Best Women's Erotica of the Year, Volume 1 Read online

  BEST

  WOMEN’S EROTICA

  OF THE YEAR

  VOLUME ONE

  BEST

  WOMEN’S EROTICA

  OF THE YEAR

  VOLUME ONE

  Edited by

  RACHEL KRAMER BUSSEL

  Copyright © 2016 by Rachel Kramer Bussel.

  All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, television or online reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  Published in the United States by Cleis Press, an imprint of Start Midnight LLC, 101 Hudson Street, 37th Floor, Suite 3705, Jersey City, New Jersey 07302.

  Printed in the United States.

  Cover Design by Scott Idleman/Bink

  Cover photograph: iStock

  Text design: Frank Wiedemann

  First Edition.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Trade paper ISBN: 978-1-62778-153-4

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-62778-159-6

  Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  A New Canvas

  Demimonde

  Ophelia the Second

  Revisiting Youth

  Date Night

  Flying Solo

  Drawn by Nic

  The Ropes

  Starstruck

  The Altar of Lamented Toys

  Matilda’s Secret

  Scents & Sexuality

  Alvin’s Night

  Enter Me

  The Wolf at His Door

  Out of the Ordinary

  Lighting the Pyre

  Restitution

  The Carnalarium

  Waiting to Pee

  Two Doms for Dinner

  The Assistant

  About the Authors

  About the Editor

  INTRODUCTION

  It’s an incredible honor to present to you Best Women’s Erotica of the Year Volume 1, my first time taking the helm. As an author, this groundbreaking series has been home to some of my favorite stories I’ve written, stories that pushed me into uncharted territory, whether writing about a dishwashing fetish (“Doing the Dishes”), an oral sex restaurant (“Secret Service”) or visiting a married lover (“Espionage”).

  As an editor, I faced the mighty task of whittling down the over two hundred submissions I received to the twenty-two found between these covers. The resulting collection is one that features the kind of women I consider my readers to be: smart, daring, fierce, loving, kinky, curious, powerful, feisty. While no single book can represent every kind of woman, you’ll find women from a range of races, sexual orientations, and backgrounds, partnered and solo. You’ll find women going on sexual journeys from the past, present and future.

  Whether they’re enjoying a threesome, acting out their passion on stage, getting a tattoo, seducing their boss, having their naked body painted, dressing up as a domme or exulting in their most submissive moment, the characters you’ll read about here, and their authors, are passionate, funny and they were a delight to visit with.

  You will notice that there are more than a few women here “of a certain age,” as the saying goes, which is fitting as I turned forty just before this book goes to press—close enough to look back on my younger days, as Aya does in “Revisiting Youth” by J. Crichton and H. Keyes, and hoping to keep the erotic spark alive well into the future, as characters like D in Dorothy Freed’s “Two Doms for Dinner” do.

  My goal with this book was twofold: to present sexual fantasies in a way that sparks your imagination and also respects your mind, and to reflect a glimmer of real life back from the deepest reaches of these authors’ minds. Though some of the scenarios you’re about to read would be impossible to live out, and some might be unlikely, all of them offer women who are willing to go toward what might seem scary or new or uncertain, whether that means an old flame, a sexy stranger or a childhood crush.

  I also wanted to present some of my favorite erotic authors, such as S.E.C.R.E.T. trilogy author L. Marie Adeline and The Original Sinners series author Tiffany Reisz, alongside writers whose work you may be reading for the first time. I’ve long said that erotica is an incredibly democratic and welcoming genre, and I’m proud to have so many new authors, whose names you’ll likely want to watch as they set forth in their erotica writing careers.

  Whether outdoors, in a love hotel or even a porta-potty (yes, you read that right, and Amy Butcher’s “Waiting to Pee” is one of the most provocative stories I’ve ever published, one I plan to reread often), they are willing to go forth into the unknown because the payoff promises to rock their worlds. I hope the same can be said for your reading experience. Welcome to Best Women’s Erotica. Whenever and wherever you’re reading this, I hope it both arouses and surprises you.

  Rachel Kramer Bussel

  Atlantic City, New Jersey

  A NEW CANVAS

  by Tara Betts

  The bass and slow pace of hip hop sounded like a drone after a couple of hours. Everything sounded as if it had the same pace then. When the dark room was even more obscured by smoke from blunts and a twinge of incense, Angela spotted Troy. She hadn’t been smoking and neither had he. For both of them, it was about being in the same space with the artists and loving the music. They would meet for dinner sometimes, talk politics, books, music and all that, but there was never a flirtation. Usually, Angela had a boyfriend or Troy had a girlfriend, and Angela simply kept quiet about how she felt about Troy listening intently to her every answer, her glimpses of one of his dozen tattoos, the lingering conversations where it took forever for Angela to get out of the car, their long goodbye hugs and even how his posture made him look strong, confident and sexy. Sexy. She could not even say the word out loud. She had not dated anyone seriously in almost three years.

