by Kerri Sharpe
Contents
About the Book
About the Authors
Title Page
The Art of Fucking
Public Relations
Pickup Girl
Union Blues
Cabin Pressure
Wet Walls
Copyright
About the Book
Quickies – a collection of bestselling short, sexy erotica from Black Lace
Some girls strip away more than inhibitions to get what they need ...
After work, Laura knows no restraint when it comes to restraint ...
Sometimes pick-up trucks contain the sexiest loads ...
Humiliation in the boardroom is not always a bad thing ...
The earth moves for Natalie at 20,000 feet ...
Dear Janie follows one mystery all the way ...
Indulgent, sensual, taboo, outrageous and always, always erotic, Black Lace short stories are the best in modern sexy fiction. Fun, irreverent and deliciously decadent, this arousing little anthology is a showcase of the diversity and imagination of modern women’s desires. So dip into the most entertaining erotic fiction around.
About the Authors
Black Lace authors in this collection are: Nikki Magennis, Mathilde Madden, A.D.R. Forte, Monica Belle, Maya Hess and Kristina Lloyd.
There are currently 10 volumes of Quickies to collect.
Quickies – 9
A Black Lace erotic short-story collection
The Art of Fucking
Nikki Magennis
MY FLATMATE COULDN’T even imagine the desert that was my sex life. She leant back in her chair, swinging her long tanned legs. Sandy’s body always seemed to fall beautifully into place – wherever she was, the room would arrange itself round her. She looked like Botticelli’s Venus, only with more lipstick.
If Sandy was a classic Italian painting, I was an abstract expressionist mess. As we sat in the sun-filled kitchen, sharing tea and our Sunday hangovers, I compared the two of us.
Not a good idea. My short fingernails were rimmed with dark-blue paint, a perpetual stain which never seemed to scrub off my hands. Sandy’s were shining and polished, and just long enough to suggest they’d been raking over a man’s back all night long.
They had. The night before, Sandy had scored.
‘An absolute raging beast,’ she said. ‘He fucked like a tornado. I mean howling and screaming all the way.’
In fact, I’d heard the howls of the raging beast and the rattling of Sandy’s headboard in the small hours. I’d covered my head with a pillow and tried to block it out. Just another loud reminder of how different Sandy’s life was from mine.
I’d lain awake for a few hours, wondering how the hell I’d ended up where I was.
I’d just moved in with Sandy after splitting up with my live-in boyfriend, and was still adjusting to life in a shared flat. Sandy’s wild lifestyle and messy habits intimidated me, so I spent most of my time in my studio. It was a dingy building in the wrong end of town; a quiet, cold ten feet square space where I wrestled with my own obsession – painting.
It was a difficult beast, and fickle too. I needed a truckload of expensive and potentially lethal poisonous materials, plenty of uninterrupted solitude and the right kind of light.
North light. You need a flat even light that doesn’t splash itself over the canvas or turn orange at the end of the day. A steady source that is never brash and never surprising. It felt like my life was lived in a constant north light. The smells of turpentine, linseed oil and white spirit surrounded me. After a day in the studio I’d be giddy with fumes, the colours of the street outside on the way home would shock me. Nothing I painted could ever compete with the noise and the huge blast of electric reality that confronted me when I stepped out into King Street. I painted big canvases, used strong colours, threw daring shapes into the compositions. It never quite clicked. My life was all about reflecting what I saw, trying to show the huge terror and beauty of the world. But I always felt like I was watching from the sidelines, painting half-hearted pictures of a life not fully lived.
Sandy, by contrast, lived in the eye of a beautiful storm. I’d been amazed at how fast she tore through men. She bedded whichever passing guy caught her fancy, discarded them afterwards like used tissues, moved on to the next one. And I? I was still stuck in the melancholy aftermath of heartbreak, still attached to my ex, unsure of how to change or of exactly what I needed. Knowing I needed something.
