Lessons in Love

by Lessons in Love [Bold Strokes FF] (retail) (epub)

  “Fuck yeah, that feels so good! Bite my nipples too. Yes, yes, like that. Oh God, yes, harder. Yes!”

  She was pumping up and down like a piston on overdrive. The juices pouring out from her center and running down my hand and arm definitely told me I was on the right track. When her thrusting changed to a steady rhythm, I felt her thigh muscles clench spasmodically and I knew she was almost there. My free hand slid around to her backside where I slipped the middle finger in unceremoniously and after a few thrusts, she blasted off like a rocket.

  With her sprawling on top of me, I could feel the pounding of her heart against my chest, and rather than soothing me, I found it highly erotic. The beat mimicked the throbbing between my legs and I found myself pulling her hips downward to relieve the pressure. She slowly rose up to place more of her weight where I needed it. She looked down at me, an easy grin forming on her lips, and her eyes glittered to see the reaction she was causing in my body. Rocking gently, she dropped one hand to find its way between my legs.

  “Mmm, so wet,” she purred.

  Bringing her fingers to her mouth, she closed her eyes and sucked in apparent ecstasy. Then she moved down my body until her face came level to my crotch where she spread me fully open, her lips finding my aching clit, hard and extended, in need of attention. She drew it into her hot mouth, gently at first, and then as I began to push upward, more fervently, swallowing her approval of what she found.

  “Oh baby, that’s it, that’s perfect, don’t stop!” I wasn’t sure, but I think I was shouting. “Keep sucking just like that. Now go inside...ohh, yes, yes, yes.”

  I didn’t need to tell her how to do it. She anticipated my every need, sucking and fucking with just the right amount of intensity and speed. I arched up, grabbing both of her shoulders, and held on. When the storm hit, I didn’t even try to seek shelter. I just let the elements take me to the inevitable conclusion.

  Lying on top of me once again, she turned her head sideways so that it nestled just under my chin. We rested like that for a while and I stroked her back soothingly, coaxing our breathing pattern to a more normal pace. When we finally got up to dress, I noticed I was partly covered in flour, and she laughed good-naturedly at the sight.

  “Well, I may not have shown you how to make bread, but I hope I’ve shown you how to do something else.” She traced a finger down my arm and brushed flour from my cuff.

  I took her hand in mine and brought it to my lips, placing a brief kiss inside her wrist.

  “I hope you’ll continue to teach me,” I murmured. “I have so much yet to learn.”

  We kissed. It wasn’t a sexual kiss, but one of future promises.

  I returned to the little bakery on the corner many times after that, but I never did learn how to make bread.

  Word Play

  Radclyffe

  When you edit someone’s work, it gets to be pretty personal. You touch on a lot of private places, catch glimpses of so many secrets. I mean, we all know that anything worth writing, or reading for that matter, has to have a little of the author in it, right? Sometimes maybe even a lot. I don’t mean an autobiographical “how I first got laid” blow-by-blow, but the underlying experiences and emotions that inspire the prose—the fantasies and fears, and sometimes—between the lines—the needs and desires.

  It’s always a challenge, offering criticism without damaging an oft-fragile ego, but after a while, there’s an ebb and flow, a give and take, that feels more like a tango than a tussle. At least, with luck, it does.

  So, when I sat down to work, my mind wasn’t on the pacing of the final action sequence in my latest thriller. The deadline was closing in fast, and I prided myself on never missing a deadline. But I wasn’t in the mood for writing; I’d been thinking about her all day. About her last book, I mean, the one I was editing. About the love scenes that I couldn’t read without seeing her as the star. And, okay, seeing myself there, too—the co-star to her dark hero. I resisted, just barely, pulling up one of her e-mail messages to reread, not that I didn’t have them all memorized. We’d gotten close, maybe a little bit inside each other’s skin. It happens, when you share a passion.

  The last message from her had been different—filled with taunting phrases and teasing innuendo. I had resisted rereading it for days, afraid that the longing, already so close to pain, would paralyze me for good. Mostly, I was haunted by the fear that everything I thought I’d read beneath and in between her words was merely a projection of my own furtive desire. As with fiction, I would discover that I had created the reflection of my own desire.

  I couldn’t deny the attraction, but I was far from certain of the source. Despite what the theoreticians and critics say, I firmly believe it’s impossible to separate art from the artist. So how could I know if it was the heat of her words or the cool, amused distance she projected in the flesh that was so compelling? At first, I decided it didn’t matter—that twinge of discomfort that masked unwanted arousal—because it could not, would not, lead anywhere at all. We had to work together, and while a little lust might stir the creative juices, too much just clouded the mind. Like the last drink that would have been better left on the bar. And if that weren’t enough, there were rumors she was heavily involved. I don’t share, not even my casual fucks.

  But then somehow, when I wasn’t paying attention, or maybe just when I was pretending not to look, we’d exchanged a few e-mails that morphed into something far more than one writer pushing another to the edge. We’d crossed a line; extended the invitation. Try me. I’m ready.

  Finally, after rewriting the opening paragraph four times and ultimately hitting delete, I relented and opened the folder of e-mail messages to the last message. To the last sweet suggestion that could have meant nothing, or everything.

