The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 11

by Maxim Jakubowski

  John Updike couldn’t have planned it better.

  On My Ass in the Snow

  “The Winter Olympians have descended from the slopes,” Ben announced, taking the last swallow of his third Irish coffee.

  I was still on my second drink, but was definitely feeling the effect. I aimed a jaunty salute at Nick, Jill, Jürgen and Katharina from my perch by the fireplace in the lodge.

  Nick swaggered over to me, with that cool-yet-clumsy gait of a man in ski boots. “Don’t you look comfy?”

  From his tone, he didn’t exactly approve. OK, so I did have my stocking feet resting in Ben’s lap, but that was only because my legs were sore from doing the snowplough all morning and Ben kindly offered a massage. At that point it was all completely innocent.

  Katharina strolled up and stood close to Nick – too close. They made quite the dashing couple in their ski togs, frosty goggles pushed up on their foreheads. “Your husband is a very good skier.”

  Her feline eyes twinkled like a German Christmas tree.

  “She’s being kind,” Nick said, giving her a fond smile. “It took me all morning to get back up to speed. I haven’t skied in about six years. You were very patient with me.”

  “On the contrary, I had trouble keeping up with you. You were very daring.”

  Maybe it was the whiskey but I watched all of this with a detached interest, as if I were observing someone else’s handsome husband flirting with another woman. It occurred to me, too, that Nick had stopped skiing when we met. Had he stopped being daring, too?

  Jill and Jürgen joined the circle. Amusingly, they made a good couple, too. Jürgen was tall with a close-trimmed blond beard and ponytail and looked every inch the Olympic skier. Jill wore her golden hair in a ponytail, too, and the stylish red outfit showed her long legs to advantage.

  Ben and I were definitely the low-rent pair of our happy group in our hired gear. But I strongly suspected we had just as much fun off the slopes critiquing the elitism of winter sports and redefining our sorry performance in the snow as a protest against the tyranny of consumer capitalism.

  “How was your day, sweetie?” Jill gave Ben a quick hug.

  “Well, I spent most of the morning on my ass in the snow, but things improved considerably when Maria and I decided to hit the bar instead.”

  “Don’t listen to him, Jill. He was the king of the bunny slope. I, on the other hand, spent the whole morning on my ass in the snow,” I added.

  Katharina laughed. “ ‘Bunny slope?’ That is very adorable. In German, we call it the ‘idiot’s hill’ .”

  Nick grinned at her, as if he found her adorable.

  Ben’s lips shifted into a crooked smile. “I definitely feel like an idiot with those skinny sticks on my feet. Give me food, wine and the hot tub. Those are my gold medal events.”

  I giggled conspiratorially and drained my Irish coffee, tipping my head back like a floozy in a beer ad. When I rocked back up again, licking the last bits of whipped cream from my lips, Nick was staring at me, eyes glittering, as if he saw the stranger in me, too.

  Updike’s Hand

  Since Ben and I had the easiest day on the slopes, we offered to make the fondue dinner, which also meant the two of us got to loll around in the hot tub in our swimsuits while the others did the dishes.

  Fortified by the riesling, I was telling Ben about John Updike and how I couldn’t seem to get him out of my mind. That led to a discussion of Updike as the chronicler of a particular moment in American cultural history – the generation who came of age in the 1950s and experienced the allure and angst of the Sexual Revolution after they were married. It was exactly the sort of mildly provocative intellectual bullshit Ben and I had indulged in all afternoon, but when Nick joined us in his swim trunks, he seemed to feel the need to explain.

  “Sorry, Ben, my wife has this fixation on John Updike stories. She likes the spouse-swapping.”

  Ben arched an eyebrow at me. “I didn’t know you were a fan of ‘the lifestyle’ .”

  Before I could reply, the sliding doors swished open behind us and Jürgen and Katharina appeared. As Jill promised, they climbed into the hot tub totally nude.

  I felt Nick’s body stiffen beside me. No doubt he was stiffening in his swim trunks as well. I myself sneaked a look at Jürgen: dark blond pubic hair, an uncut dick, gorgeous thigh muscles. No wonder Jill lingered on the deck in her robe, enthralled at this vision of Nordic male beauty.

