69

by Alison Tyler

  His chair creaked. I frowned. When I felt his hands slip around my waist, I opened my mouth wider.

  “Oh,” I said, but it was lost in Marcella’s kiss. Silent, I let them undress me, piece by piece. George tugged my skirt off, and Marcella lifted my arms up to remove my shirt. I got tugged back and forth. Then they hauled me to my feet and led me to the couch.

  George pulled it out to make the saggy double bed, and Marcella smoothed the Indian throw over and dimmed the lights. George turned some music on, some old trip-hop, and by the time he’d got back to bed, we were entwined. He had to slip his hands between us.

  It could have been a fight, almost, the way they took turns to kiss me, harder each time. George bit my lip and Marcella dug her nails into the flesh above my breast, twisting at my nipple until I cried out. George smothered the sound. He wrestled Marcella aside and covered me with his body like he was claiming me, thrusting his cock against my thigh so I could feel how hard he was. Then for a good long while he kissed me, that deep and twisty way he did that made me dizzy.

  “Please,” I said. “Fuck me.”

  “Who,” George asked. “Me?”

  “Or me, chiquita?”

  “Yeah, you,” I said, reaching for both of them. I shut my eyes and let the hands blur as they slid over my skin, until I didn’t know whose was whose, could no longer count how many kisses each of them gave me, how many fingers slid inside me, how many times my pulse rose and peaked in fluttering orgasm.

  In the morning, we stirred and woke, sleepy and heavy eyed, bodies thrumming with echoes of sensation from the night’s fucking. We reached for each other to keep working out who won and who lost, but by then we’d kind of lost track. Somewhere between the night and the day the equation had gotten all mixed up, and by the afternoon nobody had any idea who belonged to whom, and whether anybody minded.

  Marcella had missed her flight and George had stopped trying to prove he knew it all.

  Now, it’s cloudy outside and I am looking out the window with my head in Marcella’s lap while she plays with my hair. George, for once, is not talking about anything, because he is delicately and thoroughly licking at my clit. His lovely, reliably stiff cock is firming up again, and he’s beckoning Marcella. She’s shaking her head, but she’s smiling.

  “Izzy, tell her to get over here and suck my cock.”

  “I think it’s your turn, Jorge, to go down on me. Right, chiquita?”

  They both turn to me. I open my mouth and find I’m laughing.

  Really, I’m glad I have no head for figures. Otherwise I wouldn’t be lying here now, in the middle of this great big, wonderfully messy situation, wondering what the hell I’m going to do next.

  Crossed

  By Dante Davidson

  “We need to cross our i’s and dot our t’s,” Noel joked as she looked at the paperwork spread over the dining room table. For a three-week honeymoon in Europe, she’d gathered countless travel brochures, guidebooks and even novels set in the locations we were visiting. We had our passports, our itinerary, the requirements for the marriage license. The only thing we didn’t have was the one thing that was holding me back: full disclosure.

  “I need to tell you something, Noel.”

  “There’s so much to do,” she said, not paying proper attention.

  “This is more important.”

  She must have heard a tone in my voice, because she faced me and waited.

  “I cross my i’s,” I said finally, unable to think of a different way to confess.

  “Your eyes?”

  I shook my head. I hadn’t thought I’d ever have to tell her this—because I’d never been to such a final point with anyone before. Marriage. Commitment. A future. Noel had told me her secrets before we moved in together. That had been the perfect time for me to share mine, but I hadn’t taken the opportunity. Why? All I can say is that I’d never confessed to anyone before. Up to now, I’d always been able to hide my needs—pulling out my treasure box only when I was alone.

  Noel looked at me, waiting.

  “I cross my everything,” I stammered uselessly.

  “Your arms? The road? Your wires? What are you on about, Andrew?”

  I closed my eyes and reached into my back pocket. I handed her the lingerie I’d tucked there in case words ran out on me and I needed a prop. When I looked at her again, Noel was smiling. “It’s not my size,” she said, holding up the cream-hued satin bikinis between her thumb and forefinger.

