The boat draws nearer, no longer skimming the tall waves, the distant sound of its throttle dying against the wind. The man who manoeuvres it, a local fisherman, throws a rope and then lends a sturdy hand to a figure who steps out daintily, clad in camel-coloured layers. He helps her on to the landing stage.
The brown bear, without glancing back, shuts the door spitefully behind him. Gingerly, he negotiates the downwards slippery path to the jetty to meet the intruder. Through their bedroom window she watches his progress as the wind raises the flaps of his jacket playfully like a skirt. She sees their visitor throw her arms around his neck and kiss him on the mouth, watches as he glances back guiltily towards herself and the window before submitting to the embrace. Swiftly, she removes herself to one side, shielding him from having seen her observe him from behind the curtain. His arms are now around the woman’s waist. He looks happy, his face full of smiles. Arms linked, they retrace his steps along the turf-clotted path, half slipping, half stumbling in their progress.
They bypass the little bedroom annex where she waits and go next door to the main dwelling, where the kitchen and sitting room are. Ten minutes elapse in silence. Still, he does not come to explain. She studies herself in the mirror. She looks pale, her delicate features drawn as if with white ink on pale parchment. Her hair is a frizz of disarray. But it is her eyes which surprise her most. They are soft, melting with anguish, hooded in blemishes of shadow. She averts her gaze, showers and gets dressed, does her makeup slowly, carefully, sweeping the parchment of her skin with skilful washes of colour. Unlike him, she is dressed in country clothes: jeans, boots and a ruggedly knit jumper that extends its clever, grey cable design almost to her knees. She creates a chignon of her windswept hair, which has responded to the spray from the wind and sea by twisting into ringlets at the nape of her neck.
She thinks of her lover, of his graceful moments of love and love-making, of the sustenance of energy and good reason he delivers her. How she wishes he were here now. She senses a battle. These are the moments of intense loneliness between herself and the panda man, moments when emotional cruelty is delivered casually and the leviathan chaos threatens to engulf all sensibility between them.
Ready now, she sits down to wait. The door opens behind her. No explanation. “Can you come and make us some breakfast?”; a demand made cursorily. Obediently, she follows him across the brief courtyard leading to the main house. The sky is no longer streaked with pink, but iron grey. The fisherman who delivered their visitor is now departed, almost lost to view on the horizon.
The kitchen is still warm from its log fire from the night before. As they step together into its warm hug of pine furniture, red floor tiles and exposed beams, the room is empty, except for the discarded camel coat. She looks at him questioningly. “Our guest is in the bathroom. She is an old friend of mine. I have known her for twenty years. We met up the other day in New York.” No further explanation. “She prefers coffee to tea.” His face is still one of conflict, as if exasperated with her for his own miscalculation of human nature that must surely soon reveal itself. Yet he still postpones the moment, saying nothing, playing with his cuff links, fashioned as miniature clock faces, each set to a different time zone.
In this moment she hates him, as he also detests her. It is the moment of discovery, when living on the edge is no longer fun, when all their subtle truths are threatened by the baldness of exposure and ridicule.
A blonde figure, dressed in expensive cashmere trousers and a cream silk blouse, overlaid with numerous gold chains of various weights and links, emerges immaculate from the bathroom. She has clearly redone both her hair and makeup. “Hiii.” Her voice betrays a lilt of Australian, over which has been lisped an attempt at the straighter vowels proper to English. The result is a sort of sing-song. Her handshake is fish-dab limp, vaguely repellent, no communication at all. “Will you have coffee?” her hostess enquires graciously.
“Sure, whatever.” The blonde woman turns to the man and sits close by him at the table. She takes his hand in hers. “It’s so great to see you,” sung high note. “Didn’t we have fun last week in New York?” He grunts and half smiles in reply, looking both pleased and wary.
