Best Women's Erotica of the Year, Volume 4

by Rachel Kramer Bussel

  Maybe I should stop obsessively speculating and say something. I’m delightful. When I can get sentences to come out of my mouth instead of chirping single words, anyway. But what am I supposed to say? There’s no ritual here for me. It’s not like the familiar rhythms of Mass—no matter where you go, whether in a chapel or a mall or a cathedral, Mass is the same. Week in and week out, no matter what else is going on, whatever my thesis advisor is subjecting me to, no matter how crazy-making the students in my TA section are, I know what to expect when I walk into that church—or any church I happen to be in. It was one thing that helped me to make the adjustment when I came to the US for university from Manila. Here, though, I’m at a loss.

  Somehow Constance seems to understand, and her expression gentles. Turns into a warm smile that’s more innocent than the smirk she’d turned on me before.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Glory.” Then with a glance over my head, she says, “I’ve got her, Raven. Promise I’ll bring her back in one piece.”

  My thoughts stutter. Maybe I don’t want her to bring me back in one piece. Maybe I want to be taken apart. Maybe I want to be shattered into pieces, and then glued back together by Constance’s strong hands. Or maybe she’d pour the shards back and forth between her palms, let the bits of me sift through her fingers.

  I shouldn’t let myself get so carried away. We just met and I need to be careful. But freed from a script, I need cues. Want them, desperately. So without another word to Raven, I let Constance steer me down the hallway I couldn’t quite set foot in on my own.

  The place is bigger than it looks from the outside, although about as swank as the vestibule, which is not at all. The carpet on the floor is old, stained in some places, and covered with well-tread rugs. There’s an open space where play areas are delineated by ropes hung between, and each has a piece of furniture. A bench. A chair. A table. A Saint Andrew’s cross, which makes my stomach clench in a weird way. There’s a room off to the side Constance gestures to, and eyes me as she tells me what it is.

  “That’s the room for medical play. Blood play. Any fluid play. No carpet. No upholstery. Nothing that can’t be hosed or wiped down.”

  I try to play it cool, but I’m so busy rubbernecking, trying to see everything in there out of pure curiosity that I trip over a rug. Constance catches me with a chuckle. It rumbles through her so I feel it more than I hear it.

  “This your first time at a club?”

  “Is it that obvious?” I have to look up at her, and it makes me feel even more foolish, even smaller.

  “No.” She’s trying to be nice, but it absolutely is obvious. Her white lie doesn’t bother me though. She’s trying to make me feel as though I’ve got at least a toehold here, and I appreciate it. “You’re not making a fool out of yourself, which a lot of people do, and you’re clearly not a tourist looking to point at the freaks. You’re doing fine.”

  Funny thing is, I believe her. So I nod, not able to voice my gratitude. At the end of the row of playspaces, there’s a small kitchen and seating area, and Constance steers us over to what I’d call a love seat, but even thinking the word love near Constance makes my cheeks heat. I don’t love her. But I’d like to know if I could.

  When we sit, she leans back and crosses an ankle over her knee. “So you’ve never been to a club, but a play party?”

  “No.”

  “A conference?”

  “There are conferences?” I should know that. Of course there are.

  She smiles again, and the worry that had cropped up gets pushed back down.

  “Did you ever play with a partner? Boyfriend? Girlfriend?”

  “No. I don’t date much. I’m busy now, and when I grew up my parents were strict. My family’s really religious too. I know a lot of people rebel, but . . . ”

  I shrug. I don’t have a great explanation for why I still go to Mass and confession and try to be a good Catholic. I grew up that way but so did all my siblings. My older sister and my youngest brother certainly never got the memo.

  Constance looks like she’s licking up the beads of information I’m slowly dropping. Letting them sit on her tongue so she can analyze their taste and composition. “So are you a bottom? A Top? A Dom? A sub? A switch? Something else?”

  I try to hide my flinch, but I don’t hide it well.

  “Hey, sorry. You can tell me to mind my own business. You don’t have to tell me anything. If you’re not ready to talk, you’re not ready.”

