The Big Book of Submission: Volume 2 – New Anthology Release

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Adrea Kore, Anthology Release, authenticity in writing, BDSM, conscious sexuality, Desire, erotic fiction, erotica, Female Sexuality, Kinks, multiple orgasms, rope, sexuality, Shibari, The Big Book of Submission: Volume 2

Kink. It’s an interesting word, in terms of its etymology.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, defines it quite thoroughly:

1: a short tight twist or curl caused by a doubling or winding of something upon itself

2a : a mental or physical peculiarity : eccentricity, quirk

b : whim

3: a clever or unusual way of doing something

4: a cramp in some part of the body

5: an imperfection likely to cause difficulties in the operation of something

6: unconventional sexual taste or behavior

 

I’m thrilled and honoured to have my story “Roped In” selected to feature in The Big Book of Submission: Volume 2, published by Cleis Press and edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel.

The overarching kink explored in this anthology is, as the title suggests, the act of submission. Editor Rachel Kramer Bussel asserts in the Introduction that there are “so many ways to be submissive” and these stories artfully reveal that the spectrum of submissive scenarios, desires, and behaviours are as broad, creative and as varied as human sexuality itself.

The anthology boasts an array of stories that delve not just into the heat and eroticism of the physical sex, but, just as importantly, the psyche, emotions and sensations of the submissive state, and the dynamics of the relationship(s) that make these experiences possible. These more complex layers, in many of the stories I’ve read so far, are executed with startling insight, imagery and intelligence.

To quote from a glowing 4.5 star review for The Big Book of Submission: Volume 2 by blogger Bitches n Prose:

“… some of the things you can expect in the way of kink: BDSM (obviously), bondage, rope, training, power struggles, pet play, spanking, a host of different toys, affairs, pegging, role play, blades, gender play, tickling, different time periods, accents/language, food, and strangers. There’s bound (pun intended) to be something on this list that sets off your fires.”

As I’ve just begun reading the stories in my glossy, newly received author copy, I’ve been reflecting on these various meanings of the word “kink”, and how they can all apply to the concept of sexual kink: in physical, psychological, emotional and cultural terms. For example, there are depictions of the mental state of submissive desire akin to (1) “a short tight twist or curl caused by a … winding of something upon itself” in stories such as Sommer Marsden’s “Lightning Strike” and Anna Sky’s “Imago”; a twist that is only released when the desire is indulged or allowed.

Many stories expound on the emotional and psychological aspects of submission as (2) “a mental or physical peculiarity : eccentricity or quirk”, such as the eroticizing of shame in Jo Henny Wolf’s “Words” and the exhilaration that is felt when it is witnessed and accepted (or punished) by their Dominant partner. These quirks and peculiarities become portals to the submissive’s pleasure. As for “whims”, these are indulged aplenty; by following an erotic whim, many a story is born.

“A clever or unusual way of doing something”(3): If that “something” is sex, foreplay, the art of arousing another … then this definition is well and truly covered by the anthology as a whole.

Many of the characters experience their submissive needs for pain, humiliation, or domination, when unfulfilled, as physical pain, akin to “a cramp in some part of the body.” The story often unfolds around easing that cramp, releasing that tension.

For some people, knowing you have certain “kinks” can make them feel like they have a secret they have to hide, or that they themselves are (5) “an imperfection likely to cause difficulties in the operation of something”. By “something”, read conventional society. Many workplace cultures. Conservative families. Anthologies like The Big Book of Submission create vital, permissive spaces for the exploration of alternative pleasures. And kinks.

As a sexual being, I’ve known I was into restraint for a long time. If I could pinpoint the first moment, it would be when I was 20 and my first serious boyfriend, a blacksmith and blues singer, tied me up in the four-poster iron bed he’d designed and made himself. Two decades my senior, he made very effective use of those four bedposts. The foreplay and the sex was electrifying, and I suppose (however unconsciously) it was then I discovered that a little restraint in the sex-play magnified both the intensity of my orgasms and the number of them.

One could say it was natural progression that I went on to blindfolding my next boyfriend, stripping him and tying him, limbs splayed, to my big kitchen table, before having my way with him. Ahem. Enough self-revelation.

These two experiences are way back in my past, before I’d ever heard of the terms “kinky” or BDSM. I was just exploratory and creative and enjoyed finding ways to enhance sensations or sensory experience – for myself and others. I say this to simply point out that even if you don’t identify as “kinky” or of alternate sexuality, you’re likely to find plenty to enjoy in this anthology.

So maybe my own brand of kink is version (3): “a clever or unusual way of doing something.”

I’ve written before that I don’t really relate to the terms “Dominant” or “submissive”, but it doesn’t mean I haven’t explored and embodied both states, in my life and on the page. Nor does it mean I can’t engage with stories employing this framework.

What I’m enjoying in these stories is that each author is defining what it means to be submissive for themselves, and through their characters. And I think this is one of the strengths of this anthology – all the more apparent because of the intent and vision of the editor, Rachel Kramer Bussel. Assembled together, the stories truly showcase the diversity of submissive experiences. And in reading them, it’s like wandering through a kink club, and being able to magically slip into the skin and sensations of many different bodies /genders in different scenes throughout the various spaces.

More recently, I’ve had a few experiences with the intricate and erotic art of Shibari (erotic rope bondage). I’ve been a rope model, as well as exploring using rope in a sexuality workshop. As a writer, I wanted to explore elements of the practice of Shibari and some of the seemingly indescribable kinesthetic reactions I’ve had to being bound. As my character Yasmin says, it felt “beyond words”: the writer in me wanted to find the words.

Much of the action of “Roped In” takes place in a sexuality workshop. For several years, a lot of my sexual growth and exploration took place in these kinds of workshops, as I was studying to be a Tantric sex practitioner. In fact, some of my peak orgasmic and sexual experiences happened in these groups. I wanted to “demystify” some elements of the sex-positive lifestyle by setting the story in a similar kind of workshop space. These spaces are where I learnt and experienced so much about my sexuality and sexual relating; I hoped to show my characters learning skills they could use to enrich their own relationship.

Below is a little preview to “Roped In” – from the opening:

I thought I knew what rope felt like. Hard, salt-roughed rope that rigged a sail. The chafe of hessian rope against thigh on a make-shift swing. And knots? Practical things. Functional elements that kept your shoes on.

