A long, starved moan buzzed between my thighs; I signalled Ralph to slow down. I didn’t want her coming just yet. Noticing the man’s bulging trousers, I gave him permission to masturbate, pulling her head closer to my crotch, mashing her mouth up against my clit, using my other hand to twiddle with her sore little nipples.
“Next time you pull a stunt like this, young lady, I’ll spank your arse for you,” I promised her. She sighed, her tongue in a frenzy now, her bottom wiggling furiously, while her whole body worked at relieving itself on the twin phalluses.
The three peaks came in rapid series, one rising as another fell. First Ralph roared and splashed his seed all over her bum and thighs, then, as it dripped downwards, she caught the perfect configuration of dildo and nerve-ending and howled on to my clit, triggering my own explosion.
For a few minutes, the three of us were slumped together like felled skittles, panting and enjoying the stars that circled our heads.
Ralph was first to tuck himself in and button himself up, leaving my naughty little customer to fall sideways. I wiped my thighs with a tissue and patted down my skirt, thinking that now was the time for private catalogue photography.
She was flushed and sweating; her mouth glistening with my spendings; her bottom and thighs sticky with Ralph’s spunk. Her cheeks were still rudely thrust apart by the large dildo, and the strap still cut into the middle of her cunt lips. Her nipples were more like cherry stones than cherries now and one high heeled shoe hung off her heel. She looked a mess; a gorgeous dirty feast of a mess.
“We need photographs,” I told Ralph, and he nodded.
Her name, it turned out, was Jess. Her modelling and catalogue work for me is much admired in corsetry circles these days. And if you gain my trust, and ask me very, very respectfully, I might just show you my private collection.
Royal
Adam Berlin
I opened the door to my building, on the way out to have some drinks, and there she was, sitting on the stairs. I saw the back of her first. Her hair, more gold than blonde, fell halfway down her back, the backs of her arms were thin and graceful, and her posture was perfect. I’m a jaded man, but I have to admit she stopped me. Of course I knew, even as I stopped, how easy it was to be beautiful from the back. Chances were this woman on my stoop wouldn’t live up. I’d walk down the stairs, take a glance at her face, confirm that her features were not as perfectly proportioned, her skin not as smooth, her mouth not as mysterious and her eyes not as mesmerizing as I’d hoped, and then I’d walk on and get my first drink and my second and my third and soon pretty much everyone would be pretty much beautiful.
So I walked down the steps. I glanced at her face. And I stopped again. She had the kind of quiet beauty I dreamed about. Models, movie stars and high-class hookers roamed Manhattan’s streets, especially at night, but their beauty was obvious. You saw them and you knew what they did. This woman, sitting quietly, looking across the street with eyes so far away she could have been gazing at the other side of the world, was different.
If I’d already downed my third or fourth drink, I would have spoken to her immediately. I would have worked to get her up the stairs and into my bed, to open her up and fuck her, and in fucking her she would lose some of her beauty and then I wouldn’t fall in love. I preferred my day-to-days steady and slightly numb. And I preferred my nights full of easy highs that had nothing to do with love. I’d drink, live my pretend-adventure, wake with a hangover in some stranger’s bed and sneak out. The early morning Yoo-Hoos I sipped while walking to the nearest subway coated my stomach. And like the birds chirping optimistically about the sun’s imminent rise, I felt good in these pre-dawn moments. My cock comfortably sore. My balls unloaded. My body mighty and ready to sleep at the same time. I’d get through my day and when the urge hit me again a day or two later, sometimes three, I’d go out again. I hadn’t had any drinks. I was sober. And sober, I was less aggressive. But I knew if I walked on, I would never again see this quiet beauty sitting on my steps. Maybe it was the night. I felt drunk sometimes even before I had my first drink. Maybe it was how jaded I was, hoping to prove her less than she was. If she spoke and she was stupid or vapid or just too normal, her aura would disappear. Maybe it was the way her eyes moved from whatever horizon she was looking at to my eyes. She looked at me for a long time and, not being one to lose a staring contest, I looked at her for a long time too.
