Best Women's Erotica of the Year Volume 1
By: Rachel Kramer Bussel
It’s an incredible honor to present to you Best Women’s Erotica of the Year Volume 1, my first time taking the helm. As an author, this groundbreaking series has been home to some of my favorite stories I’ve written, stories that pushed me into uncharted territory, whether writing about a dishwashing fetish (“Doing the Dishes”), an oral sex restaurant (“Secret Service”) or visiting a married lover (“Espionage”).
As an editor, I faced the mighty task of whittling down the over two hundred submissions I received to the twenty-two found between these covers. The resulting collection is one that features the kind of women I consider my readers to be: smart, daring, fierce, loving, kinky, curious, powerful, feisty. While no single book can represent every kind of woman, you’ll find women from a range of races, sexual orientations, and backgrounds, partnered and solo. You’ll find women going on sexual journeys from the past, present and future.
Whether they’re enjoying a threesome, acting out their passion on stage, getting a tattoo, seducing their boss, having their naked body painted, dressing up as a domme or exulting in their most submissive moment, the characters you’ll read about here, and their authors, are passionate, funny and they were a delight to visit with.
You will notice that there are more than a few women here “of a certain age,” as the saying goes, which is fitting as I turned forty just before this book goes to press—close enough to look back on my younger days, as Aya does in “Revisiting Youth” by J. Crichton and H. Keyes, and hoping to keep the erotic spark alive well into the future, as characters like D in Dorothy Freed’s “Two Doms for Dinner” do.
My goal with this book was twofold: to present sexual fantasies in a way that sparks your imagination and also respects your mind, and to reflect a glimmer of real life back from the deepest reaches of these authors’ minds. Though some of the scenarios you’re about to read would be impossible to live out, and some might be unlikely, all of them offer women who are willing to go toward what might seem scary or new or uncertain, whether that means an old flame, a sexy stranger or a childhood crush.
I also wanted to present some of my favorite erotic authors, such as S.E.C.R.E.T. trilogy author L. Marie Adeline and The Original Sinners series author Tiffany Reisz, alongside writers whose work you may be reading for the first time. I’ve long said that erotica is an incredibly democratic and welcoming genre, and I’m proud to have so many new authors, whose names you’ll likely want to watch as they set forth in their erotica writing careers.
Whether outdoors, in a love hotel or even a porta-potty (yes, you read that right, and Amy Butcher’s “Waiting to Pee” is one of the most provocative stories I’ve ever published, one I plan to reread often), they are willing to go forth into the unknown because the payoff promises to rock their worlds. I hope the same can be said for your reading experience. Welcome to Best Women’s Erotica. Whenever and wherever you’re reading this, I hope it both arouses and surprises you.
Rachel Kramer Bussel
Atlantic City, New Jersey
A NEW CANVAS
by Tara Betts
The bass and slow pace of hip hop sounded like a drone after a couple of hours. Everything sounded as if it had the same pace then. When the dark room was even more obscured by smoke from blunts and a twinge of incense, Angela spotted Troy. She hadn’t been smoking and neither had he. For both of them, it was about being in the same space with the artists and loving the music. They would meet for dinner sometimes, talk politics, books, music and all that, but there was never a flirtation. Usually, Angela had a boyfriend or Troy had a girlfriend, and Angela simply kept quiet about how she felt about Troy listening intently to her every answer, her glimpses of one of his dozen tattoos, the lingering conversations where it took forever for Angela to get out of the car, their long goodbye hugs and even how his posture made him look strong, confident and sexy. Sexy. She could not even say the word out loud. She had not dated anyone seriously in almost three years.
She wanted him, but Angela was afraid to lose the amazing conversations, so she kept it at just friends. She tried not to think about how the steady thump of the bass reminded her of the pulse of her clit, and she quieted herself. She avoided looking at his lower lip like she wanted to suck it gently, or at the piercings on his ear; her tongue could almost taste each of the metal studs. Snap out of it. That lingering was gone in a blink, and he was doing a frenetic bounce, making fun of someone’s dance he saw the other night. He could break her into giggling too fast, but he seemed to like making her laugh, so she went with it. It was already late when they saw each other at The Spot, and the ongoing thump was starting to sound gloomy and indistinct, so she said she was leaving. “I can give you a ride back to the crib,” he said. It didn’t seem like anything he’d never offered before. She said yes.
