Passion

by Rachel Kramer Bussel

  I moan, torn between rising on my toes or bearing down hard on his fingers. He’s really unstoppable. No delicate, tentative, getting-to-know-you caresses here. He grabs hold of me like a force of nature and handles me hard. I feel like collapsing and it’s only the lift wall that’s holding me up. Dimly I wonder why on earth we haven’t reached our floor yet, but then I see that he’s pressed the hold button somewhere amongst our fondling.

  But we can’t stay in here long, and I realize that he won’t release me until I come. So bearing down it is, and as he laughs again and renews his furious efforts, I clutch my breast, tweaking my nipple through my bra.

  That always gets me off, and this time’s no exception. With a harsh, uncouth grunt, I give in to it, my pussy pulsating like a heart and yet more juice slithering out of me to saturate Noah’s fingers.

  “Good little Susie. That was nice. I love bringing a woman off. I love to feel her pleasure against my hand.”

  He’s arrogant, domineering, quite ruthless; like his office persona, but in a thrilling new variant. He sucks the taste of me off his fingers and then releases the lift and in seconds the door’s sliding open. I barely manage to straighten my skirt in time and stagger out onto his floor, convinced that the older guy who’s just got into the car will smell me and know what we’ve been doing. I imagine him grinning and maybe touching himself as he descends.

  I feel I have to assert myself and regain some ground.

  “I don’t normally do that, you know,” I say firmly as I follow Noah along the corridor. “I’m only using you as compensation for all you’ve put us through, you do realize that?” It’s the first thing that comes into my head, but it seems to make sense. Which is a miracle, really, because I can’t stop looking at Noah’s fabulous ass in his well-cut trousers. I’d like to fall on my knees, rub my cheeks against those cheeks and caress his masculine bum this very minute.

  “No problem, I know that,” he says, “and I deserve it. It’s a damn sight more than a drink that I owe you.” He flings me a smile and wink over his shoulder. “Do you think that guy who got into the lift just now knows I was just repaying a debt?”

  I bet he did.

  The moment the room door closes behind us, Noah gives me a long questioning look. He’s still dominant, still a man who’s used to being in charge. But he’s not quite the ruthless bastard all my colleagues think he is. He wants to know that I want what he wants.

  I nod.

  He says, “Strip. All off. I want to see you naked, you gorgeous woman.”

  Shaking, I drop my bag into an armchair and start to obey him, even though my fingers don’t seem to work right. He flings aside his briefcase and jacket and crosses straight to the dressing table. There’s a bottle of Gordon’s there and a glass, and he seems to consider pouring himself a measure. Golly, he can’t half knock it back.

  But then he appears to think twice and turns to me. The fact that he considers me intoxicating enough already makes me warm.

  When my clothes are off, I’ve never felt more naked in my life. I’m dripping again, too, and I could swear he’ll be able to see it running down my thighs.

  “Show me your pussy, love. Lie on the bed. Legs open wide.”

  I comply, lying back and holding my knees to open myself. He comes right up to me and studies my wet flesh. Then he reaches between my labia, grabs my clit and tweaks it between his finger and thumb. I whine like a baby, but he’s merciless. Within seconds I’m coming again, my pussy clenching.

  I gasp for air, beached on the bed, my sex on fire with pleasure. I can’t do a thing and I don’t resist when he manhandles me farther across the mattress, then starts working on his belt buckle.

  Within seconds he has his cock out, and it’s a beauty, just as I hoped it would be. It certainly looks damned pleased to see me, hard and hot and high, glans gleaming with precome.

  “I hope you’ve got a condom for that thing.” I can’t see an efficiency expert not having one, but better safe than sorry.

  He narrows his blue eyes at me, but he’s smiling. He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out the requisite foil package. I wonder dimly if he’s been carrying one all the time he’s been working at the firm. Efficiency expert, eh? Always organized and prepared for anything. I whimper, staring up into his stern, passionate face as he sheathes himself in a quick, businesslike fashion. Has he been aroused by me before now? Has he been suppressing his desire all the time he’s been putting the fear of God into the workforce? His desire for me there all the time, but controlled because of circumstances and presumably his “girl trouble”?

