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Erotica du Jour © :: Erotica » Articles Du Jour https://eroticadujour.com original essays & articles on sexuality, sensuality, erotica, book reviews, and more Sat, 11 Feb 2012 21:59:00 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.1 Melt With You https://eroticadujour.com/melt-with-you/ https://eroticadujour.com/melt-with-you/#comments Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:55:34 +0000 butterfly https://eroticadujour.com/?p=1243

Moving forward using all my breath

Making love to you was never second best

I saw the world thrashing all around your face

Never really knowing it was always mesh and lace

I’ll stop the world and melt with you

You’ve seen the difference and

It’s getting better all the time

There’s nothing you and I won’t do

I’ll stop the world and melt with you

(Modern English)

Touch is the essence of bonding between lovers. The deepest and most profoundly erotic moments might be the ones we may not realize as such. It might be the way our skin feels against each other’s during sleep, or a kiss along the back of the neck. Their finger hooked into the crook of yours during a walk together. The scent of their skin remaining on the neck of a shirt. It might be more erotic to discover how much your mate loves his or her feet rubbed during a loving foot massage, when you can allow them to fully let go without expectations. Kissing and licking their toes can be highly erotic in such cases, and chances are good that kissing the arch of their foot expands the horizon on foreplay.

Bonding and intimacy are enhanced by caressing, touching and being together. Touch itself  doesn’t need to involve anything more than just the touch of skin together. Eroticism can be found in the familiarity of our lover’s scent, the tone of their voice or their heartbeat to our chest. Eroticism is discovered when we are being present. Being aware of our senses allows us to open to any state of pleasure. Stopping the world to melt together is pure joy. The pleasure of the discovery of each other can be unlimited.

I’ve been reading a few articles on pair bonding— neurobiology has it that we bond through affectionate gestures like any other pair bonding sort of mammals. Caressing, grooming, cooing, sighing, and eye contact keep us together but not the act of sex itself. So in other words, penetration isn’t the main course of sex and bonding, but touch is. Oxytocin, the “love” hormone, is part of this magical state of being.

When oxytocin is released in our brains and bodies, we feel like we are softly melting. We are high on oxytocin. Oxytocin makes us feel contentment, reduces anxiety and increases good feelings around our mate. Studies have shown that oxytocin levels increase after orgasm and are part of sexual arousal. This does not surprise me at all. Each time I was pregnant and ready for birth, nipple stimulation during active childbirth helped the delivery along. Nipple stimulation produces more oxytocin, which is necessary for increasing uterine contractions. Sex is enhanced by oxytocin and so is childbirth. And so is love.

Oxytocin helps us orgasm too.

Brain chemistry alone isn’t enough. We have that mysterious aspect of us that we call the soul. Our souls must feel safe, secure, cared for and, in the words of Thomas Moore from his book The Soul of Sex, “Like everything human, sensation cannot be separated from the imagination.” Our lover’s body, face, scent and touch inspire us to let go and we succumb to the pleasure of love and loving, of being loved and giving love.

Our minds are also  full of all that buzzing and bubbling chemistry and electric neurological magic. Erotic love is a shape-shifter. It comes alive in the imagination. We can imagine anything we want to during sex, about sex. Erotic fantasies are the playground for our deepest desires and lightest whims. If we want to imagine an orgy in which we are the central focus, perhaps that fantasy satisfies something in us that we need or attentions that we require. But fantasy doesn’t have to mean something psychologically deep either. It can just be a fascination with orgies and a curiosity that we wouldn’t play out in our reality. It can stay in fantasy. The fluidity of erotic fantasy is like dreaming.

Being present with our lover enhances our bond with them. There have been a few times that the idea of only kissing together was discussed with my lover. We tried it a few times. Just caressing and kissing — even in the car. Well, I have to admit, we gave in to having sex in the car. But, it worked. Kissing was powerful foreplay for us.

Kissing is actually highest on the charts for both men and women as the main thing that turns them on the most and brings them together. Men, according to Your Tango Tokii survey, put kissing at the top of the list for foreplay, and 57% of men say “yes” to kissing. So, pucker up and smooch away. Men love it more than you think. They love it even more than women do, supposedly.

 “The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty ‘yes’ to your adventure.” 
Joseph Campbell

Sex and love. It’s an adventure. Be present. When we are solely focused upon reaching orgasm we can lose sight of being present. We seek that climb toward ecstasy rather than simply losing ourselves in our lover’s eyes and dissolving into the other. We are preoccupied with orgasm as the goal— for some men trying to hold back from orgasm is the distraction. For some women, trying to have an orgasm is the elusive goal. And when we are yearning too strongly for that marvelous feeling, it becomes the antithesis of letting go. We can try too hard or focus too much on that one moment. Thus, we aren’t being present. We strive for that feeling that will lead us to a better sensation, and then even better: orgasm. If it happens effortlessly, then the beauty of sex is breathing through us naturally. The flow of erotic touch inspires us. There are many women who cannot achieve orgasm at all. Psychological blocks, physical problems, and difficulty staying erect and/or achieving orgasm due to age, along with hormone changes, can all affect a man’s ability to orgasm. Anorgasmic men exist as well.

There are some men that fear that they won’t remain as virile or as hard, and if they can’t then women (their wife, their girlfriend), may not be satisfied. A myriad of worries can run through their minds. What if I can’t stay hard? And, what if? Then what? Will she want another man? What if I can’t please her? Well, women are very forgiving, generally. There are other ways to stay connected and give pleasure. Kissing, touching, oral pleasure (for both— even if he can’t stay hard or orgasm— go for it anyway), caressing and fingers work wonders. Giving each other a massage, pillow talk, and laughter can be satisfying ways to bond and stay bonded.  Believe me, just kissing while naked in bed is really fun. And so is watching your lover’s favorite sitcom while snuggled together in the nude. Do it once, and you’ll feel like teenagers in love again.

The psychological and emotional satisfaction levels increase when we are touching each other with affection. The pornographic internet-generated depictions of sex and its one-dimensional façade is junk food compared to the poetry and art of intimacy: the richness of a lover’s kiss, the soulful expression of their eyes, the sigh of their chest when love fills them with emotion, the tight embrace and the feeling that you just cannot get close enough. The meaningful experience of sex can be discovered before and beyond penetration. In fact, penetration, although satisfying in its own right, isn’t really necessary when all the ingredients for soulful sex are present. It becomes superfluous. Yes, that’s right, I said it. Penetration isn’t everything. Don’t read that as if I don’t enjoy it. Oh, I love it. What I’m saying is, penetration is part of, but not the whole of, sex.

Intimacy is delicate; a vulnerable spot in the heart of our erotic selves. We want and crave the closeness. For women (and I say most of this without any scholarly study, just my experiential references), could it be that the weight of their lover upon them echoes an instinctual craving to be taken, to surrender, to be mated with? Male lions grasp the nape of the female’s neck with their teeth while they mount and mate with them. I found this intriguing and it sounded pretty nice too, the whole act. I love my neck bitten, don’t you? The female instinct to surrender is part of the mating dance.

 Then, the Eastern wisdom of tantric sex and all its mystery lifts its veil. The pleasure of receiving expands our awareness, the height of erotic transcendence.

Ancient Chinese Taoists believed ejaculating depleted a man’s vital life energy, or “chi,” so men were taught to preserve their sexual fluid in order to build their vitality.

In Taoist sexual practices, women are encouraged to have frequent and multiple orgasms. This gives the man even more vitality so he can also stay within the woman for as long as possible in order to absorb the woman’s vital life juices and powerful energy, or “yin essence” (“yin essence” is also a euphemism for “sexual fluid”). Well, it makes me want to be a Taoist.

When I am making love with my man I often, and sometimes with mixed emotion, wish that he would just suddenly come inside of me. (Remember, I’m the one that said “penetration isn’t everything?”) I want him to come because I love him so much; it’s instinctual and in that moment I want him to make me pregnant. I want it down to my bones. Love is made of such dreams. I want to melt with him.

So, yes, I’ve been dreaming about it as well. One dream made me smile during sleep. He was awake and watching my face. He asked what I was dreaming of. In the dream, it was so vivid: I was in a hospital recovery room and I had just given birth. Next to me, my lover’s mother cradling our newborn child. She, his mother and the new grandma, hummed a song and rocked the baby softly. The warmth of the dream, the sweet feeling it gave me inside, radiated through my face while I slept. As my darling caressed my face and asked softly what I was dreaming I just smiled a sweet, happy smile. It was a soul deep happiness and a feeling of wholeness in my relationship. I felt belonging. I felt like everything was right.

Not just for my own pleasure do I want to melt and belong to him, but I want to satisfy his desire, his instinct. We make sex complex when sometimes the instincts are just so true to our human nature. I long to feel his slick come inside of me, hot and milky, smelling like springtime and freshly cut grass. That beautiful tenderness overwhelms me when he gives me so much pleasure. I want to feel him fill me with the pulse of his orgasm, the flood of his ejaculation and that dripping tickle when it runs out from me. When I stand up I want to feel his come trickle down my thigh. Sometimes what brings me to orgasm is the notion that he is going to make me pregnant. When he gazes at me when we are making love, I wonder where he is taking me or how far into me his eyes are going. What does he see in me when he gives me one orgasm after another? It’s an adventure, this tantric kind of sex. In a way, we have transcended to another level of sexual pleasure together.

One day we spent the entire day making love. This sounds exaggerated, but really, the entire day just making love. Parts of “making love” involved him making an omelette for me, some tea for us to share, but still we had sex numerous times and the resting moments in between were still “making love” as far as I’m concerned. Because my body was so attuned to his and I had multiple orgasms each round of lovemaking, the last time we made love I came so intensely I felt an energetic flood of orgasm begin in my sex, radiate through my body going upwards through my belly, through my breasts, nipples, and up further out the top of my head, simultaneously—- I felt this orgasm move through my hips, my legs and down through my toes. I was tingling and shaking. That, my dear readers, was a veritable “full body orgasm” without question. That is what tantric sex is all about. Gosh, everyone should experience that in life. I was so high from that orgasm, I felt it tingle through me for hours. Hours. I was giddy, giggly and completely goofy.

“Love is touching souls.” ~ Joni Mitchell

I already have children and I am a mother; happy with my three children, not wanting anymore. Besides, I’m not young anymore or young enough to handle more pregnancies. I know the dream of becoming pregnant again is just a dream. But something else penetrates me when we make love. I become one with him. It sounds corny, but I feel like we are together when we are apart. I believe in soul mates, and I believe we are part of each other when we love deeply.

 

]]> https://eroticadujour.com/melt-with-you/feed/ 2 Women in Lust {Erotica Book Review} https://eroticadujour.com/women-in-lust-erotica-book-review/ https://eroticadujour.com/women-in-lust-erotica-book-review/#comments Sat, 26 Nov 2011 02:34:37 +0000 butterfly https://eroticadujour.com/?p=1228

Desire. Longing. Lust.

Lust /ləst/ A noun that describes an intense sexual hunger for another. Middle English, from Old English, desire.

