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

by Jakubowski, Maxim

  She has named him her Koa, not calling him by the long name he is known by in legend. Koa, her tree that would stand through storms for her, that she could cling to in the buffeting wind, his body like the changeable koa wood out of which they carved bowls and weapons. Like the giant koa tree that towered over all others in the forest, its massive crown a protection for all who sheltered beneath it, its gnarled wood could yet be polished into smooth works of beauty. Scarred and scabbed, yet striated with softness like the koa’s varying hues, Koa’s colors changed in her presence. Not a monarch, not a warrior, but a lover.

  For two decades he defends her. Her liberation symbolized everything he fought for. But tomorrow he’ll be ripped from her as roots from earth in a hurricane. Her own two sons have grown to adulthood and will reclaim her at last. They’ve discovered and converged upon his hidden compound. It would seem that Hina is powerless, but she listens to the screams of the dying men and understands her power. The fate of great men, great nations, great religions, revolves around her. She won’t fight her destiny. But tonight is hers, her last to repay Koa for the gift of love he has given her, for his protection during her years of captivity, which were really her years of freedom.

  The sky opens up and weeps in grief for tomorrow’s separation of the two lovers, cleansing Koa of the day’s blood and gore. He sheds his soiled garments outside her hut and steps inside, naked. For the first and only time, his body betrays no desire for her. Water catches the lamp flame and dances in his hair like the setting sun on ocean waves. Hina falls to her knees before him, arms wrapped around his legs, face pressed to the center of his being, this sacred part that locks their bodies together. A fine shivering dances through his body, as his muscles tic with exhaustion. Rival forces outnumbered him ten to one today, and enemy gods decreed his defeat, yet still he stands. He drops to his knees beside her.

  She moves behind him and runs the whalebone comb through his hair, now the color of silvery dawn but still thick and curly. He collapses back against her, and she cradles him to her breast. He falls asleep there, though he fights slumber, not wanting to waste a precious last moment. She stares down at him as she did that night so long ago, when she could have killed him but chose to love him instead. Despite the passing of years, he’s still supple and muscular. More scars decorate his body, inevitable tattoos of war. Deep lines along his eyes have been carved not by the sun, but by his smile. She prays to Pele to give him dreams of her love, rather than ghastly visions born of battle carnage, and the volcano goddess answers. Passion rises during his brief nap, and he wakes with his hard ule in her fist. Even in this, when death awaits to distract him, he won’t fail her. She straddles him. Tomorrow she’ll dry up, an old streambed choked with rocks and weeds, to be entered again by nobody. But tonight she’s mossy and slick, and she rides him like the waves. Koa has taught her to surf. She often paddled her redwood board far out to sea to greet him on his return voyages, his red sail parting the distant sky like a sunrise.

  Long ago, when he had first flipped her over halfway through lovemaking, she perched on top of him like a startled turtle on a log. Once more he’d turned her world upside down. She stared down at him from the dizzying height of this new perspective, her body controlling his as he lay beneath her. He reached down, his thumb nestled into the part in her body, and she moved against his hand, against his body, invoking Pele’s eruption inside her.

  But tonight, when he lays beneath her, too weary to move, she staves off the finality of pleasure. The wind outside howls and tattoos a furious beat against the walls, protesting the lovers’ parting. His hands reach up to her breasts, and tears trickle down his cheeks. She leans down to kiss him, and he tastes like the sea.

  In the end, it is love, not man, not the gods, that sends Koa to the dark underworld of Po. Nothing less could kill one so great. The next day, Hina’s lover of two decades comes face to face with Kana, sprung from Hina’s own womb. Koa cannot bring himself to kill his lover’s son. Hina’s own beloved features are carved into this boy’s face. Both men stand with spears raised. Koa’s advantage is clear. Kana is barely a man, an unformed pup with fear in his eyes, weapon shaking. Hina still had milk in her breast for this child when Koa stole her away. Koa lowers his arm and drops his spear. Kana deals the glorious death blow to the unbeaten king.

