by Tinder James
Brianna.
The girl who knocked off the market.
She’s still in here.
She still has thoughts.
She still has feelings.
And I scream and scream. But no one can ever hear me.
Surprise Party
Giselle Renarde
Happy-fucking-thirtieth, Sharon!
Now to walk through the front door, plaster a look of bewilderment on my face and pretend I never suspected a thing. Why call them surprise parties when they’re so bloody predictable?
Bob could be such a blockhead sometimes. After seven years, he should know how much I hate this shit. Sit through five hours of mindless chit-chat and ego trips? And on my birthday of all days…
Get out the damn keys, shove them in the door, turn on the fucking lights and…
Surprise!
Six close friends, all naked and ready to feast on the birthday girl.
flash fiction
Tea and Kink
Sam Jayne
“Maybe it’s a mid-life crisis?”
Tam’s suggestion wasn’t without substance. Something inside Caroline had changed. Or maybe nothing had changed and that was the problem. Could she have been suppressing these desires for years, concealing them in order to maintain the perfect marriage, or at least the perfect image of a marriage? Tam was her closest friend, and she could trust her with such intimate grievances. But this was more than a grievance. Caroline was bored, depressingly so, and she couldn’t live that way for the rest of her life. She was considering divorce, but had no real reason for such radical action.
“Maybe I’ve just flipped,” she muttered into her coffee cup. “Why would I want to leave Lawrence? He’s a fantastic husband. Really…fantastic. But…”
“But not exciting.” Tam finished Caroline’s sentence for her as she so often did.
“No, not exciting. Very safe. When I was younger—ah,” Caroline smiled sadly at the memory. Now almost forty she felt that her younger self had never even existed. “When I was younger I had a lover who spanked me. It was his thing. And mine too, I suppose. I enjoyed it. Then I had another who liked sex in public places. I enjoyed that as well. It was dangerous and risky. It was…”
“Exciting!” Tam concluded. “Then you fell in love. Lawrence is as you say, fantastic, but from what you’ve told me he likes to feel secure. He has a very defined comfort zone. Sex in public places and slapping your ass are forms of love that are never going to venture into that zone. It’s a dead zone. You’re never going to feel content with your sex life with Lawrence.”
“So I should leave?”
Tam sipped her coffee. “I don’t know, Caroline,” she admitted. “It’s not my place to say.”
Lawrence fretted. He often fretted because he was a worrier and that’s what worriers did, but today he had a real problem on his mind. Caroline had gone out for lunch with her friend Tam. That was never a good thing. It meant something was troubling Caroline, something she couldn’t talk to him about. He hated being left in the dark when it came to his wife’s issues. He wanted to be able to help her with anything, but if she didn’t tell him….
Really, she didn’t need to. Something was different. She didn’t seem to want him to cuddle her or kiss her, or even touch her anymore. Last night in bed she had refused sex and claimed a headache. She’d never done that before, but from reading the odd article in the various women’s magazines left scattered around the house, he knew this was a bad sign. Women who blamed headaches for not wanting sex were lying. Caroline hadn’t had a headache. She just hadn’t wanted his affection.
So what was wrong? Lawrence wracked his brain. Had Caroline gone off sex altogether? He doubted this. She had always been a liberated woman with a flirtatious aura about her. And besides, losing interest in sex wouldn’t be something she’d hide from him. She’d just tell him straight. “Lawrence,” she’d say bluntly, “I’m really not in the mood for sex. Play with yourself for tonight, would you dear?” Lawrence would be embarrassed by this candor, but that’s what he loved about her. She wouldn’t skirt around the subject. No. It was something else. But what?
Opening up a search engine on his computer, he surfed the web for possible solutions. A number of past forum posts, presumably made by men in a similar position to Lawrence, indicated a potential lack of spice in their relationship. Lawrence pondered this. His relationship with Caroline had never really had spice. He would stroke her, kiss her tenderly, make love to her. He thought that’s what women wanted. A gentle, romantic sexual experience. Scrolling down the message board he discovered, in fact, that what many women wanted was domination. Lawrence had never been very dominating. Did Caroline want to be whipped brutally? He could never do that. Or tied up and verbally abused? It just wasn’t in his nature.
Wandering into the kitchen to escape the accusing glare of the computer screen which seemed to mock his unadventurous attitude, he hunted through the cupboards for a suitable snack to divert his attention. Caroline had purchased the ingredients for a cake: flour, sugar, almonds, ginger root…. Ginger root. Somewhere on the forum he’d been perusing he’d seen a post….
Ignoring his appetite, he returned to his computer and scrutinized the screen. This, he thought more enthusiastically now, might just be achievable.
Caroline returned home to a tidy house. Unusually tidy. Not that the home she shared with Lawrence was often unkempt, but he did have a habit of procrastinating when he’d promised her he’d take care of the chores. Somehow, the cleanliness of her home dulled her mood even further. The atmosphere was sterile. She felt as if she was walking on eggshells though there had been no arguments. Her conversation with Tam had convinced her she needed to talk to Lawrence. She wasn’t happy and telling her husband this, while awkward and upsetting, was imperative.