  Without further ado, he lowers himself between my thighs and with a deft adjustment, positions himself and pushes firmly into me. When he’s lodged in deep, I caress him, clasping my sex around his, just as firmly.

  “Yes! Hell, yes! Oh, god, yes!” he shouts, jamming himself into me, demanding more—which I’m ecstatically happy to give. Working him with my inner muscles, I’m pleasuring myself as much as I am him and, still moaning and gasping, I reach around, rummage in his clothes and grab his sexy bottom at the same time, sliding my fingers into the cleft to tickle his anus and add an extra frisson to his pleasure.

  “Oh, my god, you clever, delicious bitch!” he howls, bearing down harder and riding me as if I’m a bucking bronco and he’s a rodeo star. But then he kisses me, too, his lips roaming my face as we strain against each other, raining down affection, even tenderness and making me feel like a chosen handmaiden worshipping her unexpected new god.

  Anxious to please, I plague the little vent of his bottom even harder whilst I still have the wherewithal to think….

  He shouts and comes instantly, his cock pumping inside me, his staccato thrusts beating my aching clit and compelling me to soar with him.

  Afterward, at his urging, I bring myself off again as he watches me, but this time he seems sated and just lies there, his eyes unfathomable as they follow my fingers. He doesn’t even bother to touch his sex.

  The orgasm satisfies me but somehow not completely. I’ve had this tough man on my case for nearly a month now, but after tonight, I’ll probably never see him again. And that definitely induces the old postcoital tristesse or whatever. I shouldn’t take it so hard. I enjoy the occasional one-night stand, ships that pass and all that, golden moments of seizing the day…or the night.

  But somehow, Noah Stevens has gotten under my skin. I want to know more about him. I want to know who hurt him…and if there’s a way I can make things better.

  When we’re both dressed, he hands me a glass of gin. He seems to have finished drinking now, and he’s steady as a rock and apparently as sober as a judge.

  “According to your personnel file you’ve got two weeks leave owing to you.”

  What?

  “Yes, that’s right. I have… What of it?”

  “Fancy spending some of it in Sardinia, all expenses paid? My ‘girl trouble’ has decided she’d rather go to the Seychelles with someone else, and I never got around to cancelling her ticket.”

  Noah looks at me, his gaze steady. He seems superficially nonchalant, but somehow, at the back of his eyes, he’s not quite pleading, but he’s very definitely asking. With feeling.

  “Okay, why not? Sounds fantastic!” Am I insane? I don’t really know him at all. “I haven’t had a decent holiday in ages.”

  He smiles, a wide, creamy, happy, cocky sort of smile—but from the heart.

  “Okay then, it’s a deal!” He takes my glass from me and sets it aside, looks at me very, very seriously. “There’re no strings, Susie…but…well, if something should happen, well, let’s say I’m open to every possibility, if that suits you, too?”

  I consider the possibility of possibilities…and I like it. I like it a lot. My heart thuds in a way that’s got nothing to do with sex. Well, it’s a bit to do with sex but also to do with those possibilities.

  There’s no law that says a rebound relationship with someone you once thought you ha
ted can’t grow into something real and wonderful.

  “It suits me. It probably shouldn’t, seeing as you nearly lost me my job, but it does.”

  Ever the efficiency expert, he doesn’t waste a moment.

  “Okay then, get your clothes off again, and let’s celebrate our trip, shall we?”

  Before I can even start, he kisses me hungrily again, like a pirate king savoring his plundered booty, then he feels up my bottom and my pussy whilst murmuring sweet nothings in my ear.

  Smiling against his shoulder, I start tugging at my blouse….

  REKINDLE

  Kathleen Bradean

  I’m gonna fuck you seven ways to Sunday.”

  Carl choked on his coffee. “What?”

