The Mammoth Book of the Best New Erotica Read online

  “Everyone defends Crystal,” I said. “So I took her up on her advice. She told me to make love to a woman so I did. This is my girlfriend. I’m allowed to have pictures of my loved ones on my desk.”

  Miranda snatched it down and opened my drawer to toss it in. Her gaze locked on my voodoo box.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  I did the only thing I could. I acted like I had never seen it in my life.

  Acting as if it was covered in rat shit, she picked it up and opened it. Her earring and the frog came tumbling out. I’d never seen her speechless before. Mostly it involved her turning quite red and acting like she couldn’t swallow.

  Of course, she felt compelled to go through the rest of my desk.

  The sanctity of my travel agent’s rights being violated, I stormed off, spotting Crystal’s cigarettes and lighter left on the water cooler. As quick as a bee, I snatched them off and headed for a smoke in the storeroom to calm my nerves.

  I spotted Ayad, bending over as he looked at a wall socket. He did have a fine ass. I thought about my toe poking through the hole in my tights, his tongue on my skin. Suddenly, my legs felt unsteady. I sauntered over to him.

  “Does your mouth taste like toe cheese?” I asked.

  He looked up at me, a hint of a smile on his mouth. I gave him a come hither look. He stood up. I shrugged in the direction of the conference room. Like someone with their pants on fire, which they were, I scooted inside and held my breath. Would he follow? Would he be up for it? For a moment, the suspense was stupendous. He appeared in the doorway. I shut the door behind us, letting out my breath, a little more than dizzy now.

  Jumping on the conference table, I kicked off my shoe. My big toe poked out.

  “I think I need to file a lawsuit. Someone ripped my tights,” I said.

  It was sort of romantic, the way he looked at me with lust in his eyes, his package standing out and how he got down on one knee.

  The moment he put my big toe all the way in his mouth, I nearly passed out. A giggle escaped me that shook my ribcage. He ripped open my tights further, working his tongue between my toes. It was the best foot massage ever. All these knots in my shoulders relaxed, and I felt my body melting into the table.

  He pulled my foot out of his mouth and stood up.

  “Now I have toe cheese on my breath,” he said.

  “Yes. You do,” I replied smiling.

  I waited for him to do something else to me. Anything. Really. For a second, I thought he might turn around and leave, that maybe he was just a foot guy, but he ripped my tights a little more.

  “I think these need to come off,” he said.

  I couldn’t get out of them fast enough. They got caught twisted down my legs. He helped, yanking them down. Thank God, I hadn’t worn my old cotton panties, but my blue sparkly ones instead. He didn’t even bother pulling those down. He unzipped his pants, pushed aside the thin fabric and entered me. God, he felt big. I was either tighter than I thought, or he had a really big dick.

  I tried to hang on to him, but he was fucking me too hard. So I flopped back on the table, let him pull my hips to him and went along for the ride. I was just about ready to start pinching my nipples when I heard the conference room door open.

  To my horror, I saw Miranda standing there with the nicest looking man I ever saw, tall, dark, brooding, oozing masculinity and mystique. He was New York and Ayad was a suburb outside Detroit. I couldn’t believe I was checking him out with another man’s dick in me.

  “Oh my goodness,” Miranda cried out.

  Like I was suddenly made of battery acid, Ayad zipped up and jumped away from me. Sheepishly, I pushed down my skirt with an oops I accidentally fell on the table, devil may care attitude.

  Miranda didn’t buy it.

  “Ayad, I would have thought better of you. Getting caught up in her shenanigans. This has to be the most appalling thing I’ve ever seen here. You’re treading on thin ice, mister.”

  Ayad shot by her through the doorway, deserting me. Suddenly I wasn’t so impressed by him, big dick or not. I picked up my tights and my shoes, very aware that the slickness of our love was beginning to trail down my thigh.

  “And as for you . . .” she started to say to me.

  “Yeah. I know,” I said. “Daphne Greenwood is a screw-up.”

  “Exactly. See me in my office in fifteen minutes.”

  They were still in the doorway. I had no choice but to squeeze by them. Good-looking man was looking highly amused. Glad I could make your day, I wanted to say to him. Instead, I got a whiff of him. Damn. He smelled good.

