The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 3

by Maxim Jakubowski

  She collapsed, his weight pressing her into the mattress, his cock embedded in her cunt, her mind drunk with joy and life, and her heart racing at one with the storm outside.

  Through a haze of grogginess, Dea felt his weight ease off her. Lucien shifted her so her head rested on the pillow. Lips pressed on her forehead, arms held her close and she passed from frenzy to satiated rest.

  She woke to electric light blazing overhead. Damn! The power outage. She’d left the lights on. Padding across the room to flick out the switch, she realized she was naked. Her night clothes lay in a crumpled heap in front of the last dying embers and she was wet halfway down her thighs.

  She had just fucked a total stranger!

  So what? It had been stupendous and her body still vibrated with the memory of Lucien’s tongue on her skin and his cock planted deep.

  But fucking a completely unknown man! She made herself stop. No longer was she thinking like Rob Sullivant’s wife. She was Dea. Goddess. She curled up between sheets that smelled of sex and life.

  Bright morning sunshine woke her later. Time to be on her way. She may have to face Lucien over coffee, but so what? He’d fucked a total stranger too. Her shoes waited, cleaned and polished outside her door, and breakfast was set at a lone table by a window.

  As Dea sat down, Madame appeared with croissants and fresh bread, and a slab of firm cheese and little curls of butter. “Did you sleep well?”

  Was she being facetious? A look at the woman’s face and Dea decided it was a routine enquiry asked of any guest. “Yes, very well. Apart from the storm.” No need to specify which storm.

  Madame nodded. Fierce storms were to be expected. It was the time of year, the point vernal.

  The vernal equinox: the season of wild tides and gales that marked the beginning of spring. A time of new life and renewal. Of course. Dea was alive, well satisfied, and drinking aromatic coffee several thousand miles from her humiliation. She cut off a corner of cheese, chewed it slowly and decided to stop and pay homage to the Goddess in the parking lot, on her way forward.

  To Remember You By

  Sacchi Green

  “A movie!” she exulted from three thousand miles away. “They’re making a movie of our book!”

  “Our book” was Healing Their Wings, a bittersweet, sometimes funny novel about American nurses in England during World War II. My grandson’s wife had based it on oral histories recorded from several of us who had kept in contact over the past half-century.

  I rejoiced with her at the news, but then came a warning she was clearly embarrassed to have to make. “The screenwriters are bound to change some things, though. There’s a good chance they’ll want it to be quite a bit, well, racier.”

  “Racier?” I said. “Honey, all you had to do was ask the right questions!” How had she missed the passionate undertones to my story? When I spoke, all too briefly, of Cleo, had she thought the catch in my voice was old age taking its toll at last? The young assume that they alone have explored the wilder shores of sex; or, if not, that the flesh must inevitably forget.

  I had to admit that I was being unfair. Knowing what she did of my long, happy life with Jack, how could she even have guessed the right questions to ask? But it hardly matters now. The time is right. I’m going to share those memories, whether the movie people are ready for the truth or not. Because my flesh has never forgotten – will never forget – Cleo Remington.

  In the summer of 1943, the air was sometimes so thick with sex you could have spread it like butter, and it would have melted, even on cold English toast.

  The intensity of youth, the urgency of wartime, drove us. Nurses, WACs and young men hurled into the deadly air war against Germany gathered between one crisis and another in improvised dance halls. Anything from barns to airfield hangars to tents rigged from parachute silk would do. To the syncopated jive of trumpets and clarinets, to “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and “Ac-cen-tuate the Positive”, we swayed and jitterbugged and twitched our butts defiantly at past and future. To the muted throb of drums and the yearning moan of saxophones, to “As Time Goes By” and “I’ll Be Seeing You”, our bodies clung and throbbed and yearned together.

  I danced with men facing their mortality, and with brash young kids in denial. Either way, life pounded through their veins and bulged in their trousers, and sometimes my body responded with such force I felt as though my own skirt should have bulged with it.

