Dark Passions

by Jeff Gelb

  She fell asleep something like a quarter after her fifteenth volley of orgasms. Malcolm had never seen the like. He’d known a lot of women, at least three, and never had he seen such passion. It was like having group sex, like living in a Penthouse magazine, so wild and uninhibited.

  It had pretty nearly killed him.

  He lay there, slowly catching his breath. He was totally happy but totally depleted. How the hell could he keep this up? He’d have to invest in some serious vitamins.

  Or maybe the Spanish Fly might work for him as well.

  He watched her lying there, her chest rising and falling, rising.

  Shit.

  Her chest wasn’t rising.

  It was growing. Rising and swelling from sensible handfuls to high, ripe melons. Her hair was lengthening and changing color.

  More disturbing were the tiny tentacles growing from various parts of her abdomen.

  What was in that Spanish Fly? She was turning into some kind of a monster.

  She opened her eyes. Looked straight up into his.

  Oh hell.

  “Maria,” he whispered.

  He lay back down onto their bed. This was crazy, but she was his wife, damn it. And besides, she was hot.

  He was amazed to find himself growing another erection. He thought he was finished, but when he looked into her eyes, everything changed. He slipped his erection into her. He felt tiny fingers inside her pussy, skillfully manipulating his cock, bringing him to an even higher pitch of excitement.

  They fucked like a platoon of oversexed minks. She continued to change in mid-fuck. And each new Maria incarnation demanded more and more sex.

  Malcolm kept trying to please her, trying every position he could think of. Between lovemaking bouts he choked down vitamin tablets and protein shakes and ginseng tea to keep up his energy level. Nothing seemed to last for long.

  And then finally he took the Spanish Fly.

  Six weeks later everything had changed. Malcolm and Maria barely left the bedroom. The two of them were screwing like the world’s largest free love commune. He hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Seymour since that night in the bodega, and he didn’t really care. Malcolm the Multiple was having a great time with Mondo Maria, trying hard not to think about that cluster of throbbing eggs hidden in the bedroom closet, jellied beneath the shoeboxes and slippers and lost socks.

  Hot Hot Hot

  Ed Gorman

  So what if there wasn’t that old turning of heads when he walked into a bar or café anymore? So what if the ladies didn’t send him drinks and smiles now that he’d reached his mid-fifties? And so what if men didn’t glare at him when they caught their ladies glancing his way every chance they got?

  Welcome to the world of Dr. William Carlyle, neurosurgeon, a millionaire many times over, Bears fan of the most neurotic kind (absolutely toxic for at least twenty-four hours when they lose, especially a close one), father of two grown sons, husband of the most beautiful woman in his undergraduate years, “Cam,” short for Cameron Ames, and president of the county medical association, which often resulted in one of the local liberal rags running his stock photo. About a year ago, one of them had committed the unforgivable sin of running a current picture of him. He had called the publisher, whom he knew from several of his clubs, and made his point calmly while repressing white-hot fury. He wanted all photos of him to be from a set he’d had taken when he was thirty-eight. And no fucking Jack Benny jokes, either, asshole.

  The bar was one of the new clubs that catered to what the marketing lads called an older demographic. For men, an older demographic. The women, late twenties, earlier thirties, running the gamut from divorcees to never-marrieds and husband-out-of-town cheaters. In other words, perfect for picking up.

  To win this evening’s freedom he’d had to call Cam and tell her he had an emergency staff meeting at the hospital. Seems there was a chance that they might be hit with a malpractice suit thanks to something a dumbass nurse had done in the post-op of a fellow doctor’s patient. She had sympathized, of course. A good, true woman. A man couldn’t ask for better. He hadn’t had to strain to sound contemptuous when the subject of nurses came up. He was of the belief that nurses were for doctors to have sex with; medically, they were useless.

  All fine with Cam, who in fact worked at a free clinic two evenings a week, this being one of them. She’d see him later.

  The good doctor was now free to roam.

  Cam followed Bill from the hospital to the club. She needed to be sure where he’d be drinking and trawling tonight. She gave him fifteen minutes inside, making sure he’d be there when she got back, and then hit the expressway, using the directions the young woman had written down for her so carefully.

  Amy Todd was the young woman’s name. Cam had seen the potential immediately. There was real beauty there once the vulgarity was scrubbed away and suitable attire covering the elegant, slender body. They’d spent four hours shopping earlier that day. Half the time Amy was fascinated not only by the clothes but the casual way Cam spent so much money. The other half of the time she worried aloud that she was nervous about this whole thing. The nervousness was quelled when Cam went into the bank, leaving Amy in the car, and returned with nine thousand dollars in cash and six thousand dollars in traveler’s checks.

  When she slipped into the car tonight, Amy was almost unrecognizable from the trailer trash posing as middle-class she’d been forty-eight hours earlier. She’d insisted on some sort of disguise, so Cam took her to her personal hairdresser, and the elegant blonde was now the elegant brunette. Shania Twain with a hint of Jackie Kennedy. God Almighty, how could Bill resist?

  “I’m still nervous, Mrs. Carlyle.”

  “I thought I was Cam.”