  I am, though. I want to tell someone, to share this part of me with someone who might understand. There have been no opportunities prior to now and I shouldn’t waste this one.

  “I’m a bottom, I think? Maybe a sub? I’ve never . . . done this before, so I don’t know for sure, but it’s what I’ve wanted. What I think about. What I get turned on by.”

  What I’ve confessed. Impure thoughts has got to be a thing priests hear a lot about.

  “I came here tonight because I wanted . . . I wanted to try. To see for real. To see if . . . ”

  If I’m right. Or if this whole time I’ve been a stranger to my own body. If there’s a disconnect between fantasy and reality. If I’ve spent hours and hours agonizing over something that isn’t even real.

  “Do you still want to try?”

  Things tumble around in my head. I do. Is she—what is—?

  “Yes. Are you offering?”

  Constance laughs, her mouth spreading wide to show off her teeth, and tipping her head back. “I was going to ease into it, but yes. Did you have anything in mind?”

  Is there something I don’t have in mind? I want everything. Now that I’m here I want to gorge myself, take anything on offer, but that wouldn’t be smart and it might even be . . . rude? There is one thing I think I can bring myself to ask for that doesn’t seem like too much. A thing I’ve thought about a million times and never asked for because I’ve never had someone to ask.

  Now I do.

  She’s right here, offering this thing to me, or maybe opening a door, gesturing for me to come inside. I want to cross the threshold, see if I could belong here too.

  “Spank me?”

  “A girl who’s not afraid to ask for what she wants. I like that.” Constance smiles, and I have to make an effort to not squirm on the sofa. I want her smiles, I want her approval, I want her. Which is why I can’t stop myself from bouncing.

  “Now?”

  Her smile gets wider, and her gaze travels up and down my body. Doesn’t take long since I’m small, but I relish every second. It feels as though she’s double-checking to make sure I’m real. Could she possibly have the same hot flame of interest licking up from her pelvis?

  Constance reaches out and grazes her knuckles over my cheek. I want to lean in, turn her hand over so I can rest my head on her palm, but I don’t dare. Because this is my lucky day, the movement doesn’t stop at my jaw, but the backs of her fingers coast over my chin, my lips, and my other cheek before she does give me the warmth and contact of her palm. I give up, give in, sigh, and close my eyes because it’s too perfect. They snap open again when she says, “Now works.”

  I’m not shy, and I don’t think I can wait another second without spontaneously combusting, so I clamber over her lap, which provokes another laugh. I like Constance’s laugh—it’s kind and delighted, not appalled or cruel. There might be a better place to do this, or at least somewhere sexier than what’s basically the break room of a shabby kink club, but I don’t care. Constance doesn’t seem inclined to wait, either.

  No, definitely not. She sets one of her hands at the small of my back, and the other on my thigh, just below where my skirt ends. God, I’m wet. Can she tell? She works up my skirt so it’s bunched around my waist, and then her hand is on my butt. Her hand. Is on. My butt. I wish I were cool enough not to gasp, but I’m not.

  She hesitates but doesn’t move her hand. “Is this okay? You can tell me to stop anytime and I will.”

  “I’m good.” My lack of oxyge
n makes my voice squeaky and breathy at the same time, which I’m sure is devastatingly attractive. She doesn’t laugh, though. Just strokes my bottom over my underwear—lacy ones, the nicest pair I have. Then her palm leaves my flesh before landing again. Not too hard but it’s a shock nonetheless. The crisp, stinging smack makes me want to cry. It’s not painful; it feels like acceptance. Confirmation. Like pieces I’ve been trying to fit together for my whole life have finally clicked into place. It’s a relief but also overwhelming.

  The feeling grows as she hits me again and again. I try to quiet my mind so I can pay attention, enjoy, and to be honest, analyze. What do I like, what do I not like? How does this actually make me feel?

