by Retha Powers
“What is this?” I giggled. “Are you crazy or what?”
No words from him. Just the gentle jerk backward of his head, instructing me to come closer. The subtle rise of his left brow as I came near.
I dropped my bag on the floor, loosened my Plein Sud trenchcoat, let it slip from my shoulders and fall to the floor.
The weather outside was brick. New York City was in the midst of an ugly wet winter. Inside Room 416 everything was hot, steamy, thick with the threat of sex. All I wore was a zebra-striped teddy and an extremely expensive pair of snakeskin boots.
Before Cassis, I had never done this type to thing. Since Cassis, I couldn’t imagine how it was that I never did.
I made a move toward the bed. With his left arm Cassis swept away a clearing for me, a slew of roses falling to the floor, some flying across the room. I slid in beside him. He said nothing, just hovered over me sinisterly, as I leaned back into the softness of the pillows.
Each visit with him was a treat, but this rose thing was definitely something different.
“Did you buy these?” I asked, but of course he didn’t answer. My mystery man, with his right hand, removed the rose from between his teeth. He traced it down the center of my forehead, lightly, past my nose, over the swell of my lips, snaking a trail down my neck that barely grazed my skin. The sensation was electric.
His eyes tightly fastened to mine, he slipped the teddy delicately off my shoulders, down my waist, enlisting my assistance with his eyes. I pushed it all the way down, raising my butt so it could pass, letting it linger around my knees. Beneath me, a thorny-stemmed rose punctured my ass. Caught off guard, I was instantly wet. Pain and pleasure were always excellent bedfellows in the presence of Cassis.
He swirled the rose around my nipples, giving each its moment in the sun before encircling it with his succulent mouth. I could feel the blood rush center stage to meet his tongue, my areola engorged in a dance of fire. I breathed in, my eyes closing, as he nibbled hungrily on each of my buds. He rose from his worship, touched my face with his hand so that I would open my eyes. Petal to skin, he began tracing a deeper descent down my body with the rose. When he reached my clit, he stopped, twirling the thing in circular motions around the hood of my already swollen nub. With his left forefinger he pulled it back, exposing my sensitive button to the now bruised surface of the rose petals. As he twirled and stoked, Cassis stared pointedly in my face, willing reaction, willing change.
“That feels really good,” I whispered.
Cassis, my owner, my commandant, said nothing. When I parted my lips to say more, he covered them with his own, his tongue plunging and probing deep inside my mouth.
Kissing, to me, is almost as fulfilling an act as fucking. The ultimate high is to be kissed while fucking. Tongues locked, loins locked, all moving with fevered intensity toward common release. It makes me respond like a man. I bust nuts. Gush like waterworks from here to Massapequa. Bed sopping. Body wet from top to bottom. Oh, goodness, nothing feels as good as a double-lipped fuck!
All that was left was for Cassis to put it in. His dick. He already had his mouth on mine. His tongue was thrusting and sucking, pulling and pushing at my own. Below, I was soaked, my hips throwing hints like crazy as I ground them around.
Instead, Cassis twirled the flower. The rose was now rubbing, hard, up and down the sides of my lower lips. The sensation was wild, so keyed up was I by the kissing. The petals were giving off something that made my labia tingle, and, to me, within the confines of this room, all strange sensations, new sensations, were good sensations. I ground harder, pressing my pelvis up against the rose, crushing it between my legs as they scissored shut, Cassis roughly spreading them apart again and rubbing the flower against my now drenched outer lips.
“Fuck me,” I declared, mouthing the words around our dueling tongues. Cassis responded by kissing me harder, tossing the sopping rose aside, and beginning afresh as he rubbed a new flower against my pussy.
The tingling intensified, a distant fire aflame deep within the dermis of my cooch.