“It’s anatomical,” I said.
“What is?” she said and I liked her voice. It was quiet and calm. Two words spoken, one question, but she sounded like she had all the time in the world. And she had the faintest accent, refined, almost regal.
“My eyes,” I said. “I don’t need to blink. I can look at something for hours without blinking.”
“At something?” she said.
“Or someone.”
“And you can look for hours?”
“If I have to.”
“Well,” she said and smiled and then she blinked slowly, not because she had to but because blinking went so well with her smile.
“Are you waiting for someone?”
“No,” she said. “I’m simply tired. I’ve just arrived to New York City and feel quite jet-lagged. I thought I’d sit for a few moments before I walked on.”
“Europe?” I said.
“Yes. Though you’ll never guess the country.” I looked at my watch. “So it’s around two in the morning for you.”
“Exactly. And I didn’t sleep well on the flight.”
“I’m going to get a drink. Would you like to come along? A little alcohol might help you with your jet lag.”
Without a word she stood and, just like that, took my arm, her hand around my bicep and we walked down the street.
We drank. I had my usual gin on the rocks. It was summer and in summer I drank gin. She drank Sauvignon Blanc. It felt like a movie. It was just us, the leading man and woman. Everyone else in the bar was an out-of-focus extra. Her laugh was pure. Her eyes were clear. Her voice was crisp on the consonants and round on the vowels. Her hand, when she touched my arm, was warm. We talked. Not biographies. We just talked. And when we looked at each other, not blinking, it wasn’t a game. I didn’t ask her to come back to my apartment. She just took my arm when we left the bar and that’s where we went.
We didn’t fuck. That had never happened to me before, not in all my years in New York City and I’d moved to Manhattan when I was seventeen, a small-town high school kid looking for big-city action. When I took a woman to my place, which I almost never did, or when a woman took me to her place, the sleepovers were never about sleep. Only in the hardest cases, when the woman was hesitant, first-date or first-meet morality tempering her lust, did I have to use the Let’s just sleep together line. But every time, as I walked the stairs to her apartment, watching her ass move, or took the elevator up to her apartment, watching her finger press the button, I always smiled. Sleeping together sounded innocent enough, but it was a euphemism so obvious it always went corrupt. Sometimes it took some work, but by dawn just sleeping together meant my cock was inside her.
With this woman, it was different. She was upstairs, in my room, but we only kissed. We kissed like I had never kissed. Her mouth was soft and firm, her tongue rapid-fire one moment, slow and sensual the next, and the way she kissed made me kiss differently. I wasn’t just kissing her to move to the next place, the way I kissed others, routine foreplay to fast-forward the one night stand. I could imagine kissing this woman for hours. I could imagine not growing tired of her kiss. We kissed and we kissed and I didn’t know where my mouth ended and hers began, didn’t know if that was my lip or her lip, my tongue or her tongue. But when I moved my hand over her shoulder, to her breast, smoothing my palm across her nipple, she took my wrist in her hand and moved my hand back to her shoulder.
“It’s not time,” she said and I didn’t feel the need to push.
Time stopped beyond the cliché. Then she moved her mouth from mine and l
ooked at me.
“I have to sleep,” she said. “And I have to sleep alone. I’d like to sleep with you, of course, but tonight I have to sleep alone.”
“You have to?”
“Yes,” she said and I left it at that.
Chivalrously I offered my bed and said I’d sleep on the couch. She excused herself to the bathroom to wash up. I grabbed a spare comforter from the closet and threw it on the couch.
