. “No, ma’am,” I said, knowing that even though I wasn’t a blusher, I was probably blushing now. She was sexy. “There you go with that ‘ma’am’ shit again,” she said, putting very clear emphasis on the word shit. She wasn’t going to back down. “Are you normally this defiant?” I asked, wanting to jump her right there in the hallway. She shook her head, slightly. “I guess you just bring out the best of me,” she said. With that, she turned and walked into her classroom, giving me a splendid look at her ass. God, when did I become an ass guy? Better yet, when did I become the kind of guy who had the hots for a married co-worker? Classes may have started but that didn’t keep us from communicating. I felt a little childish for basically texting her as soon as I sat down at my desk. Wharton... I figured I could judge by the amount of time it would take her to answer whether or not she was looking the author up. Even if she had read it, if she took a while I would just assume so and hold it against her. Her response was immediate. I thought we already discussed you asking me about Pulitzer winners? Dammit. Age of Innocence. I needed someone who hadn’t received any significant awards. Time for a curveball. Collins. Who? she asked. Then followed with, Jackie Collins? Do you take me for a reader of trashy novels? No, not Jackie. Suzanne. I’m not familiar with that name, she replied. This time I was shocked. If you tell the students that, they might lynch you. Why? What did she write? Oh, just this little series about games. And hunger. Huh? The Hunger Games! Oh god. I think I knew that. And you haven’t read the series??

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  “Okay. Well you have to read Dubliners then. Short stories, mostly depressing.” “Sounds like my kind of pleasure reading.” “Oh shut up. You’ll love them. He’s my favorite author.” “That’s a pretty bold statement coming from someone who has read so many different books.” “I can be a fairly bold person.” “I can see that,” I said, wondering why certain things she said gave me goose bumps—the good kind. “So you promise you’ll read it?” she asked as we neared the lunchroom. The sound of the students waiting in line was almost as offensive as the smell of fried food wafting through the halls. “I do. I’ll just have to hit up my local public library and find it. It’s probably covered in dust.” She jabbed me with her elbow. “I have two copies at the house. Come by after work sometime tonight and I’ll let you borrow one.” “Are you sure your husband won’t mind if I stopped by?” “He won’t be home.” And with that, she smiled and walked into the lunchroom.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I don’t know why the hell I asked for five pounds, but it sounded like a good idea at the time. “You have one of these,” I said, as we were cleaning the prawns together at my kitchen sink. I ran my finger laterally along its body, pointing out the dark line that needed to be cleaned out. She frowned, looking down at the prawn she was holding. “It’s called a mud vein.” “A mud vein,” she repeated. “Doesn’t sound like a compliment.” “Maybe not to some people.” She de-headed her shrimp with a flick of her knife and tossed it in the bowl. “It’s your darkness that pulls me in. Your mud vein. But sometimes having a mud vein will kill you.” She set down the knife and washed her hands, drying them on the back of her jeans. “I have to go.” “Sure,” I said. I didn’t move until I heard the screen door slam. I wasn’t upset that my words had run her off. She didn’t like to be found out. But she’d be back. Nick’s Book She didn’t come back. I tried to tell myself that I didn’t care. There were plenty of women. Plenty. There were women everywhere I looked. They all had skin and bones, and I’m sure some of them even had silver streaks in their hair. And if they didn’t have a silver streak in their hair I’m sure I could convince them to put it there. But there is something about the process of convincing yourself that you don’t care that just confirms even more that you do. Every time I passed the window in my kitchen I found myself looking up to see if she was standing in the rain, judging the weeds poking out of the driveway. I looked at those weeds so much that eventually I went out there in the rain and pulled them up one by one. It took me all afternoon and I got a nasty head cold. I was cleaning up my driveway for a woman. I wanted to go look for her, but she’d told me little to nothing about herself. I could hold the five things she’d said in the palm of my hand, and still find plenty of room. Her name was Brenna. She came from the desert. She liked to be on top. She ate bread by pulling off little pieces and placing them in the center of her tongue. I had asked her questions, and she had skillfully turned them back on me. I had been eager to give her answers—too eager—and in the process I’d forgotten to collect answers from her. She had played me like a narcissistic trombone. Tooting, tooting, tooting my own horn. She must have been thinking what a fool I was the entire time. Toot, toot. I went back to the park, hoping to run into her again.

