A long gasp rattled through the still room.
The body—there could be no other word for it—slammed into the table and instead of the gelatinous slap of dough, a hard thud resounded, as though from bone and hard muscle. The sculpture sat up.
It was insane: it was flour and spice and sugar. But she looked at the sandy lips and the chest moving in and out, and the eyes roving the kitchen to meet her own. Her heart broke and reformed at every detail. The thing, which was so like her husband, swung his legs off the table.
She backed against the counter, her stomach writhing as he stepped down. He stared intently at her. She felt nervous, confused, and strangely, deliriously happy. He wrapped his hands around her waist, stroking the thumb downward to rest on her hips. Slowly, he leaned forward, settling his weight against her, pinning her to the counter’s edge.
And then she was enveloped in it. In him. He pressed his hips against her. Everything was hard, just as she had remembered it. Everything. He thrust against her belly, pinning her to the counter. He slid his hands from her waist, gently tickling up her torso to caress the sides of her breasts and throat through her soft nightgown. Carefully, he cradled her chin. He paused for just a moment and the smell of cloves and cinnamon was nearly overwhelming. His hands were warm and soft against her skin. Slowly he lowered his mouth, claiming her lips.
The kiss began gently. His lips teased at the corners and edges of her own. Then his tongue slid between her lips, deepening the kiss quickly. She only had a moment to marvel that he had a tongue at all before she lost herself. He tasted so strongly of spice it was nearly overwhelming; as she sucked on his tongue, the cinnamon came to the fore and made him taste like fire. That was different. Everything else, from the feel of his hair to the color of his skin—everything else was the same.
He moved to her neck, licking and sucking. Distractedly, she realized her nightgown was inching up, folding on top of his advancing hand as he slid it up her thigh. She moaned loudly and arched against him as he slipped up the gown to cradle her breast, then pulled off the flour-dusted garment. The countertop was cold where it pressed against her back, and she eagerly sank into the warm and yeasty musk bearing down on her. Somewhere in her distraction he had continued to grow more real. The lust that had enveloped her like a sudden summer storm calmed for a moment in wonder and she raised her hand to cup his face. David’s familiar brown eyes stared deeply into her own and locks of his fine dark hair rolled across his forehead as he moved.
She wrapped her hand behind his head and pulled him in for a long, deep kiss. She gasped as his fingers slipped between her legs, rising onto her tiptoes as a sudden bolt of ecstasy shot through her. He cupped her buttocks, slipping his hand around to meet her inner thighs. Then, as he deftly turned her, she found herself pushed against the table and then sitting on its floured surface.
He kissed her once more, deeply, then began a trail of light licks and nips, pausing at her breast to suck her nipple before arriving at her delicate cleft. He licked her then and she shivered at his hard, probing tongue against her overly sensitive skin. She lowered her hands into his hair, caressing it, then clutching as his kisses grew deeper.
Teetering on the edge of her climax, Rational Emily gave one last protest—she was dreaming, or crazy. Then he raised his head and grinned, teeth white against his dark cinnamon skin. He grasped her hips and thrust inside her in one quick motion. For a long moment he paused, deeply buried, his body pressed against her, chest aligned with her own, eyes intent and tinged with something like worry. His lips parted as though to say something and, suddenly afraid, she grabbed him and pulled him in for a deep kiss, writhing along his penis, drawing him deeper within as her thighs parted farther.
He began to thrust then and she clutched him to her, noses nearly touching, sharing breaths, until she cried out, no longer able to hold in her voice against the silent lovemaking. The feel of him sliding against her brought her again to the edge and he lowered his head, sucking on her neck until she broke under him, the world disappearing. He pulsed against her quivering flesh before collapsing over her, palms flat against the table as his head burrowed into her shoulder. She was neatly pinned to the table and she raised her legs to encircle his waist.
