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

by Jakubowski, Maxim

  And then the miracle happens; in her efforts to heave a great sigh like a sulking child angling for consolation, Alice pushes out some of the scalding sperm that Emmanuel has resentfully surrendered to her. The sudden surprise on her face! She raises her long goat-kid legs, reaches out her hands and gently splays herself open, gliding one finger between the slippery surfaces and bringing it back out with an exasperating soft cork-like pop. Alice has forgotten her fury now, she’s lost in earnest contemplation of the ravaged playground, subjecting it to a series of swift suction movements. She’s like a lone little monkey at the top of a tree, fiddling with itself completely unnoticed; and just as Emmanuel, now drained of his strength, feels a fierce rage mounting, an ill-defined hatred for the girl and her fickleness, Alice throws herself back onto the pillows with a groan, grasping her petals of pink skin in both hands and – now reduced to a perfectly, intolerably bestial state – moans:

  “Oh, finish me off, finish me off!”

  Tourist

  Angela Caperton

  Sometimes in the early morning hours, Rutger insisted on fucking Julie on the stage.

  “It is good for business,” he told her. “Not every night, not even very often. Just now and then to keep the suckers wondering if it will happen or not. Keep them coming back.”

  She objected the first two times, but her resistance only enflamed the drunken crowd and after that she decided that allowing Rutger to fuck her, usually from behind, was only another form of dance.

  “Everyone in Berlin is a whore, darling,” Rutger told her, “but you are also an artist. It is not like I want to fuck you,” he persisted. “You know I prefer men and big women, but the Mandrake Club’s reputation will suffer if we do not sometimes offer things to our audience that they cannot easily see at a dozen cabarets on the street.”

  Julie did not bother to tell him that most of the cabarets near Friedrichstrasse offered similar fare, along with girls fucking girls, erotic flagellation, and even more exotic entertainments. Rutger knew this well, but Rutger did not really care about anything other than his own opinions.

  Each night, he welcomed the denizens of Berlin and the foreigners who came to sample the city’s delights. He stalked the stage in his mad clown’s make-up, swollen red drunk’s nose and wardrobe of wigs, introduced the girls who sang, the men who dressed as women and the women in suits. The blur of sexes and genders hardly mattered in a city where everyone fucked everyone more or less without regard for anything but the moment. Berlin sagged under the weight of the lost war, under the oppression of joblessness and crazy money, but at night, on Friedrichstrasse, escape lived in flesh, song, frivolity and unfettered sexual abundance – always for a price.

  Julie danced at the Mandrake. Her name and a grotesque distortion of her image hung in a tattering poster beside the door. She had been dancing there since ’22, when Papa had turned her out into the street because he could not feed her. Now she had an apartment of her own, which she shared with a shifting cast of roommates down on their luck, other dancers from the club, men who aspired to be pimps but who lacked the moral fiber, and petty black marketers in between deals.

  She appreciated the relative fortune of her simple walls and furnishings but always Julie told herself, “Someday my luck will change. Someday I will have more.”

  The night she met Paul, she began to believe the stories she told herself. Paul strode into the Mandrake like a champion, head level, eyes sharp and determined, his very presence shivering Julie’s soul unlike anyone she’d ever met. He wore his blond hair short, stiff in a funny way, and it smelled good with a hint of something exotic. He looked like money. He wore an expensive suit that he told her later was real silk. He had the most perfect teeth she had ever seen, gleaming white in the stage light when he sat at the front table and watched her.

  “Pretty Julie,” he crooned with sincerity. “If you will come with me tonight, I will make you a duchess.” He barely looked at Rutger before giving the wicked clown a handful of gold coins.

  “I don’t care if you don’t bring her back,” Rutger chuckled as he winked and smiled at Julie. “Good luck. Have fun.”

  Paul walked out with her, his arm around her waist, possessive and endearing in his hold. He took her to the Paradise and Inferno nightclub, and Julie swallowed hard, awed and worried that she was not dressed well enough. A bony doorman dressed as St Peter looked them over. “We want to go to heaven,” Paul told him. “Only heaven is good enough for my Julie.”

