The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 11

by Maxim Jakubowski

  Then something changed.

  When I was admitted to The Company, it was understood that all Others were equal, no power exchange no matter what position or act we were forced into. I did not deviate from that mindset, not once, not ever.

  Until . . . she started to toy with me. She’d release me from torment, only to plunge me right back into the depths of this hell. She started to click the button with no rhyme or reason. She would deny me air until I danced on the verge of unconsciousness, over and again. I could see the Masters giving some subtle sort of signal to each other. I didn’t understand this game. I was only there to endure these punishments, I had no interest in games. The military-like precision of this entire set-up was like a religion to me, sacred, pure, yet here she was . . . taunting me.

  Even though I couldn’t see her eyes, I could feel her heavy gaze upon me. I no longer even felt the tortures inflicted on me by The Master. Everything narrowed down to this small battle of wills. I fixated on her, trying to predict when she would cut off my air next. Her lips wrapped tantalizingly around the gag. When she found me worthy of another breath, she would push the button, but she would also, unconsciously, flex her mouth slightly. That’s when I saw the freckle. A nearly hidden flaw near the corner of those perfect, luscious lips protruding from the opening in the mask.

  Something in my iron resolve broke. I wanted to belong to Her. Wholly and absolutely. I took my torture for her, dedicated every drop of blood trickling from my tits, every struggled gasp in Her honour. I would live in this moment forever if it meant my eternal suffering would please Her, and only Her.

  The Masters, by some unseen signal, moved on to other tactics. The pain stopped, it was time for pleasure. The gags were removed from our mouths, we took deep clean breaths as soon as we were permitted. Vibrators were fixed tight to our clits, there was no way to escape those either. We were brought to orgasm swiftly, almost as an afterthought. I was still fixated on her mouth, the freckle, aware of every movement she made. When we were finally unbound, she gave me the slightest smile, nearly imperceptible, a mere flex of her mouth, risking a breach in our agreements with The Company.

  That night burned in me, a candle brighter than all the others. It was the moment I returned to when alone in my own bed, the memory I conjured up to accompany my own hand stirring between my legs. An obsession that played in a loop, leaving me weak and frantic.

  Now, it’s as if time has fast-forwarded, skipping over winter and spring. Here we are again, facing each other. I had nearly stopped searching The Others, thinking maybe she had quit, or even been let go for that tiny smile she had bestowed on me months before.

  I try not to react, not let my heart jump, not give the slightest sign of recognition. I’m a highly self-disciplined creature. I refuse to twitch so much as a finger. Chances are she probably doesn’t even recall that night, I’m sure I was just a random Other to her as so many others were to me. I can’t imagine how she would be able to distinguish me anyway, I take every precaution to remain anonymous.

  The Masters take a long time binding us into position. I’m fastened spread-eagled to the floor, metal restraints are bolted down, including one across my neck. The Master tightens the bolts securely. My nipples are clamped to clips, attached to rope hanging from the ceiling, then pulled taut until my back arches away from the floor. From the sound, I think that she is being restrained in a similar fashion. But when I feel her breath between my legs, I realize that The Masters have positioned her on her belly, face right up to my cunt.

  She takes a cautious lap at my clit. I’m instantly engorged. Her tongue traces the pink curves and folds of my labia, searching that region neither above nor below, exploring the dark reaches of my anus. She flicks her tongue at my clit, then withdraws the moment I come near climax. We engage in this dance until I’m in a moaning frenzy. I try to thrust my cunt onto her tongue, wordlessly begging for release.

  A Master draws her head away. I can see from the reflection in the one-way window that a rope is being fastened around her neck, up to a pulley suspended from the beams in the ceiling, then around her feet. The position forces her to hold her legs up to prevent her from choking. Another Master slides a spiked board under the arch in my already aching back, then loosens the ropes suspending my chest in the air. Now I have to hold my own body aloft in this position. Devils.

  She has to continue to fuck me with her mouth, but to do so, she risks choking. When I finally come to climax, I will have to hold my body in this awkward position, there will be no relaxing into a contented heap for me. The Masters could choose to keep us in these positions for hours afterwards.

