Julian looked from her over to Rick and back again. “Sure,” he said.
Sabine took Rick by the hand. “I like what Julian was doing, don’t get me wrong,” she said. “But . . . there’s another way I like it too. Can I show you?” She tugged on his hand to lead him toward a chair that stood in the corner. He hesitated a moment, then followed her. Eagerly, she thought.
There was a mixture of anticipation and trepidation on his face that she recognized – she knew she’d worn just that expression, had had just that wonderful mix of conflicting feelings, herself. And inside herself she felt something unfurling in her chest, something waking up in answer to the hesitant, excited look in his eyes.
She stepped close to him and slipped her hands inside the waistband of his shorts, caught the bottom of his shirt and tugged it gently out. “I want to feel you,” she said, her voice a husky murmur. She stood on tiptoe, allowing her breasts to brush against the springy blond curls on his chest, sliding her hands from his belly to his shoulders as she pulled his shirt up and over his head. Out of the corner of her eye she caught Julian watching them closely.
“This will work so much better if you can feel it against your skin,” she said. And, she thought, if I can feel it against your skin. She was shocked at how much the idea of spanking him was turning her on. She reached for the waistband of his shorts again, noting how his breath caught as her fingernails grazed his belly. She looked up at him as she unbuttoned his fly and felt a tug, low in her belly, as she saw the beginnings of a smile cross his lips. Delighting in his reaction, she pulled his shorts and underwear down. His cock sprang out from the confines of his shorts as though seeking her mouth, but she only chuckled and shook her head. She saw a slight flush creeping over his chest and up his neck, and looked into his beautiful, green, inquisitive eyes, seeking an answer there.
And found it. Never taking her eyes off his, she stepped forward again, drawn toward him as though pulled by a wire thrumming taut between them.
A breath away from him, she stopped and placed a hand against his chest, lightly, so lightly. Face tilted up to his, they stood that way for a moment and simply breathed together. Then, putting a hand on his shoulder, she turned him around. Taking his wrists, she guided them to the arms of the wooden chair so that he was bent slightly at the waist. She trailed a hand down his back and over his haunches.
God, his skin felt so good. Warm and surprisingly silky, with soft, downy hairs that tickled the palms of her hands. A sigh bubbled through her. She heard him take a tremulous breath as though in answer. She stroked a hand across his ass, cupping the roundness of it, admiring its firmness beneath her fingers, before lightly patting first one cheek and then the other. She lay herself against his bent back, stroked the skin of his ass and the backs of his thighs, and just breathed in the strong, male scent of him.
When she felt him relax beneath her, she straightened and began to spank him.
She started with pats, just testing the water, and loved the way her hand sprang back with each blow, the way he sighed and submitted to her, all the tension seeming to drain away from him. His ass was firm and round, but not too hard. Just the way an ass should feel, she thought. She spanked him harder, slow and steady, and harder still, deeper, until she was delivering sharp stinging blows, over and over across both cheeks. His ass began to glow, warm and pink. His breathing quickened, became a panting that matched the timing of her hand. She relished the sting in her palm, the crack of sound that her hand made each time it connected with his backside. She wanted to go deeper yet, but wasn’t sure if either of them was ready for that. She paused, taking a breath, then slapped him sharply once more, and felt him flinch. She liked the way his muscles tensed as she drew her hand back again, liked the way he seemed to be holding his breath, liked the way she could see his testicles between his legs, swinging back and forth as he moaned and swayed slightly.
Instead of the smack he was expecting, that she wanted to deliver, she brought her hand down softly and stroked his heated flesh, then, simply, held her hands against his hot, red, tender skin.
She stood that way for a time while their breathing slowed. After a moment she felt Julian’s hand on the back of her neck, his lips on the top of her head. She leaned into Rick, slipping her arms around his waist, feeling the heat from his skin against her belly, and Julian leaned against her, wrapping his arms around her just as hers were wrapped around Rick. The three of them stood that way for a long time, while Sabine’s and Rick’s breathing slowed. Finally, she pulled away and turned Rick around to face her.
