Bottoms Up

by Rachel Kramer Bussel

  I sat and typed away on my latest project, showing enormous self-restraint by keeping my wireless connection off. But I’m nosy by nature—I can’t really help it—so every few pages or so, I would glance up and scan the bank of computers in front of me. I would have eavesdropped, too, only you’re not supposed to talk and everyone seemed to be following the rules. So I eavesdropped visually. I checked out the six computers that faced me. Six backs also faced me; six people doing whatever they were doing on the Net.

  Farthest left, Redheaded Sue. Or that’s what I called her. For all I knew she was a Marie or a Betty or an Ilene. She had up a free web-based email. No biggie. Next in, Hunchy. No lie, this man needed some help in the posture department. His screen showed a popular sports page. Yawn. Then we had Brown Bobbie, a beautiful African-American girl in a khaki jacket who was doing what looked like a college report. Poor thing. Hot Hannah, so named for her hot-pink hoodie and big booty. She had up a cooking site. Miriam the Librarian—NETWORK SOLUTIONS was all I could see on her screen. The woman had an aura about her that practically screamed, yawn. And then there was Andrew. Or as I had tagged him, Nice Ass Guy. What was on his screen? An ass in a thong and corset being paddled, that’s what.

  My body did that thing where I felt as if I’d just suffered a mild electric shock. I stared at the short, stubby pencil he had popped between his pink lips. He was paying attention to the screen but not drooling the way some guys would have been. And I knew damn well that whatever he was looking at had to be a reputable or seemingly reputable site. No way was the library going to let him pull up spankmyass.com. That made me even more curious. I strained for a better look, but all I could see was the ass—and the paddle. When he scrolled down to it, I saw a palm, a bare palm leaving a cherry red palm print on pale white flesh.

  I shifted in my seat and crossed my legs. I returned my attention to my document because I am a saint. Unfortunately, I had no fucking clue what I had been writing. My eyes wandered back to my new obsession, the man with the paddling site up on his screen for anyone who was near him to see, should they choose to look. Like I had.

  And then I wondered: did he want to spank or did he want to be spanked? Considering how much I loved to be spanked, I hoped it was the former. But considering I was hell-bent for leather to meet him, I figured if it was the latter, we’d work something out.

  I had to get out of the library. I had to. I could not focus on my work, and I could not keep staring at this man like a serial killer. Plus, he was looking at more paddling pictures and I feared for my sanity. I also feared I wouldn’t be able to take it anymore and I’d try to get myself off right there and then where would I be? Jail, that’s where. I scurried from the old stone building feeling like quite the perv. When I decided to sit in my car and wait to see when he came out, my status as perv was confirmed.

  It took about three minutes for me to realize that the steady urgent pulse in my pussy was not going to go away. If I wanted any relief at all, I would have to take care of business—not to put too fine a point on it.

  I took off my jacket and laid it across my lap. Thank god I had worn my “uniform” today: black leggings, long white tee, zip-up cashmere black hoodie, and red plaid flats. It was easy enough to worm my hand down the front of my leggings and start rubbing my hard, swollen clit. I was so far gone that the intense sensation nearly sent me right over the edge immediately. I glanced around and saw no one. I pinched my nipples through my tee until a little breathy sound escaped me. My fingers never stopped and even more warm wet fluid leaked from me, probably darkening the crotch of my leggings.

  Little puffs of air escaped me as I panted in my front seat. In my mind ran a constant stream of data: Andrew, still known as Nice Ass Guy, sitting there all handsome with stubble; the lady being paddled; the lady with a red smack print on her pristine skin; the lady with her head tossed back, eyes closed, looking to be in the midst of orgasmic pleasure; the paddle; Andrew; his jeans; his hands on the mouse; sturdy long fingers, fingers that could slide inside of me and flex…

  I slid a few fingers inside of myself and flexed. I shoved my other hand down the front of my pants like a mad woman and made greedy circles on my clit as I finger-fucked myself, all the while pretending it was him. And then he would spank me. Or I would paddle him. Whatever. Someone would get a cherry red ass.

