Poppet
Elspeth Potter
I snuck the poppet into the hospital like it was contraband. Probably, no one would care, but I didn’t want to argue with any idiot administrators. It wouldn’t interfere with any medical equipment; it was less hazardous than a cell phone. I had sealed it safely into a silver case with molded neoprene lining. If I opened the case, one would see only a silvery humanoid shape about the size of a Ken doll cut off at the knees. Come to think of it, I could say the poppet was merely a toy.
I wasn’t supposed to have it out of the lab but, in my mind, James and I were the lab, and I was going to visit James. My snug, low-necked top and flowing skirt proclaimed that. I had never been one to wear such blatantly feminine clothing, but I had begun to notice, since he’d been in the hospital, where his eyes focused most often and with the most interest. At the moment, I could do little enough else for him.
I was also wearing his favorite pair of purple panties.
The nurse at the burn ward desk looked up as I passed. “Morning, Jessamine,” she said. “Come to see Dr Lincoln again?”
“Yes,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound surly. She never called me Dr Farlow, and it was useless to be irritated over a friendly greeting. I was annoyed anyway, by everything that morning. I’d been up until four, trying to brainstorm ways to save the poppet project now that James’ continued absence was making things difficult. I was the brains behind linking the poppets to an individual’s control, but James had invented protean plastic and constructed the poppets themselves. Without him to provide a good supply of them for testing, we would soon have to stop the research. The protean plastic didn’t retain its malleability and shape-memory for more than a few months of use. At least, not yet. James would solve that. I had not a doubt in the world. But until then, we needed some use for the few we had, something that would make a large quantity of money quickly; neither of us wanted to consider selling the patents.
I felt, perhaps irrationally, that our future as a couple depended on the poppets’ success, just as our initial meeting had resulted from our early work on the project, when we’d discovered our mutual compatibility was physical as well as intellectual. I’d often thought James was more attracted to my brain than to my body. We talked to each other about science while eating, while walking to and from the lab, while having sex. He’d solved the first hurdle of the protean plastic while inside me, my legs hooked over his shoulders: one minute, furious thrusting, the next, I lay gasping on the bed while he scribbled formulae on the sheet. If he’d stopped for anything less, it’s true, I would have strangled him with my thighs, but I cared about the breakthrough as much as he did. We returned to business once he’d recorded his idea, and we finished up on the carpet so as to avoid smearing his notes.
James’ mind was a large part of what attracted me to him, as well – not so much that he was brilliant, but because he most valued in me the same thing that I most valued in myself. That and, well, I had to admit the sex was really hot. And so was our constant exchange of ideas. James pursued one as fervidly as the other, so that watching him in the lab could make me horny.
There would be no sex for us for a long while, though, and little conversation. James lay, as he had for two weeks, immobilized by pain. Ironically, the burns covering his legs from feet to mid-thigh, and searing his hands, were the result of an accident in the lab where he manufactured the poppets. The melted plastic had caused pain that no drug could sufficiently ameliorate, especially if he tried to move. His entertainment was therefore limited to visits from me and the video screen set into the ceiling. He had found himself unable to work, his second-favorite entertainment; sometimes being drugged out of his mind prevented him, and the rest of the time he was too exhausted. Worse, because of the steam and chemical smoke he’d inhaled, his doctor had recommended he not speak until he was completely healed inside. After the first awful days, we’d resorted to his using an eyeblink register so he could type, laboriously, on a pocket screen. I’d asked him how he occupied his mind, and he’d spelled out, in his usual laconic way, “Fntsy.” His eyes, a changeable pale hazel in his dark face, told what sort of fantasies they were. I hoped they helped.
I slipped into James’ room unnoticed by any of the inhabitants: James on his bed and his doctor and two nurses. I winced; I knew the signs. Another debridement to remove dead skin from his legs. I’d asked how that felt and he’d slowly blinked out three filthy words I had never heard him speak.
I took a chair by the window, where James could see me if he looked away from the doctor. I unsealed the poppet’s case. I’d brought it to cheer him up and remind him of all he’d accomplished. Perhaps I could distract him with it, even now.