But this; this seductive slither of an embrace, trailing around my neck, snaking over and around both arms, encircling my waist like a possessive lover, this, I am not prepared for.

He hasn’t even tied a knot yet.

You wanted me here. Wanted to experience more (how did you put it?) elaborate possibilities than tying my wrists to the headboard.

 

*  *  *

So, discerning reader, whether your “kinkiness” is something you explore solely on the page, or whether you dip your toes in occasionally to kinky waters, or whether you’re the 24/7 kind of kinkster, you’re sure to find stories that intrigue, arouse, and galvanize you between these pages.

A huge “Congratulations” to all 69 authors! And thanks to publisher Cleis Press and to editor Rachel Kramer Bussel for making this anthology possible.

UPDATE: I’m so excited by the news that New York’s Publisher’s Weekly has reviewed the anthology very favourably, and that my story merited a mention, alongside authors Zodian Gray, Angela R. Sargenti, Dr J, Anna Sky and Giselle Renarde. You can read the review below.

The Big Book of Submission: Volume 2 – 69 Kinky Tales

So Many Ways to be Submissive …

(Available in E-Book or Paperback – Click on the Image to go straight to Amazon, or other buy-links below)

 

Nook

Google Play

Audio Book available soon via Audible

Read the Reviews

Chrissi Sepe

Bitches n Prose

Publisher’s Weekly

 

Read More by the Editor

 

 

 

“Peek Hour” – Featuring with Cosmo UK

Tags

Adrea Kore, Creative Process, erotic fiction, erotica, Female Sexuality, On Writing, Peek Hour, Publications, sexuality, Voyeurism

Sometimes, as writers, we can forget to celebrate our achievements. We might strive for recognition, but when a little of it comes our way, we underplay it, or find it hard to embrace it.

Many erotica writers I know, including myself, take our writiing, our craft  and our subject matter seriously. We work just as hard at it as writers from other genres. We toil into the wee hours over stories, blog posts and reviews. We attend workshops and buy books on writing craft, and agonize over the right words to describe our subject.  We sacrifice parts of our social life in order to carve out a little more writing time. We engage self-awareness around our own sexual landscape, and around where sexuality sits culturally at any given time, sometimes committing to writing and revealing painful parts of our lives or our history.

I’ve been writing and publishing erotica for five years now.  It turns out that it wasn’t just a quick fling with those come-hither, wanton words. I passionately believe in erotica’s role in encouraging those who read it to become more empowered in their own sexual expression.  That writer-reader relationship sits right at the centre of my imperative to keep writing, and is why I value every person who takes a few minutes to comment on my work.

Yet, sometimes, I despair at the comparitively small sector of the potential reading populace that actually find their way to quality, well-crafted erotic fiction. Censorship and complex rules on certain sites around what can be shown on a cover, and what topics are taboo set up further obstacles, and these obstacles sometimes have intricate moral or political nuances. All things the writer of erotica has to negotiate. As if writing about sex wasn’t challenging enough …

So today, I am celebrating the publication of  my short story “Peek Hour” with Cosmopolitan UK Magazine. The lovely editor I’ve been dealing with informed me they have 6.5 million unique users every month. It’s undoubtedly the largest number of potential eyes on my work, and  that is both terrifying and super-exciting. It’s fantastic that magazines with such a large readership, encompassing diverse demographics. are looking at publishing edgier work that isn’t just about millionaires and virgins, and it’s encouraging that they want to support lesser-known authors.

Despite the background anxiety, I took myself out for coffee and cake to celebrate, and my walk definitely had more wiggle in it today. I want to take this moment to remind all you erotica writers out there: celebrate your achievements. You worked hard. You’re brave. And bold. And bad-ass. Even on days you don’t feel that way. You deserve a little decadence.

I wrote “Peek Hour” to explore a subversive little observation that popped into my head one day on the train to work. As women, we learn to deal with being on the receiving end of the male gaze every day; we of course respond to this in a diversity of ways depending on personal factors. Some of it is welcome, some of it is not. And sometimes it just depends on what kind of day we’re having, or who is doing the looking.

How would I explore a story where a woman was doing the looking?

My character, Roxy stood up in my head, and purred, “Buy me a ticket,  let’s get on that train and see what happens.”

So here it is.  A subversively sexy story, exploring voyeurism from a distinctly feminine perspective. For Roxy, a chance erotic encounter might just be the start of a new kind of journey.

Click on the pic (or the title) to read “Peek Hour“.

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Feast: Erotic Flash Fiction

Tags

Adrea Kore, cunnilingus, Female Ejaculation, Female Sexuality, Flash Fiction, men who enjoy women, Oral Sex

He is intent on making a feast of me with his mouth. Sometimes, yes, penetration is the dessert and this, the main course.

Crouching in front of me, he pushes my legs apart, then hauls me down the bed towards him, placing his hands under my buttocks, running them deliberately from the cheeks to the underside of my thighs. He leans into my flesh with his weight, causing my legs to tumble back towards my shoulders, and my sex to lift off the bed.

He likes to hold me there, hold my gaze, watch me noticing what his eyes are taking in.

I know he can smell how much I want his mouth on me.

First, he gentles me with his lips, his tongue, finding the soft silky place between my outer lips.

He licks and I sigh. I sigh and I open. I open and his tongue darts inward.

His tongue, curious inside me, and I am immediately wetter. He breathes into me. The warmth makes my womb contract, and release a small draught of liquid desire. An aperitif to prepare my lover’s palate.

He licks and I sigh. I sigh and I open … I know he is hungry and thirsty for me. I know he must drink and devour me. His hunger magics me into nectar and ambrosia.

He breaks me apart like a ripe peach, sucking on my flesh as the juices spurt out of me, drenching his face, dripping down onto the cushion beneath me. His tongue feels out and flicks the delicate ridge of the peach-stone in the centre of me … flicks and licks, sucks and delves. Mouths me, swallows me. And oh, I am fruit for his labours.

The man who loved cunt.

I am nothing now, but currents of pleasure, pleasure breathing in and gushing out, breathing in and gushing out. How can I hold such an ocean inside me? And he is drowning willingly. I will have to rescue him soon, surely. Send out a life-boat.

Oh God. The sheets.

