Engines of Desire: Tales of Love and Other Horrors

by Livia Llewellyn

  He looked around, and his hand absently moved across his stomach. I felt myself staring at the curls of hair, and my eyes slipped down to the half-open zipper, and the long curve of flesh straining the fabric to the left and below.

  “Not really,” he finally spoke. “A lot of things are the same.” He extended his hand. “My name’s Brett.”

  I slipped my hand into his. His skin was dry and warm, the fingers strong. “I’m Tesla. Nice to meet you.” I felt like an idiot, and started to slip my hand away, but his grasp tightened. I didn’t fight him.

  “So.” His fingers moved slightly, caressing the back of my hand in small circles. I felt that burn again, like the burn of the summer sun, eating up my blood as it raced through my arm and across my breasts. My legs shifted and opened, as the heat dropped into my pussy, and the rush of liquid and blood pooled in the folds of flesh. “Do you have a boyfriend, Tesla?”

  I was going to say no, but it didn’t seem right. There was a better answer, a more honest one.

  “Does it matter?”

  Brett pulled me forward, the arms in his muscle flexing slightly as he parted his legs and firmly pressed me into him. His hands wrapped around my ass, and I ground my pelvis against his, feeling his cock shift back and forth under the fabric. His stubble burned my face, and his lips and mouth tasted of tobacco. Hot and wet, with a smoky tang—our tongues locked and danced, darted in and out as I ran one hand through his hair. The skin at the back of his neck was so warm and soft, so unlike the rest of him. I moaned, and it settled on his tongue like his own sighs.

  With one fluid motion, Brett hooked the straps of my backpack and slid it off my shoulders, then caught the edges of my shirt and ripped it over my head and off. His hands covered my breasts, squeezing and kneading the flesh until I thought they’d burst between his fingers. I slid my hands under his jeans and grabbed his ass, pushing him harder against me while his mouth tugged on my nipples. I felt my movements slow, and my head dropped back as Brett moved between each hard dot of red flesh, making soft suckling noises with his mouth. His breath was hot and wet, and my pussy throbbed with each beat of my heart. I clenched down, felt the muscles contract and expand, and a flood of wetness soaked my panties.

  It was too much to bear—I pushed his face away, and dropped down to my knees as my hands tugged at his waistband. His cock sprang free as his jeans slid down his thighs. It jutted from his body almost grotesquely—long and muscular like he was, only harder and darker. In this neat veneer of campus and town around us, it ignored the niceties of civilization and leered at me with an angry red stare. I wrapped my hands around it, and it shivered as a thick drop of liquid welled up at the tip. My fingers rubbed the soft skin, marveling at how such softness could contain such a hard and relentless core at its center. I held history in my hand, geology and time, and all the violent life of the land. The tip of my tongue ran up the soft groove of flesh and rested in the hollow, letting the liquid pool and run into my mouth.

  Above me, Brett breathed deep, his stomach contracted, and his hands grabbed my hair, pulling the mass of red curls around me as if binding my face to his cock. As I squatted before him, moving the soft flesh of his tip back and forth past my lips, I fingered the folds of my cunt, working the juice out of the tangle of coarse hair and flesh. When my clit ached so hard the tears came to my eyes, I raised my soaking hand and cupped his balls, rubbing my scent into his skin. Marking my territory, even though I knew it wouldn’t take.

  “Fuck me,” I murmured, letting my lips form the words around his hard shaft, as if writing them onto his skin. “Fuck me now.”

  He pulled me up by my hair, not gently, and bent me over his t-shirt on the metal railing. My breasts slammed into the bars below, and my hair fell forward, forming a curtain around my face. I felt his hands ripping my shorts off me, then parting my ass, thick fingers grabbing the flesh and pulling the lips wide. I spread my legs apart in a rigid V. For a second, he stood behind me, holding my aching flesh open to the world. Cool air rushed over my exposed ass and pussy, and I let out a slow gasp as a wave of fear swept through me. I was vulnerable, a target, and he was in control—that’s what he was teaching me. I could have moved, but I didn’t. I waited.