  “Get in, babe,” Ben called, gesturing to the empty place between him and Jürgen.

  “I’m not sure I have the nerve to do this,” Jill said with a small laugh.

  “You’ve lived in Europe, Liebchen. I remember when you were not so shy,” Jürgen teased.

  Jaw set bravely, she took a deep breath and shrugged out of the robe. She practically sprinted the five steps to the hot tub, one arm over her full breasts, the other shielding her crotch.

  “The sky did not fall down upon you, did it?” Jürgen said with an indulgent smile. He smiled at the rest of the bathing suit brigade, eyebrows lifted in a dare.

  Nick shot back with a “no thanks” and Ben shook his head.

  I’m not sure why I rose to the bait. Maybe I wanted to shatter their image of me as a coward and a prude. Or maybe, on a subconscious level, I wanted to nudge things along. “Oh, I’m going to get naked, I just thought I’d wait until we all start having sex.”

  Five heads turned to me, mouths gaping.

  Jürgen’s eyes flickered with approval. “I have no argument with that. Or is this an example of the famous American sense of humour?”

  “Don’t underestimate Maria,” Ben said with his usual I’m-just-joking grin. “She acts innocent, but I’m told she has a wild side. She’s into swinging.”

  “So are we,” Jürgen replied matter-of-factly. He obviously wasn’t kidding.

  Katharina’s serene smile left no doubt it was true. “It is very refreshing to meet another daring couple,” she said, turning to Nick. “I see you agree sex is a healthy adult pleasure also. Like skiing.”

  Nick and I exchanged a glance. Be careful what you wish for . . .

  But I saw something else in his eyes, too, a reflection of my own dark urges. The barriers of ordinary life had indeed softened in the thin mountain air. It was as if I were floating, beyond the rules of time and space. This could be Europe or 1968. We could be our parents or grandparents, taking that first sweet taste of sexual possibility, or characters from a novel whose very existence depended on doing something shocking to keep the pages turning.

  I’m not exactly sure who actually made the first move, but things progressed quickly from there. Before I knew it, Jürgen bent to kiss Jill, murmuring something softly in German. Katharina took Nick’s hand and guided it to her breast, her eyes hooded in lust. This time my husband did not resist the dare. He circled the large nipple with his fingertip then bent to kiss it.

  I turned to Ben. We’d been talking all day. This time we spoke with our eyes alone.

  Do you want this, Maria?

  Do you?

  Why wouldn’t I? I’ve had a crush on you forever.

  That’s funny, just last night I was imagining what you’d be like in bed.

  Back when I was dating, I rarely made the first move with a man, but now I curled my fingers around Ben’s hard-on. His thick, meaty cock twitched in my grasp and a jolt of forbidden excitement shot through me. At the same time, the odd floating sensation grew stronger, as if part of me were gazing at the scene from far away.

  As if the hand reaching out to seal the deal were Updike’s, not mine.

  Compare and Contrast

  John Updike didn’t write orgies. His couples retired to separate rooms to explore their new partners and pleasures. So did we. The last to touch, Ben and I retired first, claiming his bedroom after stopping in Jürgen and Katharina’s room for a condom.

  Stripping off our swimsuits, we crawled onto the bed, again without words, as if we were playing o
ut a script we both knew by heart. When Ben kissed me, it wasn’t like I thought it would be, sex for the sake of sex. I always imagined unbridled passion, a desperate, animal coupling. But Ben’s lips were surprisingly soft and tender. The strange taste of him took me back to high school, when I made out with many different boys, reminding me that kisses are like ice cream, the same creamy treat, but each with a different flavouring or spice.

  I liked Ben’s kisses and his satiny skin, the heat of his broad body. He was different from Nick who was sinewy and hard. My palms tingled at the new sensation.

  Is this what the swingers in the stories were looking for?

  “This doesn’t seem real,” Ben confessed. From the deck below, I heard Katharina laugh, a throaty, sexual sound.

  “It isn’t real,” I said. “We’re in a John Updike story.”

  “I’ll have to read his stuff.” He smiled and cupped my breast, brushing the nipple with his thumb.

