Women in Lust

by Rachel Kramer Bussel

“Thanks,” says Viv, nodding briskly at me and escorting Ginger from the room. I stand to leave, unsettled by Blake’s peculiar demeanor, but my movement finally precipitates speech from him.

  “Stay,” he says.

  “Stay? Why?” I let myself sink back into the molded plastic. “Are you okay, Detective Sergeant?”

  “You can call me Ben,” he says.

  “After all these years…”

  “It’s Ellen, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Listen, I should…”

  “You should. I should. We should. I’ve had some news tonight. I wanted to share it with you.”

  He comes to sit opposite me, swooping down and clasping his fingers. I can see that his eyes are burning blue. Whatever it is, it’s firing him up.

  “So then?” I open. The toe of his shiny black work shoe nudges my patent pump.

  “I’ve been promoted. I’m DI Blake now. Detective Inspector.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.” His grin is vulpine. His foot inches forward until our calves rub together. “The promotion involves a transfer.

  I’m leaving Maiden Lane. I’ll be based at Stafford Row from now on.”

  “Oh.” I can’t conceal the falling of my face. “I’ll miss you.”

  “I was hoping you would.” His face is close to mine, the tip of his beaky nose blurring out of focus, his eyes still glassy-brilliant as ever. “I’ll miss you, too. But we won’t work together anymore, so…”

  “So?”

  “So…this.” He darts forward and his lips touch mine. It’s a whisper of a kiss, no more than a promise really, but it rocks me sideways. He hooks a leg around mine, capturing it. “If you want.”

  “I do want. Yes. I think I do.”

  He pushes my notebook aside and scoops up my hands until they are cocooned within his, held tightly inside, clenched into heart shapes.

  “Are you going to interview me?” I ask with a low laugh, suddenly absurdly nervous.

  “Interview you?” he says, kissing the captive hands. “Interrogate you. Put you under pressure. Make you sing like a canary.”

  “Here?”

  He uncoils, releases me, throwing his head back and blinking at the ceiling, as if he can’t quite believe what he’s doing or saying.

  “No, of course, not here.” He snaps back to life, his lip curled in erotic challenge. “Where then?”

  “Not my place, I’m afraid. I’m having an extension built; it’s chaos. Dusty chaos.”

  “My flat then. It’s not far.”

  He helps me from my chair and pulls me in close, bumping foreheads.

  “You lawyers are a slippery lot,” he murmurs. “But you aren’t. Are you going to slip through my fingers?”

  “I don’t think there’s a legal precedent,” I tell him, intoxicated by his scent. “I’ll let myself be guided by you.”

  “You do that.”

  On the short drive to his docklands apartment, we talk haltingly, as if we have only just met and picked each other up. Despite the three years of professional involvement and mutual attraction, we are strangers.

  “Did you always want to do this?” I ask him.

  “Oh, yeah.” He flicks his eyes away from the darkened streets to meet mine with an abashed smile. “I had to train myself not to check you out all the time I was questioning suspects. I had to pretend you were some old scrote with a boil on the end of his nose, otherwise the thieves would have run rings around me.”

  “That’s so strange.” I am hugging myself, thrilled at this disclosure. “You know, I’ve felt the same way. For a very long time.”

  He turns the corner and drives down a ramp to an underground parking lot.

  “Good,” he says.

  We make it to his front door in a shuffling tango, bodies intertwined, lips clashing, before falling through into the hallway. We half stagger, half crawl to the bedroom, landing on the bed in an urgent heap, ready to fulfill the night’s promises.

  “DS Blake. Ben.” I snatch a second of lip freedom to speak his name.

  “What? Don’t talk. Keep kissing. Get your clothes off.”

  “I want you to…”

  He pulls at my blouse, stretching the buttons to their limits.

  “What? Name it. I’ll do it. Just as soon as you’re naked.”

  “Interview me.”

  He is taken aback by this; his fingers freeze and then retract from my buttons and he lies back on one elbow, surveying me as he would one of his more dangerous malcontents.

  “What? Interview you?”

