He looks at her, seemingly confused, perhaps taken out of the moment.
She says, “Why me, when you can have anyone you want? Younger, prettier, more—”
“I don’t think I can have anyone I want.” He is a half-step back, though they still hold each other. “I find you attractive. And . . . well, don’t take this the wrong way.”
“Yes.”
“But I got this feeling you really wanted me. I don’t know exactly when. I became aware of you watching me during your daughter’s lessons. And then it just kind of kicked in, maybe when we talked, or when you handed me the money and your hand seemed to linger. It became very clear that what I did, even the little things, affected you strongly. I guess I found such open desire in you very sexy. Our lesson was a real turn-on for me. Not that I power trip or anything, but you made me feel sexy.”
She kisses him this time, steps forward into the court and embraces him. No it isn’t exactly her adolescent romance fantasy hunk who hungered for the touch of her abundant, exposed cleavage, nor the grand passion she so desired that would bring about the perfect union of all her physical and emotional needs. He is turned on by her! . . . Which is enough to heighten even the normally fevered desires he inspires, enough to empower her to go after everything she wants.
He responds with the same. They kiss, all mouths and tongues, lips wet and moist. It is frenetic enough so that they don’t make it to the bedroom and simply fall onto the couch. He does not hurt her with his rough kisses along her breasts. His suckling of her nipples is as gentle as she has ever felt. His hands are everywhere, wiring her body, and she feels absolutely no rush to direct them to her vagina. There is even an urge to allow the fury of his desire to overwhelm her, to lay back and to receive, but she does not let this chance to exercise her offense fall away. She has forgotten that a man’s waist can feel this narrow in her hands, that a chest can feel this defined, that the earthy odor of his sweat – her body and the polo shirt absorbing it all – can be this sweet, that the taste of flesh can create such an appetite for more. Amazingly, after he produces a condom from somewhere and enters her moistness, easily, slowly, seemingly trying to control the rush that threatens to take over them both – as they make rough, throaty sounds in near unison – he takes his beautiful hand and runs it firmly through her hair while she slides her right palm down his thigh and cups his left quadricep. Shit, this is way better than Mick Jagger.
The Copper Horse
Vina Green
The interview was short. Aside from showing me around the estate and explaining the duties I would be required to fulfil, he asked me only one question.
“What are you most afraid of ?”
“The dark,” I replied.
I got the job, and he told me that if I was ever afraid, I should just ask him to turn on the light. And, I was to call him “Sir”. Had any other employer said the same thing, I might have found it odd, or inappropriate. But there was something about him, a weight in his voice, which held me like a magnet and made my heart jump at the same time.
He liked the smell of leather. That was how it began, really.
I was employed as his cleaner and personal assistant. He’d been born blind, though you wouldn’t know it. Despite his visual impairment, he was an artist. He worked with large, heavy sheets of thick white paper, and charcoal. His work was rough, full of flowing lines which didn’t meet neatly, but combined to make a whole. Nonetheless, the portraits that I saw bore an incredible resemblance to the customers who left with them, and he had a steady stream of visitors to the house, each wanting to leave with their own small miracle, a picture of themselves reflected through the eyes of a blind man. One woman, who returned several times, told me that she wanted to know what a man, who couldn’t see, saw in her.
I wondered the same thing.
It was only ever meant to be a summer job, but when term time came around again, I found that I didn’t want to leave. I was paid well, and I liked the work. He had a big, old Victorian house, the sort that never really looks clean no matter how often you tidy it. There was a small greenhouse, and a stable, no longer in use. He had converted almost the entire upstairs floor into a studio, where he spent most of his time. There were several large windows, so that light tumbled into the room all day, casting long shadows over his strange assortment of furniture during the afternoon. He had several chaise longues, a set of narrow, wooden, uncushioned chairs with tall backs, and a strange frame in the shape of a small horse, made from copper, which I supposed was some type of art. He had laid an old saddle along the top of it, complete with stirrups, because he liked the smell of leather, he said, and the feeling of the stitching. There were no curtains, but we did not have any neighbours, and until I arrived he had always worked in the dark. Now he left the lights on. The power bill, he said, was neither here nor there, and the environment was someone else’s battle to fight.