  But I wasn’t careless. And I wasn’t in love. As a nurse, I’d tried to mend too many broken boys, known too many who never made it back at all, to let my mind be clouded by love. Sometimes, though, in dark hallways or tangles of shrubbery or the shadow of a bomber’s wings, I would comfort some nice young flier with my body and drive him on until his hot release geysered over my hand. Practical Application of Anatomical Theory, we nurses called it, “PAT” for short. Humour is a frail defence against the chaos of war, but you take what you can get.

  Superstition was the other universal defence. Mine, I suppose, was a sort of vestal virgin complex, an unexamined conviction that opening my flesh to men would destroy my ability to heal theirs.

  These very defences – and repressions – might have opened me to Cleo. Would my senses have snapped so suddenly to attention in peacetime? They say war brings out things you didn’t know were in you. But I think back to my first sight of her – the intense grey eyes, the thick, dark hair too short and straight for fashion, the forthright movements of her lean body – and a shiver of delight ripples through me, even now. No matter where or when we met, she would have stirred me.

  The uniform sure didn’t hurt, though, dark blue, tailored, with slacks instead of skirt. I couldn’t identify the service, but “USA” stood out clearly on each shoulder, so it made sense for her to be at the Red Cross club on Charles Street in London, set up by the United States Ambassador’s wife for American servicewomen.

  There was a real dance floor, and a good band was playing that night, but Cleo lingered near the entrance as though undecided whether to continue down the wide, curving staircase. I don’t know how long I stared at her. When I looked up from puzzling over the silver pin on her breast she was watching me quizzically. My date, a former patient whose half-healed wounds made sitting out the dances advisable, gripped my shoulder to get my attention.

  “A friend of yours?” he asked. He’d been getting a bit maudlin as they played “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To”, and I’d already decided he wasn’t going to get the kind of comfort he’d been angling for. I shook off his hand.

  “No,” I said, “I was just trying to place the uniform. Are those really wings on her tunic?” I felt a thrill of something between envy and admiration. The high, compact breasts under the tunic had caught my attention, too, but that was more than I was ready to admit to myself. I watched her movements with more than casual interest as she descended the stairs and took a table in a dim corner.

  “Yeah,” he said with some bitterness, “can you believe it? They brought in women for the Air Transport Auxiliary. They get to fly everything, even the newest Spitfires, ferrying them from factories or wherever the hell else they happen to be to wherever they’re needed.”

  His tone annoyed me, even though I knew he was anxious about whether he’d ever fly again himself. But then he pushed it too far. “I hear women are ferrying planes back in the States now, too. Thousands of ’em. Next thing you know there won’t be any jobs left for men after the war. I ask you, what kind of woman would want to fly warplanes, anyway?” His smouldering glance toward the corner table told me just what kind of woman he had in mind. “Give me a cozy red-headed armful with her feet on the ground any day,” he said, with a look of insistent intimacy.

  “With her back on the ground, too, I suppose,” I snapped, and stood up. “I’m sorry, Frank, I really do wish you the best, but I don’t think there’s anything more I can do for you. Maybe you should catch the early train back to the base.” I evaded his grasp and retreated to the
powder room; and, when I came out at last, he had gone. The corner table, however, was still occupied.

  “Mind if I sit here?” I asked. “I’m Kay Barnes.”

  “Cleo Remington,” she said, offering a firm handshake. “It’s fine by me. Afraid the boyfriend will try again?”

  So she’d noticed our little drama. “Not boyfriend,” I said, “just a patient who’s had all the nursing he’s going to get.” I signalled a waitress. “Can I get you a drink to apologize for staring when you came in? I’d never seen wings on a woman before, and . . . well, to be honest, I had a flash of insane jealousy. I’ve always wanted to fly, but things just never worked out that way.”

