With This Ring, I Thee Bed

by Alison Tyler

  Val set me back on my feet. For a talkative man, he’d gone suspiciously quiet. I waited, feeling like all kinds of a fool. “Oh, God,” Val said. For a self-professed heathen, he invokes the Lord’s name often enough. “I want you,” he said wonderingly. “I would love to fuck you—for free, I mean. You wouldn’t have to pay me.” He turned bright red. “Forget I said that. That was crass. I apologize.”

  I stared up at him. He has very blue eyes. For the first time in two months there was not a thought of the CPA anywhere in my entire brain. That was worth all my savings alone. And whyever not, I thought, salvage something from the sorry situation I had created? I reached for Val’s hand. “You come with me.”

  Reader, I fucked him.

  I took him to the potting shed behind the livery. If the gardener came in, he was going to get an eyeful, but I figured with the glass furnace and the yelling and the testosterone, Clyde and the boys wouldn’t hear a thing. Val looked around assessingly, as if we were thinking of buying.

  “I’m your present,” I said to him patiently. “How would you like it? From the front or from behind?” He had that lovely glazed look in his eyes and his tongue had clearly gotten disconnected from the dictionary part of his brain. He spun his index finger in a circle and I obligingly turned around. I was wearing a skirt and silk long underwear and hiking boots, an outfit I’m not going to explain at the present moment. Val slid his hands up under the skirt and pulled down the long underwear, and since I don’t wear panties, there I was. I heard his zipper go down and thought wistfully, Foreplay, I’ll have to get some sometime, and reminded myself that I was Val’s present, he could unwrap me any way he wanted to.

  There was a long pause. Apparently, he was one of those people who take a long time unwrapping a gift. Just the thought of having to wait made me twitchy. Suddenly, I didn’t want to wait. Val reached around and placed my hands on the galvanized countertop and pulled my hips back against him. He wedged his cock into my ass crack and moved his hips a little. His breath was uneven. “Can’t catch anything from me,” he huffed in my ear. “The women I sleep with, their doctors go over everything with a fine-tooth comb.”

  I arched my back a little. “Me, either.” Foreplay was a great idea, but when it came right down to it, I didn’t seem to need it much. Please, I thought. Pleeease. But I was his present. He put his cock between my legs and got it wet and slid it back and forth, the fat head of it butting into my clitoris on every stroke. My knees started to buckle and he bit my neck.

  “Stand up,” he ordered, so I did, holding on until my knuckles turned white. He used his knee to spread my legs farther apart, and surged into me, a long glide that had me groaning. “Hold on,” he commanded, and began to thrust; strong, controlled thrusts, when I just wanted him to go faster. He stopped moving and now I was the one to take the Lord’s name in vain. He leaned forward, blanketing my back with his chest, and forced his thumb up inside me, alongside his cock. My breath escaped in a hiss. “Easy,” was all he said. He put his index finger on my clit, and every time he thrust, his thumb pressed hard on my G-spot and his fingertip rolled over my clit.

  I came, if you could call it that. It wasn’t like any orgasm I’ve ever had. It was a body-gasm. Every single cell in my body contracted inward as far as it could possibly go and then exploded. I don’t remember being moved, but when I was aware of the world again, I was lying on my back on a wooden table. Val was standing between my legs, still pole-hard inside me. “Did you come?” I asked, and he nodded.

  He watched me, looking like a very serious schoolboy. “I like you,” he said shyly.

  “Well, I like you, too,” I said weakly. I waved a hand. “Don’t stop on my account.” His whole face lit up and he moved, thrusting in and out slowly, a dreamy, concentrated expression on his face. His hair had gone damp with sweat and was sticking to his forehead, masking the blue of his eyes. I certainly wasn’t going to come again, but I was kind of enthralled by Val, and a little sorry I’d missed his first climax, and looking forward to the second. I found enough strength to raise my legs and press them against his hips, logistically possible because he’d cleverly stepped inside the band of silk around my ankles. “Those boots have to go,” he said, and I laughed softly.

  All this sex was making me happy.

  It was like being rocked on the ocean, but after a while he made a vee of his fingers and placed one on either side of my clit, low down at the base, where it’s not so sensitive. Then it was like being ridden, those relentless fingers clasping me on the outside and his cock working me on the inside. “Val,” I said, pleading.

