The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 5 (42 page)

“I have the gag ready, sweetheart, and other things to hurt you with,” Tal whispers. Something cold and hard probes rudely at my anus, then leaves. He grips my pelvis in both hands, tilting it forward.

Water’s running. A warm cloth is on my belly.

I moan as softly as I can when his delicate hands reach my cunt. He lathers briefly and I feel one of my small razors working the hair off the mound. He tells me to put my right foot up on the side of the tub.

He spreads the outer labia and lets one of his fingers stray just close enough to be sucked in. I gasp and rock towards him, my body ready to break into a rhythm. My cunt coats his finger and he stops as the scent fills the space between us.

“Don’t move, Rosa. I’m serious.”

I feel a cold length of metal, flat against me. I freeze and bear down hard on my terrified stomach.

“A straight razor is the only way to get a close shave up in here.” He tickles me and I clench my teeth.

“You know the safeword. But then we’d only be half-finished.”

Moments later he tells me to switch legs. My thighs are trembling. I press my left foot hard against the cold porcelain. He finishes with a few efficient swipes, then sponges away the soap.

A long silence follows. The air tickles strangely.

I feel him whisper something just over my clit. His mouth closes slowly over the naked, slick labia. His kiss is thorough. I move in circles, impatient, trying to press my clit against him. My inner lips swell towards him, as if begging for his tongue. He stops. I hear him swallow.

“Tal, fuck me.” He must be ready to finish this game.

In answer, he stands. His hand slides under my hair and presses, soft and firm, against my cheekbone and under my skull. It holds my head still as his other hand lands loudly on my left cheek, just enough to make my eyes sting.

I hear him leave.

When he returns, he takes the blindfold off, sliding the knot tenderly from my hair. He is holding a key, and he unfastens the right cuff just long enough to turn me around. My wrist clicks back into place. His face is satiny with sweat. He is still dressed. His eyes are dazed and grateful.

He kisses my cheek. “I’m going to take you out, Rosa.”

My blue silk dress is hanging on the back of the bathroom door. His rucksack is on the floor, the contents spilling. I see the gags and he laughs softly.

“Oh, she’s mad? She thought I was kidding?” He kisses my mouth and runs his tongue over my neck where the veins are throbbing. He whispers into my hair, “I love you. Are you all right, really?”

“Tal, it’s time to fuck me. We’re not really going out.”

He kneels and pulls something from the rucksack. A tiny, plastic, powder-blue butterfly, maybe an inch in diameter. Black straps dangle from it.

He lifts my feet out from under me and slips the straps round them. I hiss when the cuffs bite into me. When I can stand again, I realize he’s fitting the straps over my hips like a harness. I twist to look; the butterfly rests lightly over my raging clit. The labia are ready to swallow it. It looks ludicrously innocent. I can feel that I’m blushing, hard.

“You know the best part?” Tal’s narrow eyes are on mine.

“It matches my dress?”

His hand moves to his pocket and the butterfly jumps to life. It hovers, buzzing greedily as if I were a deep, thick-petaled flower. The vibrations spread through my labia to my ass. My cunt is furious and I pull at the shower rod. Plaster shakes loose at the bolts and settles to the floor. Tal looks ready to eat me.

“Tal, Tal.” My voice sounds small and tight. “It’s not enough. Tal.”

“Pace yourself.”

“You motherfucking . . . motherfucker.” I’m moving my legs, grinding my hips until I see him crouch down to watch more closely.

“That sounds like a hurt word. I’m afraid it’s quiet time again. But if you really want a gag, keep talking. I have this red one. It holds your jaws apart.”

He opens my cabinet and finds some make-up. He grabs a fistful of hair at the base of my skull while he wipes the sweat off my forehead and upper lip.

“You look delicious as you are. You don’t need any blush. I want to add lipstick, though.” He leans into my swinging breasts, still gripping my hair.

He murmurs like someone drunk with love as he licks the top of each breast. He can only manage two or three words between kisses. “If you try – to sneak away – and rub this off – you’ll wear bells – all night.” With the lipstick he smoothes my black nipples into long, sticky, crimson peaks. I want to cry but even that release won’t come.

When he turns the butterfly to low I can breathe again, but it still takes all my concentration to keep my hips still. I watch the long, smooth curve of his cheekbones as he reaches over my head. His throat is a little swollen.

