Titilating Tuesday

Welcome to the very first Titilating Tuesday here at Lust Bites. I thought perhaps it would be a nice way to spice up the space between Monday and Wednesday. I'll be talking about all things sexy and titilating as we go along. If you've got any suggestions, please feel free to make requests. A disclaimer: As always, what is sexy and titilating lies in the eye of the beholder. This is about my eye but there's no one true way. What I like you may not or vice versa. So if I hit on something that pushes your buttons in all the wrong ways, there's always next Titilating Tuesday (remember I said I took requests).

As I lean in and put on the next record to play, relax and come along.

To start with - What is Sexy?


I was reading something earlier and it went into my “sigh, so not sexy” file. Filled with a zillion fucking scenes but not a one made me even the slightest bit tingly. It was all random body parts thrusting and rearing, twitching and *this is Lauren, scowling* lots of random buttsecks. And whatever, okay, buttsecks can be totally hot in the right erm, hands. It’s taboo, it has cultural baggage - it’s forbidden and naughty and it takes trust to give and receive. When the right author harnesses those things it’s whew, hot, guh! But it’s like any other scene in the wrong hands and I’m left sneering and rolling my eyes and sort of scared of rearing penises. So when it's thrown into a book to be edgy for edgy sake, it's just sort of random. Like throwing in a race car or a tumbler of good scotch. Both sexy things in context. But out of context, well they're just random and they don't fit.

Erotic isn't just about wall-to-wall sex scenes with everything but the kitchen sink thrown in or screwed, it's about context. It can be a married couple, it can be strangers, it can be the first time, the fifth or ten thousandth. It can be foreplay or full-on fucking - what is key is drawing the reader in by conveying what it is that draws them together.

While I’m a very visual person, sexy to me is more often than not about the stroking of my brain. It’s why porn is okay for like five minutes (ten if it's good porn) but after that I find myself bored, amused or horrified. It’s why I like authors who realize it’s not in the quantity of sex scenes in an erotic romance but in how the scenes are utilized.

Don’t get me wrong - a scene with a super-dominant dirty-talking man is hotter than the sun if it’s done right and in context. Really, really hot (eyeballs roll to the back of my head hot). But a man who takes his time to lick the back of a knee or who leans in to breathe in the scent at her neck? HAWT!

So today what in particular strikes me as sexy? So many things, necks, thighs, ears, lips - but to narrow it down for the sake of, say, a blog entry? Emphasis on the every-day, something we might even think of as mundane, can take something normal and make it incredibly erotic.

A while back I was giving my husband a massage - yes a real massage, not a euphemism - and I just became entranced by the way his back felt under my hands. The flex and play of his muscles as I worked, the way his ass felt against me as I straddled him, the scent of his warm skin as I pressed my fingertips into it. The act of ministering to him, of caring for him and easing his stress, became a huge aphrodisiac to me. Also, the fact that he was there, relenting to my control but still like a great big tiger who could pounce at any moment - shiver.

He told me about his day, just little bits and pieces and his voice echoed through his ribs. His hair, once deep black and now salted with gray, was soft against my fingers as I massaged his scalp.

What was the most sexy was the intimacy of the moment. He told me about his day, I told him about my new story idea, we laughed about the kids and normal stuff and it was good between us.

The outcome is something I’ll save for a book, heh, but there is sexy in every day things that aren’t overtly sexual in nature. There is sexy in connection.

So, what about you? What do you think is sexy? Today, anyway...