Lips Like Sugar

by Violet Blue

  Idyll

  Teresa Lamai

  “Fatima, just take it. You don’t have to ask.”

  There was fresh sweet bread on the table and for the first time in months I felt hunger sharply. My new housemate Goran got angry when I asked for some. I was still learning that Goran prides himself on not owning anything, not wanting anything. I didn’t notice Amel smirking in the corner until he was suddenly standing next to me. He twisted off one end of the bread and said, “Come see the garden.”

  Goran and Amel are the only Croatians living in this tiny house by the cemetery in Zagreb. They came to the city for the university, but their families can’t afford the new tuition. So instead they load trucks and work in Peace and Anarchy, a youth center built in an abandoned gasworks. The rest of us are from Bosnia. I should say we’re refugees from Bosnia, being here in Zagreb in a strictly provisional sense, on our way to Pakistan or Germany or the United States.

  As the only girl, I have my own room. Slavica, an older woman my mother had known, was living in the front room with her father and her baby son when I arrived; they’ve since been relocated to Austria. There will most likely be more refugees to take their place but for now it’s just the three of us. Amel and Goran live in the larger upstairs bedroom, and I in the smaller bedroom.

  Just seven months ago, it became clear I had to leave Bosnia. My parents were gone soon after the sniping started, and my brothers got German visas for their families. Sarajevo is like a dream now. I can’t always separate the reality of what happened from the rumors that consumed us like a collective psychosis.

  I may eventually join my brothers in Germany. I may get a visa for the U.S. I may stay forever here with Amel and Goran.

  The sun here is stronger, more Mediterranean. Even in the early morning it’s like an ancient power in a limpid, fragrant sky. The first mass is ending at the cathedral across the street and the shaded cemetery is already flickering with plastic memorial candles. The courtyards of the blue-painted Romani tenements next door are filling with children. I’m washing the sheets in our yard. The garden is a late-summer mess of palm trees, kiwi vines, and wild roses. There’s no sense in grooming anything, since no one stays here long.

  Goran comes out, a fat pastry in one hand, a guitar in the other. His long curls are wet, snaking down his bare back. He puts the guitar on the ground and sits next to me to help. Amel has been out here all morning, simply because, like a sly shadow, he is never far from me. Goran laughs at himself as he wrings one corner of a sheet. His fuzzy thigh presses into my skirt. Warmth on my shoulders and soft pulls at my skull tell me Amel is behind me now. He’s braiding grass into my hair, as he likes to do when we’re outside.

  We sit quietly for a long, long time. Every time the breeze stops, I can almost hear our hearts beating.

  I’m in love with Goran because of his generosity and sweetness without limits. He carries his large, masculine frame with a sense of wonder and discomfort, as if he had just grown into it. His wide shoulders make the house seem small. He towers over me. I think he is intent on keeping his round blue eyes clear of unkind thoughts, as if he believes innocence will protect him like enchanted armor. He fed me constantly when I first arrived here, cutting me slices of bread and cheese and asking whether I preferred coffee or chocolate milk or maybe green tea until I burst into exasperated laughter and started smacking him. Our first kiss was a week later, when he came home with a bag of birdseed for me to feed the sparrows outside my bedroom window. As if he expected me to be here forever; I couldn’t stand it. I grasped his round cheeks between my palms, drinking in his unsettled gaze for a few moments before touching my lips to his. His startled moans made me wet.

  His innocence feels less contrived when I’m pressing into him. I’m teaching him that love is selfish. I grab his ass strongly enough to hurt, digging crescents into the flesh, sometimes leaving tiny scabs. I have never told him I love him but he knows from the way I kiss him, the way I run my tongue over his neck and the warm sweet mounds of his chest. The first time I gripped the base of his hardening cock and nipped at his scrotum, he gasped, “That’s good, that’s so good,” with genuine surprise in his voice. I know it’s unbearable for him to lie still when I’m teasing the silky head of his cock from its foreskin, using just my tongue. I tell him to lie still anyway because I want us both to be free from what he thinks he should do. I just want to torture him until he’s angry enough to fuck me without thinking, his hands tight on my pelvis, cock scorching through my cunt, both of us transported and beyond hurting.

  I love Amel for his black silent eyes that seem to absorb everything he looks at. He is slight and dark, speaking rarely, disappearing into the night when it falls. Goran says Amel seems to always be ashamed. Amel follows me stealthily like a cat as I move through the house, settling in the kitchen when I cook or unexpectedly lying on the carpet beside me when I read. We’re not sure where he goes in the evenings.