“I love you,” she said softly and stroked his torso gently, then his cheek. “If this is a dream, I hope it never ends.” His eyes were soft after the intensity of their lovemaking, and he raised a hand to roll a lock of her hair between his fingers before tucking it behind her ear. She shivered again at the caress, then pressed her palms against his shoulders, pushing him back. Her brain seemed to work better with a little distance. “Am I still asleep?”
His lips formed the word No but nothing emerged from his mouth. His eyes widened as though in panic, mouth gaping.
“Shhh,” she said needlessly, pressing a finger against his lips. “I must be asleep,” she murmured as she nuzzled his sweet-smelling neck, enjoying the smell of sex strongly overlaid by cinnamon and ginger. “But I don’t care.” He trembled in her arms, then reached his own up to encircle her.
Some time later, she drew back. “Come on,” she said, pushing him gently back and hopping back onto the floor. She ruefully held up her hands, still covered in dough, arms dusted in flour. “I need a shower.” She grabbed his hand and dragged him after her.
He followed her, unprotesting and silent, down the short hallway and into the small bathroom. His hand was warm and dry and delightfully familiar. As long as she was mired in this odd dream, she would enjoy it. Emily smiled—she couldn’t stop smiling. She turned on the water and held her hand under the stream, waiting for it to warm. Then she stepped inside, closing her eyes as the hot water flattened her hair and turned her powdered skin slick.
David, standing just beyond the doors, smiled slyly and moved to step past the curtain. In an instant, the delightful, glowing morning turned nightmarish. He had placed his hand under the stream to test its warmth when the skin on his hand began to bubble. The thick cinnamon scent that had overlaid the kitchen carried quickly through the steam. He snatched it back quickly, cradling his arm against his chest, hand curled in a claw of agony. He opened his mouth, face contorted, as though he was trying to scream.
Emily screamed. Half of his fingers on the hand were misshapen and one of them was simply gone—boiled away. “I’m still dreaming.” She began to sob. “Still dreaming.” She collapsed under the spray as he stared at her in shock. “You’re still dreaming,” she shrieked at herself. “Wake up,” she sobbed. “Wake up.” Again, she met his eyes. “Get out.” She whimpered as she curled into a tight ball against the smooth bathtub. “Get out.”
She shivered in the hot shower, huddled half under the spray. David stumbled back, hand held before him, then ran from the room. Minutes later she heard, beneath the pounding water, the front door slam.
She stayed under the shower for a moment more, then turned it off, deliberately slowly. Carefully, she raised herself and stepped out, wrapping a towel around her torso and tucking it under her folded arms.
The light in the bathroom shone with offensive cheer and she flipped off the switch, edging out the door. The apartment was utterly quiet. She walked to the bedroom. David’s dresser drawers were pulled out and hung pathetically from the dresser body, clothes spilling from the edges.
She sat on the bed, numbly noting how her body trembled. She let the silence roll in and surround her. Beyond the ever-present hum of the street below, there was nothing and nothing-ness. She pinched her thigh, hard.
This didn’t feel like a dream or even a nightmare. The quiet reality she had been living in for the past two months after David’s death wrapped around her. Slowly, the trembling subsided.
The bright sun that had warmed their skin in the kitchen had faded into dark shadows. The thunder rolling across the sky did not immediately register with Emily as she sat in the darkened bedroom, confronting the open drawers. Then she started. Thunder! In a flash, Emily remembered ho
w his hand had melted in the stream of the shower.
In Emily’s heated mind, thunder meant rain, and rain meant death. She didn’t know what to make of the morning. It had been the stuff of such delightful and terrifying dreams. But as thunder crashed around her again, and droplets began to rattle the window, she sprang from the bed. If he got caught in the rain, her David, then she would lose him again.
She grabbed up a sundress that she had left pooled on the floor the night before. She threw it on, then raced to the door, slipped on a pair of slides and ran outside.
The rain was still intermittent by the time Emily reached street level and she looked frantically up and down the street, hoping to see his familiar silhouette sheltering beneath a doorway. Nothing. Frantically, she picked a direction, running toward the park. If she knew him, if he was her husband truly, then that was where he would go.
