Half an hour later we are sitting outside a riverside pub, drinking lager (him) and vodka and orange (me). It is beginning to occur to me that, in the space of six weeks, this sordid arrangement has become an addiction – something that will damage me if I cannot learn to control it. The combination of heat and sex and alcohol makes me lightheaded and bold and I say things I would not normally dare to.
“The men can’t take their eyes off you,” he is saying, relishing the words. “They can probably smell you. One day I might invite them over.”
I raise my damp eyebrows at him. “One day, Shaun. This can’t go on forever though, can it?”
His face falls a little. I want to touch his hand, but it seems against the rules somehow. Too intimate.
“I’ve met someone at work,” I tell him. “It’s nothing much at the moment. Coffee, chat. We’re going to the cinema this weekend. Might come to nothing, or it might get serious. And if it does, I can’t do this any more.”
Shaun looks away, over the river, for a moment, then looks into the dregs of his pint.
“You want to be a nice girl,” he says flatly. He looks up at me squinting against the sun, waiting.
“No. Not necessarily. I don’t know. I want to be . . . Jane. Jane who’s a slut sometimes, but a person as well.”
“There aren’t enough sluts in the world,” says Shaun wistfully. “Not perfect ones like you, at least. I might have known . . .”
“Shaun,” I say, a little distressed. “I’m not saying . . .” I don’t know what I’m saying.
He drains the last drops of his drink and bangs his glass down on the table.
“Well, you don’t have time to say it now, anyway. I have to get back to work. To the offices of the London Merchant Bank. On Threadneedle Street.”
I catch my breath. He has never told me anything about himself before. He is standing up, taking something from a pocket. Paper and pen.
“That’s where I work,” he says, “and this is where I live. Not far from you, I think.” He scribbles down an address, three streets away from my flat, and puts the paper in my hand. “If you want to call round. Tonight. Tomorrow night . . .” He shrugs. “I’ll leave it up to you.” He dithers, as if unsure how to end our encounter, looking around to the exit and then back at me.
Time to seize the day. Time to also seize his hand.
“Promise you won’t ever stop being sleazy?”
He smiles, toothy and broad. “No question of that.”
“I’ll see you tonight then.”
We snog for ages, by the river, ignoring the sniggering remarks of the boozy bankers, then I have to run for my train, all the way back to where it began.
Freeing the Demon
Sacchi Green
In two years of drifting in place Jayne had seldom looked out the window. What was the point? At night, clients came, and went; in the daytime she slept. Sometimes, very rarely, she dreamed.
She might never have noticed him looming just beyond her balcony if a nervous college kid hadn’t felt in sudden need of air.
“Hey, terrific gargoyle! French, probably, limestone, taking a beating from acid rain. Not much detail left.” He grasped at the distraction. “They say gargoyles are demons cursed with eternal imprisonment in stone. Guess nobody figured even stone might not be forever.”
Jayne’s stroke on his thigh turned him from the window. Long, pale hair swung with the seductive tilt of her head. Grey eyes looked through dark lashes into his. “You like things . . . French?” He forgot about the gargoyle.
Jayne didn’t forget.
On a rainy evening she watched through summer dusk as rivulets washed over the stone shoulders. Thin glistening ribbons of water criss-crossed in ill-defined grooves, giving a sense of layered scales, or feathers; something indelibly winglike.
The massive back was hunched. The twisted, upturned face hurled mute defiance at the heavens, while pointed ears and horns stabbed at the sky. The jaws had once spouted water from the eaves, but the intake had been clogged for years and the torrent spilled haphazardly down the head. The teeth were mere vestigial stumps. Jayne thought of the acid rain, and her own fleeting youth, and mourned for them both.
That night, after a bout with a truly nasty customer, Jayne leaned out into the light rain. Leopold sent such creeps from time to time to scare her, keep her in line.
