Taking a deep breath, I opened the loose flaps of the box. A cold hand closed around my heart. Folded on top of few photo albums was a length of pale peach silk. I picked it up and shook it out. It was the same robe I’d been wearing in the dream.
With a shiver, I tossed it on the bed and pulled out the album on the top of the stack. The first photograph was a professional quality black-and-white headshot of a lovely, dark-haired woman. In the next, she wore a black veil over her face, but her eyes shone through the lace, drawing the viewer deep into her soul. The next series of pictures showed her lounging on a couch in the silk robe. None roamed beyond the bounds of tasteful sensuality: a glimpse of bare thigh, a hint of cleavage, the generous curve of her buttock outlined in silk.
And then, gradually, just as in the dream, the woman loosened the robe. At first the camera merely appreciated her body at a distance, then in close-up, the nude as art. As I turned the pages, my hand trembling faintly, the poses became more willful and dynamic. Eventually she was fully reclining, her legs spread to reveal her most intimate secret, a split, ripe fruit framed by dark curls. In the last photograph, her blurry hand was positioned over her vulva, her mouth gaping in a cry of ecstasy. This woman was obviously coming for the photographer, the man she loved. The twist of lust in my own belly told me that.
I reached for the next album. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I jumped and let out a soft cry at my next discovery—a black satin teddy, crushed into wrinkles by the weight of the books. I lifted it out of the box. The garment was like a soft corset with dangling ribbon garters. The chest area was nothing but a sheer black nylon, which would leave the wearer’s breasts fully exposed. It was the kind of thing a woman would put on if she wanted to feel like a prostitute.
I was finding it very difficult to breathe.
But I had to know the rest of the story. I turned the first page to find close-ups of the same beautiful model as before. However, this time her mouth was hard, even triumphant, as if she had taken something important from the photographer but wanted still more. She certainly gave more to the viewer. Quickly adopting sinuous, pornographic poses, she seemed to taunt the camera, fondling her own breasts, bending over the couch and smirking over her shoulder, her exposed cleft glistening, as if to say, “He took me this way, like an animal, and I liked it.”
Just looking at these images made me feel dirty—and fiercely aroused.
The final photo was the most revealing of all: a close-up of her dark eyes, disdainful yet adulterated with something I could only call regret.
Betrayal. He’s captured it well.
In spite of the ache in my heart for him and my own past heartbreak at the hands of a faithless lover, the pulsing knot of lust between my legs required my immediate attention. On impulse, I shoved the box back under the middle of the bed and positioned myself face down above it, naked. Within moments, the sheet began to feel warm and spongy, like flesh.
“In spite of what I’ve done, you still want me, don’t you?”
This time the voice was female, a rich alto. Confident, teasing, a bit cruel. I began to rock my hips into the bed, as if I were fucking my lover oh-so-slowly.
“Your lips might deny it, but I can see you’re hard in your pants, Alex. You’re hard for your Laura, aren’t you?”
Was it my imagination or did I hear another voice, male, sighing in reply?
“I want to make you suffer like you made me suffer all those months when you abandoned me for work you didn’t even love. And what else could I do on those lonely nights? I’d masturbate all night, crying out your name as I came over and over again until I collapsed. If only you’d been there to do it for me, we wouldn’t be here now.”
I began to pinch my nipple rhythmically. Moisture pooled under my abdomen. The sheets were going to be soaked.
“He had time for me when you didn’t. He told me I was beautiful. Said it was painful to watch me waste myself on a man who didn’t appreciate me. He was rougher in bed than you are, but I liked that. Because I felt guilty at first, and it helped me forget. But then I became addicted to it. The way he’d tie me to the bed and feed me his cock, then pull out at the last second and empty himself on my face. Then he’d take me from behind, pumping patiently in and out for a full half-hour until I had no choice but to climax around him. I never could manage to reach orgasm that way with you.”