  As Hina sails away, she looks back over her shoulder. Flames rising from Koa’s temple lick the heavens, sending his spirit to decorate the night sky. The shark god’s statue stands headless on the cliff. In her lap she carries the whalebone comb. She works her fingers along the teeth, imagining that she massages the knotty ridges of Koa’s spine when he returns from battle. The comb’s teeth have caught strands of their hair – his silver, hers still black – as they themselves were caught in the tide of history and legend.

  The mother that Kana carries triumphantly home is not the pious and still woman that Koa abducted long ago. They say years of captivity cracked her mind. She openly breaks taboo by eating forbidden fruits and dancing. She hacks off her hair and rides the ocean waves. She prays to a constellation in the sky that no one else sees. The gods don’t strike her down, for she can’t help her unhinged mind. Though she’s crazy as an o’o, she’s more lovely than the day she left, as graceful as a breeze that fails to chase away the sorrow in her eyes.

  Hold

  Adam Berlin

  When I fuck, I hold my sperm.

  I feel whatever body is against me, watch whatever eyes are there, some open, some closed, some rolling into the back of their heads, shark-like. I listen to whatever sounds they make. And I plug in, into their heads, into their bodies, pressing into their rhythms until they’re raw and done. Women say they feel damage after sex, after the kind of sex I do best, hard one-night sex, but pity the men. Once our load is spent, the emptiness comes in. It enters even before the last spurt exits. The rest of the day, all those hours to get through, seems too, too long.

  So I fuck. And I hold it. And when they ask why I don’t come, I tell them. I have things to do. For me the fucking is enough. And after I fuck, I run. Literally run. I run through city streets to prove I can go on if I have to.

  And that’s what I’m doing. I’m running. Down the steep hill where West End Avenue coasts into 96th Street before it turns up again, past the doormen standing outside luxury buildings, waiting for elevators to come down so they can open doors, hail cabs, see the rich off safely and soundly. My running shoes are Nike, black stripes on the side. My running shorts are sidewalk grey but light, material made for breathing. My shirt’s a simple white T. The music pressed against my ears has hard beats that keep me running hard.

  My breathing is even. My legs feel mighty. My balls are full. I turn and run back, fast, faster. When I reach my apartment I stop and stretch for a few seconds, hands against a fire hydrant, feet on the curb. Then I open my building door and run up the five flights of stairs. Off the street, the music’s louder in my ears.

  I open the door, 5F, and the floor’s wood slats move my eyes straight to the single window that’s all the way open, my view of Broadway’s uptown lights so unlike the downtown Broadway lights they sing about.

  And sitting in my desk chair, her ankle cuffed to the radiator, a ball gag in her mouth, is C, the name I’ve given her. I met C three nights ago coming out of a downtown club. I was walking by, she was walking out and I didn’t have to say a word. Her too-tight leather, her breasts squeezed together, constricted in black, her heavy blue mascara, the whole costume I knew too well, was all I needed to see. I looked straight at her for a long time and she didn’t move her eyes. I said I needed money. She reached into her bag and made sure I saw the cuffs, the ballgag, the clothes pins, the dildos, the vibrator. Then she opened her wallet and counted out ten one-hundred-dollar bills, half a month’s rent.

  “For what?” I said.

  C showed me three fingers, fingernails painted black.

  “Three nights?” I said.

  She nodded. />
  “And three days?”

  She nodded again.

  We took a cab uptown where I handcuffed her, ball-gagged her, fucked her, didn’t come.

  Three full days.

  Seventy-two hours.

  And this is what we do: I fuck her and then I leave. To go to work. To complete a chore. To take a run. To hit a bar for a late-night drink. To do whatever I wish. I keep her waiting for me, my awaited entrance a thrilling expectation – maybe I’ll show up soon, maybe I’ll show up never. The waiting makes C’s pussy drip.

  In one hour the seventy-two hours are done.

