The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 12: Over 40 outstanding pieces of short erotic fiction (Mammoth Books)

by Jakubowski, Maxim

  I tried to compose myself.

  Went to my hotel to change clothes. Took a shower, reluctantly washing away her scent from my body, from my cock.

  Then rushed out to look for the strip joint where I had first come across her. Half believing it also would have disappeared from the map.

  But it was there. In the same place as the previous day.

  Closed. It was still only mid-morning.

  I found a second-hand copy of The Beautiful and the Damned at the bookshop on Dauphine. Hadn’t read it in decades. It helped me pass the time until the bar opened.

  Standing on the opposite pavement, late afternoon, I saw the blinds rising and the click click of the door’s lock.

  A short, greying man was wiping the tables clean with a wet cloth, and no sign of the customary barman.

  My questions hit a blank wall.

  No, it had been ages since they’d featured dancers.

  No, they no longer had a license.

  Elderly regulars slowly streamed in.

  None of them had any memory of when if ever the place had been a strip joint. All it was these days was a convenient place to get a quiet drink.

  Somehow, it was what I expected.

  Made a strange sort of sense.

  I finally sat myself at the bar and asked the middle-aged woman now serving for a drink.

  As she bent down to get the bottle from the lowest shelf of her glass-fronted fridge, I caught sight of a fading framed photograph crookedly stuck to the large mirror that formed the back wall of the bar.

  Squinted.

  Recognized the pale features of my heavenly blonde stranger behind the sepia tones.

  “Who is that?”

  “Oh, that . . . Just an old photo taken some sixty years ago when the bar was a thriving private club for gentlemen,” I was told. “Must have been one of the dancers.”

  I gulped down my drink and walked out.

  Tomorrow, I will check out of my hotel, stroll down Royal Street and head towards Canal, leaving the mighty flow of the Mississippi behind me, and I will wait for the rain to come and maybe I will melt away and meet her again on the other side of the humid New Orleans curtain of rain.

  For sure.

  Where I Can See You

  Remittance Girl

  “Isn’t she pretty?”

  He pressed the flat, curved surface of the straight razor across her lower lip and drew it along. The blade so finely milled it slid as if oiled. On its journey over her skin, the steel leached the warmth it found there.

  Suddenly she knew nothing. All her dark cravings, all the sensory yearnings for the cut and the bleed evaporated. Fear flared and burned her eyelids. She forced herself to ride the surge of adrenaline, to taste the tang of metal on her tongue, to let the dread sing in her limbs. As long as he was with her the fear could be forged into pleasure.

  Slow.

  She imagined herself as syrup gradually cresting the bowl of a spoon. No sudden moves. No twitches. No starts. Just breathe through it.

  There were three of them in the room. Trust could take you only so far, but the blade was the blade – thirsty in its own right – it would cut what it touched.

  Cold.

  There was a subtle urge to anthropomorphize the razor. To give it more volition and power than it deserved. But doing so would deny both of theirs. So, no. There were only two of them – both with volition – and a tool.

  Once she made certain, out of the corner of her eye, that the blade was well away from her face, she looked up at him. It seemed the steel he held in his hand had stolen all his warmth as well.

  Freeze.

  “She’s pretty. But only because you’re holding her,” she said in a rust-dry whisper.

  He levelled his gaze at her. She knew better than to blink or look away. He could read her soul, but that didn’t bother her. If she couldn’t have borne that scrutiny, she wouldn’t have been there.

  “Talk to me, please,” she begged, sounding small and needy.

  That was a mistake. He dropped down in front of her and smiled the terrible smile that wasn’t a smile at all.

  “What do you want me to say? That everything’s going to be fine? That it was all just a joke? That I’m not getting hard at the thought of parting your skin with this pretty little thing? Is that what you want? You want out?”

  Then she realized her mistake wasn’t a mistake at all. It was the show of weakness he needed to allow him passage through the door of his conscience. Because unlike most of the other sadists she had known, this one had never sought to reason away his desires. He despised himself for what he wanted, and she loved him for his refusal to take comfort in lies.

