Bound by Lust

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

—Benjamin Franklin

 

T
he bondage part comes naturally to me. I want my hands cuffed. I want my eyes blindfolded. I want the slippery vinyl corset cinched in place around my slim waist. Did someone mention fishnet thigh highs and a pair of glossy black boots with a chrome zipper up the side? Forget having my number dialed—you've got me tattooed on your bicep.

What's hotter than bondage?

That's where the lust comes in. See, being tied up by someone who knows every nuance of what I like tops everything I've ever done. (And those who have been playing along at home for the last two decades know that I've done a lot.)

Sure, there are the sudden-attraction aficionados who prefer a rough night with a stranger. Nothing wrong with that. But I want something more. I want to be with a man who understands how to take me right up to the precipice of pleasure, who
will promise every night to push on my inner boundaries with his big, rough hands. I want him to display his tools of pain and sweetness and make me plead:

Then right when I'm licking my lips in preparation of maybe—just maybe—uttering my safe word, I want to be with a man who knows to pull back, to unwind, to recoil and start fresh.

“Bondage with Someone You Love”—there's a category of society that's just begging for its own Hallmark section. Thankfully,
Bound by Lust
is here with nineteen whip-smart stories to fill the need.

Your need. My need.

 

XXX,
Alison Tyler

—in a letter from James Joyce to his beloved wife

 

I
n our culture, there is an overarching belief that dirty, kinky, and downright nasty sex and romance cannot coexist. Sure, you can have fantastic sex with the one you love, but it should be vanilla sex, gentle sex, the kind that is full of sweet whispers and soft caresses and glowing skin by flickering candlelight.

It's an age-old scenario, and one that's been ingrained in our understanding of the lust/love connection for so long that we've come to believe it. When it comes to love, we're supposed to choose the nice, respectful—if somewhat boring—boy over the rough-riding motorcycle man who makes our lust rev into high gear with little more than a look. Everyone knows you take the girl dressed in lace home to meet your mother, while you take the girl dressed in leather home to meet your toy box. The good girl gets the engagement ring. The bad girl gets bent over your
knee, her skirt pushed up and her underwear pulled down, your hand pinkening the globes of her ass with every swat.

Madonna and whore. Bad-boy lover and sweet-guy husband. And never the twain shall meet.

Thankfully, there is no proof that true love and kinky lust can't go hand in hand. In fact, it doesn't take much digging to realize the opposite is true. For as long as there has been love, there have been delightfully dirty acts between those whose hearts are entangled. And while there's nothing wrong with “romantic” sex, most of us would readily admit that there's something super-hot about getting tied up, sucked off, or spanked bare-handed by the ones we love. Sometimes, it's love and trust that creates a safe space for the kinky desires to be played out. Other times, it's the shared love of kink that brings two (or more) hearts together.

The stories in
Bound by Lust
explore many of the ways that lust and love interconnect to create sex that's dirty, degrading, mind blowing, arousing, and, yes, sweetly romantic. In “Marcelle,” Alana Noël Voth's gripping story of love and redemption, a man finds more than his heart's desire in the acceptance of the woman he loves, while the characters in Sommer Marsden's “Reclaiming Spring” discover that dominance and submission help them reclaim something very important: their marriage. And for the artist in Kristina Wright's “Brushstrokes,” the safety of her love creates a way for her to give a new voice to her deepest desires:
Not all of the stories in the collection showcase the serious side of love and lust. A stop at the sex toy store in Andrea Dale's “A Few Things to Pick Up on Your Way Home” becomes a sensual trip through humiliation and desire, while the characters in Allison Wonderland's “Preference for Deference” bring a lighthearted humor to their deviant play. There are tales of rope bondage, public humiliation, proper training, and even puppy play. One submissive finds her inner dominant while bending her German lover to her will in “Eine Klein Spanking,” while in “Slave Sister,” a couple invites another woman to join their love, and lust, lives.

The stories in
Bound by Lust
are sweetly romantic, but they're also kinky, dirty, and full of delicious debauchery. They'll make your libido soar along with your heart, showing once and for all that kink and love are not separate entities. They are bound together by the finest ropes, by the tightest knots, by the lustful beatings of loving hands—and loving hearts.