  I raise my ass in the air as much as I can, hoping this small action could ease her troubles, if only for a moment. Instead of lapping at my pussy, she takes the hard road, stretching down to thrust her tongue into my anus. I can hear her struggle for breath in between every plunge. She fucks my ass with her tongue as deftly as any finger could. She prods deeper, I feel my ass open up like a jagged flower. Every so often she pulls away, taking an enormous gasp, then dives below the surface again.

  My back aches. I rest myself against the spikes as much as I can stand, until the surface tension threatens to break me open, then I arch higher. I want to come instantly in her mouth, to let her know how much she excites me, pleases me. I can feel droplets of sweat fall from her forehead, trailing down to mingle with the wetness of my cunt. Every stroke of her tongue feels magnified. She attacks my cunt with the same vigour and attention that she gave my ass. Then I feel it. Something small and hard being pushed into my pussy by her tongue. She doesn’t break stride, but I’m so thrown by this act that I have to remember not to show any sign . . . of anything.

  What has she just done? The possibilities swirl before me, I break concentration. My body gives way to the strain, and I hit the spikes beneath my back with a grimace. I heave myself back up and away. The Masters are flogging us both now, I scream until my throat is raw, I hear her grunt and choke. She bites every bit of meat within reach of her teeth. I grind my cunt in her face. The Masters flog us mercilessly, every stroke leaving stinging welts.

  I am a caged animal, all instinct, no words. My body screams for a final release, but I realize that if I want to keep the object intact, I’ll have to fake it. I never fake it. It’s been one of my cardinal rules, a lie not only to my partner, but to myself. I have to decide, and I have to decide now. I can’t even begin to fathom what punishment lies in store for such a transgression.

  I direct all my energy away from my pussy. I channel it all to my brain, picturing what this orgasm would feel like brought to life. I imagine the crest of the wave, crashing against her beautiful mouth. I envision each ripple of release, opening me wider, that high tight sliver of clarity overwhelmed by the blackness. I clench my pussy tightly, I feel her tongue hesitate, she understands. She holds her mouth tight against my cunt, covertly kissing me in gratitude. I free my mind as I constrain my body. Then I scream. I come harder in my mind’s eye then I ever have in reality. My entire body shakes from the strain, all my muscles exhausted.

  Suddenly, we’re released. Restraints are undone, strong arms pull us to our feet. We’re wrapped in thick soft robes, blindfolded again, and escorted away by our respective Keepers. I keep my pussy clenched tight to keep the mysterious item from clattering to the floor. My steps are small and awkward. Once we leave The Room, my Keeper asks if I’m OK. “Leg cramp,” I answer.

  I’ve long suspected that my dressing room was monitored; I don’t want to take any chances of this illicit act being discovered. I skip the shower, not entirely unusual, but unusual enough for a punishing session such as this. I hope it remains unnoticed. I leave the object in place as I dress, not daring to pull it out of me on the premises. My panties hold it in; I’m glad I decided to wear jeans tonight instead of a skirt. My car is waiting for me, already warmed up and running. I give the guard a nod of thanks and pull away. I wait until I’ve driven past the industrial
park, then the river, but I can’t wait until I’m home. I pull off onto a secluded road and unzip my jeans.

  I extract a little silver capsule from my pussy. My name is engraved in tiny letters on the outside.

  My name.

  How? The capsule is meant to pull apart, concealing something inside. I twist one end off and a little slip of rolled-up paper falls out. I leave it in my lap, untouched, while I think this over.

  How did she know it was me? I’ve taken every precaution throughout my term with The Company. How long had she concealed this? Did she carry this in her mouth night after night, months on end? Did she somehow know we’d be partnered tonight? I couldn’t even fathom the lengths she had to go to get this to me. I’m flattered and terrified.

  The Company is everything to me. It’s given the discipline I crave, taken me to the farthest extremes I can imagine. They are very good to me, and I abide by the rules to the letter. This, this tiny curl of paper could undo all of that.