I worked my hips now, not just out of lust, but in response to an itch, a hunger, born of rose petals, that desperately needed scratching. I reached for him, rock hard amid a bed of thorny stems. I held him in my hand, trying to guide him home. Above me, Cassis still worked his magic upon my mouth. I wanted to come so bad, I could barely breathe. I wanted him in me, deep, hard, I wanted those hands crushing my thighs, I needed my pussy scratched, my labia scratched, the double itch was too much for me to take.
Before I could get him close enough to my pussy to matter, to my own surprise I erupted. Something deep, deep, deep inside of me let go, and then a jarring sensation that rushed in a wave to the outer edges of my walls, filling them with heat, quakes, an ultrastrong spasm, and, finally, release. Cassis still inside of my mouth, I moaned heavily around him. Thrashed against him, collapsed like a bitch.
He released my tongue and pulled away, the victor, smiling above me.
No words, just smiles.
Beneath him, me, frail, quivering, stunned by such immediate release with what wasn’t my typically necessary closure: tongue-on-clit or dick-in-pussy.
“Nice,” he finally muttered.
My thighs were trembling much too hard for me to try to form words.
The rose-capade had been so exhausting for me that I had fallen immediately asleep. Slept deep, too, for three solid hours, Cassis over at the desk, naked, hard at work on his book.
The pecking sound of fingers on keyboard finally broke my stream of unconsciousness and I rose, groggy, hungry, my bladder full. I stumbled from the bed, toward the bathroom, blindly flipping on the light, finding the toilet, sitting down. As I relaxed to release my bladder, absently rubbing my eyes, I felt a fullness below that seemed unnatural. Tight skin. Puffiness. I stopped rubbing my eyes to take a peek.
My labia were swollen five times their natural size. As the flow of pee made contact with the skin, I let out a squeal so steep that it didn’t even seem to come from me.
Soprano. Only this time the singing emanated from my mouth.
From the room, I could hear the deep distant hum of Cassis’s familiar chuckle.
I stood outside the room now, legs barely able to close, the card key in my hand, poised to open the door. Through the barrier, the sound of changing channels. Still flickering by with lightning speed. Cassis’s hand on his joint must be doing the same.
I stood there, staring at the number on the door.
416.
The number of times I’d come in the past month.
416.
The number of times I’d think about him in the course of a day.
416.
The number I would count to, there, outside the door, until Cassis had jerked himself to completion. Then I’d walk away. My lips couldn’t take it.
Fuhgettaboudit.
Sometimes, even a pussy needs a chance to heal.
Stores
_________________
by Reginald Harris
Fetish: A rite, or cult of fetish worshipers.
I hate to admit to being weird, but shopping makes me horny.
And not just any kind of shopping, either. Going to the mall does nothing for me. But take me to a grocery store, give me one of those silly carts with the mandatory one wobbly wheel to push around, and suddenly I get very hot.
Maybe it’s because we shop together, Ricky and me. We usually have to go late at night. Invariably he gets called on to pull an extra shift at the hospital and doesn’t get home until after midnight. I could go by myself, and I did at the beginning of our relationship, but that was never any fun. I did not enjoy lugging bags to the car, then out of the car, then up the steps to our apartment all by myself. That’s what his muscles are for. So now I’m content to wait until he gets home, checking the shelves for what we need, drawing up my list, changing clothes a few times until I find just the right ensemble for our late-night foray into comestibles.<
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Thank God for twenty-four-hour grocery stores! No swerving to avoid some family and their screaming kids. No guys desperately trying not to look like they’re a couple shopping together, fresh pasta and imported olive oil in their carts giving them away, or women with cans of dog food and big bags of litter, buying for two, not caring who notices. No single guys cruising, frozen dinners and canned vegetables rattling like pinballs in their baskets. No long lines at the checkout, either; usually just one or two checkers mostly standing around filing their nails. The store is almost empty but for the overnight shelvers, ripping into boxes like it was Christmas, and the two of us.