She kisses him on the cheek and stretches her hand to his neck, proprietorially picking pieces of lint from his weather-beaten jacket. Caressingly, she feels his cheeks with the back of her hand. “You need a shave, darling.” She glances back at her hostess. “How long have you worked for Peter?”
As the blonde woman turns her face towards her, she has the opportunity to assess it. For one moment, neither speaking, nor moving, but perfectly still, the woman’s face is exquisitely lovely, with pale eyes glancing from a delicately made-up face, the blonde helmet of hair smoothly coiffed into an ideally shaped frame for her face. She has all the immaculate polish of a German beauty. And then something extraordinary occurs. Incapable of remaining still, the woman turns back to the man and begins to speak and, in that moment, the division between the image that she has fashioned of herself in the mirror and that of her true personality occurs like a fissure. The serenity and beauty of her mirror stillness is destroyed by the vulgar immediacy of her movements and speech.
Still busy making the coffee, her hostess turns involuntarily towards the man, hoping he will answer the woman’s question for her. “How long have I worked for you, Peter?” She glances at him quizzically. He says nothing. “I am his wife,” she replies gently. But the woman appears not to hear. “After breakfast, you must show me round the island, Peter, just the two of us. There is so much to discuss.” She begins to talk of mutual friends, pals from the past, whom her hostess has never met. Her husband’s response, other than a quick smile, is lost in devouring a bowl of cornflakes. As all three eat breakfast, the blonde woman continues to stroke her host’s hand.
Her conversation becomes more intimate. She is the mistress of double entendre.
Every innocent remark strikes her as potential for sexual innuendo, which she repeats and emphasizes like a mantra, laughing as she goes. Peter inadvertently chooses the word “action” to describe the mechanism of their new boat and the woman hoots with laughter and repeats the word breathlessly, spluttering that she is sure that it is not the only kind of “action” he had in mind.
She pours her husband a second coffee, considering her remarks coolly. She is not fooled. She knows that no woman in the habit of making love would ever pounce on such a pun, that these are the conversational patterns of a woman starved of sex and love. She remembers noticing once before that the more garrulous women are, the more obvious their celibacy, as though for them the food of emotion must be drained from chatter. She begins to relax. She looks her husband in the eye. His eyes now meet hers in naughty merriment. She thinks of the woman, whose death had inspired her own infidelity, remembers her realization as she had watched her slow transition from life to death that nothing is ever worth assuming. It was then that she had found the strength to accept her handsome lover’s gifts of love. Her husband, much as she loved him, had not been worthy of the exclusiveness of her love. She had seen it then and sees it again now, quite clearly.
She gets to her feet, suddenly resolved. The chaos is upon them and it is up to her to control it. “I think I’ll take the boat and go to the mainland,” she announces. Her husband glances out of the window. “It is too dangerous. A storm is coming.” “The storm is already here,” she replies. He looks up at her disconcertedly. From her vantage height she sees that the heavily ringed, manicured hand of their guest now rests below the table on his upper thigh, her knees nudging his. He does not seem to object. She picks up the keys of their boat, a rubberized, high-powered dingy, capable of skimming the highest of waves.
The woman does not even glance up at her departure. It is only her husband who looks anxious, trying to detain her. But she is determined. She knows that his acts of infidelity that night, whether actual or merely flirtatious, will be less fun without herself as silent witness.
When she gets to the mainland, she will phone to explain that the storm prevents her return, arrange for someone else to return their boat. And then she will fly back to London to spend the night in the arms of her lover.
She reflects, calculatingly. She knows that the blonde Australian will consider that she has triumphed. She also knows the reverse to be true. She sighs, almost feeling sorry for her. Perhaps, the freedom that she and her husband had created in their marriage was a liability of misunderstanding for others. How could the blonde woman guess that she and her panda husband would again exist happily together in their corrupt consciousness, maybe for many years to come?
As she closes the door behind her, she catches one last glance from her husband. The conflict has disappeared. His face beams upon her with love and joy as he relaxes, yet again, into the fluid mud of marital understanding. She smiles to herself. How very kind of him to continually present her with sufficient reason to love him, whilst never ever feeling guilty about betraying him. It is a gift far greater... than anyone might imagine.