  “They’re my size.”

  “You cross your…”

  “Clothes,” I said, rushing now. If she wasn’t going to like what I had to say, better get the words out fast, so that she could flee if she needed to. “I cross-dress. I always have.”

  “You like to wear women’s clothing.” She was stating the facts.

  I nodded.

  “And you haven’t told me this before because…?”

  “Things haven’t always worked out for me when people have found out in the past.” That was the understatement of the millennium. I’d had roommates call me a pervert, dates assume that I was gay, and a maiden aunt tell my parents I ought to have been shipped to a military academy.

  “I’m not exactly ‘people,’ Andrew. I’m your fucking fiancée.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m telling you.”

  Was it? The pressure had built up inside me until I couldn’t hold back any longer. I didn’t want to lose her, but I didn’t want to live the lie any longer, either. What would she say? What would she do? I’d prepared for her to yell or cry or stamp her feet.

  “Show me.”

  I hadn’t expected this.

  “Are you serious?”

  “I want to know what I’m getting into.” She actually winked. “I mean, what you’re getting into. Show me.”

  Had I forgotten? Noel’s a voyeur. She needs to watch. I started to head to the bedroom, but she grabbed my hand. “Strip first.”

  Now my heart was beating faster, and I felt heat kiss my cheeks. “Do it, Andrew.”

  I pulled off my T-shirt and undid my fly, kicked off my boots and dropped the jeans on the floor. The ripple of clothes on our hardwood couldn’t have been more masculine. The flimsy panties she held out couldn’t have been more feminine.

  “Put these on.” She handed me back my knickers. They practically disappeared into my fist. I hesitated. I’d never dressed up in front of any of my lovers. This was something I only engaged in all by myself—after Noel left for work, when she was out at the gym, on the nights she met her girlfriends for their book group. There was a ritual that went with the dressing. I wondered if she could possibly understand.

  “Wait,” she said—not stopping any action. I was waiting. “Let me get in my place.”

  Her place. She meant her chair in the closet. She wanted me to dress up for her while she watched. Our two fetishes slammed so hard together I could almost hear the crash.

  “I’ll let you know when I’m ready.”

  I stood there in the middle of the living room in my shimmery panties. My cock ached against the fabric.

  “Ready!” Noel sang out. Her voice was muffled. I knew exactly where she was—seated on the hard-backed chair in the dark closet. I hurried down the hall, more excited than I can remember ever having been. Why had I been afraid to tell her? Noel is so open about her needs. I guess I was worried that if my desires didn’t mesh with hers, she’d…what? She’d toss me out? Noel’s not that type of woman.

  Thoughts like these tripped through my head as I pulled my suitcase from under the bed. The suitcase held a second smaller suitcase, which in turn contained an antique valise. This leather overnight bag contained my current obsession: sheer stockings, a ruffled blouse, and a skirt I’d had altered to fit my hips. When I put on th
e clothes, I knew I didn’t look like a woman, but I looked feminine. There were shoes I’d special-ordered from a catalog—I’d have to tell Noel about the post office box I’d taken solely so I could conceal purchases like this.

  But not now. Now, I would carry my treasures over to the mirror and begin to dress. As I always can when performing for Noel, I felt her eyes on me. But for the first time, I truly basked in the sensation. Slowly I slid on the semisheer blouse and fastened the tiny pearl buttons on the sleeves and running up the front. Those buttons always gave my large fingers a bit of trouble, but I adored the way the shiny mother-of-pearl felt beneath the pads of my fingertips. Girls get all the good stuff, don’t they? Even their buttons are pretty.

  I sat on the edge of the mattress and slowly slipped on the stockings. These were also items I’d ordered specially, and they had sticking bands at the top to stay put. Next came the skirt. I’d wanted a secretary-style skirt for so long. This was the closest I’d found, checked wool with a pale blue silk lining. What was Noel thinking? Was she laughing at me? Was she horrified?

