The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 7 Read online

  He came in the kitchen. “I want to live here with you. Why are you being a bitch?”

  I shut off the water. “Fuck you for saying that.”

  Elijah rushed over, standing in front of me. “Lena. I’m sorry.”

  I dropped the dish in the sink and then started to move around him again, but he grabbed me, like a weight pulling me down. “Please, Lena, don’t. Don’t be mad. It’ll drive me crazy if you’re mad.”

  “Let go of me, Elijah.”

  He threw his arms around my waist. “OK, wait. Just listen.”

  “To what?” I fidgeted, trying to ease his hands off my waist.

  Elijah locked his arms around me. His chin was on my shoulder and his face was in my hair. “Have I ever told you about when my parents died?”

  “No, Elijah.” Not a sob story now.

  “The police thought I had something to do with it.”

  His arms were so tight around me I could barely exhale. “What?”

  Elijah lifted his face to look at me. “Just don’t make me leave, OK Lena?”

  And I went motionless. Like a body on top of the water.

  By the Spy Who Loved Me

  Maxim Jakubowski

  Some women you have sex with.

  Some women you sleep with.

  And then there are the women you have sex with and then sleep with. A whole night. And during that night, you cannot escape the warmth of their skin close against you on every blurry single occasion you half awaken, you sense their body in the darkness of the room, soft and pale so close to you it could be an extension of your own skin, and you have to repress the urge to pull her against your bulk and squeeze her to death as the tenderness races through your soul like a sweet poison invading your bloodstream, a runaway train with its ineffable cargo of lust and affection

  Those are the women who also break your heart.

  Those are the women who move your heart in quiet, ardent, hypnotic, mysterious ways.

  And she was one of those.

  No ifs and buts; no doubts about it.

  At the wrong time.

  In the wrong places.

  We’d met in the mountains. Snow fell on a picture postcard ski resort like a curtain of cotton buds floating, swirling down from a grey sky, minute patterns against the background of peaks and valleys. Here, France. There, Italy. It was a neutral zone, an ideal place for people to meet who shouldn’t meet, away from the gaze of security cameras or familiar faces. I was staying at a luxury hotel with parquet flooring and uniformed staff. She had been assigned a room a mile away into the steep hills, some rustic inn with wooden beams criss-crossing the ceilings. Arrangements had been made to organize the exchange in the opulent ground floor salon of my hotel. It was late evening; a lounge singer was crooning a song by Coldplay, badly, his fingers flying like errant quicksilver over the electric piano keys. I was wearing black, as planned, so that she might recognize me. It was unlikely anyone in the noisy apres-ski crowd scattered across the deep sofas would be wearing the same colours, and for security, I had a copy of an obscure Italian crime magazine on the table in front of me, next to my glass of tomato juice. The red and the black. That’s what had been agreed. I didn’t know who to expect.

  Her jet-black curls fell to her shoulders as she made a beeline towards me, her long, lanky legs devouring the floor. She sat across from me, nodded politely and ordered a coffee from the white-jacketed waiter. We sat in silence, quietly observing each other while the music played and the crowd’s chatter rose and fell around us. She allowed the spoonful of sugar to float briefly on the coffee’s surface before it sank. I noted a few isolated strands of white hairs amongst her darkness. Soft brown eyes. Pale uncovered shoulders. The gentle curve of her neck and slight breasts under the thin material of her white blouse.

  She sank her coffee in one gulp and rose to her feet. She walked away slowly, leaving the manila envelope she had been holding in her right hand on the table. I took hold of it and walked swiftly after her.

  For a moment, there was a look of confusion on her face; maybe she thought she had left the envelope for the wrong person?

  “Come to my room,” I asked.

  The shadow of a smile crossed her red lips, and she followed me to the lift.

  Room 411.

