Be a Halloween HalloWINNER!

By Mathilde Madden

This time around our huge competition offers you the chance to get goosebumps on your goosebumps with a whole heap of scary, spooky and downright disturbing porn. Just comment once on this post to win and win BIG. This is the one you don't want to miss.

If you've never commented on a Lust Bites post before delurk, loud and proud - we have a stat counter, we know you're there - and yell out, 'I read Lust Bites and I love it!' And if you've commented many times, we love you - oh so much - don't forget to say hi here too. And one lucky, lucky winner will receive so much scary porn they'll be screaming all night long. Here's what you could win:

Cruel Enchantment: Janine Ashbless's seminal, ground-breaking, collection of beautiful filthy fairy tales. Try this taster
Gothic Blue: Portia da Costa's reissued paranormal classic. Way ahead of it's time, this intriguing tale was first published back when Black Lace didn't 'do' paranormals. Try this taster.
Love on the Dark Side: Black Lace's latest short story collection, packed full of paranormal lusty tales. Try this taster
Split: Kristina Lloyd's brand new erotic classic - a story of submission and bondage at the hands of a diabolical puppet master. Try this taster.
The Silver Collar: The first book in Mathilde Madden's dirty, gorgeous silver werewolf trilogy. Try this taster.
Dark Designs: Madelynne Ellis's wonderfully decadent, gothic wedding set tale of boy on boy fantasies and reality - set to a yaoi beat. Try this taster.
The Ten Visions: Olivia Knight's perfectly written story of Oxford witchery-pokery. Try this taster
AND Lust Bites: The brand new vampire novella collection from Black Lace featuring stories by Kristina Lloyd, Portia da Costa and Mathilde Madden. Be one of the first to get their mits on this eagerly awaited new direction for Black Lace. Not even out in the UK yet!

I can honestly say I have all these books on my own bookshelf and this prize will keep you warm and wonder-filled no matter how long winter lasts.

Winners will be announced in Coming Attractions on Sunday

Go! Now! Comment to win! Tell us your favourite thing about Lust Bites.

Samhain: the time which is no time

by Olivia Knight

I’m an atheist, not a pagan, but as Pratchett points out there are advantages to belief: “When you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it’s nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, ‘Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!’ or ‘Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch!’” So I’m an atheist with a creativity altar, a well-used deck of tarot cards, a shelf of occult books, and a wealth of Wiccan info – mostly thanks to writing The Ten Visions. What I can’t believe, I can write.

Paganisim or Wicca (I won’t go into the denominational differences) are all about the rhythms of nature – which sounds as floaty as a wannabe-witch dress, until you realise how much counting it involves. (Sex also involves counting, and not just the good old one-two – at least, not if you’re trying to trick nature by taking the prize and not paying your due.) Planning my heroine’s life around moon phases, the name of the moon, the sun sign, the sunrise and sunset times, her own cycle, the Esbats, and of course the Oxford terms, not to mention the Qabbalic chapters, quickly became as complex as organising the Prime Minister’s diary:

“No, I’m afraid Ms Kirkson won’t be able to have sex on the 17th – yes, it’s in Netzach with a waxing Snow moon, but new moon energy is still dominant, she has her period, and the Scorpio energy is too negative… how about the 1st, under Saggitarius? It’s a full moon, so I’ll have to squeeze you in with any ghostly visitors…”

Sarah quickly learns how events are governed.

She felt sick, stubbed out the cigarette on the chilled, pocked stone next to her feet, and immediately lit another. When had she seen Jo?
She’d met him when she was walking back from dinner with her supervisor. She’d felt an odd urge for a cigarette, and asked him for one. She’d wanted one because her supervisor’s rudeness had upset her. Well, his rudeness and his attractiveness, to be honest, but the attractiveness didn’t count because she’d been ovulating. It had been dark – no, not quite dark; she remembered the clouds whipping past the full moon, a ghostly galleon indeed.
She’d seen him the night of the All Soul’s party; he’d persuaded her to run away from the party and convinced her that she’d been talking to the devil, just because she’d been horny enough to find an old man sexy. They had dashed home in the bright moonlight. He said she’d been fed a lust potion. She’d counted afterwards, and realised she’d just been ovulating; the lust potion was nonsense.
She’d been ovulating. She ovulated with the full moon. She hadn’t wanted sex last night; something in her body had felt calm, quiet, and safe; something in her had said wait. Wait until you’re fertile. When was full moon?