I heard another sound in reply—a groan of anguish—mixed in with the gentle click, click of a camera shutter. My hips moved faster, grinding into the mattress, which seemed to push up and back in response.
“But I’ll give you one more chance, Alex. He might know how to fuck dirty, but you make it into art. I’ll never forget that first time when I came for you on camera. I never felt so beautiful, so loved. Is it possible to find that feeling again?”
Someone was moaning now. Me.
“Take me, Alex.”
A pulsing like a hard cock filled my belly. Large hands gripped my ass, possessive and hungry.
Who was rough in bed now?
The throbbing heat rose into my chest, my skull. No one had ever filled me so deeply. My cunt muscles twitched, desperate for release, but I held back my orgasm, hovering on the verge as long as I could bear it. When I finally came, so blindingly hard, it was as if every orgasm in the world—hers, his, mine—were packed into one explosive, bruising finale.
When I returned to my senses, the sun was low in the sky.
Alex served a fine dinner, too: grilled salmon, a salad of baby lettuces, a cabernet from a boutique winery owned by a friend, another ex-lawyer who’d followed his dreams. Slightly tipsy, I joined him on the sofa for dessert. Talk came easily to us. He told me about his growing photography business—mostly weddings and portraits, but a few personal projects that were less profitable but he hoped would find a gallery some day. We inched closer as dusk fell.
Then Alex hit me with the bombshell. “To me you look exactly as an artist should, a unique beauty who creates beauty. I hope you’ll let me do a photo session with you while you’re here.”
I almost choked on my Grand Marnier. To my guilty mind, he’d just asked me to put on skanky lingerie and masturbate for his camera.
“Are you all right? I know you didn’t sleep well last night.”
He put a hand on my shoulder.
My flesh seemed to melt into his fingers.
I’m not sure why I confessed my transgression so easily. I’d always felt a special connection between us, even by email, and now his touch seemed to draw the truth from me as if I’d been enchanted. Besides, I was an idealist. Lies and secrets pained me physically, like rusty shards of metal pricking my heart.
“Ah, so you know all about Laura now.” To my surprise, he didn’t seem angry, only sad. “You probably found those pictures disturbing. I suppose any woman would.”
“To be perfectly honest, I felt them before I saw them. I mean—and I hope you don’t think I’m crazy—I dreamed about those pictures last night before I had any idea there was something under the bed. The first album wasn’t disturbing at all. It was beautiful, very erotic. But the second, well, it must have been difficult, but that’s what a real artist must do. Capture the Truth, no matter how painful.”
Alex turned to me and looked deep into my eyes. “I have something to confess to you, too. I put that box under your bed on purpose. Now you might think I’m crazy, but we had so much in common, I was starting to like you even before we met in person. I suppose that box was a kind of test or a way to exorcise my own demons through your innocence. I never thought you’d be affected by it. For that I am sorry.”
I laughed wryly. “I understand these things. I’m a sensitive artist, too.”
“That you are. I have plenty of proof.” He smiled. And leaned toward me.
It was, officially, our first kiss, and yet I know he felt it, too. This was only the next step in our journey together, taking the bitter along with the sweet.
When he finally pu
lled away, every inch of my body was humming, awake. He took my hand. We rose and walked upstairs together to that magical bed.
“I think it’s finished.” Lips pursed, I ran an appraising eye over the latest watercolor in my series Summertime on Prince Lane.
“Does that mean you can come to bed now?” Alex was lounging under the canopy, shirtless, his legs lean and endless in faded blue jeans. In fact, I’d been dying to jump him for hours, but I had to finish my homework first.
“Stay there, I’ll bring over the easel and show you how handsome you are.”
“Ah, I love the way you capture the afternoon shadows. But you made that fellow too good looking.”
“That’s exactly how you look through the eyes of love.”
Alex grinned. “Or maybe your model has that glow about him because I was thinking about making love to you the whole time?”