“We’ve been meaning to go dancing for so long,” Tal purrs. He unlocks my wrists and massages my arms. He slips the dress over my head and helps me into my shoes.

He holds my head gently now, questions fluttering over his lashes again. I lean forward and bite his pink lower lip. When I pull back his eyes are pure limpid bliss.

Señor Frog’s is crowded on Friday nights, a tiny neon box, tucked under the freeway overpass. Salsa beats through its thin walls. Crowds huddle against the wind, hurrying over the black ice that gleams multicolored over the parking lot. Inside, chairs and tables have been pushed to the corners. The dance floor, the lobby, the dark hallway to the kitchen, every inch is thick with dancers. The crowds clear reverently for the best couples. A haze of smoke and perfumed steam hangs under the low ceiling.

I’m brought straight back to my cunt when the butterfly jumps again. My cry isn’t heard over the music, but I turn to Tal’s eyes, hard as ebony. I try to move away, but we’re pushed hip to hip. We’ve eased into a slow merengue, his hand resting on the small of my back. Our bellies cleave, his shirt buttons flick over my nipples. In my mind, I undress him quickly, suck him hard, and impale myself on him several times, here on the uneven floor. I doubt many would notice.

He tugs at my hair and kisses my ear. “Dance with anyone who asks.”

He’s gone. The butterfly is on low. I clasp my hands together tight, looking down.

Soon I’m asked to dance. A tall, quiet man tries to lead me in country dances I never learned. I do my best to follow, watching his feet, almost forgetting the relentless little sting of pleasure. I look up to find his eyes transfixed on my vivid nipples. I can’t keep them from pushing out farther. Just before the music finishes, the butterfly surges to high and I have to stop moving, clutching my hands over my mouth. Two desperate moans escape. My partner stops, alarmed, asking if he’s stepped on me. I do what I can to reassure him. I thank him, panting, and stumble away into the crowd.

I can’t find Tal.

But he must see me because the torment ebbs as soon as another man asks me to dance.

A hazel-eyed professor rests his tense fingers on my back, shaking as if I were a silk-covered bomb. He ignores the music and moves me in a slow orbit across the floor. He cries out at the end of the song when my fingernails sink into his wrist. I leave without looking at him.

A Haitian man, dreadlocks flying, twirls me on every fourth beat. The room spins in front of my eyes as his dark hands nudge my shoulder or tug my wrist. Our stomachs meet as a new phrase starts; his teeth flash as he laughs. He is irrepressible, radiant as a bride. I press my forehead to his at the end of the song, watching his full, soft lips as he speaks. Tal turns me up, and I pull away.

A very young student asks me. I wait for him to look up at my face before I say yes. His drenched silk shirt is nearly sliding off his smooth chest. He carefully strokes my neck as we settle into our rhythm and I smile, imagining that’s step five in some article he’s memorized: Ten Moves Chicks Dig.

He turns me and I see Tal, watching. Girls surround him like fireflies.

I make it to Tal before he can reach his pocket. He grabs at my wrist – but it’s I who leads him to the women’s bathroom.

Two elegant grandmas are sashaying out just as we arrive. One winks at me. I slam Tal against the far wall, harder than I meant to, then turn towards the door.

The ladies are still there.

“We’re not well,” I tell them. I lock the door.

I turn back to a heap of clothes. Tal, naked, is sitting on the counter, gleaming under the vanity lights. His skin is flushed and velvety as rose petals. His cock swings up, vein-covered. Stretched to its capacity, hard as a gold ingot, shimmering like fresh honey. His knuckles are white as he braces himself on the grimy ledge. His eyes are wide and starving.

My hair falls over his belly and clings to his wet skin. The sweet head of his cock nearly chokes me. I stretch my lips over him, tickling his balls, running my tongue over the crinkled, pulsing flesh. My jaws ache but I would do anything to coax that choked falsetto cry from him.

He’s begging now. I jump on the counter, one foot on either side of his waist. I lower into a squat, letting him nuzzle into my slick folds.

There’s a knock at the door. I slap Tal’s face when he looks over.

He grips the counter hard and pushes his pelvis up as best he can. I reach under him to feel his clenching ass. Sweat drips between my fingers. I lift my cunt away from him and bend down to lap at his stomach.