GLUTTONY
Rebecca Chance
Rebecca Chance is the name under which Lauren Henderson now writes Sunday Times bestselling glamorous thrillers. Born in London, she read English literature at Cambridge, then worked as a journalist for newspapers and music magazines before moving to Tuscany and then Manhattan to write mysteries, chick lit and the non-fiction book Jane Austen’s Guide To Dating. She has been described in the press as both the Dorothy Parker and the Betty Boop of the British crime novel. She writes for many UK-based publications and national newspapers and has also contributed short stories to several anthologies. Together with Stella Duffy, she edited the anthology Tart Noir, a collection of crime stories by leading female mystery writers. Her books have been translated into over twenty languages. She can be found on social media as @msrebeccachance on both Twitter and Instagram, and as Rebecca Chance Author on Facebook.
He’s a box of chocolates: his clothes are just wrappings I rip off impatiently and throw on the floor.
There’s a tale, from Morte d’Arthur, I think, about a knight who wins a contest of strength and courage and is rewarded with the hand of a fair lady.
The only catch is that the fair lady is under a spell, doomed to turn every day into an ugly, graceless hag. The knight is given a choice. He can have her beautiful by day and be envied by all, but a hag when he is alone with her: or he can have the beauty for his eyes only and be mocked by others for being married to an awful old bag.
I almost feel like that with him. No-one knows but I how beautiful he is under his awful clothes. Every time I unwrap him, he’s the best present I ever received.
His skin is like milk, his arms thick twists of rope under velvet, his arse tight and firm, buttocks round and full as cherries. He moves like a wrestler, light on his feet, his shoulders rolling forward, his hips narrow and loose. I want to braid his hair into a rope and climb up it as if he were a tower I needed to conquer. He’s always hard when I want him. Always.
His cock fills me so tightly my vibrator’s a disappointment by contrast. I could lie and sculpt his pectorals with the palm of my hand for hours. I would, if he didn’t complain that it tickles. Sometimes I turn him over and massage him from head to toe, digging my fingers as best I can into the tough weave of muscles along his back. I stand over him and dip one heel into the back of his thigh, pressing down into it with my whole weight, because I’m not nearly strong enough to make any impact on it with my fingers alone. I take his feet into my hands and work each toe gently, knead the soles with my knuckles, sink my thumbs into the softness below the ball, tenderising him a little. And then I make him turn onto his back again and work my way up the soft skin of his inner thighs, trailing my nails up them till his impatient cock jerks up still further into the air.
I kneel over him and rub myself against him, teasing him while I massage his face, smooth out his forehead, pinch lightly along his eyebrows, roll his earlobes between the pads of my fingers, pretending that I’m calming him down while I can feel beneath me how erect he is, how much he wants me.
He’s so hard I don’t even need to reach down and guide him in. He does that all by himself. And then I’m full, completely full. His arms around me, his cock rocking away inside me, pulling out so I can feel how much I want him, driving back in to plug me up again, fill me to the brim. Even when I’m desperate for him to come, even when I feel I can’t take any more, I know that a few minutes afterwards I will want him all over again. He’s better than a box of chocolates; I can glut myself on him and never feel sick or guilty. He’s my sugar rush. His sperm tastes as delicate as sweet almond paste and his sweat rolls over me like salt water. I lick it out of the hollows of his neck as he fucks me. Bite into the caps of muscle on his shoulders. I want to drown in him.
*
Only when we’re making love do his eyes really look into mine; the rest of the time he’s wary, cautious, almost afraid of me. He has never learnt to trust a lover and he won’t let me teach him. I will never really have him.
