They were moist, so moist, almost gooey with the oozing of sweet, verboten yearning, the yearning that could not, should not, would not be actualized. Except maybe. Could it be? She hesitated and then, emboldened, squeezed her abdominal muscles in a core-strengthening tuck and thrust tenderly into his man-fish tail structure. He was drawn in with a magnetic intensity. The iridescent, gleaming scales on his man-fish tail snagged the poly-blend material of her skirt and held tight, with a gentle fierceness. Their hearts aligned.

Between her creamy thighs, her pearl glistened. What magic was this, that called forth this smooth, rounded bead formed within the shells of certain mollusks and composed of the mineral calcite in a matrix, deposited in concentric layers as a protective coating around an irritating foreign object? What magic, indeed! Swooning, he grasped his trident firmly. It shuddered. She shuddered. Then, at last, they shuddered as one, the moistness they shared resolving into a gush of fluids that drenched them with the ecstatic blast of a spring shower.

The pearl would be his! No, it would be theirs, to have and to hold, perhaps to place in an elegant 14k gold setting, or maybe to just keep secreted between her creamy thighs where it would remain forever precious, forever slick with the moisture of desire and the sudsy muck of their love.

behind the steam

cover stars mae whitman and miles heizer

Chapter three of the RA Romance Novel Appreciation Club is here and is it ever a humdinger! Our almost-too-hot cover stars are two of my dearest friends, Mae Whitman and Miles Heizer. I’ve been forcing these two in front of the camera for roughly 15 years and miraculously have not driven them away entirely. Mae has graced the pages of many a lookbook and they both starred in our Spring 2014 video, which was the story of how my parents met. 

As if this all weren’t thrilling enough, here to tell the story of this merman and his human fuck-buddy, is none other than the extraordinary SUSAN ORLEAN. That’s right, the sensational Susan Orlean has authored Chapter Three’s excerpt and we could not be more excited about it. Without further delay, we give you Diving For Her Pearl!


author susan orlean

Susan Orlean is an author, a staff writer for The New Yorker, a dog owner, a gardener, a parent, a frequent lecturer/speaker, an occasional teacher, a very occasional guest editor, a once-in-a-blue-moon movie inspiration, and doodler. She's written a lot of booksand even more magazine articles


This is her first erotic excerpt.


the real stars: lillian & richard