69

by Alison Tyler

  I hang my head.

  He strips my dress down and encourages me to step out of it, then puts his hands on my shoulders. “On your hands and knees, now.”

  A shiver runs the length of my spine. Can I do this? Awkwardly, I lower to the floor and get into position. I can’t help but look then, because I want to see him. The image is so striking, with me there on the floor and Gianni towering over me. He’s stripped to the waist and his belt is already undone. The bulge beneath his zipper makes the pulse at my center go wild.

  “If you look away, you won’t get what you need.” He states this as he drops down behind me. Roughly, he pulls my G-string free and lets it drop to my knees where its stays, like incriminating evidence of fast, dirty sex.

  I hear his zipper being opened and the very sound of it runs along my ragged nerve endings. Slowly he strokes his fingers the length of my folds, teasing my clit, before he nudges one knuckle into my opening. My back arches, my eyes closing as my head lifts.

  “Oh, Gianni,” I plead. I hope he’ll take pity on me and give me his cock.

  Instead, Gianni puts his fingers under my chin as he issues his instruction. “Look in the mirror, Nic.”

  Forcing myself to obey, I look. I’m inches away from my own reflection and painfully embarrassed by what I see. No longer the sophisticated businesswoman, I look shamefully aroused and needy.

  “It’s your fault,” I whisper beneath my breath. I want him so much. A horrible knotting sensation gathers in my chest when I consider that he might not make love to me, after all.

  “What do you look like?”

  Heat flares in my face. I remember what he says about me at times like this, and how much it turns me on when he says it. Saying it myself was a different matter altogether, but I knew it was true and I wanted to be brave enough to state it.

  “Like a bitch in heat.” My voice is barely above a whisper, but somehow saying it aloud unshackles something deep inside me.

  Gianni smiles. Pleasure gathers in my chest because I pleased him.

  “Do you know how good it feels, to see you like this? Do you know how hard it makes my cock?”

  I nod. Another shackle is undone. Gianni arches over my back, and the look in his eyes forbids me to defy him. I feel the hard length of his cock against my thigh. Cursing silently, I pray he’ll fill me with it soon. My inner thighs are getting damp because my pussy is so wet. I flash him a disbelieving glance, but I can see it there in my eyes when I turn back, blatant desperation. My hips swing from side to side of their own accord, as if in invitation. That’s how he sees it, and that only makes the need more urgent.

  “It’s making me crazy,” I blurt.

  “Good,” Gianni retorts. “That is exactly what you do to me.”

  That’s when he eases his cock inside me, stretching me open.

  My core clamps on his length. The action only makes my situation worse. I feel liquid run down my inner thigh. But Gianni won’t move—won’t pull out and thrust again—not until I follow his instruction.

  I moan aloud, frustration getting the better of me.

  “Look at yourself, my love. I want you to see it all.”

  “I can’t. Please, Gianni, it’s too much.” He can’t be serious. He can’t mean me to watch the push and shove, the primitive act. But that’s what he intended all along, to cast aside my pride and undo my shame.

  Cupping my jaw in one large hand, he makes me look.

  At first I can’t see straight, but when I get a grip on my emotions and manage to focus, I barely recognize myself. My face is flushed, my eyes wild, the pupils dilated. I strain restlessly against the bulk of his cock as I wait, my need for his thrusts obvious. The rise and fall of my chest as I pant for breath shows me my how locked in I am.

  Gianni looks crazy-madman-attractive, demanding and powerful, arched over me as he is. The muscles in his neck and bare shoulders are taut, restraint pouring from him. How determined he is, how demanding. His eyes narrow and his hands latch onto my hips, holding them tight.

  “Doesn’t that look like a woman begging to be fucked?”

  And a man who is more than able to do the job, I reflect with no small amount of irony. He’s done it again—he’s taken me to a different appreciation of our sexuality and relationship. I nod and shift against that glorious erection, unable to help myself.

  He moves his hand between my thighs to run one finger back and forth over my clit, making it sting with pleasure. “Only if you watch,” he whispers.

  That sends my reason out the door. I toss my head back, staring at his reflection, brazenly demanding that he get on with it.

  He grins when his eyes lock with mine. “You’re ready now, aren’t you?”

  “Yes!” I stare determinedly at our reflection in the mirror as instructed.

  Gianni gives a husky laugh and then unleashes a determined thrust and grind. It’s so rough that I have to clutch at the carpet. My sex is throbbing and I place my knees farther apart to stay upright during his onslaught. That makes me take him even deeper, and my pussy is wide open, clit throbbing wildly. At my center, I’m slick and hot. All the while I watch, fascinated by the sheer animal lust I see unfolding before me. My lips are parted my body arched lewdly to take him in. Gianni flexes and drives, a wicked gleam in his eyes when I cry out in response.

  “You’re so beautiful when you are wild like this.” His cock swells inside me as he speaks.

  Orgasm flares on the horizon. I pivot against his hardness. It buoys up deep inside me, but still I watch, and I see it all—just as Gianni said I would—and it’s too good.

  When his eyes close and his head drops back, his cock jerking inside me, I see his release, feel it, want it. My own release blurs the image before my eyes, but still I watch us—and now I never want to look away.