  I hold it in my hand. Blue ink bleeds through the paper, but I can’t make out what it says. When the Company first found me, I was near penniless. My sexual appetites were driving me deeper into a dangerous underworld, nothing was ever enough. Secret clubs, cruel, vicious people one step away from criminally insane. The Company rescued me, gave me faith, a purpose: To be their instrument.

  I unfurl the edge of the paper. I see a handwritten capital “C”, then I open it enough to reveal an “A”. Underneath I see the beginnings of what I assume is a phone number. The rest of the slip is still in a tight curl, resting lightly in my palm.

  Is a freckle worth such a thing?

  Of Cockles and Mussels

  Stella Duffy

  If there’s one thing I know to be true about Molly Malone, it’s that she was not sweet. Not sweet at all. She was wild and funny and exhausting to be with, she could be cruel too, had a mean temper and a hard jealous streak. But God she was good, to watch, to drink alongside, to play, to laugh, to fuck. And definitely more salt than sweet. Alive, alive oh.

  I was sixteen when we met, she was already a grown woman of twenty-eight. Other women her age, the girls she’d been at school with – just for the few years before she started the business, set up her stall – the girls from her catechism class, dull, virginal girls all, she said, were long-married and on to their fourth or fifth babies by now. They spent their mornings shopping and cooking, their afternoons washing and cleaning, and their evenings moaning about mewling brats and stupid or nasty or lazy or boring husbands and interfering mothers-in-law; blaming the woes of their lives, not on the evil English as their husbands did, or on the lazy Irish as their landlords did, but on the priest that wouldn’t let up when they dared brave the confessional. Not Molly. She had no quarrel with the Church, it didn’t touch her and she didn’t touch it, not since she was fourteen years old and Father Paul, on the other side of the confessional grille, had asked her to recount, blow by literal blow, the exact details of her afternoon down by the river with Patrick Michael Fisher. By the time I met her, Molly Malone went to church only on her favourite saints’ days and no Sundays, and she had no intention of tying herself to a man, to a ring, to a child. No intention of tying herself to a woman either. More’s the pity.

  There’s something about a woman whose hands are always a little wet, red from the cold and the wind and her own hard work. Her skin flushed with standing outside in all weathers, from morning after morning waiting for the fishing boats to come in, her hair pulled right back, scraped away from her neck, from her face, tied tight, held in, held away. Molly’s hands smelled of the sea, of broken shells, what else could they do? But her hair, fat handfuls of thick, rich, dark brown hair, smelled of Molly alone. Of nutmeg grated on to warm milk, of the whiskey added for a top-up, of the fresh pillow case – old linen, always ironed, no matter how hard her week – and of the warmth of her bed. Our bed. Her bed.

  There was a song before there was Molly, my Molly. But after my Molly, that song only ever meant her.

  Molly Malone told me she’d fucked James Joyce and he named Molly Bloom after her. Told me it was the bloom of her skin of her rose of her rising and falling and falling for him, in him, under him (through him in him with him) that is, was and ever shall be. She took his hand and showed him where to go, how to go, how high to go, young artist falling from the sky on melting wings, into the melting Molly, wide bloom of melting Molly Malone.

  She said she’d fucked Tristan Tzara too, when he was over for a visit, before he and Joyce went off to Zurich together. Said his line about Clytemnestra on the quays of decorated bells was about her, Dublin quays, fishing boat bells. Molly was happy to fuck them, but had no time for their work – said it was easier when their hands were too full for a pen, their mouths too full for words. In her opinion there were too many Dadaist fellows anyway, not enough women, lads sitting in overheated rooms and getting all excited about words when they should have had women to work for, women to please, no wonder their women turned to fucking each other. She was quite fond of Joyce, but thought the others were just odd, overexcited about all the wrong things. They could keep their poems and plays and prose, she was happier with a sentence that made sense, not the cut and paste variety Tzara preferred. Molly said scissors were for cutting hair, cutting bacon fat, shucking an oyster if there was no knife to hand.

