Excitement

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.

Page 23 of 182 · 20 per page

• From Soaking Wet: Lesbian Sex Stories (2014)

  “I’m bummed too,” she said, “but I do have an idea that’ll get us through until I can get to your place.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Around ten o’clock, go into the bedroom and start playing with yourself. I’ll be thinking of you then, picturing what you’re doing to yourself and getting all hot. Will you do that for me?” My pussy clenched. “You bet!” “And then I’ll be off shift around two and wake you up in the nicest possible way.” She hung up, leaving me blushing and somewhat damp. Wow. Elle and I were still very much on a classic New Relationship High, but for the last couple of days the sexual tension had been running even higher and this pushed it further yet. I flashed back to the incident in the car. The embarrassment had faded by now, burned away by amusement that our encounter with MacIntyre had ended up sparking so much lust. I could hardly wait until ten o’clock to get started. Okay, let’s be honest. I didn’t exactly wait—nothing wrong with a bit of warm-up, right? I decided to save my actual orgasm for when I knew Elle would be thinking about me, but I curled up with a collection of erotica and teased myself over and over. By ten, I was aquiver, more than ready to explode and send all kinds of lust through the ether to Elle. I opened the curtains in the darkened bedroom to get a view of the moon peeking up over the privacy fence, cracked the window for some air and settled down in the comfy chair facing the window. The bed might have been a more logical choice, but I felt closer to Elle looking out into the night where she was. Besides, no one could see in the window without opening the locked gate and entering the backyard—but given the fantasies Elle and I had been swapping lately, I could admit I liked imagining that someone might. I spread my legs, closed my eyes and began to diddle. I’d grabbed my favorite dildo out of the toy drawer just in case, but decided to start with just fingers and imagination. I pictured Elle, stuck two fingers into my dripping pussy, imagined they were her fingers finding my G-spot, imagined her voice whispering hot, filthy things in my ear. I was so primed that I felt myself starting to quiver almost instantly with those little shivers and contractions that lead up to the final explosion. So close, so hot… And then a harsh light penetrated my eyelids. I jumped, opened my eyes to the flare of a big Mag-Lite. What the fuck? I scrambled, attempted to cover myself. Burglar? “Police! Freeze,” exclaimed a familiar voice. “Or better yet, heat it up.” I couldn’t see her clearly with my dazzled eyes, but the laugh that rippled through the window, low and sultry, recharged me instantly.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  Instead, on a journey from Jerusalem to Damascus, he found himself exhilarated and traumatized in a shattering personal encounter with Jesus’s power and forgiveness: he suffered a complete turnaround, or, as later Christianity would term it, a conversion. After that, Paul felt compelled to convey the same healing experience to a world in which the distinction between Jew and Gentile was now meaningless. Paul brought to this task dynamic contradictions: a deep and proud knowledge of his Jewish heritage, alongside his pride in being a man who could claim Roman citizenship and whose natural first language was non-literary Greek. It is significant that when writing to Diaspora communities, he habitually uses the names of Roman imperial provinces. This cultural combination contrasted with the background and assumptions of Christian leaders in Judaea. They were still close to the Aramaic inheritance of Jesus’s teaching, and they lived their new faith in close quarters to the ancient religious observance in the Temple of Jerusalem, proceeding as it had done uninterruptedly for six centuries, with all that meant for Jewish identity. When Christian activists (whom we now see almost exclusively through Paul’s eyes) erupted out of Jerusalem into the synagogues of towns on the fringes of the Mediterranean, conflict among them was particularly marked in two spheres: first, dietary restrictions founded on scriptural commands and elaborated in a variety of ways by later custom; then, more fundamentally, on the ancient mark of what it was to be a Jew – male circumcision. On dietary matters, Paul could be conciliatory, partly because his opponent Peter had apparently already reconsidered traditional dietary laws for himself (Acts 10). The toxic clash came around circumcision, and the bitterness is evident in Paul’s letter to the Christian assemblies ( ekklēsiais ) in Galatia. This text is, among much else, an impassioned plea to these assemblies not to be bound by a rule of circumcision, but to identify with Christ Jesus through the new observance of baptism. Baptism is now such a fundamental part of being a Christian that it is easy to overlook its curious origins, which are very late in Second Temple Judaism. Ritual washing had become essential for those approaching the Temple for worship, and the Qumran texts show how important similar ritual washings had become to that separatist community in the century or so before the life of Jesus; in neither case can the washing be identified as an initiation rite. The New Testament identifies a different specialized source for the baptismal rite. Christians borrowed it from a slightly older sect, for whom baptism was so fundamental that the sect’s charismatic leader is known in the New Testament as John ‘the Baptist’. This John is carefully positioned in the Gospels: given great honour but in a subsidiary role to Jesus, despite the fact that it was John who had baptized Jesus, not the other way round.

• From Soaking Wet: Lesbian Sex Stories (2014)