  Permitted

  By Justine Elyot

  No part of my body is off limits to him, nor his to me.

  The mouths crash and the hands clasp whenever the urge strikes, be it in St. Mark’s Square or the still of the Black Forest.

  Seclusion is celebrated always by the meeting of organs and orifices. My body is a map, and I guide him to the destination, unless he has already decided where he plans to visit. His explorer’s hands climb the hills and plunge into the valleys, sometimes seeking out the popular attractions, sometimes taking the road less traveled.

  Not a pore of skin has escaped his attention, not a pinch of flesh or a sweet, wet space. He has drawn me in exquisite detail, and I could mark his pleasure spots just as accurately.

  But a question still remains. We know each other. We know our bodies and our minds. We have them memorized in perfect detail.

  All the same, do we know where we are?

  “Where are we?” I ask him one evening. We are looking out over the Amalfi Coast to the isle of Capri, sitting in each other’s arms on the picnic rug, drinking Chianti.

  “Sorrento,” he says, retracting his head to give me a look of concern. “Are you okay, Lisa? It’s been a hot one.” He puts a hand over my forehead.

  “No, I mean where are we? And where shall we go?”

  “Pompeii?” he says, shrugging, still not quite catching up with me. “Maybe Naples.”

  “After that. After all that.”

  He puts down his glass.

  “Oh,” he says quietly. “I see.”

  “Divorce settlements and redundancy payments don’t last forever.”

  “I can sell the house.”

  “Even so…”

  He sighs. “I don’t want this to end.”

  “Neither do I. It’s been six months. I can afford maybe six more.”

  “Then what? You go back to your suburban semi? Get a job as…something?”

  “I don’t want to go
back. Ever. But I need to think about where I do want to go. Have you really not given it a thought?”

  “No. I like living out this fantasy.”

  “So it is a fantasy. It’s not reality, is it?”

  “Oh, reality.” He looks cross and disappointed, picking up the wine glass again and swigging. “Reality’s overrated.”

  “So what do you think we should do?”

  He looks out over the sea.

  “You’ve got the opposite of itchy feet,” he suggests. “You want to settle somewhere.”

  “You don’t?” I ask gently, fearing what might be coming next.

  “Settling didn’t exactly work for me last time. But I do want to do something, I suppose. Make something of everything we’ve done over the past six months. Perhaps write a book or teach or…I don’t know.”

  “Shall we look for a place? Do you want to stay with me?”

  “Of course,” he says, incredulous. “Of course I do.”

  We start a tour guide business in Barcelona, taking groups of interested English-speakers to explore the more hidden Bohemian haunts of the city. The job is exciting, fun and interesting, but it is only a few months before we start to feel restless again.

  “What can we do?” I ask Nick. “I want to travel again. But I love it here and don’t want to give it all up.”

  “There are other ways to satisfy your wanderlust, you know,” he says.

  “Are there?”

  He comes to stand behind me on the balcony, wrapping his arms around my shoulders and holding my hands in front of me.

  “I sometimes feel guilty,” he says, “that being with me denied you the chance to indulge in some of the attention you got from all the men we encountered in our travels.”

  “What?”

  I turn to stare at him.

  “Do you remember Enrico in Pisa? He would have killed me to get to you, I think. And what about Jens in Copenhagen? He asked me if we’d be interested in a threesome.”

  “You never told me!”

  “Would you have been? Interested?”

  “I’m not sure…part of me would have been. But I’d have worried about hurting you—upsetting the balance of what we have.”

  “Yes, I thought so. But what if I told you that I wouldn’t mind? What if I told you I’d like to think of other men having you?”

  “You…would?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want other women?”

  “Not necessarily. Lisa, I’m happy to be with you, and you only. I’d do whatever you want. You saved me, you know? That means everything to me.”

  “I didn’t save you. It was happenstance.”

  “Fate.”

  “If you say so. Do you actually mean that, though? About seeing other men?”

  “Yes, I do. Think about it. I want you to be contented, satisfied. I don’t want to stifle you.”

  I think about it. I think about it for three weeks, along with much soul-searching conversation with Nick, and an inordinate amount of sex. The idea of giving me to other men seems to send him into overdrive; he is in constant heat.

  I make my decision and find myself, one sultry August night, sitting outside a pavement café with Jordi, a sinuous snake of Spanishness from the apartment across the corridor. Nick returns from the bar where he has been chatting to the proprietor and paying our bill and says, “Well, then, are we ready?”

  “Sure,” says Jordi, taking my hand and helping me up, an old-fashioned gentleman on his way for some newfangled fun.

  “Ready, Lisa?”

  I can only nod.

  The three of us head back to the apartment, Jordi with his arm around my waist, his hand rubbing my dress up and down an inch of hip as if he is impatient to wear the fabric through and get to my flesh. The heavy heat of the night adds to the erotic expectancy, the city air a stew of sea salt and prawns tossed in garlic oil and exhaust fumes and sex.

  Inside the flat, Jordi makes to kiss me, but Nick pulls him off, holding up a hand.

  “I need to do this properly,” he says, clamping my shoulder. “Jordi, meet Lisa.”