He pulled me down beside him. The thrum of desire between my legs burst into crackling flame. His brushed my breasts knowingly. I bit my lip and moaned.
“You are such a sensitive artist,” he murmured, pulling up my shirt and camisole to take one stiffened nipple between his lips.
I pressed my crotch against his thigh and cupped his erection through the jeans. I was always impatient with Alex, as I’d never been with any other lover. My lust was on overdrive, as if he’d fed me a magic potion the moment I arrived. Yet I knew after my first skull-shattering, selfish orgasm, there’d be another on Alex’s terms, slow and teasing and boundless. But, well-bred gentleman that he was, he always obliged my urgent needs first.
Without another word, he yanked down my pants and ran a delicate finger along my slit.
“You’re so damned wet. It must have turned you on to paint a half-naked man who was dreaming of all the ways he wants to fuck you.”
“Yes,” I whispered. “Because I saw how much you wanted me.”
“My response was obvious, wasn’t it? But you are such a fine lady, you only gave a hint of a bulge for viewers who were sensitive to such things.”
I would have blushed, but Alex was right. Although no one could accuse me of crossing any line of propriety, the work I’d done this summer was the most erotically suggestive of my career.
“I wanted you, too, Alex, and I want you inside me now, please.”
He laughed and took me in his arms. “I can’t deny a damsel her desire, but one favor deserves another. Next time you’ll pose for me. You show me all your secrets, and I’ll show you how beautiful you are in my eyes.”
Even the mere thought of baring myself to him like that made my cunt turn to honey.
I clutched at his belt desperately. Still laughing, he struggled out of his jeans and briefs, his stiff rod twitching and eager as I was.
After hours of visual foreplay, I was so horny, I swung a leg over Alex’s hips and immediately sank down onto his cock. He let out a deep “Ahh,” and I tightened my pussy around him, squeezing and massaging the shaft, making the pleasure last as long as I could. I did feel everything more with Alex, my senses heightened to the point that I was almost embarrassed at the speed and intensity of my orgasms.
I nudged my left thigh into his, our signal to roll, a two-backed beast, into the center of the bed. Alex’s body enveloped mine, and he began to thrust into me slow and deep. His lips at my breast sent pulses of pleasure all the way down to my pussy. My inner muscles continued to milk him, and I felt my climax begin to bloom, a fluttering tickle deep in my flesh.
How could I capture this feeling and make it last forever?
I remembered, in a sudden flash, how I’d once made love to ghosts in this bed. Now the mattress was smooth and flat beneath me. The boxes were gone, the lingerie discarded, the photo albums stored, at my urging, with his other work as lessons of craft and history. The heat and sweat was ours—and very, very real. The throbbing deep in my pussy began to rise, up and up, a fiery flower of pleasure, banishing all thought of the enchantments of the past that brought us here together.
We had our own magic to make.
YOU
Charlotte Stein
I confess I thought the stories were little more than fairy tales when my sisters first whispered them through the darkness at me. He has the horns of a beast, they had said, and teeth like knives. And if you go to the bridge between the forests at a minute past midnight, he will come to you and grant you a wish.
How childish it had sounded then!
But it does not sound childish now, as the pale moon above seems to dim, and his footsteps ring out slow and heavy on the cobbles—like the sound of my heart. My heart, that cannot bear his heavy, slumberous approach a moment longer.
His footsteps are like the end of the world. They will ring out inside me until the day I die, I know it—and that day comes soon, soon. My sisters were wrong. He does not grant wishes. No monstrous dark shape such as his could ever grant wishes. He comes to you in the night, instead, and steals away your soul.
Or at least I think so until the clouds part around the moon, and light paints one side of him. And then I’m not quite sure what to believe, because he is neither as monstrous as the stories made out nor as fearsome.
It is true—he does not have the legs of a man. They are the legs of a deer or a goat, I’m certain of it, furred all over and strangely shaped. And these legs end in hooves rather than feet, as though he really is Pan or the Devil or some beast-god, the way everyone claims.
