The Mammoth Book of Erotic Romance and Domination Page 2

  When she did finally click open the attachment and begin reading, it was the tone of his writing, even more than the content, that first began to waken the spark in her that she had not felt for so long she had nearly forgotten it had ever existed. His voice was strong and, to Nelle’s mind, masculine. But the novel was not written from the point of view of a man, but rather that of a young woman. A dancer, who performed a series of erotic routines on stage in London’s music halls and the homes of wealthy patrons in the twenties and thirties.

  The heroine of Joseph’s novel was not described as beautiful in any traditional sense of the word. Nor did she meet any of the other characteristics that were typical of the romance books that Nelle was now accustomed to trudging her way through, a genre that she was so often assigned to work on.

  His heroine, Joan, was tall – too tall – and thin to the point of lankiness, flat-chested and with hair that was a perfectly ordinary shade of brown. Not unlike Nelle’s own appearance.

  Joan was not described in a more flattering light when filled with the heat of lust, or love, either, a state that possessed her often, as she was highly sexed. In fact, Joseph’s writing was as cold as it was sparse and elegant, and his sex scenes verged on the anatomical.

  There were many sex scenes. But none described lovemaking as Nelle had ever known it. She was not even sure that sex was the right word to use, as most of the erotic passages did not include penetration, but rather narrated the heroine’s elaborate dance routines, which became more and more perverse under the tutorage of her mentor and lover, an older, stern Russian man, who by the end of it had Joan performing ballet naked, blindfolded and en pointe with knives affixed to her shoes.

  It was animalistic, shocking, yet beautiful, and it wasn’t until Nelle reached the end of the text that she realized she had stopped actually copy-editing by the third chapter and simply allowed herself to be carried along by the flow of the story until the early hours of the morning when she reached its final chapter and then had to start over again, this time with an eye to her work.

  Joseph’s story had continued to fill her thoughts when she finally switched off her desk lamp and slid into bed. She had not been able to sleep until she had slipped her hand between her thighs and brought herself to orgasm with the artful movements of her fingertips playing over her clitoris, as his images played in her mind, only in her imagination it was not the heroine, Joan, who danced naked on knife blades in front of a faceless audience, but her, Nelle.

  She had typed his name into her Google search bar the following morning with the guilty feeling of someone steaming the envelope of correspondence meant for another. Nelle heartily disapproved of nosiness, but she could not seem to assuage her curiosity. Besides, she told herself, it was research. Finding something about the man himself and his past career might help her to better understand his current work.

  What she discovered surprised her at first. But the more she read, the more it made sense, in light of his novel.

  Joseph had once been a chemist by education and trade. He had published a handful of academic articles in obscure journals, most related to the study of minerals, and had worked as a teacher for a time, before leaving to pursue a career as a magician. Albeit one of a different nature, where the illusions he unveiled in public had a touch of the supernatural and proved more subtle than pyrotechnic. In the rare interviews he had granted, he would talk of opening up the door to secret worlds, which could be accessed through abolishing one’s sense of reality through a mastery of the senses.

  The erotic nature of his story then, was a surprising as well as a logical departure. Try as Nelle might, she couldn’t erase his lines and the tale remained painted across her mind, even days later.

  With the return of her sexual urges, she regained some of her usual joy for life. The leaves on the trees seemed brighter. Her daily swims at the local lido in nearby London Fields again made her feel as though she was gliding through the water effortlessly, for pleasure alone, and not for the sake of scheduled exercise. Even her morning coffee tasted better. And she looked forward to crawling under the covers each night and letting her mind drift away into the world of her private imagination, where she replayed the words of Joseph’s novel again and again as she brought herself to orgasm.

  Sometimes she woke in the night, hot, sweating and desperately aroused to the point of discomfort, face down with her long limbs sprawled across the damp sheets, her pelvis grinding the mattress in an imitation of intercourse, her mind too carried away by the events reeling within to prevent her body from following suit. She felt compelled to seek out other erotic literature, hoping that she might find something else that struck the same chord in her, but it was no use. Other words aroused her, of course, but none engaged her mind as well as her cunt in quite the same way as the story of the ballerina on her knife blades, enduring pain for love.

  Why it aroused her so, she couldn’t say, though in her darker moments she wondered if there was something wrong with her for relishing the thought of discomfort so heartily, and worse, pain administered by another. So long as it was fiction, she supposed, it didn’t matter what got her off.

  But it would not stay fiction for long, as she came to meet him the very next day.

  The pool was usually near empty when Nelle swam. She avoided the very early mornings when city workers ploughed ferocious laps before they scurried like ants to their office buildings, and the lunchtime aqua aerobics classes, which were full of expectant and new mothers, the elderly and the very overweight, who preferred to exercise beneath the sheet of invisibility and comfort that water brought.

  She stood for a few moments and watched the only other swimmer in the pool, a man swimming laps in the fast lane. His singularity put him in the spotlight, a lone figure gliding through the water like a solitary ship in a vast sea, the swift movements of his arms creating a current that followed him like a rip tide.

