by Rose Caraway
I heard my voice drift from my throat. There’s the wind, I thought. “Jesus,” Alyssa breathed. She put more weight on my chest, her left hand’s fingers knotting around a nipple, hard. Her right hand moved frantically over her clit. Damien’s breath came short and hard in my ear, and his hands pulled roughly at my hips with every thrust. They sped forward, each revolution coming more quickly than the previous. My sigh became a moan, became a croon.
“Oh Jesus, oh fuck, wait for me,” Alyssa sputtered. “You two fucking wait for me, oh fuck, fuck, fuck…” And she came, her inner muscles pulsing and squeezing me. Damien took his cue and thrust deep inside me one last time, shuddered and cried out. Heat enveloped me, like the gush of air from an oven door just opened. My song went ragged, turned half scream, half bellow, and my limbs clutched and quivered. I rolled off of Damien and out of Alyssa and we ended sprawled over cold tile, shaking and exhausted.
“Fuck,” Alyssa whispered.
“Fuck is right,” I answered. “Help me get this thing off.”
The lab coat beamed at me all through the ride to the airport. I’d persuaded the suits to stay behind. A headache, I said.
“Hope you feel better,” she said between proud-parent smiles.
“I feel fine,” I reassured her. “Happy to be getting back.”
“Good,” she said. “You certainly did your job. We have so much footage we’ll never be able to use it all. And the six-star review made the marketing department’s whole year.”
“Well, it’s a killer product. Anyhow, that was my bargaining chip.”
The lab coat looked confused. “Bargaining chip?”
“You know,” I said. She shook her head. “So they’d let me keep my cock.”
Her eyes blazed. “My prototype? They let you…”
“Yes. As Lys said, I’ve grown attached. Anyhow, it’s not like they’d let it be used for anything else—unhygienic, you know.”
She deflated somewhat. “I suppose. I’d hoped it could be saved…for posterity or something.”
“Oh, it will be,” I said, patting her knee. “Saved for posteriors. I promise that every time I use it I will think of you.” She turned her face in embarrassment at that—the kid was in the wrong industry. I stared at her intently. After long seconds, I said, “Speaking of which. Have you tried it?”
Her head snapped to look at me, then away again, her gaze trailing out the window. “No,” she finally said, her voice very flat. Disappointment? Regret?
“Well,” I said, reaching into my bag. “I really think you should. Like you said, it’s your prototype, your baby. If anyone should get to try this particular dick, it’s you. I’ve thought about it a lot, and though I’m very…protective of my new body part, you’re the one person I can imagine using it. I really think you should.”
The lab coat looked at me, what, wistfully? “I can’t,” she said.
“Sure you can,” I soothed. “There are motels near the airport. I’ll get the room. Driver?” I rapped on the glass. “Driver, take us to the first motel you see.”
“No…that’s really…” the lab coat tried to break in. But she quieted once we made an immediate shift onto an off-ramp. She sat back in the limo’s leather, nervously twisting her hands.
She’d been locked in the bathroom for almost twenty minutes. I tried to control my impatience. What’s so fucking hard? Just clip the damn thing on…
“Jane?” her plaintive voice wafted through the door. “Jane, I need help.”
I knocked quietly and entered. She sat naked and primly cross-legged on the edge of the tub, covering her very small breasts with one arm. “I can’t…” she began, her lip quivering. I lifted her soon-to-be cock from the counter and squeezed the clit-clamp, opening it for her. “It’s pretty simple,” I said, trying to keep the exasperation from my voice.
“No, it’s not that part, of course I know that part,” she bristled. Her eyes indicated a tangle of black on the toilet seat.
“Oh!” I exclaimed. “The harness. Of course. Those things are a bitch if you don’t know what you’re doing. Here, give me your leg.” In a few deft movements, I had her mostly trussed, but left the straps loose. “The dildo has to go in before you tighten,” I explained, fitting her cock-to-be into the harness-hole. “There,” I said with satisfaction as I pulled the last strap tight. “You’re almost a man.”