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

  The platform of his snow white bosom, that was laid out in a manly proportion, presented, on the vermilion summit of each pap, the idea of a rose about to blow. Nor did his shirt hinder me from observing the symmetry of his limbs, that exactness of shape, in the fall of it towards the loins, where the waist ends and the rounding swell of the hips commences; where the skin, sleek, smooth, and dazzling white, burnishes on; the stretch-over firm, plump, ripe flesh, that crimped’ and ran into dimples at the least pressure, or that the touch could not rest upon, but slid over on the surface of the most polished ivory. His thighs, finely fashioned, and with a florid glossy roundness, gradually tapering away to the knees, seemed pillars worthy to support that beauteous frame at the bottom of which I could not, without some remains of terror, some tender emotions too, fix my eyes on that terrible machine, which had, not long before, with such fury broke into, torn, and almost ruined those soft, tender parts of mine, that had not yet done smarting with the effects of its rage; but behold it now! crest fallen, reclining its half-caped vermilion head over one of his thighs, quiet, pliant, and to all appearances incapable of the mischiefs and cruelty it had committed. Then the beautiful growth of the hair, in short and soft curls round its roots, its whiteness, branched veins, the supple softness of the shaft, as it lay foreshortened, rolled and shrunk up into a squat thickness, languid, and borne up from between his thighs, by its globular appendage, that wondrous treasure bag of nature’s sweets, which revelled round, and pursed up in the only wrinkles that are known to please, perfected the prospect, and altogether formed the most interesting moving picture in nature, and surely infinitely superior to those nudities furnished by the painters, statuaries, or any art, which are purchased at immense prices; whilst the sight of them in actual life is scarce sovereignly tasted by any but the few whom nature has endowed with a fire of imagination, warmly pointed by a truth of judgment to the spring-head, the originals of beauty, of nature’s unequalled composition, above all the imitations of art, or the reach of wealth to pay their price.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  In 563, the forty-second year of his age, Columba prompted by a passion for travelling and a zeal for the spread of Christianity,81 sailed with twelve fellow-apostles to the West of Scotland, possibly on invitation of the provincial king, to whom he was related by blood. He was presented with the island of Hy, commonly called Iona,82 near the Western coast of Scotland about fifty miles West from Oban. It is an inhospitable island, three miles and a half long and a mile and a half broad, partly cultivated, partly covered with hill pasture, retired dells, morass and rocks, now in possession of the Duke of Argyll, numbering about three hundred Protestant inhabitants, an Established Presbyterian Church, and a Free Church. The neighboring island of Staffa, though smaller and uninhabited, is more interesting to the ordinary tourist, and its Fingal’s Cave is one of the most wonderful specimens of the architectural skill of nature; it looks like a Gothic cathedral, 66 feet high, 42 feet broad, and 227 feet long, consisting of majestic basalt columns, an arched roof, and an open portal towards the ocean, which dashes in and out in a constant succession of waves, sounding solemn anthems in this unique temple of nature. Columba and his fellow-monks must have passed it on their missionary wanderings; but they were too much taken up with heaven to look upon the wonders of the earth, and the cave remained comparatively unknown to the world till 1772. Those islands wore the same aspect in the sixth century as now, with the exception of the woods, which have disappeared. Walter Scott (in the "Lord of the Isles") has thrown the charm of his poetry over the Hebridean archipelago, from which proceeded the Christianization of Scotland.83

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I wasn’t sure if it was a pickup line. It was embarrassingly truthful. Just saying it made my lips pucker like I was holding in a mouthful of lemon pulp. I eyed the worn leather messenger bag at her hip. “What’s in the bag?” I asked. I was starting to get a feeling about her. Like I knew what she was before she told me. “A computer.” I didn’t peg her as a college student. She had too much attitude to be a professional. Self-employed, I was guessing. “You’re a writer, too,” I said. She nodded. “So we speak the same language,” I offered. She had a strip of silver running through her brown hair. More proof, it seemed, that she was born for winter. “You’re John Karde,” she said. “I’ve seen your picture. In Barnes and Noble.” “Well, that’s embarrassing.” “Only if I don’t like sappy women’s fiction,” she said. “Which I do.” “Do you write it?” She shook her head, and I swear that sliver of silver glimmered in the dying sun. My nerdy writer mind immediately said mithril. “I’m working on my first real novel. It feels pretty angry.” “Let’s talk about it over dinner,” I offered. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. I mean, sure she was stunning—but it was more than that. She was a house with no windows. You could go crazy in one of those. I wanted in. She eyed my dog. “I can drop him off, my house is on the way to town.” She paused only to check her watch before nodding. We walked in silence for a few blocks. She kept her head down, choosing the sidewalk over the rest of the world. I wondered if she liked the cracks, or if she just didn’t want to meet the eyes of the people we passed. It might have felt uncomfortable, our quiet walking, but it didn’t. I suspected her to be a woman of few words. Muses often spoke with their eyes and their bodies. The power they supply is electrifying in itself. They set fire to your synapses.