The wonder she felt was reflected in his face.
“I think,” she said, touching a hand to his cheek and then to his lips, touching the smile that hovered there, “that that concludes Lesson One. For both of us.”
The Graffiti Artist
Amanda Earl
On nights when the heat won’t let her sleep, Mariah is prone to wandering. When the humidity of the city is so oppressive, the walls are closing in on her, she hefts her bag of spray cans, paints, rags, brushes and turpentine onto her shoulder and climbs down the fire escape to the alley below and into the empty streets, in search of whatever trouble she may find.
It is July. The weather has been unbearable for days. Mariah’s night prowling is becoming a habit. She returns to the scene of her most recent crime, a billboard advertisement by a brewery with ties to arms dealers.
Mariah knows her work is ephemeral. But then again, so is life. When her grandmother died, leaving her penniless and alone, she learned that lesson. She used to dream about becoming a real artist with her work displayed in galleries and purchased by collectors.
When she was twenty, after Mariah had spent a couple of years being bored out of her mind in a general arts programme in college, her grandmother paid for her tuition to a local fine art school with an excellent reputation. She believed Mariah had true talent.
Initially Mariah loved being there. She’d always sketched and painted, ever since she was a little girl, but being able to study the greats like Van Gogh, work with live models, talk to the working artists who were her professors and gain their advice, was thrilling.
One instructor in particular, Professor Josef Markoviz, became her mentor. He was the most striking man she had ever seen, with his flashing eyes, dark beard threaded with silver, thick shoulder-length hair, and an Eastern European accent, which caused her body to shiver with desire and her mind to conjure up fantasies. He was originally from Poland, but had left in his late teens to lose himself in the exuberance of art, as he explained to the students on the first day of lectures.
He introduced the class to abstract expressionism, to the energy and beauty of Mark Rothko’s work, the geometric precision of Barnett Newman. He strayed off topic to the antics of the New York School, the jazz, the poetry, the dance theatres, the unbridled sex. The latter was a subject not breached until after class with a group of adoring young disciples, of which Mariah was one.
He took the group to openings where they met other artists. They went to bars and discussed art, sex, death and beauty. To start with Mariah was enthralled, but every time she looked into Josef’s dark eyes, all she wanted was to be alone with him. Everything about him mesmerized her: the way he held his cup to his lips, the way his fingers brushed over hers when no one was looking. Soon it was clear they both wanted to be away from the crowd and alone together.
At first, she resisted his attempts to see him in private, but that didn’t deter Josef. They continued to meet in public at a local bar, a smoky dive that played jazz and served moonshine after hours. They talked all night. He told her stories about Paris, about Modigliani’s tragic lover who killed herself after his death, about Jean Cocteau’s back-room parties in an opium den. She wished she was a decadent bohemian living in Paris between the wars. She wished she wasn’t so conservative, so staid and bourgeois.
Her grandmother wasn’t pleased. During Mariah’s teenage years, her grandmother had insiste
d that she not associate with boys throughout school. Warned her to focus on her studies. Mariah’s mother had slept with a fellow high school student and ended up pregnant with Mariah. When her lover discovered she was going to have his baby, he left town and never looked back. Mariah’s mother worked multiple jobs to take care of her child and died young from exhaustion and overwork. To Mariah’s grandmother, it felt like Mariah had forgotten all this and was heading down the same path. They had words over it. But Mariah assured her grandmother that she wasn’t going to sleep with Josef.
When she wasn’t with the professor, she worked in the studio her grandmother had set up for her, painting rough seas, layering coat after coat of dark blue, green, turquoise, gold, orange, violet, red, silver, brown and black, transfixed by colour. She had stopped going to class entirely, and never spent time with her grandmother. Her grandmother grew increasingly concerned, but there was nothing she could do.
