Indisputable fact: everyone — yes, even your 60-something-year-old mother — loves a juicy book scene. I fully support a solid TV or movie sex scene [1], but there's something even better about the descriptive language authors use to set the mood to make whatever's happening in the steamy passage really come . . . to life. We've gathered up the sexiest excerpts from literature — you may want to have access to a cold shower before getting started on these. The best part is that these books also have truly compelling plotlines book-lovers will appreciate.
Outlander [2] by Diana Gabaldon
"'You're mine, mo duinne,' he said softly, pressing himself into my depths. 'Mine alone, now and forever. Mine, whether ye will it or no.' I pulled against his grip, and sucked in my breath with a faint 'ah' as he pressed even deeper. 'Aye, I mean to use ye hard, my Sassenach,' he whispered. 'I want to own you, to possess you, body and soul.'"
Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James
"Before I know it, he's got both of my hands in his viselike grip above my head, and he's pinning me to the wall using his lips. . . . His other hand grabs my hair and yanks down, bringing my face up, and his lips are on mine. . . . My tongue tentatively strokes his and joins his in a slow, erotic dance. . . . His erection is against my belly."
God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
"Ammu, naked now, crouched over Velutha, her mouth on his. He drew her hair around them like a tent. Like her children did when they wanted to exclude the outside world. She slid further down, introducing herself to the rest of him. His neck. His nipples. His chocolate brown stomach. She sipped the last of the river from the hollow of his navel. She pressed the heat of his erection against her eyelids. She tasted him, salty, in her mouth. He sat up and drew her back to him. She felt his belly tighten under her, hard as a board. She felt her wetness slipping on his skin. He took her nipple in his mouth and cradled her other breast in his calloused palm. Velvet gloved in sandpaper."
Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin
"When she saw that he was dissolved with pleasure, she stopped, divining that perhaps if she deprived him now he might make a gesture towards fulfillment. At first he made no motion. His sex was quivering, and he was tormented with desire. . . . Marianne grew desperate. She pushed his hand away, took his sex into her mouth again, and with her two hands she encircled his sexual parts, caressed him and absorbed him until he came. He leaned over with gratitude, tenderness, and murmured, 'You are the first woman, the first woman, the first woman . . .'"
Unravel Me by Tahereh Mafi
". . . His hands slide down my body. His entire form is moving down my figure, disappearing as he shifts downward and suddenly his chest is hovering above my hips; suddenly I can't see him anymore. I can only make out the top of his head, the curve of his shoulders, the unsteady rise and fall of his back as he inhales, exhales. He's running his hands down and around my bare thighs up and up again, up past my ribs, around my lower back and down again, just past my hip bone. His fingers hook around the elastic waist of my underwear and I gasp. His lips touch my bare stomach.
It's just a whisper of a kiss but something collapses in my skull. It's a feather-light brush of his mouth against my skin in a place I can't quite see. It's my mind speaking in a thousand different languages I don't understand. And I realize he's working his way up my body. He's leaving a trail of fire along my torso, one kiss after another, and I really don't think I can take much more of this; I really don't think I'll be able to survive this. There's a whimper building in my throat, begging to break free and I'm locking my fingers in his hair and I'm pulling him up, onto me, on top of me."
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
"We f*cked a flame into being. Then as he began to move, in the sudden helpless orgasm, there awoke in her new strange thrills rippling inside her. Rippling, rippling, rippling, like a flapping overlapping of soft flames, soft as feathers, running to points of brilliance, exquisite and melting her all molten inside. It was like bells rippling up and up to a culmination. She lay unconscious of the wild little cries she uttered at the last."
Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx
"Late in the afternoon, thunder growling, that same old green pickup rolled in and he saw Jack get out of the truck, beat up Resistol tilted back. A hot jolt scalded Ennis and he was out on the landing pulling the door closed behind him. Jack took the stairs two and two. They seized each other by the shoulders, hugged mightily, squeezing the breath out of each other, saying, son of a b*tch, son of a b*tch, then, and easily as the right key turns the lock tumblers, their mouths came together, and hard, Jack's big teeth bringing blood, his hat falling to the floor, stubble rasping, wet saliva welling, and the door opening and Alma looking out for a few seconds at Ennis's straining shoulders and shutting the door again and still they clinched, pressing chest and groin and thigh and leg together, treading on each other's toes until they pulled apart to breathe and Ennis, not big on endearments, said what he said to his horses and his daughters, little darlin."
Forever by Judy Blume
"I slipped my nightgown over my head and dropped it to the floor. Then there were just my bikini pants and Michael's pajama bottoms between us. We kissed again. Feeling him against me that way made me so excited I couldn't lie still. He rolled over on top of me and we moved together again and again and it felt so good I didn't ever want to stop — until I came."
Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
"'Now,' I said, and I bit him hard on the shoulder. He gasped, and jerked, and he began moving in earnest. At first I was dazed, but I began to catch on and keep up. He found my response very exciting, and I began to feel that something was just around the corner, so to speak—something very big and good. I said, "Oh, please, Bill, please!" and dug my nails in his hips, almost there, almost there, and then a small shift in our alignment allowed him to press even more directly against me and almost before I could gather myself I was flying, flying, seeing white with gold streaks. I felt Bill's teeth against my neck, and I said, 'Yes!' I felt his fangs penetrate, but it was a small pain, an exciting pain, and as he came inside me I felt him draw on the little wound."
Exit to Eden by Anne Rice
"Then his hands came to life. He went as if to rub his wrists, then he reached for the blindfold, his fingers dancing right in front of it without touching it, and then he reached out for me. I jumped. He caught me by the arms, wrapping his fingers all the way around them and bringing me forward. And then he realized I was naked, and he felt my sides and my breasts, giving a little startled noise. And before I could stop him, he had pulled me to him, forcing me against his chest. His c*ck was thumping against my sex, and he kissed me in that shocking way and I realized he had lifted me off my feet."
Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
"'Come here,' said the lady when she saw me in the doorway; and as I walked to her, the dildo bobbed still harder. I lifted my hand to still it; and when she saw me do that she placed her own fingers over mine, and made them grasp the shaft and stroke it. Now the base's insinuating nudges grew more insinuating still; it was not long before my legs began to tremble and she, sensing my rising pleasure, began to breathe more harshly. . . . With my hands still clasped in hers she led me to one of the straight-backed chairs and sat me on it, the dildo all the while straining from my lap, rude and rigid as a skittle. . . . With her hands close-pressed about my head and her legs straddling mine, she gently lowered herself upon me; then proceeded to rise and sink, rise and sink, with an ever-speedier motion. At first I held her hips, to guide them; then I returned a hand to her drawers, and let the fingers of the other creep round her thigh to her buttocks. My mouth I fastened now on one nipple, now on the other, sometimes finding the salt of her flesh, sometimes the dampening cotton of her chemise . . .
I had one brief moment of self-consciousness, when I saw myself as from a distance, straddled by a stranger in an unknown house, buckled inside that monstruous instrument, panting with pleasure and sweating with lust. Then in another moment I could think nothing, only shudder. . . . After a second she eased herself from my lap, then straddled my thigh and rocked gently there, occasionally jerking, and at last growing still. Her hair, which had come loose, was hot against my jaw. At length she laughed, and moved again against my hip."
Grey by E L James
"When the music starts again, the lone voice singing a seraphic note, I follow the same pattern as the glove and the flogger — but this time with my mouth, kissing and sucking and worshipping every inch of her body. I tease each of her nipples until they are glistening with my saliva and standing at attention. . . . My tongue trails down to her belly, around her navel, laving her. Tasting her. Venerating her. Moving down, through her pubic hair to her sweet, exposed clitoris that's begging for the touch of my tongue. Around and around I swirl, drinking in her scent, drinking in her reaction, until I feel her tremble beneath me."