“I’m shy too,” said Valentina. It was true, though she usually forced herself to pretend otherwise.
“I’ve never been comfortable around a lot of people I don’t know. I was a teenager before I’d ever seen a group of strangers,” Lisa shared.
“So you don’t usually talk to the guests?”
“I’m pretty talkative,” offered Johnny.
“There’s either a bunch of folks or just Johnny and me. Feast or famine,” said Lisa.
“It’s always a feast when you’re cooking,” said Johnny, sopping up chili with a piece of bun.
“You two are cute,” said Valentina. “Been together a long time?” Johnny and Lisa glanced at each other and didn’t answer. “Sorry,” said Valentina. “Maybe I read that wrong? Maybe I was intrusive?”
“Been together, one way or another, for almost twenty years,” answered Johnny.
“That’s amazing,” said Valentina.
“This is why I don’t talk to guests,” muttered Lisa. “Don’t want them thinking I have any claim on Johnny.”
“But you do!” exclaimed Valentina. “And I’m really impressed, truly. I just had a breakup and all my friends are divorced, or in unhappy marriages, and I feel like I’ll be lonely forever. Here you are, twenty years and still in love!”
“You don’t know we’re in love,” Johnny said, the left side of his mouth twitching up. “We could be bitter, resentful old fools.”
“Pretty sure I heard some love coming from the kitchen last night.” Valentina kept her voice low but was still surprised at her boldness. Johnny started chuckling and looked away, gazing at the flames in the fireplace. Lisa stared steadily into her bowl but the corners of her mouth curved upward. “What I want to know is,” continued Valentina, “what’s the trick? How do you stay…interested?”
Lisa met her eye and leaned forward, the end of her pony-tail just missing the dregs of her chili. “There is no trick, but there is…a way. Call it an approach, maybe. Where the person you’re with is an independent other person. Johnny can have his own opinions, activities and relationships however he likes and if he wants to talk to me about them, I’ll listen. I may not think they are very good opinions, activities and relationships, or I may think they are very good. But it’s him who decides what he thinks, what he does, who he does what with.”
Lisa sat back, seeming satisfied. She said, “I have another extra cookie for you tonight, if you want it.” Then she started clearing the dishes.
The rest of the guests were swapping stories again by the fireplace, and this time Johnny stayed in the common room. He shared a love seat with Valentina and they carried on their own conversation. She told him a bit about her ex, a lot about Mexico and much more about the sort of books she liked to read. He told her a bit about Northern Ontario, a lot about Anishinaabe culture and much more about the sort of books he liked to read.
Most of the others had gone to bed when Lisa rushed into the room in her pajamas. “They’re here!” she announced.
“Let’s go,” said Johnny and headed toward the door. He shoved on his boots and held Valentina’s coat open.
She asked, “What is it?” as she complied. The other two tourists grunted questioningly as well, but they put on their boots and parkas.
“You’ll see!” Johnny sounded insistent, so she let him usher her outside.
Green and blue waves of light pirouetted across the sky. The stars were dazzling here every night, but now they played peekaboo, constantly disappearing behind a vibrant wash of color only to reappear a second later as the color (teal, royal blue, emerald and chartreuse green) pulsed in a different direction. Valentina stopped breathing, her entire awareness focused on the light show playing against a rich, black backdrop.
“Aurora borealis,” said one of the tourists.
“Wawasayg,” Johnny whispered in her ear.
She watched for hours. She saw meaning in the motion of the light that was wordless but important, like a feeling, like a new understanding of life.
The other two guests left for bed, muttering about a cold that Valentina no longer felt.
Alone, Johnny and Valentina watched the sky. As the color faded, Johnny put his arm around her. Valentina tore her eyes away from the firmament and found she was not disappointed to see his crooked smile instead.
“I get the impression that Lisa…doesn’t mind,” she murmured.
“She’s been drilling that impression into me for years,” Johnny laughed. “I’ve never taken her up on it. Until now.”
His lips were stronger than she had imagined.