  Now I was getting her where I wanted her. The sun was making me feel delirious. “Okay, bathing beauty, now it’s time for a little contest. Well, you’re the only contestant—but I still expect you to do be an excellent performer.” I sat in the chair, mustering all the height and haughtiness I could. I looked her up and down like a sleazy judge at a cheap beauty contest. “Come over here and turn around for me.” She complied by strutting around, even bending over, showing off her curvy ass. I gave her butt a light squeeze, then made her put her bikini bottom back on and handed her a skimpy shirt. “We’re going to have a wet T-shirt contest now, so I need you to take off your top, put on this shirt, and then get in the water. You’ll be judged like in the Olympics, on a scale of one to ten, with points for clinginess, sex appeal, and originality. You can do whatever you want as long as you keep your T-shirt on. And before you even ask, you will be highly rewarded for a high score—trust me on that.” I could see her eyes light up, her mind churning as she tried to figure out how she could dazzle me. “I’ll be sitting right over here,” I said, pointing. We were practically touching, and she batted her eyes at me the way she always does to get what she wants. “Can I really do whatever I want as long as I keep my T-shirt on?” she asked, putting on a simpering manner. She sure knew how to drive me crazy, and I almost bagged the whole thing, scooped her up over my shoulder, and brought her home, but I came to my senses in time. This would be too much fun to miss out on. “That’s what I said. Now get moving.” I gently swatted her away, then settled into my chair, a magazine over my lap and one hand idly playing with my clit underneath it. She knew that I was really putty in her manicured hands, but we both went along with the charade that I was in charge. She loped off toward the ocean, and after a while I couldn’t see her anymore. I tried to read my magazine but couldn’t concentrate, and instead closed my eyes, picturing what Jill would look like with that flimsy little shirt clinging to her tits. I didn’t have to wait long, because before I knew it, drops of water were falling onto me. I looked up and got quite the shock—she was standing in front of me wearing only the shirt, which left nothing to the imagination. I looked up and saw her holding her wet bikini bottom in front of me, and breathed a sigh of relief that we were in such a private area, or my little bad girl might have gotten us arrested.

• From Soaking Wet: Lesbian Sex Stories (2014)

  She thrust her chest out toward me, teasing me with her protruding nipples. I felt a throbbing in my cunt, but I let her go on with her show. She bent over and spread her legs so that I could see her pussy lips right in front of me, then turned around and used her yoga training to do a handstand. Then she walked over and planted herself between my legs, pushing her barely covered nipples right into my face before pulling the fabric apart with her hands. It tore straight down the middle so I was left facing her large breasts, the few drops of saltwater remaining on them quickly drying in the sun’s rays as she gave me the sexiest lap dance imaginable. “Wow,” was all I could say, looking up at her in awe. I’d underestimated my star girl, thinking she’d be too shy for this, but I should have known better. Jill never met a challenge, especially a sexy one, that she couldn’t beat. “Okay, you win. Ten out of ten. Are you ready for your reward?” She preened in front of me. “I don’t know. Are you?” she tossed back. So I grabbed her, lifting her up into my arms as she laughed hysterically. I brought her back to the chair and managed to lay her across my lap without both of us toppling over. “Your prize is a nice, hard spanking, one worthy of a girl who gets a perfect score. What do you think about that?” I asked as I squeezed her asscheeks, pinching them and spreading them apart, teasing her as I prolonged her spanking. I pretended to accidentally brush my knuckle across her exposed pussy, finding her deliciously wet. She moaned and I pushed two fingers into her mouth for her to suckle as I started spanking that perfect little ass. The sound was loud, a perfect echo. With only a few smacks I made her cheeks bright red. Her mouth was frantically sucking on my fingers, and then, as I increased the force of my smacks, she bared her teeth, and I knew I’d have marks on my fingers once we were done. I didn’t mind, though, for it gave me the chance to turn that gorgeous ass into my own personal easel. I raised my hand as high as I could and brought it down on her ass, almost toppling us as she moaned against my fingers. I pinched the part of her ass nearest her pussy, then tapped my fingers against her swollen lips.

• From Soaking Wet: Lesbian Sex Stories (2014)

  Such a long, deep kiss; such a sultry kiss, that it almost changed our plan, because it led to more kissing, and from there to nibbling, and from nibbling to stroking—the kind of progression that made old-fashioned parochial schoolteachers say that French kissing causes pregnancy. Not that it would do that in our case, but anyway…I got so distracted I almost forgot the strap-on was even there. Elle subtly reminded me by rolling me over onto my back and sinking onto the toy. “Oh yeah,” she moaned. “Why didn’t you use this on me before?” “Seems like you’re using it on yourself,” I said. “Not that I’m complaining. What a great view.” And it was a great view; her long, lean body crouched over me, rocking back and forth. “No better than MacIntyre got of you,” she said through clenched teeth. “How much do you think he really saw?” “Who knows? I just like…” Her voice broke off and she began to grind her hips against me, getting my clit involved in the action from the pressure. I grabbed her hips, moved her in the way I knew I’d want to be moved in her position. Not coincidentally, it was good for me as well and for a little while any attempt at talking was impossible. We weren’t quite at the screaming point yet, but we were certainly getting close. After she caught her breath a little, Elle picked up the sentence where she’d been forced to leave off. “I like the idea of someone watching. Or maybe more the idea of you getting off on being watched. Because you do get off on it, don’t you?” She reached down between our bodies so she was touching both our clits. At the same time she did something with her hips that obviously was very, very good for her. She arched backward, her hand still stroking both our clits. I could see her ab muscles quivering. “You get off on that idea, Destiny—and I get off on how much you like it.” I swore I could feel her contractions, although that didn’t make a lot of sense through a silicone dick. And then everything collided—the stimulation from earlier; the idea that MacIntyre was riding out on his lonely patrol with a big hard-on, thinking about us; Elle’s hand caressing me; Elle’s beautiful body riding me; the scent and heat and slickness of her; her excitement. Stars, I thought before all thought became impossible. You really can see stars when it’s this good. Friday night, I got a phone call from a desolate-sounding Elle. “I know we had plans tonight, sweetie,” she said, “but we’re shorthanded today and I drew the short straw to cover the late shift.” Safe behind a closed door in my office, I cursed volubly. We didn’t just have plans for the night. We had positively evil, depraved plans.