  On the desk is a bowl of dry cereal and a glass of water. I leave her something so she won’t starve if I don’t return for a while. The longest I’ve been gone is eleven hours. After eleven hours, my cock slipped right in.

  I take off my sweaty T. I take off my running shoes and shorts. I don’t even look at C. I go into the bathroom to shower. I soap my body and my cock. I wash my hair. This is the last time I’ll fuck C and I want her to remember me, remember the way I fucked her. I hold my sperm. I want them to hold me in their heads, the way I fucked them tattooed against their brains, so on empty nights they’ll touch themselves and think of me. It’s the only power I have. My work is mundane. My studio apartment is small. I have no ambition anymore and really no goals. I can fuck. I can hold my sperm. I can run.

  I towel myself dry and walk along the wood floor, barefoot, naked, my cock half hard. I stop in front of C. Her eyes are on my eyes. I take the ball-gag from her mouth and put my cock in. She sucks on it, needy, makes it rock.

  “Last one,” I say.

  She doesn’t say a word.

  “Last one and then you leave.”

  I unchain her ankle. Grab the back of her hair. Move her to my bed.

  We’ve done everything there is to do, used her ropes and cuffs, used her dildos and vibrator, used her clothes pins and electric clamps, and I’ve fucked her everywhere, every way.

  So as something different I do the most conservative thing in the world. I get on top of her. I put her legs around my waist. And I fuck her hard. I listen to her come and come and come and she’s still wet when I take my cock out.

  The hour’s done and C is good about standing up, getting her things together, putting them back in her bag. She puts on her clothes, the clothes she wore when I met her coming out of the club. I’m in bed, naked, watching. She looks like she looked three days ago, a cartoon of a woman dressed for painful pleasure, but it’s late enough that her costume won’t be so absurdly conspicuous. Manhattan at night is big enough to take in everyone without evoking more than a glance or two.

  “Have you done this before?”

  I’ve never heard C speak and her voice is soft, softer than I’d expected. I’ve only heard her come.

  “Have I done what before? Gotten paid to fuck, or played this little BDSM fantasy game before?”

  I haven’t talked to her either, except to tell her what I was going to do, or what I was doing while I did it, so my voice, I’m guessing, sounds different to her too. She takes me in. Her eyes are the oldest part of her. Her body is still firm and her skin is mostly tight, but there are fine lines around her eyes and her irises, more than black, show she’s been around.

  “Either one,” C finally says.

  “I have. I’ve done the one. I’ve been paid. And I did the other when I was married. I was married for a short time. She was a famous dominatrix. I thought her life was a joke.”

  “That must have made her happy.”

  “We were married for less than a year. If she remembers me at all, there’s not much happiness attached to it. We jumped in. We jumped out.”

  “Why did you think her life was a joke?”

  “It’s a game.”

  ‘“You could say everything’s a game.”

  “I could. And I could say, Look at you. Look what you’re wearing. Those aren’t clothes. That’s a costume. You have toys in your pocketbook. You want to be controlled. You want someone to threaten you with pain at all times. That’s a child’s position. It’s all Dungeons and Dragons with a little bit of hurt.”

  “Look at you,” she says.

  I look myself over. My body looks perfect. My cock looks perfect. My balls, full and tight and round, look perfect.

  “Look at me,” I say. “I have nothing to hide.”

  “That’s your game. Not a care in the world. But you’re very good at playing the game you call a child’s game. That says something.”

  “Want me to be crass?”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “For a thousand bucks, I can be good at most things.”

  “That’s too easy,” she says and the word kicks me between the legs. Too easy is what my wife always said. When I laughed at her. When I threatened her, bragging I could walk away in a second and never come back. When I told her she would remember me more than I’d remember her.

  “Good,” I say. “Then I’m easy.”

  “I didn’t say you were easy. If you were easy I wouldn’t have gone home with you.”

  “So you knew I was hard? You knew I was difficult?” The smirk’s in my voice even if it’s not turning up my mouth.