  That first night she let me undress her, but would not allow me to kiss her on the mouth. Her hair fell across her naked shoulders like a lion’s mane, thick, curling to infinity, heavy, dark as night. Her breasts were small enough that I could cup one in each hand and marvel at their softness, pink pale nipples blending quietly into the whiter landscape of her skin. There was a small brown mole growing inside the crevice of her belly button, another texture for my tongue to wander across before exploring further south through the unclipped, luxuriant jungle of her pubes. Unlike so many other women, she had no distinct smell down there, but the initial sensation was of an all-consuming fire that took me by surprise. Time and again, she rode me like a stallion, delaying penetration and rubbing her cunt against my cock, pressing down on my pelvic bones until I hurt, and could bear it no longer and cramped with a muted cry.

  Then we slept, skin touching skin, words redundant, in the peace of the Alpine night, leaving everything unsaid, after our communion of lust.

  In the morning, she left around five – she had earlier set the alarm on her mobile phone just before we had dozed off, arms tangled between crumpled sheets in the room’s penumbra. I didn’t want her to go, but she insisted she had to return to her own hotel, and be seen at breakfast by others. I watched, with pain in my heart, as she slipped on her black tights and then her dress. I blew her a kiss as she moved towards the door.

  “Don’t get up,” she said, as I slipped out from under the quilt, my cock still damp with her juices, and opened the door. I imagined her path, attempting to listen to her steps down the corridor through the wooden partition, shadowing her movements as if practising my spy craft. I did not hear the lift. I stood naked with my back against the hotel room door, with a heavy heart. There was a gentle rapping at the door and I opened it halfway; it was her. She smiled at me and quickly kissed me on the lips.

  “My name is Giulia,” she said.

  I had to stay on at the resort longer, awaiting further instructions from London. She joined me every night. On the second night, we hurriedly undressed right by the door and she suggested we share a bath, while Pink Floyd and other tunes she’d collected MP3 files of played on her laptop which she’d precariously positioned across the sink. Inside the water, she leaned against me and took my cock in her mouth; my throat tightened at her unbidden generosity and purity of desire. The landscape of her body grew familiar, her longs legs, the scattered birthmarks across her flesh, even the small pimples on her rear, the colour of her smile, the look of tenderness in her eyes when she came, the sounds she would make in the throes of pleasure, the way she would turn onto her stomach and invite me to take her from behind and the incandescent vision of my cock digging deep inside her, separating her scarlet sex lips while the puckered hole of her arse almost winked at me in complicity, the way she would say my name, or at any rate the name she thought was mine.

  “It can’t last.”

  “No.”

  “You’re beautiful.”

  “Let’s not talk.”

  We were together for now. And we fucked as if we’d never fucked before with anyone else.

  But she was too young, she had another life I knew nothing of and we both were all too aware of how impossible our situation was.

  When the time came to make our separate ways, we exchanged telephone numbers.

  “It’s wrong.”

  “I know.”

  “I have to go to New York. Join me there.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll book your ticket.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Please.”

  Our first row, as she and I already counted the number of hours before she had to leave
and return home and the pain became too much. Her sitting in a corner of the room, all bunched up.

  Making up.

  Making love.

  “You hurt me,” as I thrust inside her with too much anger and despair.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t do that again.”

  A kiss at Ground Zero, the reflection of her naked body in the room’s closet mirror as she walked naked out of the bathroom and we embraced, her pale nudity shadowed against my all-black outfit, the shape of her arse, the curve of her back, the fragile geometry of her neck. Memories that would have to last forever, I already knew.

  Her voice on the phone.

  “Pronto?”

  The next time we met was months later. She’d made arrangements and rented a room in a stone house in a walled city half an hour’s drive from Rome. It was, again, out of season, and the heating was on the blink and we had to stay in bed most of the time just to keep warm, running clumsily down the steps to the lower level of the small house to fetch water, or snacks to eat. I would watch her in awe as she moved between bed and winding stairs. She suffered from stomach cramps and every time I entered her, she flinched. We had only two nights and time flew like lightning. She would drink water and then straddle me and allow the tepid liquid to dribble back into my open mouth. My heart was melting and my soul was in turmoil. She drove me back to Fiumicino in her own car, and we almost ran out of petrol. I barely made my plane and there was no time for goodbyes. Which was better after all, I supposed. She’d also mentioned how much she disliked long, clumsy farewell scenes.

