best kiss

I'm on a classic literature kick so I spent 2008 interspersing Jane Austen novels with my other reaing. I got the BBC boxed set of DVDs to go with it because I'm visual.

Northanger Abbey ended up being the last one I watched even though it's the first one Austen wrote. This one had very haunting, evocative music. I wish there was a music CD of the soundtrack available, but I can't find any.

The movie features a spooky, castle-like abbey with very Gothic overtones. I just love Gothic. As a teenager, I devoured Victoria Holt novels.

The other Austen movies in the set had no kiss at the end or at least not any I remembered. As an erotic romance author, I felt sort of cheated after all that emotional buildup and wordplay without at least something physical.

This movie did not disappoint. The end showed the heroine against a backdrop of misty castle. The handsome hero appears out of the mist on horseback, dismounts, and kisses her. First, he grabs her face with his gloved hand. I must have replayed that scene countless times. (Am also thinking gloves can be quite erotic.)

So what makes a kiss on the screen a really good kiss? Emotion and buildup play a part as well as how yummy the hero is. But the real key, I think, is the extent we can put ourself in the heroine's shoes and feel that kiss ourselves and the emotions that go with it. She's not being kissed. WE are. Otherwise, we just watch the kiss and think, so what? Or, even worse, how gross to see them slobber all over each other like that.

So what's the best kiss you ever watched or read about? Or (gasp) participated in?

Afton Locke
www.aftonlocke.com