The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 9

by Maxim Jakubowski

  My outerskin was itchy, suffocating – alien. I couldn’t bear to keep it on.

  While I had breakfast – I was ravenous; I ate three times as much as usual – I heard them fucking upstairs, with their customary over-rehearsed rhythm of call-and-response moans and screams.

  I have shed my outerskin – forever. It’s obsolete technology; my body can now defend itself. Adapt as it needs to.

  It’s an easy task to mold my flesh so that it appears like outerskin to prying eyes.

  Around campus, everywhere I glance, there’s desirable flesh. Girls and women of all shapes and sizes. Long-legged elegant women with sinuously lithe bodies. Petite elfin girls. Giggling girls. Chubby girls with wonderfully plump butts. Brash tomboys. Fashionistas more lovely than any cover model.

  . . . And the guys. Broad-shouldered and classically handsome. Bearish, with comforting bellies and strong arms. Athletic and tautly muscled. Absent-minded, lost in their own worlds. Unabashedly macho. Ambiguously androgynous.

  All kinds of beautiful bodies – I fantasize about peeling off their outerskins, about tasting their sweat and juices. About smearing my juices on their naked flesh.

  I come to realize that I release pheromones that attract the uninfected to me. Pheromones that their outerskins fail to filter.

  In other people’s bedrooms I mold and reshape my lovers’ bodies to the ebbs and flows of my desires, my own body transforming itself in response to their unleashed fantasies. I free their flesh, their identities.

  I understand now that our entire economy is based on the fear that without outerskins or ecolocks we would all die.

  I understand that there are interests – powerful economic interests – that will not allow this to change.

  I understand that I am now a terrorist.

  I’ve moved upstairs, gratefully abandoning my small, dark apartment. Trying to weasel out of paying the monthly rent I surprised even myself by seducing my landlord and his wife. The playful tenderness of our threesome astonishes us time and again, but never more than that first time.

  Fondling his own big breasts never loses its charm for him. She laughs hysterically whenever she fucks either of us in the ass with her cock, which she has learned to mold into different shapes, which further amuses her to no end.

  Live Bed Show

  Elizabeth Coldwell

  I sat on the end of the bed, looking out into the rainy Amsterdam night. My bare legs were crossed at the ankles and the straps of my nightdress were sliding down my shoulders, threatening to let my breasts spill free. It was a look designed to entice passers-by to slow down, stop, maybe even think about making a purchase. But unlike the girls in the windows of the red-light district, over in the old part of town, I wasn’t selling myself. I was selling the bed beneath me. Or at least that’s how it started.

  I came to Amsterdam because I fell in love with Jamie. I stayed because I fell in love with the city.

  Jamie was working for the London arm of a Dutch investment bank, a breed I normally went out of my way to avoid. I hated brash City types, with their loud voices, over-confident manner and constant bragging about the size of everything from their annual bonus to their cock. But while the other blokes in his party were trying to grope my bum or stare down my cleavage as I served their meal, he was quieter, politer – and more than passably cute. At the end of the evening, he contrived to slip me his mobile phone number on the back of his business card, telling me he’d like to see me again. Three weeks after our first date, he told me he’d been seconded to the bank’s headquarters in Amsterdam for six months, then asked me to move over there with him. It was a stupidly impulsive reaction on his part – and an equally impulsive one on mine to agree. But I was so sure it would work out that I packed in my waitressing job and gave my landlord notice on the flat I rented.

  And it did work out. The bank had a ground-floor apartment on the Prinsengracht canal, a few minutes’ walk from his Jamie’s new office and near to the Jordaan, the warren of streets packed with arty-crafty little shops and brown cafés which were a magnet for tourists. It was quiet and tastefully decorated, with everything a tired businessman would need to entertain himself at the end of a long day, including a wall-mounted plasma screen TV, top-of-the-range sound system and a power shower more than big enough for Jamie and I to use together. With no need to contribute to anything but our food bills, I was as close as I would ever come to being a kept woman, and I used the time I had to my advantage, roaming the canals with my camera. I had been trying to make a career in photography, which was what I had studied at art college, and this seemed like the ideal opportunity to build up a portfolio of work. I took black-and-white shots of everything from the queue of tourists snaking round the block as they waited to get into Anne Frank’s house to a couple cycling hand in hand by the side of the canal to one of the window girls taking a cigarette break, lounging against a wall in her trashy lingerie and thighboots.

  My forays into the red-light area weren’t all to take photos, though. I had discovered that though most of the sex shops were full of tatty novelties for the tourist trade, there were a couple of places selling quality fetishwear and interesting toys. So I invested in a few items to keep things spicy when Jamie came home: Velcro cuffs we could use to fasten each other to the bed; a string of anal beads which gave him the most incredible climax as I slowly pulled them out of his arse; a waterproof vibrator he used on me as the shower’s steamy spray beat down on us both, until my knees were sagging and I clutched at the tiled walls as I came and came again. I had more, and better, sex with Jamie, in those months in Amsterdam than I’d ever had with anyone else.

