The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 3

by Maxim Jakubowski

  She came up. The breeze shifted the mist. I saw her breasts above the water, the flash of her smile. She teased me with a long, slow backstroke toward the shallow end of the pool.

  She was challenging me.

  I stepped up onto the board. It had been a long time. I wasn’t in shape for it. I considered a simple jump. It might be less humiliating than a failed dive in front of her.

  Forgotten pride rose and took hold of my mind.

  When she dove, I’d felt the board rebound. I knew the bounce. I knew I could manage something simple, something that at least showed some control, some training.

  I stepped out to my mark. I checked the water. She was there. Steam rose off the surface around her. She was watching, treading water, waiting.

  I locked my eyes on the snow peaks. I took my breath. I let it go. The breeze was cool, the mountains silent. In the distance a hawk circled, sun glinting off its red tail.

  One step. The board bent.

  Two. The rhythm of the flex.

  Three. Lift the knee and rise.

  My body remembered. In the moment I touched down on the board to take my full bounce, I knew my new body would give me its full measure. I was, in that moment, fully in myself for the first time in over a year. I felt the grit of the board, the bend in fibreglass and knees, and I knew I had what I needed to make the otter woman laugh. Safe was no longer part of the dive. In my rise, I rolled my shoulder inward and crossed an arm over my belly. I had a full rotation with a full spin as I passed the level of the board. I carried the momentum into my second flip and spin. I nailed a double double and sliced the warm water toes-on.

  I slipped deep through the silken water. My feet touched the bottom of the pool. I let myself fold downward through the caressing warmth. For a long, silent moment I hovered, fetal, near the bottom. Above me, liquid blue rippled and soothed. Tears cooled the warm water on my eyes.

  The moment was forever, and it was less than the time it takes for breath to call for the next breath. I pulled my feet under me and pushed against the concrete floor. I broke the surface, took air, and looked for the otter woman.

  At the shallow end of the pool, she climbed an aluminum ladder. I kicked into a breaststroke, not daring to dip my head into the water, not wanting to lose sight of her.

  She stopped near a deck chair and picked up a hotel towel. She began drying her hair. She glanced my way. Her eyes flashed. Her smile played hide-and-seek behind the dabbing towel.

  I kicked harder.

  She turned away and padded across the concrete.

  “Otter!” I called.

  She disappeared into the shadows of the hotel.

  I followed as far as the first shadowy intersection of corridors, but she was gone.

  I returned to the pool and did several more dives. They were adequate, even skilled. My time in the gym had given me a new kind of flexibility and strength. Even so, without her watching, none of the dives held the magic of the first.

  I fantasized that I might see her at dinner in the restaurant. I let myself linger there for hours, but she didn’t appear. Later, in bed, I imagined us together in a tract house in Illinois, or in a cabin in Oregon, or in any of half-a-dozen fantasy homes where I thought her strength and smile might fit.

  It was near 1 a.m. when moonlight slipped into my room and bathed my face. I decided it was ridiculous to stare at the ceiling wishing for the touch of a stranger with an otter’s smile. I got out of bed, splashed cold water on my face, put on my suit and headed for the pool.

  I ignored the hours signs and climbed over the damp wrought-iron railing. Thick mist blanketed the water, tendrils snaked upward, tickling the belly of the cool night. Moon-silvered ripples invited me to swim with them beneath the teasing mist.

  I dropped my towel and climbed the tower to the board. I looked up to the moon and thanked it for the stranger’s smile and the dive earlier in the day.

  One.

  Two.

  Knee high.

  Flex and stretch. Spin and tuck. Extend and reach for warm and wet. Penetrate, slip deep, smooth and slick. I slowed and smiled in the warm deeps. I snapped my hips to spin myself in the warm wetness. The silky mineral water kissed every inch of exposed skin. One long stroke. Another, and I was moving slow and weightless beneath the misty surface.

  I broke surface and rolled onto my back. The board above me still shook from my dive.

  She appeared there, tall and silvered in the moonlight.

  One step.

  Two.

