The Mammoth Book of the Best New Erotica Read online

  Come on, I thought, get on with it. We haven’t got all day. But she took her time, riding him like a jockey, her head thrown back, eyes closed, her hands clenched tightly in the hairs on his barrel chest, until she froze solid, gripping him tighter inside, and came with a whoop. They stayed like that, a human tableau, for a moment that seemed to go on for ever before she rolled off onto her side, her cunt opened to my eyes, all red and wet and raw inside before she leaned up on one elbow and looked directly at the closet door. I imagined she was looking straight into my eyes but she gave no sign that she could see me or anything else after her climax. Maybe she was admiring herself in the mirror, or may be she just didn’t give a damn.

  But the man wasn’t going to allow her a rest. His fat, red cock was still erect. Still ready to shoot his spunk up into her belly. Good job, I thought, as he grabbed her again and stuck his face between her legs, slurping like a pig at the trough, then with dripping lips, covered her face with her own juice and threw her down onto the bed. I waited until he climbed on top and pushed his cock deep inside and started to move. As he rose and fell I could see her cunt bulge from the girth of his knob and his huge balls banging against the crack of her arse, and I swear I could smell the stink of their sex clear across the room.

  They both began to moan as they approached climax, she for the second time, he for the first. Hers a slight whimper from the back of the throat and his harsher, louder, just as I had expected, and was waiting for. There was no chance they could hear as I gently slid the closet door open, its runners carefully greased earlier. I stood up slowly, the surgical gloves on my hands hot and damp inside, much like her vagina, I thought, but dismissed the thought immediately. On rubber soles I crossed the carpet silently, and just as he was beginning on the short strokes I tapped him on his big, bare, suntanned shoulder with the silencer on the end of the .22 automatic I held tightly, but not too tightly, in my right hand.

  He stopped in mid-thrust and turned his head with a look of astonishment on his heavy features.

  “Hi. How’s it going?” I asked, “Having a good time?”

  “What . . . ?” was the only word I let him say before I stuck the barrel of the pistol in his ear and fired once. The report was no louder than a virgin’s sigh, but I could imagine the small, powerful bullet ripping around inside his skull, scrambling his brains into a bloody mush, as his eyes almost popped from their sockets from the pressure within his head. He collapsed onto the woman’s body.

  She screamed a small scream then, not as loud as the one she’d made when she’d orgasmed a few minutes before, and tried to heave his dead weight off herself. I put the smoking barrel of the gun to her forehead and smiled a smile I was glad I couldn’t see, and she flinched as I knew she would when my finger tightened on the trigger again.

  We stayed like that for a brief moment before I said, “Come on,” in a voice I hardly recognized as my own, as I eased off the pressure and removed the gun from her face. “We’ve done what we were paid for, let’s get this place cleaned up and get out of here.”

  “You didn’t even let the poor bastard come,” she said as she pushed at his torso and I helped her roll him over, his almost flaccid cock popping out of her cunt like a cork from a bottle. “You could’ve at least let him do that.”

  “Fuck him,” I said, “No one comes into my wife but me.”

  American Holidays

  Mike Kimera

  Memorial Day

  “So what was your best?”

  “Best what?”

  “Best erotic experience.”

  Mark is a sex bore. He talks about it so much it’s a wonder he gets time to do it.

  “Mine was with two Swedish twins in a sauna,” he says, leaning towards me conspiratorially. “I’d added a day to a Swiss business trip to get some skiing in and these two and I were first back to the hotel from the piste. Well, you know how the Europeans are with saunas, everyone together and no clothes allowed. Just one of these girls would have been amazing – snow-white hair, all-over tan and sleek body – but twins! I thought I’d died and gone to pussy heaven.”

  I hate men who say “pussy” like that. Like a woman starts and ends at her cunt. But I’ve known Mark since grade school, so I give him some latitude. Turning slightly away from him, I look towards the lake where my wife, Helen, and Barbara are sunning themselves. They are the best of friends, and they tell each other everything. I want to sit quietly beside them and listen to their talk. Instead I am standing next to Mark at the barbecue pit, burning burgers.