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

  "As I got up I felt so weak and exhausted that it seemed as if I were walking in a trance, so, without exactly knowing whither I wended my steps, I mechanically followed some persons in front of me, and, a few moments afterwards, I unexpectedly found myself in the green room. "The saloon was almost empty. At the further end a few dandies were grouped round a young man in evening dress, whose back was turned towards me. I recognized one of them as Briancourt." "What, the General's son?" "Precisely." "I remember him. He always dressed in such a conspicuous way." "Quite so. That evening, for instance, when every gentleman was in black, he, on the contrary, wore a white flannel suit; as usual, a very open Byron-like collar, and a red Lavalliére cravat tied in a huge bow." "Yes, for he had a most lovely neck and throat." "He was very handsome, although I, for myself, had always tried to avoid him. He had a way of ogling which made you feel quite uncomfortable. You laugh, but it is quite true. There are some men who, when staring at a woman, seem all the while to be undressing her. Briancourt had that indecent way of looking at everybody. I vaguely felt his eyes all over me, and that made me shy." "But you were acquainted with him, were you not?" "Yes, we had been at some Kindergarten or other together, but, being three years younger than he, I was always in a lower class. Anyhow, that evening, upon perceiving him, I was about to leave the room, when the gentleman in the evening suit turned round. It was the pianist. As our eyes met again, I felt a strange flutter within me, and the fascination of his looks was so powerful that I was hardly able to move. Then, attracted onwards as I was, instead of quitting the green room, I walked on slowly, almost reluctantly, towards the group. The musician, without staring, did not, however, turn his eyes away from me. I was quivering from head to foot. He seemed to be slowly drawing me to him, and I must confess the feeling was such a pleasant one that I yielded entirely to it. "Just then Briancourt, who had not seen me, turned round, and recognizing me, nodded in his off-hand way. As he did so, the pianist's eyes brightened, and he whispered something to him, whereupon the General's son, without giving him any answer, turned towards me, and, taking me by the hand, said: "'Camille, allow me to introduce you to my friend Réné. M. Réné Teleny—M. Camille Des Grieux.' "I bowed, blushing.

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

  In short, it stood an object of terror and delight. But what was yet more surprising, the owner of this natural curiosity, through the want of occasions in the strictness of his home breeding, and the little time he had been in town not having afforded him one; was hitherto an absolute stranger, in practice at least, to the use of all that manhood he was so nobly stocked with; and it now fell to my lot to stand his first trial of it, if I could resolve to run the risks of its disproportion to that tender part of me, which such an oversized machine was very fit to lay in ruins. But it was now of the latest to deliberate, for, by this time, the young fellow, over heated with the present objects, and too high metled to be longer curbed in by that modesty and awe which had hitherto restrained him, ventured, under the stronger impulse, and instructive promptership of nature alone, to slip his hands, trembling with eager impetuous desires, under my petticoats; and seeing, I suppose, nothing extremely severe in my looks, to stop or dash him, he feels out, and seizes, gently, the center spot of his ardours. Oh then! the fiery touch of his lingers determines me, and my fears melting away before the glowing intolerable heat, my thighs disclose of themselves, and yield all liberty to his hand: and now, a favourable movement giving my petticoats a toss, the avenue lay too fair, too open to be missed. He is now upon me: I had placed myself with a jerk under him, as commodious and open as possible to his attempts, which were untoward enough, for his machine, meeting with no inlet, bore and battered stiffly against me in random pushes, now above, now below, now beside his point; till, burning with impatience from its irritating touches, I guided gently, with my hand, this furious fescue to where my young novice was now to be taught his first lesson of pleasure. Thus he nicked, at length, the warm and insufficient orifice; but he was made to find no breach impracticable, and mine, though so often entered, was still far from wide enough to take him easily in. By my direction, however, the head of his unwieldy machine was so critically pointed, that, feeling him fore-right against the tender opening, a favourable motion from me met his timely thrust, by which the lips of it, strenuously dilated, gave way to his thus assisted impetuosity, so that we might both feel that he had gained a lodgment. Pursuing then his point, he soon, by violent, and, to me, most painful piercing thrusts, wedges himself at length so far in, as to be now tolerably secure of his entrance: here he stuck, and I now felt such a mixture of pleasure and pain, as there is no giving a definition of.