He briefly comes up for air, and registers the sodden sheets beneath me. Panting, he moves my body to a drier part of the bed.

Sometimes, we begin in a bed and end in a wading pool.

And he is diving down again. And I want to taste what he is so hungry for, so I take his fingers within my hands and we enter my sweet honeyed place of earthy delights together.

Breathing in, gushing out.

I pull him up, sucking our fingers together as I look at him, all innocence.  Then his mouth is there too where our fingers are… and we are so voraciously, insatiably, hungry…

That it is time – for dessert.

*

© Adrea Kore 2013 (First published on Forthegirls.com – 2013)

This is one of my earlier pieces of erotic fiction, a piece I sometimes perform live at readings, exploring the playful, juicy, messy delights of sex.

The rights have passed back to me, and as I’m updating my fiction on my blog this month, thought I may as well share it. Enjoy!

Re-Imagining Feminine Desire: A New Face for Myth and Fairytales

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Adrea Kore, Anthology Release, Desire, Erotic Fairytales, erotic poetry, Fairytale Re-Tellings, Female Sexuality, Feminine Rites of Passage, Greek Mythology, Lustily Ever After, Myth Re-tellings, Persephone, Published Poetry

Fairy tales and myths can still speak powerfully to readers, despite the distance between when they were written and where we are now, as a contemporary audience. According to writer Sanjida O’ Connell, recent research indicates that “fairy tales are ancient, at least one dates back to the Bronze Age, whilst others, such as Beauty and the Beast and Rumplestiltskin, are over 4,000 years old.”

Narrative is part of the human psyche, the way we explain the world to ourselves and each other.

How is it that a fairytale we loved as a child can still resonate strongly for us as an adult? One reason is that fairy tales and myths are dense with symbols and archetypes, elements which hold a multiplicity of meanings, depending on who is doing the looking, and from what angle. What engages us as a child and what engages us as an adult in the same tale, may be diferent elements. The tale grows with us, in a manner of speaking.

How a story is told depends on who is doing the telling.

A writer, intent on creating more relevant meanings for a contemporary female audience, may find the narrative and archetypal characters of many myths and fairy tales pliable to re-interpretation and re-attribution of meanings. We are not so far removed, it seems, from understanding Rapunzel’s isolation, or  Cinderella’s longing ffor love and social acceptance, but a modern writer might contextualize it differently, emphasise different elements. Sanjida O’Connell expresses this beautifully:

“Narrative is part of the human psyche, the way we explain the world to ourselves and each other.”

Or as surrealist Elizabeth Lenk described this sense of timelessness in myth and fairytale, “the walls between time periods are extremely close to one another.” I like this idea; that as women writers, we might put our ear to a metaphorical wall and hear the story of Bluebeard’s wife or Persephone as if it is going on in the next room, as if it is close to us. Hearing only fragments, we create different interpretations, that speak to contemporary readers.

Although I adored and devoured fairy tales as a child, it’s hard not to look at them now through feminist eyes. When I read myths and fairytales now, I feel as if I am searching for clues, traces of the older, oral versions between the lines. The versions that women told to each other, mother to daughter, around the hearth. Writer Cate Fricke reminds us that “as rife with violence as they are, fairy tales are in fact women’s stories, and always have been.”

As O’Connell asserts, though the tales “may begin in such a cosy way, make no mistake – fairy stories are dark tales of misogyny, social climbing, child abuse and infanticide.” Many traditional myths and fairy tales tend to ascribe very traditional, polarized roles to women. They are often either the “good” woman:

• wife
• mother
• virgin
• daughter

Or the bad, trouble-making woman:

•  outcast / beggar
•  nagging wife (harridan)
•  witch
• temptress.

Additionally, the play and power of female sexuality is often submerged or sidelined, hidden behind the desires and needs of male characters in patriarchal worlds. One of my favourite collections of re-imagined fairy tales is Angela Carter’s  The Bloody Chamber, in part because she found ways to make the themes of  female sexuality more explicit and central to the narrative than in the originals, and wrote them in a way that questioned the roles of women in patriarchal societies and the limited choices they had, often creating new paths of action and possiblility for her female characters.

Another significant difference in these modern re-tellings is they are often narrated in first-person – the central female character is not mute or passive; she has her own voice, tells her own story, rather than it being recounted by an impersonal, authoritative narrator.

From an introductory essay to a volume of science-fiction and fantasy stories written by women (She’s Fantastical, Sybylla Press 1995), writer Ursula Le Guin observes:

“In the last thirty years or so, as women have taken to writing as women, not as honorary or artificial men, it’s become clear that they see a rather different world, and describe it by rather different means. The most startling difference is that men aren’t at the centre of it …”

Under My Cape: Erotic Fiction Excerpt

Tags

Adrea Kore, BDSM, Bondage, Fairytale Subversions, Female Sexuality, Forced Exposure, Role Play, Sensory Play

Of course I knew that defiance would have consequences.

It’s why I agreed to come to this underground bar, why I’m dressed in this little red cape. Why I acquiesced to your gift – a red choker. To match red fishnet stockings.

Tied up in teasingly flimsy bows, long red satin ribbons against black chiffon are all that hold together my performance of l’ingenue tonight. Ribbons that fall indolently between the curves of my breasts. Where the buttons of a good girl’s blouse would be done up neatly to conceal her cleavage, I am exposed, tumbling up and out of the too-tight red bra.

Red signifies danger. Tonight I do not want to be a good girl. Costumes can transform as well as disguise.

Cinched underneath the bra, drawing in my waist, a black satin under-corset is a-flutter with red butterflies. The discipline of steel boning turns my torso into the stem of a chalice. You have only to tip me to sip from me.

In these seductive flourishes of ribbon, I am a gift to be torn open. As I teeter in high heels through the club, they could ensnare me on anything. Or anyone.

Catch me if you can …

I feel many eyes glide over me, as I search for you. In this twisted basement-bar version of a fairytale gone wild, a Cheshire Cat with a flogger over his shoulder is watching me with interest, while a Snow White has her skirts up, being spanked across a Wicked Witches’ knee.

Then I sight you. Turned away from me, your tail seems to sense me first. As I approach, it dips, then rises, pointing in my direction.Tight leather pants gleam in contrast with its feral aura. You’re wearing an elegantly crafted brown leather mask, with angled eye slits, a suggestion of pointed canine ears, and a cruel snout.

