Mark was what you’d call a professional protestor, one of those people who goes in search of trouble because he wasn’t able to cause enough on his own. I didn’t pay much attention to it, apart from warning him every so often that he was going to get arrested if he kept going like this, but I think that was a part of the thrill for him. So we dated on and off for a few months and then one day while I was visiting him, and not really in the mood for anything more than the promised trip to the bar, I happened to pick up a small plastic case that was lying on the floor.

“What’s this, your make-up bag?” I joked as I opened it – and found, instead, a gas mask.

I knew he owned one; it’s how he kept going when the teargas started flying at demos, but I’d never seen it before. And of course I had to try it on… and I couldn’t believe how great it felt. Imagine your face encased in rubber. Your breathing restricted, your eyesight limited. Heat and heaviness, darkness. And HOT. Watching him as he toweled off from his shower, staring through the round glass eyelets that seemed to grow foggier the more my heart pounded, it amazed me how different his body suddenly looked.

I wondered how different the rest of him might be.

Rubber has never been a fascination for me, not in the way the writers here seem to feel. Latex dresses, PVC boots,Masters and servants, thin rubber gloves... you're not even halfway through this collection, and your entire wardrobe has been brushed aside as inadequate. And it's fascinating to realize how turned on you are getting; how voyeurism takes on whole new fascinations (Alison Tyler's masterful "Rubber Necking"), sadism glistens on the tip of a whip (Crystal Barela's "Lick of Pain"), and you just keep on reading, as all the other inevitable fantasies roll down the hill like a monster truck tire. The sort of tire that gets Jeremy Edwards hot and bothered in the first of Rubber Sex's most unexpected tales, the automotive thrill of "Tire Stud."

Which is hot, but not as hot as my gasmask.

He de-towelled, I disrobed, my restricted view transforming even that into a challenge of sorts. I reached out and stroked his cock.

“You like Gasmask Girl?” I teased, surprised at how strange my voice sounded, muffled and deep.

He nodded and I jerked his cock a little. “Do you want Gasmask Girl?”

Again he nodded, and I put my hand on the top of his head and pushed him to his knees – no easy task, he’s about a foot taller than me. But he knelt obediently and when I parted my legs around his face I did not even need to tell him what to do. He did it anyway.

Rubber Sex. Teresa Noelle Roberts explains "How To Liven Up A Boring Party" - by attending it in rubber panties, with a built in dildo thrust deep inside you. Editor Rachel Kramer Bussel's "Tight Squeeze" is just about the hottest shopping trip most of us could ever imagine. Andrea Dale's sublime "Bathing Beauty" makes exquisite sense of her partner's fascination with bathing caps. And Tenille Brown's "Breathing" sucks the air out of the room, and that's the sensation that I've been waiting to recapture. There's not a single gasmask to be found in this book. But I'm not going to hold that against it.

I was feeling dizzy. The heat, the difficulty breathing, the excitement… reality slipped away completely. And when I came, I almost blacked out… almost, but not so much that I didn’t realize that I’d just experienced the most intense orgasm of my life, and given him something to remember as well. Turned out he’d always wanted to have sex with a girl in a gasmask, but had never dared to ask anybody.

Me, I’m not so shy. Rubber still is not a fascination for me. But I bought my gasmask and it sits on my bureau, right next to my favorite dildo and vibrator. Sometimes I put it on just for kicks, sometimes I wear it for more social purposes. In fact, there’s only one thing about it that I really don’t like. You can’t suck cock with a gasmask on.

But where there's a will, there's a way.