Home

26

Bodywise Liquid Silk personal lubricant

What we used: Liquid Silk lubricant
From: Bodywise
Price: From £9.99 for a 250ml bottle
Ingredients: Highly purified water, propylene glycol, isopropyl palmitate, dimethicone, cellulose polymer, polysorbate 60, sorbitan stearate, cetearyl alcohol, glyceryl stearate NSE, B.N.P.D, di sodium EDTA, phenoxyethanol, methyl paraben, butyl paraben, ethyl paraben, propyl paraben, BHT.

 

First thoughts

Lizzie
A quality lubricant in a decent-sized bottle – and at a reasonable price – is quite hard to find. On average, Thomas and I tend to replenish our supply of slippery stuff every two to three weeks. Granted, we’re pretty generous in terms of the quantity we apply to each other but it’s a pain to be constantly buying lube what feels like every five minutes. Enter the 250ml bottle of Liquid Silk.

 

How it looks

Lizzie
The Liquid Silk lubricant packaging is very simple. The bottle is a good size and resembles the sort you’d buy bathroom handwash in. I like that the pump dispenser isn’t the annoying fixed, squat design you find on the various Durex containers; it screws on, which means that you can unfasten it and get that last bit of lubricant out when you’re nearing the end of your supply. The lube itself is actually a milky white colour, which is quite different to many of the water-based lubricants I’ve used in the past. (The majority tend to be clear.) Continue reading →

21

Alert Me: A very sexy Santa, the Bad Sex Awards, and The Story of ‘No’

I have a very mixed Alert Me bag this week. Agent Provocateur’s fabulous new Christmas promotional video, the Bad Sex Awards shortlist, and an article by The New York Observer that’s a must-read for anyone who’s new to the BDSM scene.

 

Agent Provocateur – Secret Santa
Source: Agent Provocateur

Struggling with your Secret Santa gift? Need some inspiration? Agent Provocateur have a suggestion for you. (Just make sure you work somewhere with a well-stocked stationary cupboard and a Polaroid camera.)

 

 

Continue reading →

15

Willing Victim – Cara McKenna

Title: Willing Victim
Author: Cara McKenna
Publisher: Ellora’s Cave (06 August 2010)
ISBN: 9781419928482

If you have a penchant for non-con (non-consent) role-play, a man with a dirty mouth, and rough-and-ready sex, you’re going to love this one. Willing Victim is all about indulging those slightly darker and more aggressive fantasies that many of us have but are often afraid to admit to.

First thing’s first. If you’re at all sensitive to reading about rape – in either a real or imagined capacity – then this is definitely not the book for you. (Note my over-zealous use of bold and italics here.) Per Willing Victim’s Reader Advisory warning:

 

‘Although all sex acts are 100-percent consensual, Willing Victim contains role-playing scenarios that may upset some readers who are sensitive about rape, even in a simulated capacity.’

 

Still here? Good. Then on with the review …

Laurel’s not really sure what she’s doing with her life. Despite being a qualified engineer, she’s simply drifting from one day to the next, making ends meet by waitressing. Then one day, quite by chance, she meets Flynn, a native Bostonian who works construction. There’s just something about this hulk of a man that draws Laurel and she finds herself doing something completely out of character: asking him out. Initially, he refuses her offer, but Laurel refuses to take ‘no’ for an answer and, eventually, Flynn capitulates – after a fashion: Continue reading →

12

Onwards! More books, more writing, more toys

Yes, we’re back to our regular posting programme after a much-needed bout of housekeeping.

I’ve read some fabulous books over the past few days – including Cherri Lynn’s Leave me Breathless and Riley Murphy’s Reclaimed Surrender (reviews ahoy-hoy) – and also managed to pen another episode of The Garden of Earthly Delights [*no longer available on the blog], so expect to see a bit of a focus on books and writing in the next few Chintz posts.

More toy reviews in the pipeline, too – and perhaps some new reviewers …

 

 

05

Hiatus

We’re taking a bit of a break this week, so there won’t be any new posts until Monday 12 November. If you’re new to Behind the Chintz Curtain and want to know what we’re all about (or you haven’t stopped by in a while), here’s a selection of last month’s most popular posts:

 

TOYS

Continue reading →

02

The Magician’s Lover – Danielle Austen

Title: The Magician’s Lover (The Prophecy Girl Trilogy)
Author: Danielle Austen
Publisher: Xcite Books
ASIN: B00960YQ46

Slights of hand, games of illusion. The Magician’s Lover walks the line between elaborate magic show, Las Vegas style, and erotic supernatural urban fantasy. An original and somewhat unusual proposition. Per the book’s blurb:

Shy receptionist Lindsey Wade can’t believe her luck when a chance encounter with world-famous stage magician Angelito Tarrago leads to an affair. But when he tries to convince her that he possesses genuine supernatural powers – and she might too – her life changes forever.

I must admit, I struggled with this book. While the storyline held much promise, it just never quite managed to establish that all-important rhythm and page-turning stickiness I crave in an erotic romance. The plot development felt somewhat erratic and the various story threads too loosely plaited together to really grab and hold my attention. More crucially, despite the high and varied level of sexual interaction, the core characters just didn’t seem to make solid emotional connections with one another (not until the very end, at least) – and as The Magician’s Lover is billed as having romantic elements, that was something of a problem for me. (I personally think this title would have worked better as a ‘straight’ erotica, with the more traditional romantic elements stripped out.) Continue reading →

31

Mawa Klamps: serious pressure for nipples and other body parts

What we used: Mawa Klamps
From: UberKinky
Price: £2.99 per clamp (discounts available for multibuys)
Material(s): metal (unspecified), rubber (unspecified)

If you’re serious about your nipple play, then these sprung Mawa Klamps may be just the thing. As Lizzie and Thomas discover, they’re certainly not for the faint of heart – and they’re not just for the top half of the body …

 

First thoughts …

Lizzie
If you’ve been following Chintz for a while, you’ll know that Thomas and I recently reviewed a set of Japanese clover nipple clamps and that I’m a big, big fan of them (and clamping in general). So when UberKinky asked if we’d like to review their Mawa Klamps, I was pretty keen. However, when I put these little beasts on the tips of my fingers after extracting them from their wrappings and felt how strong they were, I started to get a bit nervous! Continue reading →

30

Toy with me Tuesday: Heart of Darkness

‘Evening by evening
Among the brookside rushes,
Laura bowed her head to hear,
Lizzie veiled her blushes:
Crouching close together
In the cooling weather,
With clasping arms and cautioning lips,
With tingling cheeks and finger tips.
“Lie close,” Laura said,
Pricking up her golden head:
“We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?”
“Come buy,” call the goblins
Hobbling down the glen.
“Oh,” cried Lizzie, “Laura, Laura,
You should not peep at goblin men.”’

- From Christina Rosetti’s Goblin Market

 

Continue reading →

29

Black Lace erotic short story competition

Fancy yourself as an erotic author? Well, get your skates on. The deadline for entry into Black Lace’s short story competition is tomorrow, Tuesday 31 October. Judged by Black Lace authors Portia Da Costa and Kristina Lloyd, and the imprint’s editorial director, Gillian Green, the winning tale will be published as part of an erotic eBook collection.

I’ve long been a fan of Black Lace and was one of the many despondent readers who mourned the news that its list was to be put on ice back in 2009. Thankfully, Fifty Shades of Grey has changed the erotica landscape and Black Lace is well and truly back. (Hooray!) If you’ve not come across this publisher before, you can find most of their titles on Amazon. (Their Quickies collections are fabulous but there are plenty of full-length stories on offer, too.) Continue reading →