My big bad Wolf.

Under that mask, do I really know who you are?

“Who’s there in the shadows?” said Red Riding Hood.

You haven’t noticed me yet. And I want your attention. All over me.

I decide to cross a boundary.

I pull your tail.

Red Riding Hood enters the wood.

You’ve wheeled around, and in an instant, you’ve picked me up by the arms, growling, and pushed me against the bar.You use one arm and your body weight to grapple both of my wrists into a firm-hold in the small of my back.

“Tsk,tsk,” you whisper. You smile, lips smeared a carnal red. Your other hand, very slowly and deliberately, begins to undo the first of the red satin ribbons.

“That was very insolent, Little Miss Red.”

Watching me watching you, loosening the second of the ties, pulling the ribbons through your thumb and forefinger, resting your eyes on what is revealed.

“Don’t you know a wolfs’ pride is in his tail,” you say as you caress the swell of my breasts, parting the chiffon blouse even further. I am suddenly aware of the pulse in my neck, beating hot under my skin. As if you too can hear it, you stroke your fingers there, and up the side of my neck.

“I think I shall have to teach you to show more respect.”

You wind my ribbons around your fingers, draw me to you, so I can just glimpse the blue of your eyes through the wolf-mask. Then, you pull me towards you off the edge of the bar, spinning me around gently and guiding me backwards until I am suddenly against a wooden structure.

Taking my hand, you bring it up to touch the ornate red-and-gold choker.

“Remember, this means you are mine for the evening,” you whisper. I nod, breathing deep into my diaphragm,  enjoying the delicious contrast between the hard wood along my spine, and the fleshy heat of your leather-clad hips and groin against my sex. Your kiss is tender, intensifying into demand as you lift my right arm and stretch it out. The weight of your torso holds me in place as you capture both wrists in the grip of leather and steel. It’s impossible not to feel vulnerable. And then your thigh slides between mine, pushing my legs apart.

The lights have dimmed down into a lurid red; the room, strangely transformed.

Bodies in various states of undress, contorted in clusters of two, three or four, form strange hieroglyphics around me. Speaking a language of pleasure I do not yet understand. Others stand watching, as if transfixed. An imperious Red Queen is whipping a pudgy, bald Humpty-Dumpty, his ass as bare as his head. Bathed in red, I feel like I have been swallowed whole, trapped in the entrails of a wild beast.

Smiling, you produce a mask with no eye slits. Place it across my eyes.

The room disappears.

The woods are dark in places, darker than Red Riding Hood could have imagined.

Here at my neck, hot breath, a devouring bite.

There, a rough caress that sheds chiffon and ribbons onto the floor. Lighter strokes along the curves of my cleavage, enlivening the soft shy skin. Then, deliberately, I feel your hand encircle each breast, lifting them out of the bra, exposing their fullness above my corset. I feel you step away. Just when I most want you close. Cool air hardens my nipples as I strain to sense you.

Delicious ribbons of anticipation ripple through my body. Red ribbons of desire…

Unseeing, but oh so very seen. Exposed to this roomful of strangers in ways over which I have no control. Deprived of vision, my sensitivity to smell, sound and touch are amplified. I sense you circling me, disorienting me with where and how you will next touch my body. Like a wolf playing with his prey. Your teeth deliver a trail of sucks and canine nips up my inner arm from wrist to armpit. I twitch with each bite. A soft menacing snarl, first at one ear as you claw into the back of my hair, then at the other as you run your hand up the inside of my thigh. The sheer lace of my panties, moist between my legs at the closeness of your touch.

Then, nothing for a long moment. Nothing but the gnawing ache of erotic anticipation.

“I’ll keep you safe, Little Miss Red,” you whisper, your breath suddenly hot upon my ear, your paws in my hair. “But not too safe.”

Red Riding Hood knew the woods were a wild and untamed place. But she entered them, all the same.

Image : Jessica Tremp

 

*   *   *

© Adrea Kore 2014 (Not to be reproduced or reprinted, in part or in whole, without permission of the author)

Boundaries. Thresholds. Abandoning the familiar, stepping into the strange. These are places that fascinate me to explore, both on and off the page. These places are potent with tension and contradiction. Fear and desire. The known and the unknown.

Exploring our sexuality inevitably flings us up against our boundaries, teetering on that heady edge between resistance and surrender. One step backwards, and we are back into the familiar. One step forward and we enter the unknown, opening ourselves up to new feelings and sensations. Threshold experiences contain great potential for growth and transformation. But we have to make that choice: to step forward or back. We may have preparations to make before we can take that step forward; we may need to seek out trustworthy companions to journey with us.

I’m re-working an older story here, in preparation for its inclusion in my upcoming collection of erotic stories. In Under My Cape, I’m weaving elements of the fairytale of Red Riding Hood into a contemporary erotica story set in a kink club, but I’m also subverting those themes. I wanted to explore how the lure of danger and the unawakened elements of Red Riding Hood’s sexuality are represented by  both the forest and the wolf. Red Riding Hood does not enter the woods in complete innocence of its dangers. She enters it, desiring the transformative experiences she senses it conceals within its shadows. She seeks out the shadows, because she knows that there she will better be able to encounter her own darker desires. Only there can she come to know the wolf.

Examining the tropes and themes of the original fairytale, led me to wonder why she would wear such a bright and eye-catching coloured cape to journey safely throught the forest. But you’ll have to read the whole story to see how I interpret that …

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Chords of Desire (Erotic Fiction Excerpt)

Tags

Adrea Kore, Cello, Creative Process, Desire, erotic dreams, erotic fiction, Female Sexuality, Fiction Excerpt, Inspiration, short story, women writing sex, Writing Process

Lights up.

There are two bodies, up here on stage.

One is of cool flesh, lavender-scented. Sleek, dark hair, parted perfectly in the centre, is pulled back into a chignon, revealing the white arc of throat, the shadow formed by the sweep of her jawline as she bends her head in concentration. Black silk accentuates the pale sheen of her skin, her dress cut wide against the shoulders to reveal her collarbones, and the stretch of her swan-like throat. Slender hips cradle a spine which draws itself, erect as a candle-flame, towards the ceiling. She has arms of alabaster, impossibly long, arms of a conjuress.  Her eyes are closed, her nostrils open. She breathes music into her, as if it were all she needed to exist. All senses are focused on this other body, gripped between her thighs; this body of violent swells and curves so different to her own.