Lust is defined as “any source of pleasure or delight,” also “an appetite,” and “a liking for a person,” also “fertility” (of soil). Sense of “sinful sexual desire, degrading animal passion” (now the main meaning) developed in late Old English and in other Germanic languages, the derivative words mean “pleasure.”

I am fascinated by the erotic layers of desire, passion, and lust experienced in my own sex life. They are the spices of sex that go together just like cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger in baking. As I love to cook and bake, I think of spices to explain lust, especially aphrodisiac spices. And when I think of lust, I think of moments I have desired someone beyond control. Moments so overwhelmed by lust, I become animal, lost in the heat of chemistry. Lust itself is the high note of sexual desire. It is the spark of what moves us from attraction to arousal and into action.

Reading other women’s stories about lust gives insight to the human response of sexual desire and passion. Erotica author and editor Rachel Kramer Bussel’s newest anthology Women in Lust is juicy and bursting with the passionate flavors of many voices. These stories taste as good as the musky inside of a lover’s thigh and the intoxicating mystery of an evolving kiss. Fresh and wonderfully compiled, twenty erotica authors combine their literary gifts and mix it all up into a lusty book.

I have read this book in bed. I have also read it in a cafe while having lunch, while having a pedicure, and I have taken moments to read it before meeting my lover for dinner. Erotica like this is inspirational, and musing on the subject of lust always whets my appetite for more. One of my most favorite stories from this anthology, Comfort Food by Donna George Storey, made me do a double take to the page, as the author’s voice reminded me uncannily of my own lustful fantasies (as well as a few realities) and my proclivity for combining food with lust. The featured dessert at the beginning of the story, a butterscotch pudding, was reminiscent of a recent sensual experience with my lover at a restaurant that served a butterscotch budino (an Italian pudding). Something about butterscotch pudding, I think. Its caramel flavor and satiny texture inspires lust for a taste of something just as creamy, just as delicious, if not more so. As the author describes, “Perhaps it was the creamy smoothness caressing my tongue like satin? Or the bottomless depth of flavor: caramel, tropical vanilla and an almost floral sweet cream, all mixed together with something else mysterious, alluring, even addictive? Whatever the reason for the magic, at that moment, I was very glad to be alive. When I finished my dessert, resisting the urge to lick the bowl clean, I waved over the pretty waitress.”  

The story evolves from wanting the recipe to something more than a desire for ingredients from the chef.

Cherry Blossom by Kayar Silkenvoice is another story that capitvated me. The erotic tale takes place at a ryokan in Kyoto, Japan, where bathing in hot onsen waters and a massage transcends within the beautiful and sudden moment of desire. I loved the fluidity of Silkenvoice’s writing, as graceful as cherry blossoms falling upon hot spring water, illustrating the concentrated delicacy of sexual energy between two women for one another.

And lust can be so overpowering that we might feel like an animal, wanting to bite the one we desire because the feeling of lust is so strong. In Bite Me by Lucy Hughes, an exploration in pain, lust, and her lover’s request to bite him piques her curiosity and questions her indifference to this kind of fetish, pushing her beyond boundaries.

This book gives the reader a bouquet of delights, all clamoring with lust, displaying its words, paragraphs, and letters in sinuous sentences and wanton descriptives. As most of Rachel Kramer Bussel’s erotica anthologies are sexy, this one is hot off the press, and one to lust for. This delicious book would make anyone blush with lustful wonder.

Women in Lust is a sexy read. You can buy it online or visit the Women in Lust blog to discover more about the authors. I admire Rachel Kramer Bussel’s work as both an editor and author. Read about the Lusty Lady herself here on her main website.

The stories and their authors:

Naughty Thoughts by Portia Da Costa
Guess by Charlotte Stein
Her, Him, and Them by Aimee Pearl
Bayou by Clancy Nacht
Smoke by Elizabeth Coldwell
Bite Me by Lucy Hughes
Ride a Cowboy by Del Carmen
Queen of Sheba by Jen Cross
Hot for Teacher by Rachel Kramer Bussel
Unbidden by Brandy Fox
Something to Ruin by Amelia Thornton
Guitar Hero by Kin Fallon
Ode to a Masturbator by Aimee Herman
Orchid by Jacqueline Applebee
Cherry Blossom by Kayar Silkenvoice
Rain by Olivia Archer
The Hard Way by Justine Elyot
Strapped by K D Grace
Beneath My Skin by Shanna Germain
Comfort Food by Donna George Storey

]]> https://eroticadujour.com/women-in-lust-erotica-book-review/feed/ 1 Obsessed: Erotic Romance for Women https://eroticadujour.com/obsessed-erotic-romance-for-women/ https://eroticadujour.com/obsessed-erotic-romance-for-women/#comments Sun, 20 Nov 2011 07:50:27 +0000 butterfly https://eroticadujour.com/?p=1205

I’ve been reading (and re-reading) Obsessed. Nineteen stories of erotic romance that pivots upon the g-spot of love like a 110-volt charged vibrator in search of the female cerebral orgasm. It hits the spot; the emotional and psychological soft spot that causes obsession to grow, germinate, and blossom.

In the introduction written by editor Rachel Kramer Bussel, she hopes that “Obsessed speaks to the part of you that knows what it’s like to do anything for the right person, to bare yourself body and soul in the hope that once stripped to your most secret self, you will be rewarded with someone who sees you for who you truly are.” And isn’t that where the depth of obsession comes from? Our deepest, most secret self; the raw part of us that yearns to be touched, even down to the nerve and bone. The word “obsessed” is fraught with a hungry notion that we cannot get enough of something or someone so painfully compelling to us, and that is the very point and place where we lose ourselves to it.

The Western perspective of “romantic love” has idealized this experience, making an unconscious psychological demand that the person we are obsessed with fit our ideal “other half.” The anima and animus of Jungian archetypes present this kind of obsessive love in a mythical and dreamlike state of being “in love.” In Eastern and Zen philosophies, this kind of emotion is where inner growth begins— the experience of a “red-hot coal in the throat” allows us to evolve, and, as we know, growing pains are part of the experience. Obsession can be beautiful like a thorny rosebush. If we throw ourselves into the thick of it, blood will be drawn. Like sailors entranced by sirens, we crash into the rocks despite of it all when we are obsessed. These nineteen writers tell us about erotic obsession with extreme eloquence. Romantic obsession is one subject to contend with. Add some hot and steamy sex into the equation and erotica has some literary weight.

Each story of women in the throes of erotic obsession has taken me on a journey, caressing my own passionate emotions, comforting me while I read, reminding me that I am not alone in my own experience within the tangle of obsession, sex and love. It is because as I have been reading, I have been obsessed with a man myself. It began as mental attraction, a parallel, and a familiar feeling of like-minded connection. I was a fool to think it was merely a budding friendship, for when I first saw him I was consumed by a fire that only poets throughout history can explain. Then my sexual obsession began to brew, to be sure, after our first time together. Boiling over like a hot cauldron, the flame of my obsession is now a hot pot of scalding desire. But sex is not the only reason. There are many other aspects and layers to my own obsession with my lover. Well, the sex is amazing, I’ll admit. And not for the reasons anyone might assume. It is because he touches that naked part of me that is hidden, my secret place, and he sees me for who I am inside.

There are the obvious symptoms of a woman obsessed with the man she wants: she feels an immense desire, uncontrollably so. She can’t stop thinking about him and all the things he does to arouse her lust. Sometimes, it’s someone she cannot forget. Perhaps it’s the way he smiles at her with a gleam or the tone of his voice, or maybe she doesn’t get to hear his voice at all, as in Silent Treatment, by Donna George Storey, the first erotic tale that opens this anthology of women writers. She’s on a weekend yoga getaway where silence is mandatory, talk is forbidden. During her stay at the retreat, she reconnects with a former lover without words. “He blushed, but kept his gaze fixed on me. It was, in fact, the only way we could speak. In the almost palpable weight of our silence, that prickling warmth of desire suddenly sprang to life down there. Stephen was glad to see me. There was no question about that. And he wanted to express something else with those bottomless amber eyes: Apology. A faint sorrow. And— no mistake about it— hot, smoking desire.”

Yes, I admit, desire began with the smell of his skin, the look on his face, and his kiss. The feeling stirred itself up in my gut, a tingling sensation. Butterflies in my belly. Swarm of bees in my brain. My body became lighter, and my mind dizzy with want. Obsession. It’s real honest-to-goodness passion that takes your life off the path and creates a whole new one you never thought you’d take, and as you follow your heart (and other parts of your lusty body), obsession undoes every bit of reason you thought you had.

I know obsession intimately, and sometimes excruciatingly so— and the pain of falling in love is exquisite. Obsession is a delicate matter; it doesn’t come all neat and tidy, packaged in a pretty box with a ribbon. It can be ink-stained and needled deep under your skin like a tattoo. In Raven’s Flight by Andrea Dale, a woman’s fetish for licking her lover’s tattoo begins her adventure with a silver-tongued Irishman. “I had the overwhelming compulsion to lick his tattoo, trace every spiral and intricate knot and line with my tongue.” She goes from longing to action: His kiss tasted peaty and smoky like the whiskey from his chalice, she explains, and the sweep of his tongue sent her into a full body shiver. “My nipples peaked, my clit trembled. All that just from a kiss. A kiss that rocked my world so soundly, I half thought we were having an earthquake. So I did what any right-minded hussy would: I took him home with me, and I confessed my burning need to explore his tattoo.” Tongues, kisses, and tattoos on the skin and underneath, ink-stained within the heart.

Ah, my lover’s kiss. But, there are other things about him that arouse me. I know the way the heat of his mouth grazes my lower lip in a kiss, how it travels down along the back of my neck. His kiss intoxicates me. And I’m obsessed with his hands, remembering how the wide expanse of them holds my hips firmly as he plunges deep inside. His hands rule my body. His hands are my obsession, too. Looking upon the shape of them sends shivers of longing through me, sensations I cannot describe; there aren’t any words that can explain the way they undo me, bit by bit, like sugar dissolving. In Memphisto Waltz by Justine Elyot, Lily has a reunion with her childhood piano teacher, the passionate Russian Leonid Gorodetsky. She marvels his hands: “Gorodetsky’s hand. I am holding his legendary hand. Those women outside by the rubbish bins would kill to be in my position. It’s a very nice hand, too, warm and smooth, nothing limp or clammy about his grip. It’s the hand I remember from my childhood. The magic hand, the hand that turns notes and chords into sensual experience and fill the critics’ heads with hyperbole. I feel as if I ought to light up, or crackle, or something. Actually, I’m not far off crackling.”

And yet another story about a woman’s obsession with a man and his hands; perhaps there is such a thing as a hand fetish? If so, I have an obsession for my man’s hands and what they do to me.