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

  "Therese," Rodin said to me several days later, "I am going to install you near my daughter; in this way, you will avoid all frictions with the other two women, and I intend to give you three hundred pounds wages." Such a post was, in my situation, a kind of godsend; inflamed by the desire to restore Rosalie to righteousness, and perhaps even her father too Were I able to attain some influence over him, I repented not of what I had just done... Rodin, having had me dress myself, conducted me at once to where his daughter was; Rosalie received me with effusions of joy, and I was promptly established. Ere a week was gone by I had begun to labor at the conversions after which I thirsted, but Rodin's intransigence defeated all my efforts. "Do not believe," was the response he made to my wise counsels, "that the kind of deference I showed to the virtue in you proves that I either esteem virtue or have the desire to favor it over vice. Think nothing of the sort, Therese, 'twould be to deceive yourself; on the basis of what I have done in your regard, anyone who was to maintain, as consequential to my behavior, the importance or the necessity of virtue would fall into the very largest error, and sorry I would be were you to fancy that such is my fashion of thinking. The rustic hovel to which I repair for shelter when, during the hunt, the excessive heat of the sun's rays falls perpendicularly upon me, that hut is certainly not to be mistaken for a superior building: its worth is merely circumstantial: I am exposed to some sort of danger, I find something which affords protection, I use it, but is this something the grander on that account? can it be the less contemptible? In a totally vicious society, virtue would be totally worthless; our societies not being entirely of this species, one must absolutely either play with virtue or make use of it so as to have less to dread from its faithful followers.

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

  "Teleny returned me my kisses with the passionate eagerness of despair. His lips were on fire, his love seemed to have changed into a raging fever. I don't know what had come over me, but I felt that pleasure could kill, but not calm me. My head was all aglow! "There are two kinds of lascivious feelings, both equally strong and overpowering: the one is the fervent, carnal lust of the senses, enkindled in the genital organs and mounting to the brain, making human beings 'Swim in mirth, and fancy that they feel Divinity within them breeding wings Wherewith to scorn the earth.' The other is the cold libidinousness of fancy, the keen and gall-like irradiation of the brain which parches the healthy blood. "The first, the strong concupiscence of lusty youth— 'as with new wine intoxicated,' natural to the flesh, is satisfied as soon as men take largely 'their fill of love and love's disport,' and the heavily-laden anther has sturdily shaken forth the seed that clogged it; and then they feel as our first parents did, when dewy sleep 'Oppressed them, wearied with their amorous play.' The body.then so delightfully light seems to rest on 'earth's freshest, softest lap,' and the slothful yet half-awakened mind broods over its slumbering shell. "The second, kindled in the head, 'bred of unkindly fumes,' is the lechery of senility—a morbid craving, like the hunger of surfeited gluttony. The senses, like Messalina, 'lassata sed non satiata,' ever tingling, keep hankering after the impossible. The spermatic ejaculations, far from calming the body, only irritate it, for the exciting influence of a salacious fancy continues after the anther has yielded all its seed. Even if acrid blood comes instead of the balmy, cream-like fluid, it brings with it nothing but a painful irritation. If, unlike as in styriasis, an erection does not take place, and the phallus remains limp and lifeless, still the nervous system is no less convulsed by impotent desire and lechery—a mirage of the over-heated brain, no less shattering because it is effete. "These two feelings combined together are something akin to what I underwent as, holding Teleny clasped against my throbbing, heaving breast, I felt within me the contagion of his eager longing and of his overpowering sadness. "I had taken off my friend's shirt collar and cravat to see and to feel his beautiful bare neck, then little by little I stripped him of all his clothes, till at last he remained naked in my embrace. "What a model of voluptuous comeliness he was, with his strong and muscular shoulders, his broad and swelling chest, his skin of a pearly whiteness, as soft and as fresh as the petals of a waterlily, his limbs rounded like those of Leotard, with whom every woman was in love.