  I read it and heard her murmur the words in my ear, her breath warm and teasing. I reread it, and felt her fingers skim my jaw.

  I stared at the screen and felt the tremble of desire. And then I wrote.

  When I wake in the night, I reach for you, the smell and feel of your body so near drenching my senses.

  First sentences define the world, paragraphs the universe. For a writer, the tone and flavor and rhythm of the lines create texture, sensation, heat playing over skin, fire simmering in the belly.

  I stared at the words, knowing I could not take back the truth. I had awakened in the dark, wanting coiled deep inside. I had reached out a hand, so desperate for the feel of her, craving the touch of her fingers to relieve the aching need that had ascended while I slept. When her image shattered like promises tossed into the wind, I stroked myself, imagining it was her.

  I am always wet, always so ready for you then, when I have shed control and surrendered my defenses.

  I read what I had written, my body tight, throbbing to the rhythm of my fingers on the keys. All because of a few words on the screen. Just a few words that crossed time and space, slipping through, over, around every barrier I had ever constructed—like the slick slide of fingers through the channels of my engorged flesh. I read, and remembered—the silvery sheen of passion streaking my thighs.

  I whispered your name, a desperate plea in the night. I parted my thighs, baring my soul.

  “What is it you need?”

  “You know. You know. Please. Please just touch me.”

  I saw her so clearly as the words filled my vision, the curve of her mouth, the length of her fingers, the intensity of her gaze. I remembered laughter and a quick toss of thick, unruly hair. I recalled a moment’s hesitation, and that instant when she wondered if she had revealed too much. I saw her hands, lifting as she spoke, certain and sure. I saw them now, traveling up the inside of my legs, a slow taunting journey of pleasures waiting to be called. My fingers hovered above the keys, my clitoris hard, a reminder I was flesh. Her fingertips only a breath away. I ached. I ached.

  I forced my hands to move.

  “What is it that you need?”

  “You. Only you.”

/>   “Tell me.”

  “Touch me. Feel what you’ve done to me in my dreams.”

  You trace a single line down the center of my abdomen, your fingertip burning my skin. I wait, breathless, until you reach my weeping clitoris, exposed and vulnerable, wet with the tears of my desire. You hesitate, cruelly probing-the flick of your nail steals my breath on a whimper.

  As I typed my sex twitched, and without thinking, I stopped and slid my hand under the restraining layers of clothes. I squeezed, pressure screaming along jittery nerve endings, annihilation a breath away. I worked my clit, faster, harder, my vision blurring for an instant, and I lost the words. I stilled my hand, bearing down with brutal fury, trapping my wild need in impotent rage. If I could not find the words, I would lose her.

  I let go, leaving my desire to beat helplessly alone.

  “Please…”

  “Not until I say.”

  “I need…”

  “No.”

  “Oh…you’re making me…”

  “No.”

  Fingers clamped around the pulsing shaft, the pleasure-pain driving my hips into the air.

  “I need to.” My voice an unrecognizable scream.

  “No.”

  I am dying to come. For you.

  My body quickened as the word images took shape. Her body weighing me down, her hand inside me. A relentless scream fluttered around the edges of my consciousness and drove me into the scene, through it. The desire burned in me to touch, to be touched. To be her, them, you, us. My orgasm thrashed like a raving beast, clawing its way to freedom, threatening to let loose despite my fight to chain it down. A wild thing, devouring me with pleasure. I was so close, my clitoris alive with a heartbeat of its own, poised to rage with a well-placed caress.

  “Do you want to come?” Your voice a soft whisper, your fingers instruments of sweet torture.

  “oh yes yes…want to…need to…”

  “Ask my permission.”

  “please please…please may I come…”

  I hear you laughing through my screams.

  I wondered if she would hear my moans, feel the slick come on her hands as the eruption escaped from the hard core of my sex. I wondered if she would fuck me back, with her words.

  Beyond the Blue Horizon

  Fiona Cooper

  You are lying limp on the chaotic surface of our planet, your beautiful strong arms spread wide. Your fists have punched the shattered pillows like meteors hurtling through space, your bruised neck is bright with sweat and a vein jumps there, your heart is racing so loud I can hear it. I am on all fours above you, my face and chin are dripping with you, I stick my fingers between your laughing lips so you can taste you too…

  “Wonderful,” I tell your perfect nipples a thousand times. “You are wonderful, you taste wonderful, you smell like heaven, and I adore you.”

  Your teeth graze my fingers and you run your tongue round your lips…

  “Well, I don’t do anything for me,” you say. “When I land I need to eat you…”

  Your arm moves in a slow circle like the beating of a snow angel’s wing and you rub your hand on your perfect thigh where I have spurted all over you. Another slow wing beat and you suck your fingers and smile and nod with infinite wisdom.

  “You,” you say, drawing out the word like it was a mile long, “mmm—the best taste in this world or any other.”

  I arch my back and breathe on your glistening fur and your whole body shivers like a hologram. My tongue hovers on your steaming secret skin, sleek and rosy and pulsing like a sea anemone, spread taut by my fingers, and your head thrashes from side to side as ecstasy seizes you over and over. Then your hand is in my hair, your fingers digging into my scalp, dragging my face to yours as you growl into my mouth, your eyes electric.