  “No,” she said. “No I don’t.”

  “Are you sure? Because if you aren’t sure, then leave now.”

  “I’m sure,” she lied.

  But already he was pulling the buttons of her shirt open. Already she had started to cry.

  Shirtless and on her stomach, her field of vision offered nothing but a bleak desert of crumpled white sheets. He touched her back, smoothed his big hand across it. Perhaps it was a gesture of affection, but she couldn’t see him any more, read his face, or his mood. It felt more like a survey of real estate.

  The moment she felt the swab, she knew where he’d cut. Wet at first and then icy as the alcohol evaporated. As hard as she tried to picture the razor touching her skin and drawing its hurtful little line, she couldn’t. The image squirmed away, eel-like and the words to construct the image were equally indistinct.

  Him. Who was he now? This man who was about to part her flesh with his sharp, shiny little toy? She said his name: consonants and vowels vaporous as they left her mouth, freezing in the air, falling like snowflakes on the sheets. Panic licked the hinges of her jaw.

  He must have seen it, because he stroked her back again and made a soothing, hushing sound. “It’s OK, love. It’s going to be fine.” And under the words, there was such a hunger.

  It would be better that way, he had said: on her stomach with the cuts on her back. There weren’t so many nerves there and she wouldn’t see the cuts or the blood. At the time, it seemed logical and he’d sounded so definite – so sure. But now, with her hands fisted in the sheets, an awful sense of isolation rushed towards her like an avalanche thundering down the snow-white field of linen.

  She had made a promise. Told him she could do this. Told him she wanted it. She wanted to know this part of him. She would love it. She could take it.

  The next touch was not a caress. It was too sure, too firm. She heard him inhale as the tiniest chill touched her skin. That first tiny pressure and the skin tug. Not pain but wrongness. Godawful wrongness as it pulled over what seemed like a mile of back. God, she thought, he’s fucking with my head. He’s used the blunt edge of the razor. Then the sting came.

  “Oh, Christ,” she whimpered into the bed.

  “Sh-h, pet. It’s just a little cut. You did really well. Really well.” It did not sound like him.

  Her jaw locked, her tears brimmed over, and her chest would simply not expand enough to take in the air she needed to breathe. She tried to raise her head to look, but her muscles would not obey. They jumped and twitched and would not stay still.

  The promise was a steel band around her skull. Pressing and pressing in. Like the blade. Cutting off the top of her head and slicing into grey matter. Shutting off the parts of her that could feel or care or reason.

  Before he was through the second cut, she said it.

  This was not about delighting in the fantasy of ravishment, or pretending to be unwilling. And so the safe word was not something obscure or quaint or quirky. She spat it out like a chunk of lead, black and hard and raw. “Stop.”

  And he did.

  A warm trickle slid under her arm, over the side of her breast. Hot in the silence. Then another. The same temperature as the tears puddled next to the bridge of her nose.

  She felt a touch on her shoulder. Tentat
ive. Him. But she didn’t know who that was any more. She would have known if it were really him, because he loved her. She surely would feel that. Wouldn’t she?

  “Love. Pet. It’s all good.”

  They were the words he used for her, but somehow now they sounded sharp, brittle as the glass of a broken light bulb. There was an awful resignation in them.

  It wasn’t really “all good”. It was all fucking bad. All just shit.

  Where was he and why had he left her here with her promise and this cold, distant puppet of a stranger who sounded just like him?

  Part of her knew it was him, of course. But she felt betrayed, abandoned. As if he’d let something of himself walk away when he’d picked up the razor.

  She was too ashamed to look at him as she rolled away, and sat up. The cuts twinged as she moved and she felt the burn as another trickle of blood ran down the length of her back.

  Her shirt was on the floor. Her bra was somewhere else. It didn’t matter – she didn’t need it. The shirt would do.

  “No. Don’t do that,” he said as she bent to pick it up. “At least, let me clean the cuts and cover them.” The voice was cold. Sensible. Reasonable. Formal. Not him.