‘A good fuck’, was Sandy’s opinion. Inevitably, for a woman who relished every juicy, sticky detail of a one-night stand, her answer to all life’s problems was a good fuck. Now, I was a little naïve when it came to loveless encounters. I guess I was a romantic at heart – I liked the slow build-up, the shy smiles and late-night conversations. I liked to feel it was meaningful before I fell into bed with someone. Steady, gradual. Sex like the north light, no surprises and no brief flashes. The smell of love in the air before I joined my body with a man’s. I didn’t know if I could sleep with someone I didn’t love, though it made me feel oldfashioned to say it.
‘But who says it’s not love?’ Sandy threw her hands in the air like she was tossing my morals aside. ‘There’s a hundred kinds of love out there, honey, a different one for every person you meet. Why not try tasting a little sample of what’s possible? A mouthful of fun? An adventure, even. God knows, you could use a little excitement.’
Monday I trooped to the studio as usual, to face the current work in progress. I uncovered the palette. Limited to three colours at the moment – raw umber, Prussian blue, a little squeeze of scarlet. I was working on an interior, a picture of a kitchen. Just a table and chairs, a window, the angles of the walls. Simple, quiet, shadowy. The kind of room you could sit in and be alone with your thoughts. I was working up the background, layering washes of thin paint over each other until the colours merged into a muddy neutral depth. Deepening the shadows. I plugged in my Walkman – I like to listen to something dark while I’m working. Mazzy Star played some haunting guitar chords, and I dipped my brush into the turps. Softened the bristles, rubbed at the squeeze of blue paint till it melted into a liquid pool. Approached the easel and faced the canvas, hand poised over it, ready to make a mark. I saw where the colour needed deepening, and started work.
And then I was joined, hand moving with eye, locked into a space where no one could touch me. Wordless, nothing but the light and the colour and the resinous smells of the studio, music washing straight into me, suffusing me with steel guitar and a voice singing songs I knew so well I didn’t even listen to the words. Painting an imagined room, losing myself in a place that didn’t exist.
The hand fell on my shoulder like a thunderclap. I jumped so high I knocked the edge of the turps tin with my hand and saw the splash of dirty blue water explode over the floor, the palette, my jeans. I looked up to meet the startled gaze of the guy who’d just touched me. In my ears, some old electro song was still playing, and I felt like I was still locked in the dream state with a stranger intruding rudely into my headspace. He had the grace to look upset – a pale face with blue eyes that were cracked with shock and concern. Delicate lips that were moving fast, forming words I couldn’t hear.
‘What?’ I said, pulling the earphone away. The cold sound of real life rushed against my ear, mixed with the sound of the guy’s apology.
‘. . . so sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.’ His voice was pleasantly rich, that warm woody tone that some Americans have. Sounded like a bass guitar, a good whisky, an autumn day. Sounded male.
‘Am I late? I had a bit of trouble finding the place,’ he continued, taking off his jacket and looking around for a chair to put it down. I was mildly confused
by his actions, but still lost in that dizzy, detached space I get to when I’m painting, and mesmerised also by the sight of him. A tangle of tarry-black curls that was shockingly dark against his white skin. Those perfectly drawn lips, a full Cupid’s bow as red as carmine that gave his face a cruel, tender beauty. His cheekbones sat high and proud. And the lines of his body – I could see even under the loose-fit trousers and shirt that he had a sculpted body. The way he moved. The way he stood, jacket in hand, letting the clothes hang from his bones with a silent confidence that suggested that underneath he was hard and perfect.
‘Uh, are we working in here?’ he asked, looking a little confused by my silence. I stared back, trying to figure it out. His lovely blue eyes narrowed.
‘Jo?’
Then it clicked. ‘Joe’ worked next door. Big photo-realist charcoals. Young men, mostly. He hired models from time to time, had the poor bastards pose in the icy studio space for a tenner an hour. This guy was a stray. I opened my mouth, to laugh, to tell him his mistake. To point him in the direction of Joe’s space.
Instead, I surprised myself. Perhaps the fumes had overcome me.
‘Yeah.’ I nodded. ‘We’re working in here.’