  “So anyway, the shock came when the first one took me inside her. In the heat of the sauna her pussy felt cool. No shit. Cool pussy from an ice maiden in a sauna. How sexy is that! Then, when her sister joined in . . .”

  I think Mark is making this up. Maybe the twins were real. Maybe he even saw them in the sauna. But I want to believe that he doesn’t cheat on Barbara on his business trips.

  I am a little in love with Barbara. Helen pointed it out to me one night as we drove back from dinner at their house. She said that she’d noticed that Barbara is always the last person I look at in a room, and that I avoid being alone with her, both sure signs of my attraction. Denial would have been pointless; Helen knows me too well.

  After a few seconds of guilt-ridden silence, Helen pulled the car over to the side of the road, and right there, on a tree-lined suburban street, where nice neighbours repaint their picket fences every spring, she fucked me. She didn’t say a word. Mouth on mine, she freed my cock, pushed aside her panties and rode me. I came like a boy. She grinned at me, held my face in her hands and said, “If you ever call me Barbara while we fuck, I’ll cut your dick off.” Then she drove us home.

  Only when Mark says, “Your turn,” do I realize I’ve missed his sauna-sex story, and he is now waiting for mine.

  “Come on, Pete”, he says, “even a terminally married man like you must have had some erotic adventures. Fess up”

  An image of Helen blossoms in my mind. She is nineteen and has just let me fuck her for the first time. She’d insisted that we use her parents’ bed. “It will make up for all the times I’ve had to listen to them screwing,” she’d said as she led me into the master bedroom. I am lying on my back, wrists still tied to the headboard, sated and happy, watching her between half-closed eyes, pretending to be asleep. She is sitting at her mother’s dressing table, brushing her long black hair. The sun streaming through the window behind her seems to me to be a kind of halo. She leans her head to one side so that she can push the comb through the full length of her thick glossy hair. This causes one small upturned breast to push off the silk robe that Helen has “borrowed” from her mother, and to stretch triumphantly up towards the sun.

  I am hypnotized by the play of light on her hair; the smooth movement of her arm as she wields the brush and the slight but attention-grabbing movement of her silhouetted breast. She puts the brush back on the dressing table, looks at me and smiles. Many times since, I have returned to that moment of still happiness, crowned with the love in her smile.

  “Well?” Mark says.

  “Sorry, Mark,” I say, “nobody seems to want erotic adventures with me.”

  I mean it as a playful way of changing the subject. Mark takes me literally.

  “I don’t know,” he says, “you’re not bad-looking. I know Barbara thinks you’re sexy. You just need to read the signs.”

  “I think the food is ready now,” I say, gathering the half-burned/half-frozen products of Mark’s culinary skill onto plates.

  “You must have been tempted. At least once,” Mark says.

  “I’m happily married, Mark. Temptation is easy enough to overcome.”

  “Ah yes,” Mark says, “I’d forgotten about the ‘Peter Brader, man-of-steel’ act.”

  I start to walk back towards the lake, hoping to bring an end to the conversation before we get into a fight. Mark has always taken my abstinence from casual sex as a personal affront. Briefly I wonder if he
thinks it’s all an act and I’m just refusing to share the details with him.

  “Barbara really does think you’re sexy, you know.”

  I stop and look at him. He laughs.

  “No need to look so horrified. She’s not going to rape you or anything. But she told me that she admires your serenity. Isn’t that a great phrase? Admires your serenity.”

  I try for a wry smile but Mark is already striding ahead of me, so it is lost on him.

  “OK, girls, the hunters have returned with freshly charred dead animals for their women to feast upon,” he shouts.

  Sometimes I think Mark is locked in a parallel dimension. The “girls”, both in their late-twenties, exchange pained glances at Mark’s return, but he either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.