  “Well,” Cleo said, “I can’t say I’ve ever been jealous of a nurse’s life, but I’m sure glad you’re on the job.”

  “Tell me what being a pilot is like,” I said, “so I can at least fantasize.”

  So she told me, over a cup of the best (and possibly only) coffee in London, about persuading her rancher father that air surveillance was the best way to keep track of cattle spread out over a large chunk of Montana. When her brother was old enough to take over the flying cowboy duty, she’d moved on to courier service out of Billings, and then to a job as instructor at a Civilian Pilot Training Program in Colorado, where everyone knew that her young male students were potential military pilots, but that Cleo, in spite of all her flight hours, wasn’t.

  Then came all-out war and the chance to come to England. Women aviators were being welcomed to ferry aircraft for the decimated RAF. I watched her expressive face and hands and beautifully shaped mouth as she talked of Hurricanes and Spitfires and distant glimpses of German Messerschmitts.

  As she talked I did, in fact, fantasize like crazy. But visions of moonlight over a foaming sea of clouds kept resolving into lamplight on naked skin, and the rush of wind and roar of engines gave way to pounding blood and low, urgent cries. Her shifting expressions fascinated me; her rare, flashing smile was so beautiful I wanted to feel its movement under my own lips.

  I didn’t know what had come over me. Or, rather, I knew just enough to sense what I wanted, without having the least idea how to tell whether she could possibly want it too. I’d admired women before, but only aesthetically, I’d rationalized, or with mild envy; and, after all, I liked men just fine. But this flush of heightened sensitivity, this feeling of rushing toward some cataclysm that might tear me apart . . . This was unexplored territory.

  “So,” Cleo said at last, looking a bit embarrassed, “that’s more about me than anybody should have to sit through. What about you? How did you end up here?”

  “I’m not sure I can even remember who I was before the war,” I said, scarcely knowing who I’d been just half an hour ago. “It seems as though nothing interesting or exciting ever happened to me back then. Not that ‘interesting’ will be a fair description of life now until I’m at a safe distance from it.”

  She nodded. We were silent for a while, sharing the unspoken question of whether the world would ever know such a thing as safety again. Then I told her a little about growing up in New Hampshire, and climbing mountains, only to feel that even there the sky wasn’t high and wide enough to hold me. “That’s when I dreamed about flying,” I said.

  “Yes!” she said. “I get that feeling here, once in a while, even in the air. Somehow this European sky seems smaller, and the land below is so crowded with cities, sometimes the only way to tell where you are is by the pattern of the railroads. The Iron Compass, we call it. I guess that’s one reason I’m transferring back to the States instead of renewing my contract here.

  “The main reason, though, is that I’ve heard women in the WASPs at home are getting to test-pilot even Flying Fortresses and Marauders. And that’s only the beginning. Pretty soon they’ll be commissioned in the regular Army Air Force. In Russia women are even flying combat missions; ‘Night Witches’ the Germans call them. If the war goes on long enough . . .” She stopped short of saying, “If enough of our men are killed I’ll get to fight,” and I was grateful. “History is being made,” she went on, “and I’ve got to be in on it!”

  In her excitement she had stretched out her legs under the table until they brushed against mine. I wanted so badly to rub against the wool of her slacks that I could scarcely pay attention to what she was saying, but I caught one vital point.

  “Transferring?” I leaned far forward, and felt, as well as saw, her glance drop to my breasts. The starchy wartime diet in England had added some flesh, but at that moment I didn’t mind, because all of it was tingling. “When do you go?”

  “In two weeks,” she said. “I’m taking a week in London to get a look at some of the sights I haven’t had time to see in the whole eighteen months I’ve been over here. Then there’ll be one more week of ferrying out of Hamble on the south coast. And then I’m leaving.”

  Two weeks. One, really. “I’ve got a few days here, too,” I said. “Maybe we could see the sights together.” I tried to look meaningfully into her eyes, but she looked down at her own hands on the table and then out at the dance floor where a few couples, some of them pairs of girls, were dancing.

