Alison Tyler and I agree on a crucial point: that it’s important to do things properly, especially when it comes to sex. At the start of her last novel, Dark Secret Love, she says:

I’m hoping to paint the proper picture. I want you to know the way the wood felt under my bare feet. I want you to be able to trace a cut-crystal whiskey glass with your fingertips, to feel the sting of a slap and feel the rising blush.

With erotica more than any other genre, I think, the details are important. A single ill-chosen word can squick the reader; for me personally, even the cover can be a turn off.

It’s why I like to buy it in an actual bookstore, (after having dinner here – no, don’t go there, there’s only so long a girl can queue with a plate of ham croquetas and a glass of cava). I like to flick through book after book, reading from the middle, judging the style of the prose at an arbitrary point, and making my decision that way. Let’s be clear on one thing though: it’s not literary prose that makes me buy, it’s the ability that a book has to turn me on – can I, on that first perusal, find a scene that I know will make me come?

I’ve yet to buy a book edited by Alison that hasn’t contained such a scene, and the same is true of her writing, which is why I wanted to be a part of the The Delicious Torment blog tour. Well, that and the fact that I don’t think erotica gets nearly as much promo/attention as it should.

The Delicious Torment is a novel written from the viewpoint of a woman who’s seriously into the BDSM lifestyle. Honestly, I’m not that turned on by canings, whippings and the like, but I loved this book nonetheless – not because of the quality of the writing (which is excellent), nor because of the beautiful cover (Alison sent me a PDF copy), but because, in amongst the whippings and the spankings, there are moments like this:

After raising me close to climax, without letting me come, Jack stood and led me to the padded table. This was his choice. But he didn’t bind me down. He simply pushed me against it, and I felt him behind me, working his slacks open, releasing his cock. He’d gotten hard punishing Alex–that was no surprise to me–and he was ready for release. Without hesitation, he slid into me, hard from the start, pounding me against the leather table. Slamming into my ass with the same intensity that Juliette–I had a name for her now–had paddled me.

And that, essentially, is the point. Alison writes in a way that makes me want the kind of sex that her heroine is having and therefore, although she sent me a free copy to review, I’d have bought this anyway, in the end.