by Cara Bruce
It was good that she was human, but of course that meant that desire left me dry-mouthed and shaking all over again. All I wanted to do was fuck her. It was as if all the stored-up, unacted-on desires of the last six and a half years hit me all at once and all I could think of was fucking and all I could see was fucking and all I wanted to do was to start fucking.
It would be worth the price.
A good fuck would always be worth the price of an eternal soul.
For a second I hesitated. I had the weird feeling that there was a struggle going on over my head, perhaps between a tiny demon and a tiny angel hovering above each of my shoulders, as in a Donald Duck cartoon. Maybe it wasn’t a struggle. Maybe it was a negotiation. Maybe I didn’t give a rat’s ass.
“Oh, hang it all.” And at last I stepped toward her.
So I fucked the devil. Or rather, she fucked me: three fingers up my wet cunt, with me bent over at the waist, nearly kissing the ground, my sensible librarian trousers bunched around my ankles. Her fingers were as gentle as ramming rods, as tender as a butcher’s. These fingers of hers were red-hot pokers sliding into my slit—they would have felt bad, except they felt so good that I just gritted my teeth, tightened my cunt round her rough, hot hand, and came like a house afire. I mean, speak of the devil.
I fucked her as a boy. His mouth sucking and licking my pussy with his finger slyly intruding my asshole. His face shiny with my juice, until I pushed him on his back and rode him. His cock was thick and stiff inside me, and his smooth, scholarly ass rasped against the alley pavement, a nice counterpoint to the rain sparkling in his lashes. His hand tickled out a climax from my clit until the sensation was heavy, intense, crude. Until I would have sold my soul if I were forced to hold out any longer. Until I came, actually.
And I fucked her as a very tasty hermaphrodite: lips round the devil’s cock, hand up the devil’s snatch. Lovely.
I also fucked the devil in her previously referred to au naturel shape, and no, I’m not telling you what that was. I will say, though, that it made my head spin, literally. Have you ever seen The Exorcist?
Still, all in all, the devil’s an innately selfish person, so toward the end of that wet summer day she got a little lazy. Even that didn’t stop me from enjoying every second—a soul’s only a soul, after all. It’s much better to have fun while you can. I haven’t seen her since that occasion. I have spent the ensuing days since last August seducing and being seduced by mere mortals, and now I have to wonder why I ever stopped.
But even though that was last summer, today I realized something rather interesting. I have one over on the devil—a technicality, really: I’d be damned if I was going to spend yet another year with a big fat zero on the action front—you see, the fine print, the wording. The thing was, I wasn’t damned, because I did get shagged, thanks to the devil. Credit given where credit is due.
I figure she knew this. The devil’s pretty experienced when it comes to contractual agreements. So why’d she do it? Was it a pity fuck? Did the devil have a sentimental turn of heart on the 15th of August, 2000? It was a holy day of obligation, after all.
Who knows? Weird things can happen. Fish can fly. Once in a blue moon, and all that.
The devil is a squirrel, yeah?
Leaving the Past
Nine Declare
I wasn’t in the mood to meet anyone. I only went out because my friends pestered me, but poky little gay clubs with bad disco music aren’t really my thing. I didn’t want to stay in on a Friday night. It made me feel as if I had no life. So I thought maybe I’d compromise, go out for just a drink or two, then go home and resume feeling sorry for myself.
I’d had a long week. I’d been working like a dog and getting no recognition for it. I’d had no time to cook, and my flatmates constantly left the kitchen a mess. I’d come home lacking the energy to even wash a dish, so I’d been living on greasy Chinese food from the takeaway downstairs for the past several days. Around 11 o’clock each night I would suddenly feel inspired to stay up and read, or do some writing, or even just watch a film, and then I’d have to get up at 7:30 the next morning. I felt burned out.
To top it all, two of my ex-lovers whom I hadn’t heard from in ages both decided to contact me that week. Charlotte gave me a call to invite me to her wedding. I had purposely avoided her since the day I overheard her telling a mutual friend that I was boring in bed. I’d managed to successfully stay out of her way for over two years at this point, and attending her wedding certainly wouldn’t benefit that strategy.
