Morning, Noon and Night

by Alison Tyler

  The sound of his sharp breathing against the slope of her shoulder and the rough kiss of his lips against the back of her neck had her sighing. Her heart kicked against her ribs. Elise could barely think straight, but she remembered the time and the front door. She leaned her head back, against him. “You, um, locked the front door?”

  He kissed the corner of her mouth. “No.”

  “Aren’t you worried someone might walk in on us?”

  “If they do, we’ll tell them to pull up a chair and wait.” Focused, he tugged at her thong and managed to work the scrap of lace down to the tops of her thighs. “Take this off.”

  “Yes, sir.” Amused, she slipped the thong and her skirt down her long legs and kicked them aside, welcoming the cool kiss of air against her bare pussy.

  When she stood facing him in nothing but her heels and her gauzy blouse, Trip touched his hand to the side of her face and lowered his mouth to hers.

  Tongues twined, probed, rubbed against one another in a greedy kiss that left them both breathless. Elise moaned against his mouth, practically squirming with the need to feel him inside her. Rough fingers trailed down her body to the heat between her thighs. He stroked the soft folds of her pussy, delved deep to tease her, and then he found her clit with his thumb and began to rub the swollen bud in slow, tantalizing circles.

  A tingling sensation raced through her from head to toe. Elise braced herself against the edge of the curio cabinet and widened her stance, welcoming his slow exploration. Watching her with heavy-lidded eyes, Trip went down on one knee and gently pulled her leg over his left shoulder.

  She bit her lip as he nipped a path along her inner thigh. Sensitized to his touch, her stomach muscles jumped and twitched. He stroked his tongue along her slit, then pulled back to watch the sight of his slick fingers probing, sliding deep into her cunt. Her breath caught in her lungs. The friction was almost too intense to bear. Trip flicked his tongue against her clit, testing her before he settled his mouth over her and began to suck at her swollen bud. Moaning softly, Elise leaned her head back against the cabinet. It took every bit of willpower she had to keep from grinding her pussy against his face.

  He kept her on the edge, fucking her with his fingers, teasing her clit with his tongue until Elise’s legs trembled. She was so close to coming, the tension vibrated through her, building up. She gasped for breath, more than ready to let it loose. Instead, he pulled away from her.

  “Trip…” She whimpered his name in frustration.

  His eyes were sympathetic. “Hold it back, baby. Don’t come just yet.”

  He moved her leg from his shoulder carefully so she didn’t stumble, then stood up and reached for the zipper of his jeans. His hard cock sprang forward, thick and ready. Elise captured the silky length in her hand. The dusting of dark hair from his navel to his balls rasped against her knuckles as she slowly stroked him. Trip raked his teeth over his lower lip and thrust into her fist. “I want to fuck your mouth.”

  The words made her womb clench. Elise went down on her knees in front of him, frustrated and more than willing to give him a sweet taste of his own medicine. She kissed the glistening eye of his cock, then flicked the head with her tongue before taking him slowly into her mouth.

  Her blue eyes gazed up at him as she rolled her tongue around the head of his cock, tongue darting and flicking, drawing a hissing sound from between his clenched teeth. A smile beamed inside her at the intense look on his face. She could tell he was holding on, doing everything to make the moment last. She cupped his balls, massaging gently while sucking him deep to the back of her throat. Trip’s stomach muscles clenched, and his hands tangled in her hair. “Oh, fuck yes, like that.” He thrust between her lips and held himself there for a long minute before releasing her.

  The wet smacking sounds and the hot look in his eyes urged her on, along with the thrilling awareness that at any moment, someone could walk into the shop and potentially catch them in the act. Her jaw held tense, she focused on sucking him in a slow, methodical rhythm that soon had him squirming. When his hips twitched involuntarily, Elise knew he was close to coming.

  Barely a moment later, Trip groaned and pulled away from her, his breathing quick, his face bent in a scowl of determination. Eyes closed, he held himself very still, a hand cupped over his cock. “Fuckity fuck,” he gritted through clenched teeth.

  A wicked smile curved Elise’s mouth.

  After a long minute, he eased down onto the floor beside her and stretched out on his back. “I hope you’re ready for me.”