  “Look at you,” she says again, no smirk at all, her voice soft, calm, patient, an adult talking to a kid, not the other way around. I pull the sheet over me. It just happens. I’m aware of everything, but I hadn’t been aware of that until my hand lifted the sheet, covered my cock. I pull the sheet off me and laugh a fake laugh. C’s not fooled. Her eyes keep taking me in.

  “Look at me,” I say. “But I thought we already did that.”

  “When I saw you, when I saw you on the street walking past, I thought you were handsome, of course, I thought you were sexy, of course, but handsome and sexy is all over this city. I saw your eyes and they were empty. That’s why I let you take me home. You needed something and maybe this is what you needed.”

  “I needed the money.”

  “I wasn’t sure what you needed until now. Maybe you needed your wife.”

  One night, I was out drinking with drinking friends and we passed the Limelight where they held the Black and Blue Ball, one of the big BDSM events. My wife was inside the club and my friends and I, by chance, walked by the line in front. It looked like a Halloween party for lost kids and out-of-shape adults. Everyone was dressed in their best black and blue costumes. There were lots of piercings, lots of tattoos, lots of leather and latex. The guys I was with laughed at these people. I laughed at these people. I didn’t tell them my wife was inside. When my wife and I fought, which was constantly, fights the whole year we were together, she accused me of having a problem with what she did. I had no real problem and that was the problem. Men paid big money to worship her, but to me, she was just my wife. And that’s what I’d tell her. It was the word just that pissed her off. It was the word “easy” that pissed me off.

  “I divorced my wife.”

  “So you said, but maybe you needed something a child needs.”

  C stands there. She walks over to me. She lies down next to me. She puts her hand on my cock. I take her wrist in my hand, but she keeps her hand on my cock and I let her. She starts to stroke me, slow.

  “I don’t need anything,” I say.

  “We all need something. I know what I need, so it’s easy for me to get. Easy can be good too. I saw your pupils dilate when I said that word. I saw the flash of anger.”

  “You didn’t see anything.”

  She doesn’t answer that. She just strokes my cock.

  Then she stops.

  Then she stands.

  C takes off her clothes and gets back into bed with me. Her skin against my skin is warm. When my wife and I fought, when the screaming was done and her crying was done, sobs that turned to heavy breaths that turned quiet, I’d go to the bakery on the corner and buy her a piece of carrot cake. She loved their carrot cake, loved the coconut they put on the frosting. She loved the word “coc
onut”. She’d say “Co-co-nut,” stretching out all three syllables, and she’d smile and finish her cake and fall asleep.

  C puts her hand back on my cock.

  “Can you do this?” she says.

  Now it’s my turn not to answer.

  “Do you want to do this?” she says.

  I turn her over. I put my cock in her and look in her eyes. I move as slowly as she stroked my cock. It’s a pantomime of making love, an expression I hate. Fucking is fucking even when it means something. When my wife was in bed with me, her state-of-the-art BDSM studio with its cage and chains and whips and canes many subway stops downtown, her work far from the doorway of our home, our apartment so close to Riverside Park we smelled the leaves turning in fall, that’s what we did. We fucked. We fucked more gentle than rough, more soft than hard, and after she came and then curled next to me, she really was a kid, a sweet kid, naked, costume-less, my wife. That’s how I fuck C. I fuck her slow and slow and slow, watching her eyes, kissing her mouth, her neck, her shoulders, her breasts, moving steady and slow, and when she’s about to come I tell her to wait and she waits, and when she’s about to come I tell her to hold it and she holds it, and I move and move until she says she can’t hold it anymore.

  I stop fucking her.

  “You can’t, can you?” she says.

  “I can come on a dime.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I’m pretending.”

  “I know,” she says.

  “You’re not my wife.”

  “Did you pretend with your wife?”

  “I pretended a lot of things. I pretended our marriage was real. Sometimes I even pretended our marriage would last.”

  “Pretend some more.”

  “My marriage is done.”

  “With me. Pretend with me. If you pretend hard enough, it won’t be pretend anymore.”

  “You’re wrong,” I say. “I’m a pro.”