by Kerri Sharpe
Homework was a dry Martini and a blow job delivered with genuine affection. I liked to torture him with my mouth – I liked it when he nearly burst and just had to fuck me or he would die.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, please note that the Toy Palace will close in ten minutes. Please make your way to the checkout area.’
I don’t know how long I had been lost in aisles of Twinkleberries and plastic princesses.
Somehow my trolley had filled up with Daleks. I simply don’t know how they got there, by themselves, probably, knowing them.
If he doesn’t let me have these, I thought, I am going to pay for them myself. I’m not leaving this shop without a Dalek and that is all there is to it.
He was waiting at the till. The witch outfit was in a carrier bag.
I knew he was about to blow. It was my pleasure to press the button of that detonator. I love being annoying to men, I just do. I can’t help it. But only with the men with whom I am in love – the others? I’m not interested in playing with them.
‘Where have you been? I’ve told you about wandering off.’
‘So get me a mobile. Or tether me or something …’
‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that!’ He was furious. ‘The more I give you the more you take.’
The last time he had been so cross we had been in Harrods and I had made him wait for more than ten minutes by a handbag counter. He hated waiting. Who doesn’t? But he was rich enough not to have to queue for anything, and didn’t. Everything was delivered. Tailors came to him. His assistant arranged things.
Anyway the time in Harrods he dragged me into the ladies’ loo without taking any notice of the uniformed attendant, a plump woman in her mid-fifties. As she stared in silence at us, he bent me over the marble basin, lifted up my miniskirt, pulled down my pants and spanked me until I couldn’t sit down for a week. I remember seeing my face in the mirror, over the gold taps, a picture of flushed cheeks and pain and then wishing he would stop because it was too much, but he went on and on, a real good smacking so that you knew you had been punished and you would feel the heat throughout your lower body for hours. And then wetness …
The attendant didn’t bat an eyelid and calmly accepted a £50 tip.
Daddy had a huge erection and propelled me down the escalator and into the waiting car so quickly my feet hardly touched the ground. And bliss, over I went, over the back of the drawing-room sofa, knicks down, arse up, wet pussy, buttocks still red. Then his fingers in, him kissing me, dick in, filling me up. We came together in one of those rare moments of pure mutual understanding and physical release.
He pulled my hands away from the bars of the trolley where they were gripping so hard my knuckles had turned white. He didn’t even look down at the Daleks, of which there were about twenty, and one of whose voice-activated mechanism was chanting in the familiar (and well-loved) tone of threat.
‘Exterminate.’
‘Exterminate.’
‘Destroy.’
I smiled.
He glowered and his eyes flashed dangerously. ‘I’ve had enough of you.’
‘But …’
‘No.’
‘But I want …’
‘No.’
‘If you don’t let me have a Dalek I am going to scream and it is very likely that you will be arrested.’
‘If you utter another word, young lady, I will take down your pants and I will spank you here, on your bare bottom, with your shaved puss showing, and I will not stop until you beg me for mercy and perhaps not then …’
We faced each other in a sexual stand off, bluffing, seeing who had the nerve to go the furthest. It was usually me. He had a job, after all, with responsibilities and position. I am an ex-porn star. I could always go for it. My reputation and sales could only be enhanced by bad behaviour. Blimey. The biography alone had sold a million in America. I Stella. Hardback. Paperback. Lots of colour photographs. I’m very marketable, you see, being rampant and the holder of a 1.1 degree in philosophy. I can talk post-fem and Foucault and even the TLS likes me. Particularly after I slept with one of the (female) editors. Anyway, if I had been arrested my publisher would have been most gratified and would have assumed that I had hired a private publicist.
Daddy won. Well. I allowed him to win.
People stared as we exited and I was being told off.
Jim the chauffeur (navy uniform, gold buttons, peaked hat) was standing by the car in the car park smoking one of the Benson and Hedges cigarettes that his friend smuggled in from Belgium.
‘Successful trip, sir?’
Daddy didn’t say anything, but merely pulled me around to the bonnet of the sedan, pushed my head over it so that my face was down and my arse was raised towards him.
