The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 11

by Maxim Jakubowski

  She came over and sat on the couch. I tossed the pad onto the floor, and we stretched out on opposite ends. She let her foot wander towards my crotch and rubbed up and down on the fly of my jeans while I caressed her calf, her knee, mildly tapping her thigh as she writhed.

  She sat up so I could reach higher up, between her legs and as my hand slipped in there she closed her legs on it, like a vice, moving her right foot up and down so fast on my crotch that I told her if she kept that up we’d have an “accident” on our hands.

  “Better not,” she said, springing up from the couch, “I wouldn’t be able to give you a clean change of clothes. All my undies – as you see – are strictly women’s.”

  Lilah called out to me from behind the screen and I went around. A mound of lingerie sat on the bed edge but she had changed back into the kimono outfit. Her hair was wild and spilled over her shoulders and the bowler sat on her lap. “This is my favourite of the four,” she said. “Which was your fav?”

  I showed her all the scores on my pad, and she clapped when she saw the “10” next to Peony Kimono. I added the phrase “with Bowler Hat” to the name.

  “I had a strong, strong premonition our taste would coincide,” she said, as she stretched her legs and wiggled her toes. “I used to dress up like this when I was young and my parents would go away. This snowstorm is reminding me of one weekend when they had gone away and were stuck upstate and I, well, how can I say this without blushing, I discovered, um, the pleasures of the flesh. I must have been fifteen or so and I dressed up in tights and underwear and costume jewellery and strutted in front of mirrors just like I was posing for you now.” She told me that was the first time she’d seen herself as if she were someone else – “almost like I wasn’t me but I was me, and I loved how I looked. And that’s the night I . . .” Her hands ran over her own legs and her voice trailed off. My hand was on top of hers. She reached down and closed her eyes, dragging her finger along the red embroidery in the black panties, her finger so strictly following the red filigree it was as if she knew every microscopic warp and weave of her panties without having to see.

  I asked her why someone as in touch with her likes and dislikes hadn’t found the right man. “You answered your own question, maybe,” she said, tossing the hat onto the bed, shaking out her hair. “You know, it’s a bit sad but they say single girls have the best lingerie collections.”

  “It’s not sad. I’m enjoying this,” I said, and she repeated “this” like we both knew what we were sharing even if we couldn’t put a name on it.

  We got to talking about relationships and also about being happy alone. The pleasures of self-pleasure. “Fewer arguments that way,” I said, “you are better off. Your own place, your own time, your own possessions.” She asked me whether men pleasure themselves a lot when they are alone. I answered that men didn’t discuss that subject with other men, any more than women did, but that I guessed it was quite common. “Especially among the married set,” I added, somewhat cynically, and we laughed.

  “Girls are no different from guys on that score,” she said. Then she reached into the kimono and drew out a black dildo and held it out for me to see, as if it were proof of something. She bit her lip and lowered her head, not blushing so much as avoiding eye contact, as if to take back all this confessional sharing that was happening between us. That dream-like sensation from earlier washed over me again. Her shiny black dildo matched the lacquer-black of her kimono and black of the sleek mules on the floor, shoes she was kicking nervously as we sat there in the deafening hush, suspended in a haze of kinky karma. She recalled the snow outside and wondered how much had fallen. I took her dildo from her as if to inspect it and I asked her. “Would it be cheating – if . . .” I stopped myself. She told me to finish my thought.

  “If two friends were to . . . share. Share private pleasures in each other’s company?”

  She raised her eyebrows and grinned and said she had no idea what the rules are for that.

  “But it’s certainly not the same as sleeping together, is it?” she asked.

  We agreed it absolutely wasn’t like sleeping together, and I was so turned on by our budding conspiracy that I wanted to throw her back on the bed and peel off her clothes and admire her, like I were the guardian of this private nook of pleasure, here, surrounded by these Japanese screens, warm inside on a snowy night.

  Lilah helped me out of my shirt and my jeans. We sat on her bed facing each other as we had earlier in the evening on the couch. I could see the outline of her dark pubic hair under those black panties. Her skin beneath her stockings reminded me of the snow, the snow that we could not see except for the glowing whiteness that emanated from under the window blinds.