  Knee high, and she flew, stretched upward, arms out. Long, arched, sensual, and simple – she dove.

  In the shallower end of the pool, my toes found the grit of the concrete bottom. She surfaced three feet from me. Through mist and moonlight, nose just above the surface, she pulled herself effortlessly toward me.

  I backed away. She was too close. I was suddenly unsure, afraid. I was sick. No. I’d been sick.

  She reached. One hand touched my chest.

  I remembered Andrea and Danni. I remembered my failure.

  Her other hand slid along the ridges of my belly. The root of my spine thrilled to her touch. My suit suddenly felt tight. I wanted her touch, knew she was what I had come to Glenwood to find. As certainly as my body had known how to dive in the afternoon sun, I knew I could reach out to her. I knew how to fold her into my arms, how to bring my lips to hers and how to slide thigh along thigh in the silken warmth of the pool.

  We kissed. She tasted of the lime and sulphur of the pool. She tasted of heat and hunger. We parted to breathe. The mists surrounded us. She ran her hand up my thigh, across my bulging suit and up my belly to my neck. “Lean, sky dancer,” she whispered.

  “Otter smile,” I said.

  “I like that,” she said. We kissed again, turning slowly in the water.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said.

  I slipped the strap of her suit from her shoulder and put my lips to the pulse at her neck. The mineral slickness, the warm water, her arching and her tiny moan all filled me. I bit lightly. I teased at her pearl earring with my tongue.

  She laughed and twisted in my arms. Her hand slipped behind my thigh, slid upward, and gripped my ass. She pulled herself against me, and we fell back into the water, sinking slowly, kissing, rolling in the water and molding flesh to flesh.

  She slid my suit off. I helped her with hers. Somehow, we knew when the other needed air. Like dolphins, we sank, surfaced, breathed, and let ourselves sink into the embrace of the healing waters again.

  Slowly, we danced our wet dance. My mouth found her lips, her fingertips, her breasts, her belly. We touched bottom and rose again to breathe.

  Sinking, her lips found my ear, the nape of my neck. Her fingers wrapped themselves in my hair. I dove deeper and bit at her thigh and traced my tongue along the mineral slickness of her outer lips, then the otter-musk sweetness within. I stayed there, tasting her, searching her for deeper mysteries, for watery pleasure. Her fingernails caught in my scalp. She writhed and shook. I plunged my tongue deeper, driving inward to taste her primal wetness fully.

  She bucked against me and pulled at my head.

  I broke away, and we rose to the surface to breathe.

  In mist and moonlight, we kissed. Her hunger matched mine. Her soft hand pulled at my hardness. For a moment, I was surprised I was hard. It had been so long. Then she guided me to her, guided me from warm mineral water into her deep, healing wetness. She clasped her legs around mine and our hips found a rhythm that rotated us in the water, spun us one around the other, slowly sinking and rising and sinking again.

  For minutes or for hours, we were one body, one soul writhing in primal waters, surging forward toward an epiphany of life. Our rhythms grew urgent. We sank deep into the silvery warmth. We pulled at one another, spinning faster, sharing what breath we had. We both knew we needed to rise for air. Instead, we pulled together tighter, harder, and we spun in liquid darkness one last time, separating our lips, screamin
g underwater, freeing joy and precious air in rising torrents of bubbles.

  Gasping and laughing, we floundered to the surface. Together and silent in the moon-silvered water, we retrieved our suits then stroked to the edge of the pool. She climbed the ladder first, and I nipped her rear as it passed near my face. I followed her to her towel, and we slowly and gently dried one another.

  My belly pressed to her back for warmth, I towelled her moonlit breasts. “What’s your name, Otter Smile?” I asked.

  “Cassey.” She put her hands on mine and moved my towelling lower. “I like Otter Smile,” she said.

  “My name’s Skyler,” I told her.

  “You’re a hell of a diver,” she said.

  “You know how to move pretty well yourself,” I said. She turned, and I dabbed her cheek with the towel. “Think you’ll be able to sleep now?” I asked.