I start to come as soon as his nails sink into my shoulders. I am bent over so swiftly that the breath is knocked out of me. He fits his hand over my skull and presses my cheek into the countertop. He throws my dress over my back.

I try to reach back towards him, hands curling.

“Jesus, Tal. You have to do it.”

He slides in as soon as I begin to speak, so the last word stretches into an unhinged wail. He only has time for one slow rotation of his hips, caressing my wet, aching inner walls. The butterfly cracks as I grind it into the formica.

As he starts to thrust, I push my hands into the mirror so that I can writhe against him, pleasure flashing from the base of my spine, spreading through my body. For a long moment I’m half-dead, stretched still as my cunt opens and closes on him like a sea anemone.

He releases my head and collapses on me when he comes, sobbing, “Fuck, fuck,” with his last thrusts. Stars circle in front of my eyes, white and gold and violet.

Five minutes later, the icy wind sucks the air out of our lungs. We cling to each other, shaking, disheveled, laughing madly. The steady pulse of music fades behind us as we run to the car.

My palm pressed between Tamara’s small breasts, I feel her heartbeat. The raindrops pounding on the skylight reflect the city lights, provide our only illumination. Tamara’s fingers are entwined in my chest hair; my perception of the rhythm of my heart is intensified by the warm, steady pressure of her hand.

This mutual pressing of hands against chests is our nightly ritual. Our faces almost touching, we silently stare at each other in the gloom. This is how it is for me (and how I believe it must also be for her): I abandon myself to the dim reflection of light in her eyes, the rhythms of our hearts, the softness of her skin, the pressure of her hand; I let go of all conscious thought or intent. We whisper meaningless absurdities to each other. One of us says: “There are fishes so beautiful that cinnamon nectar spouts from their eyeballs”; the other replies: “Your mouth is infinite space and contains all the marvels of gravity.” Most nights we explore each other’s flesh, reveling in each other’s smells and touches. Deliriously abandoned in each other’s embrace, we reach orgasm, remembering the loss that binds us. Some nights, as tonight, we simply fall asleep, snugly interwined.

The cliché would be that I was jealous of Andrei’s mischievous charm, his tall-dark-and-handsome good looks, his quick wit, his svelte elegance, his easy way with women . . . but no. His omnipotent charm defused the pissing-contest resentment that heterosexual pretty boys usually provoke in the rest of the straight male population. Everyone – men, women, straights, gays – was helpless before his androgynous beauty, his complicit grin, and his playful brashness. Perhaps I was even more helpless than most.

Andrei avoided being in the company of more than one person at a time. Whoever he was with enjoyed the full intensity of his meticulous attention. I never felt so alive as when I basked in his gaze.

Andrei may have been desired by many, but few had their lust satisfied. Men weren’t even a blip on his sexual radar. Most women also fell short of his unvoiced standards – the existence of which he would always deny. The women who could boast of the privilege of walking down the street arm in arm with Andrei were tall and slim with graceful long legs, hair down to at least their shoulder blades, subtle makeup, and cover-girl faces. And, most importantly, they had to be sharp dressers. Age was not an issue. I’d first met him when we were both nineteen, and during the seven years of our friendship, I’d seen him hook up with girls as young as sixteen and women as old as fifty-five. All that mattered was that they have the look. Actually, that wasn’t all. Andrei possessed a probing intelligence. He read voraciously, and he expected his assembly-line lovers to be able to discuss at length the minutiae of his favourite books. Invariably, he grew bored with his women, or contemptuous if they read one of the books in his pantheon and proceeded to display the depth of their incomprehension. Rarely would he declare to the injured party that their short-lived romance was over. Instead, at the end of an affair, he’d simply vanish for several weeks without a word. Even I – his closest friend – never found out where he vanished to.

Ten years ago, Tamara had been one of those women. The last of those women.

At nineteen, I moved to Montreal from Deep River, Ontario. I wanted to learn French, to live in a cosmopolitan environment. See foreign films on the big screen. Go to operas. Museums. Concerts. Art galleries. Listen to street musicians. Hear people converse in languages I couldn’t understand.

I never did learn French. I’m often embarrassed about that. Montreal isn’t nearly as French as most outsiders think, and it’s all too easy to live exclusively in its English-language demimonde.