  She wanted him, but Angela was afraid to lose the amazing conversations, so she kept it at just friends. She tried not to think about how the steady thump of the bass reminded her of the pulse of her clit, and she quieted herself. She avoided looking at his lower lip like she wanted to suck it gently, or at the piercings on his ear; her tongue could almost taste each of the metal studs. Snap out of it. That lingering was gone in a blink, and he was doing a frenetic bounce, making fun of someone’s dance he saw the other night. He could break her into giggling too fast, but he seemed to like making her laugh, so she went with it. It was already late when they saw each other at The Spot, and the ongoing thump was starting to sound gloomy and indistinct, so she said she was leaving. “I can give you a ride back to the crib,” he said. It didn’t seem like anything he’d never offered before. She said yes.

  Her discomfort lingered the most when they could never just say goodbye in his car. They always ended up talking in the car and staring at her door, as if he wanted to stay in the car or follow her. Finally, after sitting in the car for the longest pause, she piped up and said what she had always wanted to say. “It’s not too late if you want to come in. I was going to make some tea and maybe watch a movie.” Even this felt too forward to her, but his hands relaxed on the steering wheel.

  “Sure, let me grab my bag. There’s something I’ve been working on,” Troy said.

  He leaned over the back seat and pulled out a half-zipped backpack. Angela thought it was a laptop until she spied the hardcover journal, Sharpies, markers, pens and colored pencils. She hadn’t seen those in years, but she knew what they were right away. She was so excited that
she could almost smell Krylon. Troy, who hadn’t done graffiti in years, still sketched in a piece book. Usually it was the small-scale version of what ended up on brick walls or commissioned murals, but this was his private haven of characters, panels, miniature versions of letters rendered in bubbled curves and wild-style angles.

  “I’d love to see what you’re drawing. I didn’t know you got down like that!” Angela said.

  She was surprised and intrigued that she saw this creative side in him. She figured he was always about his work, but this was new. She wished she could draw him nude, then snapped back to attention before she started feeling too overheated and wet from the thought of him touching her.

  “I thought it would be cool to share something with you,” he said.

  “I’d like that,” Angela said. She hopped out of the passenger’s side and waved him toward the vestibule. “What have you been working on?” she asked.

  “A lot of random sketches, but there has been a series on my mind, and it makes me wish I could paint it on trains and go all-city!”

  “You know no one does that anymore, but the idea of doing a throwback like that is nice. Too bad they shrink-wrap the trains in those ugly advertisements instead,” Angela said.

  “Right? Those kinds of pieces are something you see in old movies, but the series just struck me as that kind of classic,” Troy said.

  “Now I’m curious. I have ginger peach, green tea and honey chamomile. What kind do you want?” Angela asked. She was putting a full kettle on the stove. She liked to hear the building rumble and the eventual prelude to the whistle. She turned around to reach for the closed box of tea and realized he was standing in the doorway, quietly watching her.

  “Ginger peach,” Troy said.

  “Show me the piece book already!” Angela said, her tone partial command, but more gentle curiosity.

  “You sure you want to see it?” he asked.

  “Yes!” Angela said. For the first time ever, he hesitated, and then she started to wonder. Some of the landscapes were city scenes—brick walls with kids leaning against them, trains snaking above the dark streets dotted with a few lights, letters spelling out names of crews. Then there was one sketch with butterflies and intricate letters that stopped her from reaching for a second cup of honey chamomile. It spelled out her name in orange and yellow with twinges of red. It reminded her of the sun at dusk. “Troy, this is beautiful…” Angela was cut off before she could say anything else.

  He cupped his hand in the small of her back, and pulled her close. She was stunned that it was actually happening, but leaned a little bit forward. He nipped at her bottom lip, and when the first full kiss came, her tongue pressed past his lips and twisted toward his tongue. She was trying to slow down, but he was holding her. She had dropped the piece book on the table, and grabbed his head by then. The only thing that broke her focus was the hard whistle of the kettle. She stumbled a few steps away, but he would not let go of her hand. He looked so serious that heaven breaking in fragments and raining down on them was not going to change his intentions.

  “I actually wanted to suggest something…” Troy said.

  The deliberation let her know that this might be more than she expected, but she only asked, “What?”

  “Well, I had these pens that I wanted to try on a new canvas,” he said. He was trailing off again, but a small smirk crossed his mouth. “I was wondering if you’d want to take off your clothes and let me draw on you.”

  He had found a set of body art pens. They reminded Angela of eyeliner pencils, soft but in more colors than she’d seen at the cosmetic counters. He took out the purple one. “Your favorite color,” Troy said as he took the pen and ran the slender, covered tip behind her ear, stopping at her collarbone. She kissed him again, and gently grabbed his earlobe between her teeth.

  “Only if you end up naked too,” Angela said. She found herself wondering who the woman in her body was. She started by taking off his T-shirt and watching his locks fall across his lean chest and broad shoulders. Dear Jesus, even that much skin, plus seeing the other tattoos that she had never seen, took her breath away. His skin was covered with poems and Adinkra symbols.

  Angela unzipped her hoodie and revealed the tank top underneath. Her nipples visibly hardened, as if they were defying her bra. He leaned in, kissed her and deliberated at her collarbone while he unbuttoned her jeans. He studied her face intently before licking the hollow of her collarbone and cupping her left breast. When she bent a bit to lower her pants, he eased the tank top over her head. When the pants fell, he grabbed her close and said, “This is going to go slow, just like teasing the rest of you.”