• From Soaking Wet: Lesbian Sex Stories (2014)

  “I’m bummed too,” she said, “but I do have an idea that’ll get us through until I can get to your place.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Around ten o’clock, go into the bedroom and start playing with yourself. I’ll be thinking of you then, picturing what you’re doing to yourself and getting all hot. Will you do that for me?” My pussy clenched. “You bet!” “And then I’ll be off shift around two and wake you up in the nicest possible way.” She hung up, leaving me blushing and somewhat damp. Wow. Elle and I were still very much on a classic New Relationship High, but for the last couple of days the sexual tension had been running even higher and this pushed it further yet. I flashed back to the incident in the car. The embarrassment had faded by now, burned away by amusement that our encounter with MacIntyre had ended up sparking so much lust. I could hardly wait until ten o’clock to get started. Okay, let’s be honest. I didn’t exactly wait—nothing wrong with a bit of warm-up, right? I decided to save my actual orgasm for when I knew Elle would be thinking about me, but I curled up with a collection of erotica and teased myself over and over. By ten, I was aquiver, more than ready to explode and send all kinds of lust through the ether to Elle. I opened the curtains in the darkened bedroom to get a view of the moon peeking up over the privacy fence, cracked the window for some air and settled down in the comfy chair facing the window. The bed might have been a more logical choice, but I felt closer to Elle looking out into the night where she was. Besides, no one could see in the window without opening the locked gate and entering the backyard—but given the fantasies Elle and I had been swapping lately, I could admit I liked imagining that someone might. I spread my legs, closed my eyes and began to diddle. I’d grabbed my favorite dildo out of the toy drawer just in case, but decided to start with just fingers and imagination. I pictured Elle, stuck two fingers into my dripping pussy, imagined they were her fingers finding my G-spot, imagined her voice whispering hot, filthy things in my ear. I was so primed that I felt myself starting to quiver almost instantly with those little shivers and contractions that lead up to the final explosion. So close, so hot… And then a harsh light penetrated my eyelids. I jumped, opened my eyes to the flare of a big Mag-Lite. What the fuck? I scrambled, attempted to cover myself. Burglar? “Police! Freeze,” exclaimed a familiar voice. “Or better yet, heat it up.” I couldn’t see her clearly with my dazzled eyes, but the laugh that rippled through the window, low and sultry, recharged me instantly.

• From Soaking Wet: Lesbian Sex Stories (2014)

  “Turn your ass around this way, and I’ll make you hot.” I’d wanted to sound surly, but I was panting too hard to be convincing. “You’ll get your turn. Promise. But if you want more, you’ve gotta give it to me dirty.” “Fuck. You expect me to be articulate when all I can think about is how fucking hot you look, lying between my legs?” “There’s a start.” She raised an eyebrow, waiting… I rolled my eyes and blew out a deep breath. “Okay…I want that plastic penis cramming up inside me and your mouth sucking my clit.” “Cramming? Like this?” She twisted it, gently screwing it into me, but only about three inches. My pussy clenched around the shaft, trying to draw it deeper. Again, I growled, frustration making me grind my teeth. Her lips were set in a straight line as though she were trying to keep from laughing. “I want your hand cupping the fucking base of that plastic prick and you shoving it up until you’re slapping my cunt. I want all of it, bitch.” Her lips pursed. Her hazel eyes narrowed. “Callin’ me names, now? What if I don’t like that?” “You fucking love it. Fucking little whore. Fucking cunt.” Kari giggled and dove down, slurping as she sucked my clit and crammed the dildo deeper. “That’s it, bitch,” I breathed. “Fuck, yeah. Bite it. Scrape it with your teeth.” I closed my eyes as she ratcheted up the heat, her mouth sliding over my clit, sucking, her tongue feathering over it, then, at last, her teeth chewing it, every scrape making my body writhe. “Fucking talented. Oughta sell clit-jobs. Make a fucking fortune.” She snickered. “You know you talk like a dude when you get desperate.” “I know what the fuck I want,” I said, pulling her hair again. “And you talk too much.” Her lips latched harder, and she shoved the whole six inches deep inside me, her hand sliding in the moisture she’d coaxed from inside me when it met my pussy. My hips rose and fell; moans, one after the other, ripped from my throat. “Fuck, yeah. Fuck, fuck.” And then the spiraling coil deep inside my belly loosened. I sucked in a deep breath and rode the high, clutching her head with both hands. When my fingers slipped away, Kari withdrew the cock and turned it off. Then she crawled upward to rest on her side next to me. She caressed a breast, bending to kiss one of the hard little spikes. “You know we have to talk,” she whispered. I sighed. “Yeah, we do.” “I want more,” she said quietly. “More what?” The words came out flat, with a tinge of annoyance. I winced inside, but I don’t take rejection well. “More…company.”