Welcome to the Wheel of the Year. Paganism means patience. The year is carved into the twelve sun signs of the Zodiac and the thirteen moons. Each month’s moon has its own name and energies and the full moon is the Sabbat. (One month gets two full moons – so the second is the Blue Moon, as in “once in a…”) The eight Esbats are the major festivals: two solstices, two equinoxes, and four other special occasions: Ostara (Easter), Beltane (May Day), Lammas (31 July, still celebrated with corn sheaves in many churches) and of course Samhain – Halloween, Feast of the Dead, All Souls, call it what you will.

Most of the Esbats are what we politely call “fertility rites”, from the Imbolc planting of seeds (phner phner) through the Ostara eggs & bunnies (nudge nudge) to Beltane’s giant phallus round which the merry maidens dance, all the way to the Lammas fairs and tumbling in haystacks. Not so Samhain.

The only pagan festival to hold tight to its occult origins, it’s not a time for sex or magic – it’s the beginning of the time which is not a time. The Ten Visions has ritual sex scenes and Samhain scenes, but not the two in combination: that would be dark magic and the good Wiccan Sarah (an’ it harm none, do what ye will) doesn’t do that. (Her professor, on the other hand…)

Samhain is the day that Jo accuses Sarah of being a witch, after the eerie Halloween party in the graveyard of St Mary's. As sensible as her author, she doesn’t believe him.

She shook her head in disbelief. ‘This is the twenty-first century. No-one believes in witches. They don’t exist. Well, some silly little pagan-wannabes do, but they get it all wrong, I’ve read the manuscripts and they haven’t and –’
‘What do the manuscripts say, then?’
‘Witches joined covens – they were invited in, by female relatives or close friends – and the devil appeared, a local devil usually, and they all drank and danced around widdershins and naked, and sometimes the devil had sex with them. Every evidence suggests he was just a man from a nearby region, in a mask.’
‘Evidence taken down in witch trials?’ asked Jo, pointedly.
‘That’s the only written evidence, yes, –’
‘And what does your knowledge of Church doctrine, and interrogation methods, and manuscript-making, tell you about these manuscripts?’
‘That they’re unreliable!’ Sarah snapped. ‘That it was confessions taken from tortured prisoners, stupid ordinary women terrified of the Church’s power!’
‘So the devil really did come and sleep with them?’
‘The devil doesn’t exist,’ began Sarah.
‘Then would it surprise you to learn that earlier tonight you sat next to him, drank with him, and considered having sex with him?’

Thus begins the time which is no time, the dark hinterlands of the year. From Samhain to Yule, the wheel doesn’t turn. The veil is thin. The world lies dead, and the dead walk. This is where we now stand poised in the Wheel of the Year and here’s a snapshot of the wheel’s energies…

At Samhain, light candles for the dead, set food out for them, leave honey and cakes for the fey, and leave windows open on both sides for the roaming souls to enter and leave freely. Better that than that they rattle the panes and rush down the chimney flus. Leave a candle burning all night. We’re under the Blood Moon, making vivid the cycle between life and death, hunter and hunted. It reached its zenith on 26 October and is now waning – the only spells to perform are for cleansing and banishment; rather learn and meditate. The sun in Scorpio is also suited to study – its smouldering, dark and ruthless energy peels back mysteries. Its sexual pleasure is intense and ruthless. Today is ruled by Mars but Samhain, on Wednesday, will be ruled by Mercury – the messenger, the trickster, the ancient Alchemical tease. For the next fifty-one days, the rhythms of life recede and the world belongs to the others – until Yule.

She lay, drained and sated, feeling the warm weight of his body upon her, staring dreamily at the uneven ceiling above her. She thought of the stars and planets spinning beyond them, unimaginable distances away but really there, held in orbit by gravity, imposing their strange forces as they swung past.
‘The ritual said for seven days…’ she murmured quietly into his ear. Her voice was soft, half-lost in thought. ‘In two days time we move from Sagittarius to Capricorn… Fire to Earth…’ she added. ‘And it’ll be Yule, and we can marry for a year and a day…’
His warm arms clasped her close to him.

That's Why the Lady is a Vamp

by Mr Madelynne Ellis

Blame the ancient Egyptians. They invented cosmetics. Without them, you might all have natural, healthy complexions, unspoilt by foundation, and your eyes would be open and clear, enhanced only by what nature gave you. But where’s the fun in that?

More specifically, blame Cleopatra, one of history’s greatest vamps and serial monogamists (and a legendary fellatrix, according to some accounts). Having married her own brothers, Caesar and then Mark Anthony, as well as notched up an alleged 1000 lovers, she’s left an indelible mark on history and inspired a legion of goth chicks and neo-pagan priestesses. But her legend wouldn’t have endured without a few very special women.