  “I’m so sorry, Mr Andrews,” Miranda said. “This will never happen again. The girl is plain crazy.”

  I shot a glance back. That was Mr Andrews. Passenger Thirteen!

  I still had Crystal’s cigarettes and lighter. Why not have a smoke before I faced the firing squad? Now I needed it more than ever. I was so pissed off at Ayad for abandoning me, and I was terrified Miranda was going to have a Daphne Greenwood ass buffet when she got a hold of me. She had plenty of chafing dishes filled with my misadventures – a picture of me with a stripper, a voodoo box with one of her earrings in it and me screwing the maintenance man on the conference room table.

  Behind me, I locked the storeroom door and stood by the vent, where I lit up. A cigarette never tasted so good. In the corner stood an old gumball vending machine. It must have come from the lunchroom at some point. That was soon going to be me – empty, forgotten.

  Cigarette still in hand, I adjusted my panties. My tights were useless. Everyone was going to see my tattoos. Another thing for Miranda to yell about. Great, why not just parade around naked. I try to fit in. I do. And look what happens.

  I could talk my way out of this. I could tell her that the stress of being sexually harassed by Crystal had made me doubt my heterosexuality, so I took up with a stripper, had a breakdown and I had to screw Ayad to find myself again. It wasn’t my fault. It was Crystal’s.

  I was using the fabric of my tights to sort of clean between my thighs when the cigarette fell from my hand and landed in an open box of file folders.

  At first, I thought nothing happened. The stupid thing disappeared. Maybe the fall had snuffed it out. I poked around in the box. Nothing. Maybe I should just dump the whole thing out, but the box was huge. Pulling out some of the folders occurred to me, but then I saw it. A wisp of smoke. The box was smoking my cigarette. All that angst from travel agents and travellers was inhaling. I wasn’t sticking my hand in there.

  How on earth was I going to put it out? There wasn’t a fire extinguisher in here. What did fire need? Fuel? Air? The door looked pretty airtight. Being the good citizen I was, I fled the room and shut the door.

  Please go out. Please go out. I glanced at the crack at the bottom of the door. Blast it. Smoke. Then there was this sound like a whoosh and an intense crackling. Orange light joined the smoke at the crack.

  What do I do? I wasn’t about to leave the building without my purse. As calmly as I could, I walked back to my desk. I didn’t see Miranda. She must still be in the meeting with Thirteen. Just as I sat and opened my drawer to get my purse, I heard the fire alarm go off. Everyone leaped up.

  “This isn’t a drill. We have a situation on the third floor, please leave the building.”

  Anyone who was on the phone got to say there was an emergency and hang up on the client. The one time we get to do that, and I missed it.

  Down the three flights of stairs I traipsed with the others. You could smell the smoke now. Once we were outside we were supposed to meet in a designated spot in the parking lot, far from the building, in case it blew up or something.

  You would have thought it was a national emergency or something with all the fire trucks that pulled up, even the kind with the long ladders.

  I stood away from the others, including Pam, Crystal and Crystal’s friends. Not on purpose or anything. It just happened that no one else stood with me, not
even Ayad, who was shooting me dirty looks from beside a tree. It takes two to tango, buddy, I wanted to call to him. You’re the one who had my toe in your mouth. I couldn’t believe his dick had just been inside me and now this. He was the owner of a seriously defective character.

  Miranda finally came out, wearing a fire marshall red vest. She must have stayed behind to make sure everyone was out. How very brave. She shot me a look that could have burned Lycra off a hooker.

  I managed a wan smile in return. Not in a million years was she going to believe my sexual harassment breakdown story. Not after today. Especially if they found out who started the fire. I’d never get out of my crappy trailer or get a better life. I didn’t belong here. It was so obvious with us standing out in the open. No one else was standing apart. What had I been doing at this place? Torturing myself trying to fit in. Who was I kidding anyway? I wasn’t an office girl, a travel agent. I never traveled because I couldn’t afford the hotels or the food even with a free airline pass.

  Someone cleared their throat behind me. I turned. It was him, devastatingly handsome him.

  “Passenger Thirteen,” I said.

  “Thirteen?”