In Rachel Kramer Bussel’s piece, I Want To Hold Your Hand, Shelly’s obsession is her husband. When he lost over two hundred pounds, he changed from the sexy teddy bear of a giant to more like a linebacker. Her desire is rekindled when she feels jealous over the new attentions her husband receives from other women. But, Shelly admits, she liked her husband heavier, in fact, she preferred him bigger. Knowing that some things don’t change, as Ron still had the heft of his hands and his cock, Shelly thought of what reminded her about falling in love with her husband: “his hands, though, were big, strong, powerful; there was nothing he could do about his man hands. Ron had always been able to speak to her with his hands, even on their first date, when he’d reached for one of hers and massaged it, his thumb tricking along her palm, his fingers tickling her skin, making her curious about him, about what he could do to her.” Shelly and Ron run off to the movies and in the seats of the theater they rediscover their desire for each other, remembering why they came together in the first place.

The whistle of the kettle reminds me of an afternoon when we were in the midst of making tea, and suddenly his hands clasp my waist, then my wrists, and he pins me to the wall of the hallway, the whistle screeching with boiling hot water, his mouth on mine, going down further, until I am forgetting what the sound of steam is persistently calling out for, as the heat of his mouth on my sex causes me to lose control. His tongue dances on my clit, inscribing something, some kind of language. I’m obsessed, and I’m in love. Like a kettle on the stove to boil and whistle, I’ve spouted out “I love you” during the heat of passion, but he doesn’t express the way he feels for me in words. How he feels is secret, hidden. In Secret Places by Adele Haze, Marian’s mouth shaped the words I love you during sex with her lover, Dan, or as she calls him “the boy,” in an unusual coupling between once-strangers on a subway commute, who become tender lovers that hide their emotions from each other.  “Underneath it all, there is so much tenderness, so much of the unnamed, unknowable feeling. The other’s pleasure is the ultimate reward for each of them; they compete to bring each other to the brink. Out of bed, they race to make each other tea, to give comforts, to spoil the other with small kindnesses. Still, neither of them will say the words.” And during their lovemaking and revealing of their innermost places during sex, Marian decides to use her finger to tell her lover what she feels. “With the tip of her finger she writes on his naked shoulder: I L-O-V-E Y-O-U. Her heart whispers the invisible words.” 

Obsession is an attraction that goes beyond the ordinary, a feeling that inspires as well as terrifies, because a woman obsessed is a woman that will do anything for the man she so desires. Obsession runs deeper than lust. It tangles up the mind with feelings you never thought you would ever have. It’s irrational, passionate, and a little crazy. It’s sometimes dangerous. It’s risk and pushing your boundaries. Feelings that overwhelm you when they are near, the smell of their skin, the chemistry that has you obedient like a dog on a leash, the nearness of the one that you desire emanating power over you like gravity, like magnet pull. And sometimes your obsession can be your ex-husband, shaking you up with aftershocks of your desire in Aftershocks by Bella Andre.  “Oh god. They’d just survived one hell of an earthquake in a room full of dangers and instead of crying, instead of freaking out, she was wet. Soaking through her panties from nothing but his arms, tight around her, his breath whispering over her ear. She’d been looking for adventure, had been wanting to live on the edge for so long, that instead of frightening her, the earthquake had been foreplay. That was why she knew that the biggest danger wasn’t going to be from aftershocks and falling boxes. It was staying here with Darren. Because if she wasn’t careful, she’d give in, and they’d be right back to where they always had been. Back to good. But good wasn’t good enough— not when she wanted fireworks and breathless need and desire so strong that pleasure was almost pain.”

I think of my obsession during the day when I’m at work, and I replay scenes from our moments together. He’s just a drive away from me. I have had the pleasure and fortune of having my lover know about my obsession with him, where as Vivian Sinclair, the executive assistant in One Night In Paris by Kayla Perrinhad to fly all the way from Dallas to Paris to let her lover know how much she wanted him. I suppose I would do the same as she did— act on her desire and make her obsession known: “You’re like a fever I can’t shake. Ever since that time we were together, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.”

Portia de Costa’s eloquent Concubine tells a historical erotic story much like Scheherazade would have done. Merry weaves a romantic and juicy tale within a tale, as she tells her convalescing lover Rick a naughty story about the Concubine Merissa and her obsessive love for her Lord Alaric. Concubine Merissa’s body is moist with longing by the memory of their first night together as concubine and prince, with the memories of their love building within her a desire as strong as his princely male magnificence took her that first time. With her intense and steadfast love for her prince, she brings him back to his virile strength after a battle injury that caused him a momentary lapse in masculinity. “It was almost a miracle, but where had it started? In her mouth, or with him, as she sucked… or in her sex, through the unstoppable force of love?”

Love and Demotion by Logan Belle is about a woman who leads a secret life as a stripper, obsessed with her boss at her day job at a publishing house. Around her obsession Declan she felt like the world was in Technicolor, and when she was away from him, black and white. Hiding her moonlighting burlesque occupation from her employer was as difficult as it was to hide her Vargas girl tattoos onstage while she stripped down to Marilyn Manson’s “Heart-Shaped Glasses,” dressed as a sexy Lolita.

Obsession can be dark, full of the shadows of our souls. It can be wild-eyed lust until our throat is hoarse from moaning out of sheer animalistic fucking, from being taken, and surrendering and submitting to the man of our dreams. It can be voluptuous and full of black magic. Obsession holds us like a voodoo spell. In Spellbound by Garnell Wallace, Kia Monet goes back to her roots in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, under the spell of Jonah’s smile, his voice, and his magnificent cock. “Even his long, tapered fingers buried deep in my pussy can bring on multiple experiences of what we French call “la petite mort,” or the little death, when you are so inflamed with passion at the moment of surrender it feels like you are about to surrender your soul as well.”

Sometimes obsession is a fantasy. In Hooked by Ariel Graham, the obsession is a thing that provokes a woman’s erotic curiosity and dares her to explore it. A couple, Ricki and Jody, just move in to their new home and in one room there is a mysterious hook in the ceiling that fascinates Ricki. It’s too heavy duty for a plant and the light isn’t good in the corner either. Ricki wonders about the hook and imagines all kinds of scenarios that the hook could be used for. She wants to tell her lover Jody about her wildest fantasies involving that curious mounted hardware. “Why don’t you just look back up at that hook?” he’d asked. “Like you want to reach for it.” She reached for it. On tiptoe, as if she could touch the ten-foot ceiling, she reached with both hands. An image came to mind: her hands bound at the wrist, with some kind of silken cord, maybe a curtain tie; something soft but strong enough to keep her bound, even if she struggled. Would she struggle? Ricki held her hands out toward the hook and imagined Jody standing behind her.”

I’ve enjoyed all of these adventurous, wonderful, and genuine stories about obsession and reasons why women become obsessed. Reasons why women stayed obsessed, and things that caused them to follow their hearts and nether parts to explore the wilderness of the erotic landscapes they could not keep from traveling. Reasons to be irrationally lost in the arms of the one they are obsessed with.

Obsessed is a treasure full of tenderness, raw lust, longing, and all of the many things that fill our sexual lives and erotic minds. The nineteen stories written so fluidly fills the oceanic depths of desire where obsession lies. Perhaps the word “obsessed” is as elusive as the state of being it exists in. Like a drug, we want more. More stories, more lust, more sex, more love, and it’s never, ever enough.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Bella Andre (BellaAndre.com) writes “sensual, empowered stories enveloped in heady romance” (Publisher’s Weekly) about sizzling alpha heroes and the strong women they’ll love forever. Her books have been Cosmopolitan Red Hot Reads twice and have been translated into German, Thai, Japanese and Ukrainian.
Logan Belle went to her first burlesque show on her birthday two years ago and has been following the scene and writing about it ever since. Her debut erotic novel is Blue Angel, the first in a series. Her short fiction has appeared on Oysters & Chocolate. She lives in New York City. Read more at loganbelle.com.
Elizabeth Coldwell lives and writes in London. Her work has appeared in a number of Cleis anthologies including Please, Sir; Fast Girls; Bottoms Up and Naked.
Portia Da Costa pens both romance and women’s erotica and is the author of over twenty novels and a hundred-plus short stories. Praised for her vivid, emotional writing, she’s best known for her Black Lace titles, but now writes for a variety of publishers, including Harlequin Spice and Samhain.
With coauthors and on her own, Andrea Dale has sold two novels to Virgin Books UK and approximately 100 stories to Harlequin Spice, Avon Red and Cleis Press, among others. All she can say about her inspiration for this story is “Mm, tattoos…” Her website is at cyvarwydd.com.
Justine Elyot has contributed to a plethora of anthologies from Black Lace, Cleis Press, Constable & Robinson and Xcite Books, and is the author of the Black Lace title On Demand. More recently, she has been writing erotic romance novellas, which are available from Total E-Bound.
Emerald’s erotic fiction has been published in anthologies edited by Violet Blue, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Jolie du Pre, and Alison Tyler as well as at various erotic websites. She lives in Maryland and serves as an activist for reproductive freedom and sex worker rights. Find her online at thegreenlightdistrict.org.
K D Grace lives in England with her husband. She is passionate about nature, writing and sex—not necessarily in that order. Her novel, The Initiation of Ms. Holly, was published by Xcite Books.
Ariel Graham lives, writes and entertains her own obsessions in northern Nevada with her husband who is also her best friend, and her own deeply suspicious cats. Her work can be found in anthologies including Please, Sir; Please, Ma’am; Afternoon Delight: Erotica for Couples and in various web-based magazines.
Louisa Harte’s erotic fiction appears in the Cleis Press anthologies Best Women’s Erotica 2010 and 2011; Fairy Tale Lust; Orgasmic: Erotica for Women and Smooth: Erotic Stories for Women. Currently living in New Zealand, she finds inspiration from many places, including her thoughts, dreams and fantasies. Visit her at louisaharte.com.
Adele Haze writes sexy stories because she doesn’t know how not to. When she isn’t writing fiction, she tries to educate the world about sex-positive attitudes, female gaze in erotic arts, and acceptance of sexual preferences of others. For the rest of the time, she models for BDSM erotica.
Kayla Perrin (kaylaperrin.com) is a multi-published USA Today and Essence®bestselling author with thirty-six books in print. She is published in a variety of genres, including mystery/suspense, romance and mainstream fiction. She has been featured on “Entertainment Tonight Canada,” Who’s Afraid of Happy Endings (Bravo documentary about the romance genre) and “A.M. Buffalo.”
Jennifer Peters has a lot of obsessions, including avocados, music, books and everything kitsch. When she’s not obsessing about the finer things in life, she’s a completely neurotic writer and editor for the Penthouse magazine group, where she obsesses over porn and punctuation, in that order. Her stories can be found in Peep Show, Fast Girls, Smooth, Best Bondage Erotica 2011 and Gotta Have It.
Caridad Piñeiro is the New York Times–bestselling author of over twenty-five paranormal romance and romantic suspense novels and novellas. Her popular The Calling vampire series returns in 2012 and look for The Lost, the latest release in the acclaimed Sin Hunter series. For more information on Caridad, please visit caridad.com.
Teresa Noelle Roberts’s short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies, includingSweet Love: Erotic Fantasies for Couples, Orgasmic, Dirty Girls and Best of Best Women’s Erotica 2. She also writes erotic romance for several publishers. Disclaimer: author is not liable for injuries incurred under the influence of this story.teresanoelleroberts.com
Charlotte Stein has published many stories in various erotic anthologies as well as her own collection of short stories, The Things That Make Me Give In. She has novellas and a novel with Ellora’s Cave, Total-E-Bound and Xcite, and you can contact her atthemightycharlottestein.blogspot.com.
Donna George Storey believes a kiss is worth a thousand words. She is the author ofAmorous Woman, a steamy tale of an American woman’s love affair with Japan, as well as many short stories, which have appeared in Best Women’s Erotica, Penthouse, Fast Girls, and Passion. Read more at DonnaGeorgeStorey.com.
Garnell Wallace has been spellbound by love stories ever since she read her first one as a teenager. She is hard at work on her own addition to this continually evolving and enduring genre. She can be reached at myspace.com/garnellwallace.
Kristina Wright (kristinawright.com) lives in Virginia with her husband Jay and her son Patrick. She is the editor of the anthologies Fairy Tale Lust and Demon Lover and her short fiction has appeared in over eighty anthologies. She holds degrees in English and humanities and teaches college-level composition and mythology.
About the Editor
Rachel Kramer Bussel is a New York–based author, editor and blogger. She has edited over thirty books of erotica, including Gotta Have It; Best Bondage Erotica 2011; Surrender; Orgasmic; Bottoms Up: Spanking Good Stories; Spanked; Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z 1 and 2; Fast Girls; Smooth; Passion; The Mile High Club; Do Not Disturb; Tasting Him; Tasting Her; Please, Sir; Please, Ma’am; He’s on Top; She’s on Top; Caught Looking; Hide and Seek; Crossdressing and Rubber Sex. She is the author of the forthcoming novel, Everything But…, and the nonfiction book, How To Write an Erotic Love Letter, Best Sex Writing series editor, and winner of 5 IPPY (Independent Publisher) Awards. Her work has been published in over one hundred anthologies, including Best American Erotica 2004 and 2006; Zane’s Chocolate Flava 2 and Purple Panties; Everything You Know About Sex Is Wrong; Single State of the Union and Desire: Women Write About Wanting. She serves as senior editor at Penthouse Variation, and wrote the popular “Lusty Lady” column for the Village Voice.

