The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 7 Page 7

  Oh, God, his body.

  I remember our first date, if you can call it a date. A walk from the beauty supply store where I worked after school back to my home – with a lengthy sojourn in a deserted alley behind the beauty supply. And I remember our first kiss – moments into our first date. What was I doing out in the rapidly darkening twilight with him? Who was looking out for me? He was.

  He pushed me up against a wall and kissed me so ferociously that there are days I swear I can still feel his lips on mine. When I run my tongue over my bottom lip I feel where he bit me. Can you feel a kiss fifteen years later? You bet you can.

  His large, warm hands gripped my wrists over my head while his powerful body held mine in place. He pressed against me, and I could tell how hard he was, and I could understand – finally – what all those whispers about sex were about. I hadn’t got it before. Look, I wasn’t an idiot. Just naive. I knew where babies came from. I’d watched enough old movies to understand the steaminess of the looks between hero and heroine. But there’d been no appeal to me in the high school fumblings at dances. In the background make-out sessions at parties. I’d been an outsider, an alien, gazing in wistfully from a distance and knowing for certain that nothing present was right for me.

  With Mark, everything was different.

  In that back alley behind the cosmetic store where I was a shop girl, he slid a hand up under my shirt and ran his fingers over my pale pink satin bra. In a flash, I wished that the bra was made of black lace instead. He touched my breasts firmly, as if he owned them, as if he owned me. He took my clothes off, unbuttoning my jeans himself, pulling my shirt up over my head, exposing me for what I really was.

  “A slut,” he said, “You’re my little slut—”

  I shivered, but stayed silent. I knew who the sluts were at school. I knew that I wasn’t one.

  “Aren’t you? Tell the truth.” His hands were everywhere. His mouth on my neck, his fingers pulling down my panties and parting my lips to see how wet I was.

  “Come on, Carla. Tell the truth –”

  I Google him. Endlessly. Dangerously. Desperately.

  Because he knew me. I was just out, taking that first shy step out into the world . . . and he knew me.

  I understand why I do it. So why the hell do I find it so odd that he Googles me, too? That I get an email, short but not sweet, asking if I’m the one he remembers.

  Yeah, I am. Sure, I am. Of course, I am.

  I think I am.

  Mark waits for me in our spot, leaning against a grey concrete wall, looking almost exactly the same despite a fifteen-year absence. Do I look the same, too? I’m not. Not a teenager any more, not trembling with desire, not – dare I say it? – young.

  But I was young. Back then, I was new.

  We were inseparable for months, me, a high school kid, and this twenty-seven-year-old hoodlum. This handsome, so handsome, man with the cold blue eyes out of a Who song and the iron jawline. A man who seemed to know everything about me. What was I doing? What was I thinking? Christ, what am I thinking now, fifteen years later? He’s in his forties, but still effortlessly lean and tough with only the slightest lines around his eyes and the same tall, hard body I remember. I have on jeans and a black sleeveless T-shirt that says, “I break things” on the front, something I dug out of a box filled with memories in the attic. I can pass for twenty-three rather than thirty-three if I have to. My dark hair is long to my shoulders, my glossy bangs in my eyes, as always.

  He doesn’t say a word. He just looks at me. I close my eyes tight and remember – the loss of him when he disappeared, the way no boy could replace him after he was gone. I spent years trying to recreate the exact connection that we’d had. I slutted myself out with a variety of losers, all of whom possessed at least one rebellious quality of Mark’s, but none who owned the whole package. Some spanked me. Some fucked me in public places. None made me feel anything other than disillusioned. Ultimately, I gave up hope. Now, even though I am with someone else, I’ve come running at Mark’s call.

  What the fuck am I doing here?

  “Carla,” he says, hands in my thick hair, lips on mine, and it is suddenly summertime again, and I’m missing him.

  “Carla,” he says, and I open my eyes and I look at him, and see him, the man, the danger, the reason I’m who I am today. If I hadn’t met him in high school, who would I have become? Some other girl. Some smart chick. Not a person who would leave a loving relationship in order to track down that fleeting emotion of lust from a decade and a half ago. Not a moron who could still go weak-kneed at the first sight of her long-time crush.

