The Mammoth Book of Hot Romance

by Sonia Florens

  She held his gaze. “I would have let Apollo seduce me. I would have offered myself to him for his inspiration. You can’t put a price on that.”

  With awkward fingers he undid the buttons of her blouse. She helped him with the hooks of her bra and pulled him to her breasts as she lay back on the floor.

  “I’m not very experienced,” he whispered, sliding a hand down the flat of her belly and into the front of her cut-offs.

  “I’ll show you what to do.” She shifted until he could wriggle his fingers inside her panties and over her pubic curls, where he lingered to stroke, and she rocked against the pressure of his palm.

  “I want to look at you.” He spoke through barely parted lips. “I was too embarrassed this morning, too nervous.”

  She undid her shorts, lifting her butt so he could slide them off. She watched the play of muscles along his broad shoulders as he freed her feet. When he opened her legs, his breath was warm against her heavy pout as he inspected her folds, sliding fingers over her contours, spreading, stroking until his forefinger pressed against her and she jerked and caught her breath.

  “Is that—”

  “My clit, yes.” She rose on to one elbow and took his fingers in her mouth until they were wet, then she guided them back against her. “This is how I like it. Wet and slippery. Circles, small tight circles.” She shuddered and gasped as his movements became less awkward. “Yes, that’s it. Now use my own juices. That feels even better.” She guided his fingers into the slickness of her cunt, then back on to her clit, undulating against his touch as she did so.

  “It’s like a pearl,” he whispered, easing back the hood for a better view. “I never knew it would be so hard.”

  She squirmed. “Keep that up, it’ll get still harder.”

  “Can I taste?” His voice was breathy, hot against her vulva.

  She thought he only meant to sample her flavour on his fingers, but instead, he pushed her legs apart further and lowered his face. At first he licked gingerly with just the tip of his tongue, sampling carefully, unsure of himself and, she figured, probably a little frightened.

  “Do you like it?” She was suddenly, painfully aware of her own vulnerability.

  “I do, very much.” He opened her wider, his tongue following the path his fingers had splayed. “It’s different than I expected, soft, almost sweet, but not. Does it feel good, the way I’m doing it?”

  “Mmm.” She pressed closer. “Like I never want you to stop.”

  It was as though he had suddenly been given permission. He cupped her buttocks in his hands and buried his face in her. In spite of her best efforts to stay still, lest she intimidate him, she found herself moaning, moving against him, curling her fingers in his hair, and crying out when the first wave of orgasm hit.

  She pushed him away for those few seconds when she was still too sensitive to be touched. But he watched, his head resting against her thigh. “Everything shudders when you come. It’s like small earthquakes.”

  She could feel him rocking against her, the press of his own arousal becoming more urgent. He raised himself to look at her face, struggling to breathe. “Donna.” His voice was raw, exposed. “I need to come.”

  “Wait.” She reached into the drawer beneath the credenza, found andom and helped him into it. Then, still trembling from her orgasm, she took his penis in her hand and guided him, reassured him. She shifted her hips and parted her swollen labia until, with a little thrust, he was completely inside her. He let out a sharp moan that sounded almost like pain or maybe fear, then grabbed her shoulders hard and held her. “Don’t move,” he gasped. “I’m too sensitive. Give me a second.”

  She could feel his body straining for control. It was only a minute, but in her impatience it felt like an eternity. She longed to bear down, she ached to thrust against him, desperate to know how it felt to come with him inside her. And when at last he was ready, she wrapped her legs around him and met him thrust for thrust. They were hard, hungry thrusts, inexperienced, elated thrusts accompanied by a duet of grunts and moans.

  The veins along his neck pulsed. Every muscle tensed. The in and out friction of his cock had her on the edge again. She dug her nails into his shoulders and threw her head back. Just as her second orgasm hit, she felt him convulse as he shoved in deep and then he cried out, ejaculating in hard, grinding thrusts that threatened to bruise her coccyx.