  Nearly every night, I wake up after midnight. The moon has shifted. The air is still. I never hear Amel come home, or open my door, or undress, or pull the covers off the bed. I’ve never seen him naked in the daylight. His voice is what wakes me first, followed by the smooth glide of his belly on mine. The smoky, sweet smell of his hair as it falls on my forehead. His hands are so painfully delicate on the back of my neck that I forget not to moan.

  His skin starts to gleam, slippery with our sweat. He moves slowly as if he were underwater, and the breath is sucked out of me as he writhes, his full weight on mine. I’m fascinated by the slick heat of his body; I press one damp breast into him, then the other, stretching my back to let the arcs of our stomachs kiss. He keeps his hips away from me until this moment. He knows I’ll be wet when he lowers his cock to slide against my aching lips, just splitting them to let the scent fill the room. This is when he finally kisses me. He lets me try to devour him with my mouth and my pussy, and he knows that he can do whatever he wants with me.

  I move to lock my ankles behind him but he pulls me to the edge of the bed. Kneeling on the floor, he leans into my shaking thighs and laps with astonishing patience, from time to time sucking on the inner and outer labia until they burn under his breath. The heat is in my chest, suffocating me. When he starts to massage my clit with two fingers, I buck and he stops suddenly, moving up my body to kiss me with swollen lips that taste like seaweed and old red wine.

  Amel plays this game over and over until just before dawn. When the first birds start singing, he slides himself into me slowly, as if he’s afraid he’ll be burnt. I’m not sure if I can take it when I first start to come, impaling myself desperately. I don’t care anymore about the obscene sounds I’m making; I feel this racing sweetness will kill me if I don’t let it out somehow. My cunt clenches tight, pulling on him until he stops, his spine twisting sideways as the come moves through him. He breaks into the exhausted, final thrusts as the sky becomes light.

  I let him sleep. I get up because Goran and I always have our breakfast early in the garden. Goran is usually up already, wearing just his shorts, slouching on the moss-covered bench. He puts aside the guitar and holds out his arms to me. His chest is sun-warmed.

  Lately there has been no work for them, so they stay home with me all day. We read in the morning, sometimes go to the market to buy flowers or vegetables, and lie in the shady grass all afternoon. The lemon tree is starting to bear fruit. We are not sure how much longer we can go without paying rent.

  The third notice came for me today. If I fail once again to report in a timely manner, I’m told, the offer of a U.S. visa will be retracted. I can’t finish reading this right now; it’s time to make lunch. I drop the letter behind my bed and walk out to the patio.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  MIRANDA AUSTIN is the author of Phone Sex: Aural Thrills and Oral Skills and a coauthor, with Sam Atwood, of The Toybag Guide to Erotic Knifeplay. She is a former phone sex worker, graphic designer, BDSM enthusiast, and professional arts advocate. She has
a couple of academic degrees, spends too much time at her computer, and lives with her primary partner and a pair of extremely dominant cats. Her website is www.mirandaaustin.com.

  ZOE BISHOP is a San Francisco Web designer who has had her erotica published online, though this is her first analog erotica appearance. She doesn’t have a website or blog because it’s all just too much darn work.

  ALYSSA BROOKS is a multipublished author of erotica and erotic romances. To find out more about her books, visit www.alyssabrooks.com; readers can view free short stories there and get more info on joining her e-zine, Wicked Escapes, “a monthly treat in your inbox, featuring an escape from a featured erotic author, excerpts, and many extras.”

  CHRIS COSTELLO lives in Arizona and has written for such small press zines as Lunatic, Prestidigitation, and Smut Parade.

  ERICA DUMAS has written for Good Vibes Magazine, the Sweet Life series, and numerous books in the Naughty Stories from A to Z series, including, most recently, Naughty Detective Stories from A to Z.

  A. D. R. FORTE’s erotic short fiction has appeared in the anthology Awakening the Virgin 2 and in Scared Naked magazine. She lives in Texas and tries to avoid daylight hours as much as possible.

  BJ FRANKLIN has been writing erotica for only a year, so was thrilled to have her story “The Wheels on the Bus” published in March in Good Vibes Magazine. She is a member of the Erotica Readers and Writers Association. Her story “The Lady-Killer” appeared on the ERWA website and has been accepted by Sage Vivant and M. Christian for publication in spring 2006 in their Amazons anthology. The author enjoys swimming, loves Star Trek Voyager, and in her spare time studies medicine at a university.

  DEBRA HYDE’s inner introvert struggles against what she’s come to call her own accidental exhibitionism, but it has no problem when it chooses to express that exhibitionism through the written word. You can find her most recent erotica in Best Lesbian Erotica 2006; The Good Parts: Pure Lesbian Erotica; Stirring Up a Storm: Tales of the Sensual, the Sexual, and the Erotic; Best Bondage Erotica 2; and both volumes of Naughty Spanking Stories from A to Z. When she isn’t dreaming about (or engaging in) sex, she’s writing about it at her long-running blog, Pursed Lips, at www.pursedlips.com.