COMING SWIMMINGLY
Roger Moineau
Roger Moineau fiercely protects his or her true identity: this is the pseudonym for an author who occasionally wrote for Erotic Review Books; he (or she) wrote The Illustrated Book of Dominatrices (2003), and is no stranger to the world of male sexual humiliation – though whether as ‘she’ who does the humiliating or, indeed, as the ‘he’ humiliated, remains a closely guarded secret.
“Duval, I don’t believe you’ve listened to a word I’ve been saying for the last two hours!”
Sara, at the wheel, looked over quickly in his direction. With her driving Goldie, Duval enjoyed the novel sensation of being the passenger in his own vehicle as they made the long journey southwards. This had been their first real holiday, even though a brief one. Now he replayed in his mind the high points: wandering the immediate vicinity of the loch, visiting a ruined castle and, overwhelmingly, the time spent making love in the chalet.
A considerable part of the time, on reflection. They had never got around to climbing a particular peak from which there would undoubtedly have been a stunning view. They had been exactly like the honeymoon couple in the joke book. And now he was again ignoring his surroundings as they wound their way through some of the most glorious scenery in the world.
“Well?” Sara insisted. “You look as if you’re still in a kind of dream.”
“Nightmare’s more like it. For one moment there I thought I was stuck in a car with Cherie. That’s just the kind of thing she used to bark at me.”
“You really say the sweetest things. You looked quite blissful to me, darling, but I’d rather not hear exactly what was occupying your waking dream. I might get a nasty surprise. How about you doing some driving after lunch and then I can sit back and drink in the majestic Highlands?”
“Choose the spot. Just look at that view, darling. Let’s stop around here.” The fresh haze of the early morning had been swept away by a gentle breeze and the sky was now a cloudless blue. Through a gap in the trees they had a new panorama of the loch. This time the hills were gently sloping and the far shore was near enough to make out some small white farm-houses.
“Here’s a passing space. You’re not supposed to park but it’s a big one. And it’s shady. This should do nicely for a picnic spot.”
She stopped the car and turned off the engine. “You get the lunch out of the back and do a search. I’m off for a swim.”
“Another one? You were in the water before breakfast and I thought you said it was freezing.”
“Ah, but now I’m hot again. All that driving, you see,” she countered, grabbing a towel that had been drying on the back seat. “And anyway this will be quite different.” She headed down to the shore without further explanation.
By the time Duval had found a suitable tree stump and unpacked the sandwiches provided by the hotel, Sara was swimming strongly several metres out. She called to him, but Duval w
as no swimmer as she knew. He came down to the shoreline in bare feet and went in as far as his ankles. He noticed her towel and blue denim dress lying nearby. She was coming to shore so he picked up the towel which was already hot from lying in the sun.
It was then he noticed her pale green bra-top. He had assumed that she had been wearing a swimsuit under the denim dress, but now it appeared not. She was walking through the knee-deep water dressed only in panties, her arms crossed over bare breasts, like some goddess from Greek mythology.
A smile of entreaty for the towel made Duval tease her by whipping it away as she stretched out for it. Although the road was screened by a belt of beechwood there was a chance that a passing vehicle could for a few vital seconds catch an uninterrupted view of the shore.
“Duval, quit fooling about and give me that towel or I’ll throw you in the water.”
“Just try it, tough gal! Drop your knickers and I’ll swap you them for the towel. Do we have a deal or do we not?”
“You pig!” For a few seconds she strained her ears to hear if there was a car coming, at the same time wringing the water from the ends of her honey mane which was now in rats’ tails.
Giving him a performance, Sara turned round and waggled her well-rounded bottom in his direction. Then she eased down the pink briefs which rolled up into a tight string as she tugged them past her knees. Whirling the wet item around her head, she turned round to face him. Then she came out of the water without the slightest attempt at modesty, looking him right in the eye.
Before she reached him she tossed the panties in his face and grabbed the towel. She rubbed herself down vigorously before putting on the halter top and then the backless denim dress which buttoned up the front. She kept eye contact with Duval while dressing. She was shivering slightly. He felt himself going hard.
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