  “Okay, Cam. I’ve never done anything like this.”

  “You’ve never met a man in a bar and gone home with him?”

  “Just a couple of times. I was always afraid he’d be a serial killer or something.”

  Cam laughed. “Well, Bill is no serial killer, believe me. Serial other things, yes, but not a killer.”

  “I know, but—”

  “But what?”

  “I guess it’s just the sneakiness.”

  Cam pulled away from the curb and shook her head. “Think about where we’re going. You don’t think he sneaks around on me? The only way I can get the divorce settlement I want is to have absolute proof that he’s cheated on me.”

  Amy shrugged the shoulders of her ice-blue silk Donna Karan blouse.

  “This way, we both get what we want. You’ll have the money you need to get out of the city. And I’ll have my freedom.”

  Amy stared back at the apartment compound where she lived. Severely designed and laid out as starkly as a prison. All it needed was a guard tower. The cars lined up at the curb were old and dirty in the moonlight.

  Amy turned back to Cam. “I just hope I can hire a lawyer who’ll help me get my kid back when I get to LA. That’s all I care about, Mrs. Carlyle. Getting my kid back.”

  “Well, Amy, you’ll have thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars to hire him with even after you pay for your air fare.”

  Amy gave her one of her rare smiles. Ravishing. Poor Bill wouldn’t know how to say no.

  There were three or four of him in the bar tonight. He’d always been fascinated by the idea of doppelgangers, and this was in a way that very thing.

  Three or four men, gray haired, classically handsome, well dressed—but without the sagging, fleshy jowls and the loose, protruding belly. They reminded him of him—several years ago.

  They glided up and down the bar like sleek predatory birds waiting to swoop down the street. And they had no hesitation about escorting stunning young women to the dance floor, something Dr. Bill had stopped doing when the belly couldn’t be restrained anymore. He hated the sight of lumpy old people on the dance floor looking silly, pathetic. Hated the idea of other people looking at him and thinking those exact same thoughts.

&nb
sp; These doppelgangers were as good as he’d once been. They were after top-grade sex and would settle for nothing less. He wished he could hear their conversations, be reminded of how much fun it had been when the very best let him escort them home. Anybody could take home a lesser woman. Top grade was another matter. But top grade had eluded him for several years now, which is why he’d ended up at one of those knee-banging little cocktail tables with two public relations women, one of whom seemed offended by his presence (she must have rolled her eyes at every second thing he said) while the other one, the one he’d likely end up with, was interested and pretty but in no way top grade.

  Ms. Eye Roller finally excused herself, saying, “I hope you and Gramps here have a good time.”

  Donna, for that was her name, a name he’d inexplicably never cared for, said: “She hates older men ever since she got dumped by her boss.”

  He wasn’t sure that he liked the older men reference, but he said, scarcely believing his own words, “Would you like to dance?”

  And knew instantly that he’d said something profoundly foolish. “Really?” she said as if he’d just suggested something insane. Which, in fact, it was.

  Cam found one of those coffee bars where you could rent a laptop. She couldn’t write the letter at home. Too easy to trace.

  On the drive over, the letter had been perfectly composed in her mind. But now that she sat in the quiet, near-empty place, the words weren’t the right words at all. Writing had always been difficult for her—despite the fact that she read three novels a week, her own words never seemed to convey the meaning she wanted—and so she faced some serious time with the computer.

  Half an hour later, her coffee cup empty, she stood up and got herself a refill. The place was getting crowded with twenty-somethings. They were so fresh and vital, they seemed to be of another species, a decided improvement on the previous edition. She too had been a member of that species for a time, but she’d been kicked out early because of her age. Actually, she thought, her cowardice had gotten her kicked out. She should have had the strength to leave Bill when she first caught him cheating. God, this was back when he was still an intern in New York. He’d promised never again, never again.

  She always thought that she might have left him if the boys hadn’t come along so quickly. But there she was, wanting the best for her sons, and how could she get it if she divorced Bill? The years collapsed one upon the other, and in the course of that collapse—the Tudor-style estate house; the summer home up on Lake Michigan; the European trips she took with girlfriends who were in the same marital predicament; and—face it—the social importance of being attached to a man of Bill’s stature—no guts, no glory, just an endlessly luxurious, endlessly empty life.

  Bill, of course, led a life full of accomplishments and riches. And not just his surgical triumphs and not just his enormous income. She estimated that over the years he’d had six serious mistresses and God alone knew how many one-night stands. Not including tonight. Yet.

  They slept in separate bedrooms, they took only a few meals together, they conspired to put on a show of Happy Mommy and Daddy for the sake of the boys, who knew better anyway, and they continued the fiction of him working late so many nights and her gently chiding him for being such a dedicated medical man.

  But about a year ago, when some whore he’d met somewhere had started calling her late at night and drunk—ironically when he was out with some other whore—she knew she could no longer live like this with even a pretense of dignity.

  Was this a five-drink dream?

  The other men along the bar, bartender included, had to be wondering the same thing. Because they were in the dream too.

