Never Say Never

by Alison Tyler

  My whole body stiffens.

  “You do, don’t you?”

  It’s not really a question.

  “Y…yes,” I stutter, my throat suddenly as dry as the Mongolian steppe.

  “Be ready then,” he says, and slips away. A few moments later, I hear him in the dining room, helping our older son with his algebra homework.

  My hands go through the motions of loading the dishwasher, but my face feels hot, my pussy tingles and my mind is already busy planning for tonight’s journey on the Silk Road. That’s how I like to see it: an endless length of translucent silk, fluttering over craggy mountain passes, across golden deserts, through cities ruled by turbaned tyrants. And just as the real Silk Road beguiled travelers with perfumes, fine carpets, spices and jewels, we, too, will visit strange lands and enjoy exotic pleasures.

  On ordinary nights, I use the evening hours to wind down, relax and prepare for refreshing sleep. But my husband’s simple whispered words mean this is no ordinary night. Already my senses are on high alert. When Julian sits next to me on the sofa, I’m keenly aware of the scent of him, a masculine fragrance of leather and cumin and sun-toasted grain. I glance up at his face and he smiles, his eyes sparkling like emeralds.

  He’s thinking of the Silk Road, too.

  Finally, it’s time to kiss the kids good night and settle them snugly in their respective bedrooms. Julian changes into his bathrobe and mumbles that he has a few emails to take care of in his office. With a knowing look, he leaves me alone in our bedroom to make the necessary preparations.

  My pulse quickening, I pull open the top drawer of my dresser and snake my hand behind the control-top panty hose to my secret stash of lingerie. I carefully pull out a package of opalescent silk stockings. Placing it on the hope chest at the bottom of our bed, I head for the closet and take my white marabou mules from their shoebox. The five-inch heels are so slender, I can barely stand in them, much less walk more than a few steps. But the Silk Road is not for walking. I set the sexy slippers next to the stockings.

  Then I undress and put on my Japanese kimono, knotting the belt loosely. A moment later, I hear a faint knock at the door. Julian has the timing down just right. Not wanting to raise my voice, I hurry to let him in. He flips the lock behind him with a metallic click that resonates deep inside me.

  Julian glances over at the stockings and high heels, then back at me, a faint smile playing at his lips. He gives me a deep, knee-melting kiss.

  And so the journey begins.

  When our lips finally part, Julian takes my hand and guides me over to our bed. As I watch, he peels back the blankets and arranges our two pillows at the center of the headboard, as if readying the place for a pampered guest.

  Who, of course, is none other than myself.

  Julian settles me on the bed then gestures to the belt of my robe. “May I?”

  I nod, suddenly too shy to speak.

  He unties the belt and pulls my robe open, arranging the flaps around me. It’s an odd, and exciting, effect—to lie totally nude on my outspread garment like a virgin sacrifice. Julian gives me a final onceover then picks up the package of stockings and lounges on the bed at my feet, one knee bent, the other leg stretched toward me. I have to admit he looks a bit like a sultan, especially with his robe falling open over his strong chest.

  “May I put on the stockings now?”

  His tone is respectful, even subservient, and yet that simple question makes my body feel weightless, lifted up out of time and completely subject to his whim.

  “Yes, please,” I say softly.

  He slides one stocking from the package but pauses, rubbing the silk gently between his fingers. “I’m always amazed by these things. They feel so cool and light. Like a whisper.”

  “They feel good on my legs, too.” I smile.

  Julian lifts his eyebrows. “I wonder if they’d feel good on other places, too?”

  I feel a flutter between my legs. “What other places did you have in mind?”

  “Close your eyes and you’ll find out.”

  I fight my natural urge to resist, mainly because Julian’s naughty little detours have never disappointed me. So I obediently close my eyes, aware of my quick, shallow breath and the prickle of expectation on my naked skin. I gasp at the first touch of silk sweeping over my belly. The sensation is cool and impossibly subtle, yet it stimulates my nerves in the most beguiling way. I arch up and sigh. Humming approval, Julian trails the end of the stocking in sinuous shapes over my rib cage then circles my breasts, finally teasing each nipple to a hard point with a silk stocking pendulum. By now I’m struggling to keep my composure.