  She took the towel, and we kissed. “I’m not planning to,” she said. She took my hand, and we headed for the hotel.

  Before we entered the hotel, I looked back at the mist-covered pool and thanked the moon, the mist, and the diving board. My body had never betrayed me. It fought. It brought me to Glenwood. I’d been reborn, given a diver’s body. I was beginning my new life, a life that included laughter and love in the arms of a woman with an otter’s smile.

  The Little American

  Sage Vivant

  Their laughter began slowly; muted sporadic bubbles in his aching consciousness. The pulse in his brain, still erratic from last night’s ouzo, knocked against his cranium, periodically drowning them out.

  They had throaty, female laughs. Were they Greek? They spoke loudly, as most Greeks did, yet he did not hear that tone that sounded accusatory by English standards. Through the thin plaster wall, the voices also purred and growled. Sometimes it seemed they whispered but how would he hear that through a wall?

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed. The door of the next villa opened and a woman called out kalimera to someone. A group of people (all women?) spilled out onto the shared veranda. The scraping of metal chairs along the rough cement made him wince.

  He fumbled blindly around what he recalled was the night-stand, trying to locate his watch. After no success, he remembered it was still on his wrist. He squinted at its face, annoyed at the prolonged blur of it. Twelve fifteen. The morning was gone and he had no recollection of his return to the villa the night before.

  Nothing was referred to as a “hotel” on Santorini, or at least, not in Oia, where he stayed. There were rooms, apartments and houses; all virtually the same, save for cooking spaces. At Strognopoulous, the units were a collection of apartments labelled “villas”. As with all Greek accommodation, furnishings and space were modest but clean. The door of each villa was split down the middle, allowing half to be opened at a time and requiring most people to pass sideways through the portal. The doors led out to a semi-private veranda he shared with the villa next to him. Strognopoulous sat high enough to afford an expansive view of the Mediterranean, as well as the small, uninhabited islands of Palia Kameni and Nea Kameni.

  He lay on his back with his legs still hanging off the side of the bed looking, he imagined, like one of those long, twisted slides that emptied into man-made rapids at an amusement park. His spinal discomfort was a welcome distraction from the bongo drums in his head. The ceiling spun whether his eyes were open or closed.

  Their talking broke his inert concentration, yet he understood nothing of the human buzz that characterized their discussion. He rolled to his side, half hoping the movement would result in a landing on the floor. Instead, his face was smashed into the balled-up pillow and his legs flailed like a fish tail.

  He could see one of the women on the veranda. When had he opened his shuttered window? Smooth, dark hair pulled back in a ponytail between her shoulder blades. If she turned to look, would she see him as clearly? The window had a screen, which he hoped darkened her vision of the interior. He lay naked, too numb to register the possibility of being seen.

  Only her shoulders and head were visible to him. The subtle bronze highlights in her hair shone in the brilliant sunlight. She wore sunglasses and listened more than her companions. She occasionally raised a glass of dark liquid to her lips. The intensity of the sun on her skin and hair made him realize it was another unbearably hot day on the island.

  He gratefully allowed the women to distract him from his head, which now felt as divided as his door. The woman he could see moved toward her friends, disappearing from the frame of his small window. There was much laughter and the sounds of struggle. He began to doze, comatose-style.

  In minutes, a knock at his door jarred him. A giggle accompanied the second knock and a foreign feminine voice ventured, “Hello?”

  If it had been a male voice, if he hadn’t seen the fine features, the smooth, nearly black, lustrous hair, if he wasn’t curious, even in post-inebriation, to see the rest of her, he would’ve ignored the knock. He would have chosen the spinning room over being neighbourly in virtually every circumstance.

  Except this one.

  With torpid speed, he stumbled toward the door, landing before it thanks to lucky projectory.

  The cumbersome lock caused him some difficulty but he reasoned the noise would assure her of his impending response. He flung the half door open in victory, realizing simultaneously that his dick had not seen so much sunlight in years.

  Smiling, she gasped both at his own realization and the sight of his unprotected genitalia. Suddenly more embarrassed than neighbourly, he closed the door in her face. She laughed aloud and called something in Greek to her friends, who squealed with delight.

