by Alison Tyler
“Don’t move,” he said in that Nordic voice, and the hand that had touched my face withdrew. I closed my eyes, then opened them again. I wanted to see.
The knife he unsheathed from his belt was a simple one, utilitarian but elegant in its simplicity, with a dark wooden handle and a blade perhaps three inches long, which, at the moment, looked utterly huge.
I followed it with my eyes as he raised it to the hollow at the base of my throat, the point resting not so much on the surface of my skin as just above it. I could sense the steel radiating energy, but I couldn’t feel actual pressure.
I held my breath as he left the knife poised there. Kept holding it as he carefully raised it and with the same delicacy, traced down my cheek, applying no pressure at all, just a whisper of passage. Kept holding it as he moved down the side of my throat, applying just the faintest hint of metallic pressure in the spot where Dracula would like to bite.
I wanted to lean into the blade, but some vestige of common sense—or maybe it was the grip he had on me with his other hand—kept me still.
At least some of me was still. I didn’t move or even breathe, but my pussy was twitching and trembling and leaking hot juices that filled my underwear. Close to orgasm already. “Please,” I mouthed, afraid—and yet eager—to take the breath I’d need in order to make noise.
“Patience.” His eyes twinkled in that evil way, and instead of nicking the tender skin, he withdrew the blade, sheathed it. Then his grin broadened and he grabbed for my crotch, a bold move that I couldn’t protest. Not when I writhed against that firm hand like I did, wishing my jeans weren’t in the way.
He chuckled. “I can feel how wet you are, right through your jeans. I bet I could make you come right now, on my hand.”
I moaned in response, bucked against him.
“But I’m not going to,” he said, still rubbing me as if to belie his words. “I could smell it on you, you know, smell how turned on you were by the knives. Told myself it was my imagination, wishful thinking or something. But I was right, I wasn’t I?”
I nodded frantically.
“Yeah, I could make you come like this…but what a waste.”
With a shhh of steel moving against leather, he unsheathed his belt knife again, pressed it against my mound.
Even through denim, I imagined I could feel its cold kiss. I could definitely feel the pressure, the threat—felt it cut straight into my clit and send me flying higher. My eyes widened. I strained, so close to coming I could taste it, willing him to move the blade, to apply just a little more pressure.
“But this isn’t really how you want to come, is it? You want to feel it against your skin, feel it cutting you?”
I mouthed, “Yes.”
“Then show me which knife you want to feel first.”
Trembling, I pointed out the ones that had particularly caught my eye.
“Loki and Sigyn,” he said. “They don’t all have names but they told me theirs. Sigyn is the wife of Loki in Norse mythology—devoted, but had a few tricks of her own—and I can see from your face you know who Loki is.”
I had chosen well.
We ended up in the back room of the shop, set up as a workshop. No actual forge, to my disappointment (but where would it have fit?) but a workbench scattered with tools, dusted with bits of wood, bone, and leather. He moved aside a work in progress—it looked as though he was creating a hilt with a piece of amber inlaid in the pommel—to make room for me to perch on the workbench.
I was hoping he’d simply cut my clothing away, but he didn’t.
Not until I got down to my bra and drenched, useless panties.
Then with one shudder-inducing flick of lethal little Sigyn on each, he severed my bra straps. The knife, cutting edge out, then traced a path between my breasts, and I had to force myself to hold still at the sweet metal caress. Another flick and the bra fell off, destroyed.
Just as neatly and easily, he cut through the narrow bands of elastic that held my string bikini panties in place. I barely felt the knife touch me—he was that quick and that careful—but it didn’t matter. I was lost and I liked it that way.
He changed knives then, switching to Loki, and circled the flat of the blade on one excited nipple. “Please,” I whispered, and he knew what I wanted, because he turned the knife, let me taste the edge dancing lightly on that sensitive nub.
The tip pricked the tender nipple once, twice, before he moved on to the other one, torturing me with all too gentle sensation.
“Please.” Desperation edged my voice, gave me a blade of my own. “Please, I want to feel…”
He smirked. “Of course you do.”
The blade moved down my belly, leaving shudders and a fine white scratch in its wake. The steel was cool, but it set me on fire, and when it reached the curve of my pubic mound, it was all I could do not to buck forward, to provoke him to cut me in that intimate area.
With his free hand, he pushed my knees open. I spread them wider still, wet and yet terrified by a sudden image of him pushing the blade inside me, fucking me with deadly intent.
I clenched and squirmed back at the same time, the seduction of the fantasy warring with its dangerous reality, and with the crazy fact I was playing dangerous games with someone whose name I didn’t know.
“Relax,” he said, and his deep voice was soothing. “No cuts here. Nothing to mar this pretty pussy. Just a little tease.” He turned the knife in his hand, making sure the unsharpened spine was touching me. I saw him do it—but what my eyes told me, my brain and nerve endings refused to accept. The touch of cold steel seared my labia, pierced my clit, brought me to the verge of orgasm. It felt like my skin blossomed with blood behind the knife, but it was only my own juices blossoming in my terrified excitement.
