69

by Alison Tyler

The picture made me shiver almost as much as the chilly Melbourne morning. I cradled the glossy paper, rubbing at her back like it was a talisman. I still remembered how her skin felt, though I’d only ever touched her as a housemate and a friend.

  The thought of touching her again gave me the strength I needed. Maybe she’d hate me, but I had to tell her how I felt.

  Leaving whatever change I had as a tip, I bustled around the corner to her house. I closed my eyes as I knocked. For some reason it felt easier that way.

  I held my breath until the door opened. Mia was dressed in just a white satin robe. A very kissable frown kinked the space between her eyebrows.

  “Hello, Mia.”

  The frown evaporated in the heat of her smile.

  “Jaws!”

  God, I’d missed her. I’d even missed that stupid nickname. Everyone else calls me by name, Jacinta. It’s just that, with the surname Winter…well, she knows I hate it. It was cute until I was three.

  She swallowed me in a vicious hug two years in the making, squeezing so hard I could barely breathe. Her hair tickled my face and smelled like home.

  Mia dragged me inside and sat me at the breakfast bar. She told me how good I looked, how relaxed, and I swatted her compliments away.

  Then she asked me about Queensland. An innocent enough question, but it cut me in half. I hadn’t written. Hadn’t called. And still she’d hugged me like a twin.

  “It was…peaceful. Remote.” I’d barely gone outside of Brisbane, but lies are so soft against the tongue. I’d long ago lost the taste for anything hard.

  I asked about her training, told her I’d seen the article. “It said you’d started hurdles now, too.”

  She parried with the reflexes of a sprinter and asked me more about my time up north. I knew she wouldn’t stop until she’d burned away everything but the truth. Until I told her why I’d vanished. It was that determination that made her such a good runner…and it was a big part of what made me fall in love with her. Fuck. I’m such a girl.

  I deflected her questions about jobs and friends with half-baked answers. She kept grinding away at me, blocking my escape.

  In desperation I stood. “Coffee?” God. I’m such a coward. What difference could it possibly make to tell her? I’d already been living without her so long.

  But now, seeing her again, the pain was back. The need. A thousand days and nights, a thousand miles, none of it mattered. A thousand lovers wouldn’t have ground down the edge of it.

  We drank our coffee in silence, eyeing each other across the rims of our cups, almost like gunfighters. She didn’t need to tell me how I’d hurt her. I desperately wanted to tell her how I hurt. Instead, I tried misdirection and martyrdom.

  “You had your training.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “I…an opportunity came up. I had to take it.”

  “What opportunity? What, are you a spy?”

  “Of course not.”

  “It’s just, that’s the only reason I can see for fucking off without saying goodbye.” She drained the last of her coffee. “And I’ve heard there’s some kind of new contraption called a ‘telephone…’”

  I didn’t know how to explain it. It had been overwhelming. I mean, who falls in love with their best friend?

  I blinked away embarrassed tears and took our cups to the sink. When I turned back Mia was right there, in my face, towering over me. Her body bristled with kinetic energy and I wondered if she was about to slap me. Finally, she drew me into another hug, much softer and far more powerful. I clutched her shoulders and soaked up her warmth.

  “You don’t know how it hurt, Jaws. You were just gone.”

  I’d meant to leave for good. If I’d told her I was going, if she’d come to wave goodbye, I knew I would’ve confessed then and there. And what if it had ended us? By running away I’d had only happy memories to cling to.

  We held onto each other like we used to and I felt cleansed by her implicit forgiveness. I pretended we were lovers while my arms squeezed her. When she spoke it felt like her voice was mine.

  “Where are you staying?”

  “I haven’t…uh…”

  “Right. You’re staying here. At least, for a while. How much more stuff you got?”

  I pointed at my backpack. “That’s it.”

  She looked from me to the pack and then back again with a superior smirk. “All right. Who are you, really? I’ll call the cops.”