  “Lipstick,” I heard from inside the closet.

  Lipstick. I hadn’t thought to do my face. I hurried to her dresser and grabbed a tube. Back to the mirror I went, my hands trembling as I tried to apply the dark ruby color to my lips. The knob on the closet door turned. I stepped back.

  “Let me,” Noel said quietly. I handed her the lipstick. “Sit on the bed.” I sat. Carefully, Noel applied the lipstick. Then she went to her dresser and returned with liner and mascara. I was silent as she made me up. Nothing like this had ever happened to me. Not outside of dreams, anyway.

  “You’re beautiful,” she said when she was finished. “I had no idea you could look like that.”

  She kissed me. I felt my cock straining even more forcefully against the panties. “We’ll take you out,” she said, “go to the city, hit the thrift stores. I know we can find you clothes that will fit better. I want to buy the right lipstick, too. You have a lighter skin tone than I do. You could use a nutmeg color. Would you like that?”

  I managed somehow to say yes. I think I was still afraid, somewhere deep inside of me, that this wasn’t real. That I was fantasizing. That she was a mirage.

  “But we’ll do without for now. Now, I just want you to fuck me.”

  I grabbed her around the waist and held her close. I was dressed like a girl, but I wanted her to know that I was still her man. I started to position her on the bed, but she pulled back. “Not doggy style,” she said. “I want to watch you. I want to see you fuck me.”

  She lay back on the bed and waited. I pushed her skirt to her waist and pulled down her panties. I wanted to leave the rest of our clothes on at first. We were both wearing skirts, and I liked that. I ground against her so she could feel my cock through two layers of clothing: the skirt and the knickers. Then I undid my skirt so that I could be against her in just the panties and stockings. Noel groaned at the sensation. She seemed to really be aroused by the fact that I had on all the female trappings. She ran her hands over my arms, squeezing me through the thin fabric. She brought her fingertips up to my lips, letting me suck each one, smiling when I got lipstick on her. Clearly, she found this as exciting as I did.

  When I slid my cock inside her, she started to moan. “Oh, God, Andrew, I love the way your stockings feel.”

  I did, too. I was turned on but also so happy I felt I might burst. I never knew elation was an erotic emotion.

  “I want to shave your legs,” she said, “and then slide the stockings on for you. I want to watch you parade around for me in nothing but stockings, panties, and heels. We’ll get you a slip, too. Something rose-pink…”

  Everything she said worked to take me higher. She couldn’t have known, but I’ve gotten off simply from reading descriptions in a Victoria’s Secret catalog. Hearing her describe sexy outfits was pushing me to my limits.

  “And then,” she said as I crested two fingers over her clit. “Then we’ll get some toys.”

  I had to speak at that. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m going to dress you all up,” she said, “and fuck you. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Andrew? You’d like to be made all sweet and pretty, and then have me put on a strap-on and take you?”

  I started working her faster, my fingers against her clit, rubbing, rubbing, and my cock inside her. She’d now named my number-one fantasy, and I couldn’t find any words to say, except yes—both an answer to her query and a way to alert her that I was coming.

  She rode out my climax and came on the tail end, her pussy squeezing me as she closed her eyes and nearly hummed with pleasure.

  “I never knew,” she said afterward. “You always seemed so tough. I had no idea.”

  “Even tough guys can wear panties,” I said. “At least the ones who like to cross their i’s.”

  The Funeral

  By Georgia E. Jones

  It was not the perfect day for a funeral. A midwinter funeral in Chicago would be held in the snow, with the wind off the lake dropping the frigid temperature yet further. Any self-respecting mourner would know to show up in waterproof, insulated boots and the many layers of clothing required to prevent frostbite. But her father had died in San Francisco, and here, in the trough between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it was 65 degrees and sunny. Lauren stood well back in the small crowd gathered around the coffin. In the Midwest people wore black to funerals. She was wearing black. Everyone else was in grays and browns, with here and there a smattering of brighter color. The cemetery was in Pacific Heights, where the rich people lived, and except for the gravestones and monuments, it was like a perfectly groomed park.