  “Yes. I love your technique. It turns me on.”

  His chuckle starts off bemused then turns wicked halfway through.

  “Yeah? You like that, do you? Like to be grilled?”

  “I think you have a way about you. It’s very masterful. Professionally and sexually.”

  “Masterful, eh? I suppose you’ll want me to get the cuffs out then.”

  “Well, I…wouldn’t object.” I worry that I have said too much. He will write me off as a deviant freak.

  But his playful demeanor is unchanged as he leans back to scrabble about in a bedside cabinet.

  “You keep them in the bedroom!”

  “Of course. Where else?”

  We are singing from the same hymn sheet. Hallelujah.

  He sits back up, dangling shiny metal chain-linked cuffs in front of my face.

  “Let’s be having you then,” he says.

  I offer him my wrists. He traces their veins with a caressing fingertip, reducing me to an essence of desire, before suddenly closing his fist around them and snapping the bracelets locked behind my back.

  “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear,” he breathes. “What have you been up to, Ms. Carrington? I never thought I’d see you here. Anything you need to get off your chest?”

  He flicks at the blouse buttons so that the top two slide open. Beneath the white silk, my chest and collarbone rise and fall against his hand.

  “I’ve been set up,” I tell him. One finger slips inside the silk and strokes the slope of a breast.

  “Oh, I know, love. They framed you. You’re innocent. I’ve heard it all before, a thousand times. But the evidence says otherwise, doesn’t it?”

  His sorrowful smile looks so genuine. It always does. He always looks as if the felon’s fall from grace is breaking his heart.

  I jut out a lower lip. “I didn’t do it, officer.”

  He takes my chin in a hand, leans down to kiss the lie from my lips.

  “Yes, you did,” he says. “I’m offering you a choice. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

  The frisson that sizzles from my throat to my groin is strong, very strong. I am wetter than wet; I want to moan with need, to throw back my neck and invite him to plunge down and take me.

  I push back my shoulders, lift my chin, meet his eyes.

  “Make it hard,” I tell him.

  He smiles, his eyes firing, his ego challenged.

  “You’ve never been easy,” he says. “I just hope you know what you’re letting yourself in for.”

  He puts a hand on my shoulder, holding me still, while he forcefully unfastens the rest of my blouse buttons, letting the silk swing open over my breasts. When it is untucked from my skirt, he rests his palms at the sides of my rib cage and puts his lips on my ear.

  “You asked for it.”

  One hand slaps the seat of my skirt; I jump, as far as it is possible to jump when one is on one’s knees, and yelp.

  “Is that hard enough?” he asks. “Confess, or there’s more where that came from.”

  “Ooh, I didn’t do it!” I gasp, needing to feel that incendiary crack of palm against rump again. Did it really feel that good? I need backup data.

  Backup data arrives on cue. The slow burn radiates outward across the curve of my ass. It really did feel that good. It felt better.

  “Oh, come on,” he whispers. “You don’t expect me to believe that, do you? I’ve seen
the charge sheet. You stand accused of stiff nipples.” He pulls down my bra cups. The evidence stares him in the face.

  “It’s not how it looks,” I insist stubbornly. Another gloriously loud smack reverberates off the lined cotton.

  “What do you call this then?” He begins to roll the fat pink buds between ungentle fingers, flicking at them with the tip of a nail, examining them in excruciating detail, even putting his lips to them and blowing. Oh. That feels good. Do it again.

  He straightens up, eyebrow cocked. “Well?”

  I want to sob with disappointment. “It’s just a physiological reaction…to the room temperature.”

  “My ass,” he says, but it’s my ass that gets another spank, harder than the preceding three, causing me to fall forward and land against his chest, my face crushed into his white cotton shirt. “The room’s warm, Ellen. But your nipples are behaving as if they’ve been dipped in ice.” His hand fixes itself in my hair, gently tugging at the roots. “What’s that all about, eh?”

  “Ask forensics,” I mutter into his chest.

  He laughs out loud and spanks me again.

  “I think I need to step this examination up a level.”