This poppet was his. I’d keyed it to the chip that lived beneath the skin of James’ neck, and after I manipulated the poppet between my hands for a few moments, the link activated and he knew it was there; I could tell by the way the protean plastic softened and warmed, James’ brainwaves activating the power cell hidden inside the poppet’s flesh. It was strangely like holding him between my palms, as if I was connected to his brain as well. Or, I thought, blushing, as if I held not his brain but his cock.
Obviously, deprivation was getting to me.
Hoping my facial expression hadn’t given me away, I glanced over at the bed again. I couldn’t see James at all except for a bit of his arm and chest. The doctor and nurses still didn’t seem to have noticed my presence, or perhaps they were so used to me being there that it didn’t matter. I was, after all, listed as his next-of-kin.
The silvery poppet wriggled free of my hands. Such directed action meant it was under James’ conscious control. He was now focusing more on the poppet than his pain. Good. I watched with amusement as the poppet clambered upright on my knee and waved its little arms, silently expostulating. I guessed what he wanted to say: “Oww!” I swirled a finger over its knoblike head. It felt smooth and silky, like the most delicate of human skin, heightening my sense of handling James and not the poppet. If he experienced what I normally did with a poppet, he would feel my touch on it like a paintbrush against his body, except that the sensation would be all in his mind. It was better than nothing, better than not touching him at all.
The poppet responded to my touch with a rude gesture. I grinned and stroked the poppet again, wishing I could go over and do the same for James. Surely they would at least let me caress his hair while they worked on him, or hold his uninjured hand. He didn’t really like me to see him while he was in pain, but his resistance was wearing down as the days passed. The more I visited, the less he protested.
The poppet leaned against me, gradually softening against my stomach like a contented cat. Perhaps I should tell James to build in a purring function. I found the poppet’s fingerless hand and pressed into it with my fingertip. The hand reacted, clasping my finger in a suctioning kiss. Abruptly, I remembered James sucking my finger into his mouth, his expression seemingly blank except for his eyes, darkly intent on my face.
Involuntarily, I glanced over at him. I could see only his jaw in profile, clenched hard, before one of the nurses blocked my view.
I was unprepared for the poppet to suddenly struggle upright again and burrow underneath my blouse.
I clapped my hands down on my shirt’s hem, a reflex response, as if to prevent the poppet from escaping. As if it couldn’t crawl out the shirt’s open collar, or around the back, or out a sleeve. I glanced at the group gathered around James’ bed. None of them seemed to have noticed a thing, though the poppet was squirming like a bizarre alien pregnancy. Had he lost control of it?
The poppet poked me beneath my arm, and I writhed. No, he was in control. He knew exactly where I was ticklish, the bastard. And I’d been feeling sorry for him. He could at least have waited until we were alone before beginning this little game. I clapped a hand over the poppet, but it wriggled free easily, inching upwards until it clamped over my left breast, giving me the look of a silicone impl
ant gone horridly wrong. I was about to reach beneath my shirt to try and pry the poppet loose when it applied suction to my nipple.
Even through my bra, it was exquisite, softer than human lips. My breath came short and my belly went hollow with arousal. For a few moments, I forgot I was sitting in a hospital room; I was thrown back in time to a darkened hotel bedroom, the revelry of a scientific conference pounding through the door in sharp contrast to the gentle pulling of James’ lips. He’d slid one finger along my clit, lightly, so lightly. His eyes had gleamed in the semi-darkness, watching me.
We couldn’t be caught doing this. Besides simple embarrassment, if the scientific agencies learned we’d been using the poppets so frivolously, the little funding we’d achieved could be cut off, the project ended, both of us unemployed. Recklessly, I surrendered to it anyway. Really, who would notice, or care? Here, James was just another patient, and I was just his girlfriend.
In moments, I was trying hard not to pant audibly. All I wanted was more, more, harder, and also for the other nipple to be sucked. I got my wishes, as if James could read my mind.
When the suckling stopped, at first I didn’t even notice. My whole body gently throbbed, breasts down to toes. Gradually I began to wonder where the poppet had gone. The squashy, weighty lump of it had vanished – no, not vanished. Its body shape had flattened, spreading warmth over my chest and belly, like the glorious moment when two naked bodies first come into full contact. The poppet was a more subtle warