I had to settle into my new role as Jenna’s “tender” – the man who tended to her needs around the clock. I was essentially an indentured servant. Richard had pointed out I was free to leave, but I had no money and no prospects for working in the only industry I’d ever known, hotels. Richard had gotten me fired from his by framing me. I was accused of having rented rooms off the books to fill my own pockets. I was innocent. But he had the clout to blackmail me into staying around, and blackball me from other employment, forever. 

I reluctantly stayed in this out of my concern for Jenna. She, however, didn’t seem to give a shit about me, although I was, if only in name, still her husband. I was not the father of her unborn child. That honor belonged to one of Richard’s employees overseas. 

Jenna was totally down with her own status as an expensive whore, helping secure business for Tony Ianelli, who shared control of her with Richard and owned our apartment building. Jenna paid the rent with her legs in the air. They weren’t paying her much – five years of not-extravagant contributions to a 401K, a fraction of what she sought to ensure she’d walk away with something when they tired of her. But she was living the high life and in it as much for the sex as the money or perks. She couldn’t get enough, from them and from Tony’s investors, and stayed like that into her second trimester of pregnancy. 

I hated my life. I felt helpless. I had been ejected from the master bedroom. I was dependent upon this unholy trinity for my living. I kept waiting for Jenna to come to her senses, to take me back, but she considered me nothing more than a roommate, and enjoyed humiliating me when it pleased Tony or Richard. It pleased them often. Richard had nearly made me suck him off, and I knew that day was coming.

And I’d seen that she’d nearly married him in Europe, and would have if he hadn’t dumped her for getting pregnant by another man. She even had a wedding dress.

I’d be a Mr. Mom for the baby after it was born, conveniently there to change diapers and babysit while Jenna played. I felt pity for the baby, but it wasn’t my child. 

I escaped the apartment whenever I could, when Jenna was out, when no one was there. A big step was starting to go out at night when Richard or Tony were there. They loved leaving the bedroom door open, to openly cuck me and mock me by making me watch while they had sex with my wife, by making me listen as they brought her to orgasm over and over. 

I still had a car. I needed wheels to run errands and shop groceries for them, and the company credit card they issued me put gas in the tank. I’d leave the apartment in the evening – no one stopped me, the sport of belittling me was getting old and they hardly noticed I was gone. I’d drive around, listening to the radio, or to music from my phone. 

I didn’t really have the money to spend in bars, and in truth I didn’t want to go to one. I knew that if I chanced to meet an attractive woman, I brought nothing to the table. Who would want me? And they’d be right. I’d be embarrassed to tell them about my life. Plus I was still married.

Sometimes I’d buy a six pack, and park on a quiet street and drink and listen to music and get lost in my thoughts.

At the last big party, with a Mardi Gras theme – where Tony had engineered a massive group scene including Jenna and three society matrons including her mother Lynn – most people had been wearing masks. One male guest had a Frank Sinatra mask. 

I’d never listened to Sinatra. I mean, he was just some right-wing friend of Ronald Reagan’s, whose mask another male guest wore. That was my grandparents’ music.

But I heard some Sinatra on the radio one night as I drank, and it caught my mood right, so I downloaded some Sinatra songs. The late-night, crying-in-your-beer, my-baby-done-left-me albums fit my mood perfectly, “In the Wee Small Hours” and “Only the Lonely”. 

“One for My Baby” became my theme song, and three beers into an evening sitting in my car, I’d punch it up. 

It didn’t take much to imagine that Frank was singing to me personally. That was his great gift: he made you believe songs, made you believe he meant them, and made you believe they were his words, each and every one. You forgot they were lyrics put down by a songwriter, maybe just learned by Frank that day before he stepped into the recording studio.

And as he sang to me, that and other songs, he seemed to be telling me this:

‘Mike, you’ve got to say goodbye to her. She isn’t coming back. Move on with your life. You aren’t the only guy to ever have his heart broken. But you can’t keep going on this way. Real men feel sad, real men feel pain, real men suffer. But a real man wouldn’t stay where you are. He’d make a move. Now, be a man. Make one.’

I realized Frank was right. I couldn’t do much, but no man is ever completely powerless. I did have the power to leave. I had to set about making it happen. 

First and foremost, I needed some money. They gave me a small allowance, but I was primarily dependent upon a company credit card. 

I started going to a gym. Jenna belonged to one and this didn’t attract too much attention. I lifted weights and took boxing lessons. Boxing in exercise gyms, as opposed to a boxing gym, is more for the timing, toning and endurance. They’re not really training you to fight. But I worked on both the light and heavy bags. As I built muscle I learned how to throw a punch and deliver it with force, how to set my feet, how to follow through.

Really, I don’t think the unholy trinity minded my being gone. Would you want the ex-husband – and that’s essentially what I was – hanging around all the time? They saw me making the best of my terrible life. They figured I’d accepted my lot. My being a happy camper was to their benefit. I kept up the act.

As my muscles hardened and shoulders widened, my old clothes didn’t fit right. So when I bought new ones, I upgraded. I positioned it with them like this: Going places as Jenna’s aide, I needed to fit in and look good in the types of places rich people went. Nice restaurants, fancy hotels and apartments, luxury shopping centers, expensive homes. Nothing flashy, but good clothes, well tailored, in dark colors, appropriate for ‘the help’ to wear. I tested the waters, put a few of those on credit cards, and didn’t hear about it. 

Richard liked expensive wines. I studied up on them and learned how to match the right one to the right dish. That pleased him. I got familiar with wines costing from $100 to $200 a bottle – expensive for most people, but just good mid-range stuff to a billionaire like Richard, nothing that would make him wonder whether his cuck was developing champagne tastes. It was what he expected to be served. There was a French Paulliac and an Italian Brunello di Montalcino he really enjoyed. 

I’d buy a few cases at a time from a big liquor store with a good selection, part of a national chain. Those hit my company credit card, and I didn’t hear about them either. 

I kept buying but also started returning both clothes and wines – and getting the refunds in cash. That was now mine. When I had $3000 I opened a bank account, using a small bank in another town, someplace the unholy trinity was unlikely to hear about it. I kept the ATM card stashed in my car, buried in a cubby with some clutter, where no one would find it. I thought about keeping it all in cash but it was too risky.

I refined my Richard-swindling rackets. I’d buy a case of the Paulliac and a couple of bottles of $35 Argentinian Malbec. Ten of the good bottles and the two Malbecs would end up on our wine rack. I’d sell two of the Paulliacs on EBay. The proceeds were deposited to my new bank account. Richard even liked the Malbec.

I bought baby gear, but it never made it to the apartment and Jenna never saw it. I returned that too.

I could pocket $1500 to $2000 every time I returned a suit. $1000 or more if I returned a case of fine wine. I was careful and didn’t rush things, and no one noticed. Richard’s accountants, charged with supervising his vast interests on multiple continents, didn’t think fine wines and expensive clothes were out of the ordinary in his sphere, and he wasn’t bothering to audit me himself. If he looked the accounts over, I was sporting nice suits and our big wine closet which he enjoyed regularly was full of good wine. The baby gear wouldn’t look particularly suspicious, although the high-end crib I returned cost almost a thousand dollars. 

So the money was accounted for – more or less. 

When I had $15,000 it was enough for the next step. I had been told I’d never work in the hotel industry again but figured I could get a job at a cheap motel someplace. They wouldn’t check references, I knew the business, and someone was always hiring. I would find something, get a place to live, and start thinking about my next move. 

I didn’t tell anyone. One morning when everyone was out, I packed a few bags – with my good new clothes, of course, but no mementos of my past life with Jenna – and hit the road, after taking care of a few things. 

I drove about a hundred miles and checked into a cheap hotel on the outskirts of a smallish city, one big enough to have some hotels. I chatted up the desk clerk – maybe I could end up working there – and went out in the evening. There was a not-too-expensive bar-restaurant nearby, and I both ate there and sat at the bar afterwards, chatting with people, and introducing myself. Plenty of people heard my name. 

I didn’t hear from Jenna or anyone else, until a couple of mornings later, when I got a call from Lynn, Jenna’s mom. 

“Mike? Have you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Richard’s dead!”

“What??!!”

“Oh my God! They think it was an accident! Jenna’s hysterical! Where ARE you?”

“I left her. I’m not coming back. I had enough.” I told her what town I was in, expressed the minimum amount of dismay civility required, but said little more. What could I say? The man had, along with Tony, wrecked my life and taken my wife. 

I hoped I’d faked shock convincingly. I wasn’t actually surprised to get the call.

The previous night, I’d socialized until midnight at the bar, drinking only ginger ale. I had a long drive ahead of me. This had to happen tonight. Without explanation of my departure, Richard, Tony and Jenna would delay acting for a few days, in case I came back. But once they believed I was gone for good, they’d change the locks. I needed to get this done first.

Leaving the bar-restaurant, I checked back into the hotel, after parking my car in a strip center lot a few hundred yards away. 

I slipped out of my room shortly thereafter, avoiding the elevator and the front lobby by using the stairs and a little-used exit I’d ascertained didn’t have a security camera. I left my cell phone behind.

I went to my car and made it back to our hometown in just under an hour. It was a hundred miles but both towns were on the interstate. Both my hotel and my old apartment building were near exits, it was late at night, I drove through the middle of nowhere and no one was clocking speeders. And speed I did. My car was nothing special but a decent late-model sedan can easily do over a hundred miles an hour.

I parked away from the apartment building where I knew my slut wife lay sleeping with Richard. He and Tony had a schedule for who spent which nights with Jenna. Tonight was Richard’s turn.

I let myself in through a back door – my pass key still worked – and climbed up the back stairs to the eighth-floor penthouse I used to share with my tormentors. I knew the outdoor security camera wouldn’t capture me because I’d disabled it a couple of days before and doubted it had been fixed yet. And the staircase had a light switch. I killed the lights and climbed up in the dark, feeling my way along. I knew how many steps were on each flight – sixteen.

The security camera outside the penthouse door also just happened to be malfunctioning. There would be no trace of my letting myself in with my key. 

I slipped silently into the apartment. I was wearing dark clothes, a ski mask and latex gloves. I wouldn’t be identified should my image be captured by a camera, but really, I needed Richard’s impending death to look like an accident.

I knew Richard was a light sleeper, Jenna a legendarily heavy one, the more so now that she was pregnant. I opened the sliding glass doors from the living room to the balcony, then took one of Richard’s expensive wines out of its rack. In the kitchen, I quietly uncorked it and set a glass next to it. I rustled around outside the bedroom door, then retreated toward the kitchen.

“Who’s there?” Richard said as he stepped out of the bedroom in his black Speedo underwear. He deserved to die just for those, if not for wrecking my life. He shut the door behind him as I assumed he would, so as not to disturb Jenna. He flicked on a light and came out toward the kitchen. 

He never saw my one-two coming. I stepped out from behind the wall after he’d passed me. I hit him with a left hook to his temple to stun him, whirled him around and then poured all my anger, frustration and hate into a single right jab to the chin. I’m no Mike Tyson but that punch was on the money and he went out like a light. I caught him and let him down gently so Jenna wouldn’t wake.

I took the wine glass in my gloved hands and rolled it across his outstretched hand to get his fingerprints on it, then set it back on the counter. I poured some wine in it, about half a glass. 

I took the bottle and tipped it to his lips. Still unconscious he gurgled and almost choked but swallowed a mouthful or two. Enough, I thought, in case there’s an autopsy. He started to come to. I had to hurry. I sprinkled some of the rest of it on him. I had spilled a little on the floor, so I took a paper towel, cleaned it up and put the towel in my pocket. 

I’d been dead-lifting 300 pounds and Richard, taller than me though he was, weighed around 200. I hoisted him up and carried his comatose body past the sliding glass doors onto the balcony. I heaved Richard over the railing and one torment was gone from my life. I didn’t bother to look. I knew it was straight down, eight stories, to the poolside patio. It would be a few moments before someone hearing it turned on lights to investigate, but I wanted to be well away from the balcony when that happened.

I heard the thud; it wasn’t loud enough to wake Jenna. I gave a last look around to think how I wanted the scene to look, and decided to leave the kitchen light on. Richard would have turned it on to get the wine, and never have turned it off. 

I thought about peeking in on Jenna, one last glimpse, one last memory, but the door was closed and better sense prevailed. Why risk opening it and waking her? I turned away from her, forever.

I realized the corkscrew might not have had Richard’s fingerprints on it, so I put it away, set the cork by the bottle, and hoped the wine bottle would be written off as “previously opened”. Jenna probably wouldn’t remember otherwise. She wasn’t drinking nowadays because she was pregnant.

I slipped out the door, down the stairs and out the back the way I came in. I got into my car and hit the road. When I pulled onto the Interstate I rolled down the window and tossed out the paper towel with Richard’s wine stains and the latex gloves with his DNA on them. 

An hour later, having burned rubber all the way, I was back at my hotel, my car again parked by the strip center. I entered the way I left – I’d propped open the back door with a rock and no one had discovered it – and was back in my room 2 hours and 23 minutes after I’d left. I picked up my cell phone and clicked around enough to leave an electronic trail placing me here, a hundred miles from the apartment building, an hour after Richard’s untimely death.

Driving back, I realized I’d changed. Yes, I was now a killer. (And a litterbug.) But it went beyond that. As I thought of Jenna, of the life I was leaving behind, I no longer found arousing the idea of her cuckolding me, of watching her with other men. I’d killed Richard, and in so doing I’d also killed my pathetic kink. And what feelings I’d ever had for my wife were vanishing.

I had an alibi. The hotel lobby cameras had seen me enter, never leave and reemerge in the morning. The parking lot cameras wouldn’t show my car’s late-night comings or goings. I had numerous acquaintances at the bar who could place me there the previous evening. I’d drunk ginger ale instead of club soda because it would stick out more in the bartender’s memory; not that many people order ginger ale. My cell phone, should any investigation get that far, would suggest I’d been in my hotel room all night. And Lynn’s call reached me there in the morning. No cameras or other electronic signature placed me at the apartment. 

I worried. I could see the holes in my own story. As an estranged spouse I was certainly a suspect. I had money in a bank account while not having a job. And my alibi wasn’t the strongest, having been supposedly alone in the hotel room when Richard fell to his death. Would some security camera somewhere show me? 

I never heard from the police. Richard’s death seemed accidental, a drunken fall. Any marks from my punches were subsumed by the damage done when he hit the pavement. The drunken-fall story held. I’d worried about that too, but remembered Richard typically drank a fair amount before he went to bed with Jenna. That must have raised his blood alcohol level enough to support an accidental death finding. 

What really happened, I figured, was Lynn used her influence to quash the investigation. There were too many important people – her, her husband Jeff, the governor, the governor’s wife, numerous legislators, and even a pro football player – who I’d seen debauching themselves in that very apartment at the wild and masked Mardi Gras party. They couldn’t afford the scandal an investigation into Richard and Jenna’s – and then Tony’s – lifestyle might bring. 

Richard’s death was officially declared accidental just two days later. News coverage was terse and quickly subsided. He was a billionaire, but an English one far from home. Other than his pregnant girlfriend there weren’t too many local connections to build on.

I had told Lynn, when she called me, that I was done with Jenna. I had had a crush on Lynn herself for years, but now that she too was one of Tony’s sexual creatures, lent out to other men like her daughter, my ardor had cooled. She’d been kinder to me than Jenna of late, but I was moving on. My heart felt strangely lighter.

I never heard from Jenna or Tony. A business story I found online weeks later said Richard’s death had put a major crimp in Tony’s business, and he had had to drop his plans, which Richard had backed, to become a major global developer. 

I would have loved to have gotten even with Tony as well, but knew I couldn’t pull this off twice, and I just let it be. Tony and Jenna would have to work out their weird story themselves. 

I reflected upon my having singled out Richard for revenge. Tony had been more instrumental in my downfall, in stealing and corrupting Jenna, in holding me financially a prisoner. But Richard thought his money could buy anything. He’d tried to steal Jenna from everyone who loved her, then kept her penned up like a harem creature once he had. He wanted to marry her when she was already married to me. He seemed to take even more pleasure in humiliating me than Tony did.  

And in some ways I took less of a risk. Richard was far wealthier and more powerful than Tony, but Tony was powerful here, in this town. He owned the building, had powerful local investors, and got them laid. In some ways he was a more dangerous enemy on this turf than Richard, who was far from home. 

I wondered how Jenna’s pregnancy went, and was curious whether she was still able to or even wanted to play the expensive whore for Tony once she was a mom – and without free permanent childcare from yours truly. But I didn’t wonder too hard. It wasn’t my baby. And Jenna’s parents were rich. That baby would lack for nothing.

Not my circus, not my monkeys. 

I cut up the company credit card. I needed them to forget about me.

I filed for divorce from Jenna and a few months later it was final. I wrote a thoughtful card to Lynn and Jeff saying goodbye and thanking them for various kindnesses they’d shown me. I figured I would send them the occasional Christmas card.

I was a free man and felt better than I had in eons. 

Meanwhile, I found a job at another hotel – not the one i stayed at initially. I now wanted them to forget about me too.  

The virus lockdown that had put Jenna and I in financial straits, leading us into Tony’s clutches, now worked to my benefit. The hotel was short-handed, desperate for good employees, and didn’t look too hard at my lack of references once I’d impressed them with my knowledge of the business. 

I think my interviewer, a woman, was impressed by my candor when I told her I’d been framed in a theft because the owner was sleeping with my wife, who I was now divorcing. She knew that wasn’t the kind of thing a guy would make up. 

Within six months I was the night manager. I started studying days toward a hotel administration degree. 

I had found a place to live, a tidy little apartment in a quiet neighborhood. 

I still listen to Sinatra, but less to the late-night sad stuff. I listen to more upbeat songs now. Come fly with me! Still, once in a while, after a few beers, I’ll hear “Willow Weep for Me” and think wistful thoughts. 

I continued to hang out at that bar-restaurant, and started dating a nice gal, a second-grade teacher I’d met there one night when she was out with a couple of co-workers after a PTA meeting. 

We’re good together, including in bed. She comes hard, particularly when I go down on her or she’s on top, and I love the way she looks at me in wonder when she does. She tells me I’m her big strong man. I still go to the gym. She’ll be a great mom. We’re engaged now and plan to start making babies soon.

Lisa knows I was divorced after an unhappy marriage to a wealthy girl who cheated on me.  Although not a looker like Jenna, she’s pretty, and I’m happy to have her on my arm. 

She really loves me. And I really love her back. When I proposed to her, I told her how much she sent me and how I’d do anything to keep her. I’ve let her know that after my previous experience, I’m on the jealous side, and she’s said that’s fine. She wants a man who loves her enough to be jealous. 

I never show her anger, which I’d learned to bottle up while submitting to the unholy trinity. And I treat her gently. But if another man ever touches her, I’ll kill him. And make it look like an accident. She doesn’t need to know about that part. Actually, it would probably be enough, and far less risk, just to deck him. I still box. He’d get the message. 

I am a changed man. People’s sexual kinks are very private. If some man is turned on watching his wife with another man, I won’t judge him. I’ve been there and don’t want to be judged myself. But it went way too far. A couple arranging some kink to their mutual satisfaction is one thing. A man’s being endlessly humiliated by a woman who no longer loves him, and by the men pimping her out, who keep him in indentured servitude, is another entirely. And it doesn’t matter how gorgeous she is.

I realize Jenna was way over my head, and she realized it too once she saw how wealthy and powerful men craved her. I’d gotten lucky with her originally but couldn’t hold her. It just wasn’t meant to be. It’s the way of the world. I am better off now.

I stayed in the situation, as it got worse and worse, because I was too weak to leave. Finding the strength to do what I had to do – to lie, steal, and cheat – to free myself gave me a different outlook on life. I’m more confident. I’m more positive. I respect people who make their way in life, and now count myself among them.

Did I have to kill to free myself? I certainly needed to for my self-respect, but beyond that Richard had the power to track me down, keep me unemployed and ultimately force me back into indentured servitude. I didn’t fear Tony’s reach or desire to do so nearly as much. Killing Richard was what really set me free. The industry blackball died with him.

I had waited too long for Richard and Tony to show some compassion, but they never did, just pushing my nose further into the dirt. And of course Jenna didn’t love me anymore. Why would she? What kind of man was I? 

I realized my fate is my own problem. It’s not someone else’s, and their fate likewise isn’t mine. We’re responsible to each other but only to a point. Most of life is necessarily about getting through life and no one else does that for you.  

Oh, and I quit reading the New York Times. I get the Wall Street Journal now.

Life looks better. And I did it my way. Frank would have understood.

I recently posted my thousandth Amazon erotica review, a tribute to enjoyably misspent years. Coming up with a hottest list is, uh, hard. I originally aimed for 30, then couldn’t resist adding a few more. Hence 34.  

We’re living in a golden age of porn literature. It used to be hard to find or kept under the counter. There were important titles you heard about by word of mouth like “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” or “Candy”. You could find the occasional Victorian works like “A Man With a Maid”, invariably by Anonymous, or taboo foreign titles like “The Story of O.” There were trashy pulp novels for the downscale market. There were 1960s-era spy spoofs like “The Man from O.R.G.Y.” or “The Lady from L.U.S.T.” But what you found was hit or miss, when you could find it at all, and what was available might not be your cup of tea.

Now you can effortlessly search your exact tastes. Do you like hotwife stories? Ones with a harder cuck angle? Gay porn? Manga? Futa? Other Japanese terms which also mystify me? MILFs? Coming of age stories? It’s all out there and you can find it in about ten seconds. It’s easy to buy more titles by authors you like. You can even email them directly. Some of them will write private stories to spec. One kindly gave a character a certain name because I requested it.

On the word “erotica”, I regard it as synonymous with “pornography” and use the two interchangeably. The latter once upon a time applied to books as well as images. As it became stigmatized a new term was required to accommodate the millions of women who jilled off to “Fifty Shades of Gray” but saw that as somehow very different from men jacking off to Playboy or Jenna Jameson, because the latter involve Exploitation and Objectification and blah blah blah.

Sugar, what you get off to is porn too, so own it. (“Smut” also works but I like forcing the pornography question.)

I’ll list the book, or the series, because any work making this list deserves to be read in its entirety. But what’s getting them here is the heat each successfully generates at The Good Parts, and I’ll try to indicate where those Good Parts are.

Some notes:

–I like virtually everything Matthew Lee and Kirsten McCurran write, and most of what Kenny Wright, Arnica Butler, Max Sebastian, Ben Boswell, Jason Lenov, CK Ralston, and KT Morrison write. Selena Kitt has different categories, some very definitely my cups of tea and others not. I couldn’t include all their works on this list and had to choose. There are also deserving authors that didn’t make this list, and my apologies for that. No slights intended and a lot of what they write is hot. I’m thinking of Parker Pascal, Mia Moore, Lexi Archer, Thomas Roberts, CC Morian, Blaise Quin, Roslyn Hetrick, Randi Sinclaire, Jewel Geffen, Mimi Wilde, Jamie Hunter, Alex Hathaway, G.K. Grayson, plus the 12 Days of Lustmas gang, and a few others. Jack Spender’s out of print Professor Spender novels are sensational, but more for the historical and classical background he brings to his stories. I almost made one of Spender’s #35 here, but the sex scenes are more ridiculous than hot. (I have a theory that Jack Spender was the pseudonym for a famous author whose style, background and outlook were quite similar. Both had the right stuff.)

–The heat of the good parts is intensified by good writing, not just of the sex scenes but overall. I’ve confirmed this in rereadings of these books. Many grabbed me the first time for the sex scenes, which is what made me return to them, and it was then that I noticed that, oh, yeah, they were well-done stories too, and hotter for it.  

–A number of the books written by Wright, McCurran, Butler, Sebastian and Boswell take place in fictional suburban Kingston. The stories involve various couples and characters whose lives enjoyably interlink, as the writers riff off and cross-promote each other’s characters. The trainer/bartender AJ shows up as a bull in three different series, and various characters run into or hear about each other: Erin and Tom in “Training to Love It”, Max and Katie in “Something Forbidden”, Meg and Mal in “Parallel Lines”, Dave and Dana in “Hot Dates” all come to mind, and I think there are more. The writers seem to have gotten away from it of late but I enjoyed looking for the connection Easter eggs.

–Different people like different things, obviously. I like stories about marriages more than coming-of-age ones, although the latter in the right hands (like Selena Kitt’s) can be scorching. I like to read about straight sex (and, of course, girl-girl) but as I get more jaded don’t mind occasional male gay experimentation for shock or kink. I don’t care about werewolves or vampires or the various Japanese categories noted above. I rarely get into sci-fi scenarios. I like hotwife, size queen, swinger and MILF stories. I like bridal, bachelorette party and wives-gone-wild scenarios. While I don’t mind cuck aspects, I’m not fixated on it, don’t care for the humiliation angle, and enjoy it when authors let the noble and self-sacrificing husbands get some and thus become less pathetic. It’s hard to identify with a guy in a cock cage. As a guy I like visuals, and I like sex scenes that are lengthy, imaginative, graphic, lewd and lascivious. You want to see it, hear it, smell it and taste it. It’s pornography; let’s wallow in it.

–I used to distinguish more between male and female writers but no longer bother. Female writers can write stories male readers will find every bit as hot, if they’re writing with them in mind. And male writers can write convincingly from a female POV. What audience is being written for still matters. Male readers desire a higher ratio of sex to agonizing about it, while female readers may require lengthy processing for realism in their own minds. Books targeting women readers may focus more on building underlying eroticism and less on the nookie itself and be disappointingly (to me) perfunctory in the horizontal play by play. Or they may follow romance novel formulas, featuring the plucky girl making her way in life who stands up against adversity while landing the bad boy whose good side only she can see and whom she succeeds in taming. Except in bed, where he remains delightfully wild. (I actually think this formula is as important in modern literature as the hero’s journey, as detailed by Joseph Campbell, is.) Romances marketed to teenagers by the 1980s and 1990s had as much sex in them as books confined to bookstores’ adults-only section 20 years earlier. But male readers may not find anyone in these they can identify with, neither the plucky heroine nor Bad Boy Biker Billy nor Billionaire Brandon.

