What makes a story erotic? That's not as straightforward a question as it may seem. Playboy magazine editors chose these book excerpts that work for them and make reading sex a many-splendored thing.
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The Champagne popped when he uncorked it and dribbled down the front of him, wetting his shirt and pants. They both laughed. He poured them each a glassful and raised his in a toast. "To us!"
She clinked glasses with him. "To us!"
He offered her a chicken leg.
"I'm not sure I can swallow," she said. "I'm too...."
"I know. That's why we're having lunch, first, to relax you."
"I'd feel better if you kissed me," she said.
"All right, but just one."
"Just one. I promise."
He leaned across the picnic cloth and kissed her lightly. "No more now. First you have to eat."
She nodded, kicked off her sandals, and attacked her lunch.
When they'd finished, Shep wrapped everything up in the cloth and stuffed it back in the basket. "Now," he said. "Now I'm going to love you." He pushed her gently to the floor and kissed her. The tape recorder was playing Here I go again...I hear the trumpets blow again...all aglow again...taking a chance on love....
She held him to her, inhaling him, tasting him, her hands in his hair, her mouth open to his. He unbuttoned her shirt, slowly, watching her, then kissed her breasts, sucked on her nipples, slipped off his own shirt so that he could rub his chest against her nakedness. "Please, Shep...please...." she begged.
"Not yet...not yet..." he said, lifting her onto the bed. He unzipped her skirt and slid it off, then got out of his denim pants and jockey shorts. She looked down at him. How ready he was. How stiff and beautiful. She told him so.
He laughed and said, "I've put on some weight."
"I don't mind." She reached for his penis and held it in her hand, tracing his swollen tip with two fingers. A silky mushroom. She squeezed him and felt a drop of his liquid, exciting herself even more. Now he moaned softly, pulled down her panties, kissed her belly, her inner thighs, licked his way back up to her breasts, to her face. He kissed her lips and she buried her tongue in his mouth.
"I love you," she told him. "I've always loved you!"
"You didn't come," he said, after.
"I know...I couldn't...I was too excited."
"Too excited to come?"
"Yes."
He laughed. "That's a new one."
"I'll come next time," she told him.
"I hope so," he said. "I'd hate to think I've lost my touch."
Next time was in half an hour and she came three times, which pleased him. "Soup, main course, and dessert," she said without thinking. Then she blushed. How could she play Norman's game with Shep?
"Tomorrow, Sandy?" Shep asked as they soaped each other in the shower.
"Yes."
"How about a five-course meal?"
"Maybe, but I'm not always that hungry."
"Don't eat any breakfast."
"I always have breakfast. Rice Krispies and toast."
"Always?"
"Well, sometimes I have cornflakes."
"I'm glad you haven't changed, kid."
"I'm glad you haven't either."
My Life and Loves by Frank Harris
I got up immediately and stood by the chair she was standing on. Casually I let my hand fall against her left leg. She didn't draw her leg away or seem to feel my hand, so I touched her more boldly. She never moved, though now I knew she must have felt my hand. I began to slide my hand up her leg and suddenly my fingers felt the warm flesh on her thigh where the stocking ended above the knee. The feel of her warm flesh made me literally choke with emotion: my hand went on up, warmer and warmer, when suddenly I touched her sex; there was soft down on it. The heart-pulse throbbed in my throat. I have no words to describe the intensity of my sensations.
Thank God, E... did not move or show any sign of distaste. Curiosity was stronger even than desire in me and I felt her sex all over, and at once the idea came into my head that it was like a fig (the Italians, I learned later, called it familiarly fica); it opened at my touches and I inserted my fingers gently, as Strangways had told me that Mary had taught him to do; still E... did not move. Gently I rubbed the front part of her sex with my finger. I could have kissed her a thousand times out of gratitude.
In my bedroom at Kensington Gore I had a wonderful copy of the well known Titian in the Louvre of a girl lying on her side. Laura one day for fun stretched herself on the bed and took up the exact same pose. She was infinitely better made, slighter everywhere in the body and with more perfect hips and limbs. When she got up and was seated on the bed she suddenly put her foot behind her head, discovering the loveliest curves.
I moved my hands and held the dish of her hips so that she couldn't wiggle or deflect the thrust or pull away: she began to "Uhn" again but interspersed with small screams: we were like kids playing catch (her poor brutalized clitoris), playing hard hand: this was what she thought sex was; it was sexual, as throwing a ball hard is sexual; in a way, too, we were like acrobats hurling ourselves at each other, to meet in midair and fall entangled to the net. It was like that.