  This meal is a tradition amongst us going back eight years, to when we were both newly married couples. Every Memorial Day we drive out to the lake and have a barbecue on the public beach. Back then we slept in our trucks and drank beer with our burgers. Now we rent a large cabin and sip Pinot Noir. Sometimes I think the burgers are the last talisman of the days when we had more hope than history.

  I have my head in Helen’s lap. She smells of sunshine and cotton. I relax, content to listen to her telling Barbara stories about the people in her office. I have never visited Helen’s office. I am reluctant to have reality superimposed on the vivid images I have of her colleagues. Barbara and Helen used to work together, and Helen introduced Barbara to Mark.

  When Barbara laughs at the punchline of Helen’s story, it is a raucous laugh that seems to escape from her. I turn my head slightly, knowing that Barbara will have one hand in front of her face. Helen feels me move, recognizes the reason and, unseen by the others, pinches my ear lobe as she pulls me back to my original position. I look up at her. She mouths the word “later” and I shiver at the thought.

  Despite Helen’s admonition, I find myself wondering about Barbara’s laugh. It reminds me of Miss Honeychurch in Room With a View, whose passionate nature is discernible only by the way in which she plays piano. With a stab of guilt, accompanied by a sudden erection, I have a flash of Barbara coming as raucously as she laughs.

  On our second year out here, we almost got into a group thing. We’d stopped talking and started kissing, still in couples but with each couple acutely aware of the presence of the other. I left the decision to Helen, who in turn looked to Barbara. Mark was thinking with his cock and pushed up Barbara’s T-shirt to take her nipple into his mouth. The discomfort on Barbara’s face was obvious.

  Helen grabbed me by the belt and said, more loudly than she needed to, “Come on, Peter, I need a bed to tie you to.”

  I was happy to leave. Barbara smiled her gratitude while trying to keep Mark’s fingers out of her shorts. Civilized man that I am, I still could not erase the sight of Barbara’s stiff nipple topping a small neat breast that just demanded to be taken into my mouth. Helen knew what I was thinking. When she rode me she held my nipples between her fingernails and used them like a bridle. I was sore for a week but my cock was made of ivory that night.

  The scene was never repeated. Barbara confided in Helen her embarrassment at how Mark fucks her. I was puzzled when Helen passed on the remark. She just laughed and said, “Well, you’ve seen him dance, haven’t you?” Mark thinks he dances like John Travolta, but he looks more like Fred Flintstone. He dances vigorously, with his eyes closed, paying little attention to either his partner or the rhythm of the music. The magnitude of the criticism made my balls retract.

  I am constantly amazed at what women tell each other. Men brag, women tell the truth. It’s a frightening thought.

  A tinny rendition of the James Bond theme fractures the silence. Mark has brought his cell phone, even on Memorial Day. Barbara glares at him, but he turns his back on her and takes the call. Mark uses an earpiece on his phone. He says he doesn’t want to fry the brain cells that survived the drugs. He looks demented as he paces in a circle, apparently talking to himself.

  We overhear enough of the conversation to know that he has been summoned back to the city by some European emergency that he must respond to at once. I wonder at that – it’s 9 p.m. in Berlin right now. It occurs to me that I have just seen a piece of performance art. Maybe Mark doesn’t make his adventures up. Perhaps there is someone waiting for him even now in a city centre hotel room.

  To my surprise, Barbara lets Mark go without complaint – she just sits and watches as he takes the car, leaving her behind like luggage that we will forward to him later.

  “I’m going to lie down in the cabin for a while,” Barbara says once the car is out of sight.

  “Are you OK?” I say. Dumb question. Helen digs her fingers into my side to tell me to shut up.

  “No, Peter, I’m not OK, but I’m trying to get used to it. Not everyone has a marriage like yours. I live with a man who never touches me, but who tries to fuck anything female that can move without a Zimmer frame. He doesn’t even have the tact not to embarrass me in front of my friends. So I’m trying to preserve my dignity by not letting myself cry until I get back to my room.”