  “Feel nice?” Julian asks, rather gratuitously.

  “Yes.”

  “I could do this all night, but your bare legs are looking jealous. Keep your eyes closed. I’ll tell you when to open them.”

  I love to watch him sheathe my legs in the luxurious silk stockings, but blindness brings unforeseen pleasures. I’m exquisitely aware of his warm fingers easing the bunched stocking over my toes, then rolling them up over my ankle all the way to my upper thigh, just a few short—and yet excruciatingly distant—inches from my swollen cleft.

  “They do feel nice on your legs, don’t they?” He runs his hand over the silk. “One more to go.”

  And so he repeats the process at the same ceremonial pace.

  “There’s something so erotic about this, when you’re wearing nothing but stockings. They frame your…charms…so perfectly. See for yourself.”

  Suddenly self-conscious, I reluctantly open my eyes. But Julian is right. There is something particularly wanton about the vision of my white thighs and exposed mons, lush with auburn curls, floating above the virginal stockings.

  “Look how your legs shimmer. The limbs of a goddess.”

  My long, slim legs have always gotten me compliments, but Julian’s appreciation is as close as I’ve gotten to sheer worship. Over the years, I’ve grown to like it very much indeed.

  “Would you like a foot massage? To help you relax?” Julian’s smile is the perfect blend of deference and mischief. We both know his “massage” is likely to have quite the opposite effect.

  Without waiting for a reply, he wraps his large, warm hand around my right foot and begins to probe the tight spots along the arch with his thumb. Julian’s studied up on reflexology—very fitting given his proclivities—and at first his technique does lull me into a dreamy state. Stretched out indolently on the bed, a memory floats into my head, of a Chinese film we saw years ago. It was about a wealthy man with four wives. The wife chosen for his amorous attentions each night was honored with a red lantern at her door and a special foot massage, because the jaded master believed it helped a woman “better serve her man.” The movie was darkly claustrophobic and had a tragic ending, and yet when Julian and I got home from the theater, we went straight to bed and made love. Soon after that, he offered to massage my feet before we had sex—with a surprising, but much happier, ending.

  Julian now pulls my left foot onto his lap.

  I tense up instinctively.

  Julian clicks his tongue. “Relax, darling. I just want to make you feel good.”

  Is there such a thing as “too good”?

  He starts in on the ball of my foot, circling firmly over the flesh with the pad of his thumb. This is, in itself, harmless, but my body knows what’s coming. When his fingers move to my arch to knead the tight muscle along the edge of my foot, a jolt of pleasure shoots straight to my groin. My vagina reflexively pushes out. A gush of arousal trickles down onto my robe.

  I moan, half in shame, half in delight.

  “Enjoying this?” he asks.

  Not that I can answer with Julian stimulating my sweet spot so mercilessly. Through the veil of my lashes, I notice that my chest is flushed with a rosy sex rash and my nipples are as hard as pebbles. A fiery rope of pleasure twists from his fingers up along my inner leg to feed the throbbing knot deep in my cunt.
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br />   “Still works like a charm, doesn’t it?”

  “Please stop now. I might come, and I want you inside me.” Desperate in my need, I brush my foot over his crotch. He’s rock hard and probably has been for some time.

  Julian chuckles and shifts away. “Patience. First we need to put on your magic slippers.” He reaches for the marabou mules and slides them carefully onto my feet.

  This new stimulation is less dangerous, but equally cunning. Julian once observed that the slippers mold my feet into the same strained position they assume when I have an orgasm. Indeed when I press my foot against the unnaturally steep curve of the sole, my pussy aches in anticipation. Sometimes Julian makes love to me as soon as the slippers are in place, but I can never be sure which route we’ll take on any given night. This time, to my surprise, he deftly slips off the bed and kneels at my feet.

  “The slippers make your legs look so feminine and elegant. Like a dream. I’m almost afraid to touch you now.”

  I take my cue and sit a little higher against the pillows. “What about your lips? You could show your appreciation by kissing the stockings from toe to top.”

  His eyes flicker.

  “But no slobbering,” I add regally. “These are expensive.”