I am smooth and gleaming, the light from the chandelier creating honeyed ripples on the surface of my flesh, flesh of maple.  I am shaped to hold secrets. I am hollow, yet fecund.  Bodies such as mine are made for the fervent embrace.  Flesh such as mine will not erode easily, even from the rituals of the most devout of lovers. 

My senses are so exquisitely honed that a flutter of fingers at my throat forges fire in my womb. I feel the strength of the thighs which clasp my hips, the tender determination of her hands upon my spine.

I cannot but yield up my music.

Is this how I was born into consciousness, the bow keening across my strings, animating them with music? My cords, through which I sing and speak, and feel. She calls me Seraphine, her burning one, her angel. No matter where we are in the world, I feel as if I am always here; caught in light, cradled in her arms, pivoting on a single point of pain like a ballerina, poised between grace and chaos.

She makes love to me each night on stage, each performance a fresh seduction.  Together, we weave sound and silence into incantations which bewitch and benumb those who listen.

Those who come to sit in the dark and watch are nearly always men, no matter if we play in the theatres of Paris, New York or Cairo.  It is when the lights are directed away from them, when lulled into the roles of mere observers, that the truth of their lives is revealed in their faces, all yearnings and disillusions.  Men with hungering eyes and lonely mouths.  Men with laden wallets and leaden hearts.  There, in the embrace of the illuminating dark, they become my performance.

I am of wood, yet something of me is woman.

 

I love my mistress. But she has a heart made of wood. She does not respond to the caresses of love. It is only music that makes her soft, Bach that brings fire to her cheeks, Schumann that coaxes a languorous curve from her lips. Only for Brahms does her body quiver, her sex yielding to the vibrations of the notes through my body, becoming moist with desire. But for what? Strangely, it is I who long for the touch of a man, I who am fashioned from the finest of maple wood.

Perhaps, one night, whilst playing me in a frenzy of passion, she transferred her heart to me.

There are stories woven into the sinews of my strings. My mistress slices her bow along them like a scalpel.

But there are stories and there are secrets. The secrets I keep deep in the hollow of my body. These she shall not have.

I love my mistress. But equally, I love desire itself, the sensual energy that dances between two beings.  And if I cannot be completely fulfilled myself, then to invoke desire in others is what I will do.

 

* 

‘A dream, like trying to remember, breaks open words for other, hidden meanings.’

Rosmarie Waldrop

This is a curated excerpt of a story that was seeded in my psyche sixteen years ago, when I had an incredibly erotic dream. I was a cello, being played to an audience of only men, in tuxedoes. I could feel the music pouring out of me as if they were physical sensations, my whole body was full of this incredible cello music, and I woke up in the middle of some intense krias (a Tantric word, describing the movement or release of orgasmic energy through the body). I had woken up my boyfriend with my sounds and writhing, and I could still hear the music in my head, as I described the dream to him. The telling of the dream had an erotic effect on him too, and we umm … didn’t sleep for quite a while.

Over the next few days, I wrote about three pages of what the dream had evoked for me. It was the beginning of my first erotica story, and the words felt as if they were pouring out like streams of melody – but I couldn’t tie together the passages. Flash forward sixteen years, with several attempts in-between. I finally finshed it recently. Interestingly, I used almost all of the original material, but found my way into the “narrative gaps” to write a more fully-formed story.

Around the writing of a story, are often other stories.

Plots are something I used to struggle with, as a younger writer. That, I believe, is what hindered me from shaping the “scenes”, moments and characters I so strongly envisaged into stories. So, I am developing my “narrative muscle” with each story I work on – and complete.

To develop a strong sense of resilience and healthy writer-ego, I believe the completion of one’s creative ideas is crucial. Half-finished ideas have a terrible tendency to haunt you.

The defintion of a chord is:

Three or more notes that combine harmoniously.

And Chords of Desire is actually told from the perspectives of three characters: three characters that sound their own unique note on the exploration of desire, three characters bound together by its power. This excerpt is just after a short prelude that begins the story, and is from the cello Seraphine’s perspective. That initial dream, the surreal fact that I was the cello, and could think and feel, always meant she was going to be a sentient character. She could be said to embody feminne desire. Inevitably, this story weaves elements of magical realism into its narrative.

I’m still searching for a home for this story – if any editor or publisher reading it feels it might resonate with their publication, or indeed if any writer knows a place that its style would be at home in, please do feel free to comment or write me here. The full version is around 4000 words. Paid publication leads only, please.

As always, this writer very much appreciates reades who take a moment to let to me know their thoughts on how the story has connected with them.

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Night-Sea Journey: Prose-Poem / Flash Fiction

Tags

Adrea Kore, Female Ejaculation, Female Sexuality, Flash Fiction, Mermaids, Prose-Poetry, Wicked Wednesday

Water Serpents II – Gustav Klimt

Inside, I am oceanic-eternal. Like a medieval map of the world, my reality spills over the edges of the known. My contours and deeps are uncharted; it is uncertain where I begin or end.

Here there be Mermaids …

I will sing to you, lover, sing of my mysterious sea-secrets. The endless undulations of me; pleasure filling me, chalice-like, with briny wine for you to sip from. Let my hair caress your hips, your mouth, like filaments of pale seaweed. Let it wrap about you, binding you to me.

Come, set sail upon me. Be my explorer, my cartographer. The stars are in alignment, love. Together, we are the journey.

Part me, as Moses parted the Red Sea, a miracle act, here, too. Your questing flesh, an expanding promise, riding high on my inner tides. I sigh out with pleasure in wet waves of release; contract, back, with the moon’s powerful pull.  Ebbing. Flowing.

Je suis la mer …

Sail me, in your boat of longing, as a brave sailor will. Sometimes, I am the calm of a tranquil harbour, lapping gently at your prow. Other times, I am surging waves, impossible depths, the suck and broil of hungry currents crashing against your sides, salt-sprays high over your star-seeking mast.

And here there be dragons …

I can shipwreck you, lover, leave you gasping for breath, disoriented and drenched on the coastline of my belly.