  Nelle lowered herself into the pool and began to swim in the lane alongside him, her mind and body quickly adjusting to the rhythm of her strokes, until it seemed as though the world around her had vanished entirely and there was nothing but her body and the vast cavern of her mind, as empty and weightless as the water that encased her like a shroud.

  When she finally finished her allotted number of lengths and reached for the metal bar near the pool’s edge to pull herself out, he was standing nearby with his back to her, wet shorts clinging to muscled thighs, his face half hidden in his towel as he vigorously dried his hair.

  Again she caught herself staring, transfixed not just by the angles of his body but also by his solitude, his habits. The way he swam, moved, suggested that this man and Nelle shared whatever characteristic it was that drew them both to the lido at the quietest time of day to be as alone as it is possible to be in London, removing even the company of the earth beneath their feet, replacing the ever-bustling sounds of the world around them with the steady lapping of water.

  Alerted by her presence, or perhaps the rushing noise the water made as she pulled her body from the pool, he turned, and their eyes met before Nelle could look away.

  She recognized him immediately. Just that morning she had gazed at the photo on his website, the same close-up picture that appeared on the proof of the back cover of his book. Nelle had paused and stared at the face that watched benignly back at her from the screen, handsome, she supposed, but harmless. Academic yet approachable. The sort of face that looked as though it belonged to a science teacher. Not the sort of face that she imagined belonged to a magician with an undoubted flair for the erotic.

  Nelle had quickly dismissed the thought as ridiculous. People rarely looked how you expected anyway, which was why she generally refused to turn the final page to find the author’s picture on the inside or back covers of the books she enjoyed, preferring them to remain anonymous and not have reality intrude on the far more flattering light of her fantasy.

  In the flesh though, she saw it as soon as he turned to face her. He possessed whatever it was that made a person appear sensual, as if the strength of his sexuality was such that it was apparent even in the lines on his face. His lips were much fuller and his mouth wider than it appeared in his photograph. His eyes were a darker shade of brown, so dark that they were nearly black, like pits of coal that she could fall into, but would surely burn up if she did. His hair, still wet, was thick and dark and clung in damp curls around his forehead.

  “Joseph?” she said aloud, before she could stop herself. His mouth dropped open slightly in shock.

  “Yes?” he replied in the wary tone of someone who has been cornered by the dullest guest at a party or found themselves trapped in an elevator with a salesperson. His eyes darted over her face and then away again as if he was mentally running her features through his mind’s eye, seeking out some detail that might remind him of where they had met, before he was forced to admit that he did not remember who she was.

  They were trapped now. The unspoken laws of etiquette required that although they were both dressed only in their bathing suits, her feet still resting on the top step, half in the pool, she ought to explain herself, justify her intrusion into his privacy, put him out of the misery of wondering if he had committed a sin of terrible rudeness in forgetting her identity.

  “Oh, no, you don’t know me. I’m sorry. I recognized you. From your book cover.”

  He looked still more confused. And embarrassed.

  “But the book hasn’t yet been published,” he protested.

  “Maybe you’ve seen my website. Are you a fan of magic?”

  She realized her mistake, and felt her skin begin to redden despite the cold.

  Joseph furrowed his brow, now seemingly wondering if she had mistaken him for somebody else.


  Nelle explained. “I work with your publishers. Copy-editing. I finished reading your manuscript just last night.”

  Was he blushing, or was she imagining it?

  “It’s very good,” she added. “I enjoyed reading it.”

  “I didn’t think you copy editors actually read anything. Just scanned for all the infelicities.” His eyes crinkled up at the corners in the beginnings of a smile.

  “Your work was fine,” she reassured. “I’ve seen much worse.”

  He laughed. “Well, that’s a relief.”

  She stepped forward and extended her hand, remembering too late that she was still dripping wet, but he shook it anyway.

  “I’m Nelle,” she said. “Sorry about the wet hand. Not the most convenient place to meet, is it,” she added, looking around at the harsh grey concrete of the poolside, broken by a long line of locker doors painted in bright primary colours but bereft of seats. The café at one end that opened in the summer serving cold drinks and ice creams was now closed.

  “Here,” he replied, offering her his towel. “It’s mostly dry.”

  She took it, wrapping the fabric around her like a cape, grateful for the warmth and the opportunity to cover her body, although she had noted that Joseph had not cast so much as a glance below her neck. He was polite, in a very English sort of way. Nelle knew that, like her, he wore his social graces like a mask.

  They paused, searching for something else to say, or some way to end this unplanned encounter between two strangers that had already gone on too long.

  Nelle shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She licked her lips, embarrassed, wishing that she had never engaged him in conversation. The fantasies that his work had inspired in her had little bearing on the reality of meeting Joseph in person.

  They spoke at the same time.

  “Well,” she said, “I should be . . .” as he asked, “Would you like to join me for . . .” “getting on,” she finished, “coffee?” he said. “Yes of course,” she replied, interrupting him again as he backtracked, “no problem.”

  They laughed uncomfortably, in unison. “There’s a Vietnamese coffee shop towards the market,” he said. “They serve it with sweetened condensed milk. Very warming.”

  “That would be lovely,” she replied, firmly this time, to counteract her initial rejection.

  She handed back his towel.