On hearing Caroline’s return, Lawrence put away the duster he had been polishing the surfaces with. He had spent the majority of the afternoon cleaning. He wasn’t sure why. He’d needed some activity to distract him from his nerves, which were somersaulting in his stomach now that his wife was home. With a deep breath he strode into the hall to greet her.
“Now then,” he addressed her with a firmness that startled Caroline. “You’ve been gone longer than I expected. I want you to take off your clothes, please, and go up to the bedroom. I have a surprise for you.”
Caroline’s eyes were wide, her brows raised. Who was this man? In all their seventeen years of marriage, Lawrence had never spoken with such authority. And what was all this business about taking off her clothes…? It was only late afternoon for goodness sake!
“What…?” Caroline began, but Lawrence didn’t want to hear it. He moved closer to her and placed an index finger over her lips. Speaking softly, with his mouth edging ever closer to hers, he instructed her to do as she was told. In his head, he wanted desperately to go in for the kiss, to lock mouths with the woman he loved so deeply, but instead he brushed passed her and disappeared into the kitchen. Caroline ascended the stairs to the sounds of a knife blade colliding with the chopping board. What Lawrence was up to, she had no idea.
Five minutes later, with one hand behind his back, Lawrence appeared in the bedroom. He studied his beautiful wife, her creamy skin, her small breasts. She was perched on the edge of the mattress, clearly bemused and intrigued. He joined her there to finally satisfy his desire to kiss her. Slowly, tenderly, he moved his lips down to peck at her neck, his own arousal soaring. But it was too soon. He had plans.
Backing away, he told Caroline—quietly, but with a force that was usually lacking—to kneel on the bed.
“I want your ass in the air,” he commanded, “and your legs apart. As wide as you can get them.”
Caroline complied. How could this change have come about? Did he have a sixth sense? What was he going to do to her? Questions flooded her head.
With the aid of only cold water, which Lawrence had filled a bowl with, he inserted a finger into Carol
ine’s awaiting anus. She gasped at the intrusion. How long had it been since someone had ventured there? He slid the finger slowly in and out of her hole, in perfect rhythm with his wife’s clenching and relaxing. Then he withdrew, produced the ginger root—now carved into what the website had described, complete with images, as a butt plug shape—from behind his back and carefully eased it into Caroline’s ring. A small groan escaped her lips as the ginger was maneuvered into place. It was much larger than Lawrence’s finger and, while she was easily able to accommodate this new size, the suddenness of the introduction came as a shock to her. Besides, she wasn’t quite sure what was being introduced. A sex toy, perhaps? Some kind of vegetable?
Lawrence had stepped back and was admiring his work. “You have ginger up your ass,” he explained before leaving the room momentarily to wash his hands. On his return, with Caroline still kneeling obediently on the bed, he continued the lesson.
“Today I realized, probably, that you were wishing I would be more…exploratory when it came to our intimacy. This is called figging. The effects take a few minutes to kick in, but when they do you should, I hope, enjoy them. I know I will.”
Caroline was shocked. She had heard of figging, but had never known anyone who had tried it. For a few seconds longer she felt nothing, bar the mere presence of the ginger root in her body, but then it happened. Building slowly, like a topical ointment, the warmth of the ginger moisture gradually intensified until it swathed her entire lower region with a delightful heat. She moaned audibly as the burning sensation swept over her. It stung, but not unpleasantly. It was a delicious pain, an exciting pain. And when Lawrence pinched her buttocks, nipping them hard between his thumbs and forefingers, it was all she could do not to scream with a mixture of welcome discomfort and overwhelming ecstasy.
“This feeling will last about fifteen minutes,” he told her, moving around to the head of the bed to lay eyes on his wife’s beautiful face. She shuddered as she looked up at him, her Lawrence. How could she ever have thought of leaving him? “You can lay down if you’re careful.”
Caroline did as directed, and Lawrence lovingly brushed the hair from her face. Then they were one, clinging to each other, touching, caressing…. He unfastened his jeans and with an eagerness that had been absent for months, she took his cock inside her. They fucked rampantly and climaxed with power. This was different, Caroline thought. This was new. This was…breathtaking. With the fire of both lust and ginger burning brightly within her, Caroline closed her eyes and embraced the man she adored.
It was after ten when the couple had calmed themselves enough to settle down for the evening in the lounge. The ginger had long since been removed, but with her rim still tingling slightly, Caroline joined Lawrence on the sofa with two cups and a teapot. He smiled as she took his hand.
“It’s not something I’ve ever done before,” he told her. “I was worried how you’d react.”
“That’s what made it wonderful,” Caroline assured him.
He poured the tea and she retrieved a tin from the coffee table. For a second she let her eyelids drop, reminiscing upon the pleasant heat that had consumed her only a few hours ago. With a nudge that snapped Caroline out of her reverie, Lawrence handed her a cup of steaming hot tea. She placed it on the coffee table as she cut each of them a slice of cake. Freshly baked. Ginger, of course.