  “More than ready,” she promised, and glanced once toward the doorway, listening, while Trip lifted his hips and tugged his jeans down to his knees.

  He held out a hand to her. “Come here.”

  The patterned carpet abraded her knees as she crawled closer. Elise smiled to herself. What was a little rug burn at a time like this? She straddled him, and with a hand braced on either side of his body, she leaned forward and rubbed her clit against his cock before he took his hard length in his fist and angled it upward. The head of his cock probed her slick entrance, and she shifted her hips, lifted them higher. Trip trembled beneath her. He was practically panting by the time he squeezed into her tight hole.

  Elise wiggled down on him, and he uttered a curse under his breath. Hard hands gripped her hips, and he thrust home in a single solid movement. “Ah, yes!”

  She stiffened, gasping at the sudden, deep penetration. A tingling sensation blossomed in the core of her stomach and rippled through her, prickling her skin. Her nipples tightened. Her clit throbbed. She hung her head and savored the fullness of his cock thrust fully inside her. A low moan left her lips and she began to move. Her pussy pulsed around his shaft. Elise shook her head, and somehow she found her voice. “Trip, oh god, fuck me. Fuck me hard. I need to come.”

  He hissed through clenched teeth. Hard hands gripped her hips and dragged her forward, pushed her back. Her hips bucked in a steady rhythm, grinding him. “That’s it, baby. Ride my cock.”

  Shaking, she braced her hands on the firm wall of his chest. Her inner walls throbbed with each stabbing thrust. Her juices soaked him. Bodies tense and slick with sweat, they glided together, slow at first, and then faster.

  Around them, the candles flickered in a sensual dance. Smoke from the incense curled up from the burners in thick ribbons and dissipated in the air, settling around the room into a silvery haze. A strawberry-scented fog.

  On the edge, Elise sat straighter and shook her hair back over her shoulders. Their harsh breathing sounded loud in the silence of the room. Her swollen clit throbbed, aching for attention. Poised on the edge, she pushed Trip’s hand aside and rubbed herself while he watched her with hooded fascination. She glided on his cock and strummed her clit with steady fingers that quickly pushed her past that threshold of pleasure.

  The smoke seemed to drift through her, a ghost of lust that wrapped around her brain and seeped into her lungs, awakening a sweet, familiar tension inside her. Craving climax, she rolled her hips, meeting his sharp thrusts. A cool sweat broke out over her body when from somewhere inside her, a wave of pleasure spread through her like a winter chill. She came hard. Her breath hitched in her lungs as she shuddered over him, her body shaking, her cunt fluttering soft as butterfly wings around his cock.

  Trip made a garbled sound low in his throat and buried himself to the hilt in her clutching pussy. When she stopped shaking, Elise squeezed her inner walls around him. His head dropped back, and his eyes closed. Muttering a curse under his breath, he clamped her hips tight against him and came.

  Heart still racing, Elise bit back a smile and leaned down to kiss his chin. “I guess we’ve left our mark on this room.”

  Trip chuckled. “The spirits are pleased.” He stroked his hands over her body and pulled her down beside him. They lay there, basking in the afterglow until the air grew cool, and the bells on the front door chimed.

  Elise stiffened in alarm. Someone was moving a
round in the next room. She sat up abruptly and began grabbing for her clothes.

  “Hello?” a man’s voice called from the sales floor.

  Trip caught her arm. “Don’t panic. I got this.” He gave her a quick kiss and staggered to his feet. “Be right there!” he called out to whoever had come into the shop. He quickly pulled up his jeans and tucked in his semi-hard cock before zipping his fly.

  “I’ll lock up after this guy leaves,” he told her on his way across the room. “It’s about closing time anyway.” He pushed through the curtains, and a second later, Elise heard him greet whoever was shopping out front.

  She pulled on her skirt and grabbed a box of tissues off the little magazine table in the corner. Trip’s come trickled down to slick her inner thighs. She stood by the wastebasket and cleaned herself up before pulling on her panties, aware that she still needed to blow out all the candles and snuff the burning incense. She didn’t mind one bit. A smile curved her lips. Her tarot client hadn’t shown up, but setting up the consultation room certainly hadn’t been a waste.