The first official vamp was the silent screen goddess Theda Bara. It was her nickname, and the studio encouraged the image of spooky seductress for all it was worth. If a woman is called a vamp, it’s a comparison to her, the lover and destroyer of men. Unsurprisingly her most famous role was as Cleopatra, although sadly only still images remain. In interviews she alluded to mysticism and witchcraft, and became a powerful archetype of dark female sexuality. Her studio hinted that her name was an anagram of “Arab Death”, but the truth was a little more mundane. Born Theodosia Goodman, she’d never even been to Egypt. But like all vamps, the fantasy overshadows the reality.

A more recently famous Cleopatra, with a similar appetite for husbands if not fellatio, came in the form of Elizabeth Taylor. And boy did she look fine in eyeliner. I should admit at this point that I’ve got a thing for eyeliner and mascara, the darker the better. I can’t tell you how it started – maybe Dusty Springfield had something to do with it, or some inadvertent youthful exposure to seventies porn.

I can tell you how it developed. Heavy eye make-up carries certain, ah, spooky connotations, which is why I offered to write about it. Halloween (or Samhain) should celebrate and address all those dark aspects of the human psyche – movie monsters or half-remembered pagan myths, it’s all the same. And every aspiring vamp should know that make-up can bring out the goddess in you. Anyway, back to the story… by the fifties the iconography of the vamp had been reabsorbed by horror in the form of Vampira,

and given a comic twist by both Morticia Addams and Lily Munster. Throughout the seventies, Hammer wasn’t the only studio to realise that sex and horror go together very well. Barbara Steele starred in a string of Italian horror movies, and mesmerised audiences with her anime eyes.

So what the hell was so sexy about them? What makes so many men sit up and beg at the idea of a little necrophilia? The vampire was already well established as an erotic figure. If sex is a meaningful exchange of bodily fluids that creates life, then the vampire is an exchange of bodily fluids that negates life, or creates anti-life. No wonder it become such a staple of the gothic movement. I always preferred Le Fanu’s earlier Carmilla to Dracula, but maybe that’s a guy thing.

Maybe we need to analyse this. You may love or hate Sigmund Freud, but remember he gave you the word libido, and a whole language of sexuality. He proposed that there’s an opposite force to the life instinct, a death instinct called thanatos. Simply put, humans seek the simplicity and negation of death, or unbeing. AKA Nirvana. We like the idea of it so much that we personify it as various caped, cowled and skeletal figures. Or if you’re a poet drunk on laudanum, you sexualise it.

“Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold :
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Then along came Siouxsie, and everything changed… With the invention of punk and later goth, everyone could look like a vampire or a witch, and Theda Bara’s legacy became public domain. Heavy eye shadow became a manifesto, or statement of intent – one way or another, I’ll suck you dry. You know you want it.

I’m out of time, and there’s still so much to cover. Any suggestions for other archetypal vamps/femmes fatale? Ever vamped it up yourself? What was the effect?

“and I leave you as a souvenir the dark, fanged rose that I plucked from between my thighs…”

Angela Carter, The Lady of the House of Love

Mr Madelynne Ellis

Spooky Coming Attractions

By Mathilde Madden

Woo-ooo-ooo!

This week here on Lust Bites we celebrate Halloween with bedknobs, broomsticks and pumpin' pumpkins.

On Monday friend of the blog, Mr Madelynne Ellis will be here talking scary stuff. Tuesday sees us erect a Wicker Man and take a long hard look at paganism. On Wednesday I will be launching one of our semi-regular competitions this time with a spooky-ooky flavour. Thursday is high brow day as Kristina Lloyd introduces literary author Polly Frost and Friday is just for vampires.

So next week say goodbye to dull old Tuesdays and Thursdays without a Lust Bites fix as we give it to you hard and long and on and on all damn week!

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ETA: Split winners! I'm a day late. Sorry. A bundle of my smut - Darker Than Love, Asking for Trouble and Split to Just Craig. Copies of Split to Eloise and Crystal G. Winners, send your address to me - lustbitesladies [at] yahoo [dot] com - and I'll get the books in the post. Congrats and thanks to everyone who entered! Kristina x

Split: an excerpt

Kristina Lloyd

My third novel, Split (aka Wuthering Heights with bondage) is released in 13 days time in the UK. Here's a sexy excerpt from chapter one. To set the scene: Kate and her boyfriend, on holiday in the Yorkshire moors, find themselves in a weird little village called Heddlestone whose only attraction is a puppet museum. One night, they stumble upon an odd scene unfolding inside Heddlestone’s Working Men’s Club. A woman in ghoulish make-up and a shabby ballerina costume, stands alone in the middle of the room, her raised arms tethered to a rope. She’s soon joined by two men. Kate and her boyfriend (‘you’ in the scene below) stand outside in the dark, watching through the window.

