The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 4 Page 6

  I see her for an instant. She runs between a stand of trees, about thirty yards from me. Rushing forward, I trip over a root and stumble into mush. When I climb out, I’ve lost my left shoe. The chilling howl echoes again and I freeze, reaching instinctively for my gun.

  The insects are silent.

  I squeeze the checkered, walnut stock of my .38, holding it in the standard, two-handed police grip. Something moves behind one of the trees where Ann disappeared, but I don’t aim at it, keeping my muzzle down in case it’s Ann. It’s a human form, but not in a white gown.

  The hair stands on my arms and my heart thunders as I raise my gun slowly. The form moves behind the tree. A noise to my left turns me that way and I see the white gown floating a good distance away now.

  I move that way, watching carefully.

  The trail narrows as it sinks into an area with no trees. It’s lighter here and doesn’t look as wet. I keep moving forward until I reach another stand of trees. Easing around a towering oak, I catch a movement to my right and turn as a tall man steps from behind another tree. The moonlight catches his white face and I gasp.

  Clad only in tattered pants, the man is a good half-foot taller than my six feet. Long arms dangle to his knees, he has a wide nose and thick, bluish lips and deep-set eyes. It takes a few seconds for me to realize he’s inching toward me. I raise my weapon and he stops and then bolts away too quickly for me to do anything but finally let out my breath.

  Bluegums! Jesus, what have I just seen?

  My legs are wobbly as I move in the direction I last saw Ann. The trees are wider apart now and the trail easier to follow in the moonlight. I seem to be moving in a circle. It doesn’t take long for me to be back between the trees.

  Maybe Ann went to the Chula’s.

  I can’t tell which is the way to the houseboat. I’m lost. I don’t even know the way back to the hotel, but I know if I keep moving forward I’m bound to run into something. Stepping on damp ground, I realize I’ve lost my other shoe.

  A noise off to my right pulls me that way, through more trees to an open area of water glistening in the moonlight. I hear the sound again, like a low moan. I follow the water, still moving to my right.

  A flash of white across the water catches my attention. It’s Ann, white gown flowing as she moves away from me, disappearing between cypresses.

  I shout her name and try to follow, moving into water that’s over my knees. A sudden movement in the water to my right causes me to jump back as something large slithers away quickly. Gator? Cottonmouth?

  I move back to dryer land and look around. Shoving my revolver back in its holster, I work my way around the water. Sweat drips into my eyes, mosquitoes the size of pterodactyls feast on my arms and neck, slimy things cling to my stocking feet and I press on.

  A white face appears from behind another cypress. I reach for my gun and it pulls back. I spot another tall, white figure in the distant light. It could be the same pallid-faced man. I keep seeing them peering from the shadows.

  Finding higher ground between two oaks, I stop and listen but can only hear the call of insects. I wait. Eventually, a pale light seeps across the land. A splash behind me turns me in time to see three Bluegums standing there, staring at me.

  I pull out my gun just as a piercing howl echoes through the swamp.

  The Bluegums duck and dart away in separate directions.

  I try to follow the closest, but he’s gone in seconds. Then, I hear her again, a cry. Or, is it a moan? I hurry, but the sound fades, then comes again and sends a chill through me because I can’t tell if she’s crying for help or from something else. It sounds more like a cry of pleasure.

  I stumble and realize I’m moving in circles, but I keep moving, trying to locate the moaning. Minutes slip away into maybe an hour, maybe longer.

  I move back to the dryer land and move off, away from the cypresses. Suddenly, I step on a wooden plank. I recognize the bent oak and quickly move to the footbridge leading to the Chula’s houseboat.

  The Chula is sitting in the same chair. She rocks forward as I stumble in and leers at me with those glittering eyes.

  “Ann!” I gasp. “She’s lost.”

  “No. She ain’t lost, no.” The Chula points to a door in the far corner of the room. “She in dere, takin’ de bath.”