  “What do you need, baby?” he asks, and I find myself cradled in his strong arms, as always, my legs shaky, my heart pounding at triple-speed so that I can feel the timpani-throb in my chest and hear the clatter in my ears. “Can you say it, now? Can you tell Daddy what you need?”

  My throat grows tight. There’s a man at home, waiting for me. A simple man with a true soul who does not know where I am, but who trusts me to always return nonetheless. Yet suddenly the very concept of trust seems immensely overrated. What’s trust to lust? Which emotion would win every time?

  “Carla,” Mark says. Just that word. Just my name, and I am lost all over again, head spinning, heart dying.

  “Let’s go.”

  He has no power over me. I’m not a kid any more. You can’t impress me with a stolen Harley. You can’t turn me into a puddle with a single kiss. I’m only here on a crazy dare. I’m only here because of Google. I can leave him. I can run. I have a safe home furnished with faux antiques from Pottery Barn and appliances purchased only after careful consideration of the advice of Consumers’ Choice. I have a place to be. Mark doesn’t own me, not any part of me.

  “Come on, baby.”

  I suppose I’ve hidden it well, the desires that burn in me. I chose normal over interesting. I chose safety over adventure.

  “You know you want to.”

  Back then, I’d never have been so fucking lame. Back then, I’d always take the risks when offered. Jesus, I invented the risks when there were none available. Slipping out my bedroom window to meet him. Cutting class to ride to his apartment on the back of his pilfered Harley. Letting him handcuff me to his bedframe so that he could do anything he wanted to me. Anything at all.

  Can I change? Is it too late?

  My hand is trapped in his, held so tightly. The heat between us is palpable. Some people never find that heat. That summertime heat that melts over your body and leaves you breathless. Some people search their whole miserable fucking lives for some semblance of a sizzling kiss, and they die believing that “true love always” is just a bitter myth. But I found that heat as a teenage kid and I knew for real that it existed. Even if I’d never found it again, I’d had it once.

  How many places have I looked? How many other dark alleys have I gone down with nameless, faceless men, trying to find that old summertime magic from years ago?

  Mark bends to kiss my neck and I remember in a flash, in one of those blinding jolts, that he’d covered me in suntan oil one sultry afternoon. I’d spent the whole day at the beach, the first truly hot spring day, and he’d come to my house afterwards and dumped out my red-striped canvas tote bag onto my floor and found that bottle of oil. My group of friends had no fear of wrinkles yet, no worry about sun damage, not like the ladies in my circle now, the ones who Google StriVectin with the passion that I’ve Googled this man. We used the oil back then, for “the San Tropez tan”. Mark coated his strong hands while he told me to strip, and I’d watched his hands for a moment, dripping with the oil, knowing what he was going to do.

  I remember being shy, so nervous, still unaccustomed to being naked in front of a man. I could strip at the gym, in front of my peers, but taking off my clothes while he watched was something entirely different. Mark liked me like that. Not just naked, but nervous. He liked to put me off center, to make me feel as if I were always on a teeter-totter, the grou
nd rushing up to meet me when I fell. He watched through half-shut eyes that told me of his appreciation as I slowly took off my pink halter top, my cut-off jeans, my candy-colored bikini top and bottoms.

  And then he covered me with the scented liquid, until I gleamed, shiny and gold, the smell of papayas and coconut swirling around us. He rubbed the oil into my breasts, and over my flat belly, and down my hips. He coated me with the shimmering liquid, and then he fucked me like that, slippery and glistening, staining my sheets, ruining his pants.

  Nobody had fucked me like that before.

  Nobody’s fucked me like that since.

  “Come on, Carla,” he says now, leading me from the nondescript alley to the parking lot in back. There is a pick-up truck waiting. I know it’s his. He always drove motorcycles or pickups. They suited him. I look behind us, take one last look like Lot’s doomed wife. I could go back, wander through the alley, hit the shelves in the nearby Borders, buy the latest issue of Allure magazine, get an iced coffee in the cafe. I could go back to beige and safety and predictability. To reviews in Consumers’. To my Mr Coffee machine – a six-time winner.