  But it takes more than great sex to keep a relationship going and, as the end of Jamie’s secondment approached, it became increasingly apparent to both of us that what had begun so explosively was fizzling out just as fast. Underneath it all, we liked each other well enough but we really didn’t have that much in common.

  When the time came for Jamie to arrange our flights to Heathrow, I told him not to bother with mine. I wouldn’t be going back to London – at least, not yet, anyway. When he didn’t even try to talk me out of staying, I knew I was making the right decision.

  The problem was that I needed to sort out somewhere to live, and get myself a job. I found an apartment without too much difficulty, in a tenement building a couple of tram stops away from the city’s zoo. It was a little dingy compared to the place I’d lived in with Jamie, and up three flights of stairs, but it was cheap, and my neighbours seemed pleasant enough. An art gallery in the Jordaan had taken several of my photographs, and had even sold a couple, which covered the deposit on my apartment and the first month’s rent, but I needed to do more than sell the odd photograph if I wanted to eat on a regular basis. At home, I would have been able to walk into just about any restaurant you cared to name and land waitressing work, but here, where my grasp of the language didn’t extend much beyond “please”, “thank you” and “beer”, it was not going to be that simple.

  So when I saw the sign being placed on the door of the bed shop, it seemed like fate. I noticed the shop every time I travelled past it on the tram late at night, lit up when everything else was shuttered and silent. Today I had chosen to walk into the city centre, past the Rembrandt Museum, and as I waited to cross the road, the middle-aged shop manager was sticking the sign in place. Helpfully, it was written in both Dutch and English: “MODEL WANTED”. My curiosity piqued, I darted inside the shop and found the manager behind the counter.

  “Goed dag,” I said, then switched back to English, the limit of my Dutch pleasantries already reached. “I saw the sign. You’re looking for a model, Well – here I am.”

  He looked me up and down. I might have been short by Dutch standards, though you could say that of any woman under five feet ten, and I hoped that wouldn’t count against me. It didn’t.

  “You’ve modelled before?” he asked.

  “Well, to be honest, no. But I really need a j
ob”

  “Okay. This isn’t exactly runway work, anyway. I’m looking for someone who can make the most of this—” And he gestured to the bed in the window display which, he told me, was on special promotion. As he described the job requirements, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The model needed to arrive at the shop just before nine at night, change into their nightwear – in the staff toilet, not the window, he added hastily, as it wasn’t that kind of establishment – potter around for an hour and then go to bed. The idea was to convince passers-by the bed was so comfortable that if you could get a decent eight hours’ sleep in such an artificial environment, nodding off at home would be a cinch. The money he was offering wasn’t great, but it was enough. And I didn’t need to be able to speak a single word of Dutch. It was perfect, and I told him so. I was hired. We shook hands on the agreement, and I went off to buy a new nightdress for my first public appearance.

  I settled into the routine very quickly. Wim, the shop manager, would be waiting for me every night at about ten to nine. We would exchange a few pleasantries, he would let me into the shop and then go on his way. I would change into my nightdress and get into position on the bed. I had my iPod, on to which I had downloaded a “Teach Yourself Dutch” course, books and magazines to read and an eye mask to block out the glare of the shop’s fluorescent lighting.

  It soon became obvious, however, that wasn’t enough. I was managing to get a surprisingly good night’s sleep, once the rumble of the trams on the road outside died down just after midnight, but the reading matter I had brought wasn’t enough to keep me stimulated. And if there was one thing I needed since I’d split up from Jamie it was stimulation – mental and physical.

  Not only that, I didn’t feel as though I was doing enough to attract the attention of passers-by. Oh, they would slow down a little as they walked past, take a quick look at the strange girl sitting in a shop window, reading, but they very rarely stopped and they almost never paid attention to the sign in the window highlighting the low cost and exceptional comfort of this king-sized bed. I needed to put on a performance.

  The following night, I arrived with all the equipment needed to give myself a pedicure, and spent a long time massaging my feet with body lotion before meticulously applying a coat of red varnish to my toenails. This time, people did stop, did take notice and did, once they had tired of looking at my bare legs and the tops of my breasts where they peeped out above the lacy edging of my nightdress, look at the bed and wonder how it might fit in their own bedroom. There were a couple of men who did nothing but stare at the arch of my instep and my delicate toes, but each to their own – and after all, I was the one in charge of this little display, they the ones who stood on the outside, gazing hungrily in at their fetish made flesh.

  The realisation that I could tease and tempt, safe and inviolate behind glass, awakened in me an exhibitionistic streak I had never realised I possessed. Now, instead of huddling under the covers, ignoring my potential audience as I completed a sudoku puzzle, I perched on the end of the bed, showing off. Making them come to me. Making them want me.

  I would wait till a likely looking man approached and then I would casually, carelessly bend forward, giving him a view right down my nightdress to my breasts. Or I would cross my legs, flashing him a pair of knickers pulled up snugly against the contours of my pussy. After a couple of nights, I no longer bothered putting on the knickers. I wantonly let strangers see my pink lips, the little tuft of soft brown hair, and sent them away with a bulge in their pants that ached for relief.