Doorways passed in a blur, faces turned aside but none of them were David. Rain came down harder, taking turns with her tears to blind her. She paused near the corner, dashing her hand across her eyes and squinting across. There—in the gazebo—a familiar silhouette? “David,” she tried to yell, but emotion stifled her voice. She dashed toward the park boundary.
Emily noticed the car too late. She registered swift blue metal behind a brilliant flash of light as another clap of thunder rent the sky. And then the air was knocked from her lungs and she was on the ground, half lying on the sidewalk, half on the street. A warm body covered her own and held her tightly. Stunned, she opened her eyes.
“David,” she moaned. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you to leave.” She reached a hand up to touch his face, still hovered protectively over hers. His smile was twisted in something like sorrow and relief. And then it morphed into pain. Her hand arrested and she stared up in horror as a thick glob of dough slid from the back of his neck, falling to pool in the hollow of her throat.
“No,” she whispered, horrified. David stood, clapping a hand to his neck and screwing his face in pain as his skin bubbled and liquified in the steady rain. He took a shaky step back, then another. Too late, Emily noticed the railing behind him, realizing that they had tumbled by the bridge. David’s body glided eerily smoothly along the railing, slipping up and over the edge. In the next moment, he was gone.
“No!” Emily’s scream ripped from her core and she scrambled for the railing. The slick line of wet paste was already washing off the black iron barrier. She stared for a moment into the brackish water that was churning with the influx of sudden rain. Vaguely, she noticed people running toward her out of her periphery. They might have been shouting, but she could hear nothing at all beyond her bounding heart. She clutched the bar, took one last shrieking breath, and jumped.
The river was high and the bridge low, and Emily found herself immersed in water before she had time for any regrets. She found her way to the surface, spluttering, to find herself already past the bridge, carried by the current. She looked downstream, saw a streak of white marring the water, and set out swimming, desperate to catch up, hoping to catch anything at all.
She reached the skim of dough riding over the water and her heart collapsed. Already, the pattering rain was dissipating the thick, pale smudge. She rode in the current, her fingers swiping through the diminishing paste. The river continued to carry her through the city, and she had a sudden vision of herself sinking below the surface, hidden and quiet.
Something brushed her ankle. It was solid. It felt like a hand. Emily didn’t hesitate; she dove. She came up with nothing, forced air into her lungs, and dove once more. This time, her searching fingers found an arm, found skin, brushed past hair. It was definitely a person. She curled one hand through the thick hair and another around an arm. Straining, she kicked, eyes open and trained on faint gray light that signaled the surface.
She kicked hard, breaking into the air. Rain shot down as hard as ever and she used her legs to propel the body up. Clasping her arms around the limp torso, she kicked toward a dock that jutted out into the water. By the time she reached the struts that supported the small dock, she was too tired to do more than dangle in the water, her cargo held desperately close. The body in her arms started and coughed. Her arm stretched as he inhaled hoarsely, and she cried out in relief as he began to stir.
“David?” she asked cautiously, unable to keep the tremble from her voice as tears once again threatened. The man she held in her arms stilled and slowly reached up to grab a strut of the dock. He turned and she gasped.
Her husband, one arm anchoring him to the dock, stared back at her, hair plastered by the rain and the river.
“Em,” he whispered, his voice rough. His eyes widened in shock and he touched his hand to his throat in wonder. “You—” he cleared his throat. “You came for me. I—I came back.”
“Yes, you came back.” She gasped. “Your hand!”
Startled he held out his hand: five fingers and a palm. Emily grabbed it to prove to herself it was real. She pressed her lips into his wet, solid palm.
With a moan, he swept her into his arms and she noticed as he began to kiss her, that he tasted like David again. Emily sank into his kiss, letting the rushing water tangle their limbs as though they had never been apart. If there was still an edge of cinnamon to his lips, she couldn’t complain.