  My blouse comes off, at least as far as the cuffs, beyond which it cannot travel, then my skirt zipper is dealt with and the protective material abandons my bottom and thighs, leaving them all the more open to Blake’s merciless techniques. He lays me down on my back, so that he can remove the garment completely. While he’s about it, he takes off my shoes, so that I lie in just a no-cup bra, knickers and stockings. I always wear stockings when Blake’s on duty. Finally, it has paid off.

  I pretend to cower when he straddles me, fully suited and ready for the kill, his tie falling into my face. Behind my back, the handcuffs are uncomfortable, but I can’t bring myself to care. I am too busy trying not to fling my legs wide and beg him to mount me there and then.

  “So we’ve established that your nipples are hard,” he recaps, using his fingers to determine that this remains the case. It does.

  “And I also note that your throat and collarbone are flushed,” he says with a grin. “What do you think that tells me?”

  “Hot,” I say. “Heat.”

  “Oh, now the room has heated up, has it? From its previous arctic temperature? Come on.” He brushes the backs of his fingers under my chin, down the line of my neck. “You can’t expect me to believe that.”

  A little jerk of my pelvis is my pathetic attempt to unseat him. Of course it fails, and he simply bears down on me with all his weight before leaning down to whisper in my ear.

  “I know how to prove your guilt, Ellen. Do you want to know how? Or do you want to confess?”

  “I’m not guilty,” I shiver, but it’s too late for that.

  A hand introduces itself into my knickers, fingers taking bold possession of their contents. My lips are split apart by inescapable probes; they pay particular attention to the swollenness of my clit and the swamp conditions that surround it.

  “Oh, you need it,” he confirms, his eyes bright with triumph. “You are so wet, god, and so hot and…guilty as charged, Ms. Carrington.”

  I shift restlessly, wanting more, inviting him to rub and push, which he does with alacrity. I am not going to argue this point.

  “I’ll come quietly,” I moan.

  “Quietly? Not if I have anything to do with it.”

  He’s right. There is no way this insistent pressure, this sweet torment, is going to lead to anything other than the most vocal of throes. He pulls down the knickers, pushes my thighs wide and sets to work with all the energy and thoroughness his police training has imbued. His strong hands, capable fingers sliding inside me, test me for stretch and depth, finding the places that make me kick and whimper on contact.

  “Open your eyes,” he commands, guessing that I am close. I want to hide from his relentless scrutiny, but he will not allow it. I force them open and when I come, I watch him watching me, enjoying my surrender, relishing the confession my sex makes for me.

  “Oh, good, yes,” he smiles, the smile he always gives the crook at the moment of capitulation. “You’ve done the right thing. We’ll take care of you, don’t worry.”

  I am speechless, defeated.

  “Thanks,” is all I can say. Then, once his hand is out of me and he loosens his tie, “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  I put it another way. “What’s my sentence?”

  “Your sentence?” He pulls off the tie, unbuttons his shirt with slippery-wet fingers. “Ah. I see. I’d say the punishment should fit the crime, wouldn’t you?”

  “Absolutely. But…look, do you mind? These cuffs are really starting to dig into me.”

  “Oh.” The shirt is gone, the trousers next on the list. “Right. Let’s…”

  He pulls me up by the shoulders and rolls me over on to my stomach. My arms are still strained but the chunky metal of the cuffs is no longer a distraction.

  “So there you are.” His voice is behind me, close to my ear. “Tried and found guilty. Sentenced to a good hard fuck. Bend over the dock, my dear.”

  Oh, he is fantastically perverse. My heart flutters with love. How does he know I have pictured this, during long dreary stints in the Crown Court?

  I hear the snappity-snap of the condom, then his forearm is under my stomach, manipulating me onto my knees. The restraint of my arms forces my face down into the covers; he will have to hold on to me if he does not want me to crumple down flat at the first thrust.

  Of course, he knows this—he seems to know everything—so two hands smack down onto my hips and grip me tightly, preparing me for the first taste of my shameful portion.

