RHAPSODY IN SNAKESKIN — Kirsten Imani Kasai

Good sex, like a good scare, can be hard to come by - and sometimes they go hand-in-hand. Just think of that lover who was a bit too edgy and scared you a little, but oh what lovemaking came next! Sex can enlighten and enliven us as surely as it can ruin and humiliate us. It can open and close doors in our souls. It can be our absolute undoing - but in those vertiginous moments of falling apart, we often find a greater freedom, if only briefly. Here you'll find such dangerous, hot stories as "She Alone Can Move Me", "Flowergirl", "I'm Yours", "One Perfect Kiss", "Poorer Sister", "Rhapsody in Snakeskin", "Turned Out", "Celebrity Machine", and many others. As the author of these stories writes, "Pleasure is an art form executed in the medium of the skin. Pleasure is about sensory exploration. Touch, taste, scent. A look. A caress. A faintly wafting breeze of perfume. It's about preserving memories (the sound of her voice in your head, the bubbling excitement that builds when kisses deepen, her heat as she writhes beneath you), but it's also subjective. Eroticism is willing objectification and boundary expansion. Through surrender of self - whether physical or emotional - we become truly magical. "True pleasure is the death of reason, a stripping away of all the scaffolding that shores up our crumbling facade. We are forced to confront the unsanctioned appetites of our imaginations. In the private world of lovers, we can delve into forbidden roles, submerse ourselves in themes of power play, absorption, loss of self, transmogrification, union, the dissolution of personal limits and the passionate commingling of souls."