The Mammoth Book of the Best New Erotica

by Maxim Jakubowski

  Playfully, I push away, sitting up and pulling you with me. Our skin is flushed with passion, our breath quick, eyes sparkling. “I just want to make it last,” I explain, “savour it.”

  “Savour it,” you repeat, “I get it.” You pass back through the familiar lavender garden, the lemon of my neck, and I lean back to let you revisit the juniper of my nipples. You brace me at the waist as I lean back further, resting on my hands as your tongue circles my navel. It’s ticklish, and I giggle and squirm as you make up your mind what it is.

  “Spicy. Hot.”

  “Like you,” I say through my giggles.

  You taste again, then declare, “Cinnamon!” triumphant.

  “Go to the head of the class!”

  With a raised eyebrow and a boyish grin you say, “I thought you’d never ask,” and move lower still, to the final scented spot. This is the challenge, since you have to get past my own musk to find the herbal aroma.

  The moment I feel your tongue probe the soft, moist folds between my legs I no longer care about herbs or slowness or anything except that you don’t ever stop! How wonderful you are with your mouth; tongue tentative, yet firm. You move your head away, to make a guess at the aroma, I imagine, but I gently push you right back, moving my legs out from beneath me and letting you settle in. The heat and the wetness release the herbal scent into the air around us; amazing what a single drop can do. The earthy scent envelops us as your tongue carries me to an excruciatingly pleasant plateau, then coaxes me over the edge into the warm rolling ocean of orgasm.

  As I begin to float back to the coherent world, I find my voice and say, “Paul, I want you inside me.” I feel your weight and then I feel you push into me, a delicious feeling with the area so highly sensitized and flushed. My legs encircle your waist as your hips move, grinding against me in the realization of that earlier tantalizing promise. My arms come up under yours to hold on to your shoulders, bracing me for the thrill of each thrust. With one hand I grasp your hair, baring your neck where I smother my moans. I arch to let you reach further into me and orgasm again overtakes me. You move slowly, helping to prolong the delight. When I have settled back to earth once more, you let your passion have control, pounding against me with increasing lust.

  “I’m so close,” you whisper, your voice hoarse with pleasure.

  I quickly turn you over so that I can be on top of you, sitting up. “Lay back and enjoy this,” I tell you, as I match the rhythm we had a moment ago. You manage to smile broadly through your sighs, encouraging me with a word or two until eloquence deserts you altogether and your back arches and you buck and grunt and grasp my hips and hold me against you until you are spent. Keeping you inside of me, I bend forward to hold you and let you hold me as we catch out breaths.

  After a moment of quiet, you ask, “Are you going to tell me what the final aroma was?”

  “Won’t you guess?”

  “Something earthy, like the woods. Like you.”

  “It’s patchouli,” I say. “From India.”

  “It’s magical,” you reply.

  “You’re magical, my dear.”

  We fall asleep there, in each other’s arms, the moist fairies between us and the aromatic fairies watching over us.

  With Love,

  Laura

  Writing it down, I found myself aroused again. Often, I paused and put down my pen, rereading the passage I just wrote as I took off my shirt and ran my hands across my chest and back, along the line of hair that runs down my chest. With my left hand, I undid my jeans and stroked myself through my underwear as I wrote. Slipping my hand underneath the brim, I avoided my cock, teasing myself, running my hand along the inside of my thigh and letting the backs of my fingers tickle my balls. And as I write this now I hold my balls in my hand, gently squeezing and rolling them, pressing deeply against the muscle underneath, the root of my cock, so hard. Enough of writing for now—

  The afternoon I first read that piece stays firm in my mind. We woke at two in the afternoon. The house was quiet. Outside, the neighbours could be heard in the yard, as could the trills of birds in the dogwood which bloomed outside her bedroom. It felt like a lazy Sunday afternoon in spring as we revelled in the indolence of rising so late. Laura had called in sick earlier that morning, at dawn, when we decided finally to go to sleep.