  “Happy birthday, hon.” My light kiss left a smear of raspberry lipstick on his cheek. “Keys. Where did I put my keys?” Inside, I giggled, but outside, I kept up the act, shuffling the pile of bills on the kitchen counter.

  Do I have your attention, honey?

  Well into his forties, Carl was still cute. His soft graying curls swept against the edge of his white collar. When he wore turtle-necks, he looked like a jazz musician.

  He dabbed his striped tie with a paper towel, but he eyed me like a conductor confronting a squeaky clarinet.

  “That isn’t what you said, Sara.”

  Plates in the sink would have to wait, but I ran a towel over the counter. A drop of coffee sizzled on the hotplate as it evaporated into steam and aroma.

  Our daughter, Jenny, plopped into a chair at the kitchen table. “Wazferbreakfast?”

  At least she still talked to me.

  “Anything, as long as you make it for yourself, sweetie. You’re catching a ride home with the Millers after your music lesson, right?”

  She bobbed her head as she read the back of a cereal box.

  “We’re in talks to bring the Berlin Philharmonic into town. They’re eight hours ahead, so I need to get to work and Skype them. Don’t forget to say happy birthday to Dad,” I reminded Jenny as I grabbed my purse.

  “Happy birthday.” Jenny squinted at Carl. “How old are you now? Like a hundred or something?”

  Poor kid got the smart-ass gene from both sides. She couldn’t help it. Lucky for her, she got musical talent from both sides, too. That almost made up for the attitude.

  Carl followed me out to the driveway of our cookie-cutter suburban home. I missed living in the city.

  “Wait. You said something…”

  I made my big brown eyes go innocent. “I’m coming by your work for a little birthday lunch, so don’t go into any long meetings before noon.” I unlocked my red minivan and tried hard to suppress my smile as I buckled my seat belt across my ample mom hips.

  He put his hand on the door so that I couldn’t close it. “You never say fuck.”

  “Carl! Really. Such language.” I was having too much fun. Instead of a good-bye wave, I put my fingers in a V over my lips and waggled my tongue between them. In the rearview mirror, I could see him standing in the driveway, clutching his World’s Best Dad mug, watching me with a puzzled expression on his face.

  With my imagination so worked up over Carl’s birthday surprise, I had to leave my desk to take care of myself early in the day. I went into the last stall in the ladies’ room. It wasn’t easy, gripping that cold metal handicap rail as I worked my clit, my ears burning, my gasps muted as coworkers washed their hands and gossiped at the sinks.

  I loved how wanton that made me feel. Life was too short to waste an orgasm. Besides, the only difference between good girls and bad ones was that bad girls got caught.

  Using my juicy fingers, I smeared my scent across my wrists and neck like it was perfume.

  People noticed the flush on my cheeks as I moved through the symphony’s offices. My nipples rubbed against the inside of my white cotton bra. I could have sworn that the prickly Swedish bassoonist we had just hired smelled me as I went past him. That was the first smile I’d seen on his long, dour face.

  If I was caught, did that make me a bad girl? I giggled.

  I can be a bad girl if I want to.

  I wriggled in my desk chair as I typed.

  The first email I sent to Carl was simply the word Black.

  Half an hour later he responded with a question mark.

  Married for years, we had communication down to an art. No wasted words.

  The second email said lace.

  It took him over an hour to come back with Did you mean to send two emails to me? I got one that said lace, and another that said black. Carl was the sweetest man on earth, but sometimes I despaired for him.

  “Work with me, hon,” I muttered at my screen as I sent him French.

  My clit throbbed in time with my pulse, sweeping out measures of desire like a metronome.

  He didn’t bother to comment on that message. As I left my office to pick him up for lunch, I sent the last email.

  Knickers.

  “The Dallas office crashed their database, again,” Carl apologized as he walked off the high-rise elevator forty minutes late. He gave me a distracted peck on the cheek as we walked through the marble lobby. “I wouldn’t mind so much if it was a computer problem. That I can fix. The problem in that office seems to lie between the keyboard and the chair. It’s the same damn thing every time.”