And that little white lie, I realised afterwards, was where I crossed the line. I’d stolen Joe’s model. I was telling a stranger to strip for me. Strangely calm, but with a heart that was hammering like a drum, I watched as he moved across the space.
Remembering life-drawing etiquette, I shook myself pulled the curtain across the doorway, and ducked outside for a moment, It’s fine to stare at the model while you’re drawing them, but modesty forbids you watch them undress.
I left a chink. Enough to see my borrowed model unbutton his shirt and quickly, casually remove it. Skin like marble, firm and smooth. The form of him, the curves and the tense swell of his muscles. His low-slung trousers showed a pair of sharp hip bones, and I swallowed as he reached down to pop the button, unzip. He pulled down trousers and shorts in one movement, revealing the graceful legs of a dancer and the dark mess of his pubic hair. In the centre nested his long soft cock and the dusky-rose sac of his balls. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Watched his cock swing gently as he piled his clothes on the floor and stood waiting. Hugging himself, rubbing his arms to try and warm himself.
The studio temperature usually hovered around ten degrees – a fucking icebox no matter how warm it was outside.
Clearing my throat, I walked back in and started ferreting around for a sketchbook, a stick of charcoal.
‘How do you want me?’
His question could have been entirely innocent, but as I looked at him standing there hugging himself, calmly displaying his full-frontal cock and balls, I thought I saw a faint spark in his expression. The slightest curl of his lip.
‘It only takes eye contact.’ I remembered Sandy’s lesson on how to tumble a man.
‘A little smile. That’s all. Then it’s just a matter of finding out how to cross the distance between you and touch them.’
Well, I couldn’t just march up and grab him. No matter how strokable that gorgeous body looked, I had a charade to keep up.
‘Uh, standing, is that OK? One hand on your shoulder, your weight on the right foot. Yeah, that’s it.’
I couldn’t help it, the way he looked. I couldn’t resist recreating the pose of David, the classic stance. A tilt to the hips, the suggestion of vulnerability despite the strength of the body. I was playing with him. But he seemed willing to go along with it. He shifted and relaxed into the pose. He turned his face and showed the sweep of his neck. I could bite into that, I thought, imagining the smell of him – aftershave and soap and the sweet tang of male sweat.
I drew him slowly, pulling the charcoal over the paper like I was stroking the contours of his flesh. Smudging the lines with my finger, I had the sense of running my fingertip along his arm, across his abdomen, down his hipbone. His body hair was sparsely scattered – little tufts under his arms, a trail from his belly button spreading out over his groin. I worked deeper with the charcoal, enjoying the chance to ogle his cock. Keeping my face poker straight. Drinking in his beauty.
The Renaissance artists believed the study of the male form was the highest of arts. As I drew my model’s beautiful form, I felt inclined to agree.
I was so absorbed by the task, it was only after half an hour that I noticed the shake in his legs.
‘Oh Christ, sorry. Do you want a break?’ I said.
He relaxed immediately, shaking his limbs out and slapping at his leg. ‘Circulation’s gone,’ he said, rubbing vigorously.
The sound was like charcoal scribbling over paper, and it made me want to feel his hands on my body with the same friction.
‘Pins and needles,’ he said. ‘Fuckin’ cold in here, too.’
‘I don’t really notice it any more,’ I said.
‘No, you’re totally absorbed. Can I have a look?’
I blushed. I actually blushed. Showing someone how you see them naked is a tricky moment. Still, I couldn’t refuse. I stepped back, and let him walk round to see the sketches on the easel. Now we were close. The gap between us, as Sandy described it, was very small. I stood as still as I could. My hands were black with charcoal dust.
He nodded, and looked at me thoughtfully, like he was appraising me. ‘Beautiful drawing. You have a mark –’ He reached up to rub at my cheek. Let his thumb push down to my mouth. Held my chin and tilted my face up. Leant over, brought his face closer to mine, his eyes glittering and his mouth open, hot breath on my skin.
