The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 2 Read online

  “So,” she said, as I hunted for a grapefruit-knife, “who was the lucky girl?”

  “On the phone?”

  “No . . . last night.”

  “Oh. My bank manager.”

  “Really?” She laughed. “I thought you were too rich to have to sleep with someone for a raised overdraft.”

  “I was. Until someone started eating me out of house and home.”

  She looked at me, clearly shocked. I’d never referred to money before, and she’d stopped bringing it up after her third straight week of thanking me for my generosity

  “I do feel ready to start looking for a job,” she said in a small voice, “although if it’s all right with you I’d rather stay here and pay you rent than move out. I’m just so comfortable here.”

  I didn’t answer, preparing her grapefruit in silence and placing it in a bowl in front of her.

  I arrived at Tracey’s house an hour and a half late. This was a deliberate tactic, my childish way of getting revenge for her knocking me back after our previous date. She pretended she wasn’t aware of the time, greeting me with a hug. Feeling optimistic, I’d stopped off at an ATM on the way and taken cash out of each of my three main accounts, now having nearly a thousand pounds on me. It was good to feel my ex-girlfriend’s body against mine and I clung on to her until she broke away.

  “Would you like a drink?” she asked. “I have beer. Or whisky.”

  “Beer, please.”

  She fetched a bottle from the kitchen and handed it to me. Tracey had already strategically placed an opener on the coffee table and I used it to uncap the drink.

  “Aren’t you having anything?”

  “I will in a minute. I already had a little too much this afternoon.”

  I could tell she was nervous. Tracey was not a casual drinker, and when we’d been going out together she had only drunk at home at moments of extreme emotion.

  “Are you OK, Tracey?”

  “I’m fine,” she replied, sitting on her sofa.

  She was wearing a cream cardigan, a white halter-neck and a short grey skirt. Tracey had always had a thing for flesh-coloured stockings, and was wearing a pair this evening, with no shoes. I sipped my beer, waiting to hear why she had summoned me here.

  “The offer you made the other night.”

  “Yes?”

  “Does it still stand?”

  “Of course.”

  “What if I don’t want to have sex with you?”

  I wasn’t in the mood for this sort of game playing, and wasn’t about to beg. I put down my beer and stood up. “Then I don’t think you should.”

  “No,” she said, looking up at me, “I don’t mean that. Oh, God . . .” She rubbed her forehead. “What if I want to do other things?”

  I sat back down. “What sort of other things?”

  “Safer things.”

  “I can wear a condom.”

  “I don’t mean that sort of safe. I mean, emotionally safe.”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “Well,” she said, “would you want to see me?”

  I smiled. “Of course. But let’s not make this so clinical. Why don’t you come over here with me?”

  “But how will we work out the money?”

  “The money doesn’t matter to me. How about if I give you five hundred pounds anyway, and then you can decide how far you want to go?”

  “And you won’t get angry with me?”

  “Of course not. Don’t be stupid.”

  “Or tell anyone? Or hold it against me?”

  “I don’t know anyone you know. And it’s my idea. How can I hold it against you?”

  She still didn’t seem satisfied. I was beginning to wonder if this was such a good idea, but was feeling too turned-on to leave.

  “And you accept that this will be a one-off? You won’t force me to do it again later because I agreed to it now?”

  I couldn’t understand why she was being like this. Throughout our relationship I had almost always been the submissive one, never forcing her to do anything. I might have been a little more forthcoming than her about my desires, but that’d only been because she rarely talked about what she wanted, preferring to go unhappy than verbalize her discontent.

  “Tracey, I’m not about to cast judgement on you. I offered you money the other night because I was desperate to sleep with you and couldn’t cope with being rejected. I can understand why you were offended . . .”

  “I wasn’t offended, just scared. I’m frightened by you wanting me.”

  “Why? You work on a sex-line. You have men wanting you all the time.”

  I realized the moment I said this that it was a mistake. Suddenly, everything became clear to me and I saw my way out of this. But first I had to listen to her response.

  “Jesse, this is why I got so upset the other night. I told you about the sex-line because I thought you’d find it sexy and funny, but I didn’t think it would change the way you thought about me. After I said it I remembered how afraid I was about telling you about my sexuality. This is something I’ve been wanting to tell you for ages, in fact, that’s the whole reason why I got in touch with you again. But then at dinner you told me you’d had a breakdown and I couldn’t tell you the truth . . . well, I mean, I told you part of the truth, about how I missed you and was glad we had all that time together, but I couldn’t get to the heart of it. I couldn’t tell you . . . Look, you know what you said about your therapist telling you that what you were feeling with me, when you isolated us, wasn’t jealousy but you wanting something from me, something I couldn’t give?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, you and your therapist got it completely round the wrong way. What you wanted was to know the truth about me, but because you were so jealous you didn’t want to hear it.”

  What she was saying made sense. I thought back to my bank manager telling me about her come-fantasy and how that hadn’t turned me on at all. I had often told Tracey I wanted to know what she masturbated about – and in my head I thought I did – but the truth was, if she wasn’t doing it about me I didn’t want to know.