Jim ground his fag out with the sole of his immaculate black brogue and got in the driving seat where he watched through the window.
Daddy pulled my white shorts down. No knicks, bare arse, long socks, heels. He slapped my right buttock with the full force of his hard hand. There were no preliminaries, no more threats, no easing into it with erotic slaps – he just smacked hard. And then another on the left. I yelped.
‘Ow!’
I didn’t have time to assess the situation, to think about Jim watching us, or the risk of being seen. The pain seared into my arse and took all thoughts away.
Smack. Smack. Smack.
He hit me with the flat of his hand with all his strength for ten minutes. It was a hard spanking and I knew I had asked for it. He went on and on until he smelled and felt and heard my genuine supplication. I was wet and weeping and desperate for him. Ah me. There’s nothing like romance.
‘I’m sorry.’
He reached down and picked up the shorts, which were now on the ground. Then he hugged me and helped me gently into the back of the sedan where I lay with my head on his lap and my arse naked, hot and wet and tearful. He stroked my hair and kissed me.
Then he handed me the biggest Dalek of the range. Radio controlled, twelve inches, flashing lights, automated head movement, poseable gun and arm, blast sound effects, authentic voice mechanisms and illuminated eye.
‘You make your Daddy very very happy.’
Stella Black is the author of the Black Lace novels Shameless and Stella Does Hollywood. Her short stories have appeared in numerous Wicked Words collections. Her erotic memoir, Daddy’s Girl, was published by Virgin Books in June 2007
All I Have To Do
Nikki Magennis
REMEMBER HOME-MADE MIX cassettes? The ones that lovers used to make for each other, shyly choosing tracks that hinted at all their furtive desires without using the actual words. Songs that made you smile, made you swoon. A gift that you puzzled over, wondering if they really loved you or just wanted a little carnal adventure. One of those sweet little gestures that seems so innocent now, now we’re all grown up and too tired for games.
I found one today. With my name on the outside in red pen. The songs listed on the paper insert, your writing small and scratchy.
I remember getting it, that day in June, so long ago. The parcel in the post arriving with a delicious thud on the doormat. Before I was fully awake. Sticky with sleep, I bolted to the door to find what well-wrapped present you’d sent, heart fizzing with nerves, as hopeful and desperate as a kid on their birthday. I remember everything about that summer, even the light. It was as though even the sunshine had its own particular yellowy scent, the dusty stones warmed by sudden light that seemed to break open the city and promise endless, sweet freedom. I was living on air and white wine then, full of a vivid energy that carried me through my crummy office job and sailed me quickly from weekend to weekend. Yes, it was like sailing. A sea full of light, insubstantial water, a huge open vista of parties and dancing and smiling young men, eyes glittering with that electric look that meant sex.
Everything was bright, and everything was moving so fast you couldn’t touch the sides of your life. Dizzy. And in amongst the sweaty clubs and drunken grinding of a hu
ndred lost weekends, I met you, with your white smile. Your chocolate-smooth voice. Your fine, long fingers and your delicate frame, built to craft melodies. I could tell from the way you moved the air around you that you were someone who created things. You seemed to promise something vast and expansive. We danced without speaking, lurching slowly round the slippery floor in that way that lovers do, trying to press body parts as close to each other as possible, feeling wonderful bulges that begged further exploration. Hanging round the dark corners, interlacing fingers in a gesture that means: as I push my hands into yours, so I will fuck you. On a wave of booze, lust and music, we swayed. Later, five in the morning, with the glow of dawn chilling us quietly, you sang to me.
The Everly Brothers. A song like honey, like being wrapped in sweetness. You held my wrist and stared into my palm, like you were looking for something. While my hungry young pussy was clamouring for attention, something in the way you sang reached deeper, turned even my heart into a puddle. After the song finished the room seemed changed, as though the low timbre of your voice had altered the world. Made a space. Wide with possibility, heavy with intent. More than fucking, your singing promised that I would be utterly explored, utterly turned on.
And then you were gone.