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

  "Having done this, he took hold of my rod and pressed it against his gaping anus. The tip of the frisky phallus soon found its entrance in the hospitable hole that endeavoured to give it admission. I pressed a little; the whole of the glans was engulfed. The sphincter soon gripped it in such a way that it could not come out without an effort. I thrust it slowly to prolong as much as possible the ineffable sensation that ran through every limb, to calm the quivering nerves, and to allay the heat of the blood. Another push, and half the phallus was in his body. I pulled it out half an inch, though it seemed to me a yard by the prolonged pleasure I felt. I pressed forward again, and the whole of it, down to its very root, was all swallowed up. Thus wedged, I vainly endeavoured to drive it higher up—an impossible feat, and, clasped as I was, I felt it wriggling in its sheath like a baby in its mother's womb, giving myself and him an unutterable and delightful titillation. "So keen was the bliss that overcame me, that I asked myself if some ethereal, life-giving fluid were not being poured on my head, and trickling down slowly over my quivering flesh? "Surely the rain-awakened flowers must be conscious of such a sensation during a shower, after they have been parched by the scorching rays of an estival sun. "Teleny again put his arm round me and held me tight. I gazed at myself within his eyes, he saw himself in mine. During this voluptuous, lambent feeling, we patted each other's bodies softly, our lips cleaved together and my tongue was again in his mouth. We remained in this copulation almost without stirring, for I felt that the slightest movement would provoke a copious ejaculation, and this feeling was too exquisite to be allowed to pass away so quickly. Still we could not help writhing, and we almost swooned away with delight. We were both shivering with lust, from the roots of our hair to the tips of our toes; all the flesh of our bodies kept bickering luxuriously, just as placid waters of the mere do at noontide when kissed by the sweet-scented, wanton breeze that has just deflowered the virgin rose. "Such intensity of delight could not, however, last very long; a few almost unwilling contractions of the sphincter brandle the phallus, and then the first brunt was over; I thrust in with might and main, I wallowed on him; my breath came thickly; I panted, I sighed, I groaned. The thick burning fluid was spouted out slowly and at long intervals. "As I rubbed myself against him, he underwent all the sensations I was feeling; for I was hardly drained of the last drop before I was likewise bathed with his own seething sperm.

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

  His body was finely formed, and of a most vigorous make, square shouldered, and broad chested: his face was not remarkable any way, but for a nose inclining to the Roman, eyes large, black, and sparkling, and a ruddiness in his cheeks that was the more a grace; for his complexion was of the brownest, not of that dusky dun colour which excludes, the idea of freshness, but of that clear, olive gloss, which glowing with life, dazzles perhaps less than fairness, and yet pleases more, when it pleases at all. His hair being too short to tie fell no lower than his neck, in short easy curls; and he had a few sprigs about his paps, that garnished his chest in a style of strength and manliness. Then his grand movement, which seemed to rise out of a thicket of curling hair, that spread from the root all over his thighs and belly up to the navel, stood stiff and upright, but of a size to frighten me, by sympathy for the small tender part which was the object of its fury, and which now lay exposed to my fairest view; for he had, immediately on stoppings off his shirt, gently pushed her down on the couch, which stood conveniently to break her willing fall. Her thighs were spread out to their utmost extention, and discovered between them the mark of the sex, the red-centered cleft of flesh, whose lips vermillioning inwards, expressed a small ruby line in sweet miniature, such as Guide’s touch or colouring: could never attain to the life or delicacy of.

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

  In short, this develish thing, with its impetuous girds and itching fires, led me such a life, that I could neither, night or day, be at peace with it or myself. In time, however, I thought I had gained a prodigious prize, when figuring to myself that my fingers were something of the shape of what I pined for, I worked my way in with one of them with great agitation and delight; yet not without pain too did I deflower myself as far as it could reach; proceeding with such a fury of passion, in this solitary and last shift of pleasure, as extended me at length breathless on the bed in an amorous melting trance. “But frequency of use dulling the sensation, I soon began to perceive that this work was but a paultry shallow expedient, that went but a little way to relieve me, and rather raised more flame than its dry and insignificant titillation could rightly appease. “Man alone, I almost instinctively knew, as well as by what I had industriously picked up at weddings and christenings, was possessed of the only remedy that could reduce this rebellious disorder; but watched and overlooked as I was, how to come at it was the point, and that, to all appearance, an invincible one; not that I did not rack my brains and invention how at once to elude my mothers vigilance, and procure myself the satisfaction of my impetuous curiosity and longings for this mighty and untasted pleasure. At length, however, a singular chance did at once the work of a long course of alertness. One day that we had dined at an acquaintance over the way, together with a gentlewoman-lodger that occupied the first floor of our house, there started an indispensable necessity for my mother’s going down to Greenwich to accompany her: the party was settled, when I do not know what genius whispered me to plead a headache, which I certainly had not, against my being included in a jaunt that I had not the least relish for.