  I felt his thighs press inward, heavy and sure. It took only a single thrust—a deep guttural grunt pushed out of me as my body plunged forward. His cock moved in and out in quick, hard thrusts, and with each push forward, with each fresh wave of pain, my body moved further over the railing. The edges of my hair trailed in the weed-choked water, and I watched the watery reflection of my face, watched the O of my mouth as each cry slid out, watched my tits pound back and forth in frenzy of motion. My raw clit rubbed against the t-shirt, soaked with our sweat and juices, and I felt that wave build between my thighs, the foamy heaviness that coalesced into a dark explosion of pleasure. I cried out, and my reflection below broke into a thousands silver waves—together we watched the brush fire of the afterglow as it ate through our energy, leaving a dulled and shining ache in the landscape of our bodies. Behind me, a shuddering moan broke free from Brett, and he bent over with a final thrust, almost impaling me against the metal rail as his semen shot deep inside. He grew still, and I felt all the little twitchings of his body as he draped over my back and rested. For one peaceful moment, there was only the sound of our breath, and the bright ache of flesh cooling in the aftermath, like the sun slipping below the desert’s edge.

  Without warning, he pushed away, and I felt his cock slide out of me. A slick of semen ran down my legs, followed by the always melancholy ache of my muscles, as the sudden hollow of my pussy mourned the loss of flesh within flesh. “Help me up.” I groaned slightly as Brett grabbed my hair and lifted me back from the railing with as much gentility as if he were lifting a bag of dead leaves.

  “Not bad for our first time.” His voice sounded distant and cool. Brett grabbed his t-shirt and passed it over his stomach and cock. It swung heavily between his legs, and I noticed for the first time the thick sack of flesh it rested against, and the mass of brown pubic hair.

  “Not bad?” My legs trembled violently, and my stomach and thighs felt as if someone had punched them over and over again. I crumbled to the pavement, unable to stand. Red marks crisscrossed my torso, and when I passed my hand between my legs and drew it back, a thin film of pink stained the skin. I was bleeding. I lay back against the concrete, not caring that the pebbly surface grazed my spine. Every other part of me hurt, so it didn’t seem to matter.

  “We can do better.” He draped his t-shirt over his shoulder and slipped his jeans back up, then drew a pack of cigarettes out of the back pocket. “Next time, maybe. You’ve got a nice mouth—are you any good at sucking cock?”

  “Yeah,” I said, staring up at his smirking face. “I’m great. But I don’t swallow for any man.”

  His smile wavered behind the flare of smoke and light, only for a second. All the same, I saw it, and his answer struck my heart like a spark against anthracite.

  “I’m not any man.”

  Jharia Fire

  Days and nights moved across the unchanging face of the earth, nothing more than cogs in the clock of the universe. And we moved with them, scurrying back and forth between buildings, wrapping our fall semester around our hearts as if it would save us from the same fate as the fall of the stars each morning, the fall of the sun at the end of each day. I threw myself into the routine much as I had any other year, and looked forward to early morning coffee and the crunch of dying leaves underfoot as I walked to class. I spent two afternoons a week in the small anthropology museum, cleaning the displays for credit; and weekends found me in the library, with the whisper of pages and crack of heads against wood as students fought sleep, and lost.

  The fifth floor of the library held the art books, and its cathedral ceilings and high windows turned studying into an almost religious pleasure. I pored over books, wrote notes, watched the skies turn blue to grey to pearly white. I slipped to the
end of the stacks, where all the brick walls curved into a small space that almost seemed a part of the sky itself. I placed my back against the glass, pressed my soles hard into the carpet, and bit down hard on my lip as my fingers passed back and forth over my wet clit, faster and faster, until I thought the intensity of the orgasm would send me crashing through the window, down to the green lawns in a shower of glass-shot bone and blood. I couldn’t think of anything else but him. He filled every moment I was awake, haunted my dreams at night. He filled every part of my heart and soul. And he knew it: which was why he’d never answered my calls.

  “Him again. He never stops, does he?”

  Richard pointed from our balcony out across the cement courtyard of Student Village. At the northernmost edge of the campus, a series of ugly brick and wood apartment buildings squatted in giant circle of cement—the place I, and several hundred upperclassmen, called home. Richard and I shared a small apartment on the third floor, with a view of the entire courtyard, and spent most of our free afternoons sitting on the balcony steps, drinking beer and gossiping about our neighbors as they came and went.

