Share your favourite fictional sex scenes from books for your chance to win a copy of HAUSFRAU plus £100 worth of luxury chocolate

[UrsulaMumsnet]

Anna was a good wife, mostly...

Anna Benz, an American in her late-thirties, lives with her Swiss husband, Bruno - a banker - and their three young children, in a postcard-perfect suburb of Zürich.

Though she leads a comfortable life, she is falling apart inside. Adrift and increasingly unable to connect with Bruno, or even her own feelings, Anna tries to rouse herself with new experiences: German language classes, Jungian analysis, and a series of sexual affairs she enters with an ease that surprises her.

Having crossed a moral threshold, Anna will discover where a woman goes when there is no going back...

Anna Karenina goes Fifty Shades with a side of Madame Bovary; Hausfrau is the exceptional, haunting, and elegant debut novel from the prize-winning American poet, Jill Alexander Essbaum.

Share your favourite sex scenes from books for your chance to win a copy of Hausfrau plus a huge box of luxury chocolates worth £100!

This discussion is sponsored by Picador and will close on 18 April.

The lovely scene between Richard III and the Maiden in We Speak No Treason....."We are in the fire....." (sigh)

Rupert and Cameron on the dining table in Jilly Cooper's Rivals.

Cold and hard apparently, then his daughter walks in and asked her accusingly what she's doing to her daddy and the reply is "keeping him warm" through gritted teeth - it's just such a fantastic mental picture!

I know a pp said it, but the scene in the Godfather has stuck in my mind.

I am not a sex scene person either. I find them cringey usually. I like the more unsaid ones if that makes sense. Less is more!

Miss Smilla's feeling for Snow. Need I say more?

After posting about Vox I decided to find it and read it again to see if I still liked Jim and Abby as much as I used to.

I still liked Abby, Jim hasn't quite stood the test of time and seems a little immature now.

But it's been ruined completely by my DH, who has zero interest in fiction, picking the book up and saying "Vox? What's this about?" and then opening it to a sex fantasy page and reading a couple of sentences about dinosaur cum out loud before giving me a look, shaking his head, and carefully putting the book back down.

I have no idea what made him pick it up in the first place. Unless Vox is also some sort of electrical system or car engine manual I don't know about, this is the first time in fifteen years he's ever cared about what I might be reading.

I'd forgotten that bit. I promise in context (and in 1992 when I was seventeen) it wasn't as bad as it sounds now.

Last tango in Paris.......pass the butter!

I can't think of any decent ones, so I'm just lurking for suggestions :o

The Outlander series has some very raunchy sexy bits.

Some of them are lovely as well.

I have been left with a kilt fetish.

The Haunting of Maddy Clare by Simone St. James.
Its a ghost story really, with a romantic twist and its all anticipation and expectation between two people (I think its set in the 1930s where its a bit more prim and proper - at least in this book anyway). They finally do it and the writer has built the tension so well, and with such love. I couldn't put it down! Normally I am a complete prude and avoid any books with sex scenes if I know they have them. So this is probably the only real sex scene I've ever read, to be fair.

Also the scene between Evelyn and Otto in Unexploded, by Alison MacLeod.

Thunderball (the book) has a good scene with Bond and Domino.

Phillipa Gregory, The Wise Woman

The "wrestling" scene in DH Lawrence's Women in Love. Repressed homosexuality made so tantalisingly hot.

J R Ward's series - the first books are all great.

I've read a few good ones, but a bit from Jeanette Wintersons Power Book comes to mind immediately. I went and looked it up, because tulip sex is a surprisingly wonderful thing!

^“‘Take off your trousers and let me see you.’
So this was the moment. All would be revealed. I no longer cared. Come death, come life, there is a part to play and that is all.
Hesitatingly, I let down the blue and gold of my trousers. There was a silence. Then the Princess said …
‘I have never seen a man before.’
(You’re not seeing one now.)
‘The stories I have heard … the fleshiness, the swelling … but you are like a flower.’
(This was true.)
She touched my bulbs.
‘They are like sweet chestnuts.’
(Tulips, my darling, tulips.)
She stroked the waxy coating I kept fresh to protect them. The tips of her fingers glistened.
‘What do you call these?’
‘This one is Key of Pleasure, and this one is Lover’s Dream.’ I said this quite sincerely because it was so.
‘And what do you call this?’
Her fingers had reached the centre now. I had to think fast.
‘I call it my Stem of Spring.’
She laughed delightedly and kissed the red flower, its petals fastened tight into a head. Fortunately my mother had made it quite secure and the Princess could play with it all she liked.
Then a strange thing began to happen. As the Princess kissed and petted my tulip, my own sensations grew exquisite, but as yet no stronger than my astonishment, as I felt my disguise come to life. The tulip began to stand.
I looked down. There it was, making a bridge from my body to hers.
I was still wearing my tunic and the Princess could not see the leather belt that carried everything with it. All she could see, all she could feel, was the eagerness of my bulbs and stem.
I kneeled down, the tulip waving at me as it had done on the hillside that afternoon I cut it down.
Very gently the Princess lowered herself across my knees and I felt the firm red head and pale shaft plant itself in her body. A delicate green-tinted sap dribbled down her brown thighs.
All afternoon I fucked her.”^

Tipping the Velvet has some lovely steamy scenes too

Another vote for Forever by Judy Blume - it's the only one I can remember right now

Anything by Aishling Morgan/ Peter Birch. I couldn't possibly pick one scene. He writes about sex in such an imaginative, fun and erotic way. Endlessly imaginative and always deliciously naughty.

I haven't read a sex scene in a book for years. I do remember reading Forever by Judy Blume. I learnt a few things. Never forget my Mum taking it off me saying i was too young. Luckily I had already read it.

I love Lady chatterlys lover

This isn't particularly well known or even that well written but I read and re read a book called ' come together' as a teenager, purely for the sex scenes! It was by emlyn rees .

Love the sex scenes in Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, especially when Jamie and Claire first meet, swoon! Jamie has to be ultimate fictional sex god!

Another one for Outlander. So much passion and care. Also, you cannae beat a man in Highland regalia.

I think I must be reading the wrong books as I can't really remember any specific ones. As a teen I read Jilly Cooper, Jackie Collins etc because they were passed around and, at the time, the sex scenes seemed very exciting.

One scene that does stick in my mind (for all the wrong reasons) is American Psycho. Never reading that again!

Lady Chatterley's Lover for sure!!!