And Chris sent me an e-mail—Chris, far away in New England, where he’d been living in the back of my mind for so long now, silent and therefore pain free. And now, finally, a message from him. Just seeing his name in my in-box brought back memories that I couldn’t bear. We hadn’t been in contact at all since the horrible transatlantic breakup. I couldn’t open it. Instead I let it sit there, bothering me all week.
Whenever I caught myself wondering what he had to say, I would remind myself of the things I had to be getting on with this week. I knew that regardless of his message’s content, just reading his words would turn me into a wreck. Carrying on with these rationalizations, I still hadn’t managed to end the suspense, and was now starting to wonder what was worse, because that unopened e-mail gnawed at me every time I logged on.
So there I was, at this club, with a bunch of friends who were all in high spirits, and me, gripping my alcopop as if my life depended on it. I was trying not to be pensive and miserable, thinking if this was only a proper, quality gay club then I could go sit down at a table and an e-headed pretty boy would be there to give me a shoulder massage. But no. This place wasn’t my sort of thing, dingy and smoky, full of old men and bouncers who grilled me at the door because my hair was longer than an inch, and—you’ve been to Edinburgh, haven’t you? OK, then you know the place I’m talking about.
I stood by the side watching my friends dance and whoop it up. There was no way I felt like dancing. It didn’t really matter, because I don’t dance much anyway. Hector stood next to me and kept me supplied with nasty French cigarettes.
“So what’s wrong with you?” he finally asked after I’d tried my best to make convincing small talk.
“Oh, nothing. I’m just in a crappy mood. Sorry I’m not great company.” I exhaled and stared at the butch dyke vogueing in the mirror. Hector rolled his eyes.
“What you need is to get laid,” he confided.
“Yeah, right.” I never got laid these days. I suppose I never did much in the first place, which could perhaps explain my unimaginative way of navigating things with Charlotte. And right now, I was off people for Lent. It seemed best to take a break from my string of shattered relationships.
“It’s not going to happen,” I said simply. “Especially not here,” I added as an afterthought.
“What? Don’t you see anyone you like?” He sounded surprised, so I squinted through the smoke and flailing limbs. I counted several dozen gay boys—some were cute, but not going to be attracted to me by any stretch of the imagination—and just a few women. One or two were probably straight, which left me with a couple of butch dykes. It wasn’t that I found them unattractive, but I’d seen them around a lot, and had never really connected.
I shrugged half-heartedly.
“Anyway,” I said after a beat, “tell me about you. Who are you shagging at the moment?”
“Hector!” He was about to answer me when Daniel, who had left the dance floor, jumped on him, distracting his attention. “I’ll get this round,” breathed Daniel.
“God, you’re all sweaty.” Hector ruffled his hair. “Gross.”
Daniel stuck his tongue out and headed off to the bar. As an afterthought he stopped and returned. “What’re you having?” he asked me.
“Oh. Um. Something vodka-related. Surprise me. Thanks.”
“That’s who I’m shagging,” said Hector conspiratorially once Daniel was out of earshot.
“V
ery nice.” I’d only met Daniel a couple of times but he seemed OK. “Anyone else?”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t know.” I looked at Hector sternly, and he waved away my disapproval. “Don’t even start,” he said, blowing a smoke ring in my direction.
“Whatever.” I wasn’t in the mood to debate morals. Daniel returned clinging to three bottles, with a tall woman in tow.
“Look who I found!” he exclaimed cheerily.
“Lisa!” Hector was all smiles. The smoke cleared a little and I saw Lisa properly. She had shoulder-length, bleached blond hair, a gorgeous smile, brown eyes, and an un-made-up face; she was wearing a sexy little black top that showed off her fine cleavage, and khaki combat trousers. “Lisa’s from Glasgow,” Hector explained to me. “She’s an old friend of Dan’s.” He turned back to her. “What are you doing across here, babes?”
