She's On Top - erotic fiction by Cleis Press Inc. - review by Jul!a

She's on Top is a lovely collection of stories from various authors edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel. The 18 stories you get are all written by 18 different authors; Donna George Storey, Debra Hyde, Kristina Wright, MinaRose, Saskia Walker, Lisette Ashton, Teresa Noelle Roberts, Tara Alton, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Alison Tyler, N.T. Morley, Andrea Dale, Noelle Keely, Kathleen Bradean, Adelaide Clark, Stan Kent, Lisabet Sarai, and Kate Dominic. There's also a section at the end that tells you more about the editor as well as the authors.

The stories in She's on Top are marketed towards those who like to read about women in control in the bedroom, and it does deliver. Though a large chunk of the stories are aimed at heterosexual couplings, there are a few that touch on the idea of something else. Each of the stories are well written and thought out.

Victoria's Hands brings us back to, well, Victorian times, or at least back to a time when it was improper for an unmarried couple to be left alone together. Her dearest, Algernon, has proposed marriage, but she wants to see if he has what it takes to be her husband by seeing how he reacts to her terms for accepting his marriage proposal.

Room 2201 gives us one of our same sex stories between two men. Marshall wants to do whatever his Mistress Caroline says, following her orders is something he craves. Can he follow them when he gets upstairs and meets Armond?

In Working Late we see a couple who plays across a web cam when the husband is stuck at work late. Jack follows his wifes orders like a good boy, but hesitates when he sees his boss getting close to discovering him. What he doesn't know is that his wife has been in on it the whole time, and has a special surprise for him.

Feeder brings the element of food into the mix, telling us the story of a woman who has a twist on the old adage "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach." To Adelaide, the way to her pussy is through a man's stomach, specifically, she gets off on watching men eat. This particular story features our lady making a dinner for her boyfriend, and getting off on feeding him and torturing him sexually in the process.

Your basic paperback, it'll hold up long term if you don't abuse it. While the cover isn't actually sexually explicit, it does still have a sexual theme to it with a man lavishing attention on a woman's shiny black heeled feet. The back cover has a close-up of the same picture on the front. It's something that if you're timid or shy you'll want to not bring it out in public, but it isn't offensive to the general public eye.

It took me a while to get through this book, not because I couldn't get into any of the stories, but because my husband, who has a thing for women in control, got a hold of the book before I did and kept it hidden while he worked his way through it. But once I did get a hold of it I went through it pretty fast. To me, this book was something that could give me ideas for ways to be the top for my husband, and I definitely did get a few ideas. But I did have a good time reading all of the stories anyway. I really have a hard time picking out a favorite story, or even a favorite few stories. Suit and Tie was one that I thought was done very well, although my husband didn't like it. He doesn't enjoy reading stories that involve cheating at all, and I'm a whole lot of neutral about those. Mark of Ownership was another one that my husband wasn't fond of because of the bloodplay. Again, I thought it was done really well and I really enjoyed it.

There was only one story I was a little "eh" about, and that was Penelope the Punisher. This one features a woman who was scorned by a male student and seeks out some revenge in the form of motherly punishment. However, the whole time this sex scene is going on, the boy actually does think it's his mother, and that weirds me out a bit. It was an interesting story, but there will be people who will want to skip this one.