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  That’s the whole salt of it! Anyone can hit an uncovered object!’ Koroviev took a seven of spades from the desk drawer, offered it to Margarita, and asked her to mark one of the pips with her fingernail. Margarita marked the one in the upper right-hand corner. Hella hid the card under a pillow, crying: ‘Ready!’ Azazello, who was sitting with his back to the pillow, drew a black automatic from the pocket of his tailcoat trousers, put the muzzle over his shoulder, and, without turning towards the bed, fired, provoking a merry fright in Margarita. The seven was taken from under the bullet-pierced pillow. The pip marked by Margarita had a hole in it. ‘I wouldn’t want to meet you when you’re carrying a gun,’ Margarita said, casting coquettish glances at Azazello. She had a passion for anyone who did something top-notch. ‘Precious Queen,’ squeaked Koroviev, ‘I wouldn’t advise anyone to meet him, even if he’s not carrying a gun! I give you my word of honour as an ex-choirmaster and precentor that no one would congratulate the one doing the meeting.’ The cat sat scowling throughout the shooting trial, and suddenly announced: ‘I undertake to beat the record with the seven.’ Azazello growled out something in reply to that. But the cat was stubborn, and demanded not one but two guns. Azazello took a second gun from the second back pocket of his trousers and, twisting his mouth disdainfully, handed it to the braggart together with the first. Two pips were marked on the seven. The cat made lengthy preparations, turning his back to the pillow. Margarita sat with her fingers in her ears and looked at the owl dozing on the mantelpiece. The cat fired both guns, after which Hella shrieked at once, the owl fell dead from the mantelpiece, and the smashed clock stopped. Hella, whose hand was all bloody, clutched at the cat’s fur with a howl, and he clutched her hair in retaliation, and the two got tangled into a ball and rolled on the floor. One of the goblets fell from the table and broke. ‘Pull this rabid hellion off me!’ wailed the cat, fighting off Hella, who was sitting astride him. The scufflers were separated, and Koroviev blew on Hella’s bullet-pierced finger and it mended. ‘I can’t shoot when someone’s talking at my elbow!’ shouted Behemoth, trying to stick in place a huge clump of fur pulled from his back. ‘I’ll bet,’ said Woland, smiling to Margarita, ‘that he did this stunt on purpose. He’s not a bad shot.’ Hella and the cat made peace and, as a sign of their reconciliation, exchanged kisses. The card was taken from under the pillow and checked.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  The missionary energy that emerged at the end of the eighteenth century perpetuated this complicated story of two contrasting established Protestant Churches in the Atlantic Isles: the Presbyterian Church of Scotland and the episcopally governed Church of England (‘and Ireland’, after institutional assimilation in 1801). How to name those national bodies in different circumstances? ‘Presbyterian’ was an easy enough label to export for Scots, but the Church of England found it more difficult, as became apparent when its congregations in the former thirteen colonies had to sever their allegiance to the British Crown in 1783. Forming a new ecclesiastical identity, they developed the awkward title of ‘The Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America’. Over the next century, a more convenient general usage evolved across the world for similar Churches, from an English word hardly ever used before: ‘Anglicanism’. The resulting ‘Anglican Communion’ of linked episcopal Churches has no central head apart from a personal focus of esteem and tradition in the Archbishop of Canterbury. [3] Alongside Presbyterians and Anglicans truculently marched the separate denominations of English Protestantism that made it uniquely varied in European religious formations: ‘Dissenters’ (now more commonly styled ‘Nonconformists’ or ‘Free Churches’) and Methodists, along with the increasingly distinctive developments of these Churches in the USA. All British Churches were profoundly affected by the Evangelical Revival and Great Awakenings, and in general Evangelicalism was the launching power for world anglophone mission. Around 1830, Evangelical religion probably involved more than 60 per cent of British Protestants, registering a high level of excitement that such events as the French Revolution were heralds of the Last Days; this possibility increased enthusiasm for overseas mission still further. [4] Entangled with this global vision was a more particular cause that, after some hesitation, the majority of British Evangelicals and some of their American counterparts made distinctively their own: an agitation to end the transatlantic commerce in enslaved people forced to work in plantations. ABOLISHING

• From Soaking Wet: Lesbian Sex Stories (2014)

  “Follow my lead.” She grabbed my hands and pulled me onto the spacious floor of the limo with her. I tugged off the rest of my clothes and watched as she quickly unbuttoned her pants and kicked them off. Realizing that she’d been naked underneath her uniform all night sent a rush of heat straight to my cunt, but the sight of her naked, shaved mound made my mouth go dry with both fear and want. “I’ll show you what to do,” she said, clearly recognizing the panic in my eyes. She grinned and reached for me. “Just bring that fine ass of yours over here first.” She positioned me over her, my thighs hugging her head and her pussy in my face, intoxicating me with its heady scent. I felt her mouth on my clit, so I took a deep breath for courage and mimicked her, flicking my tongue over the sensitive tip of her solid bud. Her moans and trembling legs urged me on and gave me a confidence I had never felt before. I copied her motions and played out what I knew I liked. I made a V with my fingers to spread her outer lips apart, exposing her pulsating clit. I caressed her pussy with my tongue, growing more brave and adventurous with her every whimper. She moaned into my cunt, vibrating my clit and sending tremors all through my body. Sabra slid a finger into my tight cunt, and I let out a groan, my hands digging into her hips. I followed suit by pushing a finger inside her, and sucked on her throbbing clit as her mouth persisted in fucking me out of my mind. She added another finger in my dripping cunt, causing me to shudder and do the same to her. I could feel myself approaching my climax, but I didn’t want to let up on Sabra now. I swirled my tongue over her clit until I felt her cunt close around my thrusting fingers and her hips buck upward toward my face. Her thighs clamped around my ears, muffling the sound of her screams in the limo. Seconds later, electricity zipped through my bloodstream and headed straight for my clit. My body trembled and shook, and I rocked up and down as I came, burying her face in my pussy. I waited until I’d stopped shaking before I collapsed onto the floor next to her, whimpering while my cunt continued to twitch with aftershocks. We lay there in silence, slick with sweat, our bodies used, exhausted, and satisfied. I took a few deep breaths as I waited for my heart rate to return to normal. I wondered how to proceed from here, not just tonight but for the rest of my life. “I hate to say this, but I need to get this baby back.” Despite her casual tone, Sabra’s eyes were apologetic and sincere; she wasn’t just trying to get rid of me.

