Dipping into this collection of 20 erotic stories is like randomly sampling a tray of appetizers. You can never be sure what you?re going to get, but you can be sure there will be something for almost every taste.

Lisabet Sarai, author of several erotic novels, including the intricately-plotted Incognito (in which an adventurous young woman discovers the secret diary of her nineteenth-century counterpart in a historic part of Boston), and co-editor of the groundbreaking anthology Sacred Exchange (stories that explore the spirituality of BDSM), has now shown what she can do in a diverse collection of short fiction. Her range is considerable.

The disturbing title story, ?Fire,? is a remarkably plausible first-person account of a pyromaniac?s fetish, which first ignites when he witnesses the burning of a house as a sexually-awakening teenage boy. From then, he progresses to setting fires in abandoned buildings until, inevitably, his private scene affects another person.

The awesome, mysterious and unstoppable power of fire serves as a motif which connects this story with the last one, ?Communion,? a historic piece which is set in the time of witch-burnings, and which was published first in Sacred Exchange. Most of the fires which run through these stories take the form of various hungers: a simple desire for sexual connection with another person, a desire for power, a desire for an audience, a desire for a harmonious m?nage a trois, a desire for the sense of transcendence and union with another which can only come through surrender.

The author is a deft hand at scene-setting, and it is no coincidence that two of these stories were formerly published in Foreign Affairs and Erotic Travel Tales II, two anthologies edited by Mitzi Szereto which focus on sex in particular locations. Several of the stories in Fire (?Butterfly,? ?Vows? and ?Bangkok Noir?) show Sarai?s familiarity with various aspects of Asian culture ranging from bar life in Bangkok to the serene dedication of a Buddhist monk. The exotic locale (from a North American viewpoint) of ?Butterfly? underscores the tragic credibility gap between the two main characters, one Eastern and one Western, and the deceptive nature of appearances. The monk in ?Vows? might be unique in erotic literature: he is both convincingly sexual and convincingly committed to a spiritual life.

Just as the stories range from Bangkok to San Francisco to New Orleans to New York to rustic New England, the styles and genres range from fictionalized history to lesbian romance to mood piece to modern can-this-marriage-be-saved explorations of emotional ?baggage? to noir whodunit to gothic fantasy.

Sarai?s approach to ?kink? or BDSM can only be described as ecstatic and profound. Her descriptions of bondage, blindfolding, spanking and whipping manage to be hot yet dignified and respectful of everyone involved, conveying an insider?s knowledge. The varied sex scenes in these stories always seem to flow from the plot and the characters. These people, as varied as they are, would connect with each other in these ways.

Here is a passage from the elegantly simple meditation named ?Ritual:?

?The ritual demands much of them, the steps choreographed, but always with room for improvisation. First he binds her, with rope, or silk, or leather, ceiling-hung with thighs spread, or splayed across the bed, or bent double over a hassock. Sometimes he will position her limbs and bind her to stillness with his command alone.

?Then he teases her, dabbles his fingers in her wetness, lovingly mocks her sluttishness. She melts at his slightest touch, sinks liquid and helpless into the ritual spirit, moaning just as he intends. She could drown in his rich voice, nuanced and full of power.?

On that subject, several of these stories are told from the viewpoint of a male character, and they seem convincing enough to this reviewer. The men in these stories are as multi-dimensional as the women, and they can be emotionally and physically vulnerable as well as arrogant or protective. In ?Domestic Goddess? and ?A Quiet Evening at Home,? men who have taken women for granted are punished in ways that they ultimately accept. In ?Be Careful What You Wish For,? a man who has fantasized about watching his charismatic wife carry a flirtation to completion learns the searingly sexual power of jealousy.

Here a male vampire, Philip, comments wistfully on the mortals whose blood (and sexual juice) he needs:

?I don?t like to think of them as prey. That feels too cold-blooded. Juliana says that I?m sentimental, but after all, we rarely take their lives. They surrender to us their youth, their vitality, their beauty, a few memories. In return, we gift them with a taste of ecstasy, even if they will remember it only dimly. That, and a lingering darkness. For the rest of their short days, they bear the mark of our touch on their souls.?

The analogy with Dominant/submissive relationships is clear, and so is the mutual nature of the attraction between vampire and human.

These stories aim to be ?pansexual,? for lack of a more precise word, and to a large extent, they succeed. Sex between members of the same gender, however, is more evasively described than sex between men and women, which is usually presented as the main course. In ?Making Memory,? two women bond on the basis of shared memories of men they have loved and lost. When their mutual revelations lead them to bed, the narrator says: ?I will not recite the litanies of our lust, her tongue, my fingers, our breasts pressed together, hearts beating in synchrony.? As poetic as this sounds, the reader wonders why these lesbian ?litanies? must be limited to one sentence when the ritual is so much fuller in other stories.

In ?D?tente,? a riveting story about a three-way live-in relationship involving a woman and two very different men who each give her something she needs, the narrator simply leaves the house when the rivalry between the men becomes unbearable to her. When she returns, she finds them in the midst of an intense and unexpected sex scene. While this method of working things out has its own emotional logic, neither the narrator nor the reader can see how the men jumped from A to Z in her absence.

In general, however, this collection is a luscious tapestry of different flavors, smells and textures. Whatever you prefer, you are guaranteed to find at least one story here that arouses your appetite and satisfies it.

BDSM Reviews

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