  For a long time the room was awash in the desperate sounds of respiration, which gradually softened and lengthened into post-coital drowsiness. At last he shifted so his weight wasn’t fully on her and pulled her close, nestling her against his chest, stroking her hair as he dozed.

  Then the artist in her took control. She pulled away and reached for the sketch pad. She sketched rapidly. This time it wasn’t the curve of his neck and the slope of his belly she drew. She drew the way his penis, once freed from the condom, rested in its nest of blond curls, the way his balls bulged against the hard muscle of his thigh, the half-domes of his buttocks, the straight lines of his hips.

  “What are you doing?” he asked sleepily.

  “Drawing your cock.” The very awareness of her efforts made his penis heavy against his thigh, and he reached down to stroke its length as though he had only just now become aware of it. He fondled unselfconsciously, much more comfortable with himself than she would have imagined. He caressed his balls and shifted to give her a better view.

  She sketched feverishly until he leaned in and nibbled her ear. “If you want to draw Apollo seducing Daphne, then perhaps you should do a few groping sketches. Come on. Bring your sketch pad.” He half crawled, half scooted across the floor to sit in front of a large mirror

  He positioned himself behind her until she could feel the press of his penis against her back, then he cupped her breast and stroked until the nipple was fully engorged. “Now open your legs. That’s good.” He curled the other hand down over her pubis, fingers dipping teasingly into her pussy. “Surely this is what Apollo would do if he caught Daphne.”

  As she sketched, he nibbled the curve of her neck and her ear lobe. She imagined Apollo whispering softly to Daphne, making her promises she couldn’t resist until she succumbed to his desires.

  The sketching became more difficult with growing arousal. Jake wasn’t very sympathetic to her art. He probed and caressed, giving her exquisite views of her vulva, dilated and anxious for more of his cock. He teased her clit from behind its hood to be sketched and fondled.

  “You’re hard,” she grunted, straining against his fingers, nearly dropping the charcoal.

  “Of course I’m hard,” he said. “I’m touching you.”

  “Get a condom. I want to draw you inside me.”

  When he was properly outfitted for the occasion, he pulled her into his lap and entered her face to face so they could both see the point of pleasure. With the help of the mirror, she drew from every angle – he took her from behind, he took her in a spoon position, he pulled her on top of him. All the while he teased and caressed until at last she threw the sketch pad aside and pulled him on top of her. They came amid scattered sketches of cocks and breasts and pouting cunts, sketches of all the acts they imagined Apollo and Daphne might do together.

  At last he pulled the drapery over them like a blanket, like the wings of the swan, nestling her into a spoon position, and they slept.

  She awoke chilled and stiff, with anaemic dawn filtering through the curtains. Jake was gone. His room was empty. She showered and moped over coffee. Of course the guilt would eat at him. It would be hard for him to face her. Her stomach knotted, and she swallowed back anger. He had come on to her. She would have happily let him remain pure and untouched if that’s what he wanted.

  But hadn’t she wanted him from the beginning, and hadn’t sex with him been even more exciting than she could have ever imagined in her Apollo fantasies? He wasn’t Apollo, she reminded herself, and she sure as hell wasn’t Daphne.

  At Sirens, nothing went right. He
r satyr looked more like a cow than a goat. Everything she painted reminded her of her night with Jake, and she fought back the niggling fear that she had ruined her inspiration by having sex with him.

  But it was more than her lack of inspiration that bothered her; it was the deep raw ache that wouldn’t go away. How could she have been so stupid? Hadn’t she learned anything from her mother’s miseries? Jake was not for her, end of discussion. Finally she gave up her efforts to paint and went home to an empty house.

  In her studio, she flipped through the sketch pad of great new ideas, all sketched fast and furiously, all done since she met Jake. The canvas with the sketch of Apollo and Daphne was ready to paint. There were several other canvases that had preliminary sketches, not all involving Jake, but all somehow inspired by his presence.