She gazed at the still, dark figure as mist cooled her skin and a breeze swept the fouled air away. He hulked, blot-like, against clouds lit by ambient city light. “They’re wearing us down, mon ami,” she murmured.
As her eyes adjusted to darkness the stone face seemed to flush with a reddish glow. A dull light pulsed through slanted eyes and gaping throat, highlighting the teeth. At thirteen storeys a connection to the basement furnace seemed unlikely, but Jayne was too drained to care.
In daylight she took a closer look, finding nothing but dry stone mottled by smoke and rain and bird droppings. Some obscure proprietary impulse drove her to take water and soap and a long brush and scrub as far as she could reach. A curse was one thing; debasement was something else.
Over the weeks she watched him in varying lights and weather. Only the combination of night and rain produced the strange effect, as though acidity ate away a thin veneer that resealed in daylight.
Jayne found herself trying to communicate. “Who trapped you? Someone higher up the chain of evil? Or a self-righteous moral bigot? I’ve known both kinds. There isn’t much to choose.” His pulsing glow seemed to quicken in agreement.
Her own sense of comradeship surprised her. Since the stone demanded nothing, she yearned to give. Not, of course, that she could think of anything worth giving.
In symbolic sharing she reached up to lay morsels of food on the stone tongue. When she tried this on a rainy night, the offering was sucked into the red cavern with a force that thrilled and frightened her. When she offered raw meat, the eyes glowed hotter and a swirl of smoke rose from the rumbling depths.
She blinded herself to the ominous implications, preferring to think, if she thought at all, that her sanity was slipping. What had sanity ever done for her?
Reality was increasingly hard to bear. Someday soon Leopold would forget, or cease to care, that he couldn’t afford to mark her face or body.
On the night he finally snapped, rain splatted against the window and shards of his spittle flecked her face as he shouted and raged and shook her.
“Yes!” she screamed at last. “Yes! I held out on you! I hid money! Why not? I earned it!” The capitulation startled him into releasing her.
“It’s out there, in the gargoyle’s mouth.” She gestured towards the window. “But it slipped down and I can’t quite reach it. You get it, if you want it!”
“Like hell! In the fucking rain? In this suit? Get out there and don’t come back without it!”
The cold rain slicked her thin wrap to her body. She’d lied about the money being there, though she did have a stash secreted elsewhere, saving for . . . for some other kind of life. Any other kind.
It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going back.
She looked down. Neon flashed and car lights crawled along the street far, too far, below. To sprawl in their glare, broken and distorted . . . no . . .
She turned to the gargoyle and clung. It felt warm, vibrant, even . . . responsive. If only she had known! Such opportunities lost.
Leopold came cursing and stumbling out the window. He had shed his coat, but rain soaked his silk shirt and rage twisted his face. His cronies on Wall Street would scarcely have known him, even those who knew this source of his money because they had paid for the pleasure of Jayne’s company.
Jayne stepped up onto the low balustrade, reached an arm into the gargoyle’s mouth as far as she could, and willed herself to oblivion. Heat pulsed from within. Tremors shuddered through the stone.
Then Leopold was tearing and striking at her, not caring that her feet slid off the balustrade, that her arms were slipp
ing from the stone torso.
The void below dragged at her, tried to swallow her – but something enfolded her, something warm and winglike and unseen, holding her safely while Leopold clawed at the stone and crammed his fist into the gaping maw.
Whatever she had hoped for, it was better and worse. His head went last. Hot blood streamed past, mixed with cold rain, and only when all ran cold did she know it was over. Then she was through the window, on the floor, not remembering how she had crawled there.
Dawn showed Leopold’s crumpled coat beneath the window. There would be cash in its inner pockets, but Jayne couldn’t bring herself to touch it. Yet.
No one would wonder at any extremity of cries from her apartment. Leopold would hardly be missed except by his creditors. If she could just make sure nothing could connect her to his disappearance . . .