 

Shanna Germain
Portland, OR

 

 

 

 

 

I
t was that final puddle and the short slurping slide through the mud that did it. I stomped into the house and skidded into the kitchen.

“Problem?” Anthony asked, chopping onions. Something boiled on the stove, and the windows were fogged from steam inside and cold air out.

“I hate spring,” I seethed.

“Come on, now. Hate?”

A rage so swift and big flared up in me I bit my tongue. I pried off one orange rain boot and threw it at the small mat we kept by the kitchen door. What felt like tears pricked my eyes, and my throat narrowed with mystery emotion.

“Yes, hate.”

“You don't hate spring,” he said softly and continued his meticulous chopping.

“I do,” I said. Angry that he would counter me on my own feelings. Livid that I had to explain my feelings to him—to anyone.

“No you don't.”

“Anthony—”

He turned to me full-on. His hulking frame and dark hair shot with bits of silver filled my field of vision. “You don't hate spring.”

The anger was so big in me—out of nowhere—it had teeth and claws, and it raged at his calm, even tone. “I do hate spring!” I spat. Thinking somewhere in me that this was possibly the most asinine fight we'd ever had. But even as I pondered it, my hand acted of its own accord, and the other orange rain boot went flying. Right at him.

He plucked it from the steamy air with one big hand, and his face barely changed. He simply set the boot down on the yellow tile floor and said, “Get downstairs, Kate.”

“I—”

“Move,” he said. He made a shooing motion with his hands like I was a mouse in his kitchen or a dust bunny on his dirty floor.

“No.”

“Go, Kate. Downstairs. Now.”

“No. I won't go downstairs now. This isn't the bedroom. You don't get to tell me what to do or paddle me or any of that shit. You don't get to tell me I don't hate spring or that my feelings are wrong or that I'm not having them!” I roared, and for the first time in ten years of marriage, I took a swing at my husband.

And there he was, unflappable Anthony, catching my hand, dipping his big body and coming up under my torso to lift me off my feet. He caught me up in that firm fireman's carry, turned the stovetop burner to simmer, and waltzed me across the kitchen floor.

“Put me down,” I growled.

“You don't hate spring, Kate. You hate what it stands for. That's when you ended things with him.” And then he was clomping down the basement steps with me over his shoulder—dumbfounded and still with the force of his words.

I was grieving for Kevin. For the end of an affair.

There had been a bad patch for our marriage. A year of turmoil—an inability to conceive and start the family we wanted. And then we turned on each other as if blaming the other would soothe the ache. Anthony had picked his poison—crowded bars and too much beer and booze. Mine had been the cool white sheets of another man. But there had come a point when we needed to decide—marriage or divorce. Choose one. Choose now.

We'd chosen each other, and I had ended it.

I was mourning Kevin,
I thought again, and when Anthony opened the back door to our tiny fenced-in back yard, my head rapped the lip of the doorway. The blow was short and not too hard at all, but tears sprang to my eyes instantly as if waiting for an excuse.

I started to cry for real.

“It's okay. We'll fix it.” Anthony always saw things linear. We would fix my pain over having lost my lover. I had cheated on him with a man; he had cheated on me with booze. But we would fix it. There was no question.

“I'm crying because you hit my head.”

“No you're not,” he said and set me on the picnic table like his overgrown doll.

“Yes, I am,” I said with no real heat.

He put his finger under my chin and tilted my head so I had to look at him. “No. You're not. Now put your arms up over your head, Kate.”

“What? Why?”

“Because my wife, we are reclaiming spring.”

“I…what?”

I felt off-kilter and out of control and I didn't like that. We had our little sex games. Paddles and bondage here and there, power plays and some teeth marks on occasion. But this was in our backyard, and I had real anger, real sadness. He should be jealous and enraged. Instead he said again, “Put your arms up over your head.”

I stared into his stormy eyes—the grey of an overcast October day—and I decided to listen. I put my arms up over my head.