Engines of Desire: Tales of Love and Other Horrors

by Livia Llewellyn

  “That’s bullshit and you know it! You don’t understand—!” I started to rise up, but, quick as a shot, Richard was over me, one long arm pinning each of my shoulders against the chair.

  “No, I don’t understand! I don’t know what this has to do with anything, I don’t know why you’re freaking out over this complete asshole and loser, but you need to get your fucking shit together and move on, because I am not going to pick up the pieces when you fall apart. I’ve done that with too many friends, and I am not about to start that shit with you. That man is not important enough for either of us to fuck up our lives over!”

  “You’re blowing this way out of proportion!”

  “Tesla, he’s a drug dealer. He played with you and let you go—you should be glad he didn’t do anything worse.”

  “You don’t have any idea what he’s like!”

  “Neither do you!” He shook me, then stopped. He’d never treated me like this before, never touched me so violently. My hands were over my mouth—I didn’t want him to see the ugly pull of my lips as I started to cry. But he saw. It didn’t matter, anyway. The next thing I knew, I was sobbing in his arms, my hot tears running down his chest. He held me like a child, for how long I don’t know, kissing the top of my head and stroking my hair till it tangled with his into strands of black and red.

  When there was nothing left in me to cry over, I rested in his arms, feeling the warmth of his chest, the steady beat of his heart. My tears had dampened the soft strands of hair on his chest, and I stroked his skin, feeling his nipples harden as my palm brushed against them. Richard sighed, and his chest rose and fell as his arms shifted, pulling me tighter against him. We’d been standing for a while, but only now did I realize his entire body pressed against mine, his legs and feet entwined with mine. My bathrobe had opened, and his cock twitched and hardened slightly as it rubbed against my mound. He released me, but only for a second as his hands slipped past my bathrobe, pulling it down as he held me again. We swayed back and forth, luxuriating in the feel of skin against skin, in the swell of his cock as it rolled over my stomach, in the warmth of his chest against my breasts.

  Finally he pushed slightly away from me, but only to slip his hands over my breasts. I shifted my legs, opening them slightly—my pussy was slick with juice, throbbing dully as I shifted onto my toes and began rubbing it against his cock, wetting his shaft and hair. Richard bent over, grabbing and lifting my breasts so that my nipples stuck out in two red points between his fingers. Back and forth his mouth moved, sucking and biting, his mouth making soft noises as he moved his lips around the hard dots of flesh. I grabbed his ass and humped him in slow, steady movements, feeling his cock grow harder with each pass between my legs.

  Richard stopped suddenly, and laughed. “I’m about to fall over,” he said, as we began to pitch forward in a tangle of flesh. He spun me back to the couch, and I landed on my back, legs spread wide apart. Richard placed one of my legs at the top of the cushions, and the other on the coffee table, as he positioned himself between them. His black hair formed a curtain around our faces, as he lowered himself and began kissing me. I held his jaw in my hands, feeling the movements of his face as he fed off me in slow, deep thrusts of his tongue. His face was soft, smooth, and he tasted like cloves. I kept my hands on his head, caressing his black hair, as he lowered his mouth to the hollow at my throat, then once more to my nipples. This time his touch was gentler, and my back arched under the caress of his silky tongue. I held the back of his head, feeling the heat flood off him as his mouth moved between my breasts down to the hollow of my stomach, then just above the thick mound of red hair. Richard took his time, nuzzling it, breathing in its damp scent, winding clumps of curls around the tip of his tongue. Just below, hot liquid gushed around the thick folds of flesh, anticipating his touch. I resisted pushing his head lower, only keeping my fingers lightly entwined in his hair as I enjoyed the motion of his head hovering over me.