  The night had been spent in touch, a revelry of physical sensation. I’d had no idea what to expect, when she’d offered to put me up for the night after a poetry reading in New York. I’d figured it was likely I’d wind up on a couch in her living room. Instead she’d given me a massage, by candlelight, on her bed, since my back was sore from lying on floor cushions at the reading. I had injured my wrist, which was in a splint, and thus could only lean on one arm during the entire performance, cradling my injured hand in my lap.

  She rubbed scented oils into the muscles, a soothing sensation I had never before experienced. The combination of smells, from the oils and candles, the lighting, the lingering sensation of her fingers along my back – it just seemed natural as we were lying next to each other, to reach out and pet her stomach over the satin of her chemise. Though my hand was in a splint, the fingers were still free and danced across the fabric, thrilling the skin beneath with the light friction. Later, our clothes off, we rubbed our bodies together simply for the exhilarating sensation of skin moving against skin. Crouching over her like a wildcat, I ran my torso over her body, pressing down on her breasts to knead them gently with my own, dragging my body down across her belly, her waist, her legs, then back again. I dropped my head down to let my hair, which I’d been growing out for more than a year now, dangle lightly against her skin.

  That night was touch for its own sake. We explored each other’s bodies until dawn, kissed once, briefly, and slept. We stayed in bed until mid-afternoon. At last, I got up and showered, where I found the oils in her medicine cabinet. Wrapped in a towel, I went back into the bedroom and asked her about them, thus discovering the erotica she’d written for Paul. She made tea while I read the piece, understandably nervous about being in the same room with me as I was reading, and soon returned to the bedroom with two steaming mugs.

  “Tea?” she asked innocently, ignoring the fact that I’d been reading.

  “Come here,” I said, getting to my feet. I let my towel fall to the floor around my feet. I was very excited from her story; my erection throbbed, flushed with blood. I took the mugs from her hands and placed them on the nightstand, enfolding her in my arms. We kissed, and I drew her back onto the bed with me, running my hands along her back through the fabric of her robe. The neck of the robe hung wide, and I nuzzled her skin, running my tongue up to her chin, then back down to slide between her breasts. We rolled over, and she opened the belt of her robe, pulling the dark red fabric back slowly as if she were peeling an artichoke. I wanted to devour her. I leaned over her, bracing myself on my hands, when suddenly my right wrist gave out in a searing wrench of pain. I did not have the splint on, and the pressure of supporting myself had been too much. I bit back a cry, and collapsed on the bed next to her, cradling my injured hand under me, against my chest.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I’m not up to this, it seems.”

  “Shhh,” she said, rolling me over and sliding on top of me. “I don’t want you to do anything that will cause you pain.” She took my injured hand in hers and gently kissed it. She licked the palm, then ran her tongue down to my wrist, and slowly along my arm. When she reached my shoulder, she moved across to my nipple, teasing it with circles of her tongue and gentle bites. But she quickly slid backwards, dragging her body along mine as she kissed down my chest and stomach. The loose folds of the robe billowed about her like a butterfly’s wings. Her breath was warm, exhilarating, as she explored my pubic area, rubbing her face against my hard cock as she tickled around my balls with her tongue. At last, her tongue met my shaft – a quick lick, a tentative probe. With her hands, she lifted my cock until it was perpendicular from my bo
dy, and slowly lowered her mouth over it, surrounding it, but not touching, not yet, only her warm breath. She held for a moment, and I burned with anticipation. Then her lips closed, and suddenly her tongue pressed against the length of my shaft, sliding up and down.

  My breathing grew heavy as she drew her lips along the length of my shaft, teasing my balls with one hand as the other grasped the base of my cock and squeezed gently. I was so excited that it did not take long before her touch pushed me into orgasm. “I’m so close,” I warned her, holding back to prolong the blissful sensation, and give her a chance to pull back if she did not want me to come in her mouth. She kept her lips firmly clamped, her head bobbing up and down furiously, and I could not hold back any longer. I let out a cry, which slowly faded into a sigh as I recovered from my orgasm. My lips and hands were tingling with bliss, and I held them against her body, whispering, once I got my voice, “Look what you do to me.”