  “What?” I move to the door, open it to a small room filled with yellow candlelight. Ann, her back to me, sits in a white tub. She is humming as she lathers her arm with soap.

  “Ann,” I call out, but she doesn’t respond. “Ann!”

  She turns and smiles at me, then lathers up her other arm.

  “Are you all right?”

  Ann nods.

  “You come back in here,” the Chula calls out. “Leave dat girl alone.”

  I fall back into the main room. The only place to sit is on the small bed across the room from the old crone’s rocker. I sit heavily on the edge of the bed and look back at the Chula, who is watching me pretty closely.

  “She’ll be fine, dat one,” the old woman tells me. “But, you don’t look so good.”

  I run my hands through my hair and pull out leaves, sticks and a small pine-cone, of all things. Sitting back, I feel the heat of the room on my face and I’m so tired I fight to keep my eyes open.

  Ann comes out of the bathroom wrapped in a brown towel. She comes right for me, as if in a trance. She leans down as if to kiss my lips, but continues forward and collapses on me.

  “Jus put her in de bed,” the Chula says as I roll Ann off me.

  The towel opens and my face is just inches from her silky mat of pubic hair. I wrap the towel around her as Ann rolls on her back, her eyes staring at me with a faraway look, a look of passion from some distant fire. She’s breathing heavily and so am I.

  “She still in de sex trance, right now, yeah.”

  I look back and the Chula waves me toward the foot of the small bed. I sit at Ann’s feet, adjusting the stiff member in my pants as I sit.

  “She’s dreaming about them stickin’ in her, yeah.” The woman cackles, then adds, “She had de semen all dripping from her when she come by. But she clean up nice, yeah.”

  “They raped her?”

  “Ha! She had de sex wit’ dem. She like it!”

  I watch Ann’s pretty face for long minutes. She seems . . . so peaceful.

  “You get sleepy; you go ahead and lay down with her, boy. She ain’t gonn’ bite you, no.”

  I recline across the foot of the bed. The weariness tugs at me and I feel myself drifting to sleep.

  Something touches my face and I wake with a start.

  Ann stands next to the bed. She’s naked and the bright morning light falls across her round breasts, flat stomach and long, silken legs. Her small nipples are erect and their pink areolae seem to glow in the light as she leans them toward me.

  She grabs my belt and unfastens it, working my pants down, then my boxers, yanking off my socks. I sit up and pull off my shirt, taking a second to see if the old crone is watching. The Chula isn’t there.

  Climbing on the bed with me, Ann kisses her way from my chest to my throat, to my mouth. We kiss softly, letting our lips caress before opening our mouths to let our tongues take over.

  I cradle her breasts and knead them as she moves atop me. We kiss, a deep, long, heart-pounding kiss. Ann reaches down and guides me into her, shuddering as I slip inside. She gasps and lets out a little cry before starting long, rhythmic grinding. We fuck there on the old crone’s bed, in the middle of the swamp where her father died.

  My God, she’s so hot and so loving. She rises on her hands and her face is radiant with pleasure. With her eyes closed and her hair bouncing back and forth Ann is so beautiful I can’t help but stare at the fine lines of her gorgeous face.

  The sensations seem magnified, the pleasure is so intense. Maybe it’s because of our narrow brush with death, maybe it’s being here in the Chula’s cabin. Or maybe it’s simply Ann, the beautiful, passi
onate woman.

  Our hips grind as we both reach for pleasure. We climax together and Ann settles on me, kissing my face and neck, telling me I was wonderful, talking dirty to me. She tells me she wants to get under me, to feel me atop her.

  I roll her beneath me and we kiss until I’m ready and we make love again, we melt into one another again and the heart-pounding rapture is so intense.

  I’ve never lost count before, but when I wake up to the old crone’s cackling, I realize I don’t know how many times Ann and I fucked on that rickety bed.

  We both look at the Chula who is back in her rocker, sinewy arms folded across her lap. I notice the sun isn’t as bright outside.

  “Now ya’ll know de secret of de swamp, mais, yes you do.”

