From Sexy Little Pages: Love and Lust in Space

Hi friends! I've been lucky enough to be included in several anthologies published by Sexy Little Pages, and I wanted to explore some of the other books from their line. So I asked editor Jennifer Denys to send me some info about Love and Lust in Space, a science fiction erotica anthology she edited. She very kindly responded with details on every story in the anthology. I see some names I know and love (Ashe Barker, Jordan Monroe, and Dee Maselle, among others), and plenty I look forward to getting to know! Check it out below! :D

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They say your screams can’t be heard in space… Unless you have a partner or two! Eleven authors take you on a trip where any pairings are acceptable, locations vary from spaceships to strange and futuristic worlds, and interesting and exciting objects can be used in sex play.

If randy astronauts, virtual reality lovers, sex in near-death situations, a commitment phobe human and her alien lover, and reproduction in space experiments don’t do anything for you, you are clearly not human!

So try the stories in the alien worlds half of the anthology, instead. Here you’ll find alien Doms, a mysterious gladiator saving a stricken princess, an exotic dancer, a paid assassin on the run, an illegal sonic dilda’tor, and a pleasure booth. Space has never been so exciting!

Futuristic Earth

Naughty Nauts by H K Carlton (MFM): It's Jessa's job to observe Astronauts Hatch and Scott aboard the ISS. As the mission lengthens both ‘nauts begin to exhibit strange quirks, including suggestive behavior towards her. Jessa has no delusions. In what world would such formidable men give a curvy girl a go, let alone fulfill the delicious promises made over a wall of monitors.

Sanctum by Dee Maselle (MF): Fighting to reshape postwar Earth's data flows, virtual reality talents Krishav Santos and Marra find themselves trapped as rival network acquisitors - knackers. "We can be enemy knackers having fun while we wait," Marra decides, and she's right. After steamy VR fetish sex and united cybercombat, Santos wants Marra's talents in reality.

Re-entry by Ian D Smith (MF): Astronauts, Paul and Helen, could easily die when their prototype space capsule malfunctions in orbit. Their only hope for survival for involves a risky spell with no radio contact. Total isolation is a time for honesty about their feelings for each other. With no guarantee of living until the next day, this last chance may be all they have.

One Night by Rose Wulf (MF): Ivy doesn’t believe in love. But she believes in lust – like the lust that draws her focus to a sexy alien across the bar. He’s set to leave Earth the next morning, so Ivy figures she’s in for just a single night of erotic bliss when he walks her way. What she gets is so much more...

Filling the Void by Jordan Monroe (MFM): Josie Rodriguez is the subject for a special mission. She is the female participant of a study to determine if humans can naturally reproduce in outer space. Her male partner for the study is also the captain of the mission, which takes place on board the International Space Station. She isn’t opposed to having other lab partners, so to speak…

Alien Worlds

The Audition, by Ashe Barker (MF with multiple partners/aliens): When she accidentally opens a wormhole whilst working for NASA Lucy tumbles through to find herself in a parallel dimension with no way back. Ever. In this new and terrifying world she has to choose a Dominant mate from the group of males all more than happy to audition for the role.

The Gladiator’s Princess by Morgan King (MF): When life’s turning out just as you expected it to, when you’re about to be bred publically, as the climatic conclusion to a gladiatorial, orgy inspiring, conquest what Princess Kenara needs is a hunky alien to take her hostage. If Destin can also help with the pesky problem of her heat being triggered even better…

Alien Attraction by Dylan McEwan (MM): Five hundred years after the destruction of Earth, Aiden is a human slave on the planet Vordel, forced into the humiliating and tedious life of a sex performer in a seedy bordello. When he falls for the beautiful Vordellian aristocrat, Kyander, it seems like a hopeless dream, as relationships between the two species are strictly taboo.

Across the Stars by Ella Grey (MF): Kai knew he couldn't hide forever, but he never thought his old employers would send Lyria to track him down. Lyria wants her freedom and if that means she needs to capture and return the man who stole her heart, then so be it.

The Sonic Dilda'tor by Jennifer Denys (MF): Skarlet is a very sensuous woman, but is married to Braemel, whose people only have sex once every five years and she is desperate to save her marriage. She accidentally comes across a Sonic Dilda’tor and immediately knew it would help them. Unfortunately, it is banned on that planet …


Epilogue – after Futuristic Earth

The Pleasure Booth by Beverly Langland (MF and MFM scenes): Altairian scientists have uncovered an ancient Human artefact - the Pleasure Booth. Kazan, a feminist, xenologist and leader of a secret society, is the first Altairian female to try the booth, though strictly forbidden. She feels the journey essential for her thesis on Human sexuality and for the liberation of Altairian females. What she discovers is both puzzling and revolutionary.

