Read the Uncensored NC-17 Sex Scene That Was Too Steamy to Print in Andrea Bartz's 'The Spare Room'
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Writing a great sex scene is an art, not a science, so when you find an author who nails that perfect balance between suggestive and smutty, it's a treat...which leads us to Andrea Bartz. The acclaimed writer has penned many a sex scene with great precision, and some have even been deemed too hot for your Target aisle. Andrea put those skills to work into her new novel The Spare Room, a queer, psychosexual thriller about a woman who moves in with a married couple during lockdown. And the book is finally out today!
In honor of The Spare Room hitting shelves, Andrea has granted Cosmopolitan the green-light to publish an uncensored sex scene (!!) that was ultimately too steamy to print.
But first, more intel on The Spare Room, courtesy of Penguin Random House:
"Kelly’s new life in Philadelphia has turned into a nightmare: She’s friendless and jobless, and the lockdown has her trapped in a tiny apartment with the man she gave up everything for, who’s just called off their wedding. The only bright spot is her newly rekindled friendship with her childhood friend Sabrina—now a glamorous bestselling author with a handsome, high-powered husband.
When Sabrina and Nathan offer Kelly an escape hatch, volunteering the spare room of their remote Virginia mansion, she jumps at the chance to run away from her old life. There, Kelly secretly finds herself falling for both her enchanting hosts—until one night, a wild and unexpected threesome leads the couple to open their marriage for her.
At first, Kelly loves being part of this risqué new world. But when she discovers that the last woman they invited into their marriage is missing, she starts to wonder if they could be dangerous...and if she might be next.
Packed with Andrea Bartz’s signature tension, twists, and toxic relationships, The Spare Room marks an edgy, boundary-pushing new direction from the “master of the ‘feminist thriller’” (Los Angeles Times)."
Sounds exciting, right? Especially that "wild and unexpected threesome?" 👀
Go ahead and add the book to your Amazon cart before dipping into an early NC-17 version of the threesome between Kelly, Nathan, and Sabrina in The Spare Room's first (but def not last) sex scene, which picks up from Kelly's POV right as they get home from watching fireworks on the Fourth of July. Enjoy!
An NC-17 Version of the First Sex Scene in The Spare Room
By Andrea Bartz
Inside, Nathan pulls snacks from the cupboards and corrals us into the screened-in porch. The screech of crickets and katydids rattles the screen and boils the air. Sabrina sprawls on the wicker loveseat, Scheherazade about to spin a tale, then pulls something tiny from her purse.
Is that a vibrator? I flash to the second book in her Heart of Desire series, the lovemaking session where Perry unveils an array of shiny toys and he and Arianna sample them one by one, an erotic buffet. But then Sabrina closes her lips around it and the tip glows blue: a vape pen. She sucks slowly, luxuriously, letting it swirl in her lungs before exhaling a pearly cloud.
“It’s super smooth,” she tells me.
I glance at Nathan. “Don’t you work for the government?”
“Conveniently, the lockdown’s put a damper on drug testing.” He shrugs. “Still, I won’t partake.”
Sabrina tumbles onto her hands and knees and crawls toward me. She stops, her legs an inch from mine, and holds the vape pen up to my mouth like a cigarette. My eyes meet hers—flash—and then I lean forward and take a deep drag, her fingers just touching my lips. I turn my head and blow out a long, lazy stream.
“Damn, that is smooth.”
She sits back and takes another hit. “Strong too.”
Nathan’s brought a Bluetooth speaker with him and he puts on something bluesy. The song sounds like America, and that’s fitting, because it’s the Fourth of July.
Wait—that was a high observation. Oh no. My thoughts already have that roly-poly quality, where every thought that makes it to the surface has three thoughts charging after it from different angles, analyzing it, giggling at it, arguing with it.
Wait, why “roly-poly”? See, there I go again!
“Y’know, I’m still clinging to the fireworks’ effect on me.” My voice is fuller, thicker, like it’s shooting out of my throat differently.
“Their effect on you?” Nathan pops a pretzel into his mouth.
“Yeah. The way they made me feel.” There’s a silence, is it a long silence? I think they’re waiting for me to say more and I feel a cold lurch of embarrassment, because, whoops, I forgot what I was trying to say, or what I was thinking, even.
There’s a tingly feeling spilling down my spine, liquid gold, and it reaches my tailbone and pools so that my entire pelvis is warm and sparkly. Sabrina’s still kneeling before me and my God, she’s maybe the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. She smiles and the sparkles bounce and twirl.
And then—something happens. Something forbidden and wild, not me at all. Like the pot and attraction have charged up my insides, they’re wearing me like a Kelly costume.
I lean forward, palms flat on the floor. Sabrina’s face is so close and she looks up at me, full on, so bright I could cry.
Before I can think, I close the gap between us. And I kiss her, hard, on the mouth.
As our lips touch, a million thoughts run through my mind at once, all in a microsecond, a computer’s hyperthreading, a multitude of sparks charging out of a center point, a big bright-red firework that lights the whole night sky.
Oh my God. I’m kissing Sabrina.
I’m kissing a woman.
My friend.
My friend since high school.
Her husband is right there.
I’m screwing everything up, they’re going to kick me out.
