"When I conceived of He's on Top and its companion volume, She's on Top, I wanted to pay homage to the power – physical, mental, and emotional – that goes into being a true top," writes the prolific Rachel Kramer Bussel in "Tender Tops and Sensual Sadism," her introduction to the anthology of "male dominance and female submission."

"Dominant men get a bad rap in our society, being lumped in with so many scary, dangerous examples of male lust gone awry" that Bussel felt the need to produce a two-volume set that portrays sexual dominance for what it truly is: one person submitting willfully to the whims and control of another, on the unspoken (and, often, spoken) understanding that the other has their pleasure in mind and knows what they're doing. Even the ones who give themselves up for the pleasure of their partners derive pleasure from doing so.

As Bussel writes in "The Perfect Power Trip," her introduction to She's on Top, "the image of a strong, powerful woman hovering over a cowering man is enough to stop us in our tracks."

That point is better on the attractiveness of the confident woman than on the point of the cowering man. While allowing for the fact that sexual desires and tastes vary wildly from person to person, I don't know if it's so much seeing a weak man that turns anyone on, so much as a woman exercising dominance and complete sexual self-awareness, a rarity in a world where girls are taught to have sex in the dark.

I, for one, happen to fancy the idea of having an attractive, older female boss who demands foot rubs after long nights on the road doing business. When I think on that, it's her self-assuredness that turns me on, not me cowering.

Donna George Storey's "Suit and Tie" from She's on Top reverses those roles well. Storey is a young woman in the middle of her "Year of Suits," as she affectionately refers to her time in the Financial District, working for a successful if boring CPA named Steve Kennedy. After Kennedy walks in on Storey pleasuring herself in the unisex bathroom, Storey wobbles to a bar down the street and takes a three-martini lunch, thinking her career all but over. They quickly strike an "arrangement" that ends with Storey penetrating her boss via dildo and disappearing into the faceless mob in the financial district after Kennedy's wife calls the office looking for him.