Self, Sex

Erotic Literature: Our 5 Favorites

erotic literature

Settling in for a romantic night? Add an erotic read into the mix to stimulate body and mind. Here’s a taste.

Little Birds
Anaïs Nin
(Harcourt)

“At the same moment that she felt she was falling into darkness, into his golden-brown flesh, he fell towards her, covered her with kisses, very hot, quick kisses, into which his breath passed. He kissed her behind her ears, on her eyelids, her throat, her shoulders.…She was blinded, deafened, made senseless. Every kiss, like a gulp of wine, added to the warmth of her body. Every kiss increased the heat of his lips. But he made no gesture to raise her dress or to undress her.”

A Month of Sundays
John Updike
(Fawcett)

“Alicia in bed was a revelation. At last I confronted as in an ecstatic mirror my own sexual demon. In such a hurry we did not always take time to remove socks and necklaces and underthings that clung to us then like shards or epaulettes, we would tumble upon her low square bed, whose headboard was a rectangle of teak and whose bedspread a quiltwork sunburst, and she would push me down…”

Lady Chatterley’s Lover
D.H. Lawrence
(Penguin)

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“She did not understand the beauty he found in her, through touch upon her living secret body, almost the ecstasy of beauty. For passion alone is to awake to it. And when passion is dead, or absent, then the magnificent throb of beauty is and even a little despicable: live, warm beauty of contact, so much deeper than the beauty of vision. She felt the glide of his cheek.…Far down in her she felt a new stirring, a new nakedness emerging.”

A Sport and a Pastime
James Salter
(FSG Classics)

“Sometimes at night he stands in the crowd he sees her smile and his heart falls out of him. Among the dancers turning in the orange light his eyes can find her in an instant. He knows her calves, the shape of her body better than her lover, and those high-heeled shoes with their thin straps, as they move around the floor they are ripping his dreams.”

The God of Small Things
Arundhati Roy
(Harper Perennial)

“She pulled his head down toward her and kissed his mouth. A cloudy kiss. A kiss that demanded a kiss-back. He kissed her back. First cautiously. Then urgently. Slowly his arms came up behind her. He stroked her back. Very gently. She could feel the skin on his palms. Rough. Callused. Sandpaper. He was careful not to hurt her. She could feel how soft she felt to him. She could feel herself through him. Her skin. The way her body existed only where he touched her. The rest of her was smoke.”

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