One night Josef finally succeeded in convincing Mariah to go home with him. Perhaps he took advantage of her naivety, or his constant teasing of her bourgeois values had the desired effect. Perhaps Mariah succumbed to the little voice inside her head that told her she was being uptight. After all, none of her art school friends were virgins. Technically neither was she, having lost her virginity through the usual means of self-exploration as a teen; however, she’d never slept with a man. When he offered to take her to his place for a taste of Sliwowica, a Polish drink made from vodka and plums, she acquiesced. He insisted it would set her creative juices flowing and it did. All over him.
Imagine our young Mariah, innocent, wide-eyed and pliant, entering the lair of a sophisticated Svengali. When they kissed for the first time at his bedroom door, he tasted of plums. Mariah let herself fall into his arms. He picked her up and tossed her on his bed.
This was the first time she had ever been alone with a man in his bedroom. Mariah knew she was ignoring every piece of advice her grandmother had given her. Don’t drink too much when you’re with a man; don’t let him get you alone; don’t let him touch you . . .
Mariah’s brief pang of guilt was dispersed with kisses on her ear, her neck, her lips. Josef took her lower lip between his teeth and sucked it. Mariah’s heart caught in her throat. Her pulse raced. She shut her eyes as Josef’s hands grasped her breasts through her thin blouse, pinched her nipples until they were stiff and erect beneath the flimsy white garment. He ran his teeth along her neck, sending shivers through her. He tore the thin fabric off to reveal her naked breasts, so firm and untouched. It was thrilling and frightening. Never had a man looked at her like this, with such a burning need in his eyes. Never had her body felt such yearning in response.
She’d craved to be touched like this, to have a man’s dark head bent over her nipples, licking, sucking, teasing her tits with his tongue and lips. He probed her mouth with his tongue, grabbed her head and pressed her against him. The muscles of her stomach tightened as her arousal grew.
Josef’s hand yanked at the shredded material of her blouse. Remnants of silk fell to the floor. He lifted up her long peasant skirt and put his hands on her cotton-panty-covered mound.
“You’re wet, girl,” he said, “so wet and ready.”
He yanked the panties down and placed his thumb against her aching cunt. She rubbed herself against his hands as he parted her lower lips and found her clit. The first man to touch her nipples and stroke them into erectness, to put his hands on her body, her aching cunt. She’d wanted this for so long.
Mariah froze. She tensed up as she felt a finger pushing into her.
“Sssh, little one, it’ll be all right.”
He slid his hot, trembling hands along her thighs. Spread them wide, dipped his head down and pressed his lips against the soft skin of her naked cunt. Mariah grew more aroused, rocked against his face, took more of the finger inside her.
“That’s right, baby, open up for me, let me in.”
She put her hand on his head and pushed it toward her body, thrilling at the feel of his cool lips against her cunt. He licked along her labia, put his tongue against her clit and held it there. Mariah writhed and moaned.
“Keep still, let me fuck you,” he said.
She tried not to move. The tension in her body mounted, the feeling of his tongue on her cunt made her greedy, she never wanted it to end. The pressure built. She felt taut, like a wire being pulled tighter and tighter. His fingers thrummed her clit. She couldn’t hold it any more. She had to let go. Mariah lifted her hips and cried out as the orgasm coursed through her body. For one brief moment she was all cunt, that part of her body was all she felt. So good, so right. Josef had licked her to orgasm, her first orgasm with a man. Better than any she’d ever had on her own.
Josef rose from the bed, his lips wet with her juices. He removed his clothing. For the first time, Mariah saw his naked cock, strong and thick. She wanted a taste, so she rose up on her elbows, but he pushed her back.
She lay back on the bed, wide-eyed and naked, her legs parted, wanting to please him. She looked up at him. Her legs trembled as he parted them roughly and lowered himself onto her body.
She felt the weight of a man’s body on hers for the first time. Warm, unyielding and pressing her down into the mattress. She was afraid, but she wanted this.
He grabbed a condom from the nightstand by the bed. A flash of how many women he’d likely had on this bed went through Mariah’s mind, but she shook it away and focused on the aroused man above her.
His eyes were closed, he shoved his cock inside her quickly and humped into her. She cried out. He was so brutal she thought she’d break in two. The pain caused her to bear down on his cock. He groaned as he came.
