The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 9

by Maxim Jakubowski

  It was mortifying, and it was okay. In the morning I was happy, slutty and scruffy, no makeup, fresh clothes, or toiletries of my own.

  “Do you have moisturizer?” I’d asked.

  “Somewhere, yes, I’m sure.”

  He’s a nice guy even though he’s a cunt in bed. After rummaging in the bathroom, he offered me Magnolia body lotion to put on my face. It was a small plastic bottle with a flowery label, an obvious unwanted gift. My skin was dry and tight or I’d have turned it down. Instead, when I left his apartment, I had his ex’s reject on my face.

  I pulled a couple of jumpers from the black sack. I had no idea what she looked like or her size. About my size from the looks of it. I tried on a bottle-green cardigan with dark wooden buttons. It was big and I was pleased. And then I wasn’t pleased because I thought maybe he prefers fleshier women so I removed it.

  Their porn was so pretty. Taking photographs in bed was obviously something they did together. I guess a lot of couples do but getting them developed is special. And there they were, such a special couple in sepia, black-and-white, in soft light and shadow, this way and that, over, under, above, below, naked, dressed, roped, cuffed, kissing, fucking, looking. So much looking. The two of them together. Looking and loving. Loving each other, the curve of his freckled shoulders, the dip of her waist, that faint sheen of skin. Loving the bliss of their togetherness.

  Because it wasn’t really porn. It wasn’t cold and empty enough. Unfortunately, neither was I. Her skin looked so good and inviting, so alive. I could imagine running a blade down her back, a slow, cruel knife-point to destroy the picture.

  After an hour or so the light was dipping. At this time of year, the sunsets are pinkish and the city, slanted with long shadows, is washed with palest shrimp. There were no curtains at the window and I saw distant starlings flocking and swooping, making crazy black shapes in the sky.

  I was surrounded by photographs. Initially, I’d thought if I looked at them for long enough, I could make them fade to nothing. Now I was thinking if I stared a little harder I could make them burst into flames. Either way, I would obliterate her.

  The most difficult pictures were of Sean in chains. Yes, that’s right. My big, beautiful, dirty-talking brute could lie face-forward on a bed, arms outstretched, his shackled ankles being pulled toward his ass. He could lie like that, metal links running parallel to his spine, the hand that held the chain covering his head in a claw of possession. And he could lie there looking peaceful and zonked, eyes lowered and smiling with bliss, letting her do what she wished.

  That was not my Sean.

  So Sean wasn’t mine.

  Beyond the window, the lights of the city were coming on, dotting the smudgy dusk.

  Photographs aren’t real, I tried telling myself. You don’t click a camera at the truest moments. But that smile was real. I’d never seen him look that way before. And how I hated her that she could give him that.

  When I ran out of hate and came up for air, it was almost night. Shadows grayed the draped white room and I was surrounded by colors bleeding into the dusk, a watery paint box of chrome yellow, madder rose, Prussian blue, hooker green, cobalt, ochre, sienna, and all the shades of skin in black, white, and sepia.

  I sat in a blur of tears, scorched with jealousy and with the shame of my binge. I should have just fed the cat and left. Too late. I’d opened the door. All too late.

  I blinked away the tears and the room refocused. Like I say, it was dark by then so there was no sunlight glittering on the suspended crystal. Nonetheless, high on the far wall, glowing gently in the gloom, was the projected rainbow.

  Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.

  It wasn’t possible. I knew it wasn’t. But there it was. I saw all the colors of their past condensed in that little rainbow. I couldn’t help thinking it was my fault, that somehow I’d released her. And now here she was, back again, Jasmine and her pretty crystal, lighting up his room.

  “Did you miss me?” he asked.

  I was on my back, my wrists wrapped in rope, and he was tying them to the headboard.

  “No,” I said, because that’s the game we were playing.

  “Tell me you missed me.”

  “No.”

  It was the fourth night he’d asked that question. Something had shifted since he’d been away. Usually we’d seen each other a couple of times a week but since his return we hadn’t spent a night apart. Me, I felt time was running out because I couldn’t compete with Jasmine, Jas for short. I didn’t know his reason.

