Edited by Alison Tyler

      Foreword by Violet Blue

      MILLS & BOON

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      Countdown

      By Violet Blue

      Sixty-nine ingredients make this collection a powerful cocktail that slides over the tongue like sugar on fire.

      These skilled eroticists choose words like intoxicants. The flavors elicit what I can only describe as an instant hard-on.

      Now we girls know what this is like.

      How fast will you become aroused? Dizzyingly fast. In the time you can count to sixty-nine. The time it took to read these sixty-nine words.

      Introduction

      Are you pervy like me? Come on. You can confess. We’re all friends here. Have you ever pondered the goings-on at your neighbor’s house? What are they doing behind those lacy curtains? Why are those drums beating so late into the night? Now is your chance to find out—because these 69 sultry stories are designed to give you a peek into the lives of those around you. These are the people you know: your friends, your acquaintances, your coworkers, even your boss. You pass them every day on the street, at work, when you do your errands.

      No, you won’t find out where they went to college, or learn the name of their second cousin, or elicit whether their favorite color is citrine or turquoise. But you might discover what turns them on, what makes them wet, what makes them hard. And you might also discover that you share an overlap or two, at least where fetishes are concerned.

      Short-shorts are a specific genre of sex story. These mini-escapades are pure slivers of life, solitary snips of celluloid, single cuts off a vinyl album. These are the stories you overhear on the subway between stop A and stop B, the bits of conversation you’re privy to while riding on the elevator, the whispered secrets you catch while surreptitiously leaning forward during happy hour at your local bar.

      I’ve been fascinated, mesmerized, addicted to shorts for decades now. My own first naive attempts at fiction were abbreviated scenarios I penned for my girlfriends—situations starring their crushes, fan-fiction-type fantasies that took place on solitary sheets of binder paper. That’s about 250 words in my jagged-edged cursive.

      Why do I place short-shorts on such a pedestal? Simple. The authors must pull out all the stops. There is no fat. No cheating. No padding in the bras.

      This is the genre I can’t get over. I’m an addict, plain and simple. This is the sixth anthology of ultra-short fiction I’ve edited (my first was way back in the ice age of the early ‘90s), and 69 presented its own unique challenges. First, I needed 69 stories to equal 100,000 words. Now, nobody ever said I was brilliant at math, so I had to give my 30+ writers extremely specific guidelines. Sure, I could have collected 69 1449.92-word stories, but where’s the fun in that? (Besides, you try to find me .92 of a word. I dare ya.) I wanted to show a range from 100 words to 2,000 (which is the maximum count in this collection). Trust me, 2,000 words is not a lot of space to tell a tale. In a 500-word story, every sentence matters. In a 100-word piece there are no extraneous images. Every solitary beat carries weight. I look at the 100-word flashers as a type of amuse-bouche, designed to titillate and stimulate and whet your appetite for the next mouthwatering course.

      Next, I wanted to be sure to hit the themes that thrill me—including BDSM, spanking, oral, anal, voyeurism, exhibitionism.… Hopefully, you’ll find your favorites within these pages. And maybe you’ll even discover something new or two to try.

      Are you ready to put your ear to the crack, to press your eye to the keyhole?

      I know I am.

      XXX,

      Alison

      Contents

       The Kitchen Kink

       Hare Coursing

       Pulse

       Speed Mating

       Permission

       Star Fucker

       Redi-Wash

       Selections from a Bedroom Closet

       Dress Rehearsal

       Good Cop, Bad Cop (A Story)

       Come at Six

       Plus One

       I Dare You

       Two Ways

       Manners

       Another Country Heard From

       Frosted Kisses

       Summoned

       His

       Talk to the Hand