  Not that it mattered, but he imagined a variety of observations she might have conveyed to her friends:

  “What a pathetic little man!”

  “He must be crazy – he answered the door naked!”

  “Oh, great! Hundreds of doors and we get the flasher!”

  None of these observations was how he preferred to be remembered by a beautiful woman.

  The pounding in his head did not diminish even slightly but he could ignore it now in the face of reparation to his reputation. He found his pants in the wrinkled heap near the dresser, grabbed them and practically jumped into them. He bounded out of his villa into the blinding sunlight, yanking up his zipper.

  He stood briefly at his end of the patio, frozen by the four stunned expressions. The one who’d knocked was grinning. All of them waited to see what he might do next.

  A slim patch of various succulents separated the two verandas. His momentary paralysis helped him notice this obstacle and he walked around it.

  Establishing credibility under the circumstances was imperative but futile. He’d best settle for rendering competent assistance.

  “Hi. I mean, Kalimera.”

  “Kalimera. Good morning. I am sorry to wake you,” the beauty replied slyly behind her sunglasses, not moving from her seat at the small table. She wore only a big, white, lacy overshirt. With a little stealthy dedication, he could probably make out nipples and pubic hair through it. But it was the long, shapely curves of her crossed thighs that jump-started his already beleaguered pulse. She was in her mid-thirties, soft but firm. Her tanned, curvaceous flesh riveted him and he tried not to stare, which was easy in the blinding sunlight.

  The other three women stood near the table, with one holding a large canvas umbrella. One of them said something in Greek to the beauty, giggling under her breath. The beauty chuckled in assent and removed her sunglasses to reveal dark, exotic eyes.

  “It’s all right. It’s time to get up, anyway,” he said dismissively. Best not to mention the unsolicited birthday suit. “Did you need some help, ladies?”

  “Neh, efharisto. Thank you, but I do not like to disturb you. I think you were out very late?” Her eyes ran up and down his body, and he grinned.

  “Don’t worry about that. I’d like to help if I can,” he spoke slowly for her benefit but was grateful fo
r the excuse to think slowly.

  The three women hoisted the umbrella and aimed the bottom at the small hole in the centre of the iron table. The beauty held the table as they repeatedly missed their target. The bottle of Canaves wine wobbled slightly with the movement. All of them ignored him entirely.

  The strong sun beat into his skull, causing both pain and clarity. He could not continue to stand there so effetely. With a confidence he didn’t feel, he stepped toward them purposefully.

  “I can help you with that,” he said, grasping the umbrella and pushing into their sphere of cooperation. As he gradually wrested the apparatus away from them, he felt them surrender to his returning masculinity. He lifted the umbrella with both hands, filling his lungs with fresh Mediterranean sea air. Having failed to button his trousers, the zipper lost its tenuous anchor and opened with his exhalation. The beauty’s hands grabbed the fabric just below his ass and tugged playfully as the umbrella slid into its slot in the table.

  He stood immobile with surprise. He also stood undeniably naked.

  The women erupted with laughter, including the beauty, who remained in her chair, delightedly smug about his predicament. One of the women, near forty and especially busty, pointed to his penis and exclaimed something he didn’t understand. More laughter ensued.

  He was not a large man. He’d never sauntered proudly through a locker room, bought a Speedo or found condoms too small. He knew there were men who, when flaccid, matched his size erect.

  These were facts known to him for many years. But he loved women too much to allow an accident of birth to preclude his access to them. He’d made it his business to prove that size didn’t matter.

  That resolve, however, had never undergone this kind of test before. Being tittered at by four confident Mediterranean lovelies in broad daylight was unnervingly Fellinian. He stood frozen, the centre of their attention and stares, his mind a circuitous track of useless thoughts.

  “They laugh because you are small,” the beauty explained, stroking the fleshy curve of thigh crossed over her knee. “Maria says you look like her boy who has ten years’ ” the beauty said as if she dared him to grow before her eyes.