That Reading Over the Weekend Moved Me to Tears

This weekend, I was in New York City at Bluestockings reading from Me and My Boi: Queer Erotic Stories, as I know I said ahead of time. I have to talk about the event in retrospect, though, because it was really impressive, hit me with more raw sexual energy and emotion than I would ever have expected, and made me feel like Me and My Boi is one of those important books that deserves every effort I can make to highlight it.

I was reading with Aimee Herman, Gigi Frost, Dena Hankins, Anna Watson, and Sacchi Green. I found myself near tears at times, squirming with arousal at others, and sometimes both at once. It feels like I should have known that a book about the erotic power of female masculinity would stir up so much, but still it blindsided me.

Moments I remember:

Aimee Herman, who read like your favorite adventurous, hard-drinking friend taking you out to bend your ear, creating this mess of feverish, omnidirectional queer desire more powerful than the strongest whiskey. Coyly, just like that friend would do, Aimee pretended to skip the good part, namely the details of the rough bathroom fuck with a packing stranger known only as Q that the story had been building up to, then grinned at the audience as we all reeled from the tease. (Those details did not, in the end, get skipped.)

Tearing up as Gigi Frost described the almost unbearable intimacy of a masculine woman revealing her chest to her lover.

Having it dawn on me, as Dena Hankins read from her story set on a boat, that I’ve never really recognized my own clothing (often sporty, these days) described so accurately, made so sexy in the process. The lines a sports bra leaves, the struggle with wrestling it away from an ample chest—it felt so real, and it stunned me that I’d never thought to write it, couldn’t recall having ever read it written that way before.

Anna Watson, whose work always floors me with its sheer emotional power, embodying the voice of her story’s stern femme top, whose orders bring about a transformation—from “funny little woman” to newly minted, sexual, being-herself-at-last boi.

Sacchi Green, relishing as always the role of the crone who can make a room full of youngsters get more turned on than we’d like to admit, reading from a story that plays with ideas of beauty and ugliness until both turn into need.

And for my own story, I hope people got something out of the moments I was up at the front of the room. The biggest moment for me was earlier, when I was practicing, and I heard it all as a letter from pieces of myself I’d been suppressing. My story, “Not Just Hair,” which I wrote some years ago now, set off an eruption in my life. I’m divided by the weekend I wrote it—before, when I could still lie myself about some things, and afterward, when I didn’t know the truth but had no choice but to look for it.

All this to say, this book is really special. So many of us seemed to have changed ourselves in the course of writing for it, or to have exposed something deep and buried.

I have one quarrel with the way the evening was presented. Sacchi seemed to want to apologize for us a bit, feeling that the readers for the night didn’t present as masculine as she might have wished. It would have been cool to read alongside an unabashed butch, certainly, but I object to any implications that the perspectives presented were all femme. I think we know enough now in the world to see that so many things take place on a spectrum, and so much can be going on beneath the surface of how a person dresses at the moment.

While some stories seemed to have been written and read from the perspective of a femme appreciating a butch, mine wasn’t. Mine was written from a place of confusion and change, yearning for the courage to be things I wasn’t raised to be. Reading the story now, I’m humbled by how frightened I still am of the parts of myself that appear in it. I don’t know where I’m going, but there’s something going on for me with gender. It’s clear from what I write, but it’s hard for me to say anything about it out loud, or to say it in relation to me instead of in relation to characters.

So I wish Sacchi hadn’t assumed things about presentation. I don’t want to speak for anyone besides myself, so I won’t say anything about what I think the other writers might have meant. As a listener, though, I heard that ambiguity, that complexity, that confusion about what gender even is and what it means to enact it with each other as queers who get to/have to find our own way.

And I’m so convinced this book is important. And I can promise you it’s sexy. I hope lots of people check it out.

Heated Leather Lover: One Hot Scene

It's out today!

I've been going on and on at various places in the Internet about how hot this book makes me, and now it's time to prove it. Here's one of my favorite scenes—I wrote it early on, and it set the tone for what would be going on in this novella:

Tam stroked Yasmin’s hair. “How many spankings should you get, little girl? How bad have you been?” She wanted to give the woman a chance to set expectations. For some bottoms, taking ten hits was practically edge play. For others, taking a hundred was just warming up.

Yasmin turned her face upward, her expression veiled by a curtain of her thick, curly hair. She bit her lip adorably, into her part already. Her mouth formed the letter “F” but she didn’t speak a word. Tam thought her hesitation meant she was pushing herself, and indeed she seemed to be waffling about whether to follow the “F” with an “O” or an “I.” Tam grinned and hurried her with a sharp, fast strike to one bared cheek.

“Which is it?” she pressed. “Is forty enough, or were you so bad that you need fifty?”

Yasmin gasped. “Fi— Fi—”

Another slap. “Ask me for it, baby. Tell me what you need and I’ll take care of you.”

“Oh God.” Yasmin sighed and jerked, then decided on another vowel altogether. “Fuck me.”