  Barbara’s eyes are wet, but she is standing straight and her voice is strong and clear. She holds my gaze until I look away, then she picks up a bottle of wine and heads back to the cabin. Helen follows her. They talk quietly but passionately. I can’t hear what is said. Then they hug in that way that women do, halfway between a caress and a handshake.

  Helen waits, head on one side, hands on her hips, for my questions. I don’t ask any. She looks at me for the longest time. I seldom know what she is thinking. She moves to stand in front of me, tilts my head down towards hers and says, “I love you, Peter Brader.”

  We give Barbara an hour before we return to the cabin. I head into the kitchen to clear away the debris of our meal. Helen goes to check on Barbara. I have just loaded the dishwasher when I hear Helen say, “Come here, Peter.”

  I know from her tone that we have started to play. I am surprised, but out of long habit I go to her and wait, eyes downcast, for her instructions. I love surrendering to her like this. My cock is already thickening and my heartbeat is elevated. It is so exciting not to know what will happen next. Even so, I am concerned. Surely she’s not going to take me here, in the main room. The thought worries and thrills me at the same time.

  “Strip, Peter.”

  Helen has never done this before. On our Memorial Day weekends she has always used the bedroom for our fucking.

  I don’t look at her or speak as I strip. I feel exposed standing there, my cock sending semaphore signals of desire to my mistress.

  “Put your hands behind your back,” Helen says.

  The steel cuffs Helen produces from her bag are cold against my wrists. They make me feel pleasantly helpless.

  “Peter, I want you to stay hard as long as you can. Let me help you.” She ties a soft leather strap around my balls. My cock trembles at her touch. She grins and plants a chaste little kiss just underneath the head.

  I wait for her to undress. She doesn’t. Instead she reaches into her bag and pulls out a scarf. Standing behind me she blindfolds me with the scarf. I feel her breath on my neck. Her teeth sink into my ear lobe as her fist closes around my cock. I groan.

  “You wanted Barbara today, didn’t you,” she says.

  I nod.

  “Say it. Tell me what you were thinking”

  “I wanted to know how she sounds when she comes,” I say.

  She lets go of my cock. A cool finger probes my anus. “So you prefer her to me?”

  “No. I love you. I need you.”

  “But . . . ?”

  “But I like Barbara.”

  “Would you like her to fuck you?”

  “Yes,” I say. I think I know where Helen is going with this but I can’t believe she really means it.

  Helen kisses me; a deep, slow kiss, exploring my mouth with hers. Except it is not Helen. Helen is still behind me.

  T
he kissing stops. Before I can speak Helen presses against my back and whispers, “It will be OK, Peter. Trust me.” I nod my head slightly and she whispers, “Thank you.”

  I understand the blindfold. It gives us the option to pretend that none of this has happened.

  No one is touching me now. I wait. I assume the women are undressing. I wonder if they are touching. Suddenly it occurs to me that over the years they may have done more than just touch. My mind doubts that this is true, Helen would have told me, but my cock goes with the image and twitches ludicrously.

  A hand, strong and purposeful, pushes on my shoulder, signalling for me to kneel. The floor is hard on my knees. I won’t be able to do this for long. I recognize the smell of Helen’s sex, seconds before it is pressed against my face. She holds my head and rubs herself against me. My tongue presents itself for use. She presses her labia against my mouth until my head is forced backwards. She rubs me in a figure of eight against her sex, then she is gone.

  Seconds later another sex is pressed against my mouth. To my surprise it smells and tastes just like the first. Maybe I can’t tell the difference between Helen and Barbara. Maybe Helen is returning to confuse me. The message is clear enough: stop trying to analyse, go with the flow, be the moment, let the sex flow through you. That message is at the heart of my sexuality, and I recognize it as their gift to me.