Finally, when I could feel my muscles clenching and jumping, not just in my pussy but all over, so my skin twitched like a nervous racehorse’s, he pricked at my mound with the knife while his thumb circled my clit and I rode the warring sensations—cold, hardness, near-pain, and the more familiar spiraling pleasure—to an orgasm that felt like I’d been born into a forge’s heat.
When I recovered breath and strength, he asked me, with an old-world gallantry that surprised me under the circumstances, if I were ready for Sigyn to taste me. Something in his manner told me he half-expected a no.
Part of me—the sensible part, I suppose—clamored to say no. But with my pussy drenched and throbbing, my skin still tingling from Loki’s gentlest caresses, I couldn’t turn back.
He had me lie facedown on the workbench, a worn gray sweat-shirt under my head as a pillow.
Panic washed over me when he stepped away, opened a drawer in the workbench. Was he going to pull out a different knife, a larger one, take this fantasy to its bloody, demented conclusion? What sense I had left told me to bolt, but I couldn’t move. My body was both languid and tense with anticipation, and I couldn’t get it to obey logic. I could barely make myself turn my head to watch him.
What he took out, instead of the cleaver or chain saw my panic told me to expect, was a first-aid kit. He cleaned Sigyn’s blade with alcohol, then poured some onto a cotton ball, swabbed at my left buttock, making me clench and curse at the shock of wet chill. Fussed over the area for a while longer.
When he deemed it ready, he let the blade rest against the skin of my ass, pressing in a little. I could tell how sharp it was because, as he moved it, cutting in lightly, it didn’t exactly hurt. Not as it passed. There was a fine line of sensation, a combination of cold and heat but not really pain. He moved the blade, cut again.
And only as the skin opened up behind the second cut did I really feel the fire of the first one, sharp and exquisite. It wasn’t until the third one that I started to feel hot trickles of blood.
I tightened, imagined what my ass must look like, decorated with fine cuts—was he carving a rune? I felt myself building for another orgasm. My pussy squeezed on nothing, imagined squeezing on the big knife called Loki.
He deemed I was shaking too hard to try knife-play on him, but when he stripped down, I could see the scars on him—runes and designs and random patterns—and I knew my chance would come to test Sigyn on his body.
He fucked me from behind, the knife called Loki against my throat and the fact I was pretty sure I’d seen him sheathe it didn’t matter much in the state I was in. Not with his cock pounding into me and each thrust jarring the cuts on my ass, making me bleed a little, reminding me of Sigyn’s kiss.
He came as if he were stabbing me in the heart through my pussy.
Only when we were spent and trying, listlessly, to clean each other up in the tiny bathroom did I think to tell him my name and ask his.
“Bjorn Anderson,” he said, “but my friends call me Loki.”
MICHAEL HEMMINGSON
THE END OF CELIBACY
HANNAH HAD A QUIRKY LOOK to her I found appealing—thick, dark-rimmed glasses; a white streak in her otherwise jet-black hair; an odd assortment of attire, cool in this age of the awkward. She was one of the regulars who hung out at the pub down the street from my apartment. Some friends were playing pool, which wasn’t my thing. Hannah bought a pitcher of beer and we sat together.
A guy was bending, ready to take a shot at the table, his rear end very close to us. “Get your butt somewhere else,” Hannah said, “or I’ll take a pool stick and shove it up—”
“That’s not very nice,” I said. “How’d you like it if someone stuck a pool stick in your ass?”
Hannah raised her brows. “I just might like it.”
That was the first clue I didn’t get—I wasn’t paying attention. I’d recall it in hindsight, yes, as well as overhearing her talk about how her favorite scene in Last Tango in Paris was when Marlon Brando put butter up his young lover’s back door before sodomizing her.
Soon the beer was gone.
“What will you do now?” Hannah said.
“Don’t know,” I said.
She took her glasses off and looked at them. “I live a block away, you know.”
“No,” I said, “I didn’t know. So do I.”
This was the second clue—and I wasn’t paying attention.
“Well,” she said.
“Maybe we can go there,” I said.
She put her glasses back on. “Okay.”
We walked up the block to her place, a small cottage. It was nice, a little messy. I asked how much she paid for it.
“Nothing,” she said. “My parents own the property.”
“Nice.”
“I have beer, I think,” she said, going to the kitchen.
I sat on the couch in the small living room.
Hannah returned with two Budweisers. “Yes, I have beer.”
She sat next to me.
I don’t remember what we talked about. On the floor, I noticed an action figure of the Warner Brothers Martian from the Bugs Bunny cartoon. “I always loved that Martian,” I said.
“Me, too,” she said, going to the floor and picking it up. “Marvin the Martian. ‘I’m going to destroy planet Earth!’ ” I touched her hair. She put her head in my lap. It was nice to touch somebody.
“I, um, I don’t know what to do,” I said.
“What?”
“I haven’t been with anyone in a while.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“It’s true.”
“It’s a line,” she said. “Do you like me?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I like you.” She got on the couch with me and we began to kiss. She had to take her glasses off; they were getting in the way. We kissed for a long time. She pushed me back on the couch and lay on top of me. I grabbed her ass, put my hands down her skirt.