Buy link (this takes you to the correct Amazon for your country): https://mybk.li/llis

A Review of Knife’s Edge: Kinky Lesbian Erotica by Emily Byrne

Byrne is capable of blending a dizzying number of kink fantasy elements into powerfully hot stories with a strong sense of character.

Emily Byrne’s kinky lesbian erotica collection opens hot and strong with “Reunion at St. Mary’s,” an absolutely scorching story that combines a dizzying number of fantasy elements in a group sex scene that keeps me gasping for pages on end. (Nuns, spanking, and the girls’ hockey team are somehow just the beginning of this fantasy.) I’ve read the story before, but that doesn’t diminish its power in the least. This particular fantasy could heat me up for many nights on end without abatement.

So while reading it, my main question was where Byrne could possibly go from there. I worried that this book couldn’t maintain this sort of pace, and wouldn’t be able to fulfill the promise of that first story. I was afraid the next eleven stories would seem pale in comparison to this particular filthy, kinky gem.

Byrne, however, is very wise with pacing and variety throughout the book. After “Reunion at St. Mary’s,” she showcases other strengths of her writing. “Arachne” in particular relies on gorgeous language, strong characterization, and a particularly creative mythological retelling to hold its own after the unrelenting heat of “Reunion.” Another story, “The Hands of a Princess,” appeals through humor and a strong plot—while still being quite kinky in its own right.

But, wonder of wonders, Byrne has more delicious group sex scenes up her sleeve. Knife’s Edge doles these out just when the reader has cooled off from the last one. As a result, they hit every time, and Byrne’s particular facility with this sort of scene makes each one feel fresh and sexy in its own way.

Knife’s Edge reads well from beginning to end, but for the reader who wants to know which group sex stories deserve special attention, check out “El Tigre” and “Cowgirls and Science” after you finish “Reunion.”

Part of what held my attention throughout Knife’s Edge was that, between the hot sex scenes, there’s a lot of intriguing character and worldbuilding. More stories than I expected have speculative elements. I particularly enjoyed the lesbian vampires of “El Tigre,” which were a fresh take on a heavily played trope, and the warrior women of “The Hands of a Princess.” (Note to Emily Byrne: I could read a whole book set in that world. In particular, I’d love to know what Eriel gets up to in her spare time… Just saying.)

The back half of Knife’s Edge consists of stories set in the contemporary world. Instead of building new worlds and settings, Byrne opts for deep explorations of the psychology behind her main characters. Particular standouts include “D is for Denial” and “Polar Vortex.” “D is for Denial” explores the sexiness of the buildup between two characters and the power rush of not giving a love interest what they clearly want—while also speaking in a moving way about the fears that can drive a game like that as well. “Polar Vortex” is a poignant scene between two lovers who seem on the verge of a split, and raises the question of whether a powerful moment of trust and intimacy can turn a relationship around.

I tensed up while reading a couple of stories—”Planet 10” and “Lovely Rita, Meter Maid.” In both cases, the story is very concerned with a fetish in a way that I felt had the potential to be dehumanizing. For example, in “Planet 10,” the main character really wants to have sex with a member of a particular alien race, which for me resonated uncomfortably with my lived experience of lovers fetishizing elements of my racial heritage. Byrne, however, seems aware of the situation. In both stories, the object of desire asks at one point why the main character is interested in her specifically, and the main character is forced to recognize the insult implicit in this sort of nonspecific desire. “Planet 10” ultimately gives a science fictional explanation for why sex would happen anyway (and extracts a high price from the main character). “Lovely Rita” handles this with a complementary fetish. By the end of both stories, I was mollified, though I couldn’t really relax enough to be turned on.

Knife’s Edge contains a few weaker entries. While I was very excited about the setting and circumstances of “On the Spanish Main” (boats!), the character development in that story felt thin. “An Incident in Whitechapel” is historically rich, very sexy, and full of fascinating psychology and obsession, but in the end felt a bit obscure to me (basically, I couldn’t understand the conclusion). However, I wouldn’t let a bit of unrealized potential deny me a book full of sexy, fascinating goodness.

Overall, this book is a powerhouse, packed with heat and plenty to keep you entertained—and also some moments of deep feeling and insight.

You can pick up Knife's Edge at the publisher's website here, on Amazon, and elsewhere.

Vital stats:

Title: Knife's Edge: Kinky Lesbian Erotica

Author: Emily L. Byrne

Publisher: Queen of Swords Press

Release Date: April 12, 2017

Number of Stories: 12

Page Count: 147

Price: $2.99

(I won a copy of Knife's Edge in a giveaway.)

Icarus Bleeds Out Today!