  “How do your hands feel?” she asked, concerned.

  “In ecstasy,” I answered, with a smile. They tingled with pleasure.

  Laura smiled as well. “I’ve found a new form of therapy for them, then. Something your doctor would never think to prescribe.”

  “They should make you a practising physician,” I said, hugging her close to me and kissing her. My fingertips reflexively began to caress her thigh, but she stopped me.

  “I don’t want you to do anything that will injure your wrists. Just lay there and enjoy yourself.”

  I was frustrated with my body’s betrayal of me, but succumbed to the bliss it was currently feeling. I lay in the afterglow, feeling incredibly self-indulgent, and enjoying it. The phone rang. I tilted my head to look at her and smiled as she turned to looked back. Neither of us wanted to get up to answer it. After the fourth ring, the answering machine picked up. It was her lawyer, saying that at last he’d submitted the final papers for her divorce, and that soon, hopefully, everything would clear.

  I’d known she had been married, but had not realized the divorce was not finalized. Suddenly a gulf loomed large between us as I thought of where she was in her life with regards to where I stood in mine. But curiously, despite the vast differences in our lives, the closeness between us as we lay entwined, her hand gently squeezing my leg, my fingers still caressing despite her protests, did not dissolve.

  “Ah, adultery,” I said with a grin as I turned onto my side to look at her.

  “A new experience?” she asked, also with a smile. I hesitated, and knew she was suddenly wondering, having noticed. But she did not ask. “Don’t worry,” she continued, “we’ve been separated for over a year now.”

  I deliberated whether to tell her, wondering what would happen to our relationship once she knew. “It’s not new,” I say. “For the past two years, up until September when he moved back with his wife in Syracuse, I’ve been seeing Brian Coney.”

  I waited for a response, hardly daring to breathe, unsure whether to expect outrage, incredulity, or calm acceptance. She smiled, and after a moment said, “Well, at last I get to sleep with him, if only vicariously through you!”

  I smiled, pleased that she was so accepting. I knew that I could share how special that relationship had been to me. “Only you and he have ever made me feel an orgasm like that,” I said. “Make me tingle. Too often it’s just an ejaculation.” I looked at her, and said, “Thank you.”

  She ran her hands across my chest and said, “I’m glad. You deserve it.”

  I chuckled and asked her, “Remember when Jo Ann said I looked like a young Brian Coney at the reading in Boston? Right before you said he was so sexy that you couldn’t talk in his presence? Oh, how I was biting my tongue!”

  She was curious about everything, then, asking questions about him, and my relationships with men in general. The questions were never accusatory, rather pure curiosity. I believe the notion may have even excited her, especially when I spoke of Brian. She did not ask me which I preferred, making love to a man or a woman, but rather what I thought were the best things one could do with either sex, and what I enjoyed most from each.

  I spoke of finally learning to receive pleasure with Brian, of how before I had simply been going through the motions of sex, with either men or women, without enjoying it. How sometimes a need for physical intimacy will well up inside me until it’s unbearable. How I need to touch and be touched, the feel of skin and skin. How sometimes I have to go through other things I don’t want, or enjoy, to get those. When it builds up inside me like that, I almost don’t have a choice. And there’s almost always a man who wants to get me into bed, and I go with him, for the brief moments of foreplay – before he has my pants off, and his own, his large erection pressing against me – and afterwards, as we lie together, our bodies touching.

  I think what I like most is lying in a lover’s arms afterwards. I can never fall asleep like that – I’m too sensitized to the feel of warm skin against my own – but I relish it for as long as I can. But one has to go through sex to get there. Even if I don’t enjoy the sex along the way, I’ll go through with it, for that luxurious sensation afterwards.

  If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been avoiding writing about the event which made me need to write this account. It’s so much easier to wallow in the background, spewing forth endless, easy details. There’s no emotional stake involved. Even talking about sex is easy, although revealing my desires and fantasies starts to get slightly uncomfortable. That’s why I just realized, as I was writing the above, how much I’d been avoiding the issue.

  Enough of cold feet.