*
I wanted to be that woman. I was scared for her and yet I ached to be in her place, two strong horny men prowling around me. Her powerlessness was horribly appealing. She was entirely in their hands and they were randy and reckless. God, what luxury.

‘Do you think she’s okay?’ you asked.

A small moth fluttered at the window before settling there, its cottony wings mottled with silver-grey, camouflaged against the dirty glass.

'I’d say so, yeah,’ I replied, and I cupped a hand to your crotch, thrilled to find you hard within your jeans.

The bearded courtier walked away, out of view again, and the first guy, the bruiser, took up his position, standing before the woman. He fluffed up her skirts in a gauzy snowstorm, reaching beneath them. With his feet apart, his arm hidden beneath her nets, he began to work her, just a slight movement of his elbow to betray what he
was doing, his tattooed band flexing on his beefy arm. Only when one of them moved could we see her face. For a while she was expressionless, just a black-eyed, rosy-cheeked mask of madness, then her mouth was open, her neck taut, her breasts jutting. We watched her panting silently, her body writhing, her arms tugging on the rope.

She seemed to climax in a frenzy of pulling and gasping and immediately the man untied her. His mean expression faded and he kneaded her upper arms, the two of them talking normally as she rolled her shoulders and rubbed her wrists. The courtier came into view again, and he was dragging across the lino an old gymnast’s vaulting bar, the suede of its padded beam worn and patchy.

I hadn’t seen one since school days and the mere sight of it was enough to make my stomach churn in anxiety. I associated it with public humiliation. I hated games, especially gymnastics. I was always too chunky, too soft and fleshy to go hurtling about as if my body were light as a feather.

Together, the men moved the vault into the centre. Without a word, the woman leant over it, her upper body lying along its length, her sheepskin boots just touching the ground. She wriggled for comfort as the bruiser untied her red sash and wound it around her body and the beam, knotting it so she was bound to the apparatus.

The woman was calm, lying there with her cheek pressed to the bar, her panda eyes two holes in her panstick face. The man walked around, appraising her from different angles. My heart was thumping. He had such a cool arrogant manner, such a swagger in his attitude. His face was impassive and he showed no emotion either when, with a couple of sharp tugs, he pulled down the woman’s skirts, tossing them aside. Her pale buttocks were bared, and he looked at them as he fiddled with his zip.

His jeans crumpled around his knees and he shuffled closer, penetrating her with a quick jab. He fucked her with a light, casual manner, one hand pressing on her back as he gazed blankly ahead. It was like seeing an animal fuck, his pumping so regular and functional. Every now and then, he glanced down, perhaps to check if she was still breathing. She seemed so unimportant to him he might have been masturbating alone.

I couldn’t take my eyes off his thighs. They were immense and glorious, full of curves and muscle, sheathed in fine hair.

Next to me, you said, ‘Ah, c’mon, fuck.’ In a hurry, I began undoing your fly and you undid your belt, moving into position behind me, stones scuffing up around us. We might have looked over our shoulders to check we were alone. I don’t recall. In London, we’d have been scanning for CCTV, wondering if grainy footage of us was going to end up in some murky corner of the internet. But not in Heddlestone. There’s nothing like that here. There’s no need. Everybody watches everybody else.
Do you think we were alone that night? I doubt it. Someone, somewhere would have been watching, night-vision binoculars trained on us, two unknown figures fucking in a ghostly, green-tinged world.

You lifted up my skirt and I shimmied down my tights. The air on my skin was cool and thrilling, and the exposure made me loosen. I felt earthy and lewd, and I could picture my buttocks, plump pale moons surrounded by dark rumpled fabric. Urgent and hard, you drove into my wetness, clasping me around the waist as you thrust. My arse cheeks jiggled as your hips bumped up against their flesh. The stone crunched beneath our feet.

Flakes of paint, I noticed, had chipped off the window frame and the corners were furred with black mould. Beyond the glass, the bearded guy was grinning at the woman, thrusting out his pelvis and rubbing his crotch with comic lewdness. Then he unbuttoned, wanking close to her face before he stripped completely. In one swift movement, he straddled the vault, edging forward until his erection was by her head.

The women raised her mouth for him, her body jolting from the impact of the hulk pumping her at the other end. Eagerly, she swallowed his cock and I could see the bulge in her cheek as she sucked up and down. He wound her blonde hair around a fist, exchanging a few words with the other guy who was still ramming her with detached regularity, his arse cheeks hollowing above those giant thighs.