After many minutes of kissing, nibbles on necks and ear-lobes, Valentina tried to push up under his parka to find the fly of his pants.
“Not here!” he chuckled. “Snow. Have you noticed it’s winter?”
He led her to a one-story section at the back of the house, which she had noticed that morning as they sped away on skis. It must be attached to the kitchen, which was off-limits to guests.
Inside, Johnny flipped a switch and light illuminated walls covered with hanging tools, tables with disassembled motors, and, tucked in near the wall of the main house, a couch.
“A man cave!” she exclaimed.
“A what?” Johnny asked.
“I love it,” Valentina said, and pulled his head down to meet hers again.
They stumbled forward, laughing at their awkward attempts to discard layers of clothing. Valentina’s left sock came off with her boot, and she squealed as her foot touched the cold concrete floor. She jumped onto the couch, crouching.
“You look like an animal about to attack,” said Johnny.
“Come here and I will,” promised Valentina.
“Threats, threats,” admonished Johnny. He stepped closer though.
Valentina launched up, locking her arms around his neck to pull him down on top of her. They kissed in that horizontal way, bodies in full contact, heat rushing to lips, to hands and groins.
He kissed down her neck until reaching the edge of her bra, which he bit and pulled. She responded by hooking her legs around his waist and smiling. He pushed onto one elbow, freeing a hand to pull her bra cups aside. Her nipples stood like flagpoles, both chilled and excited. He lapped at them eagerly, then grew more serious, sucking and probing with his tongue.
She bucked her hips, ankles still clasped around the small of his back. She ran her hands up inside his T-shirt, just with her finger pads at first and then gently applying her nails.
“Yes,” he said into the valley between her breasts. “You can scratch me.”
So she scratched him. A shudder coursed through his body and she felt every inch of it, pressed underneath him.
“You can bite me,” she whispered, so he gathered one nipple in his mouth and brought his teeth together. She wondered if he could feel how damp her underwear was against his.
“Enough!” Valentina roared.
Johnny seemed shocked but rose up on his knees saying, “Of course, sorry, I thought…”
“No, yes!” Valentina shook her head at the misunderstanding. “Enough playing around, I mean.” She unhooked her bra and tugged at the waistband of his boxers. Johnny smiled in relief, and then smirked. He yanked her panties off.
“Me first,” he said.
Valentina’s ex had insisted she shower before he went down on her, every time. Today she had not bathed since skiing and dogsledding. Johnny inhaled her smell and growled. He licked every inch of labia, circled her clit, and then licked all of her labia again. He breathed on her clit and she yelped.
“Just do it!” she demanded.
So he did it. He sucked her clit up into his mouth and battered it until she was on the edge of coming, then relented to kiss the inside of her thighs until she was about to yell at him again. Before she could, he returned to where she wanted him, intent on her clit. Her legs fell loose around him, her asscheeks straining in his hands, and he kept going. Then her thighs tightened up against his ears so he
couldn’t hear a thing, and that’s when he knew she would come. He didn’t know she would squirt a mouthful of salty liquid into his mouth, but he welcomed it.
Johnny nuzzled over her soft belly toward her face for a cuddle, but Valentina stopped him with a hand on his chest. “Can you fuck me now?” she asked.
He tried not to show surprise. “Sure,” he said, and pulled open the drawer of the side table. It was always stocked full of condoms though he had never used any, not in this room. Lisa managed those sorts of supplies.
Sinking into Valentina felt so warm. It was new but comforting, similar enough to previous experiences but with a thrill of adventure.
“Oh yes.” Valentina bent one knee over the back of the couch to open herself wider. He moved slowly, enjoying the feeling, the noises from her throat, the shape of her open lips, the force of her breathing. Until she dug her nails into his back. “More?” she asked. So he moved faster.
The sensation was falling like waves through their bodies, like northern lights across the sky. Valentina shook, then stopped and held very still for a moment, and then she howled. Johnny lost track of the speed of his hips, faster and faster, her still howling and him grunting, until he felt liquid seeping around the base of his cock, and he moaned and came too.