  “No.” He was easygoing in temperament except, apparently, during sex. Was now really the time to find out? “Wait and come with me.”

  I started grinding my hips into the table to get them lower so his fingers would be higher, and thought, Splinters! And nothing else. I tried sitting up and he just placed one big hand flat on my chest and pushed me back down and pinched my nipples until I tried to bite him. I spun out a bunch of dirty talk to try and make him come faster.

  “Heard it all,” he muttered, and finally I gave up and lay back with one arm over my eyes and let it build and build and build. He slowed, moved his fingers and picked up again. I lasted maybe two strokes and dissolved with him, as requested.

  “Bastard,” I said when I could talk. “I’m not paying you for that.”

  He’d joined me on the table, and while it doesn’t sound cozy, it strangely was. “Too late, Cass,” he said smugly, his hand resting lightly over my pubic bone. “I already cashed your check.”

  All’s well that ends well, they say.

  The CPA and I went back to ignoring each other. Clyde got a showing of his high-end stuff at a fancy gallery in the city, and he’s making unicorns and paperweights with joy in his heart. I went back to the battle plans with the Tarweed and tea with George.

  Valentine is an ex-gigolo. The ring on my finger says so. He only gets kinky with me now, and once in a while, when he’s lucky, I let him do missionary.

  Strippers and Cigars

  N. T. Morley

  Jason had told Mike and Paul a thousand times, in a thousand different ways: no goddamn strippers. Really. None. Nada. Nyet. Nein. Not a single stripper. Not one. Not even if she was really cute.

  He’d fucking told them.

  Sure, Annie had encouraged him to have a bachelor party—hell, she had practically demanded that he have one—but never once had she said the word stripper, and Jason hadn’t had the guts to bring it up. When Paul and Mike had said they were handling everything, he told them unequivocally: no strippers.

  They had hemmed and hawed, argued and bellyached, explained to Jason in as many different ways as they could manage why it wasn’t really cheating to get a lap dance from a college student in a G-string, why they were totally sure that Annie wouldn’t mind. They’d tried to figure ways around his rule—what if she didn’t strip, but showed up naked? What if she didn’t strip, but just undressed? What if she stripped, but she wasn’t a stripper—she was just, you know, a secretary, sexy maid or schoolgirl?

  When that hadn’t worked, they’d complained about how he was ruining everyone else’s fun, about how now that they were all married with kids, they never had the time or money to go to strip clubs. He was the Last Man Standing; hopefully this would be the last bachelor party for a hell of a long time. Was Jason really going to deny them their one chance to give him a royal send-off?

  None of those arguments swayed Jason. And even though they encouraged him to ask her, he wasn’t about to bring the matter up with Annie.

  So it was decided, unilaterally: a little party at Mike and Mary’s house, guys only, a few TVs scattered around the room playing washed-out DVD porn as a weak homage to their vanishing youthful sexual exuberance. Maybe some cards, Cuban cigars, stag gifts, dirty jokes, that short of shit. And lots of fine tequila.

  Which was where the trouble really began. Because by the time the stripper show
ed up, Jason was hammered. He hadn’t drunk tequila in years, and he’d forgotten how good that burn felt going down your throat, how intense the salty taste of lime could be mingled with Cuervo. Stripper? Did I say I didn’t want a stripper? Wait, I did say that, I don’t want a stripper, but hell, another shot? Sure!

  But Jason still would not have crossed that line; he was all about Annie, and there wasn’t enough tequila in the world to make him go elsewhere for his stimulation. But what the tequila did do was make him think the best of his friends when they shuffled him out onto the sundeck to check out Liz’s flower garden. “Flower garden? Sure, I guess…” said Jason, and he was out.

  He should have known. Like Mike or any of them gave a flying fuck about his wife’s flower garden. Of course, Mike was extra sure to close the sliding glass door and take Jason around the far side of the deck; when they came back in, the door to the bedroom was closed.

  He figured it was some kind of a cheesy gift—who knows, an inflatable penis or something? His friends would never fuck him over and trick him into cheating on his fiancée—would they?