Touch me, leave your wet finger-prints as memories in the sands of my shores.  Dipping, spiralling, diving deep, you plunder me, asunder me.

Your fingers are learning me. Your fingers learn fast. Your fingers are listening inside me.

Secrets, whisper-dripped desires that fall from the walls of my underwater cave. Filling up the whorls on your finger-tips with the drawn-out pleasure of me.

Ebbing. Flowing.

You carry my secrets on your hands into the world. I imagine you touching your fingers to your lips when you crave the scent of mystery amidst the everyday.

Sail me to the land beneath the evening star; believe not the myth that it is always just out of reach. Drop your anchor down,

 down,

 down.

Perhaps you will not reach the bottom, but float suspended in me forever…

My contours and depths are uncharted. It is uncertain where I begin or end.

I am oceanic-eternal. A mermaid dwells in my briny sea-cave, and she will sing her siren song, whether I wish her to or not.

 

Men have drowned in me.

But you, you have lived to tell your tale. Tales of your night sea-journeyings.

When the stars are in alignment, lover, will you come sail me again?

 

© Adrea Kore, 2016

 

Myths about mermaids fascinate me; their link to feminine sexuality and the unconscious. My piece is part micro-fiction (flash), part prose-poem. I think I’ll be recording this one soon.

I’m delighted to find creative synchronicity this week has led me to Marie Rebelle’s wonderful “Mermaid” theme this week for Wicked Wednesday. Thanks, Leonora for giving me the nudge. Click the button to discover more mermaid explorations …

Eat Your Greens: Erotic Fiction by Adrea Kore

Tags

Adrea Kore, erotic fiction, erotica, Female Sexuality, Masturbation, Published Fiction

Folding the laundry on this hot summer afternoon, I’m still thinking about it.

Sitting so innocuously amongst the unpacked groceries on the kitchen table. Nestled between the tomatoes, the fresh lettuce and goat’s cheese… the cucumber.

A magnificent specimen: firm-skinned and solid, with the most impertinent curve to it. It made me think of something else.  I giggled to myself as I put oranges in the fruit bowl.

I glanced at it again. For just a moment, it seemed its firm outline throbbed. Shaking my head, I put the lettuce in the fridge, thinking salad would be perfect for dinner, after such a warm day.

“You’re going to top off a gorgeous salad tonight,  Mr Cucumber,” I said, picking it up and looking it over, noticing the little indentation in the middle of one end, where it had been pulled off the vine. How like a little eye, I thought.

Then, I swear it winked at me.

The tape measure was already out of the drawer and wrapped around its girth before I even had time to question my actions.Seven inches in circumference. I squealed softly.

“Could I?”

It was organic, after all…

“Megan, don’t be ridiculous. Go fold the laundry,” I scolded myself, yanking open the fridge door and tossing it in the crisper.

So here I am, folding underwear, and all I can think about is the beckoning curve of that cucumber. Where it would touch me inside, if I actually did what I was imagining. If I actually did …

***

Washing abandoned. Skirt rumpled around my waist. Blouse and bra jettisoned, and no underwear in sight. The thought of its shape already has me throbbing and moist. I coax my clitoris into arousal gently, while caressing my breasts. Then as I feel myself getting wetter, I slide two fingers down into me. My internal silkiness expands in expectation. I want my little friend to feel perfect; I want to be wet when I devour him.

“Oh … God…” In he slides. Not before winking at me again, like a cheeky green leprechaun. I eat him up by little mouthfuls, allowing myself to adjust to his delicious dimensions. His topography fits my geography, and that wicked curve upwards kisses that place, that place which sends me into sensory whirlpools of delirious intensity, there on the underside of my navel.

Sure now that my movements are making the most of him, I prop my body up on several pillows, opening my legs so I can see myself reflected in the mirror at the foot of the bed.

“You are a wicked –  wanton – mid-afternoon – harlot,” I admonish my reflection, dipping into myself at each word, admiring my flushed cheeks, the gleam in my eyes, and how deftly my sex is gripping my little morsel of pleasure. I guide him in and out, giving him more daringly to that hungry place inside me, building the intensity of sensations until each dive inwards is met with an outward rush of pleasure.

“Mmm – Yum!”  The word is out before I can stop it. Although it’s rather apt in the situation.

“Oh, Mr Cucumber,” I gasp, my head dizzy from several orgasms. I watch the little harlot in the mirror as she removes the cucumber. Slick and glistening with juices, as if glazed in vinaigrette. I imagine he is rather pleased with himself.

I lie back, luxuriating in the post-orgasmic haze, cupping my breasts, gently stroking my torso, thoughts beginning to return to reality.  A stripe of golden afternoon sunlight lies lazily across my body.  Matt would be here in a few hours -what would I cook for dinner?

***

My lover pours the wine, as I serve up the roast chicken. I have opened the balcony doors, as there is finally a light breeze, easing some of the sultriness of the air into something more tolerable.

“What did you get up to this afternoon?’ Matt says.

As I hand the salad bowl to him, I try not to look too significantly at the contents.

Image: Public Domain

“Oh, I kept myself amused,” I say lightly, as I watch him take a generous serve, lettuce and cucumber spilling onto his plate.

“Good to see you’re a man who’s unafraid of your greens. They’re very good for you,” I remark, smiling.

“Well, I figure I’ll need all the energy I can get for later,” he teases, his mouth full. “That’s a great dressing on that salad. Sweet. Tangy.”

“Thanks,” I say. “Glad you like it.”

Under the table, I take my foot out of my sandal, running it up to the inside of his thigh, tantalizing his crotch with the wiggle of my toes. “I made it myself. In fact, you might say it’s a kind of aphrodisiac.”

He holds my gaze for a moment. “Mmmm.  Delicious.”

“Uh-huh”, I say, taking a sip of wine and running my tongue over my lips. “Well, there’s plenty more where that came from.”

I smile to myself. I wonder if he gets it.

Never mind.

He will later.

© Adrea Kore 2013

(Not to be reproduced or reprinted, in part or in whole, without permission of the author)

This is a version of an earlier story of mine, published as Salad Days. It has a naughtier ending, and goes down well at readings.

Salad Days was first published in Little Raven I (2013), then reprinted in  A Story-telling of Ravens (2014).  

