I_Write_Ivre
I'm being told the opposite for the last week. Professional writers are telling me that the female market for non-flowery stuff is too small to bother with and guilt won't be done away with when it comes to women.
After more than five people telling me 'women DO want flowery writing, moreso today' (verbatim), I'm getting extremely confused.
In a previous generation, they would be correct. But you'll want to consider the demographic ( age wise at least) that you're going after. The world at large still believes women love pink, are horrible at math, must buy anything on sale, and that all women have an unhealthy need to buy shoes. I'm in no way stating a feminist dogma - this is the patriarchy - message, but there is a fair amount of preconceived ideal of what women's preferences are.
Older women read erotica to fulfill fantasies that they feel they are no longer able to have. It's why married women ( along with teens) were so drawn to Twilight. They want the idealized relationship either with the ultimate prince or the ultimate mysterious broken bad boy whom they can fix, with plenty of drama. You'll find that these often start out with a main female protagonist who is perceived as chaste / inexperienced and often very bland so that a woman can project herself onto her. This allows her to reimagine what may have been a very awkward or uncomfortable start to her own life as a sexual human, especially after she's become somewhat comfortable with that side.
However are also the more liberated, often younger females who are a little more comfortable with the sexual side of their personality whether through being taught a healthy self image or haven't had religious dogma with a negative tone regarding women/ sexuality ingrained into them. My friend Niki is a great example of this. She reads the flowery stuff but finds it a bit boring. She generally gets more out of reading amateur erotic fanfiction with liberal uses of the 4 letter words as well as the more eloquent terms.
So ultimately you're basically dealing with the love and lust and as I noted before that fine line between too literate to be sexy or too vulgar not to be humorous. If anything intimacy is the key. It's very hard to keep a passionate heat going for the entire length of a book, much like in real life, without a few breaks in between.