  But then, after another fifteen minutes of tequila slammers, Mike leaned close in the smoke-filled room and said, “You ready for the main event?”

  “No,” slurred Jase drunkenly. “Oh no you di-int.”

  “Don’t try to talk like a twenty-year-old black girl, Jason. It’s undignified.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Did.”

  “No. No. You’re not hearing me. You didn’t.”

  “Yes. Yes. I’m hearing you. We did.”

  “I told you no,” he said. “Stripper, no no no.”

  “Tequila, yes, yes, yes,” said Mike. “And stripper—”

  “No,” said Jason.

  “Relax, tight-ass. We checked it out with your betrothed. She said it was fine.”

  “Bull shit,” Jason said. “Really?”

  “I swear it on the grave of my virginity. She said to get you liquored up and let some stripper slut leave perfume on your crotch. She said some other stuff…not yet rated. She’s a pistol, that one.”

  “Excuse me, what?”

  “Hey, don’t blame me,” Mike said, “if your girl’s a potty mouth.”

  The other guys were cackling like biddies, telling the one about the blonde painting the porch (“It’s not a Porsche! It’s a BMW!”). Jason muttered something about sexist pigs, stood up and stalked over to Paul, who was puffing drunkenly on his Cuban.

  Before Jason could say a word, “You’re welcome,” Paul said. He kicked a chair over and pushed Jason toward it. “Now sit there and enjoy your stripper.”

  “Annie really said it’s okay?”

  “You believe this guy?” Paul groaned.

  Jason sat down guiltily.

  “Now, as you know,” Paul said, as if he were reading from the Bible, “our good friend Jason Samuel Carson III is about to kiss his bachelorhood goodbye and spend the rest of his life dragging around the best-looking, sweetest and most kindhearted ball and chain in the western United States.”

  “Fuck you,” slurred Jason. “Ball and chain, fuck you. Best in all the States. Fuck you.”

  “But before you do, Jason, we’d like to send your ungrateful ass off with a little gift from your best friends in the world. One last sultry night of unspeakable delectation with the lusty temptress of all married men’s fantasies—Trixie.”

  The partygoers erupted into hoots and howls, clapping furiously, making fools of themselves as best they were able, now that the tequila had taken its toll. “Strip-per, strip-per, strip-per!” They started chanting like sex-drunk frat boys, until Paul shut them up.

  “Now, I don’t mean to encourage temptation, Jase, because I know you’re the most faithful fiancé there is, but there’s one piece of information that I’d like to tell you. Well, two, actually. The first one is that because this is a private party, there is no need to worry about that liquor-and-G-string crap. That’s right, boys, Trixie’s G-string comes off.”

  The drunken chants came: “Pink! Pink! Pink! Pink!”

  “Christ, did you guys eat a box of old Penthouse Letters?” Jason grumbled.

  “And the second thing,” Paul said, “Trixie doesn’t usually do full service. But tonight—”

  “Full service? No. No!” moaned Jason miserably. “Not interested.”

  “You haven’t seen her.”

  “I don’t need to see her.”

  “I think you do.”

  “I really don’t.”

  “You really do,” Paul said. “And besides, she’s already been paid.”

  “You might want to get your money back.”

  “So, Jason, just let nature take its course. We all know you love Annie, but once you see Trixie—trust me, you will not resist this girl. You are duty bound to take her in the back room and—”

  “Please, my virgin ears,” Jason said sourly.

  “I even changed the sheets!” Mike howled.

  “Disgusting.” Jason sighed. “Look, I’ll let her dance for me, but—”

  Paul got down in Jason’s face. “Wait until you see her, Jase. Those tits! Those hips! That ass! She’s got a great ass!” He was bellowing. “You’ll change your tune! Let’s have her out!”

  “Thank you, Nicholas Cage,” Jason said with a frown.

  A slow, grinding techno rhythm pulsed through the room. Mike turned it up louder and louder until the whole room was vibrating and Jason could feel the beat in his breastbone. The roomful of guys clapped, shouting and chanting rhythmically, except that they were so drunk they all started chanting different things, some of them “strip-per,” others “Trix-ie!” still others “hoo-yah, hoo-yah, hoo-yah,” as if reliving their Navy days, which to Jason’s knowledge none of them had ever experienced.