 

Rachel is a sex columnist for SexisMagazine.com and has written for AVN, Bust, Cleansheets.com, Cosmopolitan, Curve, The Daily Beast, Fresh Yarn, TheFrisky.com, Gothamist, Huffington Post, Mediabistro, Newsday, New York Post, Penthouse, Playgirl, Radar, San Francisco Chronicle, Time Out New York and Zink, among others. She has appeared on “The Martha Stewart Show,” “The Berman and Berman Show,” NY1 and Showtime’s “Family Business.” She hosted the popular In the Flesh Erotic Reading Series (inthefleshreadingseries.com), featuring readers from Susie Bright to Zane, and speaks at conferences, does readings and teaches erotic writing workshops across the country. She blogs at lustylady.blogspot.com.
Find out more about Obsessed and the contributors at obsessedbook.wordpress.com.

 

 

 

 

]]> https://eroticadujour.com/obsessed-erotic-romance-for-women/feed/ 0 Dr. Estrogen (or) How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Menopause https://eroticadujour.com/dr-estrogen-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-menopause/ https://eroticadujour.com/dr-estrogen-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-menopause/#comments Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:36:12 +0000 butterfly https://eroticadujour.com/?p=1173


setting fire to my smokin’ hot mojo

“I’m a fountain of blood. In the shape of a girl.” 
~ Björk

I’m counting down to orgasmic ignition now that I’m on bio-identical estrogen cream and a testosterone cream to blast off my libido. Not that my libido needed anything. But like a pleasure glutton, I said “Sure, why not?” when my doctor asked me if I’d like some testosterone to boost my, um, libido. It’s like asking me if I’d like more chocolate cake, or another helping of garlic mashed potatoes.

All it requires (to get my groove back) is smearing on estrogen cream to my inner arms every morning: two dabs to the inner wrist, circling my wrists around and against each other, rubbing it in, imagining it absorbing into my bloodstream. I am visualizing my feminine body circa 1970′s model to be back to what it was before the symptoms started: as plentiful with estrogen as the plump lips of my thirteen year old self during puberty— glistening with strawberry lip gloss, ready to be kissed. The symptoms? Oh. Well, it began with night sweats and a sudden intolerance for red wine— Chianti to be more precise. It was my one pleasure, my one comfort, a glass or two of red wine. Instead of the usual soft and fuzzy feelings from a big goblet of vino, I got heart palpitations and insomnia. Wine tastings out the window, I was dismayed by this “Second Spring” as the Chinese call it so poetically. What about “Second Orgasm” or “Second Glass of Wine” or something?

I’m going crazy. I’m standing here solidly on my own two hands and going crazy. ~Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn), The Philadelphia Story (1940)

It can’t be happening. I’m too young. Aren’t I? But, maybe it was the birth control pills? I began them at age fourteen. I was happy to have sex and not get pregnant. I wanted to have sex with as many guys as I wanted back then. To be filled with their come and not worry about a thing. I didn’t worry. I was young and on the pill, so why worry about anything except remembering to take my pills? Had I known how it would affect my body later? Perhaps the years of taking the pill affected my hormone levels and who knows if it has anything to do with beginning menopause so early. But I feel like I’m not myself. It’s not me. It’s someone else. I feel like I am going crazy. I want my estrogen back. I hear it on the loudspeaker at the grocery store: “Ms. Butterfly, your estrogen is waiting for you at register 9, please come to the information desk.”  

And what about my groove? My mojo? My oh lala? Where did that go? Do you think Joseph Campbell knows where I can find it? Is it in my closet, or in the messy sock drawer? I just can’t find it anywhere. It must be with my pearl rabbit vibrator. I just know it.

“When smelled, an estrogen-like compound triggers blood flow to the hypothalamus in men’s brains but not women’s.” (Ivanka Savic of the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm)

So when I am low in estrogen and feeling less than my usual juicy self, my peri-menopausal mind is confused. I want sex, I want sex, and I-want-sex. But my body is off playing golf with the boys. She isn’t undulating with estrus anymore. She isn’t the Aphrodite she once was. No, in my case, I am wondering where the sexy vixen (a.k.a. my former body) went. Why did I feel like my body and my sexuality were two different and separate things? My mind was contemplating filing a ten-year restraining order against menopause. Do you think a G-Spot vibe would alleviate the symptoms? Hot flashes. Every other minute. During sex. I’m burning up, burning up for your love. Madonna, how did you know? I’m a woman in heat, that’s for sure.

It was supreme… the chicks will cream… for grease lightning… We’ll pound ‘em in the dashboard and duel muffler twins, oh yeah, with new pistons, plugs, and shocks I can get off my rocks, you know that I ain’t bragging, she’s a real pussy wagon, Greased Lightning. ~ Danny Zuko, Grease

Testosterone cream, when applied to the labia, has caused some pretty magical wonders. For one, I wasn’t sure where it came from, but I squirted during masturbation the other day. I hadn’t done that in about ten years. So I tried it out the next day. And it happened again. The G-Spot. Let me tell you folks, I just discovered that I had one. After all these years of looking for it. Female ejaculation is caused by pressure on the G-Spot that releases fluid. More specifically:

“All women have a functional prostate gland, about the size of their thumb, that surrounds their urethra. (Important Note: A medical article published in August 2011 indicates that while all women have “gland-like” structures surrounding their urethra, only 50% may have “a female prostate”. Read more) Just like the male prostate, it produces fluid, beginning at puberty. Within the prostate gland there can be an area of increased sensitivity, more commonly referred to as the G-Spot. The G-Spot is located somewhere along the length of the urethra. When the prostate gland is stimulated, many women experience female ejaculation, and a distinctive type of orgasm, a vaginal orgasm, one that is different from that experienced during clitoral stimulation alone. Some women cum, as in ejaculate, during sexual arousal, prior to orgasm, even without G-Spot stimulation. There is muscle tissue that surrounds the prostate gland that contracts during orgasm, potentially expelling its contents. There is some debate about the origin of all the fluid that is released during female ejaculation, as the prostate gland itself is relatively small, yet some women release up to two cups of liquid. Nevertheless, the liquid released during female ejaculation is not the same as urine. The best way to stimulate the G-Spot is through rhythmic massage with fingers, a penis, or dildo. It may take practice to locate and connect with the G-Spot, and to learn how to experience vaginal orgasms that are accompanied by female ejaculation. G-Spot and vaginal orgasms aren’t nearly as common as clitoral orgasms, some women always experience them, others never.” (the-clitoris.com)

I have never been a woman of extreme female ejaculation capabilities, barring two exceptions. Once was way back in my early thirties, when I drenched the bed (during sex) with my amrita or nectar of the goddess. I was surprised that it all came from me. It was truly amazing to realize that I had ejaculated so much mysterious fluid. Second time was during masturbation, again, in my thirties. I was using two vibes and double penetrating myself (there is an art to this) when suddenly I was coming so intensely, feeling this warm and wet rush of wetness goosh out of me. My lips were swollen, my body was responsive, and I was wet in between my thighs all the way to my knees. It was, strange to say, similar to when my water broke before giving birth. Warm and rushing like amniotic fluid. Pleasant. Not really like peeing yourself, which would be embarrassing. Mainly, I’ve been a ‘clit girl’ with my orgasms beginning with the slippery pressure to my swollen clitoris, and amplified by penetration. Of course, I can orgasm without penetration, but the combination works well. Anal sex is an additional subwoofer to my orgasmic sound system. Did you know that the most powerful subwoofer (for cars) is called the Jackhammer? And here I thought my minivan disc player was antiquated. But, what is worse is me.

I’m functioning like a tape deck with a raveled tape, and what I need is an upgrade. What I need is a good tune-up, an oil change, and a new sound system; and I’m a fast pussycat all ready for speed. After estrogen, and a little dab of that testosterone cream, I’m slick, I’m greased lightning. Thank you for the hormone fix, doctor!

“Cultivate your curves – they may be dangerous but they won’t be avoided.”  ~ Mae West

With the onset of perimenopause, I started getting curvier. Yet a vegan diet and raw foods only made the matters worse. I ate kale and avocado salads, and I worked out two hours a day. Nothing budged. Curves were accentuated. Then. My orgasms weren’t as, well, they weren’t as… they weren’t as orgasmic. It was like eating your favorite dessert but only you have a cold and you can’t taste it as much. You know it’s good, but it’s just hard to taste. Sometimes they would be darn elusive, get so close, and then without warning…kapow! Thankfully, I’d have a good one. But still, it wasn’t the same. Now, I’m a hyper-sexual gal with a libido that matched an entire professional football team (said my ex-husband when we were married). What exactly does that have to do with estrogen?

Menopausal symptoms all conveniently occurred simultaneously with the hottest sex of my life. Fortunately, [the hot sex god that is] my lover is capable of making me have incredible orgasms and knows how to please me in many ways. Including kissing. I thought my orgasms were gone with the wind. Then I discovered passion, or it discovered me. However it happened, chemistry. Bang! Fireworks! Hot flashes! Wow-wow!