  One of Richard’s hands disappeared from my nipples, and a second later, his body began to move in that familiar motion as he masturbated. I looked between the tangle of limbs, watching the white of his hand run quickly up and down the dark red flesh. A low moan rose up in my mouth, as I realized all that joyful pumping of flesh was for me, was because he wanted me. Richard heard me—as his hand moved faster, his lips slipped down through the hair, finding the groove that led to the small button of flesh secreted away in all the softer folds. I moaned again, full-throated now, as his hot mouth surrounded my clit, and his tongue passed over the tiny nub, coaxing the vibrations of pleasure deeper and deeper through my body. A flair of pain spiked in my nipples as the nerves caught fire, and I bucked against him. Richard pressed me down, forcing me flat as his lips and tongue moved faster, then his hand slid from my stomach to my cunt. Two long fingers slid inside, hooking up hard against the soaking flesh, then pumping back and forth in time with his hand against his cock. I pressed down, clenching my muscles around his hand, feeling every joint as it shuddered back and forth inside me.

  It was too much to bear—I cried out as I came, as my pussy exploded under the press of his lips, as the flames of desire shot through my body in a network of electric connections. My cunt, my nipples, my mouth, and all the spaces in between filled up with hot needles, heavy and warm. Richard’s mouth and fingers slowed, and he pulled himself away, but quickly arched over me, his face dark with blood. With a few hard strokes of his hand he came, and thick jets of white spurted over me as he gasped and shuddered in relief. Richard fingered the plump tip of his cock deftly, directing wet droplets across my stomach and breasts as his other hand rubbed the semen into my skin. “Marking my territory,” he said between sighs, as his hand moved gently up and down my body. For a moment we lay in peaceful silence as his semen dried on my skin, while his cock rested against my stomach, fragile and trembling under my cupped hand.

  But his movements slowed as his fingers came to the deep hollow between my breasts. I looked up at him, and he saw my face. The orgasm was fading, and that familiar obsession crept back into my eyes, dulling the glow. Richard had marked my body, but he both knew he hadn’t marked my heart.

  “Richard—” He rose with out a word, and walked into his bedroom, closing the door behind him. I lay on the couch, panting, running my hands over my body before I raised then to my nose. The faint smell of his sweat and cum clung to my skin. It reminded me of when I was a child, and my parents took me to the ocean. I remembered that same salty, musky dampness in the woods and sands, in the spray of white foam as it hit my naked skin. It was a comforting smell—but already it was fading, burning away as images of Brett filled my mind once more. I pulled the bathrobe around me, turned off the kitchen light, and crept to the window once more, like an abandoned dog returning to its master’s grave.

  Samhain

  Richard and I fell into an uneasy routine after that night, but after a while, it simply became a part of all my other uneasy routines. We found a way to avoid each other in the morning and evenings, and if he stood in the shadows of the hallway at night, watching me watch Brett, he never gave himself away and I never looked for him. Days and nights bled together into one dark mass of rotting leaves and swollen skies. Pumpkins leered out at me from the courtyard corners, and bones hung from kitchen windows, clattering like chimes. The comings and goings at Michael’s apartment reached fever pitch: Halloween descended, and everyone wanted a little bit of Brett’s paper under the tongue, to make the decadence of the season that much more real.

  Last year I’d gone to one of the off-campus parties with Richard—the art and theatre crowd threw huge bashes in their lofts, and though we left with different people, we always arrived together. Not this year. When the thirty-first rolled around, I dawdled in the library, purposely wasting time, and came home late enough to miss him. Once again, I dimmed the lights and took my place at the window. This time however, there was something else to look forward to other than a night of masturbating at the si
ght of an empty doorway.

  Sure enough, Brett and Michael slipped out before midnight—I almost didn’t catch them, as they’d turned out all the lights behind them. I’d managed to worm out of friends that the two planned on showing up at a party off-campus, where Brett would have more of a free hand to do business and indulge himself. Campus police tended to patrol a bit more vigilantly on Halloween, and as I suspected, Brett had no intention of letting the night go to waste. As soon as they hit the courtyard, I was at my front door, watching them through the crack. When they disappeared, I waited several minutes, then slipped down the stairs. I was in no rush—I knew where they were going. But it wasn’t where I was going.

  I stood in the shadow of the stairwell, watching the ebb and flow of students. I couldn’t believe what I was about to do. It was one thing to stalk someone. If they didn’t know about it, what harm did it do to them? But it wasn’t enough for me. It was too passive, and it meant Brett didn’t have to think about me. The whole point was that I wanted him to think about me, always.