“Almost,” she mused, staring down at herself. She had removed her arm from her breasts and stood naked and seemingly unashamed. She gazed at herself in the mirror above the sink. “I don’t look it from the waist up,” she said with a chuckle.
“Below the belt’s what’s important,” I stated, and knelt before her. With one motion, I gathered the clit-clamp and parted her labia. She gasped slightly, but didn’t pull away. “Ready?” I asked, looking up at her.
“Ready,” she said firmly, clearly steeling herself for the moment when she…
…stretched, elongated, grew.
“My god,” she whispered.
“My god is right,” I replied. “You done good, kiddo.” And then I couldn’t resist. A job well done should be its own reward, but a little icing never hurts. Besides, how could she tell how well she’d done without a little proof? I put her cock all the way in my mouth.
“Gak,” she gurgled, and tried to push me away. Then she cooed and smoothed my hair. “God god god,” she said. “God. I don’t…go for women really.”
I pulled her out of my mouth long enough to ask, “Make an exception?” before drawing her back inside.
“Um,” she said. “Um.”
The third time was the best. As I’d thought, she needed a little acceleration time, but she was a ferocious little tiger after her second crashing, brain-bending orgasm. I had been on top, riding her hard and fast until she cried out and beat the sheets with her fists. She then unceremoniously threw me onto my back and proceeded to fuck me missionary like the coarsest, roughest male porn-star you’ve ever seen.
“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,” she said, one “fuck” per thrust, until her whole body went rigid and straight as a board, her cock deep inside me.
As the hard manliness left her, she curled up soft and pliable on my belly, her fingers tracing my face. She stayed inside me, inside my warmth so soft. I smoothed her hair as a mother would, or as the first girl you fuck really ought to.
“Fuck is right,” I said, and checked the clock to see if I’d make my plane.
Three Legs in the Evening
Janine Ashbless
She found him among the tombs in the Grove of Colonus, outside Athens. The search had taken longer than she’d anticipated because it was so hard to ask people about him directly, but she had time on her side, and determination. She discovered him, in the end, amidst the arum lilies and the gnarled trunks of the ancient olive trees, sitting with his back to a sarcophagus, picking at the strings of a lyre.
He was no great musician, she thought.
She stopped in the dappled shade cast by the glaucous leaves, studying him. He seemed to be alone, for which she was grateful. He wasn’t young—of course not: hadn’t he left behind two grown sons and two daughters of marriageable age?—but his wavy hair was still brown, though his beard was striped with silver. A well-built man, as far as she could tell, and what she could see of his face was handsome, though most was masked by a strip of linen bound several times about his eye sockets. As to what lay beneath the bandage…she knew the stories. He’d gouged his own eyes with his wife’s cloak-pin, in horror at his crime. It was merciful of him to hide the ruination beneath from visitors.
She stepped out from her tree trunk into the open ground. At once a prick-eared dog jumped up from where it had been resting next to its master, and ran toward her, barking.
“Agrius?” The man rested his hands on the lyre strings. “Is that you?”
The dog fell silent, but she didn’t answer him.
“Agrius?” He tilted his head sharply, listening. “Who’s t
here?”
She wasn’t used to conversing with men. She ran her tongue nervously across her lips.
“Who’s there?” he repeated defensively, lurching to his feet. “If you’ve come to stare, show some courtesy and declare yourself. I’m no beast in a cage, to be gloated at.” He put his hand to his hip, searching for a sword-hilt that was no longer there.
Yes, she’d been right, she thought: he was tall, with the frame of a well-muscled man growing leaner with age. He wore a long chiton, the robe of a free man. Behind his obvious wariness, there was a dusty pride to his stance that reminded her he’d been a king once. King of Thebes.
“Come back and gawk tomorrow,” he told the air about him. “I want to eat, and I’ve had enough of strangers today.”
“Are you sure about that, Oedipus?” she asked.
Her voice revealed her gender, of course, and the stiffness dropped out of his shoulders. His mouth pulled awry as he turned toward her. “How many of you?”
“Just me.”
“On your own?”
“Well, you hardly present a threat to my virtue.”
