INTRODUCTION: THE ART OF HUNGER

This collection of explicit erotic fiction by women has been titled Lust. That’s a short, simple name and at first glance it could seem like a very self-aggrandizing title for a single book. It is after all a concept that has filled volumes; its urgency has destroyed hearts, minds and empires; its complexity rules us in ways we’d sometimes rather not explore—yet want to, oh so badly. That’s why Lust is a perfect title for the stories between these pages. Each one captures the uncontrollable, draws it out, and we get to savor every act of irresistible hunger, desire and the point of no return: lust.

When lust overcomes you, you barely know who you are or what you are doing. Each of the women in the following selections knows this feeling, and the skilled authors represented here—both new and well known—faithfully capture that feeling in each woman’s passage from ordinary to extraordinary sexual hunger.

For instance: In K. L. Gillespie’s “Golden Hand,” a slick pickpocket gets far more than she bargained for in a chance, anonymous encounter on a crowded train. When desire trumps theft, she has no choice but to submit to it. In “Ripe Fruit,” Bonnie Dee gives us a truly heated taste of both the pleasures of impulse sex and the creative use of summertime fruits. Being overcome with lust is hard work for some—especially the female private investigator in Teresa Noelle Roberts’ “Sixth Sense,” whose investigation goes from routine to highly unprofessional when she takes total control of the situation. Kay Jaybee’s “Tied to the Kitchen Sink” is a playful and randily inspiring tale of casual lust that’ll have you thinking differently about both birthday presents and housework.

Lust makes the real surreal, and changes our boundaries when we’re in its heat. As happens in “The Butch, the Boy and Me,” by Andrea Zanin, in which a butch dyke stretches her sexual orientation a bit to try on a man and a very happy female enabler. Sloane Square’s “The Hall of Justice” takes the three-way into another, less controllable direction when a public hookup among costumed club-goers goes all the way, and then some. Saskia Walker’s sexy, stylized skills excel in “The Importance of Good Networking,” making office life into the hotbed of unbridled lust and sexy IT nerds we’ve always dreamed about.

“Coffee Shop Boy,” by A. D. R. Forte, builds tension to the breaking point in that classic scenario—lusting after the hot guy you see every day at the coffee shop—but the female forensic scientist in the starring role has a very different method of turning him into her toy. Geneva King’s “American Bottom in Limousin” will surprise even those readers with the dirtiest jail fantasies, as a girl finds herself behind bars in a foreign country and is offered a tense deal for release. “Pleasant Surprise,” by Maria Grigoriadis, is a surprise that isn’t merely pleasant, but downright incendiary—when a sexy stranger shows up at her door, shushing her and asking for a hot fuck, what else can the girl do?

Susan St. Aubin’s beautiful, lyrical “Moving” is a long, lusty stroll (literally) for a woman who thinks she’s past all that lust stuff until a heckler she walks by every day gets her to slow down and rediscover skin, sex, heat and the desire she thought she’d outgrown. “Out of the Shower,” by Maria Matthews, portrays the ultimate in instant, freshly washed lust: a woman steps from the tub and right into a blindfold and some delicious light pain, bondage and sexual submission to the man who loves her.

“Love Triangle,” by B. J. Franklin, offers us a girl so overcome with lust that she gets caught watching her male lust object get off—and you won’t believe what his boyfriend does. Jean Roberta’s “Het Cats” isn’t just a playful turn across the LGBT dance floor, but a line-crossing tale of tear-each-other’s-clothes-off sex between two very unlikely people. A darker, yet wholly consuming and arousing turn is Debra Hyde’s “Kidnapped,” which delivers exactly what the title implies: rough sex, and more. After a hot nonconsensual fantasy, how about some shopping lust? Kristina Wright’s “Satisfaction Guaranteed” takes us into the fantasyland behind closed doors in a sex shop, where the manager is as ready as the toys to make the customers happy. And finally, Reen Guierre takes lust on a river adventure and a young woman drifts into a spontaneous, riveting and unexpected tryst while “Tubing the Brule.”

I hope that you find as much good friction in these stories as the women inhabiting them. A book about swimming may not save anyone from drowning, but my hope is that Lust will make you hungry enough to perform more than a few acts of lust. For satisfaction, for desire, for love; even without an audience, the hunger artist must perform. Kafka got that part right, anyway.

 

Violet Blue
April 2007