  With the slaps getting harder, there’s an element of pain, but mostly it’s warmth spreading through me, and some being turned on. A lot. Maybe embarrassingly so. Is it possible to orgasm from spanking? Am I about to find out?

  I’m squirming on Constance’s lap, but not because I want to get away. I want more, and this woman is . . . giving it to me. I can’t imagine she’s hitting me as hard as she can because she’s so solid, but it’s still intense and I appreciate more than words can say the hand she’s pressing into the small of my back, holding me down—a sensation I’d like to explore more. That doesn’t stop my hips from grinding into her thigh, making me throb and pulse between my legs until I spill over. Cry out. Ecstasy and surprise, gratefulness and this expansiveness, like I’ve discovered something new but also known it all along. I belong here.

  It’s physically exhausting, the tension and the release of it, the way my whole body shudders and my startled shout turns into desperate, greedy moans while I rock out the rest of my climax on this stranger’s leg. I’m filled to the tip top with emotions, so much that the tears finally fall.

  Constance turns me over, helps me curl up on her lap, and I fling my arms around her neck, bury my face against her shoulder, and feel compelled to tell her it’s okay though I’m the one who’s bawling. She didn’t do anything wrong and I want her to know.

  “Constance, I’m okay. I’m all right. I . . . Thank you. I—” I can’t go on because I’m choked by a hiccupping sob.

  Her arms around me, though, make me feel better, safe, not so scared of everything that just happened; let me enjoy the good and press pause on some of my fears because she’s not going to let me go. Not until I’m good and ready. That’s what she tells me in soft murmurs as she cradles me. There aren’t many people in my life I’ve had this kind of intimacy with, and I want to steep in it like I’m a bag of tea and she’s the hot water that finally allows me to loosen and unfurl. So I let myself be too much until I’ve mellowed in her arms. Finally I find the presence of mind to nuzzle and kiss beneath her ear.

  “Thank you. That was . . . wonderful. Everything I hoped it could be.” A thought seizes me and I pull away so I can see her as I ask my question, willing the fear not to choke me up. I’ve been so selfish and it makes my stomach curdle. “Did you like it too?”

  “Oh, Glory. You’re a pleasure. My pleasure. Yes, little one, I liked it too.”

  Two small words shouldn’t have so much of an effect on a person who spends days reading books and reports and writing treatises, but my heart is flushed with happiness and the queasiness disappears—little one. I’d like to be that to Constance. Let her show me more—because there’s more, right?—and I’ll ask her to teach me how to please her even more.

  I should feel guilty. I do, a little. But I’m not sorry. My confession tomorrow just got a whole lot stickier because there’s no way I can say with my whole heart that I’ll never do it again. How could Father Gabriel blame me for that, even as he says the words we both expect, instructing me to make amends? There aren’t so many places a person feels like they truly belong, and I don’t believe he’d want to take that from me. For now, I’ll sit and breathe and enjoy. This woman beneath me is a virtue and a vice, and I hope she’ll be my teacher for a little longer. Maybe even more.

  WITH HONORS

  Sofia Quintero

  Justina surveys the seminar room. It is completely full, despite today being the last day of class. She chuckles to herself. Of course it is. No one wants a semester with Professor Delgado to end.

  Today instead of standing behind the lectern, the professor half sits across the front desk—the fabric of his navy slacks taut against his sculpted thighs—and answers their questions as promised. Justina realizes that the professor knows the impact he has on his students. Even if she had not warned him of the personal inquiries to come his way, he had to have noticed how the students’ attire changed over the semester. After the first meeting, the yoga pants, flip-flops, and hair wraps gave way to contoured makeup, pencil skirts, and high-heeled boots.

  When they met two weeks ago during office hours, Justina warned him. “Expect to be asked all kinds of inappropriate things,” she said of her twenty-something classmates. “They’re children, after all.” The second she said it, she knew she had ulterior motives and worried that they were as naked to Professor Delgado as they felt to her.

  “Children, Ms. Mendez?” He raised an eyebrow at her. And then he chuckled.

