Maggie Blackbird

Today, author Lisabet Sarai is guesting.  She’s here to talk about her latest boxset release Bound and Breathless:  Passionate Kink, erotic romance stories.  Be sure to check out the excerpt.

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A Deeper Need

I want to talk about one of my favorite topics today, namely dominance and submission, sometimes called BDSM or (in the BDSM community itself) power exchange. With the success of FSOG, power exchange stories have become wildly popular, but I’ve been writing BDSM since my first book, Raw Silk, was published in 1999. My own fascination with the topic is personal rather than market-driven; some of the most intense and meaningful sexual experiences I have ever had occurred in the context of a power exchange relationship. Those experiences changed me forever.

To my dismay and annoyance, I find that erotic romance (including the all-too-famous trilogy) sometimes treats BDSM rather superficially. Fundamentally, BDSM is not about doing things: spanking, whipping, bondage, forced exhibitionism, or whatever. Power exchange is more a state of being, an ongoing psychic connection between the top and bottom which amplifies sensation and emotion regardless of who is doing what to whom. I know there are some subs who seek pain for its own sake, but I have a deeper need: the need to totally surrender to a powerful other, to trust him (or her) not just with my body but with my spirit. For me, BDSM is transformational and healing, more about devotion and respect, honesty and intimacy, than about pain or even pleasure. Meanwhile, in order to feel whole, a true dominant requires the sub’s willing acquiescence to being controlled and used. Complementary needs, complementary fantasies – like pieces of a puzzle, each partner in the power exchange completes the other.

I’ve been writing about this sort of relationship for a long time, trying to capture the essence of dominance and submission – in some sense trying to recreate for myself and for my readers the ecstatic and moving experiences of my own initiation into kink. My new release, Bound and Breathless, collects stories I’ve written over the past twenty years. Some feature committed couples for whom kink is an essential element of their lives. Others are about strangers who find each other and recognize they have matching needs for control and surrender. All, in some sense, are about love, even when the characters connect for a single night.

For these characters, dominance and submission is not a game or a choice. It’s part of who they are.

Like me.

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Title: Bound and Breathless: Passionate Kink
Series: N/A (Boxset)
Author: Lisabet Sarai
Genre(s): BDSM erotica/romance
Heat Rating: 5 Flames
Word Count: 60K words
Publisher: Self-Published
Release Date: June 17, 2021

Agony that burns – until it sets you alight with pleasure.

Blurb:  For some people, kink is a game, a way to spice up sex by adding a hint of taboo. This book isn’t about those people.

These stories dig deeper, baring souls, exposing the heady thrill of power and surrender, intimacy and complicity. In the passionate dance of dominant and submissive, there is no tomorrow. There is only now, balanced between pleasure and pain, breathless with forbidden possibilities.

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PG-Rated – From Body Electric

“You! Come over here.” I started, my meditations interrupted by a rich, unfamiliar voice. The female crowd around Moresby had dispersed, and sure enough, he was beckoning to me.

Rude, I thought, but I obeyed him anyway.

“I don’t know you, do I?” He smiled down at me. My brief irritation at his lack of manners melted away in the heat of that smile.

“I’m Colette D’Arpignay. I just joined the Department of Languages and Literature this semester.”

“Oh, right! The Sex Professor!”

I felt the blood rising in my cheeks. “Oh dear! I didn’t realize that sobriquet had spread outside my own department.”

“Never mind. It doesn’t hurt to have a bit of a racy reputation. Makes you more interesting.” He scanned my body, not even trying to disguise his lascivious interest. “The question is, do you deserve it?”

My earlobes burned. Despite the air conditioning, sweat trickled down between my breasts. I was acutely aware of my tightened nipples, pressing against the purple jersey of my top. I couldn’t look at him.

He leaned over like a conspirator and delicately flicked one terribly obvious bud with his forefinger. A bolt of lightning sizzled through me and ignited a sudden blaze between my thighs.

“I’m willing to bet that you do deserve it,” he murmured, close to my ear.

I pulled back, stumbling on my high heels, trying to regain control. “Please, Dr. Moresby. Remember where we are.” He did not look in the least repentant. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Oh?” He looked at me skeptically, eyebrows raised. “I’m not sure I believe that. Anyway, call me Ryan.” He dug in his pocket and produced a slightly crumpled business card. “Here’s my card.”

I took it, unwilling but somehow unable to refuse it.

“And may I have yours, Colette?” His eyes seized mine and wouldn’t let me look away. Later I couldn’t remember their color – only their intensity.

It seemed that I was moving in dreamlike slow motion as I extracted a card from my purse and handed it to him. He nodded. “Good. It’s got both your office and your cell. We’ll talk soon.”

Dean Evans appeared, with a busty, forty-something blonde in tow. “Excuse me for interrupting, Ryan, but I must introduce you to Larissa Carter, from Biology. She just came to us from UC San Francisco.”

“Dr. Carter.” He took her hand and half-bowed. “I’m delighted to meet you.”

She looked as charmed by him as everyone else. I wondered if he’d tweak her nipples, too.

I turned to go. His hand on my arm stopped me. I was wearing long sleeves, but somehow I felt as though he was touching bare skin. “Don’t forget, Colette. I want to hear all about your research.”

“And I want to learn about yours,” I replied archly.

“Oh, you will,” he said with a strange smile, then turned the magic of his attention back to the buxom biologist.

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Lisabet Sarai became addicted to words at an early age. She began reading when she was four. She wrote her first story at five years old and her first poem at seven. Since then, she has written plays, tutorials, scholarly articles, marketing brochures, software specifications, self-help books, press releases, a five-hundred page dissertation, and lots of erotica and erotic romance – over one hundred titles, and counting, in nearly every sub-genre—paranormal, scifi, ménage, BDSM, GLBT, and more. Regardless of the genre, every one of her stories illustrates her motto: Imagination is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

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