So here’s the list, in no particular order. (I was rereading #33 by Lenov today.) Lock the door, lower the blinds, get comfortable and enjoy.

1. Matthew Lee, “Plundered Treasure”, two books. Jill is a prosecutor. Her and husband John’s adventures begin when their house is broken into by Big Ben, a man she once put in prison. The sexual tension between a female prosecutor who puts bad guys away and a bad boy who thinks he was imprisoned unjustly becomes intense. John meanwhile starts exploring what makes her tick sexually, and discovers her porn tastes: well hung, aggressive guys (he’s neither) and women who get off on being used as sex toys, quite a contrast with Jill’s strong and independent professional persona. He then contrives for her to meet Scott, who’s tattooed, ripped, hung, and one of her favorite porn actors. The hottest scenes, mostly in the first book, are those with Ben – three, I think, including the couple meeting with him at a resort so that he can spend a weekend wrecking her. Strong runners-up are those with Scott, including their evening meeting him at the Bellagio in Las Vegas (the city where a lot of Lee’s novels take place) when he becomes the first man Jill enjoys outside her marriage, plus a wild rooftop party Scott takes them to featuring uninhibited porn actors, and then Jill, on some Ecstasy-like drug. She gets her first, but not last, taste of BBC.
2. Kirsten McCurran, “Domestic Bliss”. Gary starts staying home with the kids while ambitious lawyer wife Alexandra supports the family. Gary hangs out during the day with their friend Maggie, who shows him the ropes on kids and homemaking, while Alexandra starts meeting Maggie’s husband Adam for drinks after work. Sparks fly on both sides – between the two laid-back house spouses, who have many moments alone while toddlers play or nap, and the two Type A breadwinners. It comes out in the open one night in an alcohol-drenched adult card game in the backyard after the kids are all asleep, and then again when the two couples go for a weekend in Atlantic City for a deliberate swap. The pool party and the hotel swap are both very hot. McCurran does a great job rotating the point of view evenly around all four characters, of showing us their personality differences, and of letting that drive the sex. Gary is nervous and a little insecure, but absolutely delighted his humdrum domestic life now features this daily flirtation. And he services Maggie like a stallion when he gets the chance. Maggie is nurturing, more passive and a traditional mom – and a little bi-curious. Alexandra is competitive and an exhibitionist, which makes her good both in the courtroom and in a swap with the other couple present. Adam is a regular-guy jock, but enjoys discovering a cuck voyeur streak in himself as he watches his wife Maggie with Gary.
3. Ben Boswell and Kenny Wright, “Parallel Lines”, two-book series. Meg and Mal decide to experiment and give each other permission to wander. Meg, a lawyer, has the hots for a hunky younger associate, David, who’s her subordinate. A trip to LA to represent a client gives her an opportunity to go for it. Mal, a yoga teacher, swings with a twenty-something yoga student, Elena. To my taste the hottest stuff is near the end of the first book, Meg’s first tumbles with David in a Los Angeles hotel and a quickie in a restaurant rest room, and then the two clubbing with the Lohanesque, lifestyle-wreck of a pop star they’re getting out of legal hot water in LA. She lives up to her decadent reputation. David for his part shows Meg that out here, away from their office, she’s not the boss – he is. A strong second place goes to Mal’s threesome with Elena and her friend Zoe when they show up unexpectedly, high and in slutty party dresses on their way to a club, one night. Shhh! Don’t wake the kids! On recent rereads I’ve seen how strong and hot the entire series is, not just the good parts. The two affairs have very different flavors to them, as Meg, addicted to the sex, has trouble keeping David in his place professionally, and as Elena, behind her brash millennial persona, starts to really fall for the already-married Mal.
4. Selena Kitt, “Babysitting the Baumgartners”. Kitt wrote an entire series following the sex adventures of Doc and Carrie Baumgartner dating back to their meeting in college, their marriage and first experiences including others in medical school, and then fast forwarding to their being 30-somethings with a couple of kids. They like unicorn young ladies available for threesomes, with Doc getting some strange and Carrie some girl-girl, each enjoying watching the other as well. In “Babysitting the Baumgardners”, they take their babysitter Veronica to their Key West beach place as an au pair – and more. Later as the kids grow up, Kitt shows their sexual coming of age, and what part Ronnie plays in that. Plus their own adult lives, particularly Janie’s, as she follows in her parents’ kinky footsteps, first as a third for Ronnie and her husband, then later her own husband’s indulging of her kinks. I enjoyed them all, but probably this story the most, as Doc and Carrie seduce the barely legal Ronnie, introduce her to their polyamorous marriage and to all kinds of sensually rendered sex. All the sex scenes here are hot; I can hardly single one out. You can smell the tanning oil on Carrie’s golden body.
5. Lee, “Jennifer Roams”, two books. Jennifer and Mark get together in college, realizing early on she’s a size queen with a thing for older guys, and that he likes that. The hottest stuff for me was in the second book. They honeymoon in France, with sexual adventures focusing on Ansell, an aging French porn star legendary for his gigantic unit. He’s like Ron Jeremy (popular with the ladies and in the business without being a hunk) with French manners and hung like John Holmes. After their return to the states, there’s a breeding thing involving Mark’s boss Patrick, and with the delightful enablement of Jennifer’s slutty and budding-hotwife little sister Tina. And an epilogue, years later, involving Ricky, an older French guy in a hot tub at a hotel. I like it all, from the clit-stimulating jewelry Mark buys for Jennifer in France, to her despoilment in a tattoo-and-piercing shop, to Ansell’s sharing her with some of his veteran porn star buddies, to her performance with Patrick in a live sex show, to . . . .
6. McCurran, “Carol’s Trinity”, five books. Sexual fulfillment eluded Carol in her first marriage but she’s found it with John in her second one. He surprises her on her 40th birthday with a special birthday gift bonus: three hunky young construction workers who recently got under Carol’s skin while around the house remodeling her kitchen. This begins a period where she keeps all three as lovers, sharing the details or video later with John. She sees Mateo and Noah together, as they tag-team her, and the quiet but huge and masculine Marine veteran Conner, who has a real crush on her, separately. There’s a subplot involving the stripper Lila, a character reprised from McCurran’s “Kayla Captivated”. There’s all kinds of heat in this series. The first book’s gangbang, of course, but also all of her subsequent scenes with the boys: Noah  and Mateo taking her to the strip joint where she meets Lila, sparks flying there – the private dancing scene is awesome – and then to a motel. Conner’s various visits to her, including one where they do it in a deserted examination room at the hospital where Carol’s a night shift nurse. A hotel room reprise for the couple with the three guys, this night rougher and more BDSM than the first. And Carol’s entanglement with Lila, her nights at Lila’s strip joint plus a memorable but disturbing group scene as Carol realizes she no longer has limits while her husband, disturbed by it but addicted to the videos of her misbehavior, enables her. Meanwhile her affair with the three guys has run its course, and her marriage is shaky. There’s memorable heat in each of the five books.
7. Wright, “Just Watch Me”. This is a novel with a short story “Rediscovering Danielle” as prelude or prequel or something. Dean and Dani go to Hawaii, him for business and her for pleasure, and are just beginning to explore sexual possibilities following what happened in the short story. Dani flirts with the Hawaiian stud Sandy in a bar one night, only for Dean to realize said stud is also the client he came to meet, and that Sandy’s business, of which he was not previously aware, is making porn. Sandy doesn’t know Dani is Dean’s wife. They attempt to keep Sandy in the dark as each’s relationship with him deepens. Dani plays the single gal looking for a holiday fling, while Dean, establishing a business relationship with him, is invited to stay at Sandy’s house in the spirit of expansive Hawaiian sharing. That gives him the chance to spy on his wife when she starts getting it on with Sandy. Hottest scenes include one where he spies on the two from the upstairs balcony, and their foursome one night when Dani and Sandy get it on while Dean watches them as he himself pairs off with Avery, Sandy’s fellow porn actress.
8. Wright, “Training to Love It”, three books. Erin sticks her toe into hotwifing through the good offices of bull AJ, her personal trainer as she prepares for her first triathlon. Hot scenes here include her first weekend away with AJ at the triathlon in the first book; a variety of tumbles with him, mostly in the second book, often after workouts, as their thing ripens; a threesome with him and a famous athlete at the end of the second of the book; Tom and Erin’s involvement with neighbors Lucas and Haley, following a night-out-for-parents birthday party, also in the second book; and a lot of the third book. The finale introduces Erin’s wild friend Jo visiting from out of town, with Tom having a turn at some extramarital pleasure, plus a nasty plot complication. The group scene at the end, where the bad guy gets his comeuppance, is memorable. AJ figures as a major character also in Wright’s “Something Forbidden/Nothing Forbidden” pair of stories, and is mentioned offstage in McCurran’s “Hot Dates” trilogy. AJ is an appealing kind of bull – a hunky boytoy, good with training, no intellectual. He’s a master at seducing married women he comes across and drawing out their inner sluts, but has no interest in emotional involvement or breaking up anyone’s marriage. He’s an uncomplicated, guy’s guy, Jersey bro.