“Oh, sweetie.” Tam couldn’t resist an affectionate kiss to the back of her neck. “You’ve been terribly neglected, haven’t you?”

“God, you don’t even know.”

“I’ll fuck that pretty pussy soon. First, though, you have to tell me how much to spank you. After you get your punishment, you can have your reward.”

“Fifty!” Yasmin wailed, grinding against Tam’s thigh.

Tam obliged. She paced it slowly and evenly so she had time to watch Yasmin’s reaction. Sometimes she enjoyed striking with an irregular rhythm, toying with her bottom and making it impossible to brace at the proper moment. With Yasmin, however, she still wanted to be careful and keep an eye on how things were going. Also, Yasmin was glorious. She responded to each hit as if Tam’s hand had pushed deep into her pussy, arching her back, lifting her head and letting out orgasmic moans. The cheeks of her ass blushed slowly and deeply, a dull pink gradually blooming from beneath her dark skin until she glowed. Tam’s palm tingled and sparked every time it made contact with Yasmin’s beautiful, round ass.

Yasmin didn’t seem to feel any real pain until Tam reached about twenty-five, at which point she began to give sharp little rocks after every hit, making her cheeks jiggle. Tam, by this point, had to resist squirming herself. She hadn’t seen anyone as hot as Yasmin in God knew how long, and it had been even longer since she’d actively participated in a moment as sexy as this. Consider me distracted, Tam thought, allowing herself a victory smirk.

She laid into Yasmin harder and faster. Yasmin yelped and, for the first time, tried to twist away, beginning a running motion that was stopped by Tam’s muscled thigh. Tam held her in place with one hand and kept spanking with the other. They’d both started to sweat, and Yasmin’s helpless struggles set off a hard delight in Tam. “No,” Yasmin breathed, and even though that wasn’t the safeword, Tam stopped immediately, just to check.

She swirled a soothing hand through Yasmin’s thick hair and waited a few seconds. Then she asked, “How are you doing, honey? You still okay, darling? You still having fun?” Tam didn’t know where all these endearments were coming from—she normally wasn’t so gooey. Something about Yasmin brought out all her deepest, most protective instincts. For a dizzying moment she saw herself guiding Yasmin into her favorite bar back home, the beautiful femme tucked under one of Tam’s strong, leather-clad arms and her every sweet curve nestled against Tam’s body in an attitude of perfect, submissive trust. She shivered and forced herself to focus on how Yasmin responded to the question.

“Mmm,” was all Yasmin said.

“You’re in la-la land, huh?” Tam rubbed Yasmin’s back. Her unbuttoned silk blouse had ridden up and Tam wound up stroking her knuckles across soft skin made sticky by strain and arousal. That shot straight to Tam’s clit. Jesus. This woman really made her lose her head. “Talk to me. You’re a little more than halfway through your spanking. Do you want to keep going?”

“Fuck me. Please.” Yasmin’s voice sounded indistinct and Tam realized she was sucking on one of Tam’s leather chaps. She chuckled.

“Not until you take your spanking, naughty girl. You just remember to use your safeword if you need to, okay?”

Yasmin nodded vigorously and tongued the leather some more. Tam took that as permission to give it to her hard. She didn’t hold back at all this time, really whaling at her ass. The hard, staccato blows started a sympathetic ripple in Yasmin’s ass that just about hypnotized Tam. She loved the sight of all that sweet flesh rolling just for her.

Yasmin whimpered, her hips jerking in an unmistakable rhythm against Tam’s leg. She didn’t forget to count, either, though the numbers she pronounced came out slurred and confused and Tam was pretty sure they should have gotten through the forties a lot faster than they actually did.

By the time they hit fifty, Tam couldn’t take it anymore. She stroked Yasmin’s backside for a count of ten, just to keep herself from moving too fast, but then gave in to her desires and ordered, “Strip.”

“What?” Yasmin really had dropped into subspace. She lifted her head and blinked at Tam with wide, innocent eyes.

Tam gave her a gentle shove to signal that she could get out of position. Yasmin stumbled to her feet, moving as if drunk even though Tam knew she hadn’t given Yasmin time to drink more than a few sips of that beer. “You keep asking me to fuck you, sweetheart. How am I supposed to do that when you’re still wearing all those clothes?”

“Oh.” Lust and understanding dawned over Yasmin’s face and she struggled out of her already disheveled outfit. She shrugged off her open shirt. One of her breasts had climbed up out of its bra cup during the spanking, the nipple hard and dark and perched just above the lace rim. Her hands trembled as she worked on the zipper of her skirt, and she almost fell over trying to step the rest of the way out of her tights.
Tam took pity on her and stood up to stabilize Yasmin instead of continuing to watch her delicious battle with her clothing. On the other hand, maybe Tam just couldn’t wait any longer to touch all that soft, inviting flesh. She pulled Yasmin against her and sucked on her earlobe while teasing her hard nipples. Yasmin gave up on trying to push her thong down her hips. Instead she sighed and melted into Tam’s embrace. “You smell like leather,” she said dreamily.