For a moment his jaw tightened, but then he shook his head. “Well, that’s true enough,” he muttered. “I’m no danger to anyone now, maid or man. I’m…nothing.”
“You are a legend.”
He grimaced. He’d kept in contact with the stone of the tomb as he stood, so as to orient himself. Now he turned away and laid the lyre carefully upon the slab of the lid. “I’m expecting Agrius with food soon,” he said. “Have you seen him? Just a boy—so high—I pay him to fetch things from the market for me and light the hearth fire at night.” He gestured in the direction of a makeshift hut set back among the trees.
“I saw him down at the bottom of the hill—he was playing in the stream with some friends. So I brought your food up here myself.” She hefted the bag she was carrying, though he couldn’t see the gesture and she instantly felt a little foolish. “Where would you like it?”
Oedipus shrugged and patted the flat top of the tomb, and she came forward with her small burden.
“You’re not afraid to eat among the dead?” she wondered. “Or live out here?”
His head tilted. He was working out exactly where she stood, she could tell, from sound alone. He was trying to picture her just from the timbre of her voice. The tiny flare of his nostrils betrayed him inhaling the fugitive perfume of her skin.
“Who else would have me, except the dead? At least they don’t bother me with questions, and if they stare at me by night, well, I do not notice.” He smiled. “Besides, they’re centuries old, my neighbors. If there are any tattered fragments of curses left among their bones and dust…what would I have to fear? How could I be cursed more?”
She smiled too, sadly. Laying the bundle upon the stone, she unwrapped the contents. “Here. Cheese and bread. An onion. Some dried meat—ham, I’m guessing. A little flask of wine. Some walnuts, I see. Your Agrius has done you proud.”
“I pay him,” Oedipus muttered, but added, “He’s a good lad,” as he groped with uncertain hands across the repast. His fingers were long and strong with blunt square-cut nails. She found them curiously enticing.
“Shall I crack the nuts open for you?”
He hesitated, nodded, then tilted his head. “Is that rain?”
“What?”
“That noise. Sounds like rain.”
She smoothed a hand across her hair. “I don’t hear anything,” she said, finding a loose stone and beginning to smack the shells.
“You sound young,” he observed. “Your voice is very pleasant.”
“I’m not that young.” But she smiled, pleased.
“Would you care to share my food? The cheese here is salty; not as good as Thebes cheese, but not bad.”
“Thank you.”
“Help yourself.” He turned away, a piece of bread in his hand. “Here, Apollo.” He whistled. “Come get some dinner!”
“You name your dog after a god?” she asked, astonished.
“The gods tooled me over from birth. What can I do in return, except insult them?”
“You’re brave.” She was impressed, despite herself. She’d never dared to curse the gods.
“No. I just have nothing left to lose. My name is shit under every sandal. Even children too young to be told what I did, know to laugh at me… Where is that dog?”
“You’ll find him eventually. Be careful, Oedipus: the gods are a vindictive lot.”
“You think I don’t know that? Did I ever do anything wrong, knowingly? Did I blaspheme or break the law or abuse my position? And yet…it was all the Oracle at Delphi, you know. If it hadn’t spoken those warnings”— he almost spat the word—“none of it would have happened.”
She separated out kernels from shell pieces carefully, and heaped the nuts next to the block of cheese. “Tell me, will you?”
“Ahh.” Oedipus curled his lip, his voice growing colder. The piece of bread in his hand fell back upon the cloth. “You want to hear, do you? All about my…humiliation? Of course, what else should I have expected? Why else come and goad the freak?”
“I didn’t call you a freak.”
“You don’t have to. I’ve heard it often enough before. You think you are the first person to come here and beg for my dirty story? You think you’re the only one in Greece with a voyeur’s itch?”
“How dare you,” she hissed softly. “You know nothing about me, Oedipus.”
“I know you’re getting wet at the thought of how disgusting I am.”