  “Don’t you have neighbors?” shouted Jason.

  “Shut up and cheat on your girlfriend, bitch!”

  Paul dimmed the lights as the door to the bedroom opened; Mike had rigged a photoflood as a makeshift spotlight, illuminating the unbelievably hot female form standing there: Trixie. Jason’s eyes went wide. Christ, she really was gorgeous! Long, raven-black hair, pale skin, full lips painted whore red, knockout body displayed in a tight spandex mini-dress that laced up the front so tight that her tits were spilling out everywhere. Her nipples were evident under the spandex, hard despite the oppressive heat in the house. The dress clung to her hips and was decent by perhaps an inch. Her magnificent thighs were almost totally revealed, and she didn’t have stockings. Instead, she wore knee-high patent leather lace-ups, pointy-toed with impossibly high heels, but she stood on them gracefully—as if she’d had an awful lot of practice.

  Jason knew right then he did want to fuck Trixie silly—right on Mike’s bed. It would serve Annie right! Every face in the room was turned toward him as the music pounded. Jason turned a million shades of red and buried his face in his hands as the place erupted in shouts, cackles, guffaws and applause so loud it almost drowned out the deafening music.

  “He likes her!” someone shouted. “He likes her!”

  Trixie came for him, her hips swaying with every step; she wiggled her tits and ran her hands down her tightly clad body.

  He racked his brains, momentarily trying to remember if he’d ever gotten hard in front of so many other guys before—certainly not in a strip club, that was for sure. This time, though, his cock sprang to attention instantly as Trixie closed on him and let her hips grind with the music. Her body undulated in a smooth rhythm; she twirled and pumped in a come-on.

  Mike had cleared the heavy wooden coffee table. Trixie used it for her platform; she jumped up on it, started writhing. She was not an expert dancer; as a matter of fact, she wasn’t even very good, but Jason didn’t care. He wanted her; he was fiercely turned on, and wanted to see more. She began to toy with the laces of her dress. She’s really going to take her clothes off! Jason thought. Which was what strippers do, so it shouldn’t have surprised him—but
holy shit, she was really doing it. What the hell, he thought. Let ’em look. She tugged open the dress and popped her full, round, firm and perfect breasts out.

  The guys all hooted. Trixie’s eyes flickered over the front of his pants and—yeah, she knew he was hard. She smiled. Good God, those things are perfect, thought Jason.

  Trixie descended from the coffee table; she didn’t do it very gracefully, but to him it looked gorgeous. Trixie sashayed to him, leaned over and called out, “Hands at your sides, cowboy!” over the music. Jason obediently put his hands at his sides and Trixie lowered her breasts into his face, almost to his lips. He leaned his head forward eagerly, opening his mouth to capture one of those perfect, hard pink nipples. But Trixie pulled away just before his lips could make contact. She made a no-no-no gesture with her finger and shot him a wry, seductive smile. She sat down on the coffee table and spread her legs wide, aiming her crotch at Jason; he could see right up her skirt to the snug G-string beyond.

  His friends were shouting, “Take it off! Off! Off!” Her black G-string was mesh and practically see-through; he could catch the contours of her pale pink lips beneath it and admire her glorious ass. Trixie wriggled the skintight mini-dress down her body. It slid easily down her thighs and she dangled it from one toe before tossing it straight at Jason.

  The dress hit him in the face. Even over the reek of tequila and cigars, he could smell the perfume of her sweat and the faint hint of her sex.

  “Give me that!” shouted Paul, and snatched the dress off Jason’s head to toss to the cheering men. They passed the dress around, huffing it.

  Hey, let ’em smell, Jason thought. I get to taste.

  Now Trixie was naked except for her G-string and boots. She had her booted feet tucked under her ass, with her legs spread. She lifted her lower body off the coffee table, pumping in time with the music. It looked as if she was fucking someone, and the rhythm was familiar to Jason—so much so that it made his cock surge. Her fingers splayed between her legs, stroking her mesh-clad pussy up and down with one hand as she played with her tits with the other. Her magnificent curtain of black hair swayed back and forth very close to Mike and Dave and Simon, her tits within easy reach—but everyone kept their hands to themselves.