  “What do you need, Carla? Tell Daddy what you need.”

  Back in high school, I’d needed to be spanked, and he’d taken care of that need with the most exquisite care. He hadn’t laughed at me. He hadn’t refused my desires or been disgusted by them. He’d simply assumed the role, once I confessed. Once I’d finally gotten the nerve and spelled it out:

  I’d needed him to bend me over his lap and lower my jeans. I’d needed his firm hand on my naked ass, punishing me. Or his belt, whispering seductively in the air before it connected with my pale skin. Then I’d needed him to cuff me to his bed and fuck me, to flip me over and fuck my ass until I cried. Until I screamed. Is that what he’d seen on the day we met? A yearning in my eyes that told him I was in need? How had he found me? How had he known?

  Most importantly, I’d needed him to show me that I wasn’t a freak for having the cravings that I did, the white-hot yearnings that kept me up late at night, kept me away from the high school boys and the safety of what I was supposed to do and who I was supposed to be, and he’d given me everything I needed.

  Don Henley says: You can never look back.

  “What do you need, now?” Mark murmurs, lips to my ear. I know suddenly what I don’t need. I don’t need to erase my history with a keystroke, when history is all that I’ve got.

  My fingertips grip the handle of his vintage blue Ford. I slide the door open and climb inside.

  You know, I never liked Don Henley much anyway.

  After Hours

  Marilyn Jaye Lewis

  Whenever I’m out with Jack I feel like I’m nothing but white trash. I revel in that feeling, though, and only he brings it out of me. He’s known me too long and too well.

  “Here, have a cigarette,” he offers.

  I take it even though I no longer smoke. It’s an unfiltered Camel, no less. “Jesus, are you trying to kill me, or what?” I lean my head closer to him and let him light the cigarette with his Zippo. I inhale. It’s harsh and I feel like choking, but something about it is reminiscent of sex with him and I like it. I keep puffing on it and I get the feeling I’ll probably smoke all night.

  “Should we bring along a bottle of something?” he asks. “It would probably be polite.”

  “If you want to,” I say. “But if we buy something too expensive then I always end up wanting to hoard it just for us.”

  “Then let’s pick up a bottle of something cheap for show, and a fifth of something special to keep between ourselves.”

  “That sounds like a perfect idea. Make people think we’re more generous than we really are.”

  When we arrive at the party, it’s already in full swing. We know just about everybody there and I’m getting a little bored with it – everything always being so predictably chic. What happened to those years when everything about going to parties seemed new and maybe even a little enticingly strange? Even when you did know everybody there?

  “Remember when a Friday in New York was wildly exciting?” I ask him under my breath.

  He looks at me and smiles wryly. “No. I can’t remember back that far.”

  Jack and I are fuck buddies. We circle into each other’s orbits when we’re between significant others. Neither one of us is bold enough to take that step into marriage like almost everyone we know has already done – some of them, more than once. Beneath our respectable careers, our healthy incomes, and our trendy fashions, we’re both still hopelessly immature when it comes to making serious commitments that involve the destinies of other people.

  “Alison, hello there!”

  It’s my boss, Susan Krieger, the well-known architect, coming toward us. She’s the female half of the very wealthy couple who’s throwing this shindig. She looks astonishingly attractive. I always forget how good she’s capable of looking when she’s not seriously harried from too much work.

  “Hi, Susan. You remember Jack? He used to work with us at the firm? In drafting?”

  “Of course, Jack. How are you? So nice of you to come.”

  Susan is only slightly older than we are, but her fully loaded husband, Derek Krieger, has a good twenty-five years on most of us, and has more money than any of us can possibly imagine. He founded the Krieger Designs architectural firm in the late 60s and has been at the top of his game since the bulk of us were still in college. He’s not exactly handsome, but for a straight guy, he’s always put an extraordinary amount of effort into maintaining his outward appearance. I guess he’s what you’d call striking.

