by Rose Caraway
“Where are the diamonds?” I demand roughly, not wanting him to guess what’s coming his way.
“Mallory, baby,” he says. “This isn’t about the stones. This is about us.”
“For Jimmy Jack, it’s about the stones.”
I twist him round and round and then set him spinning.
“I need to know where they are before I can let you down,” I say.
I love to watch Tobi spin on the ropes. He’s a beautiful specimen of a man, long, clean limbs dusted with tawny gold hair, and a face so handsome you could cry. But the sheer beauty of him doesn’t mean I’m not going to make him suffer for his pleasure. I take a riding crop from a rack on the wall and put a hand on the ropes to make him still. Tobi hates corporal punishment and his eyes widen in fear as my practice swipe slices through the air.
“Mallory, wait,” he says.
I step back.
“You haven’t asked for my safeword.”
“Let’s make it diamonds,” I say. I take another practice swipe and then drag the tip of the crop across his chest.
“You can have the diamonds, babe,” he says. “Like I said, we can share them.”
I drop the crop and move in closer.
“I’ve missed you, Tobi,” I say, cupping a hand between his legs.
His cock rears against the pressure of my touch and I feel a flutter deep inside me.
“That’s it, Mal, I’m here for the taking.”
I work his rod with my hand and latch my mouth onto one of his nipples. His hips buck and he tries to arch into me but the ropes keep him steady in the sitting position. I use my teeth on the tender pink bud, making him yelp.
“Where?” I whisper, plucking a chest hair with my free hand.
“No way!”
“Where?” I say, biting his bottom lip.
He pulls away, shaking his head.
“Where?” I mouth, as I peel off the silver spandex to reveal my naked body underneath. (It’s far too tight for underwear; I’m too vain for panty lines.)
Tobi groans softly in his cradle of red rope.
I pull myself up to sit, legs splayed, on his lap. The ropes loop up behind me, giving me something to lean back against. Tobi looks down at my reclining body, practically dribbling with desire, but his hands are firmly bound so he can’t touch me.
“Like what you see, Crab Boy?”
“Crabman,” he says.
“I think I’m calling the shots, Crusty.”
I lick a finger and then stroke it gently across the soft folds between my legs. A few inches away, Tobi’s cock is throbbing with his need to be inside me.
“Where?” I say, using my fingers to open myself up. I’m wet and the earthy aroma of my desire suddenly hits my nostrils. Tobi breaths it in deeply, a small whimper escaping his lips.
“Where are they?”
I reach forward and tug on his cock. All his muscles tense beneath me.
“Mallory…”
“Tell me where they are and you’ll find release.”
The double meaning of my words leaves him guessing.
“I can release you,” I say, caressing him, “or I can let you go.” I glance toward the door.
I slide forward until I’m able to nudge the tip of his cock up against the entrance of my vagina. Tobi moans. I know which form of release he needs. Letting go of his piece, I reach my hands up into the ropes behind my head. By pulling down on them rhythmically and shifting my weight, I’m able to set us both swinging. Once I’ve built the momentum I turn my attention back to my trussed-up crab. I maneuver carefully to put my legs around his waist and then, at last, I lower myself onto his waiting cock. He slides in as easily as a hot knife through butter, and a thrill courses through me as I stretch to accommodate him.
The swinging movement angles our hips backward and forward against each other, allowing him to slide up and down, in and out, even though he has no control of his movement. I cup his face in my hands and lean forward to kiss him. But as my lips approach his, he twists his head to one side to bring his mouth to my ear.
“The ice is in the big ice bin, behind the bar,” he whispers.
I kiss him. I nearly loved Tobi a couple of years back, but I thought then that superheroes couldn’t afford to have love in their lives. Look what happened to Spider-Man. Now, though, I don’t know. The rush of heat that blossoms up through me as his tongue slow-dances with mine feels, at this precise moment, more precious to me than the ice-cold haul of diamonds downstairs. I remember how much I used to want Tobi when I wasn’t with him and how hard I had to work to suppress that feeling when I forced our breakup.