  It wasn’t just the men who watched me, either. You’d be surprised how many of the women who passed seemed to be hoping for a glimpse of my tits. Perhaps it was just to compare them to their own, but I suspected that some of them looked because it turned them on.

  Enjoying myself now, I began to fetch the vibrator I had bought to share with Jamie into work. I will never forget the expression on the face of the first man who watched me run the buzzing toy first along the length of my arm, then slowly down my neck. His eyes bugged in disbelief as I played it over my breasts, causing my nipples to pucker into hardness. He hoped, as every man who followed him did, that I would take the vibrator down between my legs and let it press against my clit. I wanted to, desperately, but something always held me back from going all the way.

  Only once I was back in my apartment did I give in to the need for release. I would lie back on my own bed, smaller and with a lumpier mattress than the one I had become used to in the shop, and masturbate, always with the same fantasy in my mind. I would imagine myself in the shop window, legs widely parted, thrusting the vibrator up into myself, and outside, some anonymous voyeur would be watching and wanking his hard cock till his spunk spattered against the glass. And at that point I would always come, screaming out my pleasure in the quiet little apartment and already eager for the coming night.

  I had no idea whether Wim was aware what I actually got up to when he left me in his shop for the night, but he couldn’t fail to notice the increased custom I had brought in. He told me that every day people would come and lie on the bed in the window. I imagined most of them were hoping for a sniff of my scent, trapped in the sheets, but more than a few of those who sampled the mattress went on to order a bed of their own.

  One morning, as he paid me my wages, he told me he had some important news. He needed to take a few days’ leave of absence to look after his sick mother and his nephew, Jaap, would be letting me into the shop in his absence. Apparently, Wim had no sons of his own, and so was training the lad to take over the business when he retired. I merely nodded, having been worried he was about to tell me the special promotion was over and he was terminating my employment.

  When I saw Jaap, a small part of me found myself hoping that Wim’s mother’s illness would be of the lingering variety. The man was gorgeous; in his early twenties, with a long, lean body, short, spiky blond hair and an open smile. I caught him giving me an appreciative glance or two as he let me into the shop, but I told myself not to make anything of it. It was just my hormones responding to the first man in a long time who’d admired my body without there being a pane of glass between us. Still, that night, as I knelt up on the bed and caressed my body, I imagined it was Jaap who was staring at me through the shop window, Jaap who was silently encouraging me to spread my legs and touch myself for him . . .

  And as I sat on the end of the bed, looking out into the rainy Amsterdam night, I heard a noise behind me, and turned. Someone was in the shop! The figure stepped out from the shadows of the curtaining display and I realised it was Jaap. But surely he’d locked up and left hours ago? I shook my head, trying to dismiss him as a figment of my overheated imagination, but as he walked over to the bed, I knew he was real.

  “I know what you do,” he said, coming to stand beside me. “My friend, Peter, saw you a couple of nights ago. He said you gave him a flash of that cute little pussy of yours. And I wanted to see for myself. That’s why I volunteered to look after the shop for my uncle. That’s why I came back tonight.”

  “But if you wanted to watch me through the window . . .” I began.

  He shook his head. “No, I wanted the real thing. I want to touch it. Taste it.”

  His words set a pulse beating fiercely between my legs. I watched as he stripped out of his jeans and teeshirt and came to sit beside me on the bed, wearing only a pair of black briefs that held his cock coiled within them. He looked huge, and though I knew we shouldn’t be doing this, I couldn’t stop myself.

  I flopped back, pushed my nightdress up around my hips and slowly, deliberately opened my legs. His gaze was drawn like a magnet to the folds of my sex, already wet from all the teasing and stroking I’d given myself earlier. I couldn’t see if there was anyone staring through the window, but if they were, I knew their view would have been obscured by the bulk of Jaap’s body. They could only imagine what might be happening, and envy the fact that what I had shown them only in glimpses, he was
seeing in all its blossoming glory.

  “Beautiful,” he murmured, and traced a big finger along my lips. Desire had made me submissive, and I lay there, letting him explore everywhere from the tip of my clit to the pucker of my arsehole. I barely knew the man, and yet already I was letting him touch all my most intimate places. And when he replaced his finger with the firm point of his tongue, I almost squealed in delight.

  I forgot I was in such a public place, forgot all about our potential audience as Jaap proceeded to lick me deliciously, thoroughly. Much as I had enjoyed fucking Jamie, he had always felt that oral sex was just a minor detour on the way to the final destination. For Jaap, however, this was clearly a most important part of the journey. My hips arched up towards his face and my hands grabbed fistfuls of the bedsheets as his tongue probed and dallied, taking me all the way to the summit of my orgasm.

  But just before he got there, he pulled his mouth away. I wanted to grab him by the hair and force him back into place, but he shook his head. He pressed his lips to mine, letting me taste myself. “Patience,” he said. “It’ll be all the sweeter when it happens.”

  As I waited, wondering where he had learned his incredible technique, he fished a condom from his jeans pocket. He casually discarded his briefs, and his cock emerged, big and beautifully in proportion to his six foot frame. I definitely needed to be wet to take that, I thought, as he slid the condom down over its substantial length, but I was ready for him.