$13.45
ISBN 1576122190
available through
Amazon
Reviewed by Shanna Germain
(12/29/04)
I have two tests to gauge the quality of every erotica collection I pick up: if I can read more than three stories at a time without stopping to get at least partially naked, then the book (in my humble opinion) isn't achieving its goal in the erotic sense of the word. Similarly, if I read three stories and am ready for bed in a more yawning kind-of-way, then the editor hasn't done her job of choosing compelling stories that are about more than just sex.
So, on the day that the mailman brought me a copy of Naughty Spanking Stories A to Z (edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel), I felt a moment of trepidation. I like Rachel's writing -- a lot. I also like spanking stories -- a lot. To have the two rolled into one book...the thought of it was practically enough to send me scurrying to the bedroom.
But it also made me nervous; I had such high expectations that I began to wonder what I would do if the collection didn't live up to my three-story rule. Rather than face the possibility of disappointment, I put the book on my bookshelf. And there it stayed...one day, two. Nearly a week. Until, finally, I couldn't stand it anymore. I opened the book to the first story -- and ran smack into Michelle Houston's piece, "Arianna's Passion for Learning."
I needn't have worried. The story of a husband and wife playing make-believe in a mock classroom is well written, unique, and intensely satisfying. But more than that -- it is red hot. By the time I got to the section where the husband pushes a plastic test tube inside his "student," I was not only half-naked, I was reading with one hand.
Gripping the test tube so tightly his knuckles showed white, Neil pressed the rounded plastic tip against her opening and lightly pushed. With a wet pop, the tube slipped in. Thrusting halfway in, he stroked his cock with his other hand as Arianna collapsed onto the desk, watching his fist work up and down his hard length.
At that rate, it took me a while to get through all 28 stories (the alphabet, plus two extra) in the collection -- you can only get near-naked so many times a day and still be "working." But by the time I finally finished, I had a newfound appreciation for all the ways in which spanking -- and being spanked -- is a turn-on. There is the joy that comes from dealing out discipline, illustrated in stories such as "Every Good Boy Deserves Favors," in which a piano teacher finds a new way to instruct her student, and in "Quiet Evening at Home," where two women give their cheating man a little red-handed revenge.
Of course, the book also includes the traditional erotic element of being a spankee -- daddy-daughter scenarios, bad girls at their worst, and those who just need it bad -- as does the delightful thong-clad woman in Thomas S. Roche's "Just a Spanking." But even these traditional takes on spanking get a new look in the book. In the daddy-daughter scenario of "A Very Naughty Girl," it's the "daughter" who chooses the level of her own punishment.
"How many do you want?"
I can see her struggling with the fear, fighting to count how many spanks it usually takes to make her come. She's rarely in any state of mind to count accurately when she's over my lap, but I am. I know it's usually twenty.
"Twenty-five," she says, her voice quaking.
"Good choice," I say. "Are you sure you can take it?"
She nods. "I'll try, Daddy."
The best thing about the book is that it isn't just another collection of erotica that revolves around a specific erotic theme. Instead, Bussel has compiled a collection of stories that uses spanking as a platform from which to explore the "Three Ps" of sex play: power, pain, and pleasure. Through these stories, the collection looks at what we give up -- and what we gain -- in pursuit of these things. The narrator in Elle McCaul's "Lucky" sums it up perfectly:
Pain blooms with each stripe of the belt. The sensation spreads throughout my body, radiating. Images before me seem clearer, as if suddenly the world has come into sharp focus: the smooth lines of the Cadillac, the rough gray gravel beneath my feet, the ruby red neon sign of TJ's. Pain is clarifying. James knows.
I hear it through the grapevine that Bussel will have a second spanking book, Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z 2, available in September 2005. All I know is that when I a copy of that one, I won't let it sit on my bookshelf. I'll crack the cover as soon as I get it, and then settle in for another hit of sexy spanking stories.