  “The truth is, the reason I freaked out the other night was because it felt like you were making the offer out of anger. And it reminded me of how you always used to view sex as something you had to take from me, as if I was deliberately with-holding it. That ‘something I couldn’t give’ was an honest sexual response, because I always felt you were judging me.

  “But the thing is, I do want to do something with you. Something that’ll get rid of all the hurt and make you think well of me. And, although it sounds strange, and it did upset me at first, I think you paying me for sex is a good idea. Only you have to be doing it for pure motives. You have to do it because you want me.”

  “I do want you.”

  “Good.” She came across and sat next to me. Taking control, she straddled me and pushed me back on the sofa. She’d washed her hair recently and I could smell her shampoo as her long brunette curls fell over her face. As she started kissing me, I considered how this evening’s experience was already so different from my previous night with Vicki. I had completely forgotten how Tracey kissed, the soft pulling that felt so reassuring after her resistance in the bar after the restaurant, and as I let her take charge, I found myself thinking back to when I first got my money and was trying to develop an interest in pornography. Although it had quickly stopped working for me, it was only now that I realized why. It was my lack of imagination, and my inability to bring details from my own life into my appreciation of the films. My one-night stands were few and far between and, to be honest, they weren’t fantasy-occasions, instead usually arising from desperation and mutual need. And although I’ve always had lots of women in my life, it’s been hard to eroticize them, as I’ve known them as friends rather than sex-objects (I realize the two are by no means mutually exclusive, but until last night with Vicki, it’d always seemed that way to me). So when I watched pornography, I
found it hard to enjoy the variety, which I guess is the whole point in the first place. It was difficult to identify with the well-built men, and unless the women looked like Tracey, or other ex-girlfriends, they didn’t seem sexy either. I’m not a natural voyeur, and watching other people having sex always makes me feel like I’m the one being exploited, not them, as if I’m stuck in someone’s house and still having to be the polite guest even when my hosts start going down on each other.

  Now that I was having sex with Tracey so soon after I’d had sex with Vicki, and was rediscovering myself as a sexual person (albeit in quite an unconventional way), I felt like I might like to watch pornography again, using the woman on screen as a point of connection between Tracey and Vicki and whomever I ended up having sex with next.

  I was amazed at how much the money was adding an extra energy. When I’d been going out with Tracey, our intercourse had always been extremely fraught, a cycle of tears, excitement, pain, pleasure and tears. The first few times had been terrifying, a form of lovemaking I was completely unused to, having previously only been with women who saw sex as a friendly adult kinship. Now I was paying Tracey she seemed to be trying to fit her need around working out how to make me happy. The way she was kissing me showed she wanted me, which is something I’ve always needed to know in order to enjoy sex with anyone. These last two statements sounds antithetical. Let me explain. What I mean is, nothing is as big a turn-off for me as a woman saying, ‘I want to make you happy.’ But a woman who wants me (even if she’s only pretending) is all I need for the sex to work. This is why I always aimed low when picking people up, and why paying my friends for sex was turning out to be so successful. I’m not vain enough to imagine I could sexually excite a professional prostitute, but I also knew that it would be imposssible for a friend (or an ex) to have sex with me without feeling something. And with Tracey I thought it went much farther than that, as I saw now that she’d always needed this sort of excuse to really enjoy sex, and may even previously have had this sort of fantasy herself.

  She stopped kissing me and pushed herself up. “How much would you pay to pull down my top?”

  “I told you. I’ll give you five hundred pounds whatever we end up doing.”

  She shook her head. “No,” she said, “I want to negotiate.”

  “OK.” I smiled. “I guess that could be fun. Are you wearing a bra?”

  Tracey got up and pulled her curtains. Then she turned on a table lamp and switched off the main light. Before taking her position on top of me, she pulled off her cardigan and hung it over the back of a chair.

  “Yes, I’m wearing a bra.”

  “So you’re only talking about me seeing your bra, not your breasts?”

  “For the moment, yes.”

  “And, let me get this straight, am I paying you to pull down your top yourself or for me to do it?”

  “Either.”

  “So there’s no price difference between those two options?”

  “No. Come on, how much?”

  “Well, it seems quite minor, so let’s say ten pounds.”

  “Twenty. I take it you have the money with you?”

  I felt surprised that Tracey was being as serious about the money as Vicki had been yesterday, especially as I’d assumed I’d have to persuade her to take the cash. But I enjoyed my role in the fantasy, taking a twenty-pound note from my inside pocket and laying it out on the table.

  “OK,” she said, fingers going to the thin cord around her neck.

  I reached up and stopped her, saying, “No, I want to do it.”

  I untied her and pulled the top down over her breasts. She was wearing a white strapless bra and her nipples were visible through the material. I attempted to stroke them.

  “No, no,” she told me, “you haven’t paid for that yet. How much to see my knickers?”

  “What type are you wearing?”

  “Does that affect the price?”

  “No, I’m just curious.

  “Mmm,” she said, “you just reminded me of something.”

  “Dinner in the oven?”

  “No. A memory. From when we were together.”