  She studied the painting of Leda and the Swan. The swan nearly flew off the canvas. She could almost see the rising and falling of Leda’s breasts in her effort to breathe. The painting was alive in the way she knew her mother had intended it to be when she started it so long ago.

  In the foggy recesses of her mind, Donna remembered coming home from school in the afternoons to find the handsome young reverend and her mother sequestered at the kitchen table arguing politics and religion over some exotic blend of tea.

  Time passed, and she found them in her mother’s studio, her mother painting Reverend Tandy as Hermes or Zeus or Endymion. She thought nothing of the preacher’s varying stages of undress. Her mother often worked with nude models.

  Then one day she came home from school unexpectedly early. She was old enough to understand what the sounds coming from her mother’s bedroom meant. Her mother had taken lovers before. But this lover had been different. This lover had ripped their world apart. The church found out. Soon after that they moved from Denver without saying goodbye to the nice preacher.

  Now Reverend Tandy looked sad and old, like her mother had before she died. A heart attack, the doctors had said, but Donna was certain her mother died of a broken heart. She blamed Tandy.

  And yet her mother had seen Endymion in the man. He had kindled that spark of inspiration in some of her best paintings, something Donna hadn’t understood until Jake waltzed into her life. She’d always said she’d willingly pay any price for inspiration. After what happened to her mother, she, of all people should know just how high that price might be.>

  When Donna left for the club the next morning, there was still no sign of Jake.

  As usual, it was only Donna and Irv at Sirens. The rest of the crew straggled in much later in the day. She had been painting several hours when, from beneath the scaffolding, Irv called her. “Donna! Get your ass down here. The Reverend’s here to see you.”

  For a frightening moment, Donna feared she’d hyperventilate. She peeked over the edge of her fortress to see Irv and Jake, both nodding enthusiastically then shaking hands before Irv went back to his office without his usual warning that he wasn’t paying her to chat. Trembling so hard she feared she’d shake the scaffolding loose, she lay staring up into the eyes of Apollo as though she were praying, struggling to calm the cocktail of emotions now slamming her heart against her ribs. When at last she found the courage, she looked down over the edge of the scaffolding to find Jake gazing up at her.

  He smiled his greeting as though nothing had happened, as though he hadn’t just vanished for two days. Then he nodded to the painting of Apollo. “You’ll ruin my reputation painting my face all over town like this, not to mention my other bits.”

  “What do you want?” she called, annoyed at the tremor in her voice.

  The smile disappeared from his face and he was suddenly serious. “Please come down. We need to talk.”

  She eased herself over the edge of the scaffolding, finding the descent more difficult than usual in her unsteady state. Jake’s heavy gaze on her back did little to settle her nerves.

  Before she reached the floor, her foot slipped and she would have fallen the last few feet if he hadn’t moved quickly to brace her securely against the metal rungs. His hot breath against the back of her neck made her nipples ache and her breath catch. Why did it have to feel so good to be near him?

  With more willpower than she thought she could muster, she pushed him away and stepped down. “You said you wanted to talk. Glad you finally got around to it.” She folded her arms across her chest.

  “I’m sorry. But I needed time to think.”

  “And how did that work out for you?” she huffed.

  He raked her with a hungry gaze that came to rest on her face. “I’m not going to seminary.”

  “What?” The shock of his words forced her back against the scaffolding, and anger rose in her throat along with no small amount of panic. “You can’t put this kind of responsibility on me. I wasn’t the one who—”

  Suddenly it was as though he could stand the distance between them no longer. He stopped her words with an earth-shaking kiss, pinning her against the scaffolding with his body, chest pressed hard against her aching breasts, groin raking her pubis.

  She made a valiant effort to push him away, but he held her tight, his tongue snaking along her hard palate exactly the way she had taught him, exactly the way she liked it. His raw strength shocked her, frightened her, then aroused her, until she gave up the struggle and found herself fighting to get even closer to him.