“I had a job interview today,” she said. Her voice was low and sounded a little smoky, which I have always found attractive. “I thought I’d stick around until the last bus and see if anyone I knew was here. Hi, I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Lisa.” She extended a hand toward me.
“Terra. Nice to meet you.” I tried to behave like a normal human being, but my brain was making fire engine noises. Gorgeous woman! Gorgeous woman! Who’d have thought I would actually meet one here?
“Terra? That’s an unusual name. It’s nice, I like it.” She smiled at me and I tried not to melt.
“Tell us about the interview,” Hector instructed, taking out his cigarettes again and offering them round.
“It’s an advertising thing. To be honest, I don’t know if I could stand it, but I want to move back here, and going on interviews never hurts.”
“Well, good luck,” said Daniel. “It would be good to see you more often. Lisa’s brilliant,” he said to me. “Really wicked.” I nodded appreciatively, tongue-tied.
“Terra here is a web consultant,” announced Hector. “Aren’t you, Terra?” Lisa raised her eyebrows as if she was interested.
“A soon to be out of work web consultant,” I muttered darkly. “I’m afraid I’m about to get a permanent holiday.” I wished I hadn’t complained, as soon as I’d said it. I was sounding miserable again. Hector offered something glib by way of a response, but Lisa excused herself to use the ladies’ room. Daniel disappeared back onto the dance floor after giving Hector a quick peck.
“Really, Terra,” Hector scolded. “You’re not going to pull if you’re so negative all the time.”
“I know, I know. But who even said that I wanted to pull?”
“Oh, you’re not fooling anyone. She’s divine. Even I can appreciate that, and I’m as gay as a goose.” He blew a smoke ring. “You’ll like her. A lot.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter. I don’t even know how to talk to women. I don’t know what to do. So it’s kind of a foregone conclusion.”
“Oh, listen to Miss Misery-guts!” Hector settled himself against the wall and took a swig from his beer. “You’ll never get anywhere if you keep thinking along those lines. That’s the first rule. And the second is, just be yourself.”
I smiled wryly. Lisa returned from the toilet and smiled at us both. “How do you know Dan and Hector?” she asked me.
“Well, I know Hector better. We’ve known each other for a couple of years.”
Hector draped an arm around my shoulder. “Tell her how we met, babe.”
I groaned and shook my head—convinced Lisa wouldn’t want to hear our stupid story. But Hector poked me in the rib and glared.
“OK, so a friend of mine had just bought a scooter, and I decided to steal it. I was tearing down the street with him running after me, scaring all the pedestrians, and then I crashed into this one here.” Hector laughed, as he did every time he made me tell this story. He prodded me again to continue.
“Hector fancied my friend, so he took us out for drinks and ended up shagging Marty that night. I was crashing at Marty’s, so I was on the sofa in the next room and had to listen to all of it. The next day when Marty went to work Hector took me out for brunch to compensate for my trauma. So that’s how we got to know each other.”
“That’s pretty cool,” said Lisa. “Hey—is that the Marty who works in Jenner’s?”
“He used to, yeah.”
“He’s the one who shagged my mother’s boyfriend, in that case.”
“Whoa,” we all agreed.
“Small world.”
Cher’s “Love After Love” came on at this point, and Hector got up to go dance with the rest of the boys. He winked at me as he left the two of us alone.
I stood there for a moment unable to think of anything to say. I was trying not to look at Lisa’s cleavage, which was fantastic.
“I like your clothes,” I blurted out after what felt like an uncomfortable amount of time had passed.
“Oh, do you? Thanks. I think they might have been inappropriate for a job interview.”
“You never know, I guess.”
“Everyone there was wearing black suits. It was horrible. And the women were all wearing impossibly high heels.” I looked down at her boot-clad feet.
“I can’t do heels either,” I confided. “Never even tried.”
“Yeah, fuck that,” she agreed. She lifted her bottle to her lips, keeping her eyes trained on me. “So tell me something about yourself, Terra.” She drank from it.