You and I weren’t so cool. Your finger was on my clit, tapping as we fucked. Where I braced myself, the stone was cold and rough beneath my palms. We got into a good rhythm, me slamming back as you shoved high and hard. The air snagged in my throat as I panted, ‘I’m coming, I’m coming. Just keep me there. Just ...’ I could feel that soft, gorgeous easiness in my hips and thighs, waves of it carrying me closer. And at the same time, voices from the village road. ‘There, yes,’ I urged, desperate to come and not be interrupted. ‘There, there.’

You nuzzled past my hair, your breath warm on the back of my neck, teeth scraping, half-kissing, half-biting as you fucked and frigged me to climax. Indoors, the bearded guy closed his eyes, head tipped back, mouth parting slackly. He might have been coming, I don’t know. But his small moment of surrender nudged me past my limit and I hit orgasm, gasping quietly. There was no time for you.

*
To read more about Split, about me and my other dirty books, visit my brand new site. I'm having a blogwarming today and you're all welcome! Bring a puppet.

Split is published 8th November (UK) and 1 Jan (US). It's only £3.90 on Amazon right now. The price will shoot up when it's published so pre-order and bag a bargain!

Win, win, win! Top prize is my filth in triplicate, ie the novels: Darker Than Love, Asking for Trouble and Split. Two runners-up win Split. Just add a comment. Results on Sunday.

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The image at the top of this post is one of Beth Robinson's creepily beautiful creations. Check out Beth's website for more strange dolls and if you're in London this autumn, see more of Beth's work at the Strychnin Gallery. Strychnin's grand opening is tonight!

Crush Wednesday: Little Beards

by Janine Ashbless

Today I want to talk about one of my favourite kinks, as illustrated above. Magnificent, isn’t it? Not too big, not too weedy…

I mean the beard of course. YOU ARE LOOKING AT HIS FACE, AREN’T YOU? Honestly, some people just can’t concentrate…

Anyone who knows me knows I have a Thing for beards. Not big bushy beards. Less is more. Something like this, say.

That scratchy, unshaven look says "I just rolled into my clothes and I haven’t time to shave because I’m off to Defeat the Powers of Evil/Paint the Sistine Chapel/Save the Whales. Something really important anyway, and definitely not data entry for an accountancy firm. When I get back I’ll be exhausted and traumatised and will make desperate semi-conscious love to you before passing out in your arms."

I mean, cocks are good, don’t get me wrong. I love them. But a cock is a cock is a cock – while a good beard ‘n’ hair combo will have me falling on the floor clawing the carpet.

Of course it doesn’t work for everyone. And it can’t work miracles. It won’t make an ugly face handsome. But it will give definition to a bland one, shape to a slightly plump one. And it’ll make a good looking man so hot I won’t be able to take my eyes off him. I’m really fixated on the goatee (or anchor) - that little beard that just frames the mouth. The Evil Beard, as worn by pretentious poets, intergalactic villains and pantomime baddies since time began. You could embarrass me by pointing out how Freudian this is. I mean, a little beard really mimics the shape of neatly-trimmed pubic hair…

But I’m afraid it’s worse than that. Much darker.

Evil Beard Man is my Shadow. Evil Beard Man is the leather-clad fascist in my right-on liberal heart. He is the Bad Boy that offers what I really want in my darkest dreams – not the shaven-headed thuggish dimwit badboy of so many people’s fantasies, but the Evil Genius. The one who takes the responsibility for doing very bad things indeed.

This beard says "I am Evil and a cleverclogs. I have seized control of your puny planet and now I will remake it in my image, purging it of the dull, the tawdry, the scum. I shall utterly destroy the thick, the unimaginative, the wilfully undereducated, the religious fundamentalists, the Chavs, the reality TV contestants, the Daily Mail readers, the teenage gangstas, the liars, the fashionistas, the shallow and foolish and worthless of the world. But you, Janine – you will serve me. You will wear a black corset and thigh-length boots and cater to my insatiable sexual urges and help me eliminate those unworthy to live. Place your finger on the trigger, Janine: we will begin with All Those Who Drop Litter and move on to Those Who Only Write in Text Language …"

But enough of my fantasies.

Herewith I enclose a selection of little beards and assorted facial hair. You may find some amusement in spotting which geek sources they come from. As you can see, for me the Platonic Ideal of Masculinity lies somewhere between Jesus and Satan. In, ha ha, oh so many ways…

xxx

Janine Ashbless