  “God, she’s a bitch,” Jack says in my ear as Susan is walking away from us.

  “She’s okay. She’s just one of those power gals.”

  “Who probably likes to be down on her knees when nobody’s looking. Or getting stuffed in both ends at once by a couple of grease monkeys in some parking garage.”

  “Jesus, Jack.” I give him an incredulous glance. “Where did that come from?”

  “I don’t know. Come on, let’s go fill up some glasses and stash our booze somewhere safe.”

  We steer clear of the bar in the living room that’s been set up for party guests and duck into the well-appointed kitchen instead. We help ourselves to a couple of their good quality drinking glasses. We press them under the ice dispenser in their over-sized stainless steel refrigerator. The ice tumbles down into our waiting glasses with a crashing noise. At that moment, Derek Krieger comes into his own kitchen.

  “Alison, Jack.” He takes in the full scope of what we’re doing with a stern expression. It’s clear he hasn’t forgotten Jack, his incorrigible ex-employee, in the slightest. “Feel free to help yourselves there.”

  He grabs a bottle of wine from the counter and leaves.

  “I feel like we just got caught by the school principal or something. And we got a last-minute reprieve.”

  Jack chuckles. “Fuck him.”

  We fill our glasses with our own Ciroc and then stash the vodka deep in the Kriegers’ freezer. Then we return to the party and act as if we’re part of it. But really we retain our own little world where we watch everyone else over the rims of our vodka glasses. We gossip between ourselves, we denigrate our friends, we mock the few party guests we don’t know, and eventually we start to kiss discreetly and get horny. We go out onto the Kriegers’ balcony overlooking Central Park and light up a couple of Camels.

  “You want to leave?” Jack asks. “We could go over to my place and fuck like bunnies.”

  That sounds like an excellent idea. “Okay,” I say. “Let’s finish these and then go.”

  Jack moves up close to me. “How long has it been since your pussy got good and fucked, Alison?”

  “Too long,” I answer quickly, practically chewing on the end of my cigarette. I follow each puff closely with a healthy gulp of vodka. Clearly I’m craving something in my mouth. Why does he always get me so horny when we’re in public?r />
  “How would you feel about getting stuffed at both ends by a couple of grease monkeys?”

  I smile at him over the rim of my glass. “You’re such a sicko, Jack.”

  He smiles back at me, his coal-black eyes searing into me without flinching. “I still think about you an awful lot, Alison. The thought of you always comes to me when I’m jerking off, when I need a pretty girl in my head to get very agreeable.”

  “How agreeable do I get?”

  “You do just about anything, honey.”

  I’m hot now. My panties are starting to get wet. The nicotine and vodka are buzzing cozily through my veins. I’m curious about my exploits. “So tell me some of the things you make me do?”

  The balcony door opens and more smokers come out to join us.

  “Hi, Alison.”

  “Hi, Tina. You remember Jack?”

  “Of course I do. How’ve you been, Jack?”

  I quickly put out my cigarette, hoping Jack will do the same so that we can leave. He does.

  I want an answer to my question. I’m feeling seriously horny. “Tell me, Jack, I want to know.”

  “Let’s go get another drink,” he says.

  I’m all for it but I thought we were leaving. I follow him to the kitchen anyway. Before we even refill our glasses, we’re kissing. Slobbering all over each other. He pulls me up close to him. I hold onto his neck. His hands are under my skirt, up inside my panties, grabbing fistfuls of my ass while we kiss. He has a rock-hard erection pressing up against me.

  When we break for air, I try again. “Tell me some of those things you make me do, Jack. I want to know how agreeable you think I am.”

  “Oh, just the usual,” he says between kisses. “Mostly.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You know, you let me put my cock anywhere. Anywhere, any place, any time I want it. You just come in very handy, that’s all. Come on. Come with me.”

  “No,” I protest on instinct, following him anyway. He leads me down the hall to the bedrooms and ducks inside one of them. “No, Jack, I’m serious. I’m not doing this in my boss’s apartment.”