  Without letting her fingers touch my skin, she helped me slip off my underwear and then she took off hers and we dropped them on top of each other on the floor by the bed.

  “Touch yourself,” she said. “And I’ll touch myself.”

  It felt adolescent, all this, awkward and exhilarating, like some strange experiment in closeness that really didn’t feel wrong.

  Once I’d stroked my cock till it was hard, she squeezed a lubricant from a black tube, letting the fragrant oil pour over my knuckles and my fingers and onto my cock. The cool relief and slickness as I gripped my cock almost made me erupt.

  Then she lubed her black dildo with the oil, her dark eyes watching me jerk off all the while. “Play,” she said, and I licked my lips and repeated, “Play.”

  She rubbed the shiny black toy against her labia. Then she raised her hips off the mattress and shifted the dildo below, towards her ass, pressing her feet into the mattress to lift herself, her gorgeous legs arched at my sides. Her moans almost sounded like laughter as she played with the black dildo like that.

  I paused for a moment in my own pleasures and with my greaseless left hand I tossed the bowler hat towards her. She sat back down on the bed and put it on, letting it tilt forward till I could barely see her dark eyes. Then she leaned her head back and slid the dildo in and out of herself with such dexterity that I was awed by the balletic strokes of her hands. “A woman who knows her own pleasure,” I thought, “is the sexiest woman alive.”

  Lilah pleasured herself in and out so rapidly that I was amazed the bowler hat stayed on her head. Watching her, feeling safe within the confines of this bedroom, I stroked my cock faster and faster, studying the slide of the red coral necklace on her breasts, admiring her close-eyed assurance as she fucked herself with that shiny black dildo, black against her pink sex. Her cheeks flushed and glowed. Her dark hair gave off an even darker sheen as it swayed behind her back. The hat seemed glued on her head. She moved the dildo between her legs as if it were a tiny clarinet – and as if her pink sex were its sacred music.

  I stroked myself with more and more speed and from time to time she stared across the bed at my cock in my fist. Occasionally her legs brushed mine; and my eyes returned her stare as my balls filled and my foreskin burned with delight and Lilah shoved the dildo in and out of her pussy, rearing her head so far backwards that her bowler hat slipped backwards off her, tumbling off the edge of the bed and rolling along the floor, and as I stroked my cock, I followed the hat and recalling that fight with X, about wearing the fedora, I groaned and erupted, coming warm jets onto the bed sheets.

  Lilah barely heard my guttural groans. She was busy, half-raised off the bed and lost in the ecstatic silence that rose from what she was doing for herself between her legs with that black dildo.

  In my exhausted afterglow, I held her calves to give her better balance and I watched her with friendly, intimate encouragement. She smiled. She stretched her whole body out tightly and I could see her legs tense as her rasping moans punctured the hush of the room with increasing frequency, the slick dildo easing in and out, ever faster.

  I took the tube of oil and squeezed a long trail of oil that slicked onto her hand and onto the dildo as she moved it in and out. She rubbed the excess oil
onto her nipples and pinched them. Her eyes were closed. I wondered who or what she was thinking of.

  Her dildo’s slickness freed it to slip and slide along her wet swollen clit deftly. There was a small puckering noise as she moved it in and out so fast that she shuddered, thrusting her hips violently, folding her legs around her dildo gripped in her trembling fist, and her happy shouts boomed off the ceiling as her legs flailed against mine before she let go. Then she opened her legs and caught her breath, beaming, holding the dildo up, waving it like a magician triumphantly flourishing her wand.

  The next day, when I got home to X, it was no lie that I had slept on Lilah’s couch. But X seemed indifferent; she was finishing her speech for her course and ranting and raving about the sorry state of the world. I spent the afternoon swapping thankful emails with Lilah.

  Things between my fiancée went south pretty fast after that evening and X and I broke off our engagement exactly six months after that snowy night at Lilah’s.

  Lilah, meanwhile, eventually moved out to San Francisco. She and I stayed in touch on email yet with my X out of the picture the old erotic tension – that forbidden quality of our connection – no longer spiced up our exchanges, and after a while my contact with Lilah faded.