What a bloody little fool I was.
But that doesn’t solve the current crisis. Our grinding hips make the cradle swing even higher and with each arc, Tobi’s cock pushes deeper inside me. My nipples find friction against his chest, our teeth clash as our kiss becomes ever more passionate and his balls feel hard and ready beneath the soft rounds of my buttocks.
I know he’s on the edge of coming, so I drop a hand down between us to find my clit. It’s pulsing, a hot, hard pleasure button, and as my fingers work it with a familiar expertise, I’m able to time my orgasm to coincide with his. With a roar, he climaxes and I feel the heat of his cum jetting up inside me just as my own orgasm pulls my muscles tight. I clasp myself around him as he surges farther into me and we stay locked in rigid ecstasy until the swing slows down to a gentle sway.
“Babe, you are awesome,” Tobi sighs.
His cock slides out of me on a wave of spent semen and pussy juice, flooding onto his stomach.
“You too,” I say, clambering down from the rope cradle somewhat awkwardly. “I’d forgotten how good we fit.”
I pull on the silver spandex.
“Where you going, babe?” he says, his voice worried.
“To get some ice, hot stuff,” I say. “Got to check if you were telling me the truth.”
I pad downstairs with bare feet, smiling at the thought of Tobi, hanging helpless in the swing with his jizz drying on his stomach. The club’s pretty quiet now, just a few stragglers winding down their scenes and chilling out before heading for home. When the bar girl goes to deliver drinks, I slip behind the bar. I find the ice bin and rummage through it. At the bottom my hand lights on something hard and plastic. I pull out a rectangular Tupperware box and snap off the lid. $22.5 million in diamonds looking like a couple of cocktails’ worth of ice chips.
Choices.
Hand them in to Commissioner Thomas? Run away with Tobi and live a life of wealth and privilege? I’ve always been partial to the taste of crab.
Or…neither of the above?
Superhero? Antihero?
What’s a girl to do?
Vivi and the Magic Man
Kristina Wright
She was watching him. Across the bonfire that licked up to touch the stars and warmed the silent group of freaks and misfits, dreamers and schemers, he saw her watching him. She shouldn’t have been able to see him, not until he was ready to be seen. The others were oblivious to his presence; they rubbed their dry hands together and smacked their lips around tender bits of animal flesh. They were all but writhing in the delights of warmth and food and companionship. But not her. She seemed neither cold nor hungry, though she wore only a thin white blouse with an open bodice, hinting at a slight frame with generous feminine curves, and a long, ruddy skirt that seemed to be an extension of her body rather than an ill-fitting garment.
They called it Port City. A joke, since they were as landlocked as a desert and just as isolated. But it was a port city, a different kind. One that brought the outcasts and the vagrants from faraway places, in a quest for hope and escape, longing for a paradise they dreamed about when their rickety old wagon made off for some true port city, hawking magic cures and sensual delights until they were turned out and forced back here. Home. Planning and scheming for the next adventure, rattling their bottles and indulging in their vices. But not thi
s time. Oh no, this time they were coming with him. All but one.
She watched him knowingly, long dark hair lifting away from her face to stream like a banner over her shoulder. She had a hand tucked in her pocket, her fingers worrying something in its depths. An arch of an eyebrow, a dip of a shoulder and she was away to one of the wagons in this ragtag caravan. He followed her; he really had no choice. She was why he had come. She was the reason for this unplanned visit.
He circled the group to follow her, knowing instinctively which wagon would be hers. Brocade fabric, once ornate and expensive but now faded and worn, hung from a frame that creaked and sighed as he climbed the steps. The squawk of a bird greeted him as he dipped his head to enter and the hair on the back of his neck bristled at its human-like words.
“He brings death, ack! He’s the one!”
“Hush, little one,” he heard her coo in the dimness of the wagon. She bent down to feed the creature, an oddly colored bird about two hands high. Cerulean feathers gleamed with gold highlights, the broad head dotted with a tuft of orange fur. Instead of a beak, it had the muzzle of—what?—a dog, he supposed. Coyote, perhaps?