Tam grunted with satisfaction and growled in a low voice, “You like that, don’t you?”

“So much.”

***

You can get the book here. Or, if you prefer, Barnes and Noble or Amazon. This book is part of Ellora's Cave's Hot Pink series—you can see the full collection here.

Also, I'm running a giveaway!

Out Tomorrow: Heated Leather Lover (With Giveaway!)

I'm very excited to tell you that Heated Leather Lover comes out tomorrow! This book was truly a labor of hot sex, er, make that love. Every now and then, I test myself. What am I into? What really turns me on? The result never seems to be quite the same. I rocked my own world writing Heated Leather Lover. My lovely editor read it and sent back an e-mail in all caps indicating that she was vigorously fanning herself. In short, this novella is flat-out, no-holds-barred hot to an unusual degree (and I always try to be hot). I don't normally go on so much about this aspect of things—usually I am giving you my philosophical motivations. There's a bit of that in here, because I'm still myself, but mostly, if you're into leather as a thing you could breathe in and quiver to, this book is for you.

Here's the blurb:

When Tam Bouie rides into town on her motorcycle, she finds the welcoming committee of her dreams. In a bar called Issues, the beautiful femme Yasmin Miller seems to have been waiting for a butch on a steel horse to sweep her off her feet.


Yasmin has a serious fetish for women in leather and isn’t afraid to go after what she wants—until she discovers that Tam isn’t just passing through. Convinced that their town is too small for the explosive love affair that threatens to ignite, and the possible fallout if it goes sour, Yasmin drops Tam as quickly as she picked her up.


Tam, however, doesn't give up easily, and Yasmin’s resolutions to stay away from her won’t mean a thing if she can’t resist the sexy butch’s heated leather love.


A Romantica® lesbian erotic romance from Ellora’s Cave

This book can be preordered now, or received immediately tomorrow.

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Ellora's Cave

And because I want to spread the word to any fellow leather lovers out there, I've got a giveaway for you as well! Check it out!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Evelyn Gets Ready

I'm still catching up on my news. I posted a while back about D.L. King's forthcoming anthology She Who Must Be Obeyed: Femme Dominant Lesbian Erotica, but now I've got this beautiful cover for you, and a July 7 release date. You can preorder it here.

My story, "Evelyn Gets Ready," is about objectification in the literal sense—the main character spends the evening as a table. I find that kind of bondage particularly deep and surprisingly emotional. It would seem to wipe emotion away to take on the role of a table, and yet in my experience it intensifies emotion in the same way that, "Stand in the corner and don't think of polar bears" makes one think of nothing but polar bears.

Heated Leather Lover

This is the cover for my next Ellora's Cave release, Heated Leather Lover, which is due out in early June!

When Tam Bouie rides into town on her motorcycle, she finds the welcoming committee of her dreams, the beautiful femme Yasmin Miller who seems to have been waiting for a leather-clad butch to come and sweep her off her feet.

The two waste no time acting on their passion, but when Yasmin discovers that Tam isn’t just passing through, she panics. Yasmin fears that Tam’s new hometown will prove far too small for comfort if their love affair goes sour. Her resolutions to stay away from Tam won’t mean a thing, however, if she can’t manage to keep them.

She Who Must Be Obeyed

Sometime in 2014, I'll be part of a collection from Lethe Press called She Who Must Be Obeyed: Femme Dominant Lesbian Erotica, edited by the fantastic D.L. King.

This is from the original call for submissions:

There’s something about a hot, sexy woman in a pencil skirt, flawlessly made-up, wielding a riding crop. Well, I think there is. I know, for me, sometimes it’s hard to decide between the black leather pencil skirt and the black rubber one. You know what I mean. I’m talking about a woman worshipped by girls, bois and butch bottoms, alike; I’m not particular – well, not that particular.

Tell me stories about women who can silence a room simply by entering it. What’s it like when a mere glance can make you weak in the knees and a stare will put you in your place – at her feet. I’m looking for power exchange as seen from either the femme’s point of view or her worshipper’s.

I've gotten permission to share the table of contents, and I'm so excited looking at this list. I'll post more information when I've got it!

Noir by Valerie Alexander

The Nose Art Gal by Mary Tintagel

Uncharted Territory by Evan Mora

Grace: Under Pressure by D. L. King

The Bullwhip and the Bull Rider by Sacchi Green

Demo Model by Rachel Kramer Bussel

Too Old for This by Giselle Renarde

The Dame by Styx St. John

Triptych by Lula Lisbon

Angel on Fire by Jessica Lennox

Mares in Heat by Evey Brett

Tears from Heaven by Jean Roberta

Bleed by Teresa Noelle Roberts

Evelyn Gets Ready by Annabeth Leong

Anger Management by Beth Wylde

Garden Party by Karen Taylor

Prima by Katya Harris

The Ride by Kathleen Delaney-Adams

Stretch by Kathleen Tudor

Silvia by River Light

The book is available for preorder here.