“I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.” ~ Mae West

The night sweats, the hot flashes, the insomnia, the feeling of discontent, edgy thoughts, bursts of aggression. Nearly hitting my ex-husband and telling him I’d like to sock him in the face, for instance. Fiery-tempered, hot-headed. I’m a stranger to myself. What was my problem? Other things were changing. And fast. No period for four months. Nothing. No blood. Wanting to come harder and get wetter, but instead I’m not so wet and my orgasms are really good but, occasionally, muffled like before. I worried. I didn’t think it could be anything but hormone fluctuations. Passion and desire certainly helped the situation, and for a good while, distracted me from the issue.

I come frequently, immediately sometimes. Multiple orgasms, yes, yes, yesOh, good, I sighed. My orgasms are back in full swing. Maybe that momentary pause was due to a dampening relationship. Was it emotional? Probably. Maybe it was the end of a relationship kind of mystery lull. A new lover has sparked my fire. Orgasms, ho! Yes, the best sex of my life and a real, honest-to-goodness lover that is a good listener with not only his ears, but his hands, his mouth, and his intuition. Amazing sex happens in between the ears. His brain circuitry makes my pussy wetter than any cream, um. Yes, pardon the pun. But he gives me neural and cerebral O’s.

And I was denying it, the onslaught of menopausal verklemption. What happened to my waist? My arms? Why did my six year old daughter tell me I reminded her of Mrs. Doubtfire while I was putting my bra and panties on in the morning? Exact quote: “Mommy, you remind me of Mrs. Doubtfire, but you’re prettier, and you’re a girl.” But I felt like Mrs. Doubtfire. I wasn’t happy about that. No, I’d rather be told I looked like Nigella Lawson with the sashay of Marilyn Monroe and the smoldering appeal of Ava Gardner. How about a dash of Rita Hayworth? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Being forty-one years old, I would have never suspected menopause would interfere with what is supposed to be my “prime” sexual peak. This myth of a woman’s sexual prime being between 35-50 years old isn’t that mythical, especially when I experienced a surge of libido after giving birth to my third child. I thought for sure it would last. I was a believer.

A man’s eroticism is a woman’s sexuality. ~ Karl Krauss

And yet, my sexuality has blossomed in the midst of menopause. I found my G-Spot. I have estrogen and testosterone and everything is groovy. I’ve reached a deeper level of pleasure with my lover. Deeper and wetter and yummier. I’m having amazing sex with someone that turns me on more than the largest electric generator facility in the world turns on over 36,000 incandescent lamps— I explode when he breathes on me, when his fingers ignite my clitoris and even when he nibbles on my neck, ear, lip— I am saturated, swollen, drenched with want. Thank you, Dr. Estrogen, for giving me my groove back. Or maybe I should thank the heavens that I finally found my G-Spot?

I won’t sweep my blossoming sexuality under the rug at forty-one years old. I just won’t. I’m just beginning to have soulful sex and understand my body in ways never before imagined. Like female ejaculation, finding the elusive G-Spot, and discovering that sometimes kissing is just as good as really good sex. Maybe menopause is a blessing, coming out to help me clean house and get ready for satisfying sex. Sorry Micky Jagger, sorry Austin Powers, but I’m getting all of your mojo in a cream and getting some real satisfaction.

]]> https://eroticadujour.com/dr-estrogen-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-menopause/feed/ 0 Scent of a Lover https://eroticadujour.com/scent-of-a-lover/ https://eroticadujour.com/scent-of-a-lover/#comments Wed, 02 Nov 2011 07:37:03 +0000 butterfly https://eroticadujour.com/?p=1149

When we smell another’s body, it is that body that we are breathing in through our mouth and nose, 
that we possess instantly, as it were in its most secret substance, its own nature. Once inhaled, the smell is the fusion of the other’s body and my own. Jean-Paul Sartre 

The power of scent influences our human responses during attraction and mating. Love at first sight just may be love at first smell. Perfumes have been created for centuries, as ancient of a practice as we can trace back. Oils, unguents, elixirs, and the like were made for perfuming during and after bathing rituals, anointing one’s body to attract and entice. Our own pheromones are nature’s chemical concoction to attract, allure, and bond us with our mate. Sexual attraction and desire are fueled by scent, along with other contributing factors. But the natural scent of a lover is everlasting in our olfactory memories.

The scent of my lover intoxicates me with desire. When I nuzzle my nose against his skin, I am flooded with emotion. As we kiss, the scent of his upper lip makes my body tingle with a strong sense of devotion for him. I feel this awareness zing through me from his face to my nose, through the bones of my face, down into my breastbone, into my belly, like electrical current into the bones of my hips and down my legs to my toes. It is so powerful, like a magic spell cast over me. The skin of his neck and just near his ear smells so indescribably good and masculine that I feel gravity pull me into him. It’s so strong, I can’t resist. His scent causes a swell of longing to surge through me. When he leaves his clothing behind, I hold it to my face, close my eyes, and remember his embrace. I am obsessed with my lover’s scent.

Gustave Flaubert waxed deliriously with desire over his lover’s scent that lingered on her gloves and slippers. Poet Robert Herrick’s desire for his lover’s intimate scent, whose “breast, lips, hands, thighs, legs … are all richly aromatical,” made him wild with want for her. Napoleon Bonaparte, upon returning home from a long absence due to war, sent a message to his lover Josephine: “Home in three days. Don’t wash.” Washing and cleanliness decrease the musky scent that lovers crave of one another. I must admit, although I do love to bathe and enjoy feeling clean, I also love it when my body smells like sex after making love, because it reminds me of my lover. I feel possessed, scent-marked. But like animals do, marking their scent and licking the scent of others, I want to be scent-marked by my lover’s body. I want to be claimed by him. I inhale the scent of his skin during lovemaking, just his natural scent, without perfumes or deodorant. With my face buried into his armpit, there is nothing like the scent of him, so I breathe him in. It arouses me beyond measure. Kissing his mouth and inhaling my lover’s scent during sex is the most compelling combination of sensory pleasures.

Walt Whitman said the sweat of a lover was “aroma finer than prayer” and I must say I agree. In fact, I’ve discovered that I’m becoming a little fetishistic about the scent of the man I love. He leaves behind a necktie and immediately I smell the narrow part that keeps itself nearest around his neck. I am transported to the warmth of his skin there, the place where my face seeks when we are embracing. I recall the scent of him, remembering the smell when I burrow my face against his warm neck. I hold the thin black fabric to my face and caress it with my cheek. Inhale. Searching for the scent of him, I give the tie another smell along the strip of its silky fabric. Smell again. I discover a hint of his scent. My eyes flutter with the memory and instantly I understand the romantic cliche of smelling handkerchiefs and jackets where the memory of one’s lover exists. There, his white undershirt is draped across the chair. I gather the softness to my face. I smell the faintest scent of his body and take another deep inhale to find his odor at the armpit. His body odor is so delicately fragrant that I have to bury my nose. We recently both discovered our mutual love of each other’s smell, so when he is on top of me during sex, he generously offers his armpit to my face. I delight, savor, and relish him then. It drives me near to orgasm and I’m ecstatic with the fragrance of his underarm, his cock deep within me, his breath near my ear.

We both recently learned about how much we have been enjoying each other’s scent— the lingering scents of our bodies and sexual blending of our odors after lovemaking. He admitted to inhaling my sexual musk from behind, burying his nose in between my bottom cheeks, tonguing me there, and then tasting my sex, breathing it in, the femaleness. Even the remaining odors of my sex upon his, as it lingers the following day, he takes pleasure in. I admit my own renifleur delight of his body, the many areas of his body I love to smell, and even more when it has been a day or two after he has washed. Underneath his arms, his upper lip, his cheek, neck, the sultry musk of his sex, the creases in between his legs, and down underneath his balls, the area around his ass, and further. His feet smell good, and when I massage his toes, I am tempted to either suckle them or smell them. I can’t decide. The inner arch of his foot, the in between of his toes. I want him in a way that I have never known before. You see, I have never desired a man this much, and this may just be my first fascination with a lover’s scent. If pheromones are the cause, then it really was love at first smell.

“Masculine exhalations are, as a rule, stronger, more vivid, more widely differentiated than those of women. In the odor of young men there is something elemental, as of fire, storm, and salt sea. It pulsates with buoyancy and desire. It suggests all the things strong and beautiful and joyous and gives me a sense of physical happiness.” ~ Helen Keller

From Diane Ackerman’s book A Natural History of the Senses there is a plentitude of information on scent and smell. I found many curious and interesting facts about pheromones and desire in her book about the senses:

“Pheromones are the pack animals of desire (from Greek, pherein, to carry, and horman, excite). Animals, like us, not only have distinctive odors, they also have powerfully effective pheromones, which trigger other animals into ovulation and courtship, or establish hierarchies of influence and power.

Animals would not be able to live long without pheromones because they couldn’t mark their territories or choose receptive, fertile mates. But are there human pheromones? And can they be bottled? Some trendy women in Manhattan are wearing a perfume called Pheromone, priced at three hundred dollars an ounce. Expensive perhaps, but what price aphrodisia? Based on findings about the sexual attractants animals give off, the perfume promises, by implication, to make a woman smell provocative and turn stalwart men into slaves of desire: love zombies. The odd thing about the claims of this perfume is that its manufacturer has not specified which pheromones are in it. Human pheromones have not yet been identified by researchers, whereas, say, boar pheromones have. The vision of a generation of young women walking the streets wearing boar pheromones is strange, even for Manhattan. Let me propose a naughty recipe: Turn loose a herd of sows on Park Avenue. Mix well with crowds of women wearing Pheromone eau de cologne. Dial 911 for emergency.”

I recall the first day we met. He embraced me right away, and I swooned against him, my face fitting into his chest. We kissed and kissed, the warmth, the scent of his skin. Everywhere I met a new scent upon his body. The faint hint of shampoo in his hair, no cologne nor deodorant to hunt through for his natural aroma.

Unnameable fragrance, mysterious. I could not argue with instinct. I wanted him more than any other man in the world. He became the entire universe in the moment of his kiss.

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.

Silent, starving I prowl through the streets.

Bread does not nourish me, dawn disquiets me,

I search the liquid sound of your steps all day.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,

For your hands the color of the wild grain,

I hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,

I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your loveliness,

The nose, sovereign of your arrogant face,

I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

And I walk hungry, smelling the twilight

Looking for you, for your hot heart,

Like a puma in the barren wilderness.

Pablo Neruda wrote this poem about craving a lover’s mouth, with the last line, and I walk hungry, smelling the twilight, looking for you. The animalistic hunger of wanting a lover, searching for them in the scent of twilight, wanting to eat them from the intensity of desire. And like Jean-Paul Sartre said, Once inhaled, the smell [of a lover] is the fusion of the other’s body and my own. 

