Best of Best Women’s Erotica 2

Welcome back to the Fleshbot Book Club-your chance to get a sneak peek at some of the hottest erotic literature out now. Today's selection comes from Cleis Press's Best of Best Women's Erotica 2, edited by Violet Blue.

The following excerpt is from "Lost at Sea" by Peony.

Has it been that long? The clocks and the calendars are conspiring once again. Surely not? Have I been wandering, trapped in this haze, paralyzed by the thought of you? What day is it?

I shuffle to the bathroom amidst the chaos of the house. Things don't seem to be where I left them, nor do they seem to be the same. Nothing seems to be sane either, anymore. My reflection in the mirror stares back at me with shiny glass eyes. I am no longer seeing through these strange holes in my head and navigate mothlike and by memory, hearing and feeling for the last traces of you.

Showering mechanically, I scrape at my skin and the nest of my hair. The hot water trickles out and turns cold. I stand there as my rubber flesh changes from pink to white, and my veins shrink from the surface and nestle closer to my bones. I suppose it must be very cold, for my skin is prickled and protesting. I hazily ponder the idea that my brain might have severed its ties to my body and is bobbing listlessly, without anchor, in the sea of my skull. I used to hate cold showers.

Of their own volition my feet find their way to the bath mat, my hands to the towel and I'm rubbing robotically. I'm temporarily distracted by the absurdity of my joints sticking out at peculiar angles. Was I always this disjointed and bony?

Emerging from the bathroom I survey the damage. The house is littered with remnants edged with the feeling of emptiness, like a fairground after the circus has left town. Even the sound of my exhalations is loud in comparison and swells out into the room in ragged clouds. My leaden feet slide onto the shards of the glass long since shattered; I suppose it must be somewhere, somewhere down there.

I wonder how long I stood there, naked in the midst of the aftermath, blood collecting under my toes, staring blankly at the enormous hole in the shell of this decaying house. It loomed large and imposing, a porthole to another dimension, the name hanging rustily on hinges holed in my head. It's a door. The front door.

I stopped trying to make sense of it and decided to surrender. If I just give in, maybe I'll find a way out. There's no sense in fighting an irrepressible tide. Perhaps I'm walking in circles following reddened footsteps on floorboards that will probably never end.

You. A synapse fires inside my head. Somewhere near the surface I can see a faint glow fractured by surface ripples. I must be a long way under. We shouldn't have. We did. It's done and cannot be undone. We're on the other side of that which had grown so large between us, the lust that devoured us, swelled fat from the absurdity of it.

You again. Brighter now, refracting like strewn crystals from an exploded chandelier. You. The thought of you burns into a focal point with a brightness that is piercing. I'm rapidly ascending with no time to adjust, chest contorted from the pressure as I struggle to acclimatize. There is a roar in my ears as I rocket to the surface in an explosion of gray water and torn foam.

You again. I am awkwardly floating as I suck air through the cracks in my clenched teeth. I'm suddenly painfully aware of the dimension of space beneath and around me; it is terrifying being without the comfort of corners and walls.

You did this to me. With your hands that carved channels in my skin as you twisted my limbs to your pleasing and fed the burning inside me with pieces of you. You did this with words that pierced my insides with hooks that pinned me open, splayed and inviting, all yours for the taking. And yes, you took all of it, what I gave and what I didn't, you took it all and left me nothing save the taste of your skin and the weight of my heart in my hands.

I let you do this to me. At first we'd adhered to the rules and the rituals. The long lingering contact and words loaded and coated, then sitting so close you could smell the reek of the need burning under my skin. You'd played a deft hand and forced me to spread all that I held, faceup and exposed. There is nothing more dangerous than one with none left to lose and though you might have won, being defeated was sweetened by the sound of my name on your tongue.

I'd read the words in your eyes and the space between lines as I took my last look at the shore before diving headfirst. It was with such little tenderness that you pushed me beneath you and spread my limbs with your hands. These weren't lover's lips that stretched tight to expose my teeth that sank deep in your skin.

The pace was frenetic, fueled by the burning and the wheels sprung loose in my mind. There was no turning back or slowing the rhythm of the pounding both within and outside of my head. Skin flayed and breath burnt from the anger inside us, there is little to exchange when conquest leaves bodies ravished and broken. I had known it would be like this. I had hungered for the taste of it, flesh throbbing with the want of it, the want of you, to be taken, submerged, and surrounded, drowned and destroyed.

You were relentless and I was remorseless, for a time, just a short time, and then.

And then, it was over.

Laid beside without touching, silent and spent, I'm facing away from the fact of your face, from the sight of the redness of my nails on your skin. You've turned from the image that's too much like another's, the other, another, the one I was not.

Excerpted from Best of Best Women's Erotica 2 written by Violet Blue and published by Cleis Press.

The book is also on sale at Amazon.

Copyright (c) 2010 by Cleis Press.

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