  “I’ll change. Meet you out front in five?”

  He nodded in agreement.

  She turned away from him to fetch her change bag from her locker, conscious of the way that her bathing suit clung to her and crept up as she walked, exposing the tops of her thighs and the rounded edge of her backside. She tried to feign confidence, nonchalance, and did not stop to adjust herself. Was he watching? she wondered. Did he like what he saw?

  Nelle looked good in a one-piece, and she knew it. Her slim legs sometimes appeared too thin to her eyes, in jeans, or a dress. Somehow the addition of clothes made her figure even more boyish. But her bathing suits accentuated what little she had in the way of curves, which was part of the reason why she owned so many of them but had relatively few other clothes. She’d never been particularly interested in shopping, or fashion.

  She paused as she bent down to open the locker door, giving Joseph ample opportunity to let his gaze linger on her rear, but when she turned back again he had disappeared into the men’s changing rooms.

  When she emerged through the lido’s glass double doors, he was already waiting for her, dressed in black running joggers and a grey jumper with the hood lying loose around his shoulders. It was an anonymous sort of outfit, the kind of clothing that advertised nothing at all about his economic status or sartorial taste.

  Nelle had expected to return straight home after her swim, and hadn’t even brought a bra with her, just a long-sleeved blouse, a skirt that hung down to her ankles and a pair of casual flat shoes. She’d hesitated over removing her bathing suit and left it on in the end, thinking that more modest than appearing braless, but by the time she had dried her hair and gathered her things her thin cotton shirt had begun to dampen and now clung to her like a second skin. The chill present in the air hit her as soon as she stepped out to meet him and her nipples immediately hardened.

  “Sorry,” she said to him, excusing her bedraggled appearance. “I wasn’t expecting to meet anyone today.”

  “No need to apologize,” he replied. “You look fine. And I’m hardly dressed for a lunch date, either.”

  He spoke as if he were cracking a whip, his tone brusque and his intonation clipped. She liked this quality in him. Joseph was honest, and his honesty relaxed her.

  Nelle disliked meeting new people. She found it hard to be fake, a quality that, to her mind, almost all relationships required to begin with. Nelle simply didn’t care much about people that she didn’t know well enough to really like, and she resented pretending empathy for the sake of politeness, so spent a lot of time alone.

  They fell into silence as they walked the length of the tree-lined footpath through London Fields to the Broadway Market. Nelle quickened her pace when she noticed that she was staring at Joseph’s back. Almost without thinking about it, she had fallen into a gait slightly slower than his, so she was walking half a step behind him.

  When they arrived, Joseph ordered two coffees without asking her how she took it, and raised his hand abruptly in a gesture of refusal as she fished in her purse for change.

  They sat opposite one another at one of the worn red tables and sipped their drinks.

  “I usually take it black,” he said, almost apologizing for the thick, sickly sweetness of the drink. “But the sugar is nice after exercise.” He paused. “I’ve seen you before, at the pool,” he added. “You swim well.”

  Nelle nodded, unsure of how to reply. Until today, she hadn’t noticed him.

  “I swim every day,” she replied. “Most days, at least,” she added, and then swiftly gulped down another mouthful of coffee, fearing that she now sounded arrogant.

  They finished their drinks and parted company uneasily. Nelle hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that he was laughing at her, somehow.

  The following week, he was there again at the same time. Had he been there every week, and she just hadn’t noticed him before? Or was he now following her? He was already swimming when she arrived, so she was able to observe him unnoticed for a time. He moved through the water with monotonous regularity, turning his head first to the right and then to the left. Nelle always breathed on the same side. She counted his strokes. One, two, three, four, five, six. He held his breath for an age before coming up for air and even then he did so with measured precision, not the startled gasp of someone who should have paused for air several strokes earlier.

  He stopped suddenly at the end of the length and, placing his hands flat on the concrete of the poolside, he straightened his forearms and with one rapid motion pushed himself out of the water.

  “Hello,” he said, to her, smiling. “Are you swimming today? Or just waiting for me?”

  Nelle was too embarrassed to reply. She simply pulled her goggles down as though she hadn’t heard him and dived into the water with a soft splash.

  She swam for twice as long as usual, until she felt as though she might dissolve if she carried on any longer, but still she couldn’t shake the image of his wet body from her mind. He was older than she was. Probably in his early forties, to her early thirties, although she found it hard to guess the age of men, particularly fit men. He was tall, though not unusually so, and broad-shouldered, with just a light smattering of hair on his chest.

  Images flashed into her mind unbidden. His pectoral muscles tightening beneath her hands. His dick hardening as she let her fingertips slide lower down.

  When she was certain that he must by now have had ample time to grow bored of watching her swim, dry himself, change and leave, she ducked her head to cross under the lane rope and pulled herself up the metal rail on the side.

  “Sixty-four laps,” he said. “You always swim an even number.”

  He hadn’t even bothered to wrap himself in a towel. Just sat there, drip-drying and watching her. She might have been spooked, had it not been for the undeniable fact that the sight of his still wet shorts clinging to his thighs and the undeniable presence of his cock and balls caused her breath to quicken and all of her muscles to tighten in immediate arousal.