]]> https://eroticadujour.com/scent-of-a-lover/feed/ 0 Goddess du Jour: Taryn Andreatta “La Amante” https://eroticadujour.com/goddess-du-jour-the-offering-taryn-andreatta-la-amante/ https://eroticadujour.com/goddess-du-jour-the-offering-taryn-andreatta-la-amante/#comments Wed, 12 Oct 2011 16:29:38 +0000 butterfly https://eroticadujour.com/?p=1123

I discovered this Goddess du Jour, Taryn Andreatta, while searching around for beautiful, inspiring, erotic images. Taryn Andreatta is a modern-day model, and I’m well aware of that fact. But, when I look at her, I can’t imagine she exists in reality. There is something more to her beauty than meets the eye. She has a timeless beauty, evocative of Renaissance paintings, Pre-Raphaelite romanticism, and oxidized daguerreotype mysteries.

The Offering was artfully shot by photographers Mark Sink and Kristin Hatgi.

Fair as the moon and joyful as the light … (Christina Rossetti)

She is a Gauguin goddess of flowers and island nature

A Pre-Raphaelite beauty of ethereal radiance

I could imagine Amadeo Modigliani falling in love with her and painting her raw sensuality

The Lover “La Amante” by director Stephan J. Bell

]]> https://eroticadujour.com/goddess-du-jour-the-offering-taryn-andreatta-la-amante/feed/ 0 The Best Sex https://eroticadujour.com/the-best-sex/ https://eroticadujour.com/the-best-sex/#comments Thu, 06 Oct 2011 06:22:39 +0000 butterfly https://eroticadujour.com/?p=1112

As I remember all the erotic moments I’ve had in my life, the ones that stand out as “the best” or “the one moment I cannot forget” are very few. I could count, but I don’t quantify; and I’m terrible with numbers. Besides, I’d rather not count. The one lover that has come along and, with a sweeping kiss, undone all of my notions of what “the best sex” is has done so without realizing it. Chemistry and all.

When I was a girl of thirteen, one of my aunts told me that sex was good and healthy to have when I’m ready. That last statement was added for precaution by my auntie, the hippie, the flower child— she had three boyfriends at the time she gave this advice. She then sealed her comment with “and it’s the best when you are in love.” So I thought that this magic combination would be waiting for me when I fell in love one fine day,  I expected it would happen like all young girls that age tend to do.

But falling in love wasn’t easily found, and, when I did have sex, the first time, I was fourteen. That was a year after my auntie gave me her words of wisdom. I wasn’t in love with the first boy I had sex with, of course. I wanted to have sex, and I was ready, or so I thought. The years that followed were explorations in sex and many a guy I wasn’t feeling anything for. I was searching for love and not finding it. I watched awful porn with my so-called boyfriend and thought I was suppose to act like those 80’s porn stars. I had no idea what the best sex was. I did whatever was required to get the approval of the boy I wanted to be loved by. I wanted to be loved, so I moaned and made lots of noise and even let him come all over my face. I swallowed, I sucked, and I fucked him wildly, but clearly this wasn’t the magical “best sex ever” experience I had in mind.

I wasn’t having orgasms during sex in my teenage sex life either. My boyfriend was older than me by a number of years, and he wasn’t very emotional or tender. I was lost in the act of sex. I had thought that sex would be as good as my auntie said. Especially so if I was in love, which I wasn’t. I wasn’t in love, and I was having lots of sex without feeling, straight ahead fucking without romance or sweet nothings. When he and I had sex in the back of his Chevy Impala, David Lee Roth was on the tape deck singing Jamie’s Cryin’ which taunted my young heart. While the lyrics said that Jamie’s been in love before, and that it should mean a little more than one night stands, I got the idea that it should mean more. It could mean more. But, I was fifteen year old girl, and my boyfriend wasn’t in love with me.

I knew I could orgasm by myself, but the mystery of sex was clouded with the idea that other women could orgasm so easily (as I’d seen in porn). But, I wasn’t having such an easy time doing it in real life. One scene I remembered watching was a couple fucking hard. The woman was being taken from behind in an all fours doggy style position— a moaning and gasping blonde porn star, her glistening buttocks shimmying like jello with every thrust as she was being fucked into a frenzied orgasm. Inspired, I tried that position with my boyfriend. He came right away. I didn’t.

The best sex evaded me.

As I entered my twenties, sex became much better. I knew my body, and I was familiar with toys and what worked for me to get off: vibrators, dildos, and anal play, mainly. I read Women on Top and My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday. I read Anais Nin’s erotica and Anne Rice’s erotic writings as A.N. Roquelaure, The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy. I was stripping down nude daily at a seedy club in the San Fernando Valley, affectionately called “The Ball,” and my best friend was a former porn star from the 80’s. She was dancing at the club and found love with a sweetheart of a man. They married, and I was her maid of honor. I wondered what exactly it was that she understood about sex and love that I didn’t. What was good sex with real love? During that time of my life, I had many girlfriends, mostly from the club. Finding a boyfriend or a serious lover was difficult when mostly what men wanted from me was to be had for the price of a table dance or a round of dollar bills around the stage. Men wanted to watch me dance naked. The loneliest time of my non-existent love life was when I was a stripper, in fact. It was a terribly lonely feeling to be sexually sought after day after day but have no one who cherished me once I left the club. The idea of someone taking me to dinner without paying me for my time was a silly notion. Who would just take me out to dinner, just because?

Not that I minded being alone. I preferred my solitude and enjoyed my beautiful apartment, my new car, and my growing bookshelf full of books. Most of the time, after a long day naked in high heels, I popped open a bottle of my favorite champagne, put some jazz on the stereo, and happily made myself a lovely dinner. I dined in candlelight on my patio alone with a good book. I had erotica to read. If the mood struck, I had my fantasies to help me along while using my vibrator. The thing was I still had no idea what the best sex was or how to imagine it happening to me.

I did figure out how to orgasm with a partner, finally. I had a sweet boyfriend who cared a little about me. Me, the young nineteen year old girl-woman. My clitoris was my best friend in that discovery. As long as I touched myself while he slowly went in and out, I came and came. It was good sex, but I wasn’t in love. We never said anything about love at all. Ever.

Playing with other women was exciting— observing how they pleasured themselves and how they liked it. One memorable moment was with a girlfriend that I lived with. We had one of those ‘papasan’ bowl-shaped couches from Pier One Imports that proved itself to be a sex chair of the deluxe kind for two nubile young women. We slathered some oil on each other’s pussies and scissored our legs together while holding each other’s hands. Grinding our pussies together allowed us to come in ways I had no idea existed. The slippery feeling of her pussy on mine was arousing beyond compare. We loved that chair for all its fabulous reasons. That was the best lesbian sex I had ever had. But did Jen care for me? I know she felt something like desire. I did feel a sense of something with her, too, but it was simply lust and sexual curiosity. She had two other boyfriends as well as me. She loved the way I went down on her and used toys to get her to come in a shaking orgasmic release. And it was Jen— the one who climbed on top of me and, with a naughty smile, she knew just what to do. She went down and licked my clitoris while slowly moving a vibrator in and out of me until I came. She also used toys in my other parts, both anally and vaginally penetrating me, while licking my clit and getting me so juicy wet. So far, it was Jennifer that gave me the best sex. And I was barely twenty years old then.

But the idea of romantic love and sex combining itself together into “the best sex” was still mysterious. My gal pal, Kristy, from the dancing days of The Oddball Cabaret, a.k.a. The Ball, was a piano teacher by weekend and stripper during the week. Kristy was a warm and wonderful redhead. She wore thigh high leather boots onstage and danced to Thomas Dolby’s She Blinded Me With Science. We spent most nights hanging out while mixing up Kahlua and cream in iced glasses, watching films, or soaking in her big round bath tub while listening to endless loops of Enya. She had a crush on Rutger Hauer in Ladyhawke, and, for the most part, she was closer to straight than anything. She was a sweet woman and yet .. . Sex with her alone was not really quite ‘it.’ Kristy was a flirt with all the men we knew, and finding boy toys to satisfy us was our specialty. We had one weekend long romp with a lovely guy we met and tired the dear man out between the two of us. But did I remember that as the best sex?

There were many other boyfriends until I had a year-long fling with a musician who didn’t mind that I was a stripper. We did have delicious sex, and I did orgasm every time. I began to discover that I was multi-orgasmic. I felt a slight tenderness for him, and I am sure he felt something similar. But there were no “I love you” moments from either of us, and we never discussed our relationship beyond a sexual one. He wasn’t my boyfriend. He was just a guy I had really good sex with. As far as the idea of love went, he compared me to liking a chocolate chip cookie rather than to a summer’s day. But he never admitted a darn emotion. Not once.

As the years went on, the best sex was hard to find.  Even while I was engaged to a chef, our best times were in the kitchen, cooking for our dinner parties, or traveling together to luxurious locales. In bed, it was vanilla and lukewarm. One hot steamy night in Kona, he was overwhelmed by my hungry need for good and lusty sex. It was too much for him— he rejected my intensity. I had a lot of sun that day. Sunning in the nude always makes me aroused. I had masturbated outside on the grass while at the house we were staying at. The scent of plumeria flowers, the ocean, the sun, and the relaxed Hawaiian air had me wriggling around in the island heat until I touched myself, feverish for some kind of passion. So I made it known that I wanted ‘it,’ but he just liked ‘it’ when I was sweet and demure, half asleep, with my legs spread open. It was a few thrusts, and that was that. I thought that perhaps the idea of ‘the best sex’ or even good sex was something I might just have to give up. The fantasy of having sex with a passionate lover that involved hair pulling and wild sweaty abandon may never happen to me, I thought. I was in my mid-twenties. I had yet to have that magical combination of amazing sex and loving emotions. Maybe the idea was just a dream?

But I wanted passion. I realized that it was something I could not live without. I hadn’t experienced true passion before, but there was a yearning deep within me that ached for it. I wanted passion, and I couldn’t get married unless I had that with my fiancé. But, we were more like good friends and less like lovers, and I wanted more.

He compared me to a diamond in the rough. If I could just polish you, he said, you’d shine. I coiled from the mere comparison, which suggested that I wasn’t good enough the way I was, just as me. So, that led me to a question. Wasn’t I enough for someone just as I am? Why couldn’t I have amazingly good sex with heaping amounts of love? Why was I labeled the ‘diamond in the rough’ and just a chocolate chip cookie?

All these years, I have waited for that mind-blowing orgasmic bliss with a man I am so very into— with passion, desire, and intense kissing. Wanting someone so much like this, I can’t embrace, kiss, and orgasm upon him enough. The desire to bite him out of sheer lusty want is my wild expression of intense affection. I feel so much desire, it’s animal. It’s almost cannibal. I want to eat him because I feel so much. And is it the best sex of my life? Yes.

Yes, years later, now in my forties, I am experiencing what I think is the best sex of my life. And yes, love has something to do with it. Passionate sex has found me. I’m getting close, and I’m coming… closer. I’m closer to that passionate experience I have been longing for. Yes. Finally, the universe has answered my heart, mind, body and soul. James Joyce couldn’t have written it better: And then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes. 