  “Oh. Him.” I took a long pull at my beer. Richard watched as, across the courtyard, Brett held court with a group of freshmen. I’d found out several weeks after we met that he’d come up from San Francisco with a stunningly large stash of drugs, which he dispensed from his friend’s apartment—the friend who happened to live across the way. I’d never told Richard about the encounter—I’d been too embarrassed at having been so easily used and forgotten. But this time it was too much, and as I watched Brett flirt with the two girls who lived next door to him, my ugly frown gave me away.

  “Do you know him? You know him.”

  “In a way.” I didn’t want to, but I smiled.

  “Oh my god. You fucked him!” Richard laughed and punched me in the arm.

  “Once. He seems to have forgotten about me. It was nothing.”

  “Was he good? He’s hot.” Richard shaded his eyes and peered across the courtyard, pursing his heavily-glossed mouth. “I bet he has a big cock. He walks like he does.”

  “Yeah, he’s hot.” Once again, my fingers wrapped around the scale at my throat. “He’s fucking hot. And he’s got a cock like a piston. Happy?” I punched Richard back, and suddenly the weight of my obsession lifted as our laughter echoed across the wide space. I grabbed another beer, noting as I turned my head that Brett was staring across the way, the two sloe-eyed girls momentarily silenced. Suddenly every movement was one of victory, every toss of my hair a crack of the cape in front of the bull.

  “So, why haven’t you seen him again?”

  “He gave me his number. I called. He never answered. I’m not dealing with that shit.” The last word shot out of my mouth, harsh and wet. “Fuck him.”

  “Was it good? Did you enjoy fucking him?”

  “Yeah. It was the best sex I’ve ever had in my life.” I pretended to examine the cracked polish on my toes, until his silence forced me to look at his face. I knew what was coming.

  “So?” Richard stared at me, that “I challenge you” look I hated so much. “What’s your problem? Go over there. Fuck him again.”

  “But he won’t answer my ca—”

  “Oh shut up! He’s right across the fucking courtyard! You don’t want to marry the guy, just go over there and have a good time. If you don’t, he’ll just give it to someone else.”

  I watched the two girls. They hung on him like glittering strands of Christmas lights, all pretty colors and tanned skin and straight blonde hair. Bitches.

  “What if he says no?”

  “Well, then…do you think he’d fuck me?” Richard raised his eyebrows, hope flooding his face. I laughed harder.

  “Uh, I don’t think so. Although, he did have me bent like a schoolboy over the rail. You know, the rail behind the—”

  “Please. I’ve worn a groove in that rail, bitch. Welcome to the club.” We clinked our bottles and drank. As my head raised up, my eyes slid across the courtyard again.

  “Hey, faggot!” From below, a beefy face peered up between the stair slats. “I’m trying to study! Shut up or I’ll shove that bottle up your fucking ass!” Our downstairs neighbor, a hulking blob of a boy who spent most of his afternoons sleeping off hangovers—but he usually wasn’t this vocal when we woke him up. The balcony rocked slightly as he slammed his door, and we sat in amazed silence, then started snickering. Richard rolled his eyes as he stood up, grabbing both six-packs with his long-nailed hands.

  “I think it’s time to move the party.” He started down the stairs, then turned. “Well?”

  I stood up. “I—” My mouth grew dry, and a strange hammering started up in my chest.

  “No, no, no. None of that serious shit. It’s all fun. We’re just friendly neighbors looking for a little party. And we have booze. Who can resist us?”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t.” It was true—I couldn’t move my feet.

  “I thought you liked this guy.”

  “I do.”

  “Then what’s wrong with you? What’s the problem?”

  The gold scale slid between my fingertips, burning the flesh. “The problem is—I like this guy. I can’t stop thinking about him. At all.”

  Richard clomped down the stairs, and disappeared. “Whatever. You know what to do!” His voice floated back up, taunting me. I picked up my empty bottles, and walked inside the dark of our apartment. I threw the bottles into the trash and turned the lights on in the bathroom. My reflection swam up from the surface of the mirror—pale freckled skin surrounded by a corona of unruly red hair. I stared until my eyes blurred, until it looked like I was melting into the dark, consumed from the inside by my own dreams and desires. When I finally blinked and tore myself away, twenty minutes had passed.