  I came with a little gasping sound because I swallowed the triumphant roar that wanted to escape. When I opened my tightly clenched eyes, he was standing there next to the adjacent car, which was a small yellow piece of shit with a cracked windshield. He clutched his keys and started at me wide eyed. Apparently, he did not stumble across women masturbating ferociously in their vehicles on a daily basis.

  I rolled down the window slowly. “Um, hi,” I started.

  “Jesus,” he said and licked his lips.

  “That’s an interesting name,” I said. I was trying to interject a bit of humor into this impossibly uncomfortable situation.

  “Andrew,” he blurted. “My name is not Jesus. It’s Andrew. But Jesus, you were…”

  “Getting off. Yeah. Sorry about that. Actually, I was waiting for you. So, let me ask you, before I drive myself to the local mental health facility to check in, do you want to be the spanker or the spankee?”

  He opened and closed his mouth but all that came out was a little squeak.

  “I’m gonna guess spankee,” I sighed. But then I smiled. Orgasms put me in a good mood. “That’s okay, we can work with it. My name is Jill. Jill Goodman.”

  “Uh…hi.”

  I climbed out of the car and he backed up a step as if I might bite. “Are you afraid? I assumed, since you were looking at the…” Then my face went blood red. I could feel the heat spreading over my cheeks. I had just admitted to him that I had been spying. I shrugged. “I’m sorry. I’m nosy and your computer was right there in front of me. And I have great eyesight.”

  “Oh, that. I was just curious. I typed in paddling, meaning, you know…” He pantomimed paddling a canoe and I burst out laughing. “Anyway, it gave me some weird sites but one caught my eye. Lady Dominique’s Palace somehow made it through the filter.”

  “And you liked what you saw?” I asked. I shifted in place because my cunt was still wet and that orgasm had only served as an appetizer. Now I wanted the main course.

  “Well, yeah. It was interesting.” Now he was shifting too and judging by what looked to be residing behind his zipper, I could understand why. The bulge there was tantalizing under normal circumstances. In my current state, it was maddening.

  “You liked it,” I said and reached out. I heard his breath catch in his throat, and I trailed my fingers along the long hard bulge behind his button fly. Sandwiched between the cars like we were, I doubted anyone could see. And if he or she could, so be it.

  “Yeah, I did.” His exhale did that stuttery little hitch and I smiled. I liked to make men sound that way.

  “And you liked the idea of being on the receiving end?” I said softly and he leaned in to hear me. The movement pushed his hard cock against my hand and he closed his eyes for a second.

  “Yes. I think that if someone did…that to me and then I… Well, I think it would make, you know, stuff, that much better.”

  He really was quite shy. I loved it. “You mean you’ll come like a rocket shot off into space?” He swallowed so hard I heard his throat click. He nodded. “Yeah. That.”

  I glanced around and spotted what I knew would be there. I work at the library enough to know the lay of the land. Between the six-foot-tall shrubs was a tiny path. Beyond the tiny path was a small clearing, one that had a picnic table, a table no one would be using because it was too fucking cold to eat outside. I nodded with my head toward the spot and said, “Move it. Through there.”

  His eyes found the path, and then after a second he recognized the clearing and his cheeks went bright pink. “Out here?” he hissed.

  I slid the full length of my palm down his cock and he
hummed a little. “Yes, out here. Don’t be a bad, bad boy, now,” I breathed. I felt his erection jump under my hand at the words. “Come on, then.”

  He moved like a man in a dream, and I watched his nice ass in his faded jeans. I was a bit excited. I had never been the spanker before. And I had certainly never spanked a big strapping man.

  He glanced around nervously. “Where?”

  “Hands on the picnic table, Andrew.”

  I liked the sight of his big hands splayed on the faded wood. I liked how vulnerable he looked despite his size. I wrapped my arms around his waist and tugged the top button of his jeans. My nipples rubbing against his broad back went hard in an instant. I yanked harder and the rest of his fly gave way. He was very tall, much taller than my five ten. I rested my forehead on his shoulder and burrowed my fingers into the hot interior of his jeans. He arched back and gasped. “Oh,” he said, sounding quite feminine.