  He said her name – firm like a snap – reached across the bed and curled a hand around her upper arm as she struggled to do up her shirt. Her fingers were shaking so badly it was almost impossible and the goddamned button holes where swimming in and out of focus as she fumbled.

  All she needed to do was to stand up and make it out the door before he felt compelled to show it to her. That is what he’d do. He’d told her so. Perhaps she wasn’t brave enough to keep her promise to him, but she could leave without being told to get out. If he’d just let go of her arm.

  He said her name again, breaking it into syllables. It forced her to look around.

  It was him.

  Him after all.

  Him caught in a purgatory of cold and angry, scared and hurt. Stricken and sickened and kicked in the gut. All straining under a taut, thin plastic wrap of control.

  The bubble burst in her chest and she sobbed. “I’m so sorry. So sorry. I love you, but then . . . suddenly . . . you weren’t there . . . gone and . . . gone . . .”

  He moved behind her, enfolding her in his arms, pulling her tight against his chest. The cuts burned pleasantly in the press of his heat. His chin tucked into the curve of her shoulder and he tilted his head against hers. “Sh-h. Just be quiet for a bit.”

  In the silence she heard him breathe and felt his heart beating against her back. The beat prickled at the wounds. But that was fine. It was safe like this. Her organs could tumble out of her body and it would still feel safe with him holding her.

  And in the silence she could think. Her mind cleared and she knew exactly what she’d done. She’d panicked. She’d lost her nerve and done what she’d sworn not to do – she’d clawed her way to the surface, past him, through him, anything to get to the air and the light.

  He’d told her she didn’t have to agree to let him cut her. That his love was not conditioned on that. But that if she did, if he showed her that side of himself and she balked, that was different. That, he wouldn’t take. Those were the rules, and the rules kept him together. Kept him civilized. Kept him sane.

  She had fallen in love with him for that. For his precision, his logic and his aching honesty. Yet in one moment of stupid, blind fear, she’d driven a massive truck through it all. There was no way back from that.

  So this – these arms around her, this breath on her cheek – was not forgiveness or understanding. This was aftercare. What he felt obliged, as a matter of honour, to do. It was just like him to be able to do it with such sincerity.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “I know you are.” He pressed his lips to her cheekbone; repeated the words into her skin. “Don’t be.”

  She inhaled deeply and let it out in a stammering, rickety breath. “I’m going to go now. I know what I’ve done. And I remember what you said.”

  “You do, do you?”

  “Yeah.” A fresh wave of tears blurred her vision. “I’m so fucking in love with you.”

  “Hmm. Well, if you really are then prove it. Take off your shirt and let me clean and cover those cuts. Can you do that?”

  It was as if he were speaking to a child. She nodded, childlike in return. When he withdrew his embrace, she looked down and realized just how badly she’d screwed up her blouse. The buttons were stuck in the wrong holes, some were missed and the whole thing was askew. Undoing it again was easier.

  “Come on,” he said. “Over here.” He patted the centre of the bed and soaked a ball of cotton in disinfectant.

  Warily, awkwardly, she moved into place. “I’m so sorry,” she repeated inanely.

  “This is going to sting like a bitch.”

  “I know. That’s OK.”

  He gave a tight laugh. “And I’m going to enjoy it.”

  She looked back over her shoulder at him, unable to stop herself from smiling. “I know that, too.”

  “Good,” he said, and slapped the dripping cotton ball onto her back at the top of the first cut.

  The liquid streamed in a rivulet down her back, making it bow in the chill. Then, like a wicked skewer, the sting sliced through her spine, lighting up nerves all the way through to her chest.

  “Oh! Fuck!” She was gasping for air, clawing her nails into her thighs and, the grin still stuck on her face. It was the shock of the pain that carved a hysterical giggle that interfered with language. “You . . . you fucking bastard!”

  He clicked his tongue and slid the ball down the length of the wound. Just as when he’d cut into her, he did it with a slow deliberation. “You know I am.”

