I’ve been working my way through the stories that co-exist
with mine in this Xcite Books anthology and
thought I’d share my thoughts on a few favourites. It’s not all ripped bodices and
heaving bosoms; the stories range from ancient pagan tribes right up to
twentieth-century New York.
In Pretty Tied Up by Elizabeth Coldwell a woman escapes
small-town life by becoming a glamour model in 1950s America. One day, a famous
female photographer suggests Lucille tries a bondage shoot. Normally, I’m
apprehensive about any story that involves someone being persuaded to try any
BDSM-related activity for the first time and suddenly realising they enjoy it
when they had never considered it before. But this story makes it clear that
Lucille has been excited by the thought and has just never had the opportunity.
Her novice status allows the bondage to be described in sensual detail. I like
the unexpected titbits too – like photographer Dusty ‘cursing like a sailor’.
Lucille’s back story is woven into the narrative, bringing her character and
motives to life. And there’s a great balance between the build-up of sexual
tension between the two women and the resulting action.
I found Garver by Landon Dixon to be a refreshing dose of light
relief, so to speak. A hired gun agrees to track down stolen coins in this
cowboy sex fest – but only after a blow job from the skilled bossman. The
language and style are far removed from anything I could write myself, which is
partly why I enjoyed the read, particularly marvelling at the range of
descriptions of cocks (which just goes to show that rules are made to be broken
since I wrote a few weeks ago that you should call a cock a cock rather than
coming up with increasingly preposterous names for it). It’s a wonderfully masculine
tale in every way, prowess as a gunfighter intimately linked to sexual prowess.
In The Gift by Clarice Clique, a princess struggles to
satisfy her husband’s desire to be dominated. So she buys a slave to do it for
her, which I thought was a nice twist to the balance of power. It turns out the
slave allowed herself to be captured because she dreamt that her destiny lay in
a foreign place. She thoroughly embraces her contradictory position. And she
proves a natural, the story outlining in vivid detail how she orders the prince
to submit in new ways.
La Contessa’s Game by Slave Nano is another tale of male
submission (there seems to be a theme emerging here among the stories I enjoy
;-), this time with a gender-bending slant. What struck me was the luxury and
decadence, particularly in descriptions of clothing. It is set largely in a
whorehouse in Venice. The countess dresses her servant as a girl, while she
dresses as a man, and pretends (s)he is his young wife and in need of
subjugation at the hands of a dominatrix prostitute. Even his/her punishment is
decadent in its thoroughness and the whole thing climaxes in a glorious
threesome. The story is told in the first person by the servant, which stops it
sounding purely sadistic!
Past Pleasures is available in paperback or ebook from XciteBooks.
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