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re very hard, Andrew. I like that in a man. Only long hard cocks need apply,” I said softly and pushed my pubic bone against his ass. The pressure against my already abused clit sang through my lower body.

  I yanked until his jeans were low on his thighs and then I levered him forward. I could see his tan line, dark nut brown skin that abruptly turned underbelly white, pale and vulnerable to the cold wind that started to blow. I jacked his cock not wanting the wind to steal my wood. I didn’t give him any warning. That was the way I liked it to play out. I didn’t like to have any warning when I was spanked, therefore I didn’t offer any. Blow one was harsh and intense. No going easy on the new guy.

  Andrew jumped like he’d been shocked. A high sound ripped from his throat like an exotic bird cry. His tight, smooth ass blushed a lovely crimson, and his hard cock grew impossibly harder in my hand and twitched with a life of its own. I smoothed my hand over his asscheek and stroked his cock, wanting him to associate the pain I would deliver with a balancing pleasure. “Two now, boy,” I laughed. My blow landed on the word boy and he danced again.

  “Oh, Jesus. I think I’m going to come already,” he said, his words pluming out white in the gray afternoon.

  “Don’t you dare. Do not come.” I delivered three and four back to back so he did a funny shriek. That almost had me laughing until he gave me a lovely gem of precome. I rubbed it over my fingertips and then placed my fingers on his full swollen bottom lip. He had been biting it to keep control. “Want to taste excitement?”

  To my surprise, his tongue snaked out and he sampled his own juice. I nodded.

  I pushed the red handprints with my fingertips and watched them blanch. I purred softly. I liked being the spanker, it seemed. Five and six had shiny tears streaking paths down his stubbly cheeks. I licked a few off. He tasted salty and warm. The stubble bit my tongue and made a sandpapery sound as I licked some more. “Nice.”

  His hips were thrusting now, involuntarily. A thrill ran through my belly at having him so very out of control. I delivered seven almost gently, so much softer than the first six. He sighed and he stilled just a little. The next one was softer still and I bit the back of his neck hard enough to make him jerk. “Ow.”

  “Yeah. Ow.” I ground my pelvis against his ass. “Only two more, lover,” I said. I could hear people laughing. We might be found. That excited me more. And I knew we were far too gone to stop. I shoved my palm to his mouth. “Lick!”

  His tongue dragged the length of my palm and I imagined it on my clit, worming into my pussy. I had to close my eyes and take a long deep breath. I wrapped him in a fist slick with his own spit and delivered number nine. Number nine made my palm scream with pain and Andrew followed suit, though he stifled it as best he could. The aftershock ripped through my forearms and I clenched my thighs together.

  “Ten, Andrew. Feel free to come,” I hissed and hit him just as hard for the grand finale.

  Andrew bucked and sobbed against me and then gave a few frantic thrusts. His come, milky and hot, covered my hand, and decorated the brown grass below our feet.

  We both stood there panting. There was more laughter and the sounds of car doors; people were out and about. Andrew turned, brown eyes wide and stunned. His cheeks looked as if he’d been slapped. He went to kiss me and I let him.

  “You’re really…”

  He kissed me again but I pulled away. “Yes?”

  “Bossy.”

  I laughed. “Not usually. I’m usually on that end. Pun intended. But yes. Bossy.”

  “I like it.”

  “Good.” I put my hands on his shoulders and started to push down. “On your knees, boy. We’re not done.”

  That was over a year ago and I’m still the boss.

  OSCAR AND HOLLY

  Bill Kte’pi

  Oscar had known Holly all of her life and half of his, the way you know the features of streets you’ve traveled past but never tarried on. He knew her family—Tom who owned the mill and Della who’d gone to Bryn Mawr—slightly better than that, enough that given their respective stations in town he should be obliged to call on them, and they on him, should either party be brought by business or leisure to a city where the other could be found. That, in fact, was precisely what brought him and Holly in closer acquaintance with each other. He owned an apartment in the city, and though Tom’s business never took him that way and Della directed their leisure toward Philadelphia, the whole fam-damn-ily had stayed with him there when Holly was looking for colleges and they had missed their train.