When at last she steeled herself to look outside there seemed to be no trace of him, until sunlight glinted on a gold wristwatch dangling from a stone jaw and jewelled rings tilting precariously on vestigial teeth.
She reached out, tentative at first; then her touch became a lingering caress across the rough stone face.
How quickly, she wondered, did erosion wear away the stone? What would happen to the world when the demon, if such he were, broke free? Did she care?
She knew what she cared about. She remembered the embrace of invisible wings, the power summoned by night and rain and her need. Her hands moved sensuously, stroking the folded wings, the breast, the ridged belly slanting away between braced forelegs. She sensed the mounting tension in the rigid stone, and whispered promises, waiting for night, and rain.
For two days it stayed dry. Jayne took the necessary steps to change Leopold’s jewellery into cash, and to make the cash secure along with what she’d found in his pockets. Attention to such details occupied a level of her mind that seemed to be waking after years of sleep. She no longer drifted.
On another level, she was willingly swept along on a tide of erotic fantasy, feeling rough stone where there were only plaster walls, seeing slanting, glowing eyes in taxi tail-lights. When the first tongues of rain licked her skin as she hurried home through the dusk, ripples of heat flowed over and through her. Her breath quickened in anticipation.
She started tearing at her constricting clothing in the elevator. By the time she thrust open the window she was naked.
The rain had intensified, and now it blew cold on her skin. The shock gave her mind a chance to catch up with her need.
When Jayne finally climbed out onto the balcony she was wrapped in a deeply hooded raincoat. She knew the allure of mystery, and slow unveiling; she also knew all previous experience might be irrelevant. Could her demon be pleased like human men? Until she knew his pleasure, she would simply please herself.
The light from his depths glowed hotter than ever before. In anticipation of her coming? Or had he gained strength from devouring Leopold? A shiver of fear sharpened her excitement.
She pressed herself against the rain-slick stone and inched the raincoat open. Chill gave way to warmth wherever skin touched stone, and when she stretched upwards from the balustrade a deep vibration pulsed through the rigid mass. She pressed closer, bruising her softness on his ridges, melding pain with pleasure, but when she sensed a desperation in his trembling she loosened her grip and stepped down.
Jayne knew the art of pleasing watchers. They had been her only bearable customers. In any closer interaction it was she who would become the watcher, removed, unmoved, observing with vague repulsion what her other self must do.
She wondered whether he could see her, but when she raised the edges of the coat like dark wings the light beamed obliquely from this eyes to warm the pale flame of her body.
The coat, once released, did not fall but floated above and behind, supported by the light. She forgot the rain, forgot everything but herself and that burning presence, feeding on his hunger as it fed on hers.
Beginning with dance-like movements, slowly, sinuously, Jayne curved her hands from waist to hips, slimness to taut fullness. Her touch was the watcher’s touch, but under her command.
Then she drew her fingers lightly upwards, brushing them teasingly around the outer curves of her breasts, catching her breath at the sweet soreness. As she cupped them gently and then less gently, the fullness, the firmness, grew; in her mind her outline transformed from slender to voluptuous.
The ripples of pleasure intensified. Urgency flowed down her body. She throbbed both with fullness and with an aching need to be filled.
Jayne thought fleetingly of pulling back. How could she bear it if this hot tide never flooded into release? But it was all she had to give. And besides, it was too late.
Hard nipples jutted from her round full breasts, yearning desperately for the stroke of hands that could not reach out, for the hot press and tug and bite of a mouth frozen in stillness. Her fingers teased their tips into greater, harder, unbearable tension, while her palms still cupped the swelling fullness. She thrust against her own hands and moaned, again and again, until a deeper echo sounded from the stone before her and she raised her eyes.
Red light pulsed from the depths. A low rumbling sound went on and on. How could she truly touch him, penetrate the shell of dark magic, bring his torment and hers to an ecstatic peak?