For a moment she was speechless. The horrible thing was that he was right, to a point—she could feel a slick warmth in her core, unexpected and sly. It wasn’t the thought of his transgressions that did that, though. It was simply being able to stand close and converse with a handsome man, to look into his face and watch the play of his expression, to let her gaze rove his body—all without fear of being seen herself, all without consequences. It was such a novelty. But she couldn’t confess to that. “You,” she snapped, “are very arrogant, for a man who needs help to check for shit-stains on his clothes.”
Oedipus laughed, softly. “Oh no—on the contrary: I have no pride left at all. I have to make a living somehow, don’t I? I’ll tell you my story if you like; I’ll tell anyone, man or woman, priestess or whore.” He swung his hand out, inviting the whole world. “Come feast your ears on my shame. Wallow in my iniquity. Despise and pity me all you like. It will cost you two obols.”
She laid her hand out over the stone and dropped two small silver coins. “There.”
For a moment he seemed to stare at her through his bandages. Crows called in the trees. He sucked his lips.
“It’s usually men who come and ask, you know,” he said with insincere amiability. “They want to know the intimate details. What it was like fucking Queen Jocasta. Was she still beautiful when I married her, or as soggy as an overripe apricot? Did she feel at all familiar when I stuck it inside her? Did she not look at me and recognize her dead husband’s features, or did that only thrill her? Did I take her first before, or behind, or in the mouth, on our wedding night? Did she beg me for more?” He smirked. “So…is that the sort of thing you want to know?”
“I want to know,” she said, “about Phix.”
He almost took a step back from the tomb. Instead, he caught himself and went very still. “How do you know her name?”
“I’m the one who asked for a story. And I want to hear the things you don’t tell other people.”
“Really.” His neck was taut and now his hand curled, almost to a clench. He was taller than her, and if he had been sighted she would have been within easy snatching distance. Respectable women never came this close to a strange man, not on their own. Certainly not when the man had such an obscene reputation. “The things I don’t tell other people?” he wondered. “That won’t be hard. They’re only interested in the end of the tale.”
“But everybody knows how it ended.
I didn’t have to come find you, to hear that bit of the story.”
“Huh. Well. If you like, then. You’re not frightened of a story from a man’s point of view?”
“All stories are told from a man’s point of view,” she sighed.
“I meant…”
“I know what you meant. Go ahead. I want to hear.”
He nodded, and moistened his dry lips. “Very well. Not the end, then. The beginning. You have to understand it from the beginning, or you’ll not believe.” He leaned back against the sarcophagus. “I was brought up as a prince of the palace of Corinth. Son, so far as I knew, of the king and queen there. Ignorant that I was a foundling, adopted—because everyone who remembered had been instructed to keep silent upon the subject. And there was a girl there— Is this the beginning? I’m not used to telling this part. There was a servant girl there in the palace…a Libyan…who had the most beautiful breasts.”
He paused, and tilted his head back, as if seeing the long-lost girl with his empty eyes.
“She was older than me, of course. I used to follow her around the palace when I was a youth, just to stare at those breasts. They were the color of pine honey, deep-clefted and firm and big, you understand, really big, swelling against her dress. And I wanted nothing in all the world so much as to lift those ample globes in my hands and suck upon her nipples and bury my head between them and suffocate there.” He smiled wistfully. “Don’t get me wrong—she was pretty too, with a big smile and a waist like so”—he shaped it, tiny beneath his masculine hands—“and a fine rump as round as the full moon that waggled when she walked. I liked all of her, but oh…her breasts had me in thrall.
“You know, even if I weren’t blind, I don’t think I’d ever see a pair so perfect again.
“All the servants sniggered at me. ‘Here comes your puppy-dog again, Clio,’ they would tell her: ‘wagging his little tail as he follows you.’ And she laughed at me too, but gently. She liked me. The day she caught me by the hand and pulled me into a storeroom and said, ‘Time to do more than just stare at my tits, Prince Oedipus,’ as she pulled open her clothes and laid my hands upon her… I think that was the happiest moment of my life. I felt like a man must feel touching a goddess. I felt like I was holding the sun and the moon in my hands. I felt like all the mysteries and treasures of the earth had been given to me.