After he climaxed, he wasn’t interested in more sex; he fell asleep and soon began to snore into his pillow. Mariah was shocked. She thought he’d want to touch her more, to lick and caress her, give her another orgasm, take her more gently. This wasn’t what she’d imagined when she read romance novels as a teen.
The fireplace was full of ashes. The dull varnish of the black cherry wood of the four poster bed looked like it hadn’t been polished in ages. The room stank of sweat and semen. The ashtray on the nightstand was full of cigar butts. The cold aftermath of reality dulled Mariah’s bright eyes. She looked down at the snoring professor and saw a washed-out has-been, a lousy lover, a desperate man, old enough to be her father. She was disgusted with herself.
She grabbed one of his T-shirts from the pile of laundry on the floor, since her blouse had been ruined, quickly rinsed off in the bathroom, straightened up and left.
She chided herself for being such a fool. A cliché. She couldn’t believe that was all there was to it. Everybody had talked about losing virginity as a remarkable act, and the pain of it certainly was remarkable, but not the least bit fulfilling. It wasn’t losing her virginity that had set Mariah on fire, it was the way his mouth and hands had felt on her skin, on her lips, on her clit. The desire in his eyes before he fucked her, the pent-up feeling of wanting him for so long.
She went back to attending classes but never returned to Josef’s bed again, despite his pleas. Instead she explored her desires further with other men, satisfied her appetite with students her own age.
After leaving art school, she continued to paint, but when her grandmother died, so did her ambition to have work shown in galleries. She knew her grandmother would have been disappointed, but Josef and his pretentious peers had demonstrated to her that it was all bullshit. The real reason those guys wanted young ingénues was to get into their pants.
Mariah was heartbroken. She felt guilty for not spending any time with her dear grandmother, for wasting time with the lascivious Josef instead of devoting her attention to her classes.
After selling her grandmother’s treasured art collection, she had some money but it didn’t last long. All that her grandmother loved was so easily traded for a pittance. She took only what she could carry on her back in a large backpack, a big duffel
bag and a suitcase of her grandmother’s and found shelter wherever she could, rooming houses, the occasional couch of a well-meaning stranger, and occasionally an abandoned house.
To paint over this particular beer ad, overflowing with hulky masculinity and testosterone, Mariah sketches a naked woman standing in the middle of lush greenery, breasts and sex covered by leaves, the portrait inspired by Gaugin’s Tahiti primitive, exotic abstractions. Just looking at it makes Mariah feel cooler, more at ease. The woman’s eyes are daring, the kind of fuck-you look Mariah often sees in her own eyes when she looks in the mirror.
Mariah paints self-portraits on office walls and billboards. Illegal and unsanctioned by the authorities. There’d even been a brief write-up about graffiti in the city and her work was mentioned. No name given of course. She’d never been caught by the police.
She’s always on the move. She squats in various abandoned houses, often having to leave due to their demolition. She likes this way of life, but it means she doesn’t keep many friends, or lovers.
Of course there are still men, from time to time. A desirable and insatiable young woman like Mariah with her caramel-coloured skin, soft brown hair and penetrating black eyes can have men anytime she wants. And she often wants.
Most of the time she tries not to draw attention to herself. Wears thick plaid shirts, ball caps, men’s baggy cargo pants. She travels incognito.
The art on the billboard is still intact. She makes a few touchups, packs up and climbs back down. That’s when she feels a hand on her back. Her heart hammers hard against her chest. She tries to run, but the guy has her. Damn, it’s some security guard. She stomps on his foot and makes a run for it.
There are several places she can hide. The rent-a-cop doesn’t make enough money to bother giving chase. He’ll likely call the police, who will file a report. They’re too busy with drug busts and domestic violence cases to allocate any resources to chasing down graffiti artists and taggers, but if they catch her red-handed, she’s doomed. Or at least she’ll be fined and she has no money.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 12: Over 40 outstanding pieces of short erotic fiction (Mammoth Books) Page 40