  I handed her a knife. She put it aside. Shucked me. Shucked off the plain and the hidden and the scared and the young and I grew under her tutelage, under her.

  When we met. I’d gone down to her stall, I’d been there before, of course, many times. Middle child of five and all those boys, you know my mother didn’t have anyone else to help her keep them clothed, fed, washed, clean. I hated doing the laundry, all that endless scrubbing of filthy boys’ shirts and underpants. My brothers are not the only reason I started with women, but knowing a little too much about the ways of men certainly did make women a more interesting possibility when I was just sixteen.

  So. I had been to her stall before, but I’d never met her, never actually talked to her. Molly Malone always had a crowd around her, a dozen housewives and as many stevedores, fishermen, passing clergy on occasion; they liked to buy from her because she always had the freshest and the best – my mother said she worked the fishermen for that privilege and I didn’t doubt it – but also because she was so damn happy. It wasn’t easy, back then, back there. None of us had anything to spare, none of us had time to give away either, not those who had their stalls in the fishmarket, or those who went to buy from them. I’m not talking the kind of Oirish poverty your American films like to revel in, all Fatima and famine, but the constant uncertainty, the grinding regularity of not quite having enough. Of never quite having enough. It’s exhausting, and boring. It doesn’t make for many cheery smiles or faux-folk songs breaking free from a mouth full of regular white teeth at the drop of a hat. For most of us, it was ordinary. And that’s why people used to stop by Molly’s cart.

  I know she worked it, we all did, none of us thought her smile and her laughter and her smart, dirty mouth were all part of her nature, we all knew it was part of her work, and she worked it well. It drew her a crowd, kept them there while she told the story of the Kilbarrack fisherman she’d bought this cod from, the Howth girl she’d wheedled this tub of winkles from, the hard bitch at the end of the old harbour wall who hoarded the best oysters, brought in just once a week by her eldest son, and wouldn’t let Molly buy any for her cart until she told her, word for word, about the last bloke she’d had. The oyster woman hadn’t had sex for fifty years or more, but Molly could get a bucket of oysters from her with a twisted tale, whispered sweet.

  Anyway, this day, a Wednesday, I arrived late. The baby brother was sick and our mother had had to sit with him while I did most of the day’s work alone, which meant it was just tired bread and a thin soup for their dinner, and none of them happy about that, so our mother sent me out that afternoon to see if there were any leavings from the market
, I’d sit with the boy and she would make up a stew of whatever I brought back. Now, I hate vegetable stew, it does nothing for my insides, and even when I was a child, didn’t agree with me too well, and scrag end of mutton can only go so far with a bunch of boys and my father, hungry from his wanting dinner. So I went to the market, to Molly Malone’s cart. I knew she had to get rid of everything at the end of the day, and there were always plenty standing around to put up their hands when she offered this chunk of tired skate for half the price it had been in the morning, that bucket of fish heads and innards the nicer ladies asked her to remove, gutting her speciality and their relief.

  This day though, I was too late. Molly Malone had given away the last chunks of tails and heads, all that was left on her stall were the blood and scales of the day and she was readying to pick up the cart and sluice it off, leaving it clean for the morning, gone six already, bells ringing for evening novenas, Molly was heading home to clean herself and sleep before she had to rise at four and grab the prime spot to meet the boats. (I assumed Molly was heading home to sleep. I know better now. I knew better not very long after.)

  Molly Malone said later she could see it on my face, the anger, the frustration, the need, the hunger, the desire. I still believe she was making that up. What she could see on my face in that moment was simple damn fury that my stupid brother was sick and my stupid mother had sent me out to buy the worst food with the least money and my stupid life in which these kind of events were going to become more not less as I grew older, were going to become more difficult as I grew older and tried to have a family of my own, a life of my own. These problems were going to be my whole damn life. That’s what I thought at sixteen, that’s what scared me then. And yes, I did also think that Molly Malone looked good. And maybe I didn’t even know I was thinking that. All I knew was she smiled at me and even though I was angry and tired and cold, I smiled back.