  In Barcelona in the Spring, she told me that while she waited for me to arrive, she couldn’t help herself and had masturbated herself on the hotel room bed we were about to share. Halfway through the first night, her period began. We fucked in blood with all the energy of despair, and damn the sheets. Her powerful body waltzing above me, impaled on me, and the flood of red bathing my loins as I grew softer and withdrew from her. My fingers checked my midriff in the room’s darkness and then spread the blood and come and sweat across her delicate breasts, like a painter celebrating the colours of the seasons on his unsteady easel.

  Flowers and books on the Ramblas on San Jordi’s day, tapas, her smoking a joint, and her suitcase emptied across the floor, clothes spread akimbo. She walked with a manly gait, which made me laugh a little and just served to annoy her as she accused me of similar ungainliness. Falling in love as we argued about small, petty things, unable to talk about the future.

  Taking separate cabs to separate destinations in early morning and time, again, to part and go our own ways.

  London.

  She had been threatening to cut her hair, shorten her unwieldy mass of medusa-like curls and I had protested.

  “It’s done.”

  A text message as I waited for her flight to arrive.

  She walked down the arrivals hall with a head full of hair, with a mischievous smile across her lips, enjoying the joke she’d played on me.

  Wearing a long, white billowing skirt all the way down to her ankles. Raising the skirt as I drove down the motorway from the airport and slipping her panties down so I could finger her. My hand soaking wet from her secretions.

  Wanting to fuck her to death as the only way to keep her, to split her open with my love – or was it my unchecked lust – to invade her with such force we would be forever embedded within each other. Feeling harder than ever when inside her, so much at home.

  Again, counting the hours to the inevitable separation. Beginning to think the unthinkable and envisage another world in which we could be together. Despite the obstacles. Age. Country. Past and present lives. The world and what it might say and think.

  A beach, where we basked in the sun and she was the only woman who would not go topless.

  My hand collecting her pee as she squatted over the toilet seat and the heat from her innards marked me forever. Wishing the day would come when she tied me down and scarred me with her showers in an indelible fashion, aching to receive her unholy offering in such shocking fashion. Memories are made of this.

  The last time: by a well-known lake, as she told me of her childhood. Coming up against the local marathon on our way to the airport and diverting onto unknown roads and not even having the proper time to say goodbye, to kiss her, to smell her, touch her.

  A final night during which our bodies were ever in contact, seeking each other’s warmth and contact. A mosquito in the room keeping us awake.

  Flowers for her birthday.

  More flowers for Valentine’s day.

  Telephone calls after telephone calls, as if there was always something more to say. The endless, anguished e-mails. The not knowing. Realizing that words are never enough. Feeling her slowly, inexorably move away, changing wavelength, tempted by new adventures, undermined by the days we could not spend together, the nights we could not share, the lives we would not have.

  The train will soon reach the Mongolian border. It’s been a long journey for which I never had a map, and I feel nauseous. In a shower of smoke, we draw into the station. There are soldiers on both sides of the track, in grey uniforms, patrolling the bleak no man’s land, weapons against their flanks.

  There is a dim light.

  I make my way down the empty wagon, leaving my useless baggage in the compartment; they wouldn’t let me keep it anyway: just warm clothes, her letters, a CD she’d burned with photos of her, punctuating our story.

  I walk down the platform.

  They are ready for the exchange.

  A man in uniform nods as he sees me approach. I stop. Wait.

  * * *

  There is movement behind him in the fog, and shapes emerge. She is escorted by two tall, stiff soldiers. She looks gaunt and tired, dark lines under her eyes, her long curls tangled. But as beautiful as ever. My heart skips a beat. My gut tightens. Everything comes back and I find it difficult to stop the tears.