He was tactile, and meticulous. He’d lived in the house for his entire life, close to sixty years, and he knew precisely where everything was kept. I was to put every item that I touched back exactly where it came from so that he could find it again. He had a cane, black, with a white fox carved in quartz attached to the top, but he rarely used it, preferring instead to feel his way both through habit and by running his fingers gently along the walls to find his way from one room to the next. He always dressed well, in expensive clothes and fabrics that felt pleasant to touch. Downstairs, the drapes were velvet, the carpet was bamboo fibre. He had cobbles in the kitchen, rather than tiles, which felt cool and pleasantly rough underfoot. Despite the impracticality, all of the work surfaces were made of thick, untreated timber, so that if you ran your hand along them you could feel the grain.
It was absolute murder to keep clean. None of the surfaces were easy-wipe, all of them were creviced, and required constant scrub and polish. I enjoyed the ache in my arms, and I found I could easily lose myself in the steady rhythm of the work. Increasingly I wanted to do a good job for him, although he couldn’t see the degree to which I made everything gleam. He did, once, in feeling his way downstairs, notice that I had managed to beat all of the dust out of the drapes. “Good girl,” he said. That made me want to please him more.
I spent a good part of each day on my knees, scrubbing.
Eventually, I began to find excuses to clean nearer to him, to dust the rooms that he was working in, hoover under his feet. He once commented on my perfume; he said that I smelled like cinnamon. I began to wear perfume every day. I leaned towards him as often as I could, handing him his mail rather than leaving it on the table, so that he might smell me. My heart quickened when I was near him, and I was sure he could hear it racing. I began to cook for him. I made food that felt good in my mouth, plates of oysters and smoked salmon. I made food with aroma, Thai soups with coconut and lemongrass, and soda bread that felt good to tear apart.
I started to wear lipstick, and nicer clothes, and gradually, fewer and fewer of them. First, a simple black dress, the sort I might wear on a date if I ever had one, and a long, heavy silver pendant on a chain that swung when I walked. Then, a satin chemise, black, short, without any underwear. I leaned in front of him as if to reach for something across the desk where he was sitting, so, had he been able to see, he would have seen directly down my front, my nipples erect, and breasts hanging down. I pretended I had dropped something and crawled under the desk at his feet, my bare arse in the air, so that he might smell me.
I didn’t touch him, though I longed to. I felt that I couldn’t, without his permission.
One day, I was naked, but for a pair of black high heels with red soles. I had walked into his studio, which was unoccupied. The door was open, and I had glanced in to check if he needed tea, or his water refilling. There was a large portrait on his desk, the size of a person. It was a picture of a woman, tall, with a full body and long red hair. He must have been working on it for some time, as it was unusually detailed, and painted in oil colours, rather tha
n black and white. She was sitting in one of the tall-backed wooden chairs, completely nude, and bound, with a purple rope. Her back was arched, and her arms pinned, presumably with her hands tied behind her back. Her feet were forced apart, further than the width of the chair legs, with a bar, so that her vagina was on startlingly frank display. She had a thick bush of ginger pubic hair. Her breasts were large and heavy, and she had big, perfectly formed, coffee-coloured nipples and creamy skin. She was looking towards the sky, with an expression of dream-like bliss, like a woman who has seen God.
I heard the floor creak as he entered the room behind me, and I suppose he surmised, from my still presence in the room, that I was staring at the picture.
“Does it scare you?” he asked, gently.
“No,” I replied. I envied her. She looked lost, in the peace of her stillness. “But how did you do it, Sir? She doesn’t have any clothes on.”
He had never seen a naked body in his life, not even his own.
“You don’t have any clothes on,” he commented.
I shifted from one foot to the other, startled by his observation.