9. McCurran, “Hot Dates”, three books. Dana and Dave, a construction company owner, explore hotwifing. As Dave’s a real man and wants to keep his cuck streak private, Dana uses false names when she’s out and pretends to be cheating or single. The action gets progressively hotter over the course of three books. All the sex scenes are good. Dana’s first time, with the younger Zach she meets in a bar and adding his roommate for a threesome merely because he’s there, is delicious. Dave is frustrated by his lack of access to her exploits. Her surreptitious video attempts sometimes fail. So in the second book Dave buys a duplex as an investment, and wires one side extensively with cameras for Dana to use as her fuckpad. Notable scenes: Her breaking in of the place, with the young waiter Travis. Her first scene with the tough cop Carlos in a hotel following a date, also in the second book. Her foursome (very hot) with him and two friends after a wild night of clubbing and drugs. Her night out with friend Jana, who’s curious and envious about Dana’s lifestyle. They pick up three guys and Dana, getting spit-roasted on an office conference table late one night, shows Jana just what her life entails now. Her final scene with Carlos, where he takes her to a sex club and turns her out, while Dave and Jana sneak in to watch. The epilogue with Dave, Jana and Dana is hot as well. The series navigates the ups and downs of Dave and Dana’s exploration. He encourages her to be a slut but sometimes lashes out at her for it. And he seems to her too focused on it to the exclusion of their own relationship. She resents all this and sometimes uses her encounters to get revenge, by not sharing them with him.
10. Boswell, “Annual Leave”. Heather, burned out from caring for children, is sent alone by her considerate husband to a tropical resort for a long weekend. She’s just planning on sunshine, umbrella drinks and beach reads, but almost immediately meets Damon, a black architect. He puts the moves on her, gently so she’s not frightened away, but she in any case caves quickly and magnificently. She discovers the joys of BBC while worrying how this will affect her marriage. The dialogue between the square white Soccer Mom, as he calls her (‘Heather’ sounding too white for him) and this hip playa from Atlanta is very good, particularly as they get to know each other and Heather’s confidence grows. And every microsecond of their odd-couple sex is hot.
11. Boswell, “Midlife Glitch”. Just like in “Annual Leave”, a spouse commits a particularly torrid form of adultery while struggling with the implications. And this one borders on taboo. Fifty-something Dan and wife Joanne host an out-of-town friend’s daughter while she works a summer internship. A family emergency calls Joanne away. That leaves Dan at home alone with the barely legal Ashley. He tries his hardest to walk the line. But when he picks her up drunk from a party one night she comes on to him, and although he resists initially she crawls into bed with him later that night and he no longer can. Turns out she thinks the graying middle-aged guy a far better lover than the fumbling teenage boys comprising her previous sexual experience. And while he recognizes he’s committing a major sin here, he tries to help her – to educate her about men, lovemaking, how it’s not like porn and how not to sell herself short. As I liked Boswell’s across-racial-lines handling of a hip black professional from Atlanta and a square white mom from Dayton in “Annual Leave”, I like his across-the-generations thing here. His resolutions of the two stories are different. Dan is getting it on with a girl about a third his age, younger than his own grown kids. His own senses of fidelity, guilt, propriety and chivalry are confronted by her younger, very different take on all of those. And Boswell gives a fine account of a guy of reasonable character, grappling with temptation any man would find searing. There’s no hall pass waiting for him on the other side. It’s all hot. 
12. Max Sebastian, “Rock Her World.” Kat, in her thirties and happily married, was in her early twenties a guitarist in a girl band that toured and even had a hit song. The Ponytails lived the wild life: sex, drugs and rock and roll. She’s put it all behind her and settled down happily with Julian. One day bandleader Josie shows up. They’ve been asked to reprise their hit song for a Hollywood movie. (The one made in “She’s a Star!”, see below.) Kat is in, once she learns Julian is supportive. He secretly loves the prospect of her returning to her wild-girl days. Kat confesses that performing in front of big crowds made her so horny she invariably sought relief after, or even during shows, and that the sexual charge of it all not only drove her to be a better musician but became essential for her performance. After the movie gig, Josie revives the band to go on tour once more. Once they gather in Los Angeles to rehearse, Kat starts flirting with their tour partner band’s young drummer. She’s enabled, in her pursuit of things, by keyboardist Renee, who lives vicariously through Kat’s exploits. Julian finds the notion of his wife returning to her scandalous rock star life intoxicating. Thousands want her but he’s got her. Hot scenes include Josie cucking her own husband by getting it on with a bodyguard in front of Julian and Kat as a visual aid of what this will all be about. Kat and Renee doing some girl-girl (within the ground rules laid down by Renee’s possessive husband) for Julian’s video-chat visual pleasure. Renee’s keeping him company one night when Kat finally goes off to do the deed with drummer Daryl, and Renee’s participation in Julian’s reclaiming of Kat. Kat’s doing of said deed with Daryl. And Kat’s threesome with him and Julian just before the tour embarks and Julian must say goodbye.
13. Sebastian, “She’s a Star!” Hayley, an aspiring actress, gets a break when she’s willing to do a role involving hot sex scenes with a top actor. Another actress backed out because it was too explicit. As publicity will be helped by the buzz about her and co-star Aaron, an A-lister, she and David fake an estrangement to pave the way for her highly publicized romance with Aaron. David is all on board, particularly if he can get audio or video of it. There’s a strong supporting role for Liona, Hayley’s agent, who babysits David at key points, has a scorching threesome with Hayley and Aaron one night, and then some private time with David at Hayley’s request. It assuages Hayley’s own guilt and allows her to experience the other side of a spouse swinging. David joining Hayley and Aaron for a threesome is hot as well.
14. Wright, “Something Forbidden”, two books. Club owner Max and his proper CPA wife Katie embark down the hotwife path. Max’s curiosity is piqued by a couple at his bar one night, the recklessly flirtatious Chloe and her husband Greg. After Chloe leaves for a date, Greg hints to Max what their life is about. Max and Katie’s relationship with Chloe and Gregg takes off, then crashes, nearly destroying Max and Katie’s marriage in the process. Katie’s own curiosity is whetted by her chance encounter in New York with AJ. AJ subsequently moves to Washington (of which I believe previously mentioned Kingston is a fictional suburb; one of the authors let that slip). Max hires him as a bartender and Katie checks him out for “personal training”. There’s also a subplot involving Max’s assistant manager Nadia and her husband John, a professional colleague of Katie’s. Nadia and John have an open relationship and she serves as a sounding board for Max. There are lots of great scenes in the two books: Two torrid nights with Greg and Chloe, one in a hotel and one in a limousine, as Max teeters between participating versus just watching. His dalliance with Nadia. Katie’s seduction of a client in his office. Her subsequent tumbles with AJ, one in the gym where he works and later in a Virginia motel room, preceded by road head in AJ’s muscle car. Katie’s reenactment of it later with Max. An evening where Katie and Max swap with Nadia and John. And the big finale, no spoilers here. The whole blow-up with Chloe and Greg has always been a little unclear to me – who knew and did what when and who lied to whom – but as Wright’s style is subtle and he gives us emotionally complex situations, I’m assuming it’s all in there and the fault is my own for missing it.
15. Arnica Butler, “Zoe’s Flame”, three books. Zoe and Josh’s hotwifing is triggered by her chance encounter with Randy, the father of her high school boyfriend from a decade ago. She always liked Randy, and learns he always had the hots for her – and now he’s divorced. He’s a wealthy, sophisticated psychiatrist and his initial approach is touchy-feely sensitive I-care-about-you-and-your-marriage, but we all know what he’s after. Her sex scenes with him are torrid. He’s got a kinky dom streak which brings out her submissive one each time he wrecks her. His controlling nature becomes too much. Zoe realizes she’s getting addicted to sex with him. Her marriage is being affected and that creates the tension driving the plot across three stories.
16. Butler, “Introducing April”, three books. Thomas and April vacation with her wild friend Lilith and a boyfriend. They get caught up in the swirl of Lilith’s high life – and her schemes to both corrupt April and feed the latent cuck streak Lilith senses in Thomas. Back home, April finally goes all the way with Jonny, a handsome bull and regular in Lilith’s world, which we never fully understand but has something to do with arranging sexual scenarios for wealthy customers for a lot of money. She’s sort of a madam for fantasies. In the second book, Lilith talks April into making a private porn film following the twisted fantasies of a customer about his own wife – whom April resembles. April takes her job seriously; it involves showing up to work on time for days on end to get banged by Jonny and another stud, Rog. And learning her lines! In the third book, Lilith lines up another commission, this one involving a live show for the same customer. Thomas, a blue-collar guy suddenly thrust into Lilith’s champagne-and-cocaine world with his wife writhing deliciously in the middle, struggles and agonizes through it all. The heat is driven high by the contrast between April’s previous innocence and present depravity. Thomas doesn’t know who she is anymore. Is she doing this for the money? Or does she really need it now? And that’s half the fun. 