  “You are in serious trouble.”

  I grin like some crazed slime-fanged alien and my hands are green-scaled claws as I pin your fabulous wrists to the starstruck sheets and my eyes shoot lasers that glorify your naked beauty.

  “What kinda trouble, lady?”

  Now I am a grease monkey, chewing gum, an idle pelvic thrust letting you know who’s in charge.

  “Big trouble,” you say, wrapping your thighs round me, digging your heels into my ass, pushing me into you.

  “How big is big?” I say, deep and impassive like the guy who tore the doors down in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

  “Big enormous mega mighty universal deep deep deep poo,” you say, cool as the best poker bluffer on the 24/7 stud gambling channel.

  “I am sooo scared,” I say, and my fangs clash the air by your ears. You grip me tighter, thrusting up at me so our bones singe through the flesh.

  “I am teeerrrified.” I burn your throat with my breath. “You’re the only trouble I want to be in.”

  Now you struggle, and we wrestle—when we fight like this, you really fight, and that takes my breath away, but if I hang on to your wrists I’m okay, I’m the boss, my baby, because if you tickle me, well, I’m finished.

  I tug both your wrists into one hand and kiss you so our teeth clash and our tongues rip at each other and our eyes lock and we are one.

  My free hand slides through the swamp of our bellies and I thrust my fingers inside you. Hard.

  “Is that okay?”

  “Mmm.”

  Your thighs clamp on my arm hard as the petrified jaws of a giant clam and you throw me over, climb on me, knees on my shoulder. Jesus, woman, you bowled me over the first time we met and I knew in my guts that without you I am only half alive. When we let our eyes meet all those years ago—a hundred people in the room and not one of them existed—there was a deep space explosion like the proud and ancient star we came from. A cigarette paper between us is too much distance. Call it destiny, call it karma, call it fate, call it hey diddle diddle, shoo-be-doo, call it si si, oui oui, da da, doo wop, words cannot hold it—even the word love holds only a microcell of our truth.

  Your eyes are multidimensional as you look down into my soul. Your hair is spiked and dripping and you smile wide as all the Osmonds rolled into one. Then you drop your drooling mouth onto mine and our faces slide together. You smell like a rainy field as the sun rises, you with rainbows in the eternal skies of your eyes.

  You arch your back and wriggle your thighs between mine, resting one wrist on my neck, flipping the lid of our magic gel open, squeezing the tube until your fingers are thick with a clear web and you flex your hand into a fist. I am burning for your touch, I need to leap that first bruising edge of almost pain and you know it, your wild smile shows it.

  I spread my arms like a crucifix as you glide down my shaking body. I push up to meet your mouth and you seize me between your lips, suck me, your tongue huge and soft as you lick me over and over. Then your tongue is stiff and delicate thrusting into me, circling me until I could scream for needing you deep deep inside me.

  One of your fingers joins your tongue, then your knuckles nudge against me and I open wider and wider and drag you into me. You swim up to my face, your fingers take it slow, nudging into me, your eyes very still and glowing.

  “You are mine,” you say.

  “I am yours,” I breathe, dizzy with the feeling of your fist sliding into me. My body jackknifes over the edge of pain, blood roaring in my ears, and I break every sound barrier, you shoot me higher than anything that ever squandered rocket fuel and TV footage from a NASA launch pad.

  “Mine,” you say and I feel your fingers peel from your fist one by one and probe me as I shudder from head to toe, gripping your wrist and needing you—my God is it possible—more and more.

  Now you rock your hand inside me as galaxies fly by bright as pixie dust. This is the bit that drives us crazy—crazier?—because we are one and I need to swallow all of you, our mouths are a vacuum of desire, and we cannot be close enough. All at once you are fierce and strong, my soft-skinned gentle love, my lover, you possess me completely, I flow like a flood dam. Every deep th
rust and twirl of your beautiful hand and I am in deep space, your blue eyes are liquid gold, and I have no body, no skin, I am nothing but a creature born to love you, be loved by you, I am a zillion formless cells merging into you.

  “I’m…

  nothing without you

  coming

  close to tears

  to

  we two are one

  you…”

  My perfect love, I am sobbing, biting your face, thumping your shoulders with my fists, spouting like a geyser, laughing like a madwoman.

  You hold me close as I rematerialize from eight miles high, from our waist down we are in the Everglades and clinging to each other, you rescue me as wordless and tender as the Swamp Thing, take me to your world which is our world, oh God my darling I was utterly lost until I found you.

  You pat me and totter to the loo and pee loud and laughing. Somehow I crawl to be where you are and fall to my knees, bury my head in your breasts and tongue your navel. As you stand I push my face between your thighs and eat you, we fall to the cold tiles, then you pat me again as I drag myself up to pee too. You are curled in front of me, and I slide my smallest finger into your ass and let my hand splay and play with you. I bend so I can cup your breasts and pull you to me, squat behind you and bite into your neck as you whimper and shiver and fill my palm with liquid ambrosia.