But his horns are not great monstrous things, sprouting from his forehead. They are the smallest nubs, set within the rich tangle of his dark hair. And his eyes are not slits, burning out at you like the deepest fires of hell. Even through the darkness I can see they are blue, a dark, deep blue like stones at the bottom of a lake.
He regards me with them, silently, and I do not fear for my soul. Instead I find myself looking at him, in return—at his mouth like a slash in his face, and his arms so pale and sinewy in the dim light. He looks like a man who spends all of his time running through endless forests, with hounds on his heels and nothing but trees and vales and mossy banks ahead of him.
And then I realize I’ve thought of him as a man rather than the thing he is, and I don’t know what to think of that. I don’t know what to think of it, other than, He makes it easy.
“Have you come to ask of me, maiden?” he asks, finally, and I know by heart what I am supposed to say in return. I’m supposed to say, I have come to ask of you, He Who Has No Name.
And yet I do not speak the words. Instead I think of the word he used—maiden—and I wonder if he knows. If he has some power that sees inside the hearts of women and understands that they are pure or tainted, good or wicked. Can he see my wickedness clear, when he looks at me? I have never lain with a man, but there are other ways to do evil. A part of me did not want to come here, after all, and make these wishes for my sisters.
A part of me was afraid and could not be brave for them.
But that part is done with, now. He is not so monstrous that he can frighten me off and force me not to speak. He is like the forest, I think instead, like a wild and untamed forest—and I can ask. I put my shoulders back. I steel myself.
“I have come to ask of you, He Who Has No Name.”
He inclines his head the moment I speak, like a nod only not. In truth it seems more like a salute, a sealing of the pact we are about to make. He has done this dance before a thousand times and probably knows what I will say before I say it. When he looks at me with those blue-stone eyes, I feel as though he can see right into my being, through all the places I hide within.
But he still asks it of me.
“Speak your wish, then,” he says, in a voice as clear and cold as a mountain stream. It strips me down to nothing and makes me shiver, but I find the words inside myself anyway. They have been there a long time—ever since I saw Eladria sobbing for want of a husband.
“My sister cries for her true love. She cries day and night, and will not rest. I would ask that you bring thi
s true love to her, oh He Who Has No Name, and end her torment.”
He is silent for a long time after I have spoken, but I cannot tell why. Did the words sound like a lie? Can he see that deeply inside me, to the place where my sister resides? If he can, I am not sure what he might see. Eladria can be fickle, and sometimes I am half-certain her weeping and wailing is not in earnest.
But then, surely he must know. Surely he must understand that as spoiled or false as someone might be, to be without love is still a torment. To have no one to walk beside you, no heart that beats as your own does…
Can he not simply see inside my own heart, and know that this is true?
“Are you sure that this is your wish, maiden?”
Apparently he cannot. He has spent his existence as impassive as stone, a granter of human wishes, an observer of their faults and foibles. But there is no true understanding inside him, I am sure.
“It is,” I say.
Strange, that he looks almost disappointed when I do. However, he still finds it in him to name his price.
“A kiss, then,” he says, and for a moment I am sure I have misheard. Why would a creature such as him want a kiss from the likes of me? I spend my life sewing buttons on shirts and soaping clothes in water. I read books and marvel over all the things I’ve never done in my life.
Only fairies and beautiful damsels and women like my sisters get kisses from beast-gods. Though mostly they seem to despise and hate it when things like that happen to them. They all want princes, handsome princes—and I’m quite sure he thinks the same of me.
He thinks I’m going to refuse, I know it, but the thought only makes my hand steadier. My head clearer.
“Agreed,” I say, and I do as the book told me to. I put out my hand for him to shake, which had seemed like a very poor sort of mystical agreement sealer to me. But he takes the outstretched offering all the same and laces his fingers with mine, and just like that the deed is done.
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