  The young woman—if she was even that—had appeared half a drink after the doctor’s public relations woman had deserted him for a different dancer. Young, slender, mesmerized by her breasts. He’d retreated, sullen, to the bar. Never mind Grade-A material. She’d been B material at best, and even then he couldn’t hang on to her.

  He had been sulking when the bartender interrupted his orgy of self-pity and set a fresh drink down in front of him. “I didn’t order that.”

  “No,” the bartender said, “but she did.”

  And then he saw her. And then the notion that this was all a dream came to him. Because she was beautiful in a simple, fresh, startling way that a man his age shouldn’t even dream about. This was beyond even Grade-A material. He was so shocked by her gesture, he couldn’t fully appreciate the curiosity and jealousy of the other men at the bar—losers like him; the successful ones were on the dance floor or at one of those kneeknocking little tables.

  And the dream continued....

  A slow song played now, and everybody in the place knew what that meant. Universal dry-humping on the dance floor, a few couples so excited that they would slip from the dance floor into the shadows where they would have sweaty standing-up sex in the booze-and-coke delusion that they were suddenly invisible.

  But there was none of that with her. They danced closely but not intimately. But he held her, and for now that was enough, almost too much, really. It had been quite a few years since his fingers had felt flesh this taut but supple and he’d seen a face so pure in its elegance that it inspired not merely sexual fantasies but memories of real romance. For just a moment there on the dance floor of couples groping each other, he was living in a past time, back when he was still interning and numbingly in love with a night nurse on his floor. He’d almost left Cam for her and would have too if Cam hadn’t gotten pregnant.

  She kissed him then—she, she, she; he didn’t have a clue about her name—a gentle kiss, with her long, slender fingers brushing the back of his head and the subtle scent of her perfume making him weak with the memories of that long-ago night nurse.

  And the world he had inhabited only moments ago fell away. He had no idea of how many songs they danced to. Not even if they were fast or slow. He was all need—need of her specifically and need of what she represented. He was a man reborn, a man who had not felt this vital in a decade or more. And somehow, then they were in his car. And somehow, then they were in the catacombs of the parking garage attached to the hotel where she was staying. And somehow, then they were in bed.

  The taste of her sex threatened to make his mind burst into joyous insanity. He was drinking the very elixir of immortality. He came even before he entered her, but it didn’t matter. He was ready again in minutes, recalling his fraternity days when he had Olympic-class hard-ons. And this time he lasted for longer than twenty minutes, shifting positions so that he could plunge his miracle rod into her every way possible.

  And then, after many minutes that seemed like glorious hours, they were spent.

  “I’ve never felt like this.”

  She had a Mona Lisa smile. If it was a smile. Her beauty was enigmatic, timeless. She would have been as lovely in the time of Rome and King Arthur or the Renaissance or Winston Churchill. Lovely, but always difficult to read in any satisfying way. He sensed enormous secrets in her, but had no idea of how to dislodge them.

  “I could stay the night.”

  Rule one, according to all his friendly fellow philanderers: always go home to mama. You pull an overnight, your ass is grass.

  “I really need to get up early.”

  “That wouldn’t bother me. I have to get up early too.”

  “You’re married.”

  “I didn’t say I was married.”

  The odd, unreadable smile again. “You didn’t have to.”

  “That obvious?”

  “Afraid so.”

  They lingered apart. When he touched her hip with glancing fingers, he felt a tremor race up and down her body. Or was it a shudder? Did she find him repulsive suddenly?

  “You’re a consultant, you said?”

  “Yes. Office design.”

  He was watching her, eyes unwilling to leave her face for even a moment, when a shudder of his own troubled his stomach. He’d been holding off a
bowel movement but could hold it no longer.

  “Much as I don’t want to, I have to excuse myself for a few minutes.”

  “I’ll just lie here.”

  Nice if she’d said, I’ll just lie here and think about you. In the old days he’d been not only a trusty cocksman but a trusty heartbreaker too. Hard to say which gave him more pleasure. The sex or knowing they’d fallen in love with him.

  “Be right back.”

  No, hurry back or I’ll miss you. Just watching him. Watching.

  And when he finally did come back—much longer in there than he’d hoped, and God, he hoped the toxic odor had quelled by the time she needed to go—she was gone.

  Her clothes. Her purse. Her person.

  Gone.

  Cam was no more or no less pissy with him than she usually was in the days and nights following his time with the mystery woman in the hotel. He had cautiously explained that his important medical meeting had run late, but she didn’t seem interested one way or the other. For the next week of nights, he dutifully stayed home, the irony being that for three of those nights she was gone to her various meetings and social gatherings. The duties of a prominent man’s wife.

  He hadn’t forgotten about the woman. That would have been impossible. He tried to find out her full name—Jane was all he had—but when he phoned the hotel, their computer information indicated that 605 had been registered that night not by a Jane but by a woman named Beth Whitney. The information indicated that she was a press officer for the state government and resided in the state capitol. Which turned out to be bullshit. No Beth Whitney listed on the state employment rolls, no such occupation as press officer except to the governor ...

  Who the hell was she, and where had she gone?

  The letter arrived on a sunny Saturday morning. Cam had long ago been told never to touch his mail, to leave it on a small table outside his study.