“Where did you get that—thing?” It wasn’t what he’d intended to say to her first, but it seemed innocuous enough.
“Xerxes? He came to me in my dreams,” she whispered, turning her steady gaze to him. “Just as I conjured you.”
She was delusional, of course. All the strongest ones were. Even from a kneeling position, he could sense the power in her. The bird-thing had it wrong, he wasn’t the one; she was. She was the maiden who blessed the barren, healed the Earth, made dead things grow again. Their little queen, a lesser prophet and savior. It was…sweet. He could indulge her for a little while and he would.
She was what he needed. What they all needed.
“You are the Magic Man,” she said. “I knew you would come.”
He’d been called many things, most of them unkind, few of them untrue. Magic Man was as good as any and better than most.
He nodded. “That sounds a bit…ostentatious. You may call me Dio. And you are Vivi.”
“Vivianna Magdellana Riestto Tyluchia,” she said with a curtsey, as if he were royalty come to visit. “But yes, they call me Vivi.”
“Victorious, virtuous, valiant,” he said, ticking off the other things they called her.
He deftly twirled a gold coin between his fingers, trying to remember from whence he collected it. Past or future, he couldn’t remember. North or south, east or west, it didn’t matter. He tossed the coin in the air, watching the gold wink in the light of a brightly colored lantern. She stood and crossed the narrow wagon while the coin still turned end over end. She snatched it from the air before he could catch it, slapping it into the palm of his hand with a sting and a smile.
“Vicious, violent, vile. Verily,” she said, her crystal blue eyes going dark, so dark, as her pupils expanded to take over the blue of her irises, then the whites of her eyes, until she was all dark hair and bottomless black eyes. Eyes he knew too well for he saw them reflected in every shiny service.
He felt as if he was falling, spiraling downward into those depths. Few things surprised him anymore, but this did. This sense of being off balance, out of breath, helpless. Lost. When was the last time he felt lost? Had it ever been so?
He put out a hand to steady himself, grasping her arm that felt hot to the touch. So hot.
“They do not say those things of you,” he managed finally, his voice a gasp of shock and pain.
Her eyes returned to normal, blinking at him with awareness and clarity, but not fear. “No, but they say them about you, Magic Man.” She shrugged and laughed. “Magic Man. Dio. You have other names, yes? Diablo. Devil. Death. Evil. Magic Man is the nicest of them all, and it suits you. You look like a man of magic, of hope. A promise of the future.”
He knew it was true. He’d styled himself that way. His hair, a rich chocolate brown rather than the clichéd black, was long to the point of being feminine, matching his narrow face and delicate features. The burgundy waistcoat fit his angular frame like a second skin, the matching felt hat was crisp and sharp edged, the charcoal trousers had been tailored for long legs used to walking slowly, deliberately. His calf-high boots were polished and shined, the unusual color of the leather from an animal not of this world. Spurs on their heels—gold from yet another forgotten tribute.
There was no need to dispute the truth, but he felt the urge to say something in his own defense. That in itself would have been amusing if it hadn’t also been troubling. “I serve a purpose.”
“As do I.”
Whatever he might have said was lost in the sound of raucous noise. The group gathered outside was drunk—not on spirits, though certainly he’d seen a bottle or three being passed amongst them—no, their minds and emotions were altered by something else entirely. Music started, the twisted mechanical notes of an ancient calliope starting up, followed by an accordion and something stringed, a mandolin, perhaps? No, something more ancient. Voices raised, uneven, discordant, but singing, ever singing.
The night comes to take us away
This is the night we shall pay
Our lives for one
Our lives for her
This we become
Go into the earth
Away, away
Away
The instruments played carnival music, dancing music, but the words the freaks sang were eerie and haunting. Death was here.
She took his hand, her fingers long and surprisingly strong, calluses on each pad. “Come on,” she said, her eyes flashing lavender and gold amongst the blue. A trick of the light or something of her own true nature, he didn’t know. That truth was difficult to admit. He knew everything. Saw everything. Had experienced past and present and future at once, but he did not know the truth of her. For a moment, no longer than the flutter of an eyelash, he was afraid.