When Ricky and I first walk into the store I’m fine, focused, I can control myself. But once we hit the fresh produce, walking past the rows of onions and celery, the bulging bags of oranges or grapefruit, it hits me. I’m overcome with emotion. Something about the ordinariness of it all, how dull and everyday it is to buy groceries together, drives me wild. Ricky’s receding back, pushing our cart toward the deli section, becomes suddenly the most beautiful sight in all the world.
My list is filled with innuendo: Meat. Juice. Eggs. Milk. Even the wheat creams here. One night someone had dropped a container of yogurt in Dairy, thick globs of lumpy white suspension still quivering on the floor when we turned down the aisle. I nearly fainted dead away.
“Excuse me, but what aisle are the blow jobs in?” I whisper in Ricky’s ear. “Stop it,” he says, shaking his head.
I want to drag him into the stockroom, lean against a box of thousand-gross muffin mix, and have him fuck me there. In my wildest fantasies we do it in the middle of the store, rutting on the floor in Aisle 11 between oversize bottles of store-brand soda and cheap pretzels, ejaculating into a pool of waxy buildup.
As we wander through the store, checking off items from our list, beads of sweat begin to form on my forehead. I show Ricky the store’s weekly sales flyer. “Look, dear—this is a good price for a nice piece of tail, don’t ya think?” He stifles a laugh and keeps on walking.
At the display of oils, the sight of so much lubrication makes my knees grow weak: corn, olive, vegetable. In liquid form, in tubs—sticks! Fortunately the rest of the baking equipment calms me down. Besides, to mention nuts and stuffing mix to Ricky would be too obvious. Then we’re at the spices and my excitement returns. Parsley and poppy seed, rosemary, cilantro, leaves of bay, all mix in my head like a sexual herbes de Provence.
The dreaded snack aisle looms next, cookies and chips reminding me of our couch potato nights glued to the TV. We pass the cereals and baby food. “Syrup?” I say to him, waving a bottle and licking my lips lasciviously. “And they double our coupons.” Ricky stares as if I were insane and tosses the bottle into our cart. We head to the arctic wastes of the freezer section.
He prefers looking at the chicken, steaks, and chops alone, ever since the night I went up to him, saying, “Special on hot cock in the meat section,” and squeezed his crotch. I still don’t know why he got so angry and slapped my hand from him. “Go find the toilet paper,” he told me, as I slunk away. Who cares what those stockboys think they saw anyway?
Finally we press on to bread, butter, orange juice, and milk, as if the store itself knows it’s almost morning, and wheel our cart to the lone cashier to check out.
By the time we leave the store I can barely breathe. Ricky glances at me, saying nothing. We travel the short distance to our apartment in silence and divide the bags between us for the long trip up three flights of stairs.
Once inside, the bags are strewn across the kitchen floor, and I sigh, girding myself for the next chore of putting everything away. I lean over to take a head of lettuce out of the first bag, and Ricky tips me off balance with his foot. Sprawling to the floor, I turn over quickly to look up at him.
He’s grinning broadly now, has stripped off his jacket and shirt, and looms over me in his blazing white T-shirt. He unbuckles his belt and slowly unzips his pants, pulling out a sausage longer and thicker than the kielbasa resting against my elbow in the bag beside me.
“Here, baby,” he says, straddling me, placing his hand behind my head. “I know how shopping makes you… hungry. I got a special purchase for you. Eat.”
And I do.
The Dawn of Our World
_________________
by Carolyn Ferrell
Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field till there be no place that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth,
thought Rhonda Robinson as she sewed the zipper back into her favorite winter dress, the pink-and-black gingham fashioned coyly like an oversize maid’s apron. She did not ask herself why those words were on her lips, the Bible drifting gently from cobwebs of melancholy. Tonight was the night for love, a year’s worth of passion; and with her eyes closed and her back to the bedroom window, she enjoyed the surface of nettles that moved beneath her skin, traveling her arms and legs and across her womanly triangle in anticipation of the man from Auntsville. His name was Billy Merry, and he came up to Long Island every December twenty-fourth to make love to Rhonda in various positions of joy and exertion. Otherwise there was little mystery: She knew he had once belonged to her grandmother as a pet or fancy piece of furniture, but now that he had become a man, he was all hers.