  I walked across the courtyard in the direction of the lower campus, passing a few drunken students along the way. No one paid any attention to me—I wore black jeans and a black leather jacket, and a small mask over my face. It was lame, but no one cared. Everyone was looking for booze and sex, they weren’t looking at me. Behind me, laughter and music drifted, doors slammed and girls screamed in glee. I emerged from the cluster of buildings, but instead of following the path across the road, I took a hard right, hugging the edges of the buildings as I crept around them to their silent backs. Here the music was faint, and the low grass field I waded through rustled in the lazy night wind. I’d plotted my way before, many times. It took five minutes total to get to the far side of Michael’s apartment, where I stared up at the dark rectangle of the porch door, and the small balcony it opened onto.

  I can’t believe I’m doing this, I thought as I pushed the mask up off my face and climbed onto the table on the porch just below the balcony. It gave me just enough height to sling my way up and over the railing, although my arms trembled a bit as my feet hit the wood deck. I’d forgotten how hard it was the first time I’d done it. I didn’t need to check if the door would open—I grabbed the handle and slid it aside, walking into the empty room without a problem. I’d broken the small lock at the bottom of the door a few days ago, knowing that Michael was too lazy to bother to fix it. Breaking and entering—I’d resorted to this, and why? How would this get me any closer to Brett? What did I expect to find?

  I removed the small flashlight from my inside jacket pocket, and switched it on as I climbed the stairs, careful to keep the beam away from the windows. I rounded the wall at the top of the stairs, and stood in the small alcove where Brett’s bed was. There wasn’t much else—a tiny desk and chair, and a small dresser with a suitcase on top. Right at the top of the stairs, a small closet held a few coats, but nothing that looked like it belonged to Brett.

  I shone the light from one thing to the next, my heart hammering away in my chest. Would the key to his heart be in one of those dresser drawers? I found change, a small bracelet of beads, underwear that I balled up and pressed against my face. I found faded jeans, dirty tshirts, and a thick plastic bag filled with dope. I found cigarettes and sheets of stamps. But no papers. No passport or ID, no letters or notes. Nothing to tell me who he really was, where he really came from. I thought of the spark falling from the sun, and once again I felt the scale at my throat. It was as if he’d been born of flame and fire, a avatar of the sun, to torture me until I burned like the summer land.

  I sidled up to the desk, which was crammed in the corner at the foot of the bed. Five large cream photo albums were stacked on the top shelf, next to several stacks of photo envelopes from the drugstore. Jackpot. I reached for the nearest envelope, but as I started to peel open the top, I stopped: the front door was opening to the sound of two girls squealing, followed by a low voice. Brett.

  Panicking, I fumbled to seal the envelope and put it back in the pile, then switched off the flashlight. The girls stood in the kitchen now, chattering in slurred, drunken voices about which beer to swipe from the fridge—the sluts next door, I realized as I recognized the nasal patter. “Go upstairs. I’ll be up in a minute,” Brett called out. I almost vomited in terror—the girls were already on the steps, falling over each other as they shrieked with laughter. Quickly I opened the closet door, closing it behind me. The hose of a vacuum cleaner tangled around my legs, and a wire hanger poked my cheek, but there was nothing to do about it. Light poured over the tops of my sneakers, as one of the girls flipped the switch on the weak desk lamp.

  “Fuck me, that’s bright!”

  “Fuck you! How’s my lipstick look?”

  “Why do you care? It’s gonna be all over his cock in five minutes.” Both girls cackled, and there was a crash, followed the by sound of a beer bottle rolling across the floor. The light muted suddenly—I snickered, in spite of myself. What girl hadn’t thrown some scarf or piece of clothing over the lamp by the bed to make it more “romantic”? I prayed they wouldn’t burn the place down.

  “Breeeett! Oh Breeeeett!” Heavy footsteps up the stairs—I sucked in my breath, willing my blood to stop pounding in my ears.

  “Shut the fuck up, both of you.” Brett growled the words, and the girls grew quiet. There was rustling, the sounds of kissing, and a few giggles that faded to nothing. I could hear him slip their costumes off, hear the tinkle of bracelets and earrings hitting the floor, and soft moans as lips pressed against breasts. I slipped my hand under my jacket, pulling aside the black halter top to fondle my hardening nipples. I couldn’t help myself.