  The trio stand to attention.

  I begin my steps towards them. One of them taps on her shoulder and Giulia raises her face and begins her journey towards freedom. She sees me but doesn’t allow herself to react. She passes me, ever so closely; I am tempted to say something but I know it would be pointless, and even attempting to touch her, brush her cheek gently with a final act of infinite tenderness might provoke some trigger happy soldier. The distance between us widens with every step I make towards Mongolia proper and the end of the no man’s land.

  The exchange is over.

  Now my winter begins.

  Don’t Look Back

  Alison Tyler

  I Google him. Sometimes occasionally, if I’ve got a minute to kill while the printer is churning out my latest project. Sometimes obsessively, staring at the computer screen until my eyes water, drinking straight vodka as the minutes blur. Sometimes recklessly – not bothering to delete my history afterward. “Deleting history” seems like too much of a cheat. It would be dangerously easy to strike out all the pages I’ve visited on my endless, circular search. You can’t do that in real life.

  I know he isn’t the doctor in Minneapolis who specializes in exotic-sounding diseases, or the professor on sabbatical in the Orient who beams his latest pictures up to his website every two or three days – lovely lush landscapes that I’ve grown fond of viewing. Sure, people change, but not that much. I’m absolutely certain he’s not one of a pair of Bluegrass-loving brothers who live in Utah. They hit local bars every few weeks, playing warm up for bands I’ve never heard of.

  I’ve done the online White Pages searches, as well, turning up addresses from fifteen years ago, six or seven places in a row, apartments I remember visiting when I cut class to fuck him. I actually think about calling the numbers – one might be current – but I can’t make myself. There was no caller ID back then. Now, I might get caught. And what would happen to my well-ordered life if he Star-69-ned me and my sweet boyfriend answered?

  So I resort to Googling.

 
Googling takes the place of those late-night drive-bys, looking to see if his Harley was in the spot out front of his building. My muscles tighten up the same way now as they did back then. Maybe I’ll see him. Maybe I won’t. So why do I even bother? Because I fantasize that one day when I type in his name, up will come all the information that I crave. What he’s been doing for the past decade and a half. What he’s doing now. Who he’s with. How he’s aged.

  Truthfully, I don’t know all that much about him. If I were to tally up all the facts, they wouldn’t fill an index card. Or a matchbook cover. He was older than me, but by exactly how much, I don’t know. Twenty-seven to my eighteen. That’s what I remember, but he lied all the time. He could have been lying about that. In my online search, I found a man with his name who graduated high school in 1978 somewhere in Southern California. Is that him? His middle initial was D, but he never told me what it stood for. Donald? David? Daniel? Dean? None of those seem right, yet I’ve found men with those middle names on the internet. Might he be one of them?

  There’s a fellow in the midwest who runs marathons. I can’t imagine Mark breaking a sweat unless he were running from a cop. But he had a sleek runner’s physique way back when. Could he have transformed himself to an athlete? Has he given up pot in favor of healthier substances? Has he hit the pavement to kill his demons?

  Googling takes my mind off my modern-day problems. Googling makes me forget about deadlines and pressures and what we’re going to have for dinner. Delivery pizza, again? Sounds good. Far easier to answer that mundane query than the other nagging questions pulling on me until my stomach aches: Should I pay the $29.95 and do a search of prison records? Because that’s where I’ll find him. I’m sure of it.

  I don’t enter my credit card. I don’t think I actually want to know.

  After spending hours on the computer, I dream about him. My eyes hurt and my head spins. I hit the pillow and recreate his image from the puzzle pieces that I remember: the black-ink Zig-Zag man tattoo on his upper arm. The way his blue eyes could turn grey or green depending on what he was wearing. Depending, even, on his mood. His paint-splattered jeans. His grey shirt. His body.