Old Flames
Keesha Marie
She watched the logs burning in the fireplace, the flames making her pleasantly warm and painting a faint sheen on her just-showered skin. She didn’t need the fire, it being late September and the temperature still in the middle seventies. But she liked to hear the crackle of it, the pop and hiss of the wood and the scent it gave off. She’d been waiting weeks to start one, and she’d used the excuse of the storm raging outside to get this one going. Fires simply mesmerized her.
Behind her, the rain pattered angrily against the window glass. She glanced over her shoulder to see the water snakes racing down the pane, colored orange and blue neon by the flashing bar sign across the street. When she turned just so, she could see the fire reflected in the window. She loved to watch fire.
He was late.
Always late.
Well, this would be the last time, she thought. She would end it tonight. No more waiting for this man…no more waiting for any man.
She lit three candles, two of them long, cream colored tapers scented with vanilla, and the third in a fluted jar that was labeled cinnamon hazelnut, but smelled like something entirely different, something she couldn’t put a name to. She arranged the candles in a triangle on a corner of the hearth, and watched the flames dance. She leaned close enough to capture some of the heat.
A boom of thunder sounded in time with the doorbell and made her jump.
For a moment she thought about not answering it. Let him realize being late was not acceptable.
“The last time,” she whispered. “I end this little affair tonight…after one last time with him.”
Drawing her robe tight, she retreated from the blessed fire, flipped the deadbolt and slowly opened the door. She stepped back to see him dripping water on her mat, intending to berate him. Maybe, she thought, I should just turn him away. He was far too young for her, and far too good looking. She had just turned forty-four, and she thought she ought to like them closer to her own age—with a few noticeable physical imperfections to give them more character.
“Sorry, Lou. I didn’t mean to be late. The traffic—”
She tugged him in and pushed the door closed behind him. He peeled off his coat as she dropped her robe and buried her face in his neck. He struggled out of the rest of his rain-wet clothes and shoes and socks, leaving everything in a sodden pile in the entryway.
He was far too young and far too handsome, she told herself again, but he filled an inexplicable need. She was the moth to his youthful fire and she let him draw her toward the fireplace and the candles.
“The traffic was one of those bears, you know, Lou.” He kissed her deeply, his lips opening hers and his tongue flitting along her teeth.
She cursed herself for purring.
He pulled back for a moment. “This storm made everything worse, Lou. There was an accident on Washington, a van lost an argument with a light pole. Some people can’t drive in this.” A head taller than her, he gazed down into her eyes and watched the anger melt from them. Then he kissed her once more and held her so tight her breath caught.
She thought there was something mystical about it—the feel of his wet skin against hers, the flames warming both of them. She drew the scent of him and the fire, the vanilla and the cinnamon-hazelnut deeply into her lungs and let it all become a part of her.
Definitely mystical.
He released her lips and started talking about the traffic again, but she paid no attention. Instead, she put her ear to his chest and found his heartbeat. Some part of her realized this was absurd, that there was nothing proper about this—no dinner date or movie first, no hand-holding, never any pleasantries of dates that most people shared, just straight to the flesh.
Not that she was old, but he was fifteen years her junior. She couldn’t get past the age difference. She just wished he didn’t look and feel so damn good.
This would be the last night, she promised herself, the very last night.
She heard him moan softly when she slid down him, teeth nibbling across his smooth chest and stomach, kneeling in front of him on the thick rug she took him in her mouth. She heard the flames crackle, the thunder sound again, the rain pattering more angrily against the window she’d left open just an inch. She heard the sounds of the city outside too—the honks of car horns, a shrill whistle, music coming from elsewhere in the building or from the bar across the street. It was a bluesy piece she rocked in motion to, back and forth, as she gripped his thighs and registered the goosebumps and beads of sweat.
His moans came louder and she felt him tremble.
There were secrets
in the sounds outside; a siren wailing, police responding to some unfortunate occurrence; laughter out on the street over a joke shared by drenched lovers; the thump of something mysterious, a car door slammed in anger or haste. Above that the rain rat-atatted out something she imagined was a message in code.
Back and forth to the bluesy piece.
“S-stop.” Breathless, his hands found her hair, then her shoulders and he gently pushed her away. He dropped to his knees and loomed over her, bent her back and kissed her almost hurtfully, tasting himself. “You’re going too fast, Lou.” He sucked her lower lip into his mouth and pushed her down on the rug, laying next to her and draping a leg across her. “I’d like this to last awhile.”
But she didn’t want it to last. This would be the last time.
Too young, too handsome, no dimension to their intimacy beyond this rug and the flesh. Never a proper date.
She squirmed out from under his leg and rolled on top of him, hands splayed against his shoulders, hair hanging down to brush against his chest. She saw more goosebumps form amid the sweat beads.
“Max, this is never too fast. Sex is never too, too fast.” It was the first she’d spoken since she’d let him in and she intended no more words until she told him they were finished.
And they were finished.
After this last time.
The rug was soft against her shins, and his skin hot against her thighs. There was a hint of stubble on his face, and she bent to rub her chin against it. He whispered something in her ear, but she couldn’t hear it. There was the crackle of the blessed fire and the honking of car horns, the bluesy music swelling and another siren cutting above it all. She felt her heart pounding in time with the pops of the logs, and she moved down him just a little so she could take him inside her.