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

  It was on this foot that I solved to myself all the falsity I employed to procure him that blissful pleasure in it, which most certainly he would not have tasted in the truth of things. Eased, however, and relieved by one discharge, he now applied himself to sooth, encourage, and to put me into humour and patience to bear his next attempt, which he began to prepare and gather force for, from all the incentives of the touch and sight which he could think of, by examining every individual part of my whole body, which he declared his satisfaction with, in raptures of applause, kisses universally imprinted, and sparing no part of me, in all the eagerest wantonness of feeling, seeing, and toying. His vigour, however, did not return so soon, and I felt him more than once pushing at the door, but so little in a condition to break in, that I question whether he had the power to enter, had I held it ever so open; but this he then thought me too little acquainted with the nature of things, to have any regret or confusion about, and he kept fatiguing himself and me for a long time, before he was in any state to resume his attacks with any prospect of success and then I breathed him so warmly, and kept him so at bay, that before he had made any sensible progress in point of penetration, he was deliciously sweated, and wearied out indeed: so that it was deep in the morning before he achieved his second let-go, about half way of entrance, I all the while crying and complaining of his prodigious vigour, and the immensity of what I appeared to suffer splitting up with. Tired, however, at length, with such athletic drudgery, my champion began now to give out, and to gladly embrace the refreshment of some rest.

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

  All my back parts, naked half way up, were now fully at his mercy: and first, he stood at a convenient distance, delighting himself with a gloating survey of the attitude I lay in, and of all the secret stores I thus exposed to him in fair display. Then, springing eagerly towards me, he covered all those naked parts with a fond profusion of kisses; and now, taking hold of the rod, rather wantoned with me, in gentle inflictions on those tender trembling masses of my flesh behind, than in any way hurt them, till by degrees, he began to tingle them with smarter lashes, so as to provoke a red colour into them, which I knew, as well by the flagrant glow I felt there, as by his telling me, they now emulated the native roses of my other cheeks. When he had thus amused himself with admiring, and toying with them, he went on to strike harder, and more hard, so that I needed all my patience not to cry out, or complain at least. At last, he twigged me so smartly as to fetch blood in more than one lash: at sight of which he flung down the rod, flew to me, kissed away the starting drops, and sucking the wounds eased a good deal of my pain.