  The Chula points to Ann, who sits up behind me. “She gonna need more screwin’, yeah.” Ann climbs over me and heads for the bathroom without saying anything. I hear the bath water running.

  “You join that gal in de tub. You betta hurry.” The Chula looks out the open door. “It gonna be dark soon, yeah.”

  I climb into the narrow tub with Ann and we wash off, but I’m in a hurry and get out quickly to dress in the front room. It’s still daylight out, but the light is beginning to fade.

  When Ann steps out in her white gown that is brown from the knees down, the Chula tells her she now knows what the women around here all know.

  Ann stares at her.

  “You want some good sex? Some wild-ass, animal sex, you do dere yourself and de Bluegums give you a good screwin. Just like the way the white slave owners used African womens for dere lust, Bluegums do de same to white womens, who love it!”

  I stand and buckle my belt as the old woman lets out a high-pitched laugh.

  “De best fuckin’ you ever gonn’ get. Can’t have no baby from dem. Can catch no disease from dem cause dey ain’t human, zactly. Dey a different breed. Bluegums got dere own womens, back in the deep swamp. Dey make babies wif dem, but dey come out for us womens too.”

  I don’t know what I’m going to do with this girl when we get back to town, besides reporting to Mr Noonan that her father died an accidental death. I do know I’m holding on to her as long as she wants.

  We pick up our pace to hurry back to civilization before dark. What did Dr Simone say? Something about living in some sort of primitive area?

  Jesus, we have to get back to New Orleans!

  Pet Shop Girl

  Lisette Ashton

  “There you are.” He spoke without surprise and Cindy got the impression he hadn’t just expected her to be waiting in the pet store for him had he known she would be there.

  She glared at him, her expression a mixture of annoyance, contempt and adoration. She had waited – not because she needed to, and most definitely not because she wanted to – but because he was her master and she was his slave. Regardless of when the instruction was given, or how it interfered with her life away from him, it was her duty to obey. “Yes, master,” she replied stiffly. “Here I am.”

  “Give me your coat.”

  She glanced nervously around and, when she looked back at her master, she fixed him with a silent plea. There were shoppers and staff nearby, emptying shelves and slowly restocking them and, because this store was local for both of them, Cindy knew there was a danger of their relationship becoming public knowledge. She didn’t want to take off her coat and beseeched him with her eyes. Fervently, she hoped he would sympathize with her unspoken wish.

  He kept his hand extended and repeated the request.

  Not disguising her reluctance, Cindy unfastened the belt from her trench-coat and pulled it grudgingly from her shoulders.

  Like the expert in human nature that he was, her master seemed to understand her brightest hopes and darkest fears. He knew she dreaded public embarrassment and yet he appreciated that the prospect excited her beyond belief. Those few times he had reprimanded her within earshot of others – a sharp word spoken too boisterously, his hand tightly encircling her wrist while his eyes spat venom, and the obvious implication when he loudly called her a slut – they had all been exercises in the most exquisite form of torture. Even something as simple as the instruction to remove her coat, and the mortifying fear that someone would see what she wore beneath, was enough to send her pulse racing with loathsome arousal. From past experience she knew the worry that a passer-by could notice, or the horror of friends or strangers discovering her servile vocation, were only matched in magnitude by the relief that came when she realized her subservience remained a secret.

  “I have a gift for you,” he explained.

  Her antipathy melted and, for the first time since she had received his summons, Cindy smiled. It was easy to forget the torment of the previous two hours since he had called; her haste in concocting an excuse and escaping from the office; the inconvenience of her quick rush home to shower and reapply makeup; and the nuisance of having to change into the uncomfortable outfit he expected her to wear. She brushed aside her memories of the pains that had come from struggling into the rubber lingerie – the agony of fastening the stockings’ clips to her over-stretched labia, the discomfort of tying herself into the waspish corset, and the punishment of donning the six-inch stilettos – and she beamed for him.

  “You have a gift for me? Really?”