  Julie smiled as the doorman’s scorn melted away when Paul gave him a generous fold of marks, and then they were inside the most infamous club in Berlin. A nearly naked Cupid led them to a booth on the left side of the stage, shrouded in shadows but sometimes washed by red light from the spotlights and floodlights that danced across the stage. She tried not to stare at the dancing sparkle of diamonds and satin flash when the stage lighting splashed sometimes over the women in the audience. As Julie looked around the cabaret, she wondered, what did it feel like to wear a ring that cost more than food for a year? A gauzy white curtain bisected the theater. On the other side of it, Julie knew from stories, Hell’s patrons sat in equal splendor attended by handsome devils and almost-nude lady demons.

  Satan, his muscular chest bare and painted red, paraded on the stage addressing the audience. Julie grinned, wondering if the obvious bulge in the tight black pants he wore was real or a stuffed prosthetic. Regardless, the illusion gave many in the audience reason to twitter approval. “So, Berliners, welcome to Hell,” he said to the half of the audience hidden from Julie by the white curtain, before he turned to Julie and Paul’s side of the room. “Our friends over in Heaven, don’t worry! We delight in showing you—” he chuckled with low, wicked delight “—what it is you’re missing!”

  Paul sat beside her in the booth, his light laughter a hymn beyond the other merriment in the club. She glanced at him as they both faced the stage and smiled, delighted by his obvious enjoyment. Then he slid his warm hand under Julie’s skirt and stroked her slit through the black lace of her panties. She remembered her price tag, but she also grew wet under his touch, her heart pounding. The giddy wonder of his forwardness surprised her even as a touch of disappointment dimmed the glow of the evening. He stopped after only a moment and leaned to her, pressing trembling lips to her ear. “Remove your panties, Julie,” he commanded with a whisper that rippled through her soul. She started to stand, to find shadows or a powder room, but he traced his hand down her wrist and locked it in a grip that claimed, took, breathed, and promised. “No,” he corrected her. “Remove them here.”

  She shifted and adjusted, reaching up and behind and under, unfastened her garter and slowly squirmed out of the soft cotton panties. Anyone in the club who looked at her would surely know what she was doing, but perhaps the shadows concealed her. She surrendered her underpants to Paul and looked at him, waiting.

  Paul curled his fingers into the white material, his thumb stroking the prim edge, then at Paul’s commanding nod and curt order, the waiter brought a strong brandy and a bottle of good wine. On the stage, a thin woman, entirely nude, pale as ivory, danced in smoky light, a study in white and black, milky skin, black-ringed eyes, the whipping mane of her raven hair, and the thick tangle of silken black between her legs. Sinuous, precise, she fought with the smoke and made love to it, a teasing undulation of flesh and dreams.

  Paul took Julie’s hand and rested it on his hardening cock. She pressed through the smooth material of his trousers, her fingers expert from many nights in the Mandrake. She brought him to full, impressive erection, just as the dancer on the stage twirled one final time and vanished into the billowing smoke.

  Everyone applauded. Julie smelled opium and hashish. The smoke and the brandy turned her mind golden and she relaxed against Paul, opening his trousers and reaching in to touch the bare heat of his cock. She smiled and stroked down its pulsing length with one testing finger.

  The silky bead at the tip delighted
her, the slippery warmth of it, the affirmation of Paul’s desire. She smeared the bead and relished his quickened breath.

  The stage stayed dark for a long moment, then a clown dressed as an angel appeared and began to tell stories and make dirty jokes about politicians and Socialists, Frenchmen and Russians. Paul put his hand over Julie’s, his fingertips almost tickling the back of her hand as she slowly pumped him. “Wait,” he whispered, and she stopped, but he didn’t move her hand, allowing her to hold the hard, responsive flesh.

  He poured wine for her and she drank. “You are an American?” she asked him casually as she tightened her grip a moment, then relaxed her hand.