  At last he pulled back just enough to allow her to breathe, then he spoke. “Didn’t you hear me the other night? I never wanted to go to seminary in the first place. I was only trying to please my family. You were just my wake-up call, nothing more.”

  “Nothing more?” She shoved her hand hard against the flat of his chest. “So glad I could be of help.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” He grabbed her hand, but not before she jerked away and gave him a resounding slap across the cheek.

  “That’s for disappearing for two days without a word.” She fought back an angry sob and slapped him again. “That’s for making me care one way or another.” As he recoiled she turned and headed back up the scaffolding.

  “This is not going to happen.” His voice came out a frustrated growl. He was on her before she could make the third rung, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her off the scaffolding like she was a rag doll. She came around fighting and struggling, but he held her tight and kissed her again. She bit his lip. But still he held her. “I’m not leaving until we’ve cleared this up.” His breath was ragged as it tore through his chest, and his grip on her was bruising. “You said I inspired you. I’ve never inspired anyone before.” He pulled her closer, holding her so tight she could barely breathe. “Did it ever occur to you that you inspired me too? That just maybe you gave me courage to pursue my own dream and not what everyone else had planned for me?”

  In their struggles her skirt had come up until only the thin crotch of her panties separated her from the obvious bulge in his trousers. The subtle rocking of their hips made it clear that their bodies knew what they both wanted long before their minds could settle on a plan of action.

  “Don’t push me away.” His words came out a harsh whisper against her throat. “Not when I’ve only just found the courage to come to you.”

  The roil of emotions forced its way out in a heavy sob that shook her whole body. Suddenly she hadn’t the strength to fight any longer. She wrapped her legs around him feeling his penis surge beneath his trousers. The rocking became blatant dry-humping. She grabbed the rungs of the scaffolding for support and leaned back while he undid her blouse, popping two buttons in his anxious efforts. Then he shoved aside her bra, bathing her breasts in the heat of his breath as he suckled and caressed.

  With her legs still wrapped around him and his face still buried in the valley between her breasts, he cupped his hands under her bottom and lifted her away from the scaffolding. Then he carried her to the bar and eased her back on the smooth wooden surface.

  “Irv will catch us.” She made a weak effort to push him aw
ay.

  “Let him.” He nipped the inside of her thigh with his front teeth making her clench and swell. He pulled her panties down over her hips and let them drop to the floor. When he slipped a finger between her heavy folds, she was already slick and responsive to his probing. He pushed her legs apart and his tongue took over what his fingers had begun, snaking along the engorged lips of her pout, making her groan and bear down against his face while he nibbled and tugged.

  The sound of his fly opening was followed closely by the crinkle of a condom wrapper, and her pussy grasped expectantly. She opened her legs wider, brazenly exposing herself. Her whole body ached to be filled, just like the supplicant offering herself on the altar to Apollo. And when Jake climbed on to the bar between her legs, it was as though her painting had become reality.

  He fingered her lips apart, then with a deep-chested grunt, pushed into her, stretching her around his thickness almost, but not quite, to the point of pain. She gave a sharp cry and caught her breath. Then she wrapped her legs around him, grabbed the edge of the bar for leverage, and they both began to thrust and hump and writhe, like the satyrs and the fauns who frolicked in her mural.

  Beneath the watchful eyes of Apollo, the room was filled with the urgent sounds of sex, and the smell of arousal dominated the smell of fresh paint.

  After two agonizing days of anticipation, neither of them held back. There was no lingering, no exploring, only hard shoving and pushing to get to what they both needed.

  They came together convulsing and shuddering so violently that she feared they’d be ripped apart by the sheer pleasure of it. She could think o better way to die.

  She wasn’t sure how long they lay on the bar spent and oxygen depleted, unable to do more than gasp. From behind the not very soundproof walls of his office, they could hear Irv cursing the damn government for all the damn taxes.

  Later when they were once again clothed and enjoying a Coke at the deserted bar, she asked, “What will you do now?”