  “Yes, I’ll be careful.” His voice is hoarse, slightly winded. As if in a trance, he takes my foot and presses his lips to my toes, then the arch, then the ankle.

  I tilt my head back and focus on his soft mouth moving slowly but inexorably up my leg. Soon he has to crawl back up on the bed on all fours, his head lowered as if kowtowing to my heavenly legs. The adoration fills me with a heady rush of power. Am I really so enchanting I can bring a man to his knees?

  When he reaches the top of the stockings, Julian pauses. I feel his hot breath against my thigh. A question hovers in the air between us.

  “You may proceed,” I say.

  Exhaling in a grateful sigh, Julian’s lips cross the border from silk to bare flesh. In this earthier realm, the rules apparently change. His kisses grow wetter until he’s shamelessly caressing my naked thighs with his tongue. I pull my knees up and open, thinking, perversely, of the gate of a monumental temple on the banks of the Nile. Julian positions himself at the entrance to my “pink satin palace”—as he likes to call it on our Silk Road travels. He places a few decorous kisses of greeting on my nether lips. Then his tongue darts out and flicks my clitoris.

  I clutch the top of the pillows, opening myself farther to him. My husband flirts with the sensitive nub of flesh, but soon he is lashing it greedily until I’m squirming and juicing all over his face.

  “Do it, goddamn it, fuck me,” I growl.

  “As my lady commands,” he whispers. Then he’s up on his knees, pulling open his robe to reveal a very impressive erection. My mouth is watering, I want it so bad, but he teases me, probing my entrance with his cock then pulling back to rub the wet knob over my clit. I return the favor by clenching my cunt muscles then pushing them open so quickly his cockhead is sucked into the hole. He gasps, then yields, sliding all the way in to the root.

  We rest for a moment, gazing into each other’s eyes.

  “Stroke the stockings,” I say. “Stroke the stockings while you fuck me.”

  With a grunt of assent, he pushes my knee up so my slippered foot dangles in midair. At the same time he begins to thrust slowly, deliberately. My inner walls are so inflamed from the extended foreplay, they thrill in the steady friction, up and down, up and down. I grip the pillow and point my toe, readying myself for arrival at our final destination.

  When his fingers brush the top of my stocking, I cry out. Sparks shoot straight to my pussy, and my belly pulses with white heat. I thrust back, grinding my mons into his coarse pubic hair. Now we’re struggling together, up a tall mountain, both of us lathered with sweat and female juice. Somehow he manages to keep caressing my thigh through the silk, tickling, teasing, taunting the sensitive nerves that are linked, by some mysterious sorcery, to my grasping cunt. Still we climb and climb, higher with each stroke, until suddenly my body is lifted into the air as if by a huge hand. And then just as suddenly I’m falling, hurtling through space, jerking and thrashing as I come. Julian rides my climax with me. With a few more deep strokes, he shoots inside me with a full-body shudder.

  The trip isn’t quite over yet, although the last part is easy, like floating on a river through a golden mist. I kick off the high heels and twine my silken legs around him while we glide with the current back to our ordinary life. There the landscape is gentle, even and pleasantly predictable—at least until our next adventure.

  Because our passage to the Silk Road lies just inside my dresser drawer.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MORE THE MERRIER—

  MÉNAGE

  If two wrongs don’t make a right, try three.

  —LAURENCE J. PETER

  Ménages have managed to make their way into popular culture. Mainstream ads for everything from liquor to margarine to plumbing devices feature potential ménage à trois. The idea of being sandwiched between two partners is a fantasy I’ve heard many times—and experienced, as well. (This is why I was thrilled to edit the book Three-Way!) What I adore about ménages is the constantly changing points of view. One person is the focal point, and then another, and then…yes, another. There is no back and forth. There’s only round and round. And what’s sexier than a circle?

  Well, figuring out the logistics. That can be seriously sexy, as well.

  In “Mercury in Retrograde,” I write about an F/F/M situation:

  I couldn’t believe how matter-of-fact the couple was acting. I’d just been tongued and finger-fucked by Cynthia, had gone down on her in the shower, and now her man was stripping down and joining us beneath the spray. Was I the only one who found the situation unusual?