  “That’s what I like to call you. A nickname of sorts.”

  He looked mystified.

  “Haven’t you noticed you frequently end up in row thirteen?” I asked.

  “Oh, that. Actually I probably deserve it. I can be quite abrasive sometimes.”

  How had I ever been shitty to such a fine man?

  “You probably shouldn’t be speaking to me,” I said. “I’m a doomed woman.”

  He smiled, obviously not heeding my warning.

  “That was some meeting you were having in the conference room,” he said.

  “You liked that?”

  He nodded. “You could probably do better with your choice in colleagues though,” he said.

  I glanced at Ayad.

  “You can see someone’s true colours when the chips are down,” he continued.

  “Or when the skirts are up.” I blushed. I was so blatantly flirting with him. Hysterical flirting.

  “I probably won’t be booking your travel any longer,” I said. “I think I’m all through here.”

  I was debating going back inside to get my things when the fire was out, but it was all crap wasn’t it. I realized Thirteen was looking at my legs.

  “Nice tattoos,” he said.

  “Do you want to see a picture of my pretend girlfriend?” I asked.

  He looked at it. For a moment, I thought shock was registering, but then I saw that same bemused look I saw in the conference room.

  “This is a very interesting photograph,” he said. “I think we should get together sometime.”

  “You do?” I asked. “Even if I’m working as a waitress at a strip club? Because that’s what I’m going to be doing next.”

  He nodded. I heard Miranda shriek. The fire was out. With a fireman in tow, she headed over to Crystal. I saw something glint in his hand. I knew what that was. I’d left it in the storeroom. The lighter!

  Thirteen got out a scrap of paper and a pen to write down my phone number.

  “Nice pen,” I said. “I know a lot of uses.”

  The sexual tension between us was crackling. I never wanted to fuck someone so bad in my life. All that conflict on the phone between us had been like some sort of intense foreplay. I knew he was feeling it. I could see it in his eyes.

  He raised an eyebrow at me.

  “I have a lot more pens in my car,” he said.

  And just like that, I trotted off after him towards his car, like a dog in heat. Miranda caught sight of us.

  “Where do you think you’re going, missy?” she called out. I waved her off and caught up with him.

  “This could cause you problems,” I said.

  “No. It won’t. I wasn’t going to use your travel agency any longer anyway. That’s why I came in for a meeting.”

  His expensive car was parked in two-hour parking. The moment I got inside with him, I forgot all about the pens. He was as horny as I was. Over the console, he pulled me into his lap so I straddled him. Pushing my panties aside much like Ayad, he was inside me lightning fast. I was really tight today, or he was big as well. Very big.

  “Don’t you think it’s perverted you met me with another guy’s dick in me and now you’re screwing me?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And you don’t care about sloppy seconds.”

  “No.”

  I shoved my tongue down his throat, licked his tonsils, and bumped his uglies with a passion I never knew. The moment I came up for air, I realized the entire office was watching us with open mouths, Miranda, Pam, Ayad and Crystal. And there it was. The end of my travel career.

  Hitting the window button with my elbow, I leaned out my head as Thirteen was grabbing my hips and ramming me into him. He was quite the fucker.

  “See, Crystal. I do like a lot of bone,” I called out.

  Eye of the Beholder

  Mark Timlin

  I’d been sitting on the floor inside the walk-in closet for over an hour before I heard the key in the door of the hotel suite. I’d slid in like a ghost using a duplicate when I knew she’d left to meet him, and before I went to my hiding place I wandered around for a few minutes picking up things here and there: a used glass, an item of soiled underwear that I’d put to my face to smell her musk. I wondered what the hell I was putting myself through again. She’d left her portable CD player on repeat, playing an old Joni Mitchell album that I’d always liked, and I nodded my head in time to the music.

  Inside the closet her clothes hung close to me and I could smell old perfume, old make-up and just the hint of sweat. But that might have been from me. It was hot in there and I had only cracked the sliding, mirrored doors an inch or so, just enough to see the king-size bed lit softly by the bedside lamps that she’d left burning.

  The two of them had been drinking and were noisy as they came in, straight to the bedroom, where I was waiting. No messing with niceties like a schooner of sherry or an after-dinner mint. I appreciated that. The closet was getting warmer and warmer by the minute, and as they entered the room I squinted through the gap to see them both, and what they were going to do to each other.