She pulled her mouth from mine. “Bad boy,” she said.
I grabbed her head, and we kissed more.
When I tried to touch her cunt, she stopped me.
“No,” she said.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said and we kissed.
When I touched her breasts over the fabric of her blouse, she pushed them away. “No, no,” she said.
“Sorry,” I said.
She took one of my hands and put it back on her ass. “Play with that.”
I did and we kissed. My hand and my second hand were all over her butt.
“Hey,” Hannah said, “rub my asshole.”
“What?”
“With your finger,” she said, and I found her asshole with my finger. “In small circles,” she said, “yeah, like that—”
She pulled away from me, and sat. She put her glasses on.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, moving to her, wanting to kiss her more.
“Nothing,” she said. “I have to pee.”
“Hey.” I grabbed her hand as she stood up. “Can I watch?”
“You want to watch me pee?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I need a commitment before I go that far,” she said.
“We hardly know each other.”
“Exactly,” she said, and went to the bathroom.
I sat there.
I got up and followed. The door was unlocked and I went in. Hannah was sitting on the toilet; she glanced up at me. She smiled and said, “You.” I could hear the stream of her urine. I sat on the floor, cross-legged.
“You’re bold,” she said.
“The door was unlocked.”
“There is no lock.”
“I couldn’t resist.”
She stood up. “Okay, Mr. Bold. Clean me.”
“With my mouth?”
“Absolutely not.”
I would’ve done it with my mouth, if she’d asked. I took a wad of toilet paper and wiped her cunt. She pulled her panties up.
“I have to go, too,” I said.
“Then I get to watch,” she said. “Quid pro quo.”
She took my place on the floor; I stood in front of the toilet, took my cock out.
Hannah made a weird sound. She moved, snagged my cock, and put her mouth before it, drinking my urine; what she didn’t get flowed out, down her chin, and into the bowl. I liked the sound this made. I breathed hard; it was an experience in itself watching her drink from me.
She pressed her face to my leg. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself,” she said, softly. “Now you know my fetish. Okay, I’m weird. You’ll never love me.”
“I could love you,” I said.
“Do you mean that?”
“Yes.”
“Will you kiss me to prove it?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
She stood, and we kissed, and I tasted her—and me.
“I want to make love to you,” I said.
“No, I can’t,” she said.
Hannah left the bathroom and sat on the edge of her bed. I sat next to her; we both fell back. It was a nice, big, comfortable bed, the kind of bed I liked, the kind of bed I didn’t have.
“It’s late,” she said, moving away from me. “I’m a little drunk.”
“Me, too,” I said.
“You can stay here,” she said, “if you want.”
“I’d like that.”
“I’d like it too,” she said, standing. “I’m going to turn the light off.”
“Okay.”
In the dark, I saw her silhouette; she was removing her clothes. I also took my clothes off and got under the covers. She joined me; we didn’t touch. My hand went to her body; she was still wearing her bra and panties. I moved closer to her, kissed her.
“I don’t think I want to screw,” she said.
“Okay,” I said.
“I mean, I’m not sure if I can.”
“Okay.”
“I’m not sure if I’m in the right frame of mind.”
“Okay.”
“It’s not okay,” she said. “You don�
��t understand, you don’t know.”
“I want to,” I said.
“I know you do.”
“Hannah,” I said.
“It’s nice having you in my bed,” she said.
“It’s nice to be in a bed with someone.” She placed her head on my chest and then a hand, playing with the hair. We were quiet, touching each other. Her hand moved down and grasped my cock.
“This is nice,” she said.
“Yes,” I said, “it is.”
“Nice....”
I kissed her on the head.
“I’m twenty-eight years old,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“I’m still a virgin.”
I laughed, after a moment.
“This is true,” she said.
“Now who is giving who a line?”
She let go of my cock. “I made up my mind years ago that I would save myself for my husband, because some day I plan to marry a nice man. And this man will expect me to be a virgin.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t see,” she said. “I don’t expect you to understand. Other men haven’t. Like I said, I’m twenty-eight. This doesn’t mean I’m not sexual. Obviously I’m sexual, and I have fetishes. I’m really pretty basic in that matter—I have a pee fetish, and a butt, you know. I mean, I’m a virgin, vaginally, but I like having sex in my butt.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“I’m terribly attracted to you,” she went on. “I want you. I want you inside me. But I want more than a fuck-buddy. I had a fuck-buddy for a while, for a few months. It was just sex, nothing more. I didn’t like it. I mean, it was okay but it wasn’t me. It was a different me.”
“He fucked you in the ass?”
“Yes. I don’t know if he liked it that much. Some men do, some don’t.”
I’d only had anal sex with a woman once, and I think I was nineteen or twenty.
“I want you to fuck me,” Hannah said, “but I’m looking for more than just fucking. I’m not looking for a husband. I’ll do that in my thirties, maybe my forties. I’m looking for companionship, closeness, a little love. Devotion, all that.”
“Sounds nice,” I said.
“Yes. It sounds—it sounds nice.” She took her panties off. “I’d like you to fuck me,” she said. “I want you to.”