  He held the door for me. We stepped onto the chilly city street. The air stank of bus fumes. Gusts of wind pushed my skirt against my mons. A chill ran up my spine, but it had nothing to do with the weather.

  People moved down the sidewalk with their heads down and their coats hugged tight at the neck. Their faces were portraits of unhappiness. Did they realize that they were drowning in misery?

  We weren’t like them. We knew about happiness. It wasn’t a pursuit. It was a choice.

  I could see from Carl’s dazed eyes that he daydreamed of idiot-proof code. None of my birthday surprise would work unless I had his full attention.

  I nudged him. “Get my emails?”

  His hand was on my elbow. He stopped walking and stared down at his shoes. “Yes.”

  “All four?”

  He ducked down farther in his jacket. I could barely hear his muffled answer. “Yes.”

  He was so damn cute. I vowed to always remember that about him.

  I’m marking you on my heart, Carl. I’ve grown too accustomed to you. I want to get a fresh perspective so that I can feel every nuance over again, like a jazz interpretation of a classic song. I want to fall in love with who you are now. How have you changed in the years we’ve been together? Have there been shifts so gradual that I didn’t notice?

  “I promised you lunch. Come on.” I tugged at his arm. Another gust of wind tried to lift the hem of my skirt. “It’s colder than I expected.”

  Carl glanced up at the sky and seemed surprised to see the low clouds. “Hmmm. Well, it’s spring.” He shrugged.

  We’re not this boring. Come on, honey. Remember that night on the picnic table? We’re still those people, I swear.

  Carl followed me into the lobby of a downtown hotel. The glass doors slammed shut behind us, cutting off the wind. I straightened my hair with my fingers, giving him a chance to ask, but he either trusted me or didn’t notice where we were.

  “Let’s sit here.” I found us a secluded wicker couch in the lobby bar. A tall planter and a thick column hid us from the reception desk. We went through the unwrapping ritual, coats and scarves piled over a brass railing until we were down to our comfortable office layers, him in white shirt and tie, me in skirt and sky blue blouse.

  The wicker couch was for two, a love seat. The slick chintz cushions were jungle green. In front of us was a small cocktail table, wicker and glass.

  “I have your present, but I want to explain it first.”

  I dug through my big mom purse and pulled out a small container with a frosted cupcake inside. The pristine white frosting smeared against the clear plastic. I popped the top and stuck a small blu
e tapered candle into the stiff buttercream.

  “I bet you remember when you stopped believing in Santa Claus, but do you remember when you stopped believing in birthday wishes?”

  Carl blinked at the cupcake. “Not really. No traumas or scars.”

  I rubbed my neck and wrists to raise a faint whiff of my personal perfume. From the movement of his thick eyebrows, I saw that Carl smelled me but doubted his senses. His nostrils flared a little.

  Glancing around the lobby as if I were about to tell him a big secret, I leaned across the uncomfortable couch. “What if I were to tell you that birthday wishes are real?”

  He chuckled.

  “They are.”

  “If you say so.”

  I saw the smirk at the corner of his mouth. My shoulders slumped.

  “Come on, honey. Play along. Please?”

  “Okay.”

  He made it clear he was humoring me. That’s all I asked for. He could be skeptical, but he had to at least pretend.

  “This is no ordinary birthday candle.” I did a magician’s hand flourish over the taper.

  “No? Really?”

  “Don’t be a prick, Carl.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Believe.”

  I struck a pose like a conductor about to launch into an overture. My hands made circles around the candle before touching my closed eyelids. I had to get into the part again.

  “This, as I said, is no ordinary candle. One day, as I was walking outside the symphony hall, I found a secluded alleyway I’d never seen before. Curious, I went down it.”

  Carl still had a smart-ass grin on his face, but despite that, I could see he was hooked.

  “At the end of the alleyway, there was a mysterious store. The windows were coated with thick dust. I peered into them, but could only see glimmers of metal and wood. The deep blue awning over the door said ANTIQUITIES AND CURIOSITIES. Well, I needed a gift for your birthday, so naturally, I went in.”