  “Cow.” I dug my fingers into her ribs. I still knew all her weak points.

  She giggled and fell to the floor, and I collapsed onto her, just for fun. My hand fell between her breasts and it made us stop laughing.

  “Cut the bullshit. Why did you leave? See, I think I know. I just wanna hear you say it.”

  I bit into my bottom lip and rolled my head onto my shoulder.

  “Jaws?”

  “I…got scared.”

  “Of what?” Her throat seemed to vibrate under the weight of her breath. “Jaws? Tell me.” A course of tears drizzled down into her hair and she shook her head. “God…I wish I meant as much to you as you do to me.”

  I swallowed something. It certainly wasn’t pride.

  “You have no idea how much I missed you, Jaws. You’re like the sun. Since you left I’ve been so cold. Then, when I opened the door and it was you…it was like waking up. I just wanted to grab you and hold you down, stop you from ever leaving again and I missed you so much.”

  I was crying unashamedly by that time, and I swept down and scooped her head into my hands, burrowed my face into her hair and just kept saying, over and over, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, peppering her cheek with kisses between every apology. Her breath pulsed in my ear and I drank the tears straight from her face.

  It seemed so natural when her mouth crept under mine. My lips grazed hers, little pecking kisses that could almost have meant nothing. Then, with a rich gush of breath, she opened herself to me. A broken hum rolled into my mouth and down to my belly, and she scuffed her teeth across my lips as her hunger grew.

  I almost howled with fulfillment as my lips explored hers. My fingers found the pulse points on her neck and it felt like her heart was sprinting. I hunched up my shoulders and framed her face with my hands. I would’ve swum into her mouth if I could possibly have fit.

  Her hair twisted in my fingers. Her toned shoulders flexed in my palms. I touched nothing I hadn’t touched before, but it was so much more intense this time. Like my fingers were completing a circuit that began at my lips.

  I ground my body into her bones. My mouth found her throat and my teeth explored it. The soft folds of her robe opened easily to my touch.

  “Mia…oh fuck, you’re beautiful…”

  I kissed the sheer softness of her breast and she pulled on the back of my head, urging me on. I locked onto the perfect nub of her nipple and it filled my heart. Her beautifully toned muscle writhed beneath my fingers as I searched for the places I’d never touched.

  My breath faltered when her soft bush filled my palm. We froze, only the trembling of our bodies proving we weren’t statues. I kissed a trail back up to her mouth.

  Her racing breath washed over my lips. The heat of her pussy radiated across my fingers. I ached to touch her there. I felt sure there was something to say, but no words would come. I cradled her mouth with mine and she whimpered a breath across my tongue.

  When I finally slipped two fingers inside her she gushed a moan into me so wet that I almost cried out. With every stroke I gave her she seemed to gasp in surprise and suck more of me into her. I didn’t mind. She could have all of me.

  She snaked her hand down and rested it on mine. She flattened my palm against her clit and circled her hips. Her mouth sneered with effort and made it hard to kiss her, so I bit her earlobe and foun
d the words I’d lost before.

  “God, I wanna taste you.”

  She pressed on my hand again. “Later…don’t…stop.”

  I hung onto that ‘later’ like it was my inheritance. Until Mia said that one word I hadn’t dared to believe in a future. There’d been that nagging doubt that my slick fingers were doing nothing more than…scratching an itch.

  I rested up on my elbow so I could watch her face. We’d been closer than sisters, but I’d never seen her come. I’d never seen her so beautiful.

  She grasped my head in both hands, spiked her fingers into my hair. Her mouth hung open, and a swarm of tiny expressions danced across her brow. I ground my slippery palm into her clit and she bit down on her lip.

  “Oh, fuck…”

  “Come, baby.”

  She pulled me down and wailed into my mouth, her voice juddering, coughing in time with the pulsing of her climax. Her sweet pussy squeezed my fingers, rolled them over each other until the waves of her pleasure passed.