She was still in the bathroom. I went into my bedroom to get a pair of boxers to sleep in. I needed to do laundry and it was my last pair of clean boxers and there it was, where I hid it, and that’s when I got the thought. Maybe it was fate. I lifted my last pair of boxers and saw its head peeking out from under a sock in the back of the drawer. Maybe it wasn’t fate. I’d never been in this position before, not in this apartment, not in this city, not ever, and so I got the thought. My last sort-of girlfriend had given me her dildo, saying she didn’t need it now that she’d met me. She wanted me to have her favorite dildo as a sign of eternal gratitude for making her come like a porn star. I’d grown tired of her by the time she gave me her special gift, so tired I didn’t bother correcting her. She wasn’t the porn star. I was the porn star. I was the one making her come.
Making the golden-haired beauty in my bathroom come was what I wanted. I wanted to see her perfect mouth open in orgasm. I wanted to feel her perfect hands holding my biceps as I moved my cock inside her. I wanted her perfect legs wrapped around my waist. And most of all I wanted her perfect eyes, eyes that could look and linger, to look at me, look through me, while I was fucking her and then, something I had never really wanted before, I wanted her eyes to stay on my eyes after we were done. I was a jaded man, but I wanted her and not just to fuck. I would sleep on the couch if that’s what it took. But I had to know, had to know now, that she was as sexual as her kiss, that she could keep up with me and keep me fulfilled for more than a night and then, maybe, I could fall. Like the fairytale I’d heard so many times as a kid, I took the dildo from my drawer and, as if it were the pea to the puzzle, put it under my mattress.
I went back to the couch. I was the opposite of tired.
She came out of the bathroom, her face freshly washed, and she kissed me once more. “Thank you for tonight,” she said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“I hope so.”
“And thank you for letting me stay over. I had a room reserved and my family arrives tomorrow, but I’m glad I’m here. It feels real to me here. It feels like a home.”
“This place is nothing like a home,” I said. “I live like a Spartan. There’s nothing here.”
“You don’t have much, but what you do have is yours.”
She looked around my living room and I followed her eyes. To the piece of driftwood propped up in the corner of the room. To the prints on the wall, blurred black-and-whites of cityscapes. To the single photograph of me standing in front of the high-end auto shop where I worked, mock-squinting like some B-movie tough guy. I was wearing my usual jeans and an oil-stained T-shirt, looking too blue-collar for Manhattan.
“Good night,” she said again and she smiled and blinked and walked into my bedroom and closed the door.
I lay down on the couch. My eyes stayed open and I thought of her.
The city’s night noises went through their pattern. At midnight, the moan of a garbage truck’s compactor. At one, the drunken chatter of students moving bar to bar. At two, a homeless person sifting trash. At three, a cursing drunk, angry at himself, angry at the world. At four it was mostly quiet, just the intermittent sounds of cabs taking their fares home. My eyes were still open. And then I heard a new noise, or a louder version of a noise I’d heard when we’d kissed. She was moaning, a low, steady moan. I got off the couch. Perhaps the pea was working. I had to see.
I cracked the door and looked in. My eyes were already adjusted to the darkness and the streetlight across the street, shining through the blinds, helped show me all I needed to see. She was on her stomach, pressing into the bed, her pussy grinding exactly into the place where I’d put the dildo under the mattress. Pressing and pressing and moaning. My cock was hard while I watched her.
The morning sounds started. Newspaper trucks arriving at five. Early-morning risers walking to the subway at six. I shifted on the couch, shifted again, thought of her in my bedroom, thought of how she’d looked and how she’d sounded. My cock had been hard all night. I waited and finally the bedroom door opened. I closed my eyes and listened to her bare feet on the floor. Then I felt her sit down at my legs. I opened my eyes and she was looking at me.
“How did you sleep?” I said.
“I don’t know. I had dreams all night. The dreams were so real I feel like I didn’t sleep at all.”
“Good dreams?”
“Wonderful dreams,” she said. “And you were in them.”
“Really?” I said.
“You were perfect,” she said and she smiled.