  “The judge is watching you…everyone in the courtroom is. The stenographer is poised to record every thrust, every gasp, every little squeak that comes from your mouth. The press will have a blow-by-blow account in all the papers tomorrow, and the court sketcher is making sure he gets the curve of your ass… just…right.”

  I feel the tip of his cock butt my buttocks, then glide its way around the flesh, stopping for a quick poke between my cheeks before drifting down the crack to its destination.

  “Did you hear what the judge said?” he whispers, guiding that fat bulb to the slick entrance awaiting it. “You’re going to be made to come, at least five times a week, for a minimum of two years. No time off for good behavior. No parole. Just plenty of time spent on your back, or your knees, with a hard cock inside you. And it starts…now.”

  My lungs inflate and I hold the breath his sudden ingress prompts for much longer than I should. The feeling of him, inside, filling me with his thick length, is too precious to permit me to focus on anything as mundane as exhalation. I need to take and hold this moment for as long as I can.

  He eases into his rhythm, moving slowly at first, taking every opportunity to lean down and fill my ears with more of his fervid imaginings.

  “See their eyes upon you. See the furious scribbling and note-taking? You’re front-page news. And the collar is mine. You are my body. I caught you fair and square.”

  He tugs on the handcuffs, straining my shoulders, pulling me back so his cock sinks deeper. I imagine the cold sleek wood of the dock, slippery with condensation from my heat. I imagine that I am bent over, in high heels, my skirt rucked and blouse pulled open while the jury stares at my exposed nipples and creeps around the room for a better view of my ass, turning pink from the relentless pounding of my arresting officer. The sketcher captures the moment of confluence between cock and cunt, confident sweeping strokes of charcoal depicting my punishment for the edification of the masses in tomorrow’s papers. He has to get my face right. He has to get that overwhelmed look into my eyes, that contortion of mouth and crumpling of forehead, every shameful lineament of expression.

  The thought of it heightens the sensation below, which is already growing with each tiny increment in Blake’s pace. His dick is deadly accurate, hitting all the sp
ots, over and over. His whisper, his thrust, his finger on my clit, his power, my surrender—all of these converge in one moment of frightening intensity, a feeling I don’t immediately recognize as orgasm until the fire of it reaches my belly. I realize that I have not ripped apart at the seams. I am simply coming—coming harder than I have ever done before, and certainly not coming quietly, but coming nonetheless. What an inadequate verb it seems to describe the experience; somebody really needs to invent a better one.

  But not me, and not now. Not while the cells of my brain occupy opposing ends of the universe.

  I am almost surprised, on coming round, to find myself in a bedroom and not amidst the majestic trappings of Her Majesty’s Crown Court. Blake has discreetly withdrawn from my well-used pussy and is lying beside me, one slightly shaky hand on my hip.

  “What do you think?” he asks, his voice a little dry. He clears his throat. “Was that sentence too harsh?”

  “No.” I try to move my wrists. He takes the hint and uncuffs me. “Not at all. I think I got off lightly.”

  “Oh.” He laughs tiredly. “You’re not going to appeal then?”

  “Not unless it’s for a stiffer sentence.”

  I have my stiffer sentence. I have it most nights. Believe me, when the choice is available, I will always opt for the hard way.

  STRAPPED

  K. D. Grace

  When I see him eyeing me from across the room, my stomach drops to the floor, and I wonder if he knows. Will he betray me if he does? If so, will he do it quietly, or will he make sure everyone knows what I’m up to? I contemplate leaving quietly by a side door, but before I have a chance, he sidles up to the bar next to me. I stand frozen to the spot, close enough that his arm, hard muscle beneath soft cotton, brushes mine, even though the bar isn’t crowded.

  My pulse is a drumroll hammering against my throat. Surely he must see it. In the mirror behind the bar I can see his sideways glances taking me in. I try not to squirm, while I take a mental inventory: jeans, loafers, tits strapped tight beneath my oversized shirt. My best friend, Alex, coached me. He says I’m good. He says my disguise is flawless. But then he never thought I’d actually go through with it, and it certainly never occurred to either of us that I might have to make a run for it wearing a strap-on.