  Then one day, almost two years to the day after that snowy evening, I got a message from Lilah suggesting I go downtown to a certain boutique in the Village and check out their front window’s display.

  I bundled up and took the train down. In the shop’s window, I saw that peony kimono outfit, complete with the stockings and the red coral necklace. Even her bowler hat and those lacquer-black mules were set in front of the outfit.

  I went inside and asked how much the outfit in the display window was, “As I think I’d like to buy it for my girlfriend,” I lied, shoring up my lie by pretending to inspect the kimono’s size. I asked the saleswoman to add the bowler hat and mules as well. “Are you sure these shoes will fit your girlfriend?” I was asked.

  I said I was sure they would. The ensemble cost me two grand. I didn’t even wince as I handed over my Visa card.

  I took the outfit home and stored it safely in a garment bag in a cedar closet. I kept the bowler hat on a shelf above my work desk. I sent Lilah an email that her ensemble was there and that, coincidentally, it had sold to someone while I was in the shop.

  Lilah answered two weeks later to say she’d received a handsome cheque from that Village boutique and that she had sent the proceeds from the boutique’s consignment cheque to a worthwhile charity.

  “Nice,” I answered. “That ensemble saved the world.”

  Lilah said she appreciated my remark. I also know that, to this day, she doesn’t know the half of it.

  One Last Fling

  Kristina Wright

  “We’re Vegas bound,” Douglas said, helping me into the back of our sleek, black limousine.

  The neon lights outside Club Europa reflected off my silver-sequined minidress, causing it to sparkle like a disco ball. I made a half-hearted effort to preserve my modesty as I climbed into the limo, tugging my skirt with one hand while I held a glass of champagne in the other. I wasn’t particularly successful at either, as I felt a cool breeze on my ass and the trickle of champagne on my wrist. I fell into the back of the limo in a fit of giggles and waited for my entourage to join me.

  “Oh, but I’m not finished dancing!”

  Alex got in beside me, his long limbs tangling with mine as we made room for two more. “It’s three hours to Vegas and the girls are waiting for you. You’ll dance the night away tomorrow night.”

  “Fuck the night away, is more like it,” Douglas said, as he and Neil climbed in and sat across from us.

  Neil tapped the partition between the driver and us. “We’re ready,” he called. “Let’s get the bride to Vegas.”

  The limo pulled away from the kerb in front of my favourite dance club and I waved goodbye as if I would never see it again. I was giddy and tipsy and very cosy in the back of the limo with my three favourite men – besides my fiancé Simon, of course. What can I say? I’ve always been a tomboy and that has translated into deep, meaningful – and sometimes even platonic – friendships with men. Not that I don’t have female friends, I do. They were waiting for me at the Bellagio in Vegas and in the morning we’d be getting massages and pedicures and talking about boys before I walked down the aisle. But I had wanted my last night as a single woman to be spent with my three closest male friends.

  It had been Simon’s idea for my bachelorette party to end up in Vegas, where we were to be married the following evening. Now, I was floating happily along thanks to the beautiful, bubbly champagne that kept flowing into my glass from endless bottles provided by my attentive staff of three. I was dressed in sparkly sequins and smoky mascara, looking very much the part of a party girl out for a night of dancing and debauchery. I smiled like the proverbial cat that has eaten the cream and curled up contentedly on the leather seat next to Alex.

  “Well, lady, did we show you a good last night?” Alex asked, refilling my glass yet again.

  I giggled as I sipped the expensive champagne. “Absolutely. We made quite a scene on the dance floor.”

  It was true. We’d popped into three clubs over the course of the evening and caused a bit of a stir every time as I led the men out to the centre of the dance floor. Gyrating with three men is likely to garner a lot of attention. Not that I minded. I loved having all eyes on me and my boys. Alex, at six-four and with almost white-blond hair often caused enough of a stir on his own. But throw in former football-playing Douglas with his rugged good looks and Neil with the lean, muscular body of a runner and I was certain every woman in every club was jealous of me. The best part was the safe feeling I had surrounded by men who knew me at least as well as Simon did. I snuggled against Alex’s shoulder and sighed. Douglas and Neil sat across from us, drinking beer from the well-stocked limo fridge.