  FIVE P.M. SOMEWHERE

  Kristina Lloyd

  I heard the silence at dawn and knew we were trapped. Beyond the windows, an eerie, deadened calm smothered the world, and no birds sang. Ordinarily, the countryside’s quiet is expansive. You can hear the space, can sense sky and far-off hills in a landscape teeming with tiny life. The morning was echoless and flat. When I peeped through the frilly bedroom curtains, the village square had gone, reshaped by a thick padding of snow, heavy flakes falling fast in the muted silver light.

  My first thought: How pretty. My second: He forgot the fucking gin.

  I hurried back to bed, feet like ice, and recalled my cousin, Mel, comparing the taste of gin to sucking on a Christmas tree. Well, we had a tree downstairs, pine needles glittering with tinsel, but I could think of more enticing objects to suck on. But then I wasn’t sure he deserved it since he’d failed so spectacularly in his gin duty.

  Next to me, Brynn grunted in his sleep, his feet flinching from mine as I sought out his body warmth.

  No gin. Given that gin was the key ingredient in the dirty martinis scheduled for three o’clock, our lack presented us with a problem.

  At three, there wasn’t a cocktail in sight although the two of us were extremely well chilled. Brynn was trying to dig out the car with a spade he’d found in the lean-to while I was using a metal tea tray, pocked with corrosion, to scoop and flip snow to the edge of the small courtyard. The tray was decorated with an antique picture of London’s Natural History Museum, dandies on horseback milling about in front of the grand building. I wondered how the tray had ended up in an old stone cottage over two hundred miles north. What was its story? Holiday lets are strange places, personal possessions popping up unexpectedly in a contrived but welcoming domesticity. Hoping vainly someone had left behind a personal possession of gin, we’d checked every cupboard, but no such luck.

  “I think we should quit,” said Brynn, straightening. He shoved his spade in a bank of snow, sniffed and touched his nose with the back of his glove. His beanie cap was pulled down low, his face bright and flushed, his breath clouding in the air. “Temperature’s dropping. It’s going to freeze tonight. Essential journeys only. And however much you like a tipple, gin isn’t essential.”

  “Essential to a martini,” I countered. I looked up at him, this dark-hatted man framed by a white sky, snow-clad mountains at his shoulders, and I thought how our surroundings, stark and sparkling with frost, had the icy clarity of a gin martini. It made me long to sip perfection. Some people choose hot toddies in winter, but on a cold day I prefer the bite of a cold drink.

  “It’s only a drink.”

  Kneeling, I resumed flipping snow aside with the tray. “It’s not only a drink,” I said. “It’s our anniversary tradition.”

  “Then fuck it. Let’s break with tradition, celebrate some other way.”

  “I’m superstitious.”

  “No, you’re not,” said Brynn. “You’re trying to guilt-trip me. I’ve already apologized, so can we please move on?” He tugged his spade free and began stomping toward the house, compacted snow creaking beneath his boots.

  “It wasn’t hard, though, was it?” I called. “We load up the car. I sort out the food, you sort out the drinks. And the one thing you forget—”

  He spun around. “The phone rang! I got distracted. For chrissakes, let it drop, will you?”

  He went indoors and I listened to him stamping his feet on the rear porch, unzipping his jacket. I wanted to be indoors too, warm and dry. He was right, I was being unreasonable. The trouble was, throughout our relationship, I’d always felt our anniversary was something I organized and valued with Brynn hopping on for the ride. If I didn’t put the effort in, our special day would sail past, unacknowledged. I view anniversaries as reminders not to take each other for granted. Admittedly, Brynn had been making more of an effort these last couple of years, but him forgetting my gin at the last minute seemed to encapsulate the problem of his noncommittal approach to mutual appreciation. And he’d managed to remember the whiskey for his sour, hadn’t he?

  I stood and dusted down my damp knees. Indoors, Brynn was sat at the table in the overly floral kitchen, drinking tea and reading a magazine that didn’t look like his kind of thing at all. The pages showed pictures of fields and fences rather than software. He hadn’t made tea for me. In the living room, I lit the imitation log fire and warmed my hands before its leaping flames. In the kitchen, Brynn turned pages, loudly.