At breakfast Valentina tried to ignore Johnny’s winks and didn’t speak when Lisa was putting out the meal. She was heading upstairs to pack when Lisa caught her elbow and led her into the kitchen, her face beet-red.
“You should visit again,” Lisa started and Valentina’s eyes went wide. “I know Johnny enjoyed your company, and I don’t know you much but I think you’re a good person.”
“I…I’m glad,” stammered Valentina.
“It can be lonely; it’s hard for two people to be everything for each other. Do visit again. No charge. Maybe every couple of months? Would you like that?”
“Yes.”
She would settle in Toronto, Valentina decided. Apply for a work visa, residency. It was close enough to the lodge to visit regularly, and it was a big city with opportunities for jobs and friends. She was ready to start having a life again.
SERIOUS FACES
Ella Dawson
Chelle might only be twenty-two years old, but even she knew that telling an intern her contract was not going to be renewed on the day of the office holiday party was a mistake. She stared at her smug supervisor, who insisted everyone on the design team call him Tax but was actually named Jeremy, and wondered if Chargr would even exist at the end of the next calendar year. Six unpaid months of her life had been spent illustrating letterheads and tweaking fonts, and what did she have to show for it? A lot of free snacks and a “Thank you for all your hard work!” from someone with the maturity and self-awareness of the frat bro who used to sell her weed in college. Then again, who founded startups other than frat guys with a surplus of confidence and cash?
Bring on the open bar.
Tax leaned over his gigantic glass desk. “You’ve played an invaluable role in shaping Chargr’s brand identity, Chelle. But until we find a new angel, we’re a little fucked on funding.” He smiled sympathetically before glancing at his Apple Watch— firing an unpaid design intern was a huge drain on his time.
She pasted a clipped grin on her face and considered setting fire to his decorative bonsai tree. Instead, she said what was expected of her. “I completely understand, and I appreciate the opportunities I’ve had here. I hope you’ll keep me in mind if you find a new investor.”
“Who else would we call?” Tax said, and she considered reminding him yet again that he’d been spelling her name wrong since July. “You’re still coming to the party, right? I hear it’s gonna be sick. We rented a green screen!”
Chelle wouldn’t miss it for the world.
The party was extravagant and unorganized, like the bar mitzvah of someone whose parents had not yet mastered the art of saying no. In addition to the aforementioned photo booth with a green screen, there was also a traditional black-and-white photo booth for the purists. Two open bars, one on each floor, plied Char-gr’s thirty employees with alcohol. A DJ spun electronic music on a small stage at the back of the warehouse, though it was still too early for anyone to be dancing, and twin popcorn and cotton candy machines stood beside the entrance to the venue. There was even a wall covered in Chargr’s logo, just in case you wanted to pretend you were a famous entrepreneur. Chelle now understood where her nonexistent salary had been spent. She wanted to get shitfaced and draw dicks on the logo wall.
Tax strutted into the warehouse like an artfully disheveled peacock, followed by the true prince of the occasion: Wes Nathan, Chargr’s founder and CEO. Chelle was willing to bet the pair of them had never had an impulse refused in their entire lives, and a coil of resentment burned in her chest. She turned away from the entrance and stormed up the metal spiral staircase to the balcony overlooking the venue, where the cacophony of the music was a little softer. The bartender had lined up flutes of champagne, and she plucked one up before turning to the railing to watch the cocaine-fueled frolicking below.
“How’d your meeting go?”
A flush rose up her chest, entirely unlike the hot rage she’d felt a few moments ago. She knew that voice, of course—she’d spent the last six months wrapping it around her senses when the internship threatened to take away her soul. Ryan leaned against the railing, a martini held loose in his hand. He wasn’t looking at her and for that she was grateful. It always took her a few spare seconds to retrieve her jaw from where it had landed on the floor.
“I got fired,” she said, inserting as much detached amusement into her voice as possible. His eyebrows flicked up but he didn’t seem surprised.
“So you’re celebrating tonight.”