• From Soaking Wet: Lesbian Sex Stories (2014)

  “You mean as he was ogling my tits? You owe me a new shirt, by the way.” (She didn’t, really, but I figured I’d keep my options open. Never turn down the opportunity for new clothes.) “Destiny, it was priceless! Poor guy couldn’t figure out where to look. He was really embarrassed.” “He was embarrassed? It’s not like his ass was on display for the world to see.” She laughed again. “I don’t know about that. It’s one thing to be ogling seminaked strangers; it’s another to realize you were ogling your coworker and her girlfriend.” I gave up on the search for my shirt (a bra doesn’t show any more than a bikini top, right?) and started the car. Before we got very far, Elle was laughing again. “You should have seen his face, Des. His eyes were like dinner plates. I think he’d been watching awhile before he turned on the flashlight…and then saw the one person on the force who can consistently best him at target practice.” This time I managed to laugh as well. I hadn’t been so embarrassed since I was in junior high school and Julia Ruiz discovered I had pictures of actresses in my locker instead of boy-band members, but it was pretty damn funny. And as I was laughing, something dawned on me. The way I was squirming wasn’t just from embarrassment. Some little part of me was turned on, not so much by what actually happened as by images running through my head. I wasn’t quite sure how to broach the subject, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to say something. I finally choked out, “Too bad it was MacIntyre.” “If someone had to catch us, he’s perfect. He’s a good guy, and he’s so scared of doing anything to upset Debbie right now that he’ll keep it quiet.” “Yeah, but he’s still a guy. A man catching us is just embarrassing. A woman catching us and watching for a while—that might have been hot.” My voice kind of trailed off at the last bit. Elle made a funny choking noise. “What?” “I said it might have been hot.” I looked away, focusing completely on the road, not quite able to meet her eyes after that admission. “Hm. Sounds like somebody’s a bit of an exhibitionist…” I couldn’t tell from the tone of her voice whether that was a good thing or not. We hadn’t been together long enough for sharing our wilder fantasies to come easily. Had I found a limit? I figured the answer out pretty quickly, though, when I felt her hand brush my nipple. “So, my darling Destiny likes the idea of a stranger watching her getting off?” she said, still chuckling a bit, but in a throaty, sexy way now. I arched my back, pushing my breast toward her palm. “I guess so. Bit of a surprise for me, too,” I admitted.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  The very language of the novel was a contradiction of everything wooden, official, imposed. It was a joy to speak. When the second part appeared in the January 1967 issue of Moskva , it was greeted with the same enthusiasm. Yet this was not the excitement caused by the emergence of a new writer, as when Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich appeared in the magazine Novy Mir in 1962. Bulgakov was neither unknown nor forgotten. His plays had begun to be revived in theatres during the late fifties and were published in 1962. His superb Life of Monsieur de Molière came out in that same year. His early stories were reprinted. Then, in 1965, came the Theatrical Novel , based on his years of experience with Stanislavsky’s renowned Moscow Art Theatre. And finally in 1966 a volume of Selected Prose was published, containing the complete text of Bulgakov’s first novel, The White Guard , written in the twenties and dealing with the nearly contemporary events of the Russian civil war in his native Kiev and the Ukraine, a book which in its clear-sighted portrayal of human courage and weakness ranks among the truest depictions of war in all of literature. Bulgakov was known well enough, then. But, outside a very small group, the existence of The Master and Margarita was completely unsuspected. That certainly accounts for some of the amazement caused by its publication. It was thought that virtually all of Bulgakov had found its way into print. And here was not some minor literary remains but a major novel, the author’s crowning work. Then there were the qualities of the novel itself—its formal originality, its devastating satire of Soviet life, and of Soviet literary life in particular, its ‘theatrical’ rendering of the Great Terror of the thirties, the audacity of its portrayal of Jesus Christ and Pontius Pilate, not to mention Satan. But, above all, the novel breathed an air of freedom, artistic and spiritual, which had become rare indeed, not only in Soviet Russia. We sense it in the special tone of Bulgakov’s writing, a combination of laughter (satire, caricature, buffoonery) and the most unguarded vulnerability. Two aphorisms detachable from the novel may suggest something of the complex nature of this freedom and how it may have struck the novel’s first readers. One is the much-quoted ‘Manuscripts don’t burn’, which seems to express an absolute trust in the triumph of poetry, imagination, the free word, over terror and oppression, and could thus become a watchword of the intelligentsia. The publication of The Master and Margarita was taken as a proof of the assertion. In fact, during a moment of fear early in his work on the novel, Bulgakov did burn what he had written. And yet, as we see, it refused to stay burned. This moment of fear, however, brings me to the second aphorism—‘Cowardice is the most terrible of vices’—which is repeated with slight variations several times in the novel.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  CHOOSE : EVANGELICALISM European Protestant religion meanwhile was striving against dourness in a series of religious movements emphasizing human passions as much as did the Enlightenment. These twin phenomena may seem unrelated, or even opposed, since the religious fervour of what came to be known as ‘Evangelicalism’ sprang out of the Augustinian theology of Martin Luther, who had reaffirmed Christian pessimism about humanity in sharp contrast to Kant’s praise of humanity coming of age in the Enlightenment. Nevertheless, many religious leaders were in fact keenly interested in the scientific advances that accompanied Enlightenment thought, notably the founder of Methodism, John Wesley. Wesley’s championing of a doctrine of ‘Christian perfection’ crafted out of Reformation Protestantism was an emphatic rejection of the conclusions that John Calvin had drawn from Augustine on salvation, putting Wesley bitterly at odds with fellow Evangelical leaders who self-consciously championed Calvin’s predestinarianism. [32] The new-found freedoms of choice encouraged people to choose, shape and even re-invent their religion, pouring new life into Churches of the Reformation just at the moment when Protestant powers were beginning to create overseas empires that spread the Word across the world. What is remarkable is the interconnection of the various movements, which all took their immediate and their long-term origins from Protestant Germany, still recovering in the long aftermath of its seventeenth-century trauma in the Thirty Years War (1618–48). As we have noted in Chapter 14, from the 1670s a movement that came to be known (at first abusively by its opponents) as ‘Pietism’ affected first the Lutheran and later the Reformed Protestant Churches, and it was appreciatively noted by the serious-minded in England. Pietism sought to bring a new individual and emotional commitment to enrich the parish systems inherited from the medieval Western Church and make up for much devotional variety that Protestants had lost in the Reformation. Out of Pietism came the peculiar construction of an episcopally led ‘Moravian Church’ conjured up out of the remnants of the Unitas Fratrum (‘Unity of Brothers’), an ecclesiastical shadow persisting from religious crises in the fifteenth-century kingdom of Bohemia. The Moravians’ refounding and presiding Bishop was Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, an eccentric and charismatic aristocrat who was closely acquainted with some of the chief movers of Pietist Lutheranism, but who took his own path beyond them. From 1722 von Zinzendorf gathered a motley array of the religiously dissatisfied or persecuted from central Europe, first on his own extensive estates in the rural southern borders of Saxony and then in further communities reminiscent of some of the radical groupings of the Reformation such as the Hutterites. The Moravians were thus not a nationality but a newly crafted religious identity. They had an importance out of all proportion to their always relatively small numbers, because they were the first Protestant Church to commit itself to world mission with consistent passion.