 

 

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“For the Men”: Staging Stories of Male Desire

Tags

Adrea Kore, Anthology Release, Dominance / submission, erotic dancing, erotic fiction, Exhibitionism, Female Sexuality, For the Men Anthology, Male Sexuality, Published Fiction, Seduction, sexual fantasies, Voyeurism

I write a lot about female desire. So imagine my delight (and surprise) at hearing that my story “Dance For Me” had been accepted for inclusion in sassy Rose Caraway’s latest project and anthology: For the Men: And the Women Who Love Them.

Featuring twenty-five stories from twenty-five authors, editor Rose Caraway’s vision for the anthology was to curate “a space for men to partake in the erotic” and to “eliminate assumptions, obliterate out-dated generalizations” about masculinity and male sexuality.

As the title emphasizes, it’s a space that overtly welcomes men, but where men and women readers are of course, both welcome. Here, I very much agree with Rose, in the anthology’s introduction, when she declares ‘the gained strength that comes from our intersecting sexual paths can create a level of intimacy that is more fruitful than you can imagine.”

I believe that is the place where my story “Dance for Me” sits. On its simplest level, it’s a narrative of seduction. It’s also an exploration of how having the courage to own one’s sexuality and explore it through “mutually intersecting” sexual fantasy can deepen intimacy.

Like a courtesan from another era, I must dance for the pleasure of my Dom. Dance for his pleasure and his favour.

I’ve always been interested in the inherent theatricality in sexuality. Dressing up, creating scenes, becoming the one who watches or is watched … Showing parts of our inner secret selves that don’t always get to come out in our everyday lives. So many possibilities in the staging of desire.

I’m standing in this cage. In the centre of a fetish club dance floor. In a leopard-skin corselet. It could look like I planned this, but I didn’t. It’s my first time here, my first play session with this dark-suited Dom, after several intense online interactions. The decisive click of his handcuffs securing the cage door. Ensnaring me in his scene of submission. Arms folded, smiling at my indignation.

“Dance for me.”

I look around at the club full of diversely dressed and undressed people. Bodies poured into and spilling out of latex, leather and fishnets. Unexpected revelations of flesh, piercings and tattoos. Some have stopped their conversations or caresses, or are looking over their drinks, surveying my predicament with interest.

“Please me, and I shall ensure your … release … in more ways than one.”

Cheeks flushed hot with embarrassment, I try to focus on the music, washing over me in waves. Try to focus on his beguiling promise of release. The effect this has on my body. This slow burn, beginning already in my clitoris.

“Disappoint me, and I might make you spend the evening in there.” He kisses my hand, wound around the elegantly-crafted iron bars, and closer to me, whispers: “But I doubt you’ll disappoint.” He steps back, swirls his scotch, withdraws to a velvet couch at the dance floor’s edge. Best seat in the house, I think.

Which brings me to my love of dancing. Perhaps obsession would be the more truthful word. For me, a dance-floor is the place where I can fuse my passion for music with my body’s hunger for rhythm, sensation, sweat and expressive movement. Athletes love to hone and push their body through activities like running, swimming, weight training. I love to do this through dancing. I love how eventually my mind switches off. I become headless, nothing but breath and sensations. I’ll dance alone, while I’m cooking or doing housework. But when someone is watching me, I cannot deny there is an extra charge.When that someone is someone I’m attracted to, the charge soars.

If I could find a way to dance while I write, I would. So, the next best thing was to challenge myself to write an erotic story around the idea of dancing for someone as an act of seduction; translating such a deeply physical act into words and imagery.

Just breathe in the music.

Yellow glow of the spotlight turns my skin into warm pelt. I’m a restless cat in a cage. Tossing my mane of tawny hair, the sensual layers of rhythms are fusing with my limbs, my hips. My dance becomes part of the music. Sure now of my movements, I throw myself lightly from side to side of the cage, writhing down and up, sometimes facing my Dom, mock-imploring him for my release. Sometimes I show him my back, the curves of my ass emphasised by black suspenders; teasing him with a coquettish glance over one shoulder.

I’m in the cage, but he’s the one ensnared.

Dancing can be such an art of erotic and sexual expression – for oneself but also for others.

For me, a dance-floor is the place where I can fuse my passion for music with my body’s hunger for rhythm, sensation, sweat and expressive movement.

Trained in acting and dance from a young age, I was entranced by the magic of being on-stage performing for an audience. I guess it’s no surprise that I saw (and revelled in) the theatre in sex as I grew older and gained sexual experience. I was drawn to exploring the theatrical elements of sex long before I knew there was such a thing as BDSM or kink.

Even now, I shy away from identifying myself in conventional BDSM categories – I am not a sub or a Dom or even a switch. I have elements of all of these within me, and I do enjoy exploring power exchange in sexual play – both on and off the page. That power exchange, happens for me as I access different archetypes within, and I interact with whatever is coming up in those I am intimate with.

Lovers of kink are welcome to see and enjoy the kink elements in my story – they are certainly present. But I try, always, to write inclusively, so that readers of all predilections will find something to draw  them into the story, something they will relate to.

I was drawn to exploring the theatrical elements of sex long before I knew there was such a thing as BDSM or kink.

By now, curious reader, you may have guessed that some of this story is autobiographical; and some of it is fiction. The “true” part is I got to be “the girl in the cage” that night; I got to access my Middle-Eastern temple dancer, my Salome, my dancing whore, my “courtesan from another era”. I feel all these parts of me when I dance, and it was a total and utter liberation to let them all out,  in the service of pleasing the man I was there with.

He was certainly that. And to focus for a moment on him, he said he’d never had a woman dance like that for him before, and the line in the story after the dance is, word for word, what he said to me.

As the lovely Rose observes “erotic fiction has the capacity to liberate our minds and bodies … fantasy can be that powerful.” So, if you’re a man reading this who’s never indulged in a book of erotica – just for you – maybe now is the moment. And if you’re a woman who wants to inspire that man in your life to dive a little deeper into his sexual depths, imagine the look on his face if you gave him this.

You can read more on my thoughts behind “Dance For Me” – and male desire – as I chat to Rose over on Stupid Fish Productions . There’s also a saucy excerpt to whet your appetite. Head over there in the coming weeks to find out more of the fabulous authors  and stories featured, and as listed in the pic below.  But I understand if you can’t wait – and you want it all now. So – here’s where to get it.

