A Is for Amour

by Alison Tyler

  RADCLYFFE

  ALL ABOUT US

  ALTHOUGH I HAD A TRAILER ALL MY OWN, with words I was secretly very proud of printed on the side—RAFE BEVALAQUA, GENERAL CONTRACTOR—I still liked to eat lunch with the crew. Even on a sweltering July day in the middle of a half-finished subdivision where there wasn’t a single tree to offer shade. Even when I had a little air conditioner in my unit where I could have taken a break in comfort. I liked eating with the guys, and that included the girls, because even though I was the boss, I needed them as much as they needed me. Besides, it wasn’t all that long ago that I was one of them, a union carpenter with big dreams. Now I had my own company, which was a good thing, because I also had a wife and two kids.

  Being a parent and the major breadwinner changes how you look at everything. Most of my day—hell, most of my life—was spent working so I could be sure they had what they needed. Not that Donna didn’t work just as hard with a two- and four-year-old at home and a part-time job proofreading for a lesbian publishing company. But where my biggest worry used to be what restaurant I’d take Donna to for a romantic evening, now I worried about college funds and health insurance. That’s the other thing that had changed. Since the kids, there wasn’t a whole lot of time for us.

  We were both dog-tired at the end of the day, and we didn’t have the money or energy to do a lot of things we used to do when we first got together. We didn’t go out clubbing or even out to dinner much anymore. Once in a while we caught a movie when my sister or Donna’s mother could babysit, but we didn’t party with our friends until all hours and we didn’t stay up until dawn fucking like we used to. We were lucky if we could steal a couple of minutes on Sunday afternoon for few quick kisses and a fast come with a vibrator.

  I missed coming home at the end of the day and finding Donna stretched out on a lounge chair in the backyard with a drink in her hand and a smile that said I’ve been waiting all afternoon for you to take care of me, when I’d go down on my knees right there and pull her skimpy panties aside and she’d already be wet and I’d lick her until she came with her fingers twisted in my hair and her pussy riding my face. I missed waking up on Saturday morning to her jerking me off nice and slow and easy while I just lay there, letting her do me like only she knows how. I missed strapping on a big dick and sliding inside her with long deep strokes, watching her face turn all dreamy and her eyes fill with tears because it felt so good and she was going to come so hard for me.

  I loved my wife and I loved my kids. I loved my life. But sometimes I missed us like we used to be.

  “Hey Rafe,” Joe the electrician called. “You gonna eat what’s in that lunch box? ’Cause if you’re just gonna stand there with it, I’m good for seconds.”

  I stared at the black aluminum lunch pail in my right hand and realized I’d been standing outside my trailer daydreaming and blowing a good part of my lunch hour. Plus, I’d worked myself up pretty good just thinking about sex with Donna. My clit ached and my boxers were wet. “Yeah, yeah. Forget it, you mooch.”

  I pulled myself up onto a half-finished concrete wall next to Joe and a couple of other guys, ignoring the way my clit jumped as it was squashed against the seam of my khaki work pants. I flipped the top on the big box and pulled out my thermos, listening to the guys complain about the weather and the Yankees and the high cost of gas. When I reached in for my sandwich my fingers closed round something that definitely didn’t feel like lunch, and I yanked my hand out so fast I almost dropped everything onto the hard-packed dirt at my feet. Fortunately, none of the guys noticed my reaction. Turning so no one could see what was inside, I opened my lunch pail again. The first thing I saw was the note in Donna’s handwriting.

  Rafaela. I’ll be there at one. And I’ll be hungry.

  Underneath the note, neatly arranged next to the sandwich that Donna fixed for me every morning, rested my harness and a fat cock.

  “What time is it?” I croaked.

  “Five to one,” Joe said. “Why? You got a plane to catch?”

  I slammed the lid and jumped down. “I forgot. I got a… phone conference. I’ll be busy for a while.”

  Then I ran for the trailer.