She was wearing one of my T-shirts. That’s all. Her bare legs looked long and lean. I moved my hand from under the comforter and touched her leg. Her skin was smoother than any skin I’d touched. I moved my hand up her thigh and she didn’t stop me. I moved my fingers over her pussy. She was completely shaved and the skin was smoother still. And then I put a finger inside her. The smoothest skin of all. I worked my fingers in and out and I heard the sounds I’d heard. I put my fingers in her mouth and her lips and tongue that had been on my lips and tongue the night before sucked and licked my fingers. She was pushing her mouth into my fingers, thrusting her hips forward on the couch. I sat up. I stood up. I lifted her up. I carried her to my bed. I took off her shirt and spread her before me and she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. From the back. From the front. With her legs open in front of me, her pussy open, her mouth open, her eyes open. I took off my boxers and put my cock inside her and she took me in. It was perfect. She was perfect. I moved slowly. Just the head first. In and out. I watched her eyes. Then more of my cock. In and out. Then all of my cock and she thrust forward, her legs wrapping around me, tight, her moans louder now and I moved hard and harder and watched her the whole time. Her face flushed. Her teeth flashed. Her eyes stayed open.
“Come in me,” she said.
“Is it safe?”
“It is. Come in me. I want to feel you. I dreamed you came in me last night and I want to feel you now.”
I hunkered down, pressed into her. I closed my eyes and moved inside her for myself but I wasn’t thinking of anyone else, only her, and I saw her in my bed, pressing herself into the sheets, pressing herself into the place where I’d hid the dildo under the mattress and that’s when I came.
We were side by side.
We were looking at the ceiling.
I listened to her breaths, now slow, rested.
“I didn’t sleep either,” I said.
“Were you dreaming of me like I was dreaming of you?”
“I was waiting for you,” I said.
“I’m here.”
“Stay here,” I said.
She moved her fingers over my chest.
“Stay,” I said again.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Tonight I’ll be at the Ritz Carlton staying in the penthouse suite. That’s where we stay when we come to New York City. But even if I’m there, I’ll be wishing I were here.”
“Then be here.”
“I can’t. My parents have official business to attend to and I have to go where they go.”
“You work for your parents?”
“I belong to them. My father is a head of state and my mother is considered royalty where I come from. I’m their daughter.”
“You’re a princess?”
She didn’t blink.
So the fairytale, at least that part of the fairytale, was true.
“No wonder,” I said.
“No wonder what?”
“No wonder you didn’t sleep we
ll last night. It was the mattress. You must be used to sleeping on the softest mattresses in the world.”
We stayed there looking at the ceiling.
“Royalty,” I said.
“In a way,” she said and her fingers stopped moving over my chest.
“In a way I am royalty,” she said. “And so were you. You were a perfect prince.”
“A perfect prince. I like the sound of that.”
“A perfect prince for one night.”
“For one night?”
“Yes,” she said. “One night. Isn’t that how you do it?”
“How do you know?”
“I feel it.”
I didn’t ask if it was like feeling a dildo at the bottom of a bed. As soon as we met, she’d held my eyes for as long as I held hers and that had made her my princess.
“You lived up,” I said.
She smiled. She got out of bed. She still looked beautiful to me. She took my T-shirt from the floor, folded it, placed it on the bed.
“I saw you from behind sitting on my steps and then I saw you from the front and you lived up. And you lived up every moment after that.”
“That’s why we’ll say good-bye now,” she said. “So we’ll never falter. You never want to see the fairytale a year later.”
“Or even a week later,” I said. “Or even a day.”
“Yes,” she said. “Or even a day.”
She dressed.
I dressed.
We went down.
We kissed at the door. A final kiss. A fairytale kiss.
She walked down the stairs and I watched her, from behind, move into her day.
The Strangler Fig
J. D. Munro
We’d never spoken until today, except for the day she named me long ago in a backstage hallway. She had crouched to tie her shoe, and roadies bumped the black-haired backup singer as if she didn’t exist. Only I saw her. I snapped her: click. Her head snapped up at the sound. Click, she mimicked the camera’s voice, a voice I throw. She worked an air shutter. I shuddered, newly baptized as Click.
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