  Angela’s mouth fell open. She was still stunned that her tea kettle might not be the only vessel making a high-pitched sound. Troy asked her to grab a blanket and a couple of pillows that he could spread on the floor. Angela, half-naked, obliged.

  When she came back, Troy was standing in her kitchen looking like all the lean muscle that she had imagined in his baggy jeans and Timberland boots. He was already half erect and leaning to the left. She was trying not to stare. He had more to offer than she’d imagined. She had known him all this time, but just him touching her and finally meeting her mouth with his had broken her defenses. He smoothed out the blanket on the kitchen floor and took one of the pillows from her.

  She felt a bit awkward, but he asked her to lay on her stomach at first. Before a pen touched her skin, he rubbed her shoulders, then pressed his fingertips down and ran them along the length of her back. She felt his lips kiss each vertebrae in her spine until he reached the curve of her ass. “Turn over,” he said. Troy took in the length of Angela’s body and traced his tongue between her breasts, then grabbed the right one. He teased the nipple with his tongue until it puckered into hardness. His warm breath and his coppery locks brushed against her bare skin. When she felt a pulse quickening at the tip of her clit, a small moan escaped her lips. He spread out the rest of the body art pens near the blanket. “Just relax and be still,” Troy said. Angela didn’t know if she could stand it, but she was curious to see what he would sketch on her.

  At first, the cool, firm tip of each pen chilled her skin. She felt the goosebumps rise as he wrote Uhuru, the Swahili word for freedom, on her left forearm. He colored in the purple letters with pink and blue chevron-like stripes. He moved on to the right forearm and wrote if, the Yoruba word for love, in black. He colored in that shorter word with red and green. On the left side, he started drawing a purple arrow along the length of her body toward the pubic bone. “Directions for later,” Troy explained. When he was done drawing that arrow, he capped the pen and traced the tip around the lips of her opening, which had been wet when he began. He stroked her clitoris a few times with the pen and Angela shuddered. When he touched her with his fingers, he smiled, reached for the black pen and drew the second arrow between her breasts, right next to the purple one.

  Just above the collarbone, he etched in a purple and navy skyline, but included an array of tiny gold stars across her hips. A few outlined the constellation Cassiopeia between her shoulder and breast. When he got to her thighs, he started to sketch out anatomical images of the brain and the heart on one side and the uterus and tongue on the other. He leaned over and kissed her, and told her that her eyes and lips always drew him in, but the brain and the heart made it better. He loved how every word fell from her tongue, and he wondered what her babies might be like inside her. He drew monarch butterflies trailing up one leg and toward her inner thigh. It almost looked like the migration to Michoacán had landed on her leg. On her other leg, there were blackbirds in midflight. Their wings were tipped in bright green and silver.

  As the ink dried, his lips worked their way back up her legs. She felt him inhale and exhale over the soft curls that covered her outer lips. He was breathing in her smell.

  “I have to know what you taste like,” Troy said.

  He gently lifted her legs a couple of inches. He had not eve
n parted them yet, but she said yes anyway. He spread her legs and let them rest on his shoulders. She wanted to know what he spelled out on the button of flesh, and he seemed to lap up her wet quivering. Angela looked down to see him drinking her in while her decorated legs were in full sight. She felt his soft skin covered in tattoos, and the muscles pressed into her soft flesh; that alone made her moan more and grab fistfuls of the blankets in both hands.

  “Are you ready?” Troy asked. Angela nodded. When he started to ease his way into her, she felt like her body could not remember this first thrust ever feeling so full, tight and electrifying all at once. She clutched his lower back and felt him move even faster, but not too fast. He listened to her breathing and synced his breath with hers. They clutched each other’s hands and Angela rose her hips to meet his. She got louder. Troy said, “Damn, girl, it’s like that?” A small smile parted Angela’s lips.

  “Yeah, it’s like that.” She felt the familiar tightening of a man’s legs and saw Troy’s eyes clench before he asked her to slow down.

  They waited for a few breaths before he flipped her on top of him in a quick, confident motion. It reminded her of how comfortable he was just standing in front of a room full of people, and how she found that sexy—but now she wanted to scream, though she knew she was not quite there. She was on top of him now and leaning forward. She wondered what all his designs looked like on her body from this angle, but she was leaning into him to feel all his heat, his skin. He pulled back just enough to almost be free then plunged inward to enter her even deeper. She leaned down with her elbows on either side of his head and grabbed his face to kiss him so hard that she could almost feel his teeth. She nipped at his lip.

  They started moving faster, and she guided him into a steady, rhythmic pace, where she felt the orgasm growing like the quick moment when a sparkler ignites and then blooms into bright sparks. Shuddering, she said his name. She gripped the shaft even tighter while he began flexing inside her. It felt like a second pulse beating hard and fast, and soon Angela was yelling “Don’t stop.” They were clamped onto each other so tightly that she didn’t even notice how loud they both were until she collapsed and rested her head on his chest.