  Once inside, I twisted the knob on the window air conditioner to high and hopped around the room on one leg and then the other trying to get my boots off. I finally took a breath, sat down on the small sofa pushed against one wall, unlaced my boots, and shucked my pants and underwear, all the time keeping one eye on my watch. Two minutes to go. I got myself geared up, redressed, and zipped just as a knock sounded on the metal door. The sound went straight to my clit, which was already pounding against the underside of my dick.

  I opened the door and grinned at my wife. She was wearing very skimpy baby-blue shorts that matched her eyes and a halter top that tied behind her neck. Her blonde hair was loose and just touched her tanned shoulders.

  “Hey, baby,” I said, feeling as nervous as I would on a first date.

  Donna stared at my crotch for a beat or two and then climbed the metal steps and brushed past me, bumping her pelvis into the bulge between my legs as she went by. “Hi, honey.”

  Knees shaking, I closed and locked the door. I leaned against it to regather my cool. “So where are the kids?”

  “At my mother’s.” Donna dropped a shopping bag next to my desk and looked out the little window that didn’t have an air conditioner in it. “Good. No one can see in.”

  “I got your note.” My hands were sweating I wanted to touch her so bad, but this was her show. She knew what she wanted and whatever it was, I was going to give it to her.

  “I noticed.” She slid her hand between my legs and cupped the cock in my pants, jacking it slowly while she kissed me. Her tongue filled my mouth, thrusting slowly in and out to the rhythm of her hand working me. I untied her skimpy top, let it fall, and stroked the soft surface of her breasts with my fingertips. When I skimmed her nipples, already puckered and hard, she moaned and jacked me faster.

  “You don’t want to do that so hard, baby,” I warned breathlessly. “Not unless you want me to come in my pants right now.”

  She eased up on me a little and ran her tongue around the rim of my ear. Her breath was hot and her voice husky. “Play with my nipples. That makes me so wet.”

  I knew exactly what it did to her. I could make her come if I tugged and twisted them hard enough and fast enough and long enough, but I knew that’s not what she wanted. So I took her up to the edge a couple of times while she whimpered and clutched my shoulders and rubbed her pussy over the lump in my khakis. I backed off just before she was ready to shoot over the top and palmed her ass so I could buck my hips and bang her clit with the dick in my pants. She sagged against me.

  “How you doing?” I asked, watching her struggle to focus on my face.

  “I want to come,” she whispered.

  “Is your clit all swollen, baby?”

  She sucked on my neck and rubbed herself all over the front of me. “You know it is.”

  “Do you want to come on my cock? Is that what you’re doing here?” I walked her toward the little couch, my cock jammed into her pussy, while she nodded and made incoherent sounds. Then I sat down, spread my arms along the back of the couch, and opened my legs so the cock formed a tent in my khakis. “Show me.”

  Instantly, she was on her knees, fumbling with my fly. I bit back a groan when she pushed her hand inside my pants. She was so anxious to get at my rod she almost got me off from the pressure on my clit when she twisted the cock around to set it free.

  “Jesus, take it easy, baby,” I gasped. Any chance I had at being cool was gone.

  She laughed and went down on my cock. She’s a genius at timing the pumping action of her fist with the slow glide of her mouth down the shaft, so I can watch her suck me off and feel it in my clit just like it was a cock. The first time she did it to me I was going seventy on the interstate and she pulled my dick out and leaned over and blew me in about two minutes. I wasn’
t going to last two minutes now. I cupped the back of her head to slow her down.

  “Not so fast. I want to come inside you.”

  “Do you? Sure about that?” She smiled up at me while she kept jacking and licking the head of my cock. Her eyes said she knew just how bad I wanted to come in her face. She kept at it until my legs went stiff and my belly got hard and I was one stroke away from going off. And then she stopped.

  I groaned but I kept my hands clenched on the back of the couch, staring in a daze as she stood and slid her hand into her shorts. Her fingers twitched between her legs.

  “I’m so wet.”

  She pushed her hand deeper.

  “Mmm. Feels so good.”

  Her fingers danced faster and she threw her head back, eyes closed. I knew what she looked like when she came and she was almost there. I leaned forward and yanked her shorts down. Then I swatted her hand away.