Her mouth came open, her eyes had rolled to one side and stayed there -- it felt like twilight to me -- I knew where she was sexually, or thought I did. She pushed, she egged us on. She wasn't breakable this way. Orra. I wondered if she knew, it made me like her, how naive this was, this American fuck, this kids-playing-at-twilight-on-the-neighbor-hood-street fuck. After I seated it and wriggled a bit in her and moozed on her clitoris with my abdomen, I would draw it out not in a straight line but at some curve so that it would press against the walls of her cunt and she could keep track of where it was; and I would pause fractionally just before starting to thrust, so she could brace herself and expect it; I whomped it in and understood her with an absurd and probably unfounded sense of my sexual virtuosity; and she became silent suddenly, then she began to breathe loudly, then something in her toppled; or broke, then all at once she shuddered in a different way. It really was as if she lay on a bed of wings, as if she had a half-dozen wings folded under her, six huge wings, large, veined, throbbing, alive wings, real ones, with fleshy edges from which glittering feathers sprang backward; and they all stirred under her.
A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter
"Do you want it that way?" he says. His voice sounds unfinished.
She was expecting it. She hesitates.
"Ne me fait pas mal."
She watches in silence as he lays a thin coating on his prick. The strength seems to have left her. She behaves as if she has been condemned. He lowers himself carefully onto her back. He is determined to perform the most gentle act, but he doesn't know exactly where to enter. He tries to find it.
"Plus haut" she whispers.
His arms are trembling. Suddenly he feels her flesh give way and then, deliciously, the muscle close about him. He tries not to press against anything, to go in straight. She is breathing quickly, and as he withdraws on the first stroke he can feel her jerking with pleasure. It's the short movements she likes. She thrusts herself against him. Moans escape her. Dean comes -- it's like a hemorrhage -- and afterwards she clasps him tightly. He can feel faint annular twitches. He lies perfectly still until these final agonies, these quenching hugs which draw the last semen from him, subside. Then he withdraws. There is a tight, failing embrace of the head, then that, too, is gone. They have parted.
"Did you like it?" he asks.
"Beaucoup."
Princess Daisy by Judith Krantz
"Now...now we come to the penance, Stash. You must stand up." She remained still, waiting patiently, steadily watching him, not repeating her command. Slowly he stood up, his trousers falling to his feet. Controlling her breathing with difficulty the woman looked at the slender youth who stood before her, not daring to meet her eyes. Through the opening of his undershorts the thick, jutting shaft of his penis was clearly visible.
"Pull down your shorts," she whispered. He obeyed. His body was marvelously made, pale except where the winter sun had touched his big hands and strong neck. All his joints and tendons were tender-skinned, yet firm and defined. A little blond hair grew on the legs and a deeper shadow of coarser hair curled at the base of his testicles.
"Step out of your pants and lie down on the sofa," she ordered. "Don't touch me, Stash, or I will stop what I'm going to do to you. I am the teacher here and you are doing your penance, so be obedient. If you move, even one little inch, I'll stop the lesson. I swear it." The threat in her voice was real. She pulled at her gown so that it dropped from her shoulders. Her breasts sprang out from the confining lace. She cupped each of them in a hand, leaning over him so that he could see how sumptuously heavy they were, tipped with the light brown nipples of a true red-head. He lay still on the rose satin, not daring to arch his back and thrust his agonizingly hard penis upward. She brushed her nipples tantalizingly over his chapped lips. "Don't move!" she warned again, adoring the sensation of the roughness of his young open mouth on her flesh. When he moaned in fearful desire and tried to touch them with his tongue, she moved away at once. "Ah! No! I've only begun...." Very delicately, with the lightest possible touch, she moved her full, succulent mouth down this body which had just emerged from boyhood, stopping to anoint each of his nipples with her pointed, flicking tongue. Finally she hovered over his penis for a long moment while he held his breath. Her sleek head hung, almost in meditation, as she observed how it strained upward, jerking toward her mouth. But, without even touching it, she passed on and went lower, tonguing the insides of his strong thighs. As she knelt on the sofa she had gradually slipped out of her gown so that her full body, with its rich bounty of lush perfumed flesh, was entirely exposed, but from his position on the sofa, he could not see her nakedness clearly without raising his head. She had not yet touched him with anything but her nipples and her mouth, nor had he touched her at all. He ground his teeth and clenched his fists in frantic frustration and heard her low, satisfied laugh, the laugh of the true gourmet.
"Oh, yes, indeed, yes, you are making progress. You are beginning to appreciate relativity. You are almost prepared for the end of the lesson."
The Marquise's tongue traveled leisurely from Stash's thighs back to his testicles. She blew on his pubic hair very lightly, and again, he couldn't prevent a groan from escaping his dry lips. Like a line of fire, the tip of her experienced tongue ran up the base of his straining penis and then rested for one whirling moment on its tip.
"No," she said, pensively. "No, you cannot control yourself well enough." With a little movement she positioned herself until she was straddling Stash's body, one knee on either side of his tensed thighs. Slowly, with the leisurely care of a woman of thirty-two, she parted her thick, red pubic hair and opened the lips of her vagina with the fingers of one hand and, with the other, she gently pulled Stash's penis back from his stomach until it was pointed straight up into the air. He was so hard that she had to hold it back firmly while, taking an infinite amount of time, she gradually lowered herself onto the swollen tip. She gathered her ripe body into a soft pillar of flesh and slid down on him. When he was completely enclosed within her, she leaned forward and whispered into his contorted lips, "Now, now...."