  He jerked my wrists up to the headboard then began working on my ankles. He split me wide open, one leg fastened to the left of the bed, the other leg to the right. He was fresh from work and dressed in a suit, his tie loose, collar undone. I was naked, and my pussy felt so plump, wet, and open. He straddled a thigh and shoved two fingers inside me, his eyes pinned on mine.

  “You miss me?”

  Before I could answer he thrust hard and fast, taunting me with his fingers.

  I rocked my head on the pillow, whimpering. “No. Show me your cock.”

  I could see his boner, big and cumbersome, pushing at his suit and fucking up all the neatly tailored lines. You’re not meant to get an erection in a suit. You’re not meant to look so wild and dirty. You’re meant to be in a meeting, heading a PowerPoint presentation, face in neutral.

  Sean’s face was far from neutral. He was wearing his hot little sneer, and he looked mean and spiteful, the pleasure he takes in tormenting me so transparent. His pleasure doubles mine. I tipped my hips, wanting to bear down on his fingers. “Show me your cock,” I repeated. “Let me suck you.”

  He withdrew from me and gave me a light slap across one cheek. I caught my breath. He’d never done that before. I stared at him in shock. Half my face stung, the heat rising, and I felt weirdly off balance.

  “I give the orders around here,” he said, whipping off his tie.

  Oh, but I’ve seen you in her chains, I thought, and I know that’s not true.

  I scanned the room for Jasmine, for the little rainbow of her presence that had liberated itself from the Bluebeard room. For two nights it had rested high on the wall, gleaming in the dark like some neon-bright tropical moth. I didn’t mention it to Sean and he’d said nothing either. On our third night, she came down to join us. I was astride him, just a good old-fashioned fuck, and there she was on his chest, a small spectrum of multicolored light.

  Get off him, I thought. Off him. Off his skin. Get off him, you bitch.

  I swiped at his chest, lifting and sinking on his cock. Off, off, off. She kept landing on my hand. I tried to flick her away, repulsed, enraged, but she jumped back on his chest, a ray of light, impossible to dislodge. It freaked me out. I swiped and slapped. “Off!” I sobbed. “Get off!”

  Sean grabbed my wrists. “You crazy fucking bitch,” he said, and it soon stopped being an ordinary fuck.

  You’d think we might have worn each other out that night but no. The next day we were still at it. He cracked his tie at the air, stretched it taut then slotted it into my mouth. He wedged it hard into the corners of my lips as he fastened it behind my head, getting my hair snagged in the knot. Being gagged is awful. The fabric feels dry and fluffy. I don’t know where to put my tongue. My saliva pools. My breath goes shallow and panicky. I look an idiot and I can’t speak. All I can do is grunt like an animal, and the fabric gets sodden. It’s debasing. I loathe it and at the same time, it’s excruciatingly hot.

  As if to reinforce my wordlessness, Sean asked, “Did you miss me?”

  Splayed on the bed, I tugged at my ropes – wrists and ankles – and shook my head, mumbling into his tie.

  “What did you do while I was gone?” he said. “Tell me.”

  He gave me a dark, hard look and I was immediately scared. He knows, I thought. Something’s wrong. He suspects. I shook my head again, a frantic denial of whatever I might be accused of.

  “Did you jerk off?�
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  Again, I shook my head and briefly closed my eyes, relieved.

  “You sure?”

  He reached between my splayed thighs, sawing the edge of his hand along my slipperiness. He dropped his voice to a whisper. “Because you’re always so wet for it, so greedy.” He drove his fingers inside me and rolled my clit with his other hand. “Aren’t you?”

  My thighs started to go. I felt molten and woozy, dropping toward orgasm.

  “You didn’t miss me,” Sean went on. “You didn’t fuck yourself. So what did you do, babes? Were you bad?”

  “Uh-uh,” I said, trying to say no against the tie.

  And then I saw her again. She was draped over his shoulder, striping his skin in those glowing rainbow rays. Sean’s fingers squirmed inside me, and my clit throbbed. I felt watched by her, and I was appalled to be so aroused and disheveled before the Technicolor spread of her Zen-like calm.