  “Get down here and fuck yourself on my cock.”

  She kicked off her shorts, straddled me on the couch, and sank onto my cock in one movement. Her head snapped back and she gave a high thin cry. She pushed up, almost all the way off, and sank down again to the hilt. She rode it that way, slow and deep, while I pulled on her nipples. I could see her clit each time she slid up the shaft. It was deep red, glistening, standing up between her parted lips.

  “Feel good, baby?”

  “The best,” she gasped.

  “Gonna come all over me soon?”

  She nodded wordlessly, her body trembling. I knew what she needed, but I waited for her to ask. She managed another couple of strokes before she wrapped her fingers tight around my forearms and gasped, “Rub my clit.”

  I knew just how she liked it too. Back when we had all the time in the world, I used to watch her masturbate so I’d know just where to tease her clit to make her come. Now I pressed my thumb into the base of her clit until the head was bare and standing up, then I circled it with my fingers, dipping low to carry her cream up and over the top. She got superhard almost at once and I knew nothing was going to stop her now. Her nails dug into my arms and her hips flailed away at the cock while she half whispered, half cried, “I’m coming I’m coming I’m coming coming coming…”

  I caught her when she fell into my arms, her legs still splayed on either side of my thighs, my cock still deep inside her. She always comes more than once when we do it this way, and while she circled her pelvis working up to another come, I could finally let go. I was almost sick, I needed to get off so bad. I slid the fingers I’d used to work her clit lower between our bodies, beneath the leather harness and onto the hot stone that was lodged between my thighs. I got the slippery shaft between my fingers and squeezed.

  “Oh yeah. Oh baby, yeah.”

  Through half-closed lids I saw Donna raise her head to watch my face. “Are you going to come inside me now?”

  I nodded, jerking my clit as best I could while she kept riding my cock. I couldn’t breathe enough to talk.

  “Ooo, I’m going to come again,” Donna gasped, looking surprised. She pushed up so she was nearly sitting, her hands braced on my shoulders. I shoved my hand lower and pounded my clit while she pounded herself off on my cock.

  I felt it coming from a long way off, that jangling of nerves that spreads from my clit straight into my pelvis and deep down the inside of my thighs. I waited until the last second, timing my come to hers, and then I let go of my clit and grabbed her hips and jammed her cunt down on my cock.

  She was already crooning her come song when I yelled, “Here I come right inside you, baby.”

  I shot for so long, my hips jerking so crazily, that Donna got one more tiny come out of it before she pushed herself off and collapsed next to me on the couch.

  “Oh my God, I haven’t come like that in so long,” Donna said.

  I stared at my crotch where the dick bobbed in time to my pulsing cunt. My pants were soaked with come. My arms and legs felt boneless.

  “I’m wasted and I can’t go back to work looking like this.”

  “Aww, we really made a mess, didn’t we?” Donna said, sounding not the least bit concerned. She kissed my neck, then took a tiny nip. I didn’t even have the strength to move away. “I brought you clean pants, sweetheart.”

  I turned my head in her direction, my vision still hazy. “Yeah? You think of everything.”

  She fisted my cock and gave it a little shake. “Guess so.”

  I grabbed her hand, too sensitive for any more stimulation. “I’m done, baby. I can’t get it up again. I’m sorry.”

  She sucked on my lower lip until I groaned, then kissed the sore spot. “You were very patient. Did you come nice?”

  “Gangbusters.”

  “You held out a long time so I could come again.” She kissed me, gently this time. “Thank you.”

  “Hey, you made it happen,” I whispered. “So I wanted it to be great for you. I wanted it to be all about you.”

  Donna shook her head. “Every once in a while, honey, we need it to be all about us.”

  Like always, she was right. Which is exactly why I married her.

  BROOKE STERN

  AN UNEXPECTED LOVE STORY

  A LOVE STORY SHOULD BEGIN WITH A CRIME, but when they busted me for shoplifting cheese from an uppity gourmet shop, I only expected a little bit of trouble—a fine or something—not love. How could I have foreseen someone like Tom?