She moved the heavy-duty needle back and forth through the ancient fabric—this was a dress she’d been sewing up and down since she arrived on Long Island seven years ago, a dress fashioned into either matronly or sexy, but it was the prettiest one she had. In reality, it never mattered what she was wearing. All he ever wanted was her, the softened spread of woman wrapped snugly around him, licking his salt-block body as if she were dying of thirst.
He usually pulled up at her house around six in the evening. He would get out of the car and stand there like a statue, his sharp country eyes taking in the suburban land, thigh meat bulging from too-tight trousers, chin shaven smooth as a spring limb. From the screen door she’d call his name in varying shades: Bill, William, My Heart, My Lover.
She felt proud of him, of his good looks and musk—a man just as pleasing as those Greek heroes she occasionally glanced in Harriet-Ann Hutchinson’s social studies textbook, The Dawn of Our World. She held the pages at arm’s length and pronounced the names with care, all the while measuring her loneliness in the number of times her breasts knocked against her brassiere. She wished to pronounce something beautifully, but to whom? Who in all of Featherstone really cared? The only person who spoke to her was the janitor, and he was nothing more than an annoyance. Mr. Blank: He had that oldtimishness about him she so despised in the elderly, the desire to talk about nonsubjects with gusto and then the expectation of appreciation, one extraordinarily shameless. She hated that.
But with Billy. This visit was number seven, the lucky visit. She closed her eyes and held the dress still over her lap. He would appeareth. He would cross mountains and nations for her, lift her up like a new bride and carry her toward the couch (the one without slipcovers), breathe in the seams of her dress, tap his hands along her body like a blind man until they reached the zipper and discovered the speckled velvet of her skin. Her arms and belly would be sheathed, as usual, by a last-minute layer of baby powder and Jean Nate. Then the indulgence, the fire of gluttony. Lights flickering on and off, faces creased and then shuttered into nothingness. Afterward, in the remaining ash that was her body, Rhonda would hold his face in her hands and, like a schoolgirl, gaze woefully into his eyes.
They were eyes she recognized all the way back from the fifth grade in the country, Auntsville, North Carolina, where he had been a miserable boy, an undesirable, someone about whom rumors were spread containing words like pervert and bang. It was said that his first girlfriend was a dog; when Rhonda once passed his house and saw the lone hound tied to the mulberry in the parched red yard, she felt a certain amount of pity and jealousy. How was it he could put his finger on desire and name it so painstakingly? Desire was not crysta
lline; it was murky, unfettered, gargantuan. In the schoolroom, loneliness and foreboding were her sole allies.
Years; and he had grown into a man. Rhonda set the dress down on her bed and (from sheer force of habit) slipped her whole hand between her unpantied legs and tried to relieve herself. His tobacco field cap and armpits entered her mind—all that glorious history, a Greek statue, just like in the book!—and she went to work. Everything down there was wet and swollen, impossible to get through. She stuck her finger as far as it would go. Though she herself was not religious, she now and then stopped her business to ask God why Christmas couldn’t come more than once a year.
As usual, Billy took the Belt Parkway once he made it to New York. He rather hated Long Island and what he perceived was box living, but then there was nothing much going on in Auntsville this time of year, the supply of women being at a low. He was a man who loved love. He loved sex, touching, bedroom camaraderie, the predominance of false intuition. And since Rhonda offered this and more, he would just have to deal with the squared communities and endless strip malls advertising the baby clothes and automotive parts and Laundromats and cavernous supermarkets offering everything and nothing. At the end of the line she would be waiting for him.
As a child she was so wanting, and now she’d grown into a woman not at all his type: tall, meandering, wistful, always meaning something she could never say. She wore the same dress year after year, thinking it something special. A pitiful girl. An even more pitiful woman. Seven years now he’d made the trip—seven, an unlucky number. Yet here he was, on his way. Here he was.