  “I could get used to this, if I wasn’t getting married tomorrow.”

  Douglas winked at me. “Why would you trade in wild nights of dancing with your own personal harem for boring married life?”

  “Aren’t harem boys usually eunuchs?”

  “Definitely no eunuchs here,” Alex said, gruffly.

  We laughed at that. Alex’s sexual conquests were almost as legendary as, well, my own. I’d tested those waters a time or two and decided he had earned his reputation as a cocksman. Of course, Douglas wasn’t a slouch in the bedroom, either. The only mystery for me was Neil. Bedroom-eyed, soft-spoken Neil was a big question mark to me. I glanced at him now – wondering things probably better left unknown.

  The limo turned a corner a little too sharply, which pressed me a little closer to Alex. “Hey, Mr Limo Driver,” I called through the darkened partition. “Please be careful! I’m getting married tomorrow.”

  The partition lowered enough for me to see blue eyes staring at me in the rear-view mirror. “Yes, ma’am. My apologies.”

  I giggled. “Is’OK.”

  “It’s official,” Neil said. “She’s drunk.”

  I harrumphed in a very unladylike fashion. “I am not drunk. I’m just a little bit tipsy.”

  Alex’s hand, which had been on my knee since the corner-turn, seemed to have accidentally slid up my thigh. “Well, I’m drunk.”

  As if to prove his intoxication, he stroked my thigh seductively. His fingers felt warm on my bare skin. I couldn’t tell if he was messing with me or being serious. The possibility that he might be serious was exciting – and also proof that I was most definitely a little drunk. I made a low murmur of pleasure and the three men laughed. I didn’t like that at all. I was the bride, damn it! I wanted to be pampered and coddled and . . . other things.

  “Uh oh. Watch out, Alex,” Douglas said. “You know how she gets when she’s drunk.”

  I tilted my head and finished the last of the champagne in my glass before holding it out for another refill from Alex’s bottomless bottle. “D
o tell, Douglas. How do I get?”

  “Oh, love, you know how you get,” Alex answered good-naturedly as he refilled my glass. “Don’t you?”

  Alex, more so than the other two, always knew how to calm me down from one of my bitchy moods. I looked into his twinkling green eyes and smiled. I covered his hand with mine, wondering if I dared move his hand just a couple of inches higher. The thought made me squirm and sigh.

  “Oh yeah. I remember now.” I licked my lips, noting the way his gaze followed the tip of my tongue from one corner of my mouth to the other. “I get very needy when I’m drunk.”

  “Very needy,” Alex said. “That’s certainly one way of phrasing it, babe.”

  “She’s needed me on more than one occasion,” Douglas smirked, giving Neil’s shoulder a nudge as if the whole thing was a big joke. “Haven’t you, doll?”

  I pouted. “I don’t remember.”

  “I remember.” Alex topped off my champagne glass. “Douglas’s birthday, three years ago. You did naughty things with his birthday cake and then you disappeared into his bedroom for a good half-hour—”

  “It was an hour,” Douglas interrupted.

  “Fine, a good hour. And when you came out you had birthday cake in your hair—”

  Douglas laughed. “Among other places.”

  “I did not!” Of course I had, but I felt like I needed to defend my feminine honour in face of their laughter at my exploits.

  “Then there was that night we got thrown out of that club – what was the name of it? – because you pulled me into the bathroom. The women’s bathroom,” Alex went on.

  I glared at him. “My zipper broke on my dress.”

  “Before or after he went into the bathroom with you?” Douglas asked.

  Neil had remained quiet through their ribbing, but now he finished his beer and shook his head. “You’ve never needed me.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but he was right. All of my drunk fooling around over the years had been with Alex and Douglas, mostly because I knew they didn’t take it any more seriously than I did. Neil was different, though. I always suspected he had a bit of a thing for me and while I adored him and thought he was sexy as hell, his attraction was purely physical. I might play with the boys, but Simon had my heart and I felt like that was the one part of me Neil might demand if I let things go too far. But, like earlier, I was starting to wonder what I’d missed.