• From Soaking Wet: Lesbian Sex Stories (2014)

  Walking soundlessly, I reach the center of the park, continually checking the shadows and real obstacles that appear in my path. My clit is tingling. It aches from the recent sight of a youngish-looking man being fucked in the arse by a blond, heavy man in biker’s leathers, whilst twisting his head around at the same time to service the throbbing, red-tipped erection of another kneeling man. I had to force myself to steal quietly away before they shot down his throat and up his arse, worried I’d forget myself and betray my presence by some involuntary noise of lust and jealousy mixed together. Now just ahead of me I see the outline of a tall, slim shape leaning against a tree. I prepare myself to walk past casually but my heart is bumping in my chest cavity. For the first time tonight I feel like I’m on display. The man is dressed in dark clothes, jeans and a jacket perhaps, and is leaning with one foot up against the tree. Something dangles from his right hand—oh, it’s a dog leash. I relax slightly. I’m close enough to see that his hair is cut even shorter than mine. I look around but can’t see the dog. “Hey,” the figure murmurs softly and I follow the sound without any real thought. I’m standing opposite now, face-toface. For all my five feet seven I feel short. A kind of pleasurable sensation freezes my brain as the dog owner reaches forward with leather-gloved hands and manipulates me so I’m facing the tree. I’m pushed so hard against it that I can feel the patterns of the bark pressing into my cunt. Hypnotized, I stay pressed against the thick trunk while the leash is used to fasten my hands together around the other side, securing me tightly to the tree. “Cuffs—convenient,” a concentrating voice mutters from the other side of the tree. The burning, stretching sensation in my arms as the final knot is tied restores some of my sense to me. “What are you doing?” A pathetic and useless question. The dog owner suddenly slams against me from behind, shoving me hard and nearly winding me. “You should be quiet. I’m going to expose you…play with you…do what I like with you. If you want to be freed at the end don’t make it necessary for me to use a gag or blindfold.” I stop squirming and trying to turn my head to see over my shoulder. That and my heavy breathing are taken for assent. All I can think is how I can now feel breasts against my back, and something harder, lower. The voice, although gruff, isn’t quite low enough to be a man’s, I realize. I can’t believe it.

• From Soaking Wet: Lesbian Sex Stories (2014)

  Such a long, deep kiss; such a sultry kiss, that it almost changed our plan, because it led to more kissing, and from there to nibbling, and from nibbling to stroking—the kind of progression that made old-fashioned parochial schoolteachers say that French kissing causes pregnancy. Not that it would do that in our case, but anyway...I got so distracted I almost forgot the strap-on was even there. Elle subtly reminded me by rolling me over onto my back and sinking onto the toy. “Oh yeah,” she moaned. “Why didn’t you use this on me before?” “Seems like you’re using it on yourself,” I said. “Not that I’m complaining. What a great view.” And it was a great view; her long, lean body crouched over me, rocking back and forth. “No better than MacIntyre got of you,” she said through clenched teeth. “How much do you think he really saw?” “Who knows? I just like...” Her voice broke off and she began to grind her hips against me, getting my clit involved in the action from the pressure. I grabbed her hips, moved her in the way I knew I’d want to be moved in her position. Not coincidentally, it was good for me as well and for a little while any attempt at talking was impossible. We weren’t quite at the screaming point yet, but we were certainly getting close. After she caught her breath a little, Elle picked up the sentence where she’d been forced to leave off. “I like the idea of someone watching. Or maybe more the idea of you getting off on being watched. Because you do get off on it, don’t you?” She reached down between our bodies so she was touching both our clits. At the same time she did something with her hips that obviously was very, very good for her. She arched backward, her hand still stroking both our clits. I could see her ab muscles quivering. “You get off on that idea, Destiny—and I get off on how much you like it.” I swore I could feel her contractions, although that didn’t make a lot of sense through a silicone dick. And then everything collided—the stimulation from earlier; the idea that MacIntyre was riding out on his lonely patrol with a big hard-on, thinking about us; Elle’s hand caressing me; Elle’s beautiful body riding me; the scent and heat and slickness of her; her excitement. Stars, I thought before all thought became impossible. You really can see stars when it’s this good. Friday night, I got a phone call from a desolate-sounding Elle. “I know we had plans tonight, sweetie,” she said, “but we’re shorthanded today and I drew the short straw to cover the late shift.” Safe behind a closed door in my office, I cursed volubly. We didn’t just have plans for the night.