17. Sean Geist, “The Things We Do For Lust”, three novels plus a short-story epilogue. Searing hot, as Robin’s affair with Scott becomes a real threat to her marriage with Peter. It goes way beyond play-act cuckolding or occasional nights with a bull. The couple first meets Scott in a Las Vegas casino while Peter is there for a veterinary conference. Robin, along for the ride, has time to kill while he’s in session. She cheats with Scott and there are consequences. Peter’s anger is softened by his voyeur/cuckold enjoyment of it and everyone framing it as a hotwife thing. He isn’t expecting, though, for Scott to pitch a business opportunity to Robin, or for her to take it: managing a new gym the wealthy Scott is opening, moving two hours away to do it, and then moving in with Scott. There are hot scenes when Peter watches or participates with the two, but Robin’s straying ever further from her marriage toward a lover she has growing feelings for pushes Peter towards divorce. The darkness drives the sexual tension. When Robin, on a visit home, tries to reconnect by seducing him in the hot tub, his enjoyment is simultaneously heightened and darkened by his sense of how much bolder and sluttier she’s become, and why. He meanwhile has two flings of his own, one with a kinky veterinarian in an open marriage whom he meets at his convention and who guides him in the lifestyle; and another with a barmaid as he’s separating from Robin. Scott makes no bones about wanting to take Robin away from him. Male readers will want Scott six feet under – it’s set in the Southwest and all those “Breaking Bad” bodies-buried-in-the-desert scenes flashed through my mind – and it adds to the tension and heat. I liked this for the realism: that opening sexual doors in marriage can have major consequences. Be careful what you lust for. An epilogue short story involving a threesome has a ton of hot and varied sex despite its brevity. 
18. Kitt, “Under Mr. Nolan’s Bed”. Kitt revisited this story several times. She rewrote it not once but twice to avoid censorship for its incest angle, and then moved the story back in time and expanded it to three stories to incorporate 1950s-era Catholic Church scandals. (No, not THAT scandal. A different one.) And to put the girls in poodle skirts. My review is of the single-story contemporary version, which is hotter and more focused. Just-turned-18 Leah mostly hangs out at her best friend Erica’s house, sleeping over and spending weekends frequently. Erica’s mother died a few years back and the girl’s being raised by her stepdad (dad in the original version) Rob. (The back story, Leah’s own family situation, and the ending changes with each rewrite.) Erica shows Leah the porn she’s discovered under her dad’s bed and they begin to sample it, exploring their burgeoning sexuality. Leah, using an adjoining bathroom late one night, spies through its open door Rob masturbating to a video featuring a girl who looks a lot like Leah. Her own hunger is whetted. And when he, still naked, accidentally barges in on her half-naked in the bathroom a few minutes later, she wonders from the way he looks at her whether he wants her too. Things evolve one day as the girls cut school. Leah is left alone while Erica gets it on with her boyfriend. She starts watching Rob’s porn, only to be surprised by him returning early from work. He tries to demur but she seduces him. All their sex scenes are hot. Rob tries to do the right thing and date someone his own age, but can’t stay away from Leah, and she reclaims him one night after his date has gone home. The two dally in a fancy restaurant restroom, and again in a movie restroom. Two threesome scenes near the end are way hot. Kitt’s treatment of sex from a first-person teenage girl’s perspective strikes me as very well done and three dimensional: the combination of curiosity, innocence, lust, confusion, perception and passion as she experiences things for the first time. Kitt gets away, here and elsewhere, with taboo scenes by having the girls be the initiators. There’s no chauvinism or exploitation from the patriarchy! And women are in charge! It’s different! Whew.
19. Kitt, “Naughty Bits”. David, just graduated from high school, is told by his folks to get a job. He hasn’t found one yet and is still stuck in their cramped lower-middle-class English home. Meanwhile his older sister Dawn (in another version rewritten to avoid censorship she’s an American exchange student and in another, a stepsister) has a week’s break from her job. She’s discovered David’s secret porn stash and impishly annotated a picture she thinks looks like herself. She’s devoting her staycation to clubbing and drinking at night, then sleeping it off sunning voluptuously in a bikini in the backyard during the day. The two are around the house alone, with their parents at work, and scantily clad Dawn begins to tease her younger brother. He’s tormented by how wrong it is and the possibility of their parents finding out, but Dawn, the older one, is relentless and reckless in her pursuit of him. As he gets drawn in he becomes jealous of the men she dates. He becomes so fixated on her that even when he finds romantic possibility with onetime schoolmate Julie, he’s too infatuated with his sister to pay Julie much attention. The scent of forbidden permeates the book and their stealthy trysts. Dawn crawls into bed with him one night after returning late and climbing drunk through a window. Another time, he consoles her in her bedroom after her boyfriend dumps her. Another time, he and Dawn connect late at night in the bathroom while each’s date sleeps off drunken sex in their respective bedrooms.  Another time he and Dawn make it in a club bathroom, each jealous of the other’s date waiting outside. Preliminary scenes, with Dawn teasing David with her skimpy bikini and begging him to fuck her, are also hot.
20. Lee, “Ring of Fire”. Laurie and Steve go on a long Pacific cruise. Fellow guests include a group of swingers who initiate Laurie into their world and Steve into the world of cucks. There are two great group scenes here, one on board ship and the other on a hilltop in the Galapagos, when Laurie embraces her new slutdom wholeheartedly with the group’s men in the group plus some strangers as well.
21. Jason Lenov, “Nell Gets Naughty”, two-book series. Teddy, a blue-collar guy, has improbably married an Irish immigrant oboist. Nell plays for the local symphony. Their sex life is humdrum, a once-a-week encounter allowing Nell to check the wife box, plus there’s some deeply reserved Irish Catholic prudery at work there. She’s somewhat withdrawn, her only hobby whittling her own oboe reeds. That is, until Cyril and his wife Evie move in across the street. Teddy can tell Nell is taken by the wealthy black man with his stunning and bold white wife. The latter couple hint at their alternative lifestyle, well beyond anything Nell and Teddy know about. Nell’s inhibitions are shattered by her encounters with the couple, so much so that she can’t think about much except sex, and the previously disciplined musician’s work suffers. Teddy reaps the benefits in bed. But he worries about the professional and personal implications of Nell’s succumbing to her animal appetites, and her submission to Cyril’s control. All the scenes of Cyril wrecking her, with Evie variously enabling or participating in it , are hot.
22. Lee, “Hard of Darkness”, two stories. Kelly, an anthropologist, goes to a remote African village for field work and takes her husband Mike along. Her study involves the tribe’s marital and sexual customs. She finds the people reticent, though, to an outsider. The only way for her to get them to dish is to participate in their custom: all women sleep with the chief upon their marriage, in a droit du seigneur ritual lasting several nights. They thus get considered his “wife” and the accompanying tattoo entitles them to his permanent protection, including against abuse from their husbands. Kelly’s not a newlywed. But as every other married woman in the village has done it, Mike finally consents to her partaking as well, and getting the distinctive tattoo that goes with it. She does, for ten days (this tribe’s week), while her husband suffers in open cuckold agony. This begins her appreciation of BBC which continues back in the US. There’s a thing with a black gang banger, and another that Mike arranges with three black friends. But the scenes in Africa at the beginning are the best. The chief invites them to witness his taking of another man’s bride on her wedding night. When it’s Kelly’s turn, Mike is allowed to watch and participate briefly with her and the chief before being expelled to cuck agony and loneliness once more. I like jungle fever books that actually take place in the jungle, but too many writers don’t really sell it. Here Lee does a great job quickly but convincingly sketching out a tribe with unique customs, making the sex integral to Kelly’s research, and depicting sex with the chief in a wonderfully lewd manner. He’s a powerful man with (of course) a BBC, elected chief because he’s the strongest warrior and hunter.  It all fits together. One detail I particularly enjoyed is Mike and Kelly watching the chief’s despoiling of the young bride. He stuffs a piece of fruit in her mouth while he penetrates her, so her agonized husband outside the hut won’t hear his bride screaming with the pleasure of her deflowering. Lee also writes fantasy novels, and I sense that he put his talent for creating alternative worlds to work fashioning a tribe with just the right customs to propel a hotwife story. It’s unlikely, but still plausible, and meanwhile felt real, with little bits of language and custom thrown in to flesh the scenario out.