The distance reduced to zero and his mouth was on me, wet lips covering mine in a warm shock. All of a sudden the cold tension of the studio was flooded with sensation – the quiet northern light was eclipsed by the movement of this man against me, his hot human aliveness crashing into my world, encircling me, gripping me in those naked marble-smooth arms. Everything was dark, but dark in the way of flesh, with a heartbeat and a pulse and the vivid animal sounds filling my ears.
I didn’t pull away, and I didn’t miss the smell of love in the air. Instead, I felt the delicious surprise of an unfamiliar man kissing me, and the want and the need to feel him closer yet. Michelangelo always said the sculpture was already in the stone, and he just had to work out how to find it. When the model kissed me, it felt like he’d found a new image of me, of what I could be. Like he’d dug out the long-forgotten, reckless girl I used to be from where she was buried deep in the cold hard rock and brought me back to life.
His prick was stiffening, pressing against my leg, while he slid his tongue into my mouth and we tasted each other.
‘A mouthful of fun,’ Sandy had said.
I’d never been so hungry in my life. I knelt.
The wood planks of the studio floor were hard under my knees as I took hold of the guy’s hips and pulled him towards me. I buried my face in his pubic hair, letting it scratch against my mouth. His cock bobbed against my cheek and I nuzzled at it, feeling the smoothness and the heat of what I’d been longing for for months. I’d spent a half-hour looking at his body, trying to recreate it on paper, but drawing his beauty was nowhere near close enough to this. Touching him, taking him in my mouth, sucking on him. Tasting the bitter-sweet honey of his pre-cum as his cock swelled and grew rock hard.
Fuck drawing, I thought. It doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. I realised just how flat a picture can be, as his hands tangled in my hair and I pulled at his ass, sticking a fingertip into his hole and feeling the corresponding spasm in his cock. This wasn’t static, everything was in motion, stimulating all my senses at once, and we were sinking inside each other, intertwining, pushing and pulling at each other. He was tumbling down to kneel in front of me and his hands were burrowing into my clothes, seeking out the pockets of heat, the dark and wet spots that connected straight to my brain. His fingers ran into my knickers, slid quickly between my thighs and into my pussy. A slight resistance, before he found the groove and the moisture of
my pussy and dived into it. Two fingers, three, jammed inside me, opening me up, wriggling in there with a funny little shock before I felt the rhythm of it, the to and fro rocking that made me feel like my body was caught in a tide. Waves ebbing and flowing, he was imitating the beat of sex that would sink into me and pull me under.
I couldn’t even get my jeans off before he was pushing me over, holding his cock to guide it in and nudging at my slit.
‘Stop, stop, wait,’ I said, remembering one of Sandy’s rules. ‘We should use a condom.’
He nodded, breathless and beyond speaking now, then leapt up nimbly to find his jeans and check the pockets. He sprinted back to where I lay with a foil square in his hand.
‘You brought one to work?’ I couldn’t quite believe it. Was I the only person in Glasgow who didn’t anticipate a casual fuck at lunchtime?
My model grinned, biting at the foil to rip it open. He had a wicked smile. ‘Boy scout motto. Always “Be Prepared”. You never know who you’ll bump into.’
I wasn’t in any position to argue, so I gave in and just marvelled at the sight of him, cock in hand, unrolling the rubber down his length and checking to see it was on tight. I lay back.
But he wasn’t ready. The pause seemed to have given him an idea. ‘How about we even the score a little?’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘You’ve spent half an hour staring at every inch of my naked ass. But I haven’t even had a peek. I feel like I hardly know you.’
I laughed. It was a little one-sided – a fully clothed artist taking advantage of her new employee.
Even so, I felt strangely shy as I struggled out of my jeans and sweatshirt. Untying my shoelaces, I could feel his eyes on me, curious and searching. My skin seemed fragile, tender – as if it had never been exposed to daylight before. I was struck forcefully with the realisation of what I was doing – getting naked and amorous with a total stranger. I unhooked my bra and forced myself to resist the desire to cover my breasts. I slipped out of my panties and sat back while he looked at me.