(August 8)
Following her previous anthologies “She’s On Top” and “He’s On Top,” which featured stories written by the dominant’s perspective, Rachel Kramer Bussel’s skillfully chosen anthologies “Yes, Ma’am” and “Yes, Sir” stories are all narrated by the submissive. Seductive and enticing female dominants and their devoted male submissives shine in “Yes, Ma’am”. Brutal, gentlemanly and exacting male doms appeal as well as their delectable female submissives in “Yes, Sir”.
The stories in Yes, Ma’am are about the inner workings of male submission, yet the submissive narrators are fascinated, entranced, enchanted and terrified by their sultry and commanding dominants. Their gaze is ever on Her, from the exacting boss of a new fresh-faced male executive assistant eager to fetch coffee and wait on his boss hand and foot, to a more traditional D/s arrangement. This anthology gives a rare glimpse into the internal processes of male submissives serving with strength, dignity and no small measure of delicious degradation.
Stephen Elliot’s “It’s Cold Outside” is spare and realistic, gritty and hot: “I pushed my tongue as far into her as it would go. She tasted sour and thick. I tried to do a good job because I didn’t want her to get off of me. I went down on her for a long time and she ran her nails gently across my wounds.” His precisely written story captures the desperation and gratitude of a lonely masochist, once the narrator submits to a truly sadistic woman. Though he gets exquisitely tortured, he’s left in the bleak loneliness of a pain slut after a scene - horny while her boyfriend sleeps, surrounded by rural snow to muffle any sound.
Rachel Kramer Bussel's "Secretary's Day" is a standout in the anthology with its unconventional twist on the traditional boss/secretary power dynamic, with the eager young male executive assistant being held to rigorous standards by day and attending to his powerful female boss’s needs in the evenings - that’ll show up well on his reviews. Yet again, Rachel Kramer Bussel knows exactly how to pin down a core fantasy of her themed anthology, and this one is exemplary - the power dynamic is exquisite, her Ms. Davis perfectly haughty, her male assistant willing to do anything required, at her service in every way.
Another stellar story is "His Lady's Manservant" from Andrea Dale. It is a period piece, as a couple switches for the weekend at a Victorian murder mystery. The former submissive is now a lady of the house, her husband now the butler, leading to delicious moments of chastisement for dusty corners and fucking on command. This story takes roleplaying to a new and delightful level.
A dominant commands her eager and adorably nervous male submissive to crossdress in her garments with text messages in George Cross’s lush and elegant “i 1t u 2 do sumfin 4 me”; an entire group of women commands the hapless “Pretty” to jerk off to porn while on TV in D.L. King’s “A Different Kind of Reality Show” . In these stories, the female dominants were so far away from being touched, they weren’t even in the room, which gives another meaning to the archetypal icy, untouchable domme. These were some of the hottest stories in the anthology - the male submissives alone with the humiliation of this, his desire to please, exhibitionism, and confronting and overcoming internal resistance. But these stories of untouchable dominants miss out on the more intimate sexual service which often appears in “Yes, Sir”.
In “Yes, Sir,” the story “Dear Professor Pervert”, by Donna George Storey, is, well, fabulous. For those of us who like professorial types with wire-rimmed glasses and a ready smirk, this story is just the ticket. The story features gloriously filthy assignments (“Ah, yes, Assignment #5. That’s why I’m here in this strange pose: sitting on my bed with my back against the headboard, my legs spread wide. It’s the only position that lets me keep the butt plug in place while I diddle myself.”) from a college professor-turned-lover to his former student-turned-submissive, and her responses and journal entries, along with his comments and grades, always with a little humiliation in there - somehow she never does anything quite well enough which leads to neatly forceful verbal dressing-down and lowered grades. For those who love this sort of thing, this story is heavenly and pushes all the right buttons.
“Sitting on Ice Cream”, by Lisette Ashton, is a delicious confection of a story. The sweet submissive has a new job dressed as a French Maid as an usher at a theater, and can never please her former-military boss enough, so to discipline her, after the intermission he spanks her and fucks her. The story has a wonderful buildup and fantastically smutty sex.
More professors feature in Lisabet Sarai’s “Body Electric”, this time, at a faculty mixer, Colette, a Women’s Studies professor who studies women’s sexual fantasies, pairs up with a handsome engineering professor who builds wonderfully sadistic and pleasureable electric machines to extract wonderful response from women. This is a match made in heaven and the electric professor is a hair away from a mad scientist - his bag bristling with inexplicable Naughty Electric Gadgets (and yes, he uses many of them on Colette.)
Personal trainers are a popular lust object in erotica, but “Make Me”, by Rachel Kramer Bussel, has to be the best and edgiest of any of them. The narrator is a self-identified brat who is looking to be taken down a peg by her trainer. “Every time he got close to me, my heart beat faster, and I pictured him slamming me against the wall, rigging my hands above my head, showing me how he was going to keep me in line – with his cock…..I was still looking for the man who could break me, who could make me whimper and sob and submit to him completely...the man who’d make me go to my lowest point, grind me to a pulp, and put me back together again, better than I was before.” She certainly finds this in her trainer, and he meets her brattiness and resistance at every turn. I’d never imagined gyms or personal training to be sexy, but this story makes obeying a personal trainer sound powerfully appealing.
“Yes, Sir” and “Yes, Ma’am” are stellar anthologies - they feature a wonderfully creative variety of stories on both themes which run all along the kinky spectrum. The stories are fantastically hot and both anthologies make a wonderful matched set. I can’t recommend these collections highly enough.