  The woman was tall and blonde in a leather coat with her hair piled up on top, and they’d obviously been having such a good time in the bar that some of it had come loose and strands hung around her face. Even so, she looked great, and even better when she did something to it at the back and it fell to her shoulders. Her hair had always been beautiful: shiny, lustrous, the colour of butter melting in the sun.

  Lucky bloke, I thought as they stood by the door and kissed. She had the face of a Hollywood star on a movie poster and blue eyes that said, “Come to bed, and I mean right now.”

  He was taller, older, florid, ugly, as it goes, and I felt my spine contract at the sight of his face. He was big, but not fat, in a pinstripe suit cut to make him look slimmer, a blue shirt, striped tie and black slip-on shoes. When they broke away from each other he slammed the bedroom door behind them, as she slipped off her coat to reveal the inevitable little black dress. She tossed her coat over a chair and he threw his jacket down and grabbed her again. She didn’t object when he kissed her once more, and neither did she object when he spun her round and pulled the zip of her dress down to her waist and peeled it off her shoulders so that it fell to her feet like a pool of ink before she stepped out of it.

  Underneath she was wearing tart’s gear, whore’s kit. But by Christ she did look good in it. Black fuck-me shoes with five-inch heels, black nylons that gleamed in the light with thick bands of double black at their tops, then pure white thighs, the colour of fresh milk, slashed by the black bondage of suspenders, lace briefs just see-through enough to give a hint of the goodies underneath, and a black lace bra that her breasts hardly needed for support but to flaunt their beauty. To tease. Her tummy was flat as a bi
lliard table, her waist was tiny then flared into rounded hips and when she turned round she shook the twin peaches of an arse to die for.

  I could see he appreciated the sight as the front of his pinstripe trousers tented, and when she turned back she reached for his cock straight away. She seemed to be pleased with what she found and she kneeled down and unzipped him, reached in and pulled out his prick. It was long and thick, gorged with blood, and she spat on her fingers and rolled back the foreskin before taking it in her mouth, both of them groaning with pleasure.

  It was getting hotter in the closet as I watched, and I felt myself harden too and I hated myself for it.

  “Wait,” he said, and she stopped for a moment, releasing his prick. He kicked off his shoes, undid the button on his trousers, and pushed them and his boxer shorts off, looking comical in shirt-tails and socks. No one ever knows how silly they look having sex.

  As he tugged off his tie and pulled at the buttons on his shirt, almost popping them off the material in his haste, his cock hardened even more as she took it inside her soft mouth again and she put her fingers in the bush of his pubic hair and gathered his balls into her hand. Bitch, I thought, as she sucked on his dick like a baby at a tit. Bitch. Just you wait. It didn’t help that my cock was now unbearably hard and all caught up in my underwear, and in the position I was in I couldn’t adjust the damn thing to get it comfortable.

  Anyway, after she’d feasted on his prick for a few minutes she let it slip out of her mouth and it was all shiny with spit and they went over to the bed and really got down to it after he’d pulled off those stupid socks. First, off comes her bra and by God she’s got a pair of tits. He held them in his big hands and started sucking on each nipple until they were as pink and hard as pencil erasers, and she started wanking his cock in her hand and I was worried he was going to come all over her and I’d be stuck in that damned closet until he could get it up again. But she knew just how to get him to the peak of orgasm before she let him slip back.

  He was loving all that, squeezing her breasts and rolling her nipples between his fingers, making her cry out half in pain, half in pleasure. After a minute or two he went for the main event, running his hand down her belly and inside her knickers and he obviously liked what he found as I could see his fingers were slippery with cunt juice, and he took a big lick and then kissed her again, a long, lingering snog, and at the same time pulled her pants over her hips and down those long legs and let her kick them off. She opened her legs wide and I could see that her cunt was shaven close to the skin which somehow made her look even more naked, like a young girl, even though she was still wearing the suspender belt, nylons and those shiny black shoes. So now was the time for them to start fucking. The man lay on his back and she climbed on top, her favourite position, and she guided his prick up inside her and slid down hard.