  “We have met.” He sulks, but Nick shushes him.

  “Lisa wants to travel. She likes variety and she likes excitement. I want to help her by getting her fucked by as many men as she likes. If you want to fuck her, you can. But I want to watch. Do you accept this offer?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. Then here you are.” He lets go of me and releases me into the hungry arms of Jordi.

  We are on the bed in moments, my clothes ripped, my hair mussed, my lips kissed into stinging swollen cushions while he thrashes about above me.

  Nick settles into the wicker chair by the balcony door, crossing his legs and watching with one finger to his lips, his other hand at his crotch.

  When Jordi finds my pussy, it is twice as hot for Nick’s eyes on us, and he speaks up, encouraging Jordi to finger me, then to eat me out.

  Jordi does not take kindly to instruction, but he does what Nick says anyway, and I lie in disarray, legs spread, panting and moaning, while Nick smiles down at me, calling me his best girl.

  “You could lick her all night, couldn’t you?” Nick remarks, watching my body spasm a third time, a melting mess on the bed, dizzy and flying. “I think you should fuck her now. She likes it hard.”

  I do like it hard. I like the bedsprings to creak and the headboard to clatter. Jordi can do all of this, and he can make me come again, my fourth orgasm, wrenched from me, splitting me open, laying me bare.

  He thanks me as he zips up his fly, then he thanks Nick.

  “My pleasure,” says Nick. “We must do this again.”

  I look up at him, squinting, misty-eyed as the door bangs.

  “Was that what you wanted?”

  “Yes,” he says, sitting down beside me, putting his hand over my soaked pussy. “Because the best thing about traveling, Lisa, is the homecoming.”

  He bends over to kiss me and we make the bed squeal until dawn. Does travel broaden the mind? I have to say yes.

  Never Alone

  By Alison Tyler

  POP!

  Everyone jumped. You’ve seen that happen. A balloon pops, and people put their hands to their ears as if a bomb has been dropped. A random woman will invariably shriek, “I hate that noise!” And someone, someone like me, will get wet.

  I didn’t start off lusting after balloons. I didn’t know that the stretchy plastic would arouse me, that walking into party stores would become foreplay, that the squeaky sound of a man running a firm palm over a fully inflated balloon would turn me on.

  Fetishes don’t always come when you call. Sometimes they simply arrive.

  Mine showed up at a New Year’s bash—the room was filled with balloons, Mylar helium ones tied to every chair, windowsill, and banister. Unbeknownst to most of the guests, myself included, hundreds more inflated colorful orbs were caught fast in nets overhead.

  The balloons meant nothing to me then. They were pretty. Yes. But many things are pretty, and I don’t feel the need to fuck them. I milled aimlessly through this party, an event I’d been invited to, but hadn’t much wanted to attend. I’d ticked the Yes box on the RSVP card simply because I didn’t feel like being alone—in fact, that was my solitary New Year’s resolution—not to strut through the following year as a single. I hadn’t realized that going stag to a New Year’s party would make me feel even more like singing “All By Myself” than I had back in my apartment. That is, until I saw Josh, the out-of-work actor who lives upstairs from me. He was manning one of the bars, and when I saw his friendly face, I practically tripped over myself to get to his station.

  “You look beautiful,” he said as I snagged my third glass of bubbly.
>
  “You, too.” He’d never seen me in a dress. I’d never seen him out of Levi’s and a T. There we were—he in a suit, me in silver spangles—and we had that cosmic kind of connection that happens more often on New Year’s than most people would care to admit.

  “Why are you here?” he asked as he refilled my glass.

  I could have said anything. I could have said I was a college friend of the hostess—which was the truth. Or that I wanted to break in my fancy party dress that had thus far only been paraded in my bedroom for my own enjoyment—also the truth. But I said the biggest truth of all. “I didn’t want to be alone.”

  At the stroke of midnight, he pulled me down behind the bar and kissed me. The balloons fell on cue—all those colorful, rubbery balloons—in cobalt and emerald, turquoise and silver. We were doused in them, drowning in them, and Josh pressed his ear to my mouth and said, “I could fuck you on a bed of balloons. When you moved, one might pop—you wouldn’t know.”

  A shiver ran through me.

  “Would you like that? Your naked body surrounded by these…” he gripped a scarlet balloon and brushed the top against my cheek. I could smell that powder-rubber scent. Why did the smell make me want to come?

  POP!

  Somewhere in another part of the banquet hall, a balloon popped. A woman shrieked. And I got wetter than I could ever remember.

  * * *

  Josh was waiting for me the next day. I’d gone home with him—no drunk driving for me. But I hadn’t gone to bed with him. No drunk fucking for me, either. Not that I was playing hard to get. Dom Perignon had made the decision crystal clear. Josh had tucked me in and turned out the light, promising to check my status in the morning.

  Morning? Hah.

  I didn’t make the first step outside until after noon. Champagne does that to me. But Josh was true to his word. He was sitting on my front step when I went out to get the newspaper. We looked different today, didn’t we? He had on his jeans again. I was wearing a tank top and drawstring yoga pants.

  “Hangover?” he asked.