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

  At the same time the strangest visions began to float before my eyes. First I saw the Alhambra in all the luxuriant loveliness of its Moorish masonry—those sumptuous symphonies of stones and bricks—so like the flourishes of those quaint Gipsy melodies. Then a smouldering unknown fire began to kindle itself within my breast. I longed to feel that mighty love which maddens one to crime, to feel the blasting lust of men who live beneath the scorching sun, to drink down deep from the cup of some satyrion philtre. "The vision changed; instead of Spain, I saw a barren land, the sun-lit sands of Egypt, wet by the sluggish Nile; where Adrian stood wailing, forlorn, disconsolate for he had lost for ever the lad he loved so well. Spell bound by that soft music, which sharpened every sense, I now began to understand things hitherto so strange, the love the mighty monarch felt for his fair Grecian slave, Antinöus, who—like unto Christ—died for his master's sake. And thereupon my blood all rushed from my heart into my head, then it coursed down, through every vein, like waves of molten lead. "The scene then changed, and shifted into the gorgeous towns of Sodom and Gomorrah, weird, beautiful and grand; to me the pianist's notes just then seemed murmuring in my ear with the panting of an eager lust, the sound of thrilling kisses. "Then—in the very midst of my vision—the pianist turned his head and cast one long, lingering, slumberous look at me, and our glances met again. But was he the pianist, was he Antinöus, or rather, was he not one of those two angels which God sent to Lot? Anyhow, the irresistible charm of his beauty was such that I was quite overcome by it; and the music just then seemed to whisper: "'Could you not drink his gaze like wine, Yet though its splendour swoon In the silence languidly As a tune into a tune?' </poem> "That thrilling longing I had felt grew more and more intense, the craving so insatiable that it was changed to pain; the burning fire had now been fanned into a mighty flame, and my whole body was convulsed and writhed with mad desire. My lips were parched, I gasped for breath; my joints were stiff, my veins were swollen, yet I sat still, like all the crowd around me.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I sat in front of my laptop and wrote more words than had come to me in years—all at once. They just strung themselves together and I felt like a writing god. I had to have more of this woman. I’d write a library full of books if I had a year with her. Imagine a lifetime. She was meant for me. I cleaned out my weeds, I cleaned out my closets, I bought a new table and chairs for my kitchen. I finished my book. E-mailed it to my editor. I lingered some more at my kitchen window, industriously washing and rewashing my dishes. It was Christmas before I found her again. Actual Christmas—the day of tinsel and turkey and colorful paper wrapped around goodies we don’t want or need. I have a mother and a father and twin sisters with rhyming names. I was on my way to their house for Christmas dinner when I saw her jogging along the barren sidewalk. She was headed for the lake, her fluorescent sneakers blurring beneath her. She was a flash of speed. Her legs were chorded with muscle. I’d bet she could outrun a deer if she tried. I sped up and pulled into the empty lot of an Indian restaurant about half a mile ahead of her. I could smell the curries seeping from the building: green and red and yellow. I hopped out of my car and crossed the street, planning to cut her off before she reached the lake. She would have to go through me to get to the trail. I looked bolder than I felt. She could tell me to go to hell. By the time she saw me it was too late to pretend she hadn’t. Her pace slowed until she was bent at the knees in front of me. I watched the way her back rose and fell. She was breathing hard. “Merry Christmas,” I said. “Sorry for interrupting your run.” She glared at me from her bent position, confirming my guess that she didn’t want to see me. “I didn’t mean to upset you the last time you were at my house,” I said. “If you’d given me the chance to apologize I wo—” “You didn’t upset me,” she said. And then, “I finished my book.” Finished her book? I gaped. “In the three weeks I haven’t seen you? I thought you’d barely started.” “Yes, and now I’ve finished it.” I opened and closed my mouth. It took me a year to complete a manuscript, and that didn’t include the time I spent on research. “So when you just left like that…?” “I knew what I had to write,” she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Why didn’t you say something? Call me?” I felt like a clingy high school girl. “You’re an artist. I thought you’d understand.”

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

  Barville, who used her house, just come to town, whom she was not a little perplexed about providing a suitable companion for; which was indeed a point of difficulty, as he was under the tyranny of a cruel taste: that of an ardent desire, not only of being unmercifully whipped himself, but of whipping others, in such sort, that though he paid extravagantly those who had the courage and complaisance to submit to his humour, there were few, delicate as he was in the choice of his subjects, who would exchange turns with him so terribly at the expense of their skin. But, what yet increased the oddity of this strange fancy was the gentleman being young; whereas it generally attacks, it seems, such as are, through age, obliged to have recourse to this experiment, for quickening the circulation of their sluggish juices, and determining a conflux of the spirits of pleasure towards those flagging shrivelly parts, that rise to life only by virtue of those titillating ardours created by the discipline of their opposites, with which they have so surprising a consent. This Mrs. Cole could not well acquaint me with, in any expectation of my offering for service: for, sufficiently easy as I was in my circumstances, it must have been the temptation of an immense interest indeed, that could have induced me to embrace such a job, neither had I ever expressed, nor indeed, felt the least impulse or curiosity to know more of a taste, that promised so much more pain than pleasure to those that stood in no need of such violent goads: what then should move me to subscribe myself voluntarily to a party of pain, foreknowing it such? Why, to tell the plain truth, it was a sudden caprice, a gust of fancy for trying a new experiment, mixed with the vanity of approving my personal courage to Mrs. Cole, that determined me, at all risks, to propose myself to her and relieve her from any further look-out. Accordingly, I at once pleased and surprised her, with a frank and unreserved tender of my person to her and her friend’s absolute disposal on this occasion. My good temporal mother was, however, so kind as to use all the arguments she could imagine to dissuade me: but, as I found they only turned on a motive of tenderness to me, I persisted in my resolution, and thereby acquitted my offer of any suspicion of its not having been sincerely made, or out of compliment only.