  When she stilled I eased my mouth off hers. She smiled and traced my lips with her finger. I tried not to smile, but it was hopeless.

  I fell against her chest and she cradled me there. I listened to her heart, still pounding but slowing. I drew little shapes on her breast and finally found the courage I’d lacked for so long.

  “I love you, Mia.”

  She squeezed my neck playfully. “Fuck, Jaws. You’re such a girl.”

  The Long Afternoon

  By N.T. Morley

  On Tuesday, she transgressed.

  Lily Imbrock discovered her husband’s private man-things.

  In fact, she spent the whole morning and much of the afternoon discovering his private man-things, and doing things with private man-things that prudent wives and responsible law students really oughtn’t to do.

  It started ten minutes after Malcolm left for work. She had the best of intentions. Another day of studying for the bar exam. Perhaps a break at lunchtime for a sandwich and a wank. Meanwhile, Malcolm slaved away at his investment bank, surely working himself into an early grave. Lily felt that she owed it to him to study hard and pass the bar on the first try.

  Then disaster struck.

  She tried the door to his den and found it unlocked.

  Unable to resist, she tiptoed in and ravished the place.

  The office was in immaculate shape s shoe knew immediately that anything she wasn’t meant to find would be where any modern man kept it—on the computer.

  She had opened up Malcolm’s big and very private computer; it had wanted a password.

  She typed her name.

  It let her in.

  Glowing with pride and love and tormenting guilt, Lily combed the hard drive. It took about a minute for her to find what she wanted. She discovered folders stuffed to overflowing with JPEGs and short video files of pink-faced girls just like her tossed over the laps of British-looking men who smoked meerschaum pipes, reddened naughty girls’ cheeks and said things like “Very bad girl!” and “Wear your sister’s knickers, will you? I’ll show you, you dirty tart!” and “There there, Ophelia—take your punishment like a good little slut.”

  She arrowed ravenously through JPEG-filled folders, devoured three-minute videos of girls squirming over the laps of men dressed by Brooks Brothers. She watched them three and four at a time. About 9:45 she reached a critical mass; before she knew it, her skirt was up and her blouse was open and she was doing things a prudent wife really really, really, really shouldn’t do. At least not in her husband’s chair, in a room he’s politely informed her is private, before a computer the contents of which he’s politely informed her is private, with her husband’s affinity for vigorous chastisement displayed before her while she rubbed herself furiously.

  The girls all seemed rather purified by the chastisement, which was very much how Lily felt following her slow, dark trio of explosive guilty orgasms in front of Malcolm’s computer, spread wide with her knees bent over the big cushy arms of his leather chair, smelling the scent of his skin and his sweat and his premium bourbon and pipe tobacco as she rubbed furiously to the rhythmic spanking of tart after tart—and the cathartic round of crying, of course, that went with it as she apologized and thanked her tormenter in that special way that very naughty girls always thanked men who spanked them.

  Sometimes, in the videos, girls particularly extreme in their transgressions—smoking in the house, for instance, or masturbating sailors two at a time down by the waterfront—would find themselves bent over not on their handler’s lap, but over his desk—and the supple swish of a cane would coax pathetic yelps of penance from the naughty slut’s red lips, the very same cries that came from Lily’s mouth as she stroked herself watching quartets of such scenes at a time.

  She had to struggle not to come too often; doing so would call a halt to her exquisite torment. She climaxed at ten, at twelve, at three; she was close to another hard come at four o’clock when she realized how naughty she’d been.

  She peeled herself out of her husband’s office chair, her sex still pulsing with want. She’d had to work to keep the number of orgasms down; Lily liked to work for her pleasures. She could have climaxed another trio of times, but that would be wrong. It was already wrong, what she’d done.

  It was very, very, very, very wrong, what she’d done.

  She closed and locked the door behind her.

  She went to the shower.