23. McCurran, “Kayla Captivated”. Kayla and her husband Russ go to a strip joint where their friend Lila dances. Lila’s husband Blake is with them. They watch Lila, whose stripper name is Lacey, perform, and then she lap-dances both Russ and Kayla. They pay for a private room where things can go further. Lila gives Kayla a stripping and lap-dancing lesson, and the couples swap.  It’s very erotic as Kayla witnesses a strip club, contemplates the girls, watches her husband get a lap dance , and gets one herself before the couples retire to the private room. Lila is reprised and developed in a major way in McCurran’s “Carol’s Trinity”, in which she also serves as stripper-with-a-heart-of-gold instigator. She’s an intriguing character in another way: she’s married and living in the burbs. Her millennial character seems very real nowadays, as sexual rules and mores have generationally changed so much. It’s not at all implausible that a college graduate might become a stripper, with a husband who not only consents but works it into their entertainingly open marriage. 
24. McCurran, “Stephanie’s Hotwife Seduction”. Stephanie and Andy, out for the evening, run into her co-worker, the handsome black Dez. He’s with another couple and obviously making it with the woman. Turns out he’s a bull. The couple’s imaginations are whetted, and talking about it raises the temperature in their bedroom that night – as does Andy’s letting it slip that he watches hotwife porn. Would they ever do it?  Stephanie married Andy when she was young, and he’s the only guy she ever had sex with. She’s 40 now but in good shape, still hot, and curious. Stephanie starts talking to Dez, a delivery guy for her company, over coffee or lunch about the lifestyle. Sensing she wants it, the young and hung bull begins her gradual seduction. Stephanie and Andy meanwhile must seduce themselves by talking themselves into it. Andy is ambivalent. Stephanie knows from his physical reaction that he’s into the idea, but worries he could change his mind afterwards and judge her for it. McCurran researched the lifestyle for this one, and it comes out in Dez’s descriptions to Stephanie of how it works. All the scenes are hot, including Andy and Stephanie’s sex talking about it and building up to it, and Stephanie’s first date with Dez, at a bar with only a handful of white women at it. Stephanie does a threesome in a hotel room with Dez and Charlotte – the rich hotwife she saw him with that first night. She’s still new to this, while the other two are coke-snorting party animals. The mixture of innocence and debauchery is explosive. Andy in the end accepts it. The scene where he finally gets to watch them live is intense, as are all of Stephanie’s lunchtime or after-work tumbles with Dez. I had read this story first a few years back, and it wasn’t until revisiting it recently that I recalled just how hot it was. (I reread a lot of porn during lockdown.)
25. McCurran, “Gentrified”. One of my faves. Jess (do NOT call her Jessie) and Kyle buy a house in a gentrifying city neighborhood. Jess grew up in the white-bread suburbs and is still new to mingling with black people but working on not being like her narrow-minded mother. She strikes up an acquaintance with their new neighbor Winston, small-talking when she walks their daughter to school. It’s innocent at the outset but inside she begins to smolder. It turns out Kyle finds all this arousing. Jess’s single friend Nicole dates Winston but they’re both players. Nicole serves as a sounding board as Jess considers something more with the handsome, strong black guy across the street. And Nicole, with a wild streak and not at all possessive, would love to pander Jess to Winston. Jess’s first night with Winston and her second one, at which Nicole shows up and joins in, are among McCurran’s hottest sex scenes – as is the denouement at a Christmas party. There, Jess enjoys a final moment with Winston, then a furtive threesome with her husband and Nicole on the bed with the coats as guests roam around downstairs. I like how McCurran considers gentrification for its collision of cultures and sexual possibilities without getting into political rants. I also enjoy that she likes masculine men and not only doesn’t portray her hotwives’ husbands as wimps – why would the primary female character have married him then? – but often lets the guys get some at the end. As a male reader I appreciate that. Marital sexual openness should lead to equality, not to brand-new pro-woman double standards.
26. Anonymous, “Arabella”. This purports to be Victorian-era porn and the language and outlook suggest to me that it’s genuine. Arabella, a well-to-do young lady, begins to have sexual adventures with her cousin Elaine. She is enabled first by Elaine’s father Harold, whom Arabella espies sodomizing a friend’s wife late one night. Arabella and Elaine want Harold to take them to an orgiastic house party, which he does, after first unburdening Arabella of her virginity. Arabella meets Harold’s lover Pearl at the party. Taking the girls to Paris, Pearl instructs them in the fine points of being an upper-class libertine, including kinky sex acts that generate pleasure far beyond that of mere rutting. Much attention is paid to their comportment: how are women of a certain class expected to behave while sporting? Does one dally across class lines, say with the servant help, and if so how is that managed? What is the proper distance for a lady to maintain with a burly farmworker who has just serviced her on a haystack in the barn? Should she pay him? How does one chat at the soiree prior to partaking in a golden shower? If a girl is put up at a party to be “trodden”, it’s boring if she’s too bold and willing, even if she really does want it. She should struggle prettily and sob a bit. Upon their return Arabella becomes an agent of sorts for Pearl, dispatched into domestic situations requiring an adventuress providing Victorian-style family sex therapy. 
27. Gars Mechant, “Tired”. Kristy goes off on a girls’ trip to Las Vegas with a fairly square group – fellow teachers and secretaries at a Catholic school. Her husband, though, urges her to cut loose – packing her bag without any underwear just to make his point. She rooms with Corrina, the staidest of the group, and they figure they’ll keep each other out of trouble. Things take off as the group goes to a club with male strippers. Kristy and Corrina depart before things get too nasty, but have their own hijinks that night and the next night with men they pick up. When the entire group returns to the male strip joint one last night, the two go along to witness and participate in the wild scene, their friends not knowing just how much Kristy and Corrina have done already. Kristy’s lack of underwear spurs her friends to do the same on their what-happens-in-Vegas vacation, and they dub themselves the Cameltoe Brigade. All the sex scenes are hot: the strip club scenes, as the women, led by birthday girl Jennifer, strip and cavort with the strippers in front of an all-woman audience, particularly on the last night where they retreat to a private room. And Kristy and Corrina’s private straying, the first night double-teaming a single guy they pick up, and the second night with two guys they pick up at the hotel hot tub.
28. KT Morrison, “Scream Queen”. Four stories, the first three grouped as “Chelsea Hates Libby”. Libby and Ben, who’s finding some business success, move to a trendy Toronto neighborhood. There they encounter Chelsea, who went to their high school before becoming a movie star, and her husband Finn. Libby and Ben weren’t that popular in high school. Chelsea and Finn epitomize the decadent show biz lifestyle. Finn’s in the industry too, working sets or sound or something with rock bands. There’s a back story of ancient drama. Libby seems to have crossed Chelsea over a boy back in high school, and Chelsea, now a celebrity starlet who’s had countless lovers, weirdly holds a grudge against the meek nobody Libby. Chelsea has a manipulative streak. She seduces Ben and meanwhile plays up to Libby in a way that seems phony, encouraging her to get with the studly Finn. What’s she up to? Is she trying to wreck their marriage? The best stuff is in the last book, “Scream Queen”, when things are more out in the open and Ben and Libby spend a decadent evening with Chelsea, Finn and another couple. It begins in the hot tub and gets hotter, as Ben gets to watch Libby with Finn. Chelsea manipulates Ben with her movie-star hotness. What she wants is for Libby to become the submissive plaything for her and her husband, and Ben the voyeur cuck to whom she occasionally throws a sexual bone as the two watch their spouses play.
29. Morrison, “Watching Natalie Cheat”, two books. Nelson has a wild musician friend, Renny, who shows up uninvited late one snowy Yuletide night when Nelson and Natalie are cocooning at home. Renny can’t leave for some complicated reason, and meanwhile has been dosed with some ED drug giving his sizable unit a boner that won’t quit – one that Nelson and more importantly Natalie can see through his pants. He’s obnoxious. Natalie, a professional woman, has never liked him. But her animal instincts kick in as he persists and she yields to temptation late that night with the ripped, hung, tattooed, nipple-pierced guitarist after Nelson pretends to fall asleep. There’s a hate-fuck aspect to it that turns up the heat even higher. Natalie never really softens towards Renny, even when he’s delivering her screaming orgasms. The dialogue – “Fuck me, you piece of shit asshole” and “Take it, you disgusting pig slut” – combined with the really savage fucking rendered by Morrison in graphic and well-done detail – makes this way, way hot. They don’t like each other much better a year later in the sequel where they reprise after a chance encounter near Nelson and Natalie’s winter cabin rental. Nelson openly watches this time. Hate-fuck in a winter cabin with a wood stove!  I hope the two never stop hating each other: their sex life and our enjoyment of it might suffer.