There were phone calls, and I’d tangle the phone cord round myself like I was wrapping myself in your voice, coiling it round my ankles and wriggling. Letting you tickle my ear with your laughter. Listening to the sounds in the background, the landscape of your life, so distant and alluring. You sent letters too, written in the same red pen, sheafs of creamy paper tucked in parcels that had the aura of relics, the sense of you folding them and slipping them inside like little secrets.
You were so far away, so unreal, that my whole body ached for you. I became super-sensitive, shivering at the sound of your voice at the end of the phone, as though you were touching me just by speaking. I pictured you moving around in your city, making songs in your room, trying out notes on your keyboard with those gentle fingertips, striking the keys with that suggestive weight, that playful touch. I wished so hard to feel you touch me that way that sometimes I felt the slightest bump against my neck or shoulder, as though some phantom hand of yours had reached out somehow across thousands of miles and made contact. I’d jump a little, and feel the warm tingling spread over me, like the liquid swell of post-orgasm. Like you’d turned your thoughts to me and made a mysterious, psychic fuck happen in my head.
Meanwhile, through my obsessive haze of your voice and words, I was hurtling through real life. I had the hysteric, vivacious hunger you get from losing something before you’d even got to play with it. I found a club that played soul, the songs so loud they warped the air and made the floor thud. I stuffed myself onto the inferno of the dance floor, squirmed through the tightly packed bodies till I found a boy with a cute face or a tight ass, thumped up against them and danced like a whore. The music was bottled sex, dirty and funky and delicious. You couldn’t listen to it, only dance, and dance like you were coming right there on the crowded floor.
Shooting fish in a barrel. I’d always leave with a boy’s arm draped over my shoulder, sometimes two. A trail of phone numbers was scrawled on hands, on beer mats, on flyers. Lipstick and eyeliner smudged the numbers – sometimes made up, sometimes real. And then there were hotel rooms, and foreigners. Sweat and body hair and tights with holes ripped in them. The kisses of starving people, so hard they made your head spin. Clothes shed like confetti, clumsy manoeuvres towards the bed, the shock and wonder of a strange tongue in your mouth, love bites tattooed down your neck. I loved that cocktail of tastes, the concentrated essence of men and decadence that was so heady and strong it was better than drugs. Almost addictive.
It got so easy to spread my legs for strangers I felt like a wild beast – a connoisseur of cocks and body hair, tasting their aftershave like vintage wine as they shoved their hands eagerly into my more-than-willing pussy.
Those brutish, fast and messy nights would leave me tender and satisfied, my body bruised like a piece of fruit and my skin all humming with the friction of men’s hands, stubble, cocks. I’d wake on a Sunday morning and pass the day in a happy daze, the dirty sheets and hangover a glorious reminder of each new conquest. I’d lower myself into a scalding bath and let the water sting at my poor chafed parts. Relish the humming sensation of a body that’s been well fucked.
In the evening, you’d call. The phone would ring gently like a cat meowing, and I’d pick it up carefully, take the receiver and hold it to my ear and receive your ‘hello’ like a kiss of benediction, a warm salve to wash away the night.
* * *
It was a slight, nothing-much of a love affair even in the beginning – both of us too shy to say anything blatant. A whole ocean to keep us apart. The more sweet and distant you got, the more wild and lascivious my weekends became. Booze, fellatio, cocaine, threesomes. One long summer of lust. I felt like that mythical woman the sailors used on long voyages – made of rubber; flexible; indestructible. And all along our chaste, dreamy conversations, little gifts, a longing that stretched out like aeroplane trails over the blue skies.
I racked up enough lovers to develop a kind of world-weary demeanour. Became so careless I didn’t even try to remember their names, or cherish the battle scars. A skilled slut, I learnt how to lose people and how to enjoy even the slight ache of loss, the possible heartbreaks. I’d think with pride how my tits had been fondled by an army of men, enough almost to make up for the lack of you.
Time’s passed, since then; the inevitable seasons come and go. I grew tired of debauchery and moved elsewhere. Your phone calls quietly stopped.
I got a house, a job. Took care of my lovely pussy and decided I would no longer hand it out to every cute guy I happened to dance with. After a long while, I hung up my dancing shoes altogether. I got a husband.