  The shower massage was agony; she simply could not keep it from her sex. She pulsed and throbbed toward another climax, her mind filled with tormented images of the girls who’d displeased their tweed-jacketed, pipe-smoking handlers.

  Did her husband pull his prong to this? Did he stroke his magnificent cock, the cock that Lily worshipped, to the sights and sounds of spankings?

  Was this what he wanted? What Malcolm really wanted?

  He never left her wanting.

  His cock and his hands and his mouth and his body pleased her every night—quite thoroughly. Sometimes such pleasing was accomplished after Malcolm’s quick late-evening trip in to the study to check his email. While Lily dressed herself up in the skimpy frilly lingerie he so adored, was Malcolm in his study, glancing through JPEGs, scanning videos, so that when he made love to her—all over her, always passionate, crazed with desire for her—he was dreaming of doing exactly this to a girl in a schoolgirl uniform?

  Or maybe to her?

  Did he want to tell his wife that she was a “Very bad girl!” and punish her for wearing her sister’s knickers? Did he want to “show” her? Was she a dirty little tart? Did he want her to take her punishment like a “good little slut?”

  They almost never fought.

  Malcolm was calm even when she transgressed. He never showed anger. Whatever fury seethed in him, he kept it there.

  Oh, she saw hints of that fury—Malcolm was a man of many passions. His withering look was enough to have Lily apologizing even when her crimes were infinitesimal. Without exception, she was soon forgiven—no spanking required.

  But did he want to give her what she “deserved?”

  And would he agree with her that what she’d just done—spent an entire day invading his privacy—”deserved” a punishment, or a series of them, so severe she’d be putting her ass in the air for him every night till their tenth anniversary?

  Lily moaned into the steam.

  That shower massager almost destroyed her. She was on the edge and panting again before she finally gave up any hope of making it anywhere near the soap. Steaming from the hot water but still smelling faintly of sex, Lily turned off the shower and toweled dry on her way to the bedroom, her naked body trembling all over.

  She went down naked on her knees and opened her bottom drawer.

  She found her skirt from Saint An
ne’s Academy.

  She barely fit into the thing; she had to inhale deep to get it buttoned and zipped. Wearing the sort of panties one wears with such a garment would have left obvious panty lines. So Lily found her skimpiest white see-through thong with a dusting of pink lace. That would simply have to do.

  She put the thong over her garters, which she hitched to white stockings with saucy pink bows.

  She’d grown up tall as well as curvy; her St. Anne’s skirt was barely decent. It showed the tops of her stockings quite obviously. Lily blushed to realize that in becoming a girl ripe for punishment, she had indeed turned into a very naughty girl.

  She didn’t have a pair of Mary Janes; she had to improvise.

  She wore the white high heels she’d worn on her wedding night, locked in the honeymoon suite at the Beaumont. She had actually never walked in them before, but they looked amazing thrust high in the air.

  She thought they’d look nice kicking wildly above her red bum as she squirmed on Malcolm’s lap.

  She found a tight white bra that shoved her meager tits up into a slutty pair of teacups begging to be spilled and sipped, steaming.

  She found a white blouse and a plain black tie.

  They had no cane, of course—so she dug an eighteen-inch wooden ruler out of her old school things and hoisted her skirt with some difficulty, testing it.

  She had her hair in pigtails in record time—the fastest she’d ever done so. She slapped her makeup on quite carelessly; she was just applying a very thick coat of very red lipstick when she heard Malcolm’s Jaguar pull into the driveway.

  Heart pounding, she raced to the front door to greet him.

  Breathing hard, she planted herself in the entryway.

  She heard heavy footsteps on the walkway.

  She heard Malcolm chatting amiably.

  More footsteps, heavy ones.

  She heard another voice—another, and another.

  He wasn’t alone.

  Her head spun. She turned to run—but by then the door was open and Malcolm was staring at her in shock, puffing his meerschaum pipe.

  The trio of bankers he’d brought home stared at Lily in even more shock.