  “You are,” she gasped, hiccuping, giggling, losing it. “Jesus, you are! And I still fucking love you.”

  “I love you too,” he said, firmly slapping another soaking wad of cotton on the second cut.

  She could hear the smile in his voice, just before she felt the pain again. “Jesus FUCKING Christ!” It came out as a screech. Her back bowed again, unbidden. The pain was far worse this time. Perhaps the second cut had been a little deeper.

  “Shush your whining, woman.” He swabbed his way down the cut. The room stank of rubbing alcohol. It hurt to inhale it.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck! It bloody stings!” But that was an understatement. Her whole upper back was on fire.

  “That’s how you know it’s doing good,” he said primly.

  She turned and launched herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck and although the urge to kiss him was strong, she stopped and met his eyes.

  “I love you.”

  He tilted his head. “I heard you.”

  “Did you?”

  He cupped her ass and pulled her onto his lap. “Yes. Did you hear me?”

  His lips were so warm when she kissed him. And, even through the stench of isopropyl, she could smell his spit, his sweat, his skin. She tightened her embrace and kissed him deeper, waiting for him to open his mouth, but he didn’t.

  “It felt like you left. Like it wasn’t you. I couldn’t see you. Sense you. Where the fuck were you?” A pair of tears raced their way down her cheeks.

  He nodded.

  “I’m sorry I told you to stop. It was the fear,” she said

  “Fear of the pain?”

  “No.”

  He nodded again, slowly. “The fear of me.”

  “No!” She furrowed her brow. “The fear of not-you.”

  Big palms slid up her back and came to rest just below her shoulder blades. She winced.

  “Not-me.”

  She stared at him. “I can’t explain it. This,” she said, tugging his head against hers, “is you.”

  He gave the spot covered by his left hand a rub, then a slight squeeze.

  “Ow!”

  “Still me?”

  “Of course. Still you.”

  The next squeeze was considerably crueller. I
t made her gasp. Not the pain – that was there and she didn’t like it – but the odder sensation of the newly clotted cuts breaking open.

  “And now?”

  “Still you,” she groaned, kissed him again.

  This time his lips softened, his mouth parted under her petitions. One arm banded her waist and pulled her against him tight. The hand over her wounds felt warm and slick. He squeezed again, even harder, forcing a throaty cry from her. But he soothed her with his tongue, stroking it along hers, tempting her to suck it. And she did.

  Between her parted legs, through the layers of her wadded up skirt, she felt his erection, hard and thickening. There was an instant rush of relief that streaked down from the base of her skull and settled in her groin, turned feral and hungry. Her hips moved, pressing into him, grinding against the cock that strained his pants.

  “Cut me now. Can you cut me now?” she panted. “Like this?”

  His hand skimmed over the skin of her back. So easily, wet with her blood.

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  His hips rolled, pushed back. “It’s not safe.”

  “Oh,” she muttered, worming her hand between them, tugging at the button of his trousers, trying to work down the kinked, distorted zipper. “Why?”

  Her fingers pushed aside the remnants of his clothes and curled around his cock. It pulsed in her hand. This she knew. This she trusted. This part of him – sometimes all of him. She let her fingers graze the hot, soft skin, upwards, until the cockhead fitted snugly into the cup of her palm.

  “You know why.”

  His hips arched, pushing himself through her loosely held grip. He cradled the back of her neck, grasped it tighter and pulled her back to his mouth. The slow thrusts through her curled fingers spoke to her of so much presence, so much intention. To be here. To be with her. To be in her. It made her cunt spasm with a needling ache.

  When he bent her backwards, onto the bed, she didn’t wait for him. She wrenched at the sides of her panties, tugging them down her legs, smearing her thighs with her own wetness and kicking them off one ankle before he settled between her spread legs.

  It was then she saw his hand. The palm was smeared crimson. The blood had grown darker, tacky in the air. She reached for it and laced her smaller, paler fingers between his.