  In spite of an on-again, off-again case of kleptomania, I had never been arrested before. But on that night, my arrogance got the best of me and the way I slipped the cheese under my sweatshirt was just lazy. After a long evening and all the indignities of the legal system, I finally reconciled myself to calling the 1-800-GET-BAIL guy, read the numbers of my one credit card that wasn’t maxed out, and walked out of the police station, hungry, tired and only slightly more hopeless than I had been the day before. I went to a grocery store and stole breakfast. I had cereal and milk at home, but at least walking out into the dawn with their most expensive prosciutto in my jeans made me feel more alive.

  Then I went to a bookstore and stole a bunch of books on representing yourself in court. To make a long story short, I spent the time before my court date studying the law, falling another month behind on my rent, and maxing out my last credit card on an outfit for court. The judge, unfortunately, wasn’t interested in my newfound enthusiasm for litigation and slapped me with a fine that I couldn’t pay. Unsatisfied by my day in court, I decided it was a good time to file for bankruptcy. I studied even harder for the court date, this time at the law school library (it turns out legal books are hard to steal). I thought all of this would help, but the judge treated me like the other bottom-feeders in the courtroom. I was sitting on a bench in the hall crying when I met Tom and that’s when the trouble really started.

  He was next up to be called into court for a case he was prosecuting, and he sat down next to me on the bench to wait. The tissues I was using to dry my tears and blow my nose were piling up at my side. I first noticed him because he had grabbed the wastepaper basket from his side of the bench and held it in front of the bench where my used tissues lay. He waited patiently for me to see him, realize what he was doing, and brush the tissues off the bench and into the waiting receptacle.

  “When’s the execution?” he asked.

  It took me a minute to get that he was joking.

  “It’s not that,” I said, sniffling and straightening my hair. I tried to laugh, but it came out as a half cry, half sniffle.

  “I know. I was watching you. You’re not bad, but the mock trials in the first year of law school aren’t going to help you defend yourself in bankruptcy court.”

  “I guess I should have seen it coming.”

  “A week after your shoplifting conviction? What were you thinking?”

  “How did you know?”

  “I work in the prosecutor’s office. A friend of mine told me about the cute law school dropout who nearly got away with it.”


  “I nearly got away with it?”

  “Yeah, he said you were great. But don’t let it slip that I told you. It’s our policy not to encourage criminals.”

  Impulsively, I hugged him, and I felt him go a little stiff as I pulled him into my sloppy embrace. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me since…well, I don’t know when.”

  “How about you give me another chance to say nice things to you over dinner tonight?”

  I knew, according to the latest slew of dating guides, that I wasn’t supposed to accept last-minute requests, but who was I trying to fool? He already knew I was a broke kleptomaniac; I didn’t have to hide that there weren’t men lining up at my door.

  “Sure.”

  “Stay here. I’ll be done in an hour.”

  I grew fidgety and wanted to get up, go steal a coffee or at least go to the bathroom to fix my makeup, but something about the way he said “stay here” made me sit tight. Exactly an hour later, he emerged.

  “Did you drive?”

  “No.” (I didn’t tell him that I didn’t even have a car.)

  “I’ll drive. Is Italian okay?”

  “You mean a Ferrari or a Maserati?”

  “No, I mean spaghetti or linguini.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  The date was amazing. Sometimes a man can take you away from everything; he can make you forget your nerves, your insecurities, your worries and your failures. Tom made me feel beautiful and smart. For the first time in a long time, I felt loveable. For a while, it even seemed as if he was the insecure one. He warned me that he was the weirdo, the one who was hopelessly controlling and needed everything just so. While I suppose I should have been able to foresee the downside of all this, I found his honesty totally charming. Not only was he funny about his quirks, mocking his own craziness, but the order of his world also offered a welcome contrast to the chaos of my own life.

  Finally, he looked me in the eye, reached across the table to clasp my hand and asked if I thought I might be able to accept him the way he was. He tried to make it a joke, but I could tell it really wasn’t.