“There’s more to nakedness, you know, than not having any clothes on,” he added.
I nodded, pointlessly.
“I’ll show you.”
I shifted awkwardly again, back to the other foot.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You don’t think I can see you, do you?”
Still, I said nothing.
“Sit down,” he ordered, moving towards his desk.
“Where would you like me to sit?” I asked, cocking my head towards him.
“Where would you like me to sit, Sir,” he corrected, authoritatively now. “Get onto the saddle.”
I took off my heels. He must have heard them clatter onto the floor. “No,” he said, “leave those on.”
I swung a leg over the copper horse, hoisting myself up onto the saddle, putting a high-heeled foot in each stirrup. I left a trail of moisture across the cool leather, and was embarrassed by my sudden wetness. Later, I thought, I would come back and polish it. He pulled a chair up, and sat on it, facing me side on, with his mouth about two feet from the top of my thigh. He could have easily reached out and touched me, but he didn’t. He held his sketchbook in his lap and a thick pencil between the thumb and forefingers of his right hand.
“Tell me what you feel,” he said.
I felt increasingly embarrassed, each time I shifted my weight, the leather pressed against me pleasantly, making me wetter still, and wanting to shift back and forth, more and more. I gripped the saddle with my thighs, feeling the cracks in the leather scratch my skin.
“You don’t feel anything?” he asked again, goading me.
I was silent, other than the creak of the copper horse, as I moved in the saddle.
“Then I want you to open your thighs further,” he said, “and spread your pussy lips apart, so you can feel the saddle, properly.” His face was the picture of calm, as if this was as normal to him as asking me to refill his water jug.
“Yes, Sir,” I replied meekly, spreading my legs, and my lips, apart.
“Good girl,” he said. “You can clean it later. With your tongue.”
“Yes, Sir,” I said again, closing my eyes, so that the sound of his voice washed over me, like a tide. I imagined how the leather would taste and the feeling of the stitches rough against my tongue. I would even lick the stirrups, so that he would know I was thorough.
“Lean forward,” he said, and I did, so that the front of the saddle, the curve, rubbed against my clitoris.
“Now, describe yourself to me, tell me what you look like. And keep moving.”
“I have long fingers,” I said, because they were the first thing I could see, when I looked down at the saddle.
“Go on,” he said.
“I have pale skin,” I said, “and black hair. I dye it. I have a nipple piercing, just one, on my right nipple.”
“Tell me about your breasts,” he replied.
“They’re small, smaller than I’d like. The size of an orange, cut in half, cupped in your hand. And I have small nipples. Each about the size of a blueberry. They’re erect, always.”
“Move,” he said. “Move quickly. Harder. So I can hear you.”
I ground back and forward, and back and forward on the saddle, pressing my feet into the stirrups so the metal bit into my ankles.
“I don’t have a bridle,” he said, “So I’m going to pull your hair back.”
“Yes, yes, please, Sir.” I was begging now, and grinding more. I could smell myself, the scent of my vagina mixed with leather. He put the sketchbook down on the ground, and stood up, touching my thigh as he reached forward to find the horse. I wanted to grab his hand, to feel him squeeze my breasts. He moved behind me, and pulled my hair back, hard, so my back arched as I pressed forward against the lip of the saddle. He ran his hand down my front, as I leant back against him, finding my nipple ring and tugging it gently. He moved his hand up, cupping my throat.
“Tell me if you’re afraid,” he growled into my ear, but I wasn’t, I felt everything other than afraid. I moaned, and pressed against his hand. He squeezed my throat tighter, and I came.
“Good girl,” he said, and let me go. He moved back into the chair and picked up the sketchbook.
“Stay there,” he said, “until I tell you that you can go.”
I sat, seeping come onto the leather until the long shadows began to fall across the room.
“It’s getting dark,” I said.
“Then I’ll turn the light on,” he replied. And he did.