Her lips are so fucking soft.
I’m ruining everything.
Mike.
I’m cheating on—
She kisses me back and the thoughts drop away, like someone hit the Mute button. She grabs the back of my head and I could kiss this mouth forever, I could breathe in her breath, I gasp as our tongues meet and now the sparkles are everywhere, fully charged particles, like those fireworks we saw, the ones that danced and spun.
I pull away with a surprised laugh. Now the thoughts come back, an electric circuit: When our lips touch the current flows and those thoughts go away but now they’re back, back, back, baby.
Embarrassment and guilt spray through me like a fountain. Mike. My hosts. A woman. “Whoa, sorry.” I lean back, mash my hand against my brow. “I don’t know what came over me.”
When I dare to open my eyes, Sabrina hasn’t moved away, and she’s looking at Nathan, some silent conversation passing between them. Finally she turns back and it’s the sun, her full-on attention so blazing hot it could incinerate me.
“It’s okay, Kelly.” She tucks my hair behind my ear, then runs her fingertips down my jaw. They leave a trail like a comet, like those weeping-willow fireworks. When she’s touching me, the voice is quiet. When her skin is against my skin, that’s all there is. “No pressure, obviously. I can go back to the sofa. But... it is okay. With both of us. If you want.”
My whole body is thrumming. I look at Nathan, who nods. I turn back to Sabrina. Her huge green eyes. Her lifted brows. The expression that’s inviting me into something—a running leap from a cliff, no going back.
I can’t answer because I’m beyond words, I’m a humming closed circuit, charged and alive. I lean forward and kiss her, hungrily, so ferociously I want to eat her whole, and then her hands are under my shirt, unhooking my bra, undressing me with unbelievable speed and skill.
Now Nathan is on the floor, too, and I grab his chin and kiss him hard and run my fingers through his coarse, lamplight-colored hair. His beard tickles me as he kisses my neck and Sabrina runs her hand up my thigh and it's all here and there are textures everywhere, hard and soft, and I want to sample them all, that erotic buffet.
After a few minutes Nathan suggests we go to their room, and so we dash upstairs, Sabrina holding my hand as if I might not remember the way. As we turn down the hallway, Mike flashes in my mind—Mike, my Mike, and a shard of gloom starts to impale my heart.
But then Nathan throws open the bedroom door and all thoughts of Mike scatter, like napkins on a windy day. Moonlight spills across their bed and we launch ourselves on top, laughing, undoing all the hard work of buttons and buckles and zippers so that we can feel skin, all that skin, Nathan’s hairy and rough, Sabrina’s smooth and warm. I see it all, the flesh I’ve been picturing since that first day, since I saw their tiled shower and pictured them like this, body parts that are somehow awe-inspiring yet exactly what I expected.
They’re both focused on me, working as a team, gentle and insistent and exquisitely precise. When I cry out Nathan kisses my thigh and Sabrina buries herself in my neck and they’re both so pleased, so caring and proud, it’s almost like they’ve come too. Nathan sits back and I can feel them on either side of me, smiling as aftershocks rock through me. Finally I crack open my eyes, run a hand across my forehead.
“That was incredible,” I tell them, looking from one to the other.
Sabrina begins to climb over me. “Our turn?”
And now it’s happening, oh Jesus Christ it’s happening, I watch Sabrina straddle Nathan, the way they both freeze for a moment to get the angle just right, sweat gleaming on their skin, breath hitched, and then she crashes down and they’re both gasping, those sounds I heard from the hallway weeks ago, it’s real life, it’s right next to me, so real I could touch them.
After a minute Sabrina rolls off and scoots herself sideways on the bed, and Nathan steps onto the floor and hurries to his spot, standing, grabbing her legs, crying out as he leans forward, and then as he rocks he looks at me, God help me he looks right at me and gives me a little nod, and it clicks, I can touch them, and so I reach for Sabrina’s nipple, gingerly at first, and her cry of pleasure is so loud that I get into it, become a part of it, moaning too as her hand slides up my leg, and it’s never been this good, so good, so motherfucking good.
I catch a glimpse of us in the mirror, the one that hangs near the bed, the slope of Sabrina’s thighs, the round moon of Nathan’s bare ass, my naked spine curved like a question mark. It is hot to be able to see. I think again of the scenes I read and reread in Sabrina’s new book, the moments I imagined in this very three-dimensional space, and now I’m in it, part of it, it’s finally real.
Their moans turn to roars and when it’s over, Nathan crashes down next to Sabrina and we lie still, panting. I feel warm and safe and still sparkly, glittery champagne. I’m on their bed but floating, too, alert and dreaming. I close my eyes and Nathan rolls over to kiss my shoulder and I smile into the darkness, trying to hold on to what’s just happened. But my pot-soaked brain starts doing that channel-flipping thing where the thoughts move too fast and in unexpected directions, zooming like a school of fish.
Soon I’ll fall asleep, and the weight of Nathan and Sabrina around me might already be asleep like warm safe bedding.
But first a thought blips through the chaos, almost nonsensical yet full of clarity and light:
I’m never going back.
The Spare Room, by Andrea Bartz is available now. To order the book, click on the retailer of your choice:
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