  Footsteps, as Brett stepped back, and I heard the familiar sound of denim slipping down his thighs. “Yeah, that’s it,” he murmured, and his words of encouragement continued, as I heard the creak of the bedsprings, followed by the girls pressing their mouths and tongues against each other’s bodies. Slurping and suckling noises, and little mutterings of pleasure seeped in through the door, and I moved closer to the crack, my own hands moving faster. One of the girls cried out, and Brett grunted: I knew he was masturbating as he watched each girl eat the other’s pussy.

  I slid my hands down to my jeans, carefully unzipping them, then working a finger past my hair over my wet clit. Despite the fact that I hated those sluts, despite my despair and rage that Brett was with them, and not me, I couldn’t stop thinking about that angry red pole between his legs, or his rough skin and the burn of his stubble against my tits. The girls cried out again, and I rubbed my clit harder. Despite all my pain, and because of it, I wanted him even more.

  “Get off her.” Movement, bedsprings squeaking, and the crash of his body against the mattress. In that second, I pushed at the door, and it sprang open, slightly. Just enough that no one could see, but enough that I could. I leaned against the door frame, careful that my body wouldn’t slip and push the door open wider, and switched my hand in my pants to my left. As I sucked the thick juice from under my nail, I resumed rubbing my clit, and watched as the two girls began sucking Brett’s cock, their mouths and tongues running up and down his shaft while their hands pulled at his balls.

  After a few minutes, my hand slowed, as I tried to stem the rising tide of laughter in my throat—it had to be the worst blowjob I’d ever seen in my life. The sluts were drunk, and they kept missing his slick cock, and hitting each other in the face with the swollen tip. Brett’s hands directed their heads, but even his sure grip on their blonde hair couldn’t keep their mouths on his shaft. He was getting frustrated, I could tell. Gradually his hands crept down, replacing their mouths as he began to pump up and down.

  “You, get on it.” The girl he was pointing to shot him an indignant grimace, and tossed her hair.

  “I’m tired. Why can’t she get on it?” Quick as a cobra, Brett rose up, his hand lashing across her face in a hard crack. The girl gasped, and grew still, her hand against her cheek. The other girl
said nothing, only looking down at his cock in respectful silence. Brett wasn’t even staring at them—the flat and dulled look on his face was directed into the dark, and for a horrifying second I thought he stared right at me. I resisted moving, but finally closed my eyes, as if that would make him go away. When I opened them a second later, he was lying back on the bed, looking calm and composed.

  “Fine,” he said. “Get off the bed.” The girl complied with a huff, but as she bent down to scoop up her clothes, Brett rolled, his hand sweeping under the bed, then against her arms. In one fluid motion, he handcuffed her wrist, then pulled her to the desk, handcuffing her to the small leg under the bottom of the drawers. The girl shrieked, and jerked: but the desk was bolted to the floor and wall—a preventive measure against sticky-fingered students. I wondered when he’d realized the desk was bolted, and how many times he’d used those cuffs before.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, bitch, so shut up.” He slapped her again, and she shrank back, clutching her clothes with her free hand. “I just want to make sure you get a chance to see what you’re missing. You, come here.”

  The other girl, who’d been cowering at the edge of the mattress, crawled next to him. He grabbed her tan ass, directing her to turn around and straddle his head. I let my breath out in a long, muffled sigh as the girl’s cunt rested against his mouth. She arched her neck back and moaned, her hair falling back over her shoulders as Brett began working his tongue back and forth over her clit, then sliding his tongue in and out of her pussy. Unlike me, she had almost no pubic hair at all, only a small strip of straw thinning out where the groove of her cunt began. I could see every movement of Brett’s lips and tongue, every gentle roll of his mouth over the dark folds of her flesh. I jammed my fingers into my pussy, and the zipper teeth bit against my knuckles, drawing blood. I didn’t care. I saw the way Brett touched that girl, saw how gentle he was with her. Why couldn’t he be that way with me?