ALL IN A DAY’S WORK
Saskia Walker
Faye toyed with two sets of handcuffs while she considered how best to handle the current situation. She was with an attractive merchant banker who was begging to be broken in. Faye—who was known as Faye the Bountiful amongst her closest friends—savored the anticipation. George, the merchant banker, watched her toy with the handcuffs with an eager look in his eye, waiting for her to take action. George didn’t know what he was in for.
Her body simmered with arousal as she paced back and forth in front of him, eyeing him all the while. This was too much fun. The soft creak of her tight leather jeans and the click of her boot heels on the marble floor were the only sounds in the room. Sunlight poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows of George’s city office, and she basked in it. These were the corridors of power, and the fact that she was there at all was quite a kick. As yet, she hadn’t even used her magic on him, and his attention was all hers. George was an influential man, and if she hadn’t been Faye the Bountiful her mind might have been moving in an altogether different direction, a more selfish one. But there was more to this than met the eye. Faye the Bountiful was a mischievous sort, and the situation compelled her to act in an unexpected way.
“Faye, please.” George stared down at the handcuffs she had dangling from her hand, and swallowed. Tension was evident in his voice and posture. He was as taut as an arrow about to fly from its bow. The bulge at his groin was impressive.
“Patience, George.” She gave him a quick smile. Having him at her mercy was intoxicating for them both, and there was a built-in thrill to getting him all hot and bothered during his lunch break, right there on his imported mahogany desk. “You know that it’ll be worth the wait, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes, you’re worth it, but you’re making me crazy here.” He gave a low chuckle. “You goth women sure know how to make a man hard.”
If he thought that was her secret, he was in for a big surprise.
His chest seemed to give a little tremor, right before her eyes. He was fit like an athlete with lean, toned muscles—the sort of man who worked out every morning.
“We wouldn’t want to make you crazy, not when you have so many important things you have to do this afternoon.”
What next? she mused. The belt on his expensive Yves Saint Laurent trousers was already hanging open. Faye had undone it. She had also removed his jacket, shirt and tie. She could strap him to his expensive flight-commander leather chair, tie him up against the marble pillar or splay him on the antique imported rug in front of the bookshelves.
He made a sound, something between a whimper and a bleat.
She closed on him
, wrapped one hand around his neck and kissed him, briefly. Then she lifted the papers from his desk, clearing them onto the adjoining computer table. With one fingernail, she tapped the surface of the desk.
George stepped closer to it. She circled him and then backed him against the edge of the desk. “Sit,” she instructed.
He did so, and she rested one hand against his bare chest, easing him down. Then she lifted his hands in hers, pulling them over his head toward the opposite corner of the desk. Putting a cuff on each wrist, she secured both sets by dangling them down around the leg of the desk and then locking him in place. Returning to the other end of the desk, she stared down at him. His cock was pushing up beneath the zipper on his pants, the coins of his nipples tight and hard. Admiring the view, Faye smiled and nodded, letting him know that she approved of what she saw.
George cursed, his body arching up against the hard surface beneath him. He really got off on being dominated by women, and that fact fed into her awareness in the most delicious way, empowering her, making her instinctive magic flare. Right from the moment he’d brought her back to his office, walking her past his staff, she’d been on to the subtle underplay here. That atmosphere outside George’s office was alive with interest, and Faye absorbed it all, quickly homing in on the true nature of the setup. “It’s your lucky day, George,” she’d said as she locked the door behind them and took charge of him, right there in his prestigious city offices. George had swallowed and nodded. He didn’t know the half of it.
Allowing herself a couple of minutes to be sure she had the lay of the land, she determined her plan. Reaching for his button and the zipper on his trousers, she undid them slowly, watching as he urged her on with a pleading expression. Inside his trousers, his cock pushed against the soft white cotton of his jockey shorts. When she rested her hand over it, George groaned. The muscles in his arms tightened and he jerked at the restraints halfheartedly.
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