]]> https://eroticadujour.com/the-best-sex/feed/ 0 Secret Place https://eroticadujour.com/secret-place/ https://eroticadujour.com/secret-place/#comments Fri, 30 Sep 2011 20:01:22 +0000 butterfly https://eroticadujour.com/?p=1099

It was forbidden, that street. When I was a girl, I was not allowed to go down that road. My mother had made it clear  that I could only go as far as the end of our street when I went out on my bicycle, never to wander. The forbidden street was at the bottom of the hill, just to the left, at the end. The entrance was shaded with trees, sloping down into the park. At the end, the road turned into hiking trails, eucalyptus trees, mystery.

I wanted him to drive me through the neighborhood where I grew up, where I skinned my knees from bicycle falls, where I played and drew in colored chalk on the sidewalk. We drove around and up and through the hills, my memory as a girl following along the asphalt. “Where can we go?” he asks. I give him a look, wanting. We kiss quickly. He leans close to me as he curves the moving car through the narrow roads, guiding the steering wheel through my childhood memories. I nestle my head into the scoop of his shoulder, planting little kisses lightly along his neck, nuzzling my nose to smell his skin. I trail my fingers along the edge of his ear, the curving shell roundness of it. Just then, at the bottom of the hill, was the forbidden street I wasn’t supposed to go down.

“Let’s go down that street. Turn here.”

The street is quiet. There are houses on one side. The other side is hidden by the densely wooded brush and trees. The tires crackle slowly along the road. We look for a spot to park. I have butterflies in my stomach and a melancholy ache in my bones. He turns the car around at the end, finding a place. We kiss for a moment. It’s dark, headlights off, streetlights buzzing in their orange glow. We can hear someone’s television in the distance. Like teenagers on a date, we cannot wait to kiss. I clasp his face lightly with my hands. The natural scent of him, his warm mouth melting against mine, I’m intoxicated by his kiss. He leans across the center and unbuckles his seatbelt. The click of his seatbelt undone, the sound, opens a place in my body. My blouse, my wide leather belt, my jeans, the seatbelt—confining me. I want to remove everything, remove the things in my life that keep me from him. I want undoing. I unbuckle my heeled sandals. I undo the seatbelt. His hands tuck up underneath my hair. He pulls my face deeper into our kiss.

His mouth and mine, his mouth, mine.

I look out the window into the nigh, and see myself as a girl, running down toward the end where the dirt path begins. I see myself looking back at the older me in the car. She knows— that little girl— where I am going. Whatever she knows, it’s discovered here, this secret place at the end of this street. She sees me, thirty years later, in a minivan full of my children’s things– a baby seat, a baseball bag, the sand toys for the beach all cluttered in the trunk, kissing a man I am having an affair with, a man I am falling in love with, in the dark, stealing a moment away. Secret. It seems that my life has come to this secret and hidden end of a street, to rediscover something forgotten within me.

We climb into the back of the van, my jeans pulled off, removing my belt, my pussy wet, his hard sex in my hand. You are so hard,” I marvel, as the length and swell of his cock is warm and heavy with thick arousal. I caress his sex with one hand. I cup his balls with the other. He is sitting on the seat, half dressed, still wearing his shirt. I lean up and into him, kissing him deeply. Holding his body to mine, my blouse is sticking from sweat and desire, the fabric coming between the smoothness of our bodies. I want to feel him naked and breathing upon me. I pull the fabric away to feel his belly and chest against mine. He pulls his shirt away, too. We want our skin touching. I want to dissolve into him where the world is golden-yellow and soft like sunlight in summertime memories. I want to melt away into the light as he plunges his body into mine. No barriers, nothing between us, not even the years we lived so close to one another, never knowing that all this time, we were already close in parallel existence. I want his hunger, his sadness, his memories, all of his colors inside of me, blending both of our shadows, touching, like watercolors all bleeding together until the paper is saturated with imperfect beauty.

My lover’s face in the shadows is luminous and delicate. There is something within him that is intangible, revealing itself to me. His face is like moonlight through a raincloud. I put my hand to his cheek, making sure he is there. Here in the dark, the blueness of the evening, illuminated by the amber street lamps lighting the shadows within ourselves, the forgotten places within us can no longer stay hidden. I open my eyes to see him in the dark. He cannot see me entirely. We can only see each other in the half-light. We are shadows of each other. We are radiant with desire, opening and tasting what is true, kissing him, kissing him. By this desire, he is awakening my soul. His fingers and hands light along my body, undoing me, releasing me, bringing me back to life.

I feel released from everything when we kiss. Nothing is binding me to the gravity of my existence. I am a butterfly coming out of a chrysalis. I am returning to myself within his embrace, by his kiss. We move around in the back, trying to find the right position. We kiss, and I laugh like a teenage girl. My legs are up, bare and dangling over his shoulder. He can’t see my face at all now. What he can see he finds with his hands. He discovers me in the slip of my wanting. My skin against his, my pussy is flowering with ripeness, and, as he touches me there, as he slides his fingers inside, he has me, he possesses me— all of me— the girl running down the street and the woman in the back seat of the car.

We kiss. I press my body into his. My hands are slipping all around his shoulders, feeling the fabric of his shirt, flattening my palms, smoothing and stroking his chest, squeezing his arms, and pulling him against me. I want him inside of me. My hands caress up along the back of his neck. My fingernails claw into his black hair. I have this erotic need to kiss him in the back of the car, half naked like this. It brings moments from girlhood into womanhood colliding within me like a surreal dream. I pretend it is him that I first gave myself to in the back of a car. I pretend, all this time, it was he, this man I see in the half-light, the blue shadows curving along his handsome face, his smile, his sighs. I suckle his lower lip, and he says something, pulling away, mystified, searching for my face. He says something beautiful. He is beatific in that moment. I suck his lip in a kiss again, and the same reaction comes. He is searching for my face. The kissing is making us dizzy with the feeling we have. We are in this dream together, looking out the windows at the broken indigo and granite colors, just shapes now, the houses, the street. We are dreaming each other. What we cannot see with our eyes, we can see with our hands, with our kisses. We can see everything about each other and all the years that paralleled themselves, bringing us to this moment, all the secrets once so elusive, now illuminated.

Thirty years before, I ran down that street, not supposed to go there, not allowed. Danger. My mother worried about someone kidnapping me, taking me away. Now, I want to be taken, I want someone to kidnap me. Take me,” I whisper.

We are in the back of the van. My body is longing for him to be deep inside of me. I am sucking him as he straddles the farthest back seat, slinking into a position so I can take his cock into my mouth. My face nuzzles into his belly, making my way down. I inhale his musky scent, petting the soft nest of hair there with my palm, pressing down upon where his pubic bone meets the base of his sex. Tenderly I open my mouth to take him in, my mouth wet, longing to suck him, licking the head, savoring the length of his erect cock. He is hard. So hard, I have never felt him harder than that. I want him to kidnap me, just take me and take me. I don’t want to go back. I want to run away. I want him so much I can’t imagine how it’s happened. It consumes me, this want, and there’s no stopping it.

Outside the car windows, it’s deep night. We can only hear our breath and our sighing, our desire for one another climbing over the velour car seats, reaching the branches of the trees outside, shaking. I am shaking with orgasms. He gives them to me, over and over until everything blurs together and I don’t know who I am anymore.

The gray concrete of the street softly encompasses us. There is no time, only our breath, our hands, our kisses. My body sinks upon him, I climb upon him, slide him within me. When I am like this, on top of him, I am his. I belong to him, and that is what I need. It doesn’t really matter what we do, or how we do it.

He moves us down onto the carpeted floor of the back of the van. My leg is cramped against the side of the car interior. I cannot see his face now, but he can see mine by the dim light of the window. I feel him watching me as I ride him, moaning a little, feeling the marvelous way his cock slides in and half out of my cunt, my wet and juicy place where he is entering me. He grasps the sides of my hips, holding me upon him. He holds, squeezes me, and shakes my fleshy hips with yearning. I feel like a woman. When he holds my hips like that, I feel him possess me. The softest place of me, not just the inside of my body, but the most secret place, he finds, he uncovers. I am naked inside. I am his. I am myself again.

 

 

]]> https://eroticadujour.com/secret-place/feed/ 0 Surrender, Desire and Passionate Love https://eroticadujour.com/surrender-desire-passionate-love/ https://eroticadujour.com/surrender-desire-passionate-love/#comments Sat, 24 Sep 2011 15:29:35 +0000 butterfly https://eroticadujour.com/?p=1076

 

“Love is an attempt at penetrating another being, but it can only succeed if the surrender is mutual.” ~Octavio Paz

Surrendering to another person is an exquisite feeling. It is also terrifying. It’s been a part of my psyche and played its role in my soul’s growth. Being a submissive type of woman— only when I’m in control of that, mind you— I take pleasure in relinquishing all. In most cases, romantically speaking, I’ve been the one that’s sought after, desired, and taken. In the moment of the taking, I delight in the feeling of giving myself over to the passionate experience of love, lust or whatever you have in mind. Only once did I ever pursue and aggressively ‘take’ a man (to bed), and it was not exactly the kind of experience that suited my needs. You see, I love to surrender. (I do have a funny story about that moment, but that I will save for another time.) There is a deliciousness that builds from sexual tension. The surrender, then, is blissful, yielding, opening.

“This hunger of the eyes, skin, of the whole body and spirit, which made others criminals, robbers, rapers, barbarians, which caused wars, invasions, plundering and murder, in Djuna, at the age of puberty, alchemized into love. Whatever was missing she became: she became mother, father, cousin, brother, friend, confidant, guide, companion to all. This power of absorption, this sponge of receptivity which might have fed itself forever to fill the early want, she used to receive all communication of the need of others. The need and hunger became nourishment. Her breasts, which no poverty had been able to wither, were heavy with the milk of lucidity, the milk of devotion.

This hunger. . . became love.

While wearing the costume of utter femininity, the veils and the combs, the gloves and the perfumes, the muffs and the heels of femininity, she nevertheless disguised in herself an active lover of the world, the one was was actively roused by the object of his love, the one who was made strong as man is made strong in the center of his being by the softness of his love.

Loving in men and women, not their strength but their softness, not their fullness but their hunger, not their plenitude but their needs.”  ~ Ladders to Fire, Anais Nin

Surrender is ecstasy when you allow it. The loss of control, letting go of everything, and giving over to something or someone is a kind of freedom. When I gave birth the second time, I had to learn how to let go. Birthing is the biggest letting go one can do. My first childbirth experience was not like that at all. I refused to let go, and I suffered. So, the second time I gave birth I practiced the art of letting go. It was a psychedelic experience. My body knew what to do. The body itself has an innate and supremely ancient wisdom. Letting go is all about trust. Tension causes pain. I learned this the hard way the first time. The second and third time I gave birth, pure joy. By completely letting go and surrendering to the experience of childbirth, I saw everything sparkle. Colors were vivid, and I had a big “a-ha” moment. As I was about to give birth, I looked at my birthing doula and laughed quizzically, “I don’t know.” She smiled, seemed amused, and said, “What don’t you know?”