30. CK Ralston, “Show Business Kids” and “The Career”, five stories overall. I like almost all of CK Ralston’s stuff. Ralston builds character and plots smoothly and plausibly, often set in Los Angeles and displaying behind-the-scenes familiarity with the movie business. Other books are set in the Bay Area or Northern California smaller towns. Here, Inga Norgaard, a gorgeous Scandinavian Minnesota girl, moves to Beverly Hills. She instantly falls in with the cool-girl clique at Beverly Hills High, all children of actors or other show biz folks.  The cool girls, happy to accept this sizzling hot babe into their exclusive clique, teach her the ropes – how to party, how to dress, how to handle people, how to get what you want in life. How to drink (‘try a seven-and-seven’) and smoke pot (‘I’ve been sneaking my dad’s weed since I was ten’.) Meanwhile their parents discover Inga in the movie sense. Inga is offered a major movie role – if she can please its disgusting, casting-couch-addicted producer, even grosser than Harvey Weinstein. The parents are all infatuated with her as well. Inga’s career steadily rises as she beds most of them. Lee-Lee’s folks are two middle-aged but still hot actors in an open marriage (as, Inga learns, a lot of Tinseltown marriages are, unlike those in her small Midwestern birthplace). They get Inga in the door with the lecherous producer. Cyn’s dad is British, an aging but still sexy Oscar winner (I pictured Richard Burton) whose lessons build her acting skill and who agrees to direct when the movie project nearly falls apart (you’ll love why) and requires saving. Marsha’s father is the shrewd money manager who negotiates Inga good contracts, guards her money and builds her fortune. In the latter two books, Inga and her posse a few years later in their twenties all have successful careers following in the posse parents’ footsteps, and Inga is in an open marriage to Riley, Lee-Lee’s brother. It’s all built around Inga’s star power: Cyn directs, Marsha does money and Lee-Lee acts supporting roles. Our new character, Taylor Wells, comes to Hollywood like countless girls to escape her hometown and make it in pictures, but gets roped into porn to pay the rent. A chance encounter with Inga’s friends gives her a way out. Inga shows her how gorgeous actresses break undesirable contracts, (well-done head helps) and Taylor co-stars in Inga’s next picture. Ralston’s stories are a delightful combination of overnight rags-to-riches, fun because it’s told well and somehow plausible even if unlikely, combined with consequences-free sex, all seasoned with perceptive and lifelike insights into businesses like the movies. Here, porn-story sexual excess fits right in with what we gentle readers know of Hollywood. Inga and her posse have lots of girl-girl sex and various orgy scenes with guys in their orbit. Inga has numerous liaisons as she considers both the business and pleasure sides of it. In the last book Ralston perceptively considers the shaky role of the aides, set workers and other little people in orbit about the stars. They know their perch on the good life is tenuous, often dependent on the continuing good graces of the powerful ones whose beds they’ve agreed to share, and willingness to play by their rules. Among the sex scenes that stand out are, in the first book, Inga and her new pals entertaining Riley and his fraternity brothers; and in the last book, a decadent party around a pool where Taylor, joined by her assistant April and April’s hung-stud boyfriend Bob, a studio electrician, get passed around and sampled by Inga and her posse. I’m not convinced the series is actually over, Ralston’s protestations of “Show Business Kids” fatigue notwithstanding. The fifth book ends on a down note, Taylor’s realization of how messed up her world is, and I wonder if Ralston will come back one more time to resolve that and end on a positive note. Ralston does, though, seem to take perverse pleasure in giving us seamy bad news. It does shelter Ralston, though, from accusations of the stories being too unrealistic and their characters’ behavior without consequences. Ralston also leavens things with moments of clarity, such as Inga in the third book deciding she’ll marry Riley but isn’t that crazy about him, and Cyn alienating herself from the others in the last book because she’s become such a classic directing martinet.
31. Morrison, “Happy Endings”, four books. A married massage therapist, who does of her work on a table outdoors in her big suburban Atlanta backyard by her big suburban Atlanta pool, engages in a flirtation with her husband’s boss, a young Greek guy whose name is Dio and, not coincidentally, built like a Greek god. His dad built the business and he’s cocky and entitled. Her husband Tommy is a hard driving salesman and they’ve got a fine life, sexually and materially. He’s just developed this particular kink. Things come to a head when Dio and the couple take a business trip to Africa and there’s this rental villa there. The sex scenes are all hot. What I thought made this series stand out is that, unlike a lot of Morrison’s cucks, this husband isn’t pathetic and his wife’s hotwifing is not in the least bit reflective of any inadequacy on his part. There’s a great twist at the end where he turns the tables on Dio. I liked that the scene in the epilogue is set at Atlanta’s St. Regis Hotel. It’s reputed to be the place where wealthy Buckhead cougars go after their divorces to hunt men.
32. Wright, “Bull’s Eye”, five books. Paul, single and a capable player, learns that some couples allow the wife to roam – to flirt or go further with other men, something the husband also enjoys. And that the men they go with are called “bulls”. Paul discovers this while trying to pick up a woman, Heather, who flirts with him, intrigues him, then shuts him down. They later find themselves working together professionally, as she consults in PR with the charitable agency employing him. They become friends and confidantes, reverting sometimes to their bar personalities from that first night, “Manhattan” and “Jameson” – what each of them was drinking, as they cagily didn’t give up their real names. They flirt and banter, each letting the other under their skin without admitting it. Heather’s a hotwife, but with real issues now in her marriage. Paul seeks out bull opportunities. A major donor to his charity, Eleanor, begins to explore the hotwife-cuck lifestyle with her husband Ron, and Paul shows the very wealthy couple the ropes. Heather and Eleanor prod each other along, and all three become confidantes. Paul and Heather are slowly drawn together. There’s a lot of good sex in this series. Paul and Heather’s, when they finally get to it, is hot after the multi-volume buildup. Heather’s back story is searing, suggesting the pitfalls of sexual libertinism while treating us to a bunch of it. In the real world, there are consequences. The big group scene in Las Vegas near the end, where the agency heads for a convention, is memorable, both for its gangbang sex and for its resolution of several major plot elements. And there are a lot of great scenes along the way as Paul plays with Eleanor, as he and rival/wingman Mason pick up some women one night, and as things smolder and slowly surface between him and Heather. Wright makes you wait for it in this series but it’s worth the long buildup.
33. Lenov, “The Sowing Song”. Adam is engaged to Milena, the love of his life. To make her happy, he agrees to be married in her faraway birthplace, a tiny redoubt tucked away deep in some Slavic mountains. He discovers her people’s unique culture, rooted in timeless agricultural life, a pagan tradition untouched by Judeo-Christian morality. They aren’t possessive. They don’t have a word for “jealousy”. They share everything. Everything. Everything. Including that. Adam realizes Milena can’t be happy – and won’t give him the good thing, which she’s been saving for marriage – unless she can walk this walk and Marry In The Way Of Her People. So he consents. Lenov puts great effort here into creating this fictional culture’s weeklong marital rites. These pagan rituals might have been designed by the Goddess of Vixens and Stags, benignly ruling over colorful rustic goatherds. Adam learns it’s not all cuck torture for him. He gets to sport too, with Milena’s BFF and maid of honor Zarica his guide to the premarital week – she has deep Zen peasant wisdom, great Slavic tits and incongruously but conveniently speaks English – plus Zona, a bosomy married woman performing as sexual surrogate for the fiancée he’s not allowed to see much or touch at all. When he does see Milena, it’s in a ritual setting where everyone’s naked and she’s sucking off or getting sodomized by other men. And he must reckon with the wedding ceremony itself, in which The Deed will be done by another man, enormous and well-hung, who has saved up his seed for 37 days in a mountain hermitage, the better to fertilize the ripe Milena with. It Is The Way Of Her People. Lenov gives us their language, which sounds convincingly Slavic. Adam’s journey, as he struggles with his own jealousy and possessiveness, as he wrestles with whether to tumble with the other women offered him – Yes! It Is Also The Way Of Her People! Do It! – is rendered with depth. It’s a twist on jungle-fever hotwife formulas. This white tribe lives what we imagine are Europe’s pre-Christian practices of 1500 years ago – but with a lot more clitoral orgasms, oral sex and foot fetishes – in pursuit of a collective, sharing way of life. Lenov riffs as much off idyllic Polynesia as off Deepest Darkest Well-Hung Africa. And, while he’s a master of dark and snarky humor in writing hotwife books, he keeps that at bay here, and to good effect. Adam witnesses another people’s radically different ways and ponders the meaning of life with convincing sincerity, as he seeks to please the woman he loves. I am going on at some length because of the unique story and well-done execution, but it’s hot all the way through, with Adam pleasured by naked village women and Milena by the men in a variety of colorfully imagined traditions.  
34. Judy Kemp, “A Bouquet of Gardenias”. You wouldn’t think a writer could get such mileage out of an English couple in a threesome with an unhappy housewife trying to get pregnant. But Kemp’s sex scenes excel as she lovingly details every second of encounters that go on for hours. This is about two or three times as long as the average work of smut.