  He nodded.

  Eager and excited, she blurted, “Where is it? What is it?”

  He stepped away, beckoning with one commanding finger, and Cindy hurried to follow him down the aisle. Each step was a lesson in torture, the six-inch stilettos straining the muscles of her calves and inner thighs. It was impossible to walk normally in the footwear and she knew her gait was little more than an elegant hobble.

  But the shoes were only a minor source of discomfort.

  The micro-mini was painfully tight and obscenely revealing while the whalebone corset pinched her chest and squashed her breasts more effectively than the cruellest tit-bindings with which they had experimented. Her nipples, stiff with the arousal that always precipitated her meetings with the master, rubbed painfully against their rigid confines.

  Yet it was the rubber stockings that caused her the greatest suffering.

  The rubber stockings were an accessory that Cindy simultaneously loved and loathed. They clung beautifully to her legs, sculpted every curve with a polished, glossy lustre and the micro-mini displayed them to a glorious perfection. But, because they were secured to her labia, held in place by torturous clips that bit incessantly at her sex and mercilessly tugged downward, they made every step an exercise in anguish and constantly sparked her body with conflicting explosions of pleasure and pain. However, because her master had summoned her to follow, and because he was being generous enough to present her with a gift, Cindy tried to walk without complaint. It didn’t matter that her body was aflame with perpetual torture. All that mattered was that he had been thinking of her.

  “Now, stand still,” he instructed.

  Relieved to obey this command, Cindy did as she was told.

  He was a good twelve inches taller than her and, even with the addition of the crippling heels, she only found herself on eye-level with his broad, manly chest. Standing so close to him, able to inhale the sweet perfume of his fresh sweat, she basked in the nearness of her beloved master.

  With a broad smile, he revealed the gift. It was a short length of supple black leather, decorated with stainless steel studs, and equipped with a shiny, simple buckle. Not waiting for acquiescence, acting with the commanding authority of her undisputed owner, he encouraged her to step closer and looped the collar around her throat.

  Cindy stood rigid, basking in the caress of his fingers against her neck, and shivering with gratitude. She considered the soft flesh beneath her jaw to be one of the forgotten erogenous zones, a sensitive expanse of skin that responded to every subtle kiss and caress more acutely than most other parts of her body. Cindy knew her own neck was extremely receptive to any stimulation and that made the coll
ar seem even more special. Just as her master knew that she wanted to keep her servility a secret, he had also known exactly which gift would best please her. The collar reaffirmed their master and slave status and, sitting snugly against her throat, its presence was a constant reminder that he had been thinking about her.

  “You can’t ever take this off,” he said firmly. “Not without my permission.”

  She touched the gift, her fingertips sliding from leather to steel. “I wouldn’t want to take it off,” she told him. With honest gratitude, she whispered, “Thank you.”

  She wanted to say more but a shopper was walking past, casting a curious glance in their direction. Cindy’s master acted with his usual haste and forethought, his hands holding her cheeks, his cuffs concealing the collar, as he lowered his face to hers. His kiss, while only a ruse for the sake of discretion, gave her the opportunity to thank him properly. She explored his mouth with her tongue, pressing herself freely against him and revelling in the discovery of his swelling arousal. She gasped eagerly when she felt his pulse twitch against her and Cindy tried squashing her body closer. Their mouths remained locked together for a long time after the stranger had walked by. When the master eventually broke the kiss Cindy could see her eager smile reflected in his eyes and knew she appeared breathless and wanton.

  “That collar isn’t the only gift I have for you,” he confided.

  She stared at him puzzled and not sure she had heard correctly. It was touching that the master could treat her to one present but, Cindy thought, the idea that he had organized a second was more than any slave deserved. She started to shake her head, trying to tell him that he was being too generous, but the master was already producing a longer length of leather. Identical to the first gift in colour and style, fashioned from the same, supple black hide, and decorated with matching studs, the leash clipped easily onto the metal loop that hung close to the collar’s buckle.