  “Okay.” To avoid his gaze, she busied herself with inserting the first draft of her final paper in her bag just so. To atone for the petty remark, Justina told on herself. “But remember I have a child their age.”

  “Really? I thought you had just the one. Brianna, right?” Three classes into the semester, Justina had come to Professor Delgado on the verge of tears. As much as she enjoyed his course, she had to drop it. Brianna had just started at a high school where she didn’t know anyone, and in a desperate effort to make friends, she fell in with the crowd that liked to cut class, get high, and who knows what else. Justina couldn’t risk taking evening courses while Brianna was in this phase now that her brother, Caleb, was in Syracuse. She needed to pick up her daughter from school, bring her home, and make sure she did her homework before indulging in any teenage shenanigans with thoroughly vetted accomplices.

  Professor Delgado refused to sign the form that would allow Justina to drop his class. Her perspective was vital to class discussions, he said. He relied on it to tease out important nuances. She knew by that Professor Delgado meant he appreciated having a member of Generation X in a room full of postmillennials. Her much younger classmates rolled their eyes when she raised her hand and barely muffled their scoffs when he praised her insight. Their insecurity instigated Justina’s performance of the experienced and confident woman even as she, too, switched from business casual neutrals to jewel-toned, form-fitting suits. At least on Tuesdays and Thursdays from six to eight, the persona felt real.

  Ground the girl, Professor Delgado had said, and bring her to class. Justina laughed. She had underestimated his brilliance. Did he have children, she asked. Yes. A son. Eight. A few minutes later, as Justina walked across the campus to the parking lot, she wondered where their conversation might have gone had they not been interrupted by another student desperate to speak with the professor.

  And so Justina grounded the girl and brought her to class. Brianna whined the entire way until she entered the room and saw him. “Mami, that’s your teacher?” Out came the smartphone.

  “Brianna, what are you doing?” Justina swiped at the device, but her daughter swung it out of reach. “Give it here.”

  “Just one picture for Insta.” The phone flashed and clicked. “I wish I had a teacher who looked like him.” Brianna’s thumbs danced across the screen as she churned out one hashtag after the other.

  “Brianna, give it now!” Justina grabbed the phone before Brianna could close the app. #thisiscollegebitches #collegeislit #professorbae #howyoudoin #Idnevergraduate. Within seconds Brianna’s post racked up likes, shares, and emojis. “I swear I don’t know what to do with you.” Still, the experience brought them closer. Brianna’s teen lust grew into genuine interest as she hung on Professor Delgado’s every word, and mother and daughter were continuing
class discussions on their rides home. While she still gave Justina the occasional fit, Brianna soon grew bored with her first choice of friends and gravitated toward two girls with whom she could both Photoshop and politick.

  Really it was the professor’s kindness that made Justina give in to her attraction. At first she resisted the dark curls, those toned arms, that husky laugh. What did a forty-six-year-old divorcee with a full-time job, eleven credits, and two grownish children need with an adolescent crush on a younger man, never mind her instructor?

  Everything, it seemed, when Justina grew tired of the long days, the demanding course load, the hustle, the loneliness. After handing in their midterm exams, she watched her young classmates cluster off, bounding out of the room joshing with relief and debating where to eat. Justina collected her things, walked into the bathroom, and began to cry. Even if they had invited her to join them, she wouldn’t have been able to go. Twenty years ago she had traded the structured spontaneity of college life for motherhood, and while she never regretted having Caleb, if she had to do it all over again, Justina would have returned to school to finish her degree before having Brianna. Before Justina could release the sadness, some classmates barged into the bathroom, chasing her into a stall for cover. As the young women reapplied their lipstick and brushed their hair, they admitted what they really wanted to know from Professor Delgado before the semester ended.

  Professor D, are you married?

  Who fuckin’ cares?

  I do, okay, because I’m not a slore like you.

  Nope, she’s her own slore.

  Exactly. Thank you.

  What size shoe are you, Professor Delgado?

  Gawd, are you for real right now? That’s such an old wives’ tale.