Lip Service

by | September 30, 2013 | General | 7 comments

by K D Grace

Auguste Rodin's The Kiss

Auguste Rodin’s The Kiss

On the 22nd of September, Grace Marshall and I helped Victoria Blisse celebrate the 100th Sunday of her weekly Sunday Snog posts by posting sexy kissing scenes from a couple of our novels. The proceeds went to help Médecins Sans Frontières, and a lot of filthy writers had a lot of fun sharing sizzling kisses on their sites. That got me seriously thinking about kissing and what an important part of our sexuality and our culture it is.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like it’s a proper sex scene, or even a proper PG love scene, unless there’s some serious lip action. Here are a few fun factoids about the lip lock that I discovered while I was writing my post for my Sunday Snog. They are from Psychology Today , How Stuff Works and Random Facts:

  • The science of kissing is called philematology.
  • Lips are 100 times more sensitive than the tips of the fingers. They’re even more sensitive that the genitals!
  • The most important muscle in kissing is the orbicularis oris, whichallows the lips to “pucker.”
  • French kissing involves 34 muscles in the face, while a pucker kiss involves just two.
  • A nice romantic kiss burns 2-3 calories, while a hot sizzler can burn off five or even more.
  • The mucus membranes inside the mouth are permeable to hormones. Through open-mouth kissing, men introduced testosterone into a woman’s mouth, the absorption of which increases arousal and the likelihood of rumpy pumpy.
  • Apparently men like it wet and sloppy while women like it long and lingering.
  • While we Western folk do lip service, some cultures do nose service, smelling for that romantic, sexual connection. Very mammalian, if you ask me, and who doesn’t love a good dose of pheromonal yumminess?
  • Then there’s good old fashion bonding. It’s no secret that kissing someone you like increases closeness.
Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 1890 painting of Pygmalion and Galatea

Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 1890 painting
of Pygmalion and Galatea

While all that’s interesting to know, what really intrigues me about kisses is how something seemingly so fragile can become so mind-blowingly powerful when lips, tongue, a whisp of breath, perhaps a nip of teeth are applied in the right proportion at the right time on the right part of the anatomy. And with the size of the human body in proportion to the mouth, the possibilities for a delicious outcome are only as limited as the imagination.

One theory is that kissing evolved from the act of mothers premasticating food for their infants, back in the pre-baby food days, and then literally kissing it into their mouths. Birds still do that. The sharing of food mouth to mouth is also a courtship ritual, and birds aren’t the only critters who do that. Even with no food involved the tasting, touching and sniffing of mouths of possible mates, or even as an act of submission, is very much a part of the animal kingdom.

The sharing of food is one of the most basic functions, the function that kept us all alive when we were too small to care for ourselves. The mouth is that magical place where something from the outside world is ingested and becomes a part of our inside world, giving us energy and strength. Not only is the mouth the receptacle for food, it’s the passage for oxygen. Pretty much all that has to pass into the body to sustain life passes through the mouth. I find it fascinating that the kiss, one of the most basic elements in Western mating ritual and romance, should involve such a live-giving part of our anatomy.

But the mouth does more than just allow for the intake of the sustenance we need. The mouth allows us voice. I doubt there are many people who appreciate that quite as much as we writers, who love words and the power they give us. And how can I think about the power of words without thinking about the power of words in song and poetry? Our mouths connect us in language, in thought, in the courtship of words that allow us to know and understand each other before those mouths take us to that intimate place of the kiss. And when that kiss becomes a part of our sexual experience, it’s that mouth, that tongue, those lips that allow us to say what we like and how we like it; that allow us to talk dirty; that allow vocalise our arousal; that allow us to laugh or tease our way to deeper intimacy.

The fact that the mouth offers all those wonderful, life-giving, life enhancing things, AND can kiss, makes it one of my very favourite parts of the body.

“If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.”

Romeo and Juliet Act 1 Scene 5
William Shakespeare

KD Grace

Voted ETO Best Erotic Author of 2014, K D Grace believes Freud was right. It really IS all about sex — sex and love – and that is an absolute writer’s playground.

When she’s not writing, K D is veg gardening or walking. Her creativity is directly proportional to how quickly she wears out a pair of walking boots. She loves mythology, which inspires many of her stories. She enjoys time in the gym, where she’s having a mad affair with a pair of kettle bells. She loves reading and watching birds, and she loves anything that gets her outdoors.

KD’s novels and other works are published by Totally Bound, SourceBooks, Accent Press, Harper Collins Mischief Books, Mammoth, Cleis Press, Black Lace, and others. She also writes romance under the name Grace Marshall.

K D’s critically acclaimed erotic romance novels include, The Initiation of Ms Holly, Fulfilling the Contract, To Rome with Lust, and The Pet Shop. Her paranormal erotic novel, Body Temperature and Rising, the first book of her Lakeland Witches trilogy, was listed as honorable mention on Violet Blue’s Top 12 Sex Books for 2011. Books two and three, Riding the Ether, and Elemental Fire, are now also available.

K D Grace also writes hot romance as Grace Marshall. An Executive Decision, Identity Crisis, The Exhibition and Interviewing Wade are all available.

7 Comments

  1. Kay Jaybee

    This is brilliant!! xx

  2. Madeline Moore

    "Lips are 100 times more sensitive than the tips of the fingers. They’re even more sensitive that the genitals!"

    Now I know why I can count the number of people I've kissed and NOT had sex with on one hand. Kissing has (almost) always been foreplay in my . . . mind.

  3. KD Grace

    Thanks Kay! Kissing is the best!

    And Madeline, I agree, Kissing is always foreplay in my mind, but sometimes a kiss is just a kiss and it's totally enough! xx

  4. Fiona McGier

    I have a miniature of that Rodin sculpture sitting next to my laptop, courtesy of my husband, to inspire me. Kissing is so under-rated in erotic romance these days, in favor of being beaten to a froth. I much prefer kissing as foreplay, rather than being injured.

    In one of my books, I have the heroine trying to get over being raped years ago. The hero tells her that he will wait for her to want to be touched as long as it takes. She asks if she can touch him while he keeps his hands to himself, and he lets her. She kisses him for an extended time, and he worries it's so erotic he'll "jizz in his pants", as Adam Samburg put it.

    Gotta love a good kissing scene! Porn never involves kissing because it's all about the male point of view and penetration. Erotic romance should involve kissing because it's what expresses the feelings behind the passion, and that's what seduces most females.

    • Lisabet Sarai

      I know many men who enjoy kissing at least as much as women do.

  5. Jade A. Waters

    Ahh, kissing. It's the best, and these facts are fantastic. Nothing like a good ole kiss-fest, in or out of books!

  6. Lisabet Sarai

    The Sunday Snog tradition has actually inspired me to write more kissing scenes. Otherwise, I'm going to run out!

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