“Did you not hear me correctly?” Chelle teased, relaxing as they slipped into familiar banter. She was never sure if the spark between them was mutual attraction or just mutual respect, but the puzzle of it had long been one of her favorite distractions. “My days at Chargr have come to an end, and I have nothing to show for my hard work other than some cotton candy and a LinkedIn endorsement.”
That earned a laugh, and Ryan finally looked over at her, his blue eyes glittering in the iridescence of the dance hall lights. His angular face walloped the air out of her lungs again, but she’d learned how to keep her expression still in these little pockets of longing. Chelle was many things—petty, arrogant, passive-aggressive—but she was not impulsive. Getting involved with a coworker was a recipe for disaster.
“Yeah, I heard you,” he said, and there was something about how he lingered on you that made her wonder if the needle had moved on the dial closer to attraction than respect. But he turned his focus back to the dance floor, swirling his drink in its glass. “You’re getting out of this myopic hellhole. That’s something to celebrate.”
“All right then.” Chelle raised her champagne flute. “Here’s to getting out. May you soon find your exit as well, Ryan Gaines.”
Their glasses clinked, and she downed the rest of her drink. It bubbled pleasantly in her stomach and she coughed, grinning as Ryan hid a smile and shook his head like an RA who had caught his residents smoking in the dorm bathroom. “You were the one who said we were celebrating,” she said. A server appeared with a tray loaded with more champagne, and Chelle swapped her empty flute for a full one.
“I did,” Ryan agreed. “You need to let me catch up.”
Despite his aloof attitude, Chelle had learned a great deal about Ryan during her stay at Chargr. Born and raised in Michigan, he was a moth caught in the jam jar that was Brooklyn’s startup culture, battering his wings against the glass to escape. He was the company’s exhausted head engineer, constantly updating an app according to the whims of its founder, who knew absolutely nothing about apps. Ryan’s calendar was littered with job interviews, but, unlike Chelle, he was actually making good money. “I’m waiting for the right window to open before I leap out of it,” he once whispered
conspiratorially at an office happy hour. Until then, he sucked it up and patiently explained to Wes that no, it was not legal for Chargr to text every contact in a user’s smartphone without their permission.
Chelle also knew that he had beautiful, dark hair that spilled across his face, and perfect cupid’s-bow lips he chewed on when he was frustrated during meetings, which was often. But tonight there was something else about him, this subtle hum of energy that made him swirl his drink in the glass again and again, a new reluctance to maintain eye contact with her while chatting. Something was different. She realized with gradual clarity that only one thing had changed—her job title, or lack thereof.
Maybe there was something to celebrate tonight after all.
The idea struck her giddy and fast somewhere after her third flute of champagne. “Let’s do the photo booth,” she said, reaching out to touch his arm. His cheeks were pink from the drink he’d just thrown back, and his gaze flicked down to where her thumb rubbed circles against the sleeve of his flannel. “C’mon, there’s no line. We can moon the camera if you want.”
He rolled his eyes but agreed, and he didn’t protest when she took his hand to tug him back to the staircase. Chelle let it drop as soon as they descended into the party but marveled at her own boldness, smirking at her oblivious former coworkers. You can keep your green screens and your holographic business cards, she thought, weaving through the crowd. I’m going to be fine.
The old-fashioned photo booth was off to the side of the warehouse. She slid across the tiny bench, and Ryan pulled the curtain closed behind them, his thigh pressed firmly against hers. In the dark, she could only see the sharpness of his nose and the shadow of his eyes.
“What should we do?” he asked, twisting in the confined space to look down at her. He was so close, his perfect mouth so near her face, and she wondered how he tasted, how he kissed. Gentle and considerate, the kiss of a man who picked up the tab when they got drinks at the end of a hard week? Or something firmer, something as dark as their mutual restlessness surrounded by startup money and egos eagerly fed by the rest of the world? Fuck, she could smell him mixed in with the dusty heat of the booth and the rum on his breath.
Best Women's Erotica of the Year, Volume 2 Page 14