  “Dangerous territory.”

  “Doesn’t have to be. Anyway, this is a nice memory. It was about the third or fourth time we slept together, and we met unexpectedly, or maybe I hadn’t been planning to go to bed with you but it ended up happening anyway, and you were surprised because I wasn’t wearing matching underwear and I felt really weird hecause I didn’t even have that many niatching sets and you’d already seen most of them.”

  “So you’re not wearing matching underwear today?”

  “I am, actually, although I didn’t think about that this morning. Well, kind of matching, they’re white string-knickers, with a small red design in one corner.”

  “Let me see.”

  “How much?”

  “Forty.”

  “Cash on the table.”

  I unfolded another two notes. “Are you sure you don’t want me to give you the whole five hundred right now?”

  “And spoil the fun? I’m enjoying myself, aren’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good.” She smiled at me and pulled her skirt up. She tried to make the material stay as high up her thighs as possible so I could get a proper look at her knickers. Shortly after we’d started going out, I’d discovered Tracey’s diary. Just before we’d started going out she’d had a lonely night with some unsatisfactory ex-partner and come home and detailed all the things she liked and didn’t like. Eventually I was forced to admit my betrayal of her trust, but prior to my confession it provided a useful shorthand on how to please her. She liked having her breasts caressed rather than kissed, preferred having her knickers gently slipped down her thighs rather than taking them off herself, sometimes enjoyed being fingered to orgasm with her knickers still on, although that was never quite as nice as being eaten out. She liked sucking cock; sometimes more than being fucked. Her favourite fantasy was imaginary incest (something only ever exciting to those who hadn’t suffered the irritation of real-life siblings) and except for very, very rare occasions, hated being on top.

  She laughed. “I bet you’re just dying to touch me, aren’t you?”

  Tracey never used to be this confident. I knew it had something to do with the money, but I also thought it was probably connected to her new job. I’d always known Tracey had the perfect voice for sex-line work, but felt surprised that she’d actually gone through with it. I wanted to ask her more about what the job was like, but after her previous outburst, felt scared about spoiling the mood.

  “Can I touch your cunt and breasts at the same time?”

  “If you’re prepared to pay for it.”

  “I’ll give you fifty pounds. But you also have to rub my cock.”

  “For fifty, I’ll only do it through your trousers.”

  “That’s all I want, for the minute.” I counted out the cash and put it on the table. “Although let me touch you for a bit first.”

  “OK. Can I lie back more?”

  “Of course. It’ll make things easier.”

  She shuffled backwards, reclining against the arm of the sofa. I moved round between her legs, leaning in to kiss her as I began to gently stroke and squeeze her breasts. Her kisses were more open now, her mouth more relaxed. I quickly embraced her and then began to rub the heel of my hand over her cunt. I touched her breasts at the same time, kissing her again. After a few minutes, she pushed me back up and began stroking the tight crotch of my trousers. She stroked her hand around my shape, the heel of her hand rubbing my cock while her fingers softly dug against the underside of my balls. I let her do this for a short while, then pushed her back.

  “Another fifty to see your tits.”

  She laughed. “Shall I undo it?”

  “No, let me.”

  I put a fifty-pound note on the table, and Tracey leaned forward to let me unhook her bra. I was amazed at how unfamiliar her breast
s looked, and wondered how I could’ve forgotten something so important. Why are visual memories the hardest to preserve? Especially sexual memories. I couldn’t believe that in my fantasy-world I had robbed Tracey of her real body and replaced it with an anonymous alternative. I had forgotten how easily she flushed; that her shoulders were lightly freckled. Her breasts had become bigger in my memory, her nipples smaller, and the real-life combination was much sexier. But strangest of all, I had forgotten how Tracey looked at me differently when I started to undress her.

  She kissed me. “Knickers too?”

  “Let me do it. You know what you said earlier about not wanting to have sex with me, do you still feel like that?”

  “I don’t want to have penetrative sex. But everything else is OK.”

  I considered this. “All right then, I’ll give you a hundred and fifty pounds to pull your knickers off and go down on you.”

  “OK.”

  Placing the cash on the table, I gently lifted Tracey from the sofa and brought her down onto the floor. She raised her knees and I slipped my fingers under the waistband of her knickers and gently tugged them down. Her cunt was already wet and slightly open, the pink bright beneath the spring of her light brown pubic hair. I pulled her legs slightly more open and gave her cunt a first kiss. She murmured something and I moved up to hear what she said.

  “What was that?”

  “I said I’ve fantasized so much about you doing this. Especially since the other night.”

  Remembering Vicki, I asked, “What did you do when you fantasized?”

  “Touched myself, of course,” she said, sounding surprised.

  I couldn’t stop myself asking, “When was the last time?”

  She sounded slightly irritated as she replied, “In the shower at the gym this morning,” and, not wanting to push my luck, I went back down on her.

  It was incredible to be between Tracey’s legs again, and I felt disappointed when she came quickly. I wanted to carry on and see if I could bring her to a second orgasm, but she stopped me and made me come up alongside her for a hug. We lay like that for a while and then I asked her,