  “Sure,” she said. “That would be fun.” Her casual tone seemed a bit forced.

  “I don’t suppose you’d like to dance, would you?” I asked, with a sort of manic desperation. “Girls do it all the time here when there aren’t enough men. Nobody thinks anything of it.”

  “They sure as hell would,” Cleo said bluntly, “if they were doing it right.” She met my eyes, and in the hot grey glow of her defiant gaze, I learned all I needed to know.

  Then she looked away. “Not,” she said carefully, “that any of Flight Captain Jackie Cochran’s handpicked cream-of-American-womanhood pilots would know anything about that.”

  “Of course not,” I agreed. “Or any girl-next-door nurses, either.” I could feel a flush rising from my neck to my face, but I ploughed ahead. “Some of us might be interested in learning, though.”

  She looked at me with an arched eyebrow, then pushed back her chair and stood up. Before my heart could do more than lurch into my throat, she said lightly, “How about breakfast here tomorrow, and then we’ll see what the big deal is about London.”

  It turned out we were both staying in the club dormitory upstairs. We went up two flights together; then I opened the door on the third floor landing. Cleo’s room was on the fourth floor. I paused, and she said, without too much subtlety, “One step at a time, Kay, one step at a time!” Then she bolted upward, her long legs taking the stairs two, sometimes three, steps at a time.

  Night brought, instead of a return to common sense, a series of dreams wilder than anything my imagination or clinical knowledge of anatomy had ever provided before. When I met Cleo for breakfast it was hard to look at her without envisioning her dark, springy hair brushing my thighs, while her mouth . . . but all my dreams had dissolved in frustration, and I had woken tangled in hot, damp sheets with my hand clamped between my legs.

  Cleo didn’t look all that rested, either, but for all I knew she was always like that before her second cup of coffee. When food and caffeine began to take effect, I got a map of bus routes from the porter and we planned our day.

  London Bridge, Westminster Abbey, Harrods department store; whether I knew how to do it right or not, every moment was a dance of sorts. Cleo got considerable amusement out of my not-so-subtle attempts at seduction. She even egged me on to try on filmy things in Harrod’s that I could never afford, or have occasion to wear (what on earth, we speculated, did Harrod’s stock when it wasn’t wartime?) and let me see how much she enjoyed the view. I didn’t think she was just humouring me.

  In the afternoon, after lunch at a quaint tearoom, we went to the British Museum and admired the cool marble flesh of nymphs and goddesses. Cleo circled a few statues, observing that the Greeks sure had a fine hand when it came to posteriors; I managed to press oh-so-casually back against her, and she didn’t miss the chance
to demonstrate her own fine hand, or seem to mind that my posterior was not quite classical.

  Then we decided life was too short to waste on Egyptian mummies and wandered a bit until, in a corner of an upper floor, we found a little gallery where paintings from the Pre-Raphaelite movement and other Victorian artists were displayed. There was no one else there but an elderly female guard whose stern face softened just a trace at Cleo’s smile.

  Idealized women gazed out of mythological worlds aglow with colour. The grim reality of war retreated under the spell of flowing robes, rippling clouds of hair, impossibly perfect skin.

  Cleo stood in the centre of the room, slowly rotating. “Sure had a thing for redheads, didn’t they?” she said. “You’d have fit right in, Kay.”

  I could only hope she herself had a thing for redheads. Standing there, feeling drab in my khaki uniform, I watched Cleo appreciating the paintings of beautiful women. When she moved closer to the sleeping figure of “Flaming June” by Lord Leighton, I gazed with her at the seductive flesh gleaming through transparent orange draperies and allowed myself, experimentally, to imagine stroking the curve of thigh and hip, the round, tender breasts.

  “I don’t know how this rates as art,” Cleo said, “but oh, my!”