Raha bent down and kissed my breasts, suckling the nipples until they stood almost painfully erect. I arched my back in ecstasy and wrapped my legs around her. I was so wet I thought a flood would pour out of me.
Ashrafs voice floated through the room, echoing off the stone. "It is said that in the time of the ancients, Ra, the greatest of all the gods, grew disgusted at man's disregard for his laws. In his anger, he created Sekhmet, the Eye of Ra, the goddess of destruction, a bare-breasted woman with the head of a lioness, and unleashed her upon man to reap vengeance."
Raha moved lower, kissing my belly. I squirmed and moaned on the bed. The inferno raging between my legs could only be extinguished by her tongue.
"The Nile turned crimson from all the blood she shed. When Ra saw the horror he had created, he regretted his actions. He laid a trap for her, hundreds of barrels of beer stained red with pomegranate juice to resemble the blood she enjoyed drinking."
Raha ran her tongue lightly over my pussy, from bottom to top. I shivered and arched my back again. It wouldn't take much more to make me come. I could feel it building already, dancing on the cusp of onset.
Ashraf appeared behind Raha. He removed his shirt and let it drop to the floor. I couldn't take my eyes off the medallion hanging over his chest.
Philosophy in the Bedroom by Marquis de Sade
EUGENIE: Am I as I should be, Dolmance?
DOLMANCE: Admirably! I've got this little virgin cunt all to myself, delicious. Oh, I'm a guilty one, a villain, indeed I know it; such charms were not made for my eyes; but the desire to provide this child with a firm grounding in voluptuousness over-shadows every other consideration. I want to make her fuck to flow, if 'tis possible I want to exhaust her, drink her dry.... (He sucks her.)
EUGENIE: This pleasure will kill me, I can't resist it!
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE: I'm coming, I say! Oh fuck! Fuck! Dolmance, I'm discharging!
EUGENIE: And I too, my darling! Oh, my God, how he does suck me!
MADAME DE SAINT-ANGE: Then swear, little whore, curse! Then cry an oath!
EUGENIE: All right then, damn thee! I discharge! Damn thee! I am so sweetly drunk!
DOLMANCE: To your post! Take up your station! Eugenie! I'll be the dupe of these handlings and shifts. (Eugenie assumes her place.) Ah, good! Here again am I, at my original place and abode...exhibit your asshole, Madame, I'll pump it at my leisure.... Oh, but I love to kiss an ass I've just left off fucking.... Ah! Lick up mine, do you hear, while I drive my sperm deep home into your friend's.... Wouldst believe it, Madame? In it goes, and this time effortlessly! Ah, fuck! Fuck! You've no idea how it squeezes, how she clamps me! Holy frigging God, what ecstasy! Oh, 'tis there, 'tis done, I resist no longer...flow! My fluid flows! And I die!
Any woman masturbates anywhere, I want to know about it. No woman is anything but beautiful when she is masturbating. Any plainness or overweightness or boniness or even a character flaw, an ungenerousness or something, everything is part of the recipe of her particular transfiguration, everything bad is pressed out of her when she shuts her eyes tight and comes. There used to be a tiny ad that ran in a lot of men's magazines, a half-inch-high ad, that had a shot of a woman lying back with what seemed to be, and it was very hard to tell at that scale, but what seemed to be her two middle fingers inside herself, and the headline was, I LOVE TO MASTURBATE. I probably came fifty times to that little ad. I'd look through at the full-page shots, but then when I was almost there, I would find this ad. You were supposed to send money to Mrs. Somebody in Van Nuys, and she would send you six hot photos and a pair of panties. Right, sure -- I never sent off for them. But the ad was a tiny window onto something, onto an idea: because there is a Mrs. Somebody in Van Nuys, California, who does love to masturbate, there are lots of Mrs. Somebodys in fact, and she is not advertising herself in men's magazines, she isn't wasting her time with that, she is simply masturbating, right now, and that idea fills me with energy, it's all I need from life, the notion that women are masturbating, and I don't know when or where, but it's going on. One time I drove all night back from college my sophomore year, and I shared the ride with this girl who was on my hall in the dorm who had a car, and it started to rain this mysterious warm rain...no, but I really did share a ride with her, totally uneventful, but just this past year, ten years later, we had a sort of reunion of the people who'd been on that hall that year, because it had been kind of a funny nice group, and this same woman sat next to me at dinner and told me in a low voice at one point that on that all-night trip, at six in the morning, while I was driving, and she was supposed to be fast asleep, that she'd made herself "comfortable" in the back seat, just as we were going past the big GE plant in Syracuse. I said, Thank you, thank you, thank you for telling me. Ten fucking years that secret orgasm of hers was accumulating interest. Sometimes I think of myself up in a satellite, and I'm looking down at America, or anywhere, really, but I usually imagine America, and all these little lights are blinking on and off, and each one represents a woman's orgasm. That's what "simultaneous orgasm" should really mean -- the awareness of all those women's orgasms simultaneously going on.