  I started to come, ripples rising. “Good girl,” cooed Sean, eyes fixed on mine, his fingers taking me closer. My orgasm clutched and he smiled down, clearly relishing his power as he made me come; my bound, open body jerking to his tune. And Jasmine was with him, Jas for short, all her pretty little colors lighting up his face.

  Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

  Violet. That’s the color of jealousy for me, just a letter away from violent. Green is a witch’s broth but violet is tainted blood and a bitter, poisoned heart. I glared at her as my orgasm faded, glared at Sean.

  “Easy there,” he said. He wiped strands of hair from my face then unfastened the tie, freeing my mouth. “You okay?”

  It was a while before I could speak. Sean’s face shimmered with spectral colors. I didn’t know who I was talking to, him or her. “I want to tie you up,” I breathed. “I want to wrap you up in chains, take you over. I want to make you mine.”

  It was a lie. I didn’t want to do that at all. It’s not really my thing. I don’t do knots and clips and locks. I’d rather they were done to me.

  Sean smiled. He traced his finger along my jawline, down my neck, down my body. The rainbow began fading. He knew me.

  “Hey,” he said gently. “Don’t worry about it. This is good. This is great.”

  She was barely there, just some smudges on his cheek.

  “This takes me over,” he said. He gave me a new smile that was tender, blissful, zonked. A special smile for me. “I’m already yours, babes. No chains required.”

  And then she was gone from his face, and he was gazing down, smiling so softly. And all around us, her pretty little colors were dying in the room.

  Georgie Cracks the Case

  Kathleen Bradean

  We’d just met, and already Jack and I were Nick and Nora Charles. Or maybe we were David and Maddie from that old TV show Moonlighting, but without the fighting. Either way, we had the witty banter going with just a hint of sexual tension, which had my gaydar pinging between he isn’t and is he?

  Ten feet away, the bride was doing the chicken dance with her 6 year-old nephew. Jack and I were on our third martinis. Mine was more mussed than dirty; his was blueberry.

  “To open bars, darling.” Jack clinked his glass against mine.

  I leaned forward, my elbow on my knee, chin resting on my hand. There was another question I wasn’t drunk enough to pop yet, so I asked, “How did a dashing urbanite like yourself get stuck at the reject table?”

  “Dashing urbanite? Is that the new euphemism for men who watch Project Runway, Georgie?”

  Was that an answer to the question I didn’t ask?

  Most guys tried to shorten my name to Georgia, which I hated. Jack was the first person to call me Georgie and not immediately break into a rendition of “Hey There Georgie Girl”, reason enough to crush on him. It didn’t hurt that he looked damn fine in a suit.

  “And why are you seated at the back table? Please tell me you did something scandalous.” Jack wriggled his eyebrows.

  “It’s a sad tale, really. Full of woe. I was supposed to be a bridesmaid.”

  He sipped his martini. “Do tell.”

  “I refused to wear the hideous bridesmaid dress.”

  We cast glances at the head table. Really, only a sadistic bride would make her friends wear lime chiffon hoop skirts. It was a nightmare mash up of the 1970s and Gone With the Wind.

  “If she’d meant it as an ironic ugly dress, I would have been game, but I’m afraid she was serious about it. I suggested white floppy hats and gloves to make it totally kitsch. She had the nerve to tell me that was tacky. So I told her I’d have to decline the honor of being one of her bridesmaids. Apparently, that effed up her usher/bridesmaid ratio, so I got banished to the leftover table.”

  Jack turned his attention to my beaded champagne silk sheath. “Good call.” He kept looking, letting his gaze linger over my bare shoulders and plunging neckline. “Very good call.” His long legs stretched out and his hands were in his pockets, the picture of contentment.

  I couldn’t say the same for the frumpy Auntie sitting on his other side. She stubbornly resisted Jack’s charm, avoiding his every attempt at conversation. She hadn’t moved since the reception began. The bread bowl sat empty beside her elbow – she grabbed it the second she sat down and emptied it into her enormous purse. No mystery why the bride stuck her in the back corner table. If the older woman hadn’t been wearing a four-carat rock on her ring finger, I would have been worried that she was an impoverished relative barely surviving on Social Security, but apparently she made her fortune the old-fashioned way – by shoplifting it.