  I stood, in a pathetic attempt to be a gracious hostess. Hello, Joe. Welcome to my shower. The thought made me giggle nervously, and Cynthia put her arms around my waist, as if to calm me down.

  Joe had other plans. He slid in between us and got his mouth against my neck. “I’ve wanted to do this for so long,” he said, before gently biting my skin. I could feel the arousal building inside me once more—or maybe it never had completely died down since my oily orgasm on the kitchen floor. “Cynthia and I both have.”

  “Why’d you wait so long?” I asked, turning to face him. The spray from the showerhead made us all wet, all over. The water droplets lingered on Joe’s long dark eyelashes.

  “You never want to overstep your boundaries,” he said.

  Kat Watson describes a couple on the make in her sexy story, “They Should Have Sent a Poet”:

  I’d spotted her in a bar, all rich brown hair, curvy legs and pouty red lips; who could’ve overlooked her?

  When I asked Derrick if we could take her home and he agreed, I almost let out a squeal. We’d talked for weeks about inviting another woman to our bed, but we didn’t seem to fit in with the swinging crowd in our area.

  Her name was Lily, and watching Derrick between her thighs made me want to write poetry to her cunt.

  “See right here?” he asked, his pointed tongue skimming over her clit. “Gentle.”

  I mimicked what he’d done and was startled when she bucked into my mouth, needing more. I sucked and licked, taking her lips between mine and finally focusing my attention back on her clit.

  “You’re doing so good, baby. She’s going to come any second.”

  Lily’s hands tugged painfully at my hair, holding me to her pulsing pussy as she did, indeed, come.

  In a move they’d seemingly silently planned, they maneuvered me onto my back. One of Lily’s hands flicking and teasing a nipple, the other with several fingers buried deep before I could take a deep breath. From above my slit, she winked at my husband then moved faster.

  Unlike my tentative licks and touches, hers were certain, sure. Practiced.

  “Do you like the way she licks you, baby?”

/>   Derrick’s words sent me flying, just like he knew they would.

  Elisa Sharone’s ménage piece, “Our First Girl,” also focuses on two girls and a boy:

  Fingers sliding between her wet lips, the memory of the threesome tickled at the back of her mind. They’d always been monogamous and faithful, but in recent months their sexual boundaries had become fluid and what was once taboo now seemed like an adventure. She stretched her long limbs out across the bed and closed her eyes, letting the image take hold.

  He’s watching her, this beautiful slender girl with long auburn hair straddling my hips and teasing my breasts. Her lips and teeth graze my nipple, her face hidden behind a curtain of curls. I can feel her pussy slipping against my skin as she rolls her hips and grinds against me. I pull our unexpected lover to my chest, holding her tightly as a kiss plays between our lips.

  Then his cock slides easily into my slick heat and he thrusts hard against us both. And suddenly we’re moving together, him holding her hips as though he’s fucking her from behind while I draw him inside. I’m lost in the scent of her, the feeling of him. And together they make me come, both of their names on my lips.

  “Tripartite,” by Georgia E. Jones, details the pleasure of two men and a woman (and also the pleasures of oral outdoors):

  Adam sank to the ground, pulling me with him. I ran my hands across his belly before pulling down his trunks and putting my mouth on his cock. He made a strangled sound, and I sucked on him, hard, crouched between his thighs, not giving him a chance to adjust. Will lifted me to my knees, stripping off my bikini and touching me, spreading me open, nudging me with the head of his cock. He knew exactly how much sex I hadn’t been having since the divorce. Then I was filled up, the hot, thick length of Will inside me and hard thrust of Adam’s cock in my mouth. It was what I wanted, bone deep and mindless. I couldn’t establish any sort of rhythm, clenching around Will and grinding back against him. He said something—the dark voice of a cautionary tale—and held my hips in broad-palmed hands and did it for me.

  I sucked on Adam, licking him up and down, cupping his balls in one hand then taking him as deep as I could until he touched the back of my throat. Adam came first, crying out, his hands fisted in my hair. I swallowed and rested my face against his belly, feeling Will thrust harder and harder, my own pleasure rising toward orgasm, but it was going to take longer than he had, so I just tightened around him as hard as I could and held on until he came.