  KAY JAYBEE is a thirty-something medievalist living in the Grampians of Scotland. She juggles two jobs, two daughters, and as much writing as ahe can squeeze into an average day—providing that black coffee and cakes are at hand. She has recently had her erotica featured on several websites, and she’s looking forward to the future publication of a poem (nonerotic) in a book called Mixed Emotions.

  CAROLINA JOHN is married, with an assortment of pets. She lives in Stourbridge, England, and her illustrated anthology of poetry has just been published by Kates Hill Press.

  KC is the pseudonym of a San Francisco Bay Area erotic writer who believes that some things are too naughty even to use the regular pseudonym.

  TERESA LAMAI lives in the Pacific Northwest. She started writing in 2003. Her stories appear in Best of Best Lesbian Erotica 2, Best Women’s Erotica 2006, The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, and Dying for It: Tales of Sex and Death. A former dancer, she’s recently completed a collection of dance-inspired erotica, entitled Swayed to Music. She’s working on her first novel.

  TSAURAH LITZKY loves to write sexy stories. Her erotica has appeared in more than sixty publications, including Best American Erotica six times. In 2004, her erotic novella, The Motion of the Ocean, was published by Simon & Schuster as part of Three the Hard Way, a series of erotic novellas edited by Susie Bright. Litzky teaches erotic writing at the New School in Manhattan. To find out more about her, check her website at www.tsaurahlitzky.com.

  DARA PRISAMT MURRAY’s poetry and prose appear in Intimate Kisses, Velvet Heat, and The Mammoth Book of Women’s Fantasies as well as on CleanSheets.com. Her favorite activities, all beginning with the letter S, include, first, the obvious, followed by singing, swimming, and shopping. She won’t divulge her day job for fear of sullying her reputation as a hot New York City cabaret performer and a proud writer of erotica.

  HEATHER PELTIER’s work has appeared in Eros Zine, Good Vibes Magazine, the Sweet Life series, and the Naughty Stories from A to Z series. She is at work on a book of poetry and several longer works.

  JULIA PRICE has written for a wide variety of anthologies, magazines, and websites. She lives in West Hollywood with her lover and too many cats, and is presently at work on a novel.

  AYRE RILEY has written for Down and Dirty, Best Bondage Erotica 2, Naughty Stories from A to Z volumes 3 and 4, and Slave (edited by N. T. Morley). She lives in Hollywood, Florida.

  THOMAS S. ROCHE’s novel The Panama Laugh was a finalist for the Horror Writers’ Association’s Bram Stoker Award. Roche’s other books include the Noirotica series of erotic crime anthologies and four collections of fantasy and horror. A prolific blogger, Roche writes regularly for TinyNibbles.com, Boiled-Hard. com and many other blogs.

  ERIN SANDERS is a midwestern submissive who has recently found steady work in comedy writing. She resides with her longtime partner near Saint Louis, Missouri.

  J. SINCLAIRE is a Toronto-based writer by profession but erotic by nature. A firm believer that sex and masturbation are both healthy and necessary, she considers it her civic duty to write smut. The rest is up to you.

  ABOUT THE EDITOR

  VIOLET BLUE (tinynibbles.com, @violetblue) is an award-winning author and editor, CNET reporter, CBSi/ZDNet blogger and columnist, a high-profile tech personality and one of Wired’s Faces of Innovation. She is regarded as the foremost expert in the field of sex and technology, a sex-positive mainstream media pundit (MacLife, CNN, “The Oprah Winfrey Show”) and is interviewed, quoted and featured in outlets ranging from ABC News to the Wall Street Journal.

  Blue was the notorious sex columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. She has been at the center of many Internet scandals, including Google’s “nymwars” and Libya’s web domain censorship and seizures—Forbes calls her “omnipresent on the web” and named her a Forbes Web Celeb. She headlines and keynotes at global technology conferences, including ETech, LeWeb, SXSW: Interactive and two Google Tech Talks at Google, Inc. and received a standing ovation at Seattle’s Gnomedex.

  The London Times named Violet Blue “one of the 40 bloggers who really count.”

  Copyright © 2006, 2012 by Violet Blue®.

  All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  Published in the United States by Cleis Press, Inc.,

  2246 Sixth St., Berkeley, California 9710.

  eISBN : 978-1-573-44834-5

  “Cops and Robbers” by KC first appeared in Best Bondage Erotica, edited by Alison Tyler (Cleis Press, 2003).