  After a while, Jack gave up trying to draw her into the conversation and turned all that wit and sexy ambiguity on me. We were catty bitches all evening, giggling behind our napkins. That earned us harder looks from the Auntie.

  “Are you two ever going to go dance, or are you going to sit here all night?” the Auntie asked after dinner was cleared. Other than grunting, that was the first thing I’d heard her say.

  “Wonderful idea.” Jack stood up and extended his hand. “Dance with me.”

  “Of course, darling.” I was a little more wobbly on my feet than he was.

  I glanced at the biddy. I bet she had a ziplock in that great big satchel of hers. Great minds thinking in unison, Jack and I snatched our martinis from the table and took them to the dance floor with us.

  One arm looped over Jack’s shoulder, I moved into the crook of his arm. The heat of his hand seeped through my thin dress at the small of my back. We were dancing slow even though the DJ was out to exhaust everyone. I glanced around the room while I sipped my drink.

  “Well what do you know, the Auntie finally got out of her chair.” I watched her go to the empty table next to ours and glance around furtively before sitting down. “She’s probably dumping slices of the leftover wedding cake into the enormous purse of hers under the tablecloth.”

  Jack led me into a turn so that we could both watch her. She saw us looking and glowered. “She’s a character all right. I wonder if she’s with the bride or the groom.”

  “She wouldn’t even tell you that, would she?”

  “Maybe she’s in control of a trust fund that the bride gets when she marries, and she’s been secretly siphoning off the funds all these years, and she’s upset because she’s about to lose control over that fabulous money.”

  I giggled at his story. It made the Auntie seem much more sinister and interesting. As we glided out of the path of other dancers, Jack brought me around so that I could see the bar in the far corner of the room. The bartender, a delicious Latino with flirty eyes, grinned at me from across the room. “Never mind the Auntie. Looks like I’ll be taking home a favor from this party after all.”

  Jack swung me around. Half my drink spilled on the dance floor. “Who?”

  “That absolutely divine bartender. We’ve been committing eye adultery all night.”

  Jack laughed. “You’re a little off. He’s flirting with me.”

 
; “All bartenders flirt. That’s why his brandy snifter is stuffed with bills.”

  “Maybe that’s why he flirted with you—”

  I waved away his explanation. “That wasn’t a tip I offered him earlier.”

  Jack’s eyebrow rose. “Funny you should mention that, because when I bumped into him in the men’s room, I offered to stuff my tip in . . . Well, anyway, I have a date with him after this reception.” He sipped his martini.

  I stopped dancing. “Why that little whore. I have a date with him too.” And just because I was afraid Jack might be right about the bartender, I added, “You might want to slow down on the drinks, love. There’s nothing sadder than whiskey dick.”

  Jack choked on his drink. “Whiskey dick?”

  It was hard to manage cool bitchiness, but I channeled Bette Davis and did all right. “You know – you want it, but you’re too drunk to get it up.”

  “That, madame, would never happen to me.” He was equally haughty.

  “Why not?”

  Jack looked at his glass. “Because I’m drinking vodka.”

  He was so sincere that I burst out laughing. Then he was laughing too, and we were slow dancing again in a close embrace. “You’re lovely,” I told him. “Truce?”

  “Absolutely.” He put his hand on the back of my head and leaned down to my mouth. His hand slid to the nape of my neck as his tongue pressed between my lips. Perfection. Gentle art with a healthy dollop of persuasion. “And that seals it.”

  I dragged the tip of my tongue slowly over my upper lip. “Mmm. You taste like blueberries.”

  He leaned down again, this time brushing my earlobe. “I’ll bet you taste like the ocean. I’d love to take a dip.”

  Pleased, I laughed. “Cad. I’ll bet Fred Astaire never said things like that to Ginger Rogers.”

  Jack’s hand slid down to my ass and pulled me to his groin. “Only because Ginger was making eyes at the hottie bartender all night. How could he compete?”