Still, he did not let me go. We sat silently in his studio, me on the copper horse, and him facing me on the chair, for at least another hour, perhaps two. He did not have a clock in the room of course, and he was accustomed to sitting, sketching, for hours. His subjects sat still for him for hours and he seemed always unaware of, or unresponsive to, their discomfort. My legs grew stiffer and stiffer, until I feared that I would be too cramped to get off the horse when he asked me to. But still, I sat and waited, my thighs clenched tightly against the saddle.
Suddenly, he shut the sketchbook and stood up.
“You may go,” he said, turning his back to me and placing the book inside his desk drawer.
Slowly, I unfurled, and slid off the horse, my legs nearly buckling beneath me as the blood rushed back through them. He did not turn as I left the room. He stood next to his desk, with his fists clenched, looking straight out through the window, as if he were staring at the moon.
The next morning, I woke to find a package next to my bed. It was beautifully wrapped, black tissue paper with a thick silver ribbon. I opened it slowly, careful not to make a single rip in the tissue, and I folded the paper neatly and placed it alongside the bow, on my dresser. Inside, was a black satin bag with a black drawstring, and within that, a deep brown leather corset, the colour of the saddle. It fitted under my bust, and was shaped to sit low on my hips. The front fastened with six gold metal clasps, each the shape of a crescent moon. It laced at the back with a long, thin strand of soft black leather. I put in on, lacing it as tightly as I was able to with the help of a mirror. I pulled the strings so tightly that the leather lacing cut into the palms of my hands, leaving bright red welts. I wore the corset that day, all day, cleaning.
I tried to clean his studio that afternoon, leaning over him so that he would smell me and know that I was wearing the corset, but he did not acknowledge me at all. I hoped that he would tell me to get on my knees, to clean the saddle with my tongue, but he didn’t.
I barely saw him for nearly a month after that. He began to sleep in his studio during the day, while I cleaned the rest of the house, and then work at night, in the dark, so that I did not wish to disturb him. Sometimes, as night gathered, I would peer in through the door and see him standing in the same place, at his desk, with his fists clenched, staring out at the moon.
Every day, there was a new pack
age. They were all beautifully wrapped, and I unwrapped each one with the utmost care, folding the wrapping paper, and placing it onto my dresser until I had a pile of neatly folded tissue threatening to topple over with every new addition. Each gift was expensive, and exquisitely beautiful, but not all were lingerie. One gift appeared in a leather box, about a foot long, with a weighted envelope-style lid and a metal stud that held it closed. Inside, the box was lined with velvet, and on the velvet lay a heavy black rubber penis, attached to a leather harness. The cock was attached to the harness with a metal ring, and it was double-ended. A small rubber attachment, not more than three inches long, slipped inside me when I buckled up the harness. It belted around my waist, with a leather strap between my legs, which rubbed against my anus. The dildo was tapered, and lifelike, with a large head pierced with a silver ring. Attached to the ring were two long silver chains, with a nipple clip at each end. The right chain was attached to a hoop, so that I could insert it directly into my nipple piercing, and the left was a clamp.
That day, I cleaned the bathroom.
I must have looked a picture, kneeling in the marble bathtub, naked, but for the black rubber cock erect between my thighs. Each time I stretched forward to scrub, the nipple chains pulled tight, biting my flesh sharply. When I leaned back, to release the nipple chains, the double-ended shaft of the cock entered further inside me. The harder I scrubbed, back and forward, back and forward, the more I imagined he was fucking me on the copper horse, pulling my nipples from behind. I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, until my nipples were raw and sweat dripped down my body, mixing with the wetness that had gathered at the base of the cock. I tasted salt on my lips. I wanted to take the harness off, to sit the cock on the floor and lower myself onto it, to grind myself onto it until I felt release, but that was not what he wanted. The gifts were for wearing, not for self-pleasuring. I wore the cock and the harness all day and late into the night, until my nipples bled and the leather strap chafed against my arse.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 12: Over 40 outstanding pieces of short erotic fiction (Mammoth Books) Page 5