  Laura is a portrait photographer, by profession, and we began taking photos of me, to try and reveal my inner self. I’ve never been terribly aware of what I look like, and a comment to this effect made Laura decide on this project. I readily agreed. I was curious what she could show me. I’d produced a body of work as a writer that was much more familiar to me than my own body.

  I hadn’t been photographed in a long time, and was very nervous as we began. For one thing, I truly had no idea what I looked like now. Until I had begun to grow my hair out a year ago, my image had not changed in the last seven, eight years. I’d shown Laura two photographs of me, one taken when I was thirteen, the other at twenty, and both looked identical. Now, with shoulder-length hair, and the start of a beard, I had no idea who I was. I’d still been using those photographs of my younger self as my mental image of myself. It’s how I’d always defined myself. That’s how I imagined I looked to other people, since I had no other way of seeing myself. Laura was going to show me who I was now.

  The first session went awfully. I’d taken the train out to her place after work Friday, and after a quick dinner, we went upstairs to her home studio, on the second floor of the house. I was so tense that it made Laura nervous as well, and seeing that she was now nervous only made me more so. It fed on itself in a vicious cycle, until the air was thick with uncomfortable frustration, and we finally called it quits. We went downstairs, leaving the studio set up in hopes that tomorrow we’d manage a better session. We made love that night, tension dissolving as slow caresses gave way to deeper passion.

  Waking the next morning, I felt contented as a cat as I stretched in her bed as she moved around me. “I wish you’d been this comfortable last night,” Laura remarked.

  “You should run get your camera,” I teased. “Or rather, you can walk. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Yes, you are, dear,” she said, tugging me upright and kissing me on the lips. She dropped a white terry-cloth robe in my lap. I smiled as I noticed the Hilton insignia embroidered onto it, and wondered if it had been stolen after a tempestuous weekend with one of her previous lovers, like something from the story she’d let me read. I put the robe on and followed her upstairs.

  She positioned me in front of a large free-standing oval mirror in her studio, and stood behind me. Reaching around my waist, she undid the sash of my robe, letting it fall open. “I want you to look at yourself, touch yoursel
f, until you know what it feels like from the inside,” she said. “Until there are no boundaries between the you in the mirror, and the you inside here.” She tapped her knuckles against my chest, and squeezed me gently from behind. Then, taking my hand in her own, she began guiding my fingers across my chest, pushing the robe from my shoulders until it fell to the floor. She released my hand and stepped back as I continued exploring, running my fingers over my arms and torso. I watched myself in the mirror, studying my body as my hands passed over each area. I felt the double sensation of touch, in my fingers and skin, not trying to analyse but simply feeling it.

  I explored every inch of myself, running my hands along the muscles of my neck, even exploring my scalp, the fingers running through my own long hair as they felt their way along the curves of my skull. I ran my hands down my chest and back, onto my legs, crouching down to reach all the way to my feet. I stood again, my hands always in motion, exploring new areas – my thighs, my buttocks. I caught sight of Laura in the mirror, noticing that both she and the camera were watching me. I smiled, and did not stop my exploration. I grew hard, reveling in the multiple voyeurism: looking at myself in the mirror, looking at Laura looking at me. I could tell she was turned on by our voyeurisms as well, and began tantalizing her, staring into her eyes through the lens as I moved my hands over my body, grabbing my erection with one hand as the other circled a nipple or explored elsewhere.

  And suddenly, I turned and looked at her over my shoulder, directly, no longer through the mirror. The camera clicked, the shutter winking open and shut like the lips of her labia moving apart and together again in fast motion. She put the camera down and I went to her, almost giddy with desire. We kissed fiercely. I undid the sash of her robe, and she shrugged out of it so quickly, like from one of those tales sailors tell of seals who shed their skins and become women. As her hands explored all the areas where my own had just been, I thrilled at the difference in the feelings. I remembered the mirror and looked up, to see my hands running up and down her back. I snorted with amusement, and pointed to the mirror. Laura turned towards it, and in that moment I leaned down to kiss her neck, her breasts, the entire time watching myself perform these actions in the mirror.