No more soul clubs, no more gut-vibrating beats to get my mojo going. No more long-distance phone calls and foreign parcels. No more love letters. Instead, I pay my bills and post thank-you letters. My hair got longer, and these days I wear less make-up. I still love fucking, but sex has become more comfort than dazzle. A way to knock ourselves out before sleep, grabbing for that pleasant buzz from each other like eating a slice of heavy cake. All those exotic and horny young men, left behind like my sweaty nightclub dancing clothes. Life built up around me like a piece of self-assembly furniture, surprisingly graceful as it fell into place. As I learnt how to be a human being. I watch the world pass now from behind large clean windows. I smile at the shopkeeper when I buy milk; I ignore his glittering eyes, the raised eyebrow. It seems you become immune to all the little signals, kind of dulled. As though there’s a secret world of signals and scent and glances that gets left behind as you age, overtaken by more important languages. Subtler, saner conversations. All my friends got fat. We got money and started sagging at the edges.
Sundays these days I wake up with a clear head and take a walk in the park. I climb the hill and look down on the city, lying there like a vast jigsaw puzzle: mapped, tattered, understandably complicated.
I live within familiar patterns. Supermarket. Kitchen. Chop spring onions with a matchstick in my mouth to stop the tears. Hoover. Wash. Consider the wall colours.
Still, no matter how organised my life is, I have shelves overflowing with junk, cupboards full of things that lurk in the dust and murmur to me. Make me feel guilty.
So this afternoon I started, gingerly, pulling open old boxes and sifting through the detritus. On my own in the bedroom, husband collapsed next door under the papers, I unfolded pieces of ancient history, touching them quietly so as not to disturb the patina of age, the weight of forgotten history. I found stashes of old love letters, cringeworthy teenage adulation spilling from the pages. The thousand lies of old boyfriends, recorded forever on blue onion-skin paper. Kneeling on the bedroom floor with the sisal rug making ribbed dents in my flesh, I got submerged in all the preserved pieces of time past. St
ashes of photographs emerged. Pictures floated into my field of vision, images of a more colourful time. Those days I wore bright lipstick and listened to music so loud it infuriated all the neighbours. It was all brighter, harder, more desperate and more furious, days when you flung yourself into things. Your whole body. Your whole self.
I was lost in wry and pretty memories when I found that tape. Small and plain, it was a little bomb that set something off in me. All the blood rushed to my head and I felt my heartbeat pounding like I’d swallowed a clock.
Without making any more noise than I had to, I slipped it in my pocket and carried it into the study. Closing the door behind me, I walked straight to the Bang and Olufsen stereo and slid the tape in the slot. I settled in the big faux-leather chair and felt myself sink deep into the cushions. I put on the big padded earphones that smell faintly of aftershave. I pressed play.
There was a hissing noise, and it suggested the sound of that summer, the interference pattern that played as background music to all our coy telephone conversations. The sound of distance, of hunger and of unspoken, aching, aching longing.
When the piano chord struck, it hit me right in the chest, with a strong taste of bitter pleasure, like you’d laid your hand on me. That stereo is so perfectly tuned it seems that the music originates inside your own head, delivered straight to the most tender part of the mind. The part that responds instantly, overwhelmingly to sound. As though you were right next to me, close enough to touch.
And though the tape had lain untouched and silent for years it played with such ripe and vivid melody I could have wept.
Resonating, playing slowly up the scale, I felt your touch running over me again, fingertips brushing the side of my face as softly as new spring beech leaves. My lips were buzzing to feel you, to taste you. That lemon-tinged flavour of yours that echoed so faintly – I knew it was just on the edge of my tongue – then the song started, the words, and it was as though your voice was in my mouth, like a deep kiss. I might have expected to be moved – the bittersweet pang of long ago is one I’m accustomed to. What I hadn’t counted on was that I’d be aroused. Eyes closed, I felt the song as much as heard it, felt your voice like silk over me, creeping into my ears and lulling me with those sweet words. ‘Baby …’ you crooned, and it was pure hell, pure hell and pure heaven all at once, as you insinuated yourself into my body all over again. I felt the lack of those lost days so strongly it hurt.