  “Yes I am,” he answered with a little smile. “Have you ever been in this place before?”

  “No. Have you?”

  Paul shook his head. “I’ve heard a great deal about it – read books about it.”

  “Are you a teacher?” she asked him.

  “No. Only a tourist, Julie. Like so many in Berlin.”

  “Why did you come here?” Julie leaned toward him, her stomach tightening pleasantly as they talked. Not only was Paul handsome and his cock seemingly full of promise, but his eyes glowed with the mellow light of kindness and thoughtfulness. The discomfort of moments ago melted with his patience, his quiet answers, his indulgence. She liked him. Maybe that would be a mistake, but Julie accepted the risk. It wouldn’t be her first, or her last.

  He sighed thoughtfully, watching the clown as though he might have been observing a squirrel in the park, with only casual interest. “Because in . . . America . . . it is not easy to do the things I wish to do. The possibilities here are so much richer.”

  “It doesn’t always seem good to me here,” she said, “but I do like the freedom we have, and I am glad you are here with me now.”

  The clown finished on stage, bowing with a flourish to a parade of beauties who streamed from the wings clad in gossamer white and feathers, angels with bared breasts and red lips. Paul’s cock jumped under her hand and she began to stroke him again.

  The women on stage danced with each other, the gossamer costumes floating like wings about them, hands busy on arched backs and long pale legs, round buttocks, a flash of pussy here and there, calculated to arouse. The audience made noises of appreciation and Paul’s hand stroked hers, then stopped her motion again. He waved to the nearest Cupid and said to him, “A round of drinks for everyone here and a little something for yourself.” He handed the waiter a stack of bills and the waiter bowed.

  “Anything you wish, sir,” the Cupid said with a cherubic chuckle.

  Paul turned back to Julie, his eyes bright with wickedness. “Sit in my lap,” he told her.

  She giggled, thrilled but also uncertain. Then she obeyed him, gathered her short skirt in nervous fingers, settled her bare bottom against the smooth silken texture of his trousers. He reached under her and freed his cock so that it rose like a rod of precious, warm jade between her legs, the round shaft parting the moist lips of her pussy. He did not penetrate her, but held her, one hand stroking her breast through her blouse and chemise, the other stroking her sex, lingering at the bud of her clit, until she began to pant.

  On the stage, the angels danced.

  Julie’s cheeks heated as she glimpsed some of the patrons around them watching her writhing body, admiration shining in their eyes. They sipped the drinks the waiter brought them, but soon Julie realized their interest in her and Paul’s private show barely aroused them. She closed her eyes a moment, enjoying the build of shocking pleasure in her pussy as she accepted that such sights were not uncommon, though here in a club of some reputation it added to the excitement that their brazen public display was not ordinary. Blood boiling, her pussy pulsing with need, Julie rose from Paul’s lap a little and he maneuvered his prick beneath her so that when she settled, he filled her in one long, thick slide, a slow and tight possession that stole the air from her lungs.

  She began to moan and rock on him, shifting her hips to increase her stimulation. His practiced touch delighted her and she hardly believed how truly wonderful he felt inside her. She forgot her surroundings, the crowd, the dancers; the stage and lights only distant hums and blotches of blurred colors. She began to push against the table as he countered her motion, bucking slowly under her, their goal the same, to touch the golden tip of bliss.

  His fingers moved with relentless precision on her clit and the blast of pleasure that shattered inside her overwhelmed her senses. She came hard, clutching the table, moaning louder than the music. His body pulsed inside her, his arms around her banded her middle with thick heat. The deep thrust swelled against her electrified pussy as he climaxed, and the wet gush inside her turned her knees to butter. They came together, hot and united. His hands continued to stroke her, the nipple between his fingers rock hard and her slit soaked but greedy, and, without warning, another orgasm rocketed through her. She sagged in his lap, her head falling back onto his strong shoulder. Sweat trickled down her back and between her breasts while he murmured incoherently in her ear and the angels took a bow, some of them – the ones on the left side of the stage – giggling at Julie and Paul, their eyes shining in the footlights’ glare.