I've been waiting a long time to announce this one--Icarus Bleeds is that rare story that seemed to spring out fully formed, a gift from the muse in exchange for my long hours of grinding devotion. The novella is out today from Forbidden Fiction, and the story page here will include links to various sites where it can be purchased.

Here's the blurb:

Icarus, a man on the run, dreams of wings, and of taking flight like the surgically modified rich and famous of Central City. The hacker who harbors him will do anything to keep him, including paying for the dangerous operation in a back alley chop shop. Neither can imagine how much the wings will truly cost. (M/M)

And the opening:

I will call him Icarus, because he worked so hard to erase his birth name that I will not commit the sin of returning it to him now. The things I said and did when I knew him will only make sense if you understand how beautiful he was, so I will try to force the words of mortals to describe a man who never seemed to belong to earth at all.

Icarus first came to me in the dark, in the rain, passing out of the shadows falling over the street, slipping smoothly into the shadows I made for myself. His eyes glowed from the corner where he took a seat, huddled under shelves loaded with discarded computer equipment. Even then I wondered how a shadow could be so luminous within a shadow, how black could shimmer from within black.

I wasn’t in the habit of looking at my clients. They came because they wanted to be forgotten, and they generally did not want to be seen either. I could not help myself with Icarus. He reminded me of flesh I liked to pretend I didn’t have. Eyes, lips, fingertips, inner thighs, the sides of my stomach, the soles of my feet. And, yes. Tongue. Cock. Thoughts both crude and poetic competed to distract me from the mechanical process of obscuring someone from all the files and IP addresses that affirmed that person’s existence.

I avoided looking at his skin, a lighter shade of what is called black than my own purple-tinged pigment. Icarus’s brand of black flowed with honey, shone with sunlight, glittered with the gold that may once have be- longed to Pharaoh. Long, thin fingers, delicate as a girl’s. Red-gold palms, and the beginnings of a scar, a telltale revelation of a story that started in the hands and parted the flesh of the forearm nearly to the elbow.

He saw me looking, and pulled the sleeves of his sweater down low, clutching bunches of the material in clenched fists. “Can you really make me disappear?”

I snorted. “Of course not. Not these days, not with the backups they keep and the triple cross checks they have to avoid failure conditions. Best I can do is make them forget to look for you.”

He nodded, the gesture emphasizing the length of his neck, the quality of his silence. “How much?”

“How much you got?”

He shrank back from me, receding into the forest of parts and cords. “I’m not looking for favors.”

“I don’t do favors. I do a sliding scale. You pay what you can afford to pay. What you think is fair. I trust you.”

“Why?”

I sighed. No one ever understood this when I bothered to explain. “Because I’m not one of them. I don’t want to act like one.”

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple moving gracefully up and down in that impossibly lean neck. “I was going to see what you would take.” He bit his lip and didn’t explicate, but I got an idea of what he’d had in mind by the way his hands crept toward his fly, the gesture so subtle that I wasn’t sure it had been a conscious invitation.

On any other night, with any other man, I wouldn’t have. I would have kissed that smooth, wide forehead, done my work for free, and sent him back into the street uttering the vague promise that someday, when he could, he would take care of me. With Icarus, I could not resist the offer. I had to keep him a little longer. Though I hated myself for it, the sentence passed my lips as if it made up part of my daily stock in trade. “After I finish, you’ll come upstairs with me.”

His bowed head telegraphed his acquiescence well before his soft words. “Thank you.”

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I should warn you that this is a dark story, but it's also one of the best I've written. You'll find the rest here.

Sexy Spies

The Second Oldest Profession: New Tales of Sexy Seductive Spies, which includes my story, "Loyalty," is now available from Sizzler Editions. Here's the blurb:

If the exchange of sex for something in return is one of the first transactions by the human species, you can bet that there was someone spying on the couple! In Chinatown by Jay Lawrence, has Dixon Frost of MI5 following the luscious spy, Veronica Blow along the dangerous streets of Wartime London. Misha is searching for a mysterious master spy in Double Oh by Mike Howard. Will spilled blood join the other bodily fluids on the sidewalk? In Maxwell’s Demon by Essemoh Teepee a deliciously sensual woman is coolly professional in doing just what takes to get at some very valuable secrets. Double Dare by Lily Gower is about a watcher, one of the invisible spies, observing an infidelity. Loyalty by Annabeth Leong has a corporate spy wearing a hi-tech disguise to seduce information out of the CEO of a prominent designer drug company. The World Game by M. Christian has Andrea and Mitchell navigating the Cold War landscape of treachery and double agents. In Spy School by Anandalila, Ana and Ian are in their last assignment, a sexy game of seduction. In The Love Who Spied Me by M. Howard, when Sven came in from the cold he was still hot stuff – and about to get hotter. MI5 are under pressure in OHMS by Max Sandford, Emma is fresh from training when she meets Khemet and discovers her own true nature. In A Taste of Honey by Moses Emary, A spy must choose if risking his job and quite possibly his life is worth one sweet taste of Honey. Ten stories from some of the best authors around are all about sexy, seductive spies and hot, steamy sex.