  I wondered where in the world it was five o’clock. Not here, that’s for sure, even though, literally, it almost was. Extraordinary to think that six years ago, on the day we first hooked up, it had been a mild December afternoon, buildings blurred and sparkling with low golden sunshine. I’d taken a day’s leave and was in town for some leisurely Christmas shopping when I bumped into him. He was the new guy at work, employed on a temporary, part-time contract to assist in the company’s website overhaul. We’d spoken a few times, nothing more than that. Watercooler. Cute guy. Friendly. No wedding ring (just checking).

  “Do you fancy a drink?” he asked.

  “Now?”

  “No problem if you’re busy.”

  I checked my watch. “It’s three o’clock.” My tone must have implied, quite accurately, I thought this was too early in the day to drink.

  “C’mon, you know what they say. It’s always five o’clock somewhere.”

  And that’s how we ended up in a quiet cocktail bar in the middle of a Thursday afternoon poring over a menu of extravagant, frivolous beverages.

  After some deliberation, Brynn chose a whiskey sour. I closed the menu. I hadn’t needed to look. “Dirty martini, three olives, gin not vodka, stirred not shaken.”

  “Seems you’re a woman who knows what she wants,” he said, apparently impressed.

  “Yup. And I aim to get it.”

  Initially, that was an asset as far as Brynn was concerned. He never had to second-guess me. A few years later, it was a failing. I was inflexible, a perfectionist, a woman unable to go with the flow.

  Well, I was determined to go with the flow of being snowbound, our regular plans to recreate our first drink scuppered by one small moment of forgetfulness. It was no big deal. We could do something else instead. Watch TV, play Scrabble, have a row.

  Outside, the afternoon was dark. Snow shimmered in the lamplight of the buried village. A couple trudged across the square, knees high as they marched in slow motion, heads down. Brynn began moving about in the kitchen.

  I went to tell him I was taking a bath to warm up. He stood by the open fridge, giving me an effortful smile. “Can I join you in a while?” he asked.

  Ah, so we were calling a truce, or trying to. “Sure,” I said. “That’d be nice.”

  I felt myself thawing out in the bath, physically and emotionally. I recalled how, weeks after our first cocktail, when we were excitable and loved-up, Brynn had writ
ten me a wonderfully romantic email name-checking cities that had been in the five p.m. time zone when we’d sat down for cocktails: Helsinki, Kiev, Istanbul, Beirut, Cairo, Cape Town. But, he declared, the only place he’d wanted to be was with me in a bar in Bromley.

  Would he say the same thing now? Given my grouchiness, I could hardly blame him if he’d prefer Beirut. I was a romantic and a control freak, that was my problem. I got fixated on an ideal version of events and when life didn’t go as planned, I felt cheated. On the plus side, Brynn’s more laid-back approach counterbalanced my rigidity. Our differences made us a great team—and a terrible one.

  I soaked for a while, mulling things over. Brynn didn’t appear. I wondered if he’d fallen asleep in front of the fire like an old man. Well, if he has, I told myself, that’s fine. Go with the flow. I was about to step out of the bath when I heard his footsteps on the stairs.

  “You ready?” he called. Enthusiasm twinkled in his voice.

  I was weak with heat from the water but curiosity perked me up. “For what?”

  Brynn strode into the bathroom and took a large towel from where it was warming on a rail. “It’s cocktail hour,” he declared. “And I’m about to make the world’s first alcohol-free dirty martini, no glasses required.” He gave a small bow, bath towel draped waiter-style over his arm. “Mr. Mixologist at your service. Now, if you wouldn’t mind stepping out of the water…”

  Laughing, I did as instructed. Brynn quickly wrapped me in the towel and a tight embrace, rubbing vigorously at my arms and back. “Dry,” he said. “Because a dirty martini needs dry vermouth.”

  I couldn’t remember the last time someone had dried me. The cotton on my skin, thick, brisk and absorbent, was both invigorating and comforting. Brynn took care to towel me all over, making me laugh hard when he knelt at my feet to dry my toes individually.

  “It tickles,” I gasped, thinking how different it is when someone does something to you that you’d ordinarily do yourself.