  Paul’s lips found the raw nerve at the base of her neck and her whole body clenched with exhausted ecstasy. “Thank you, Julie,” Paul said to her, his kiss lush and true. “You have made my dream come true.”

  The next night Julie stared at herself in the mirror of the Mandrake dressing room. “I liked Paul very much,” she said to Rutger before swirling her make-up brush in the chipped bowl of face paint. “Do you think he will come back?” Rutger, stripped to the waist, worked on his make-up as well. Julie, costumed as a harlequin for the first number of the night, watched him through the reflection.

  “Who knows?” Rutger answered with disinterest. “He’s a tourist, Julie, and he probably spent a great deal to come here. If you made him happy, maybe he will come back.”

  “How much did he pay you?” she asked. “You should give me some of it.”

  Rutger barely shrugged, but then handed her a handful of marks.

  Julie counted them and smiled. “That’s generous but I saw he paid you in coins.”

  “Mind your business, Julie, and you will be happier. Just because you liked his cock and he took you to Paradise doesn’t make him anything special.”

  She rubbed rouge into her cheeks. “I think he is in love with me.”

  Rutger laughed. “Love isn’t real. If life in Berlin teaches you anything, it should teach you that. Your good fortune is making you crazy. If it were not for me, you would just be another chonte, fucking sailors for pennies. I’ve made you a real table-lady now and you had better keep your head on and be grateful for what you have. Don’t do anything stupid. Go out there and be a good little dancer tonight and I will try to find you another man who loves you. Best you forget your American because I am sure he will forget you.”

  But a week later, Rutger came to Julie backstage, his grin not reflected in his eyes. “Your lover is back and he wants something really special tonight.”

  Julie’s heart beat as hard as a street drummer. She stood, smoothing the folds of her short skirt with nervous strokes. She didn’t dare tell Rutger, but, as far as she was concerned, Paul didn’t need to pay her a thing. She had thought of no one but him in the time since they had gone to the Paradise and Inferno together, and the ache his absence had burned into her drove home her need to just be with him, regardless of the circumstances. She waited for Rutger to speak, not trusting her own voice yet.

  “Tonight, in the last performance, your tourist wants to make love to you on the stage wearing a mask. He is a wild one.”

  She nodded, her emotions and thoughts tangling so much she only managed one word. “OK.”

  Rutger caged her with his gaze. He paced in front of her like a predator. “I told him it would cost him – that there was great risk from the police, bribes to be paid, and so forth, and
he did not even hesitate. He also wants your company until then. Go with him. Be good to him. I don’t think that will be difficult for you.” Rutger looked her over from head to toe, his expression one of uncertain awareness. “Come back here at three o’clock, maybe four, he’ll have his mask and his fun. We are really going to be lucky now, you and me,” Rutger stressed, as if his words could brand her. He smiled at her, his made-up face pale and ghastly as a movie vampire, but Julie barely registered his implied claim. Her ears still rang with the only words she cared about.

  Paul waited for her.

  In the dim light of the little club, she did not see him at first and he called to her. The tone in his voice might have been joy and she tried to control her steps so that she did not appear too eager as she wove among the tables and patrons to reach him.

  He rose and took her hands, holding them tight between warm fingers and all concern that he might not feel as she did faded from her heart.

  “It’s been so long, Julie,” he exclaimed, pulling her lightly into the seat beside him, his gaze devouring her with a hunger and a reverence that made her heart pound.

  She studied him through the dim light of the club and a thin sheen of tears and her stomach clenched, cold. Small lines creased across Paul’s forehead, and his hair looked just as short and spiky, but not as vibrant and not as thick. He looked worn, older – more so than she thought even a week on the hardest streets of Berlin could cost a man. “Are you all right?” she asked, trying to keep her voice light and clear of worry as she gently traced the small line at the corner of his mouth.