I laughed, “I don’t know.”

This was the funniest thing in the world, at the very moment of birth, I had no idea about anything. It was a riddle, and it was an answer. It was everything and nothing. It was complete surrender. Joy, of course, came after.

Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips. 
~Percy Bysshe Shelley

Kissing is surrendering to another. In the first moment of giving in to a passionate feeling, the kiss opens us. We are tender, full of emotion. There is an eroticism in being vulnerable. Surrendering to passion is giving in to the moment of desire, letting it sweep you away. Being taken by emotion, the yielding is what happens, opening ourselves— mind, body, and soul. Being psychologically penetrated is a kind of surrender. Opening one’s mind to another’s—sharing experiences, telling tales and stories about one’s life— is a form of surrender. Letting another into our metaphorical hearts, there is actual physical pain in the center of one’s chest. It’s not pleasant; it feels like standing on the edge of a balcony looking downward— falling in love— and just may be equal to the sensation of jumping out of a plane. For some. For me, at least.

The feeling of opening one’s self, whether it be all at once or over a period of years, is surrendering to love. And what if the parachute is broken? Then what?

“Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.” ~Albert Einstein 

Ah, the mysteries of sex. Like a labyrinth, the mystery of erotic love is an adventure that takes me deep within my soul. There’s no reasoning, no logic. Life takes on a mythical and magical quality. I discover and decipher. I feel fine-tuned for creative energy. I see things clearly; I feel intensely. Alive, full of fire, music and the elemental and invisible wonders of life. During a passionate moment, I have seen the most beautiful things within my lover’s eyes. The invisible becomes visible within the heart. Sweat from his body smells good. I can’t kiss his mouth enough, and I want him like nothing else in the world. I want him, desire him. I feel it deep in my bones. There are no words. Everything that comes out of my mouth sounds cliché. The only thing I can do is express this feeling with active affection and passion. Grasping his hair during sex, squeezing his body against mine, biting his shoulder, kissing his mouth— hunger, fire. I write poetry, I paint, I write. I am in the moment, and I feel alive. Inspiration comes from the darkness. From the invisible threads woven through my chemistry, the power of sex is the seed of creativity. Sex becomes a spiritual opening, a doorway to the mystery. A passage through the labyrinth with a thread of red fleece. The pleasure of yes is surrendering to love, surrendering to passion and desire.

“I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he
 asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first
 I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so 
he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was
 going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”
 ~James Joyce

James Joyce wrote this letter to his beloved Nora:

My dear Nora,

It has just struck me. I came in at half past eleven. Since then I have been sitting in an easy chair like a fool. I could do nothing. I hear nothing but your voice. I am like a fool hearing you call me ‘Dear.’ I offended two men today by leaving them coolly. I wanted to hear your voice, not theirs.


When I am with you I leave aside my contemptuous, suspicious nature. I wish I felt your head on my shoulder. I think I will go to bed.


I have been a half-hour writing this thing. Will you write something to me? I hope you will. How am I to sign myself? I won’t sign anything at all, because I don’t know what to sign myself.

(James Joyce)

Passionate love overwhelms the senses. The lover is on fire. When in love, I can’t think. I can’t do anything but crave my lover’s touch, hear their voice, and, even in the daily routines of life, I am consumed by the flame of desire.

Love is like a friendship caught on fire. 
In the beginning a flame, very pretty, 
Often hot and fierce, 
But still only light and flickering. 
As love grows older, 
Our hearts mature 
and our love becomes as coals, 
Deep-burning and unquenchable. 
~ Bruce Lee 

Fire is a common thread among lovers past and present. When experiencing the feeling of falling in love, I have also felt the fire of passion wildly burning inside of me. Erotic love and all the colors of passion are full of fire and symbols of transformative yearning.

A letter by Napoleon Bonaparte to his lover Josephine:

I wake filled with thoughts of you. Your portrait and the intoxicating evening which we spent yesterday have left my senses in turmoil. Sweet, incomparable Josephine, what a strange effect you have on my heart!

Are you angry? Do I see you looking sad? Are you worried?… My soul aches with sorrow, and there can be no rest for your lover; but is there still more in store for me when, yielding to the profound feelings which overwhelm me, I draw from your lips, from your heart, a love which consumes me with fire? Ah! it was last night that I fully realized how false an image of you your portrait gives!

 You are leaving at noon; I shall see you in three hours.

 Until then, mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses; but give me none in return, for they set my blood on fire.
 (Napoleon Bonaparte)

Napoleon mentions that “a love which consumes (him) with fire” and that Josephine’s kisses “set (his) blood on fire” so he asks her not to give any kisses in return. He is already burning.

Another love letter by Victor Hugo to his amor:

My dearest,

When two souls, which have sought each other for, however long in the throng, have finally found each other …a union, fiery and pure as they themselves are… begins on earth and continues forever in heaven.

This union is love, true love, … a religion, which deifies the loved one, whose life comes from devotion and passion, and for which the greatest sacrifices are the sweetest delights.

This is the love which you inspire in me… Your soul is made to love with the purity and passion of angels; but perhaps it can only love another angel, in which case I must tremble with apprehension.

Yours forever,

Victor Hugo 

The transcendent aspect of passionate love is an erotic exhilaration for the soul. The eyes, the voice, the smell, the taste, and every bit of the beloved sends the lover into a rapturous moment. Delicious passionate sex, open-hearted and orgasmic, bring two people closer to the gods and goddesses of myth and legend, to angels, to transform them into fire and blaze into ether, where they return into the stars and the universe.

“At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.” ~Plato

 

 

]]> https://eroticadujour.com/surrender-desire-passionate-love/feed/ 0 In The Kitchen https://eroticadujour.com/in-the-kitchen/ https://eroticadujour.com/in-the-kitchen/#comments Mon, 19 Sep 2011 19:08:19 +0000 butterfly https://eroticadujour.com/?p=1065

Slipping his fingers into my wet and wanting sex,  he pulls aside my apron from behind as my ass lifts a little higher. I’m leaning over the kitchen sink. He has three fingers buried deep into my pussy; my lips are swollen with a delicious melting sensation. More. The bottle of gourmet olive oil. He spies it on the counter and reaches for it. Pressing his arousal hotly against my bare behind, he pours some of the oil into one hand and slathers my bottom up with it. The delicate perfume of olives fills the kitchen in the heat of the day. With the slippery olive oil he deftly presses his thumb— his one thumb that is wide and slightly flattened– slowly against the tender entrance of my ass. Pushing gently inside, it sinks in slow. His fingers work themselves deeper into my pussy. Deeper. He’s got a way of doing this where I can only surrender to the pleasure. I want his hardening cock inside of me too, but his hands are causing me to vibrate with excitement. I can’t think of anything else. He takes his other hand and, with the long tips of his index and second finger, circles my clit in light, little motions. He flutters his fingers back and forth, lightly, the way he taps an eggshell against a bowl. He pinches my clit and plays with it like sprinkling spices into a pot. The ache of his three fingers in my pussy and the girth of his thumb inside my ass is exquisite. I want him so much that my whole body responds to him like a pot of boiling water, simmering and rolling into heat. He has full control of my body with his hand. He kneels down on the kitchen floor, burying his face in between my legs. His hot mouth is tonguing my pussy, trailing his kiss up, spreading my cheeks open, licking, tasting. I moan with desire, clutching the Formica countertop. Being in the kitchen with him couldn’t get any hotter. His fingers stir me into a froth of lust.

When we are at dinner in a restaurant, sitting side by side, he trails his hand to my thigh, delving downward in between my legs. His fingers tempt me under the dinner table, coaxing the edge of my panties aside, teasing, just until my body bubbles with desire, so close to climax. He smiles mischievously, observing my response. He drinks his wine coolly, watches me with a sideways glance, as I try to not to show anything in my expression. He’s sly and just a bit naughty. Other diners at surrounding tables might notice. Sometimes I just don’t care, it’s so good, what he does to me with his hands.

His hands. Looking upon the shape of them sends shivers of longing through me, sensations I cannot describe. There aren’t any words that can explain the way they undo me, bit by bit, like sugar dissolving.

I watch him peel shrimp in the kitchen. He’s holding the knife steady, his index finger is pressed against the outer part of the blade. With precision, he deftly cuts along the spine of the shrimp, pink and quivering in his grip. I understand how that shrimp feels, much like the way I am when in his command. At the wooden cutting block, he conducts with his chef’s knife— he’s finely chopping fresh wide leaves of mint, frilly clumps of cilantro, his fingers nimbly mincing the green leaves into submission. He scoops the herbs into a bowl as I watch, enthralled by the way his hands take such loving care with what he is making. The watermelon and cucumber, all cubed and ready, shimmer with watery urgency. His long fingers casually shimmy among them, dipping into the bowl, tossing and dressing it with a squeeze of lime. The juice spurts into the bowl. He squeezes the lime until its pulp feathers and separates from the green rind. I notice the juice covering his fingernails, tips of his fingers, palm of his hand. It smells good and citrussy. He pulls me close and kisses me. I smell fragrant mint and juicy lime on his fingers as he touches my face. Then he’s back to preparing our meal. I delight in watching him drizzle olive oil into another bowl; stirring the dressing with the stainless whisk. He slices corn off the cob. While I stand there, barefoot in my sundress, watching him like a little girl, he smiles the faintest hint of a smile. He knows I am melting inside down to the marrow with want. My body is responding from the buttery center of my rising lust, a soufflé of creamy desire.

He sets the two dishes down on the dining table. Just a simple dish: shrimp in a dressing of olive oil, lime, honey, mint, cilantro, corn, watermelon and cucumber— the fragrance and sweetness, the pleasure. He caresses my thigh with one hand as I taste a mouthful of his creation, and suddenly, from the very core of my body, I am shuddering with some kind of mysterious reaction to the meal made aphrodisiac by his hands. I am melting with tenderness. I am noticing how he holds his fork. His index finger points into the silver handle of the fork, controlling its motion. My thoughts are percolating, the agitation in my body won’t stop. His other hand is warm and smooth against my thigh. I am shaking; my knees are gelatinous and unable to hold still. He slides his hand softly along my leg. My mouth is full of watermelon and shrimp, and I can’t stop giggling. I am so moved I want to cry from the joy. Another kind of orgasm, one coming from the depths of me, ripples from within, and all I can do is surrender to it. His eyes gleam at me like champagne glasses as he gives a fizzy smile. We eat from our dishes, and I taste slowly, savoring each mouthful. The heat of his hand and the way he made our dinner is whipping up some unknown place inside my body. A kiss with flavors of watermelon, olive oil, honey and mint on our tongues, the sea-sweetness of the pink fresh shrimp, the tang of pleasure.

Later, again, after the food, in the kitchen, his hands hug my hips close. We embrace. The warmth of his palms travels up my body, wraps in and cups around my breasts, kissing. He holds my face in his hands. The faint scent of herbs, like a magic spell from his fingertips, intoxicates me with its summery bouquet. He gazes into my eyes. I am trembling. I’m in love.

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