  I sighed to show him he got it right.

  “You’re beautiful, you know,” he said, repeating that pleasurable motion until I squirmed and my breath came faster.

  I laughed. “Are you trying to seduce me?”

  Ben’s expression was serious. “I want to make you happy tonight, Maria.” He took my hand and guided it between my legs. “Teach me how you like to be touched.”

  Under the circumstances, a little hands-on tutoring wasn’t a bad idea, but in truth it had taken me a while to feel comfortable touching my own pussy in front of Nick.

  So I closed my eyes, touched my sweet spot and started to strum. My clit swelled beneath my fingers, a hard, aching diamond. It was just like masturbating in my teenager’s bedroom, biting back my moans while I imagined John Updike rubbing me through my ski pants in the back seat of the car on a wintry night. That is, until Ben’s large hand closed over mine, and his very real finger carried on with the task.

  I spread my legs wider. Ben was a fast learner. He slipped his left arm around my shoulder to rub one nipple, while he suckled the other. It felt good, very good, but still it seemed more like a fantasy, my old naughty dreams made flesh. A cold winter night, a ski weekend, another man with his hand between my legs, working my clit patiently. I had to come soon, and oh-so-quietly or my husband would be pulling the car into the driveway, stopping the engine, then turning to catch us doing that naughty, forbidden thing.

  Before long, I was indeed shuddering and thrashing in Ben’s arms.

  He kissed my cheek afterwards. “Thank you for that. Tell me what you want next.”

  “I feel greedy,” I confessed.

  “Don’t. I like pleasing you.”

  “OK, I want you on top now. I want to feel you all around me.”

  Tap, tap, squeak.

  I almost laughed at his bed’s encore performance as we rocked together, my legs clasping him, feet hooked behind his thighs. I didn’t come again with him – I actually pushed his hand away when he tried to finger my clit again. Instead I floated somewhere outside my body, drinking in the sounds of his ragged breath, the way he suddenly tensed, then bucked rhythmically, his quivering moan of release.

  These are the things I would remember best, my small, shiny souvenirs from the land of Updike.

  Answers

  “Did you have a good time?” Nick asked when we were back in bed together again. I’d guess it was sometime after midnight.

  “Yes. And you?”

  “It was nice.”

  We both seemed to sense detailed descriptions weren’t in order now. As if on cue, we rolled towards each other and embraced. I stroked his back and shoulders, filled my lungs with his scent, seeking some change in him, some mark to prove it was real.

  “I should be tired, but I want you.” His voice was hot in my ear. “I want you naked inside and out.”

  What happened next was the real surprise of the evening.

  Because those words broke something in me, like a balloon blown to the bursting point. A sigh, more like a sob really, forced its way through my lips and I clutched him, squeezing until my muscles burned.

  He groaned, too, his lean body pressing against me as if he would crush me to pulp.

  When we kissed, it was more like a bite, our lips banging together, stinging from the pressure. Our hands roamed over each other’s bodies, grasping, reclaiming what was ours. I wanted him, too, his naked cock buried in my wetness. And I wanted him now.

  I rose and shoved him over onto his back – I never knew I had such strength in me. When I yanked down his sweat pants, his cock sprang up like a jack-in-the-box, bobbing against his belly. I struggled out of my own pyjama pants and straddled him. Our genitals met like a head-on collision, my pubic bone jamming onto his belly over and over. There were no questions. We knew just what to do. Nick grasped my nipple and rolled it between his fingers. His other hand circled around to my ass, the territory on which he still had sole claim.

  I started to fuck him, angling my hips so I could feel his cock pressing against my front wall the way I liked best.

  “Come for me, baby. Come for me,” Nick growled.

  Which is just what I wanted, too. And with his finger invading my ass and his lips tugging my tit, I did, roaring as my orgasm tore through me, not caring who heard.

  Only afterwards, when I lay in my husband’s arms, my pussy raw and slick with his jism, did it finally make sense. Because the story had two acts: a wandering off to glimpse the familiar in the foreign and to watch the stranger in the man I knew best. And now the rush of bittersweet pleasure you can only know when you come home to real life from a fantastic journey.