She had come to despise men’s bodies, but now she cursed the spell, or sculptor, that had shaped the gargoyle, pressing the forelegs together to obscure the loins, leaving her without even a simulacrum of maleness to stroke, taste, press against.
Her hands slipped downwards. Her breasts still yearned with fullness, but a hunger still more intense built in her depths, a pounding pressure that demanded a harder pressure in return, more, and more . . .
Detachment long gone, she could only open mind as well as flesh to him, projecting her own sensations, hoping for him to somehow tell her how to meet his need.
His vision of her flashed through her mind; eyes half-closed, lips full and parted, head twisting from side to side as damp, heavy hair coiled over her shoulders and slid across her thrusting nipples, rising and falling to the ragged rhythm of her breathing. It was his will that raised her hand to cradle and press one breast and then the other, gently at first, then harder, sending hot lances downwards. She no longer knew which sobbing cries and moans were her own, and which reverberated from the stone.
Somewhere in the outer world there were sounds. Pounding on a door? Or her own blood pounding in her ears? The clamour of her body drowned any intrusion. Linked with this being who watched and shared and demanded, she moved in response to his will as well as her own, hips twisting, undulating, arching towards him, hands stroking and kneading and tantalizing but leaving the hot, pulsing void for him, for his filling, if only he would come to her, into her . . .
A sharp crack split the air. The balcony shook. A wave of force slammed her against the building, jarring her teeth into her lower lip until it bled. She forced down pain-sparked anger; whatever she had incited she would willingly accept.
The pressure surged up and down her body. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, mist swirled before her eyes . . . but the force eased at her struggles. She pushed against it and it eased again, in slight, unsteady increments.
As her vision cleared, distant lights and buildings twisted and wavered, distorted by something not quite visible, something trembling between being and not being. She reached out and felt a throbbing as of air propelled by beating wings, or a pounding heart.
She leaned into the pressure, then fell back as it surged towards her. Forward, back, approaching a balance; “Yes, gently, softly, but not too softly . . . now harder. . . .” He was taking form now, still murky to the eyes but tangible to her hands, her skin, her demanding body.
Wingtips curved around her. Strong arms circled her and hands grasped the soft fullness of her buttocks to lift and press her up against him. Fiery crescent eyes flickered closer and closer as she stretched upwards. He bent
his head and with a tongue gently rasping, like a cat’s, licked the drops of blood from her lip.
She clutched at his massive chest, iron-hard under deep velvet fur; gripped corded thighs with her own, straining to raise herself enough to meet the tip of the great cock pulsing against her belly. He lifted her higher, and she was there . . . there . . . but in spite of overflowing readiness she thought at first she could never fit him in.
She sobbed in frustration, thrusting frantically against him, and he raised her again until his hardness teased, stroked, licked at her, flooding her with wetness and sensation. When finally, slowly, he slid inside, the demanding fullness was a pleasure/pain almost more than she could bear.
Distant sounds, banging, harsh words, impinged on her consciousness. Then he moved, and drove her to move, and the world receded. Hot surges of sensation wracked her, until they came so close and fast that she rose on the wave and rode it until it crashed, at last, into thunderous release.
Even the ebbing was glorious. She clutched the great body, now solid, dark, completely there, and held him as his wrenching spasms went on and on and on.
At last, when he seemed almost spent, she reached up to stroke his face; but it grew ever more distant as the presence that had filled her receded. She slid down until her feet touched the floor. His form dissipated slowly, like smoke, leaving her a last vision of a wraith-like hand outstretched in supplication.
Cold air chilled her fevered skin. She watched the glow intensify inside the stone and knew he was trapped again, though a thread of fire showed through the long crack newly formed between braced forelegs.
The rain had stopped. She forced herself to move, bent to reclaim the limp raincoat, turned towards the lighted window. Lighted? She hadn’t turned on the lamps! Had she locked the door before rushing to the window? Sounds and words she had blocked out came back to her in a rush.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 11 Page 24