Amazon

Smashwords

I-Tunes

Reviews are now popping up, come read what fellow erotica writer Malin James  has to say  – here …

Also, the book will soon be available on Audible, narrated by Rose Caraway, engineered by Big Daddy Dayv Caraway.

Table of Contents

A big congratulations to Rose, Dayv, and all the authors from all over the world who have contributed to opening up this erotic space … For the Men.

Interview: Oral Pleasures on the Page – with Editor Jillian Boyd

Tags

Adrea Kore, Anthology Release, cunnilingus, Female Sexuality, femme fatales, Interview, Licked Anthology, Oral Sex, sex as addiction, Squirting, Taboo, Wet Satin Plaything

 

Soon after the release of erotic anthology Licked, I chatted to the anthology’s editor Jillian Boyd. She asked me to talk about my story Wet Satin Plaything: one of seven stories featured in the anthology and my thoughts on the rather slippery subject of the anthology’s theme: oral sex.

Jillian: What would you say your story is about?

Adrea: My story Wet Satin Plaything started off as several scenes of hot oral sex and intense, somewhat kinky sex, where a generally non-dominant woman is driven to a point where she finds her Inner Dominatrix.  It centred around a man and woman in relationship, the man is very into the act of cunnilingus, and gets off on all things associated with it – a woman’s sexual scent, lingerie, wetness, squirting. Seeing how many times he can get his lover to orgasm and assisting her to go deeply into that altered space of sexual pleasure.

…as I wrote those scenes, I realised something darker and more complex was trying to come out – an actual story where I wanted to explore the dynamics of something like addiction

But as I wrote those scenes, I realised something darker and more complex was trying to come out – an actual story where I wanted to explore the dynamics of something like addiction – addiction to sex with a certain lover. It’s not addiction in the textbook sense of the term, but it gets close. It clouds her judgement about the behaviour of the man and the healthiness of the relationship. It starts to change her behaviour and feelings about herself. Classic sex addiction is something only a small proportion of people experience, but a sexually compelling, yet emotionally dysfunctional relationship that we get caught in, and find really hard to disentangle ourselves from? I think many of us have been there.

She succumbs to it just like a need for a hit, and it feels impossible to leave the source of the hit, even though she questions his love and knows his behaviour is emotionally abusive. As time goes on, the high from the sex becomes more short-lived, and other problems start to crowd in on her. Just like a substance addiction. She realises she has to do something drastic to break the cycle, to free herself. And although the story is told from her perspective, it seems like he may have a kind of addiction too – to cunt, to being in control, to being needed sexually. I’m never quite inside his head – so these things are all possibilities!

J: What made you want to write a story for Licked?

A: It was one of those convenient synchronicities – I was drafting this story, and saw the submission call for stories that centred around the theme of oral sex. It made me realise a lot of my stories do feature oral sex scenes. Having the deadline definitely helped motivate me to get the story written, so I thank you for that.

J: My pleasure. What was the inspiration behind your story?

Apart from the theme of sex addiction, I wanted to explore how a woman might extricate herself from an emotionally abusive relationship; how she reclaims her power. And initially, I just kept seeing a scene in my head where a very assertive, somewhat controlling man, only lightly restrained, is psychologically subdued by a woman who knows him well enough sexually to appeal entirely to his particular ‘kinks’. She manages to subdue him so effectively that he doesn’t see what’s coming until he’s in a situation entirely unfamiliar and quite terrifying, with a woman he’s (supposedly) very familiar with.

I’ve always been fascinated by femme-fatale archetypes like Lady MacBeth.

I’ve always been fascinated by femme-fatale archetypes like Lady MacBeth.

“Unsex me here” Part of Study of Lady MacBeth by Gustave Moreau

Back when I was acting and directing in independent theatre, I created an entire theatre piece around the theme. Does every woman have this archetype inside them? I’m not sure, but I am sure if you are wounded by the masculine in some way early in your sexual development, a woman is more likely to have this aspect somewhere inside her. So, what kind of situation might bring it out? Well, here’s one in Wet Satin Plaything.

J: Well, as I told you when I accepted the story for the anthology, the opening sentence packs a fucking great punch that draws you in.

A: Thanks. Yes, that line came quite quickly – as soon as I knew I wanted to turn my scene in to a story.

J: When did you first become aware of oral sex being a thing people did?

A: Early – maybe too early! I think I would have been five or six when I first encountered a description of a guy getting a blow job. I was one of those precociously bright children with a very high reading age. I was voraciously reading everything I could, and I had a habit of randomly taking books from the top shelf of the family bookshelf and reading from them – whenever my Mum wasn’t around.

In this case it was one of those steamy paperbacks popular in the seventies – set in Hollywood, and about a male porn star called Toby – I even recall his name. Put it this way – a child is sexual from an early age. I felt guilty as hell, but I scoured those pages looking for the “rude” scenes – and let me tell you, I was well rewarded in that book! I remember being both fascinated and kind of horrified. I knew what a penis was, but it was for peeing, so the fact that women were described putting one (well, several) in their mouths was pretty shocking for me.

I don’t think I realised that such an act existed in regards to women until much later – maybe when I was 13 or 14. Depictions of it, even in illicit media I might have stumbled upon, wasn’t as common as that of fellatio back then – and my Mum, surprisingly enough, didn’t include it in her “how babies are made” talk when I was around eight.

Pheromones and sexual instinct, the archaic programming in our limbic brain to want to get close, and closer, to push ourselves up against and into someone we are attracted to when we smell the scent of their arousal, their sexual juices. It can over-ride our more refined taste-buds. We salivate over what isn’t clearly sweet or salty or bitter, but a little of everything.

J: What’s the best oral sex scene you’ve ever read / seen (in any form of prose or film, not just erotica or pornography)?

A: From memory, I think the French cinema classic Betty Blue (the Director’s cut) has at least one hot, intense scene where Beatrice Dalle’s character Betty is being treated to some incredible cunnilingus by her lover Zorg. What I love about this film is how apparent it is that Betty adores sex, without any shame, and gives herself to it with utter abandon. Diary of a Nymphomaniac, a Spanish film is up there too. And so many of the stories from Nin’s Delta of Venus depict oral sex, in all its variations and hues so evocatively.