  Because I never felt closer to Nick than I did that night.

  I suppose I had John Updike to thank for that, too.

  The Purple Gloves

  Gala Fur

  Translated by Noël Burch

  A cold April wind blew in from the North and through the streets of Paris, whipping the coats of passers-by and the pleated skirt that Elvira was hugging to her thighs. She heard soles slapping the pavement in her wake. Elvira was a long-legged woman in her early thirties and the sensuality of her rolling gait drew men like flies. Intrigued by this new admirer’s perseverance, she turned to have a look. A pair of violet ballerinas with matching quilted pocket-book and gloves tapped along behind her. Today, it was a woman pursuing her along the empty sidewalk on Avenue Mozart. Only a few minutes before, Elvira had caught a glimpse of the tweed-suited woman’s pallid face as she strolled arm in arm with their dermatologist across his waiting room. Her fellow patient had the face of a collectible porcelain doll. The unhealthy pallor emphasized her thick black hair held in place by two barrettes over the temples and swept up in a high bun. Elvira pointed her magnetic key as if she were switching TV channels. The orange headlights on her Mercedes winked at her. She scrambled into the car and was reaching for the dashboard button that would lock the car when already the right-hand door swung out and a face appeared in the opening.

  “We were together in Dr Goult’s office. Are you heading for the Left Bank?”

  There was the touch of an American accent in the stranger’s question. Instead of “Sorry, I have things to do,” Elvira heard herself replying: “I can leave you at a cabstand near L’Étoile, if you like.” It was those sudden bursts of generosity that endeared her to her own “patients”. Elvira was a professional dominatrix. She had the gift of empathizing with the needs of her masochistic clientele. As her psychoanalyst put it, performing services for others was a vocation with her. The pushy American woman sat down beside her, those doll’s eyes staring straight ahead, holding that violet pocket-book on her lap with gloved hands. There was something unreal about her mother-of-pearl complexion. Had the dermatologist rejuvenated her? Embalmed her? Elvira had a passion for vampire stories. Driven by a morbid bulimia, she would spend her sleepless nights watching one horror movie after the other.

  The Arc de Triomphe was coming into view when the woman spoke again:

  “Where do you li
ve?”

  “Saint-Germain-des-Près.”

  “You’re on your way home?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have an errand to run in your neighbourhood. Saint-Germaindes-Prés is a lot like the Village in New York. I live on Bleecker.”

  “Oh?”

  “I come to Paris regularly to see Dr Goult.”

  Elvira had known Pascal Goult for years. Tall and athletic as he was, he liked having his face slapped. In exchange, he took care of her skin. Elvira enjoyed slapping. When she was expecting a client for a slapping session, she grew terribly excited. She had to change her panties afterwards because they were so wet. If she had been a hard-line dominatrix, she’d have slapped this importunate woman. Only a New Yorker is capable of acting like this, she said to herself. Instead of pulling over to the kerb and ordering her out of the car, she said nothing: she was consumed with curiosity. Chance meetings always affected her this way.

  On Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés, she called out “End of the line!” The woman ran gloved fingers over the dashboard. Elvira reached out to open the door for her and her arm brushed against the woman’s breasts. Both were wearing the same perfume, L’Instant Magic by Guerlain.

  “Be seeing you soon,” said the woman, peering through the glass with a little wave of her hand.

  Elvira bought fresh bread, rice, artichokes and fruit at the supermarket. As she turned her key in the lock of her apartment door, she saw the unknown woman again, ensconced in her hallway. Her smile looked as if it were painted on sticking plaster.

  “I left my gloves in your car.”

  The witch has probably bribed the garage attendant to get my address. Elvira suddenly had the feeling she’d seen her somewhere before. In New York, probably . . . A shiver ran down her spine. Was her stormy past pursuing her to her very door? She was overcome by a burst of paranoia, like one of those attacks that cured junkies experience. What if this woman’s been paid to investigate me, do me an injury, kill me? If she was merely prying into Elvira’s present means of subsistence, an expertly applied arm lock should be dissuasive enough: she would escort her out of the building by force. The woman patted her shoulder.