I'm inclined to agree. My wife and I used to read erotic fiction to each other, none of which either of us would have considered pornographic, and we were both very sensitive to the issue.
May I suggest at book: Grushenka, three times a
woman.
It was one of the few pre-revolution books not surpressed by the Soviets because of its depiction of the lives of serfs at the hands of the Russian nobility. It's explicit, but never vulgar. It's pretty erotic to have read to you.
There's a Russian woman poet who's poetry used to appear on the subway here in NYC in the "Poetry Underground" program. I haven't seen it in a couple of years, but she describes the footsteps of her and her lover crunching in the snow as they walked to her house, and in the rest of the short poem it was very clear what was going to happen when they got there, although it was never stated explicitly. Very, very erotic.