  Her father had not been wealthy when he’d left her and her mother in Chicago, but somewhere in the intervening span of seventeen years he had acquired some wealth. Maybe it belonged to his second wife, the rail-thin woman who had parted with some of her money in a plastic surgeon’s office, if the tautness of her face was anything to go by. Bereavement warred with the perennial expression of surprise common to the faces of women who have undergone one too many procedures. Lauren did not begrudge her father the money, or the wife, or the two young women standing next to the wife (looking a little plump, but only by comparison) who surely must be Lauren’s half-sisters. She did begrudge him the abandonment of his first family, and for that she had never forgiven him. He had made attempts to keep in touch, coming back for her birthday and school breaks, though never during the summer, and once offering her a plane ticket to visit him at Christmas. She could not leave her mother alone, even had she wanted to, which she did not. When she was older, Lauren understood more about children of divorce, and family dynamics, and blame. But she was twelve at the time and angry, and not speaking to her father was the only thing she knew to ease the rigid, bitter pall of her mother’s features.

  Lauren noted that the chaplain had spoken at length of her father’s ambition, his achievements, his constant striving for greater success, all indications that he might actually have known him. “A man lacking in natural warmth,” was how her mother had put it. “But I thought I could mend him.”

  Lauren compiled her own list. Respected but not liked. Intelligent but arrogant. Disdainful of other people’s faults and oblivious to his own. Still, she had come to say goodbye. It meant something that her father was dead. Didn’t it? She felt no sense of loss, which was what she supposed the others felt. Someone you knew and loved was dead, and you missed them. That was what she would have felt if it had been her mother who’d died.

  Lauren made a sharp, involuntary movement, which caught the attention of a man in a charcoal, pinstriped suit standing near her. She felt as if she were in the center of a frozen lake and everywhere she looked was a vista of ice. She had not seen her father in five years and they had not spoken for two. He had not been a part of her life for a long time.
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  * * *

  She did not go to the reception. It was at his home, a palatial structure in the same neighborhood as the cemetery. She could imagine it: the wife and children of the deceased, and Oh! Who is that? No one knew, except that she was a female carbon copy of the dead man. Sometimes her mother stared at her, but not in the way mothers looked at their children. “Sorry,” she would say whenever Lauren caught her at it. “I cannot get over how like him you are.” Lauren stood at the graveside until everyone else had gone, just stood quietly with the sun on her face, eyes closed. Then she placed the flowers she had brought on the dirt beside the grave and went back to the car.

  * * *

  She drove her rental to the hotel. She could have found a cheaper room, but it was only for one night and she was unfamiliar with the city and wanted to be in a clean, well-lighted place. She wanted room service and a mini-bar and a hot bath and a movie on the wide-screen TV. But when she got to the lobby, the thought of her expensive room was unappealing. She went into the bar and ordered a Tom Collins and sat by herself in a leather armchair.

  “Mind if I join you?” a man said.

  “No,” Lauren said. “Who are you?” It was true that she did not mind, but she didn’t have the energy for the usual social discourse. If this man wanted to pick her up—and he might, because she had long red hair and green eyes and a perfectly adequate ass—he could say so.

  “I’m Anson,” he said, taking the chair beside hers. “I worked for your father in the nineties. It was my first job out of college.”

  Lauren took a long swallow of her drink. She did not ask how he knew who she was. “Did you respect him?” she asked.

  “I liked him,” he said.

  “Really?” she asked. “You might be the only one.”

  Depending on the tone, her words could have been bitter, or sarcastic or maudlin. They were matter-of-fact. “I might have been,” he agreed, equally matter-of-fact. “Would you like another drink?”