  For a man, the strangest thing about getting older is its effect not on his body, on his mind, or—as your aunt would say—on his prospects, but on his relationship with women. Women of any particular age cycle through levels of availability to him. The forty-year-old woman is first an impossibly old figure—a teacher, maybe, or the woman who cleans the house on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturday noon. Soon she’s an object of curiosity and examination, as the shape of her breasts and the movement of her hips abruptly become interesting. Not long after, she may seem as though she’s in reach, and some years after that she actually will be, as a mentor, a gateway. For a time, she is a peer; before long, a breath of fresh air and youth. And finally, she may as well not be a woman for you at all, for all her inability to perceive you sexually, when you reach your second infancy at the long-shadowed end of the street.

  The twenty-year-old, similarly, swings through a brief-lived availability between two long periods of taboo—when you are a fumbling eight-year-old and she the babysitter whose breasts feel good against you in her hugs though you don’t know why, and when you are the adult and she the adolescent, the fiancée of some big man on campus or the shy daughter of some belt-straining burgomaster. Holly was twenty years old when Oscar found her in his apartment in the city.

  He’d come to the city for business but had spent the day in offices and most of the night in a club with a woman whose company he sometimes kept, but who suddenly returned to her husband’s bed, leaving him unsatisfied at too late an hour to call anyone else. He lingered for another half hour, for what reason he didn’t know—appearances, he supposed—and it may have been that distraction that kept him from noticing an unfamiliar car when he arrived at his apartment. Though he owned the whole brownstone, he rented the first floor to the elderly couple from whom he’d purchased it, and had never so much as set foot in that unit. The second floor, accessible from the exterior stairway, was one of those second homes that feel more spacious because everything you hoard is somewhere else.

  There was a light on. Oscar doubted he had left it on himself, or the woman downstairs would have telephoned him about it or used her key to turn it off for him. He heard movement in the apartment as soon as he opened the door, and his first thought wasn’t that he’d startled a burglar, but that Rebecca had changed her mind, had used that half hour he spent in the club to beat him home to surprise him. This was wishful thinking, drunkenness, or some combination of those two fed by the fact that there was perfume in the air. Bu
t it wasn’t Rebecca’s brand, and in the close air of the apartment he could smell the skin beneath it, and it wasn’t Rebecca’s skin.

  He’d walked in on a couple who were on his couch. The door to the bedroom was open and the sheets were in disarray. On the end table next to the couch was a full ashtray he didn’t normally keep there, and two of his amber-tinted rocks glasses. They looked pretty, but he had fallen out of love with them because they too easily made gin look like whiskey, and so off to the brownstone they had gone, exiled from the house to a place of relaxed standards.

  “Oh, Christ,” the man said—young, good family, the college type, you could tell those things from the haircut. “What is this? Is this a, is he your—”

  “Calm down, honey,” the woman said. She was straddling him, naked except for a pair of panties, and had not turned around to look at Oscar. Her back was faintly bright and marked with the lines of the man’s fingernails. “Oscar?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Oscar said, and tossed his briefcase down; threw it, really, and it clattered on the hardwood floor next to the dining table. He stifled a wince at the hollow sound of it, which had likely woken up the couple downstairs. “…Holly?” It was her voice he recognized, and then her hair.

  Holly got up from the man’s lap, and began buttoning his shirt for him before reaching for her own clothes, covering herself before facing Oscar. “I’m really sorry,” she said, but her attention was still on the man. “I can explain, don’t blow up—”

  “I’m not going to blow up,” he said, and walked toward the telephone.

  “And don’t—don’t—”

  “Who the hell is this guy?” the man asked. “What, do I pay him now?”

  Oscar took a stuttering step as a result of changing his course toward the telephone, and then two strides before slapping the man across the face. It was as loud a sound as the briefcase had been, but meatier. “Get dressed and get the hell out,” he told him. “And don’t say another word.”