  “Something’s wrong with me,” I muttered as I sped to my bedroom, throwing clothes onto the floor as I wriggled out of them. I slipped on a sundress, something light and loose—easy to pull up, or down. After a second of hesitation, I slipped my underwear off as well, then sped back to the bathroom, passing a wet washcloth between my legs and ending my grooming with a few well-placed spritzes of perfume. I looked at myself in the mirror one last time: I wasn’t as pretty as the blondes, but I wasn’t ugly. The color in my cheeks was high, and my lips were dark and full. I smiled. My face didn’t matter, anyway. I knew what to do with it. That’s what counted.

  Students gathered at the edges of the courtyard, clustered around benches as they unwound from the long day. Overhead, stars sparked in the cobalt sky, as the cool of evening pushed day over the edge of Ellensburg and into the great beyond. Young men and women stood on the balcony, draped over the thick posts of wood, talking and smoking and drinking. I navigated across the space under Brett’s gaze, under the glare of the girls and the bemused and silent smile of Richard. Other people had joined them, all of them flushed from the booze, or dreamy from the drugs. Acid—that’s what I’d heard Brett sold, in neat sheets like stamps. One Hello Kitty under the tongue, and everything flowed.

  “I was looking for you!” I called out to Richard. “I thought we were going to go to the library.” He placed a hand on his chest, his mouth open in surprise.

  “What? I’m so sorry, I completely forgot! Well, fuck that. Come on up and have a beer!” He motioned vigorously, and I demurely walked up the stairs, stepping neatly around empty bottles and full ashtrays. Who was I to ignore the request of my beloved roommate?

  Music poured from the open door of the apartment, and the lights of the television flickered like a strobe. In the muted light, bongs littered the floor, and smoke rose in thick waves like the smoldering fire in a coal mine. I counted five couples making out. Not even dark outside, and already this party was going to be epic. I could tell—there was a vibe in the air, a sense of recklessness. To throw caution to the wind so early in the quarter, and in the middle of the week, no less, was something that rarely happened. When it did, it was the stuff of
legends.

  “Hey.” Richard gave me a quick kiss on the cheek as he handed me a cold bottle—half-full, as he knew I’d want. “You owe me,” he mouthed as he steered me toward Brett. He held court in a lounge chair, his long legs splayed wide, and the usual cigarette decorating his lips. A girl sat on his lap—one of the girls I’d seen earlier. I knew her from a couple years ago, when she worked at a Lerner store in the mall in Yakima. She was a slut and an idiot—two qualities that made her prized among college women. I had my work cut out for me.

  “Tesla, this is Brett. Brett, Tesla.” Richard smiled innocently as he pushed me forward. The slut scowled, but Brett smiled.

  “Yeah, well.” Smoke coiled around his face like gray dragons. “How’ve you been.”

  “I’ve been fine.”

  “Haven’t seen you around.”

  “Haven’t answered your calls.”

  “I’m not a dog. I don’t come when I’m called.” The slut giggled and wriggled her ass against Brett’s thigh.

  I smiled and threw my neck back in a long white arch. The beer bottle slid past my lips, and as I opened the back of my throat, the entire neck disappeared into my mouth. The beer disappeared in a single rush of gold. I didn’t slide the bottle out until it was empty. As I wiped my lips and smiled, the slut made a loud scoffing sound.

  “Well.” I stepped back and placed the empty on the deck. “You’re busy, so…. See you around.” I walked into the apartment, rubbing my stomach. The urge to puke it all up would pass in a minute. The image of me deep-throating the bottle, however—that would last a lifetime.

  “The goddess with the golden throat strikes again,” Richard said as he caught up to me. “The bathroom’s just past the kitchen.”

  “I’ll be fine. It was the perfect amount. Are there any chips? I haven’t had dinner.”

  “Look in the kitchen. I think there’s some pizza, but I wouldn’t touch it. I don’t think that meat is pepperoni.”