• From Soaking Wet: Lesbian Sex Stories (2014)

  Now I was getting her where I wanted her. The sun was making me feel delirious. “Okay, bathing beauty, now it’s time for a little contest. Well, you’re the only contestant—but I still expect you to do be an excellent performer.” I sat in the chair, mustering all the height and haughtiness I could. I looked her up and down like a sleazy judge at a cheap beauty contest. “Come over here and turn around for me.” She complied by strutting around, even bending over, showing off her curvy ass. I gave her butt a light squeeze, then made her put her bikini bottom back on and handed her a skimpy shirt. “We’re going to have a wet T-shirt contest now, so I need you to take off your top, put on this shirt, and then get in the water. You’ll be judged like in the Olympics, on a scale of one to ten, with points for clinginess, sex appeal, and originality. You can do whatever you want as long as you keep your T-shirt on. And before you even ask, you will be highly rewarded for a high score—trust me on that.” I could see her eyes light up, her mind churning as she tried to figure out how she could dazzle me. “I’ll be sitting right over here,” I said, pointing. We were practically touching, and she batted her eyes at me the way she always does to get what she wants. “Can I really do whatever I want as long as I keep my T-shirt on?” she asked, putting on a simpering manner. She sure knew how to drive me crazy, and I almost bagged the whole thing, scooped her up over my shoulder, and brought her home, but I came to my senses in time. This would be too much fun to miss out on. “That’s what I said. Now get moving.” I gently swatted her away, then settled into my chair, a magazine over my lap and one hand idly playing with my clit underneath it. She knew that I was really putty in her manicured hands, but we both went along with the charade that I was in charge. She loped off toward the ocean, and after a while I couldn’t see her anymore. I tried to read my magazine but couldn’t concentrate, and instead closed my eyes, picturing what Jill would look like with that flimsy little shirt clinging to her tits. I didn’t have to wait long, because before I knew it, drops of water were falling onto me. I looked up and got quite the shock—she was standing in front of me wearing only the shirt, which left nothing to the imagination. I looked up and saw her holding her wet bikini bottom in front of me, and breathed a sigh of relief that we were in such a private area, or my little bad girl might have gotten us arrested.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  And the eyebrows, the eyebrows!’ ‘Take all these rags, take the perfume, drag it to your trunk, hide it,’ cried Margarita, ‘but don’t take any valuables, they’ll accuse you of stealing.’ Natasha grabbed and bundled up whatever came to her hand—dresses, shoes, stockings, underwear—and ran out of the bedroom. Just then from somewhere at the other end of the lane a thundering, virtuoso waltz burst and flew out an open window, and the chugging of a car driving up to the gate was heard. ‘Azazello will call now!’ exclaimed Margarita, listening to the waltz spilling into the lane. ‘He’ll call! And the foreigner’s not dangerous, yes, I understand now that he’s not dangerous!’ There was the noise of a car driving away from the front gate. The garden gate banged, and steps were heard on the tiles of the path. ‘It’s Nikolai Ivanovich, I recognize his footsteps,’ thought Margarita. ‘I must do something funny and interesting in farewell.’ Margarita tore the curtain open and sat sideways on the window-sill, her arms around her knees. Moonlight licked her from the right side. Margarita raised her head towards the moon and made a pensive and poetic face. The steps tapped twice more, and then suddenly—silence. After admiring the moon a little longer, sighing for the sake of propriety, Margarita turned her head to the garden and indeed saw Nikolai Ivanovich, who lived on the bottom floor of the same house. Moonlight poured down brightly on Nikolai Ivanovich. He was sitting on a bench, and there was every indication that he had sunk on to it suddenly. The pince-nez on his face was somehow askew, and he was clutching his briefcase in his hands. ‘Ah, hello, Nikolai Ivanovich,’ Margarita said in a melancholy voice. ‘Good evening! Coming back from a meeting?’ Nikolai Ivanovich made no reply to that. ‘And I,’ Margarita went on, leaning further out into the garden, ‘am sitting alone, as you see, bored, looking at the moon and listening to the waltz . . .’ Margarita passed her left hand over her temple, straightening a strand of hair, then said crossly: ‘That is impolite, Nikolai Ivanovich! I’m still a woman after all! It’s boorish not to reply when someone is talking to you.’ Nikolai Ivanovich, visible in the moonlight to the last button on his grey waistcoat, to the last hair of his blond, wedge-shaped beard, suddenly smiled a wild smile, rose from the bench, and, apparently beside himself with embarrassment, instead of taking off his hat, waved his briefcase to the side and bent his knees as if about to break into a squatting dance. ‘Ah, what a boring type you are, Nikolai Ivanovich!’