“Um.” Be interesting, be interesting. “Well, I work with computers, as you know. I like to travel, and swim, and read crime novels. I have two cats, and, uh, I can juggle.” I can’t really juggle. I just added that so that she’d stay awake.
“Really?” Obviously, it worked.
“OK, so tell me something about you,” I said, before she could ask me to demonstrate.
“I’m looking to move back to Edinburgh now. I met Tina Turner once when I was fourteen. I have many secrets, mostly other people’s. I like sunsets and smoking and Truman Capote and whipped cream.” I didn’t really know what I should say in return, I just sat there with a smile frozen on my face. She laughed and took my hand. “Come on, let’s get some more drinks.”
So we did. We didn’t bother returning to watch the boys on the dance floor; we sat up on bar stools and talked about this and that. She told me some interesting things she’d done, and I told her some semi-interesting things I’d done, and then we started doing shots. After a while we ran out of cigarettes and started asking complete strangers to donate them, grading them on their responses. A bald man glared at us and pretended that he’d never heard us, but most people were friendly, or if they weren’t friendly they at least reached into their pockets and handed us smokes in silence.
“You’re pretty cute, Terra,” she said to me finally. It was 1 o’clock. I had meant to go home and sleep hours ago.
“Thanks. You’re not so bad yourself.”
She smiled. Then she leaned over and kissed me. She smelled of smoke and Acqua di Gio for men. Her studded tongue explored the inside of my mouth. I reached out and held her by her shoulders, touching the straps of that little black top, wondering if I would get her out of it tonight. Her hands crept up my legs. No, don’t tease me right here, I thought, I’m too turned on. I sighed and continued to kiss her while she deliberately traced a slow line up to the top of each leg, over my old, paint-splattered jeans. Her touch felt electric.
My eyes were closed and I was lost in my own world. I felt her hands on my body and her lips on mine while my brain received random, abrupt images of nothing that mattered. I saw a space shuttle, then a sign I’d seen on the bus that day that advertised a driving school, then a kid I’d known as a child who had pet turtles, then Pokémon. In the background I heard disco music and the noise of the bar; in the foreground there was her heavy breath and occasional sounds from our kissing.
“Girls, girls, girls!” Hector and Daniel jumped on us. I pulled away.
“We’re going home now,” Hector said. “Maybe you should too?” He reached out a
nd gave me a friendly punch on the arm. “It was nice seeing you again, Lisa. You girls have a fun night.” He kissed each of us on both cheeks.
And they were off.
Lisa looked at me.
“Well,” she said. “Do you want to come back to my place? It’s in Glasgow, though.”
“I live just around the corner, if you’d—”
“Great!” She jumped off the bar stool. “I’ll get my coat.”
On our way out of the club she suddenly turned and pounced on me. I was pinned to the wall in a secluded corner as she kissed me hard, pressing her body against mine. I reached out to hold her, but she grabbed both my wrists, holding them in one hand at my side. Her other hand traced my shoulder, then worked its way down my left breast, which she squeezed and groped.
She was kissing me hard. I realized I was holding my breath. Her hand worked its way under my shirt, under the cup of my bra, then seemed to think better of it. Lisa drew her face an inch from mine and looked down at my button-up shirt. She undid the top button, then the one underneath, and finally the one below that.
“Not here!” I whispered.
“Shhh,” she purred, still holding my wrists together, not hurting but enough to let me know I wouldn’t escape without her permission. “No one will see, I promise.” She bent her head to my breast, pulling down the bra cup. Her free hand had found my ass. She dug her nails into my buttocks as she sucked on my nipple. I writhed, turned on from what she was doing and from being exposed in public.
I leaned back against the wall. All I saw was her head as her tongue licked its way across my chest to the other nipple, circling it again and again before her lips took over once more. Her hand moved to the crotch of my jeans. Her fingers were slowly massaging me. I let out an involuntary gasp.
Someone walked past us, so close I could hear the footsteps. I stopped responding for a moment, paranoid. She pulled away from my breast and let go of me.