He had only time to ask, “Where are we going?” before they were out from under the canopy of her wagon and down the uneven steps and into the fray of the fire and the music and the drunken, hungry crowd.
She laughed, a breathy, musical sound. “To dance! To dance our lives away!”
It was a silly thing to say, for if he knew nothing else of her, he knew she could not die. Neither of them could. But he was caught in the web of her hair and her skirt and her strange and mysterious spirit, and he let her whirl him about in a crusty dirt cloud kicked up by boots and bare feet and long skirts. A need for something hungered in him just as surely as it hungered in these citizens of the fringe.
He spun, recalling the last time he’d danced like this. A dance to the death, not his own. He blocked the memory from his mind as best he could and followed her lead, dizzy from the heat he knew too well, dizzy from her aroma wafting from her dampening skin. He was becoming drunk and that was a dangerous thing, dangerous for all of them. But he didn’t care. He didn’t care for he was here, with her.
Her too-long skirts swirled around her like a desert dust devil, the color of hay left too long in a pasture, the sequins and bits of glass stitched into the rough-hewn panels winking in the firelight with a gaiety that her own expression did not match. She wasn’t like the others, oh no, this one was different. She was special. In a circus of gypsies, outcasts and ghouls, she was uniquely special.
Vivi was not special in the way of Penwal, she of the angular face and serpentine tongue, with her long misshapen tentacles tucked beneath her own rotting skirt, the slippery tips swirling about in the dust, swiping at the others, capturing a bit of silver or perhaps a bauble in a moment of inattention. It would be returned later, or so she thought, for these were her brethren and to steal from them for real and true would be punishable by excommunication of a most painful sort. Now her tentacles tickled the narrow buttocks of a farm woman, plain except for the aura that hovered around her, blue and gray and mauve, darkening as she hiked her skirt up to midthigh, showing off flesh ravaged by age and
disease and demon claws.
She wasn’t like Blaskana, who whispered obscene things in an obscure language while she fed her milk-white breasts into a lover’s mouth and used her hands, all five of them, to bring ecstasy and death. Blaskana took a different lover every night, but would only bleed one dry each month. Her erotic skills were such that many were willing to play her version of Russian roulette for the chance to bed her. He recognized Lebba, she of the multiple genitalia, writhing on the ground before her mistress. The two were well matched, he thought with a nod.
There were the twins, Buu and Onett, who told fortunes and granted wishes. The fortunes they proffered were always dire, which led their patrons to request wishes of health and wealth. For a few bits of silver, the industrious twins would offer a perfume to turn the nose of the most fickle conquest or a handful of fool’s gold to line the pockets and attract true wealth. Their real talent was in telling the needy and desperate what they longed to hear—something exciting and dramatic to offset the dullness of lives led quietly and obediently in chains. They swayed in unison, two halves of a whole, their beautiful violet-tinted bodies with long, hanging phalluses that could woo a ship to the rocks—if there were a ship to be seen for a thousand miles.
There were the others, more names crowding his mind than he cared to recall, all of them different from Vivi. Nightmares. Monsters. Ghouls. His kind. Finley and Harris, tricksters and thieves who seduced everyone and each other alike, with a wink and a smile, and used knives to carve up the lot in sacrifice. Elenna, queen of the night sky and reader of the stars who could conjure erotic thoughts with just a thrust of her hip was now being serviced by Manitou, he of equine descent, heir to a throne of madness. Across the way and dangerously close to the flames was Jahone, who could swallow swords and spit fountains of fire. He swallowed other things too, Dio recalled with a shiver, his own arousal becoming thick and heavy in his trousers. Jahone crouched amid the dancing bodies, mouth open to receive a sword fed to him by Hillia, her rolls of ample flesh wriggling with delight as Jahone took the sword, his hands working between her plump thighs as he did. He watched them all with disinterest, knowing they were his for the taking when he chose. But it was Vivi who had brought him here; she was the reason he had been called to this place. She was not like the others. She was so much more.