• From Why We Believe: Finding Meaning in Uncertain Times

  There is now a substantial body of scientific studies that has established links between finding ‘meaning in life’ in lessening anxiety and enhancing wellbeing. Individuals need to feel that their lives and their existence are of importance and value (a condition now known as ‘existential mattering’).25 We do not know why this is so; the evidence simply indicates that it is so – and is thus important to us. As the writer Jeanette Winterson observes, human beings are clearly meant to do more than just survive; they need to flourish. A meaningless life for a human being has none of the dignity of animal unselfconsciousness; we cannot simply eat, sleep, hunt and reproduce – we are meaning-seeking creatures. The Western world has done away with religion but not with religious impulses; we seem to need some higher purpose, some point to our lives – money and leisure, social progress, are just not enough.26 Winterson is surely right here. The cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz earlier suggested that human beings are ‘symbolizing, conceptualizing, meaning-seeking animals’, who are driven to ‘make sense out of experience, and give it some form and order’.27 Humanity ‘cannot live in a world it is unable to understand.’ Nobody is sure why human beings find the concept of ‘meaning’ to be so significant; what we do know is that humans flourish when they have it and wither when they don’t. As mentioned, I discovered Marxism in the late 1960s. It was exhilarating, offering me precisely what Winterson identified as central human needs – ‘some higher purpose, some point to our lives’. So let me tell you a little more about my own teenage longings for certainty, how I once believed these were met in Marxism and what I learned from my encounter with this worldview. Reflections of a Lapsed MarxistI was a nerdy scientist during my teenage years, studying at the Methodist College Belfast, one of Northern Ireland’s largest schools. I loved the natural sciences for two reasons: first, they allowed me to engage with the beauty and mystery of nature in an intellectually rigorous way and, second, because they seemed to offer me evidence-based certainties about life. My growing fascination with chemistry helped me grasp how a good scientific theory could organise and explain what otherwise was a jumble of observations. Dmitri Mendeleev’s brilliant analytical tool of the Periodic Table of the Elements (1869) organised chemical elements in a way that both accounted for their distinct properties, while suggesting (correctly) that there were gaps in the scheme that would be filled with as yet undiscovered elements.

• From Soaking Wet: Lesbian Sex Stories (2014)

  I’m not really clear on how we got me out of my jeans. My thong, Elle just pushed aside. It was mostly useless by now anyway; I could smell myself in the steamy confines of the car. “My little firebomb,” Elle whispered as her fingers sought my wetness. “You are just insatiable.” I couldn’t form a coherent answer. She buried two fingers in my folds, pressed them up into me. I clamped down on them, desperate for release. The combination of thrusting fingers and the thumb she had pressed against my clit and her mouth clamped on my aching nipple was overwhelming. So many sensations, driving me further to the edge. I crashed over into orgasm, grinding myself against her hand. I clutched the headrest with one hand and pounded against the car’s ceiling with the other. “Fuck, yes!” And that’s when a bright light shone in the window and a strident male voice said, “All right, kids, let’s break it up in there.” It was the voice rather than the light that caught my attention, largely because my bare ass was facing the window, giving the officer a fine view. I pulled my bra up, and tumbled sideways into the driver’s seat, my feet still tangled in my jeans. The action revealed Elle’s breasts in all their glory. She yanked the edges of the cardigan together, but not before the cop outside got a nice eyeful. Shit. Cop. I’d been caught making out in a car before. Even caught by a cop. But never with a cop herself. Never when one of my partner’s coworkers, essentially, was watching. Crap. I reached behind my seat and flailed around for my shirt. “Jesus, MacIntyre.” Elle’s voice sounded annoyed rather than embarrassed. She rolled down the window a little farther and glared up at him. “Don’t you have anything better to do?” “Tudor, is that really you?” “Yes, it’s me,” she said, trying to button her sweater in the dark. (Lucky her. Even with the missing button. My shirt had apparently been sucked into a black hole.) “I thought you had the night off.” “Nah, I’m trying to get in as much overtime as I can before the baby comes.” He chuckled. “Lucky me. Wait ’til I tell—” “You’re not going to tell anyone, MacIntyre. The word will get back to Debbie that you saw me naked, and she’s got pregnant-woman hormones right now….” His face fell. “Damn, you’re right. Oh well.” As he turned to go, he added a “Hey, Destiny,” in my direction. In silence, as if we were both holding our breaths, we listened to his car door slam and the motor rev to life. “Elle, I’m so sorry…” To my amazement, she busted out laughing. “It’s all right,” she said when she could finally talk over the wild whoops and guffaws. “Did you see his face?”

• From Soaking Wet: Lesbian Sex Stories (2014)

  “Why is that?” She smiled, flashing me a row of charming, semicrooked white teeth. She wasn’t taking me seriously—I could tell by the way she undid that top button and went for the second one. “Because.” My cheeks turned pink with shyness. “Look, I’m not—” “You don’t have to be anything you don’t want to be,” she assured me as she undid the last button and pulled my pants down over my hips and off my legs, revealing my lace thong panties with the butterfly appliqué. “But one thing you are is horny. And no matter what you are or aren’t, you want me. I know that much.” How did she know? Did it even matter? She was right; more than right, in fact. I was feeling more excited than I ever had toward my ex-husband, a lawyer who had a mind for business and not a clue about a woman’s needs. I had a feeling that Sabra didn’t have his same problems. “Have you ever eaten pussy before, Mrs. B?” she whispered, her voice thick with amusement and sensuality as she slid off my lap and knelt on the floor of the limo. She lowered her head to dip her tongue inside my belly button. I swallowed hard. “It’s just Kent now. Rachel Kent. I’m not married anymore.” “Good to know,” she said, her voice still smiling. Her head moved lower, and her teeth scraped at my inner thighs. A moan of anticipation escaped my lips and intensified as her tongue slid inside the crotch of my panties. “These are very sexy panties, by the way. Too bad we have to get rid of them.” She dragged the thong off my legs, leaving me wearing only my coat, my unbuttoned shirt, and my bra up around my neck. I was still half-clothed, yet feeling more naked than I ever had in my life. My mouth opened to protest, but no sound came out. Sabra opened my legs, and the cool air of the car against my hot cunt made my legs shake. Then she bowed her head again and swept her tongue over my pussy. The feeling was so different from when Edward used to go down on me. He had been hesitant and insecure with his tongue—even a little disgusted. Sabra, however, lapped at me with the tongue of a tiger and sucked on my clit as if it were hard candy. I gripped the seat and felt the leather grow wet under my sweating hands as I writhed under her spell. But she pulled away, her face glistening with my juices. “It’s time you gave it a try, Ms. K.” Her dark eyes laughed at me, but I didn’t care; I wanted her so badly. “I don’t know how—”