My piece is erotic science fiction, featuring spaceships, synth suits, gender-bending, and designer drugs. Here's an excerpt from Loyalty:

"Oh, you really did want to talk?" Stella said, forcing my mind back on track. "I'm surprised. Didn't think that was your style."

I whirled. Stella had downed the wine in her glass and undone her shawl, displaying a pale expanse of curvaceous female topography. My buddy, Jack, did indeed seem to have done most of the work of seducing this woman for me. I ogled her studiously, imitating the eye movement patterns we'd observed Jack using. I lingered in the valley of her cleavage, then craned my neck a little to peek at her hip and the small bit of ass that I could see.

Stella grinned and shifted slightly in her chair to show me a little more. If I weren't working, she might have genuinely excited me. I liked her curves, and the way her messed-up cuticles showed a little vulnerability to balance the power promised by her manicured, blood-red fingernails. Unfortunately, this was no time to think about myself. I leered with Jack's face, trusting the expression I'd practiced to fall within 1/8 of a millimeter of his normalized lustful configuration.

"You sure you want to talk?" Stella said.

I gritted my teeth. Maybe she'd loosen up off the power trip after I made her come a time or two. I went ahead and took the cue, closing the distance between us. A guy like Jack wouldn't ask, so I didn't. I sank my fingers into her hair, tilted her head back, and took her mouth. The dossier didn't include data on Jack's sexual style, so I winged it, trusting my intuition of the man and the intel that she had no reason to know for sure how he would kiss her. I went in deep and aggressive, forcing her mouth open wide and going straight for big handfuls of tits and ass.

She felt good — a lot to grip, and nicely firm. I allowed myself a moment of distraction and pinched her nipple, liking the way she sighed into my mouth. But I had to return to the bosses with more than an afterglow if I didn't want to spend my whole life in debt servitude, so I kept myself focused. "As fascinating as all this is," I murmured, not quite pulling back from her mouth, "I really did want to get your thoughts on that ship redesign I mentioned."

"Oh?" Stella took my hand and guided it over her white silk dress, fastening my fingers around her crotch. I couldn't ignore the invitation and keep talking without insulting her, so I decided to take it to the hilt and maybe wow her a little. Slipping to my knees on the floor in front of the loveseat, I pressed my face into the spot where she'd placed my hand. The tangy scent of her came through clearly, going to my head more than I expected. A shiver of arousal reached my actual clit, which was sealed off and neglected inside the synthsuit. I moaned, not entirely the way Jack would have.

I followed my instincts, licking her through the silk, my saliva spreading rapidly over her dress and making it cling. She wasn't wearing panties, and, even through layers of synthsuit that covered every part of me including the inside of my mouth, she tasted sweet and compelling.

"That's good, Jack," Stella purred, gently separating me from her cunt with a tight grip on the back of my neck. I couldn't take my eyes off the nearly transparent wet spot on her white dress. I could just see the dark pink shade of her inner labia through the indentation where her outer cunt lips had begun to spread open.

Stella must have seen where my eyes focused, because she smirked down at me. "I'm not being fair, am I? I should let you talk to me."

You can pick up the book here, or at Amazon.

Loyalty

And yet another forthcoming story:

"Loyalty," coming soon in The Honey Trap: Sexy, Seductive Spies from Sizzler Editions:
A corporate spy trapped by years of debt servitude dons a synthsuit to seduce information out of Stella Swansea, the CEO of a prominent designer drug company. Unfortunately, the dossier she used to prep for the job failed to mention Stella's history with the man she's impersonating, and no outsider knows the true secret of the drugs her company sells.

I'll post more about this forthcoming gender-bending SF story as it becomes available.

Words and Wings

I've signed a contract with Forbidden Fiction for a new m/m science fiction novelette, called Icarus:

A man on the run dreams of wings, like the surgical modifications given to the rich and famous of Central City. The hacker who harbors him will do anything to keep him, and undertakes risky missions to pay for the dangerous operation in a back alley chop shop. The wings bring agony as much as freedom, but they allow the two lovers to share a brief moment of bliss in the upper reaches of the atmosphere before tragedy strikes.

The mythological Icarus flies too close to the sun and melts his wings of wax, and my Icarus does much the same -- with dreams, with wings, with boldness, and with love.

The story will be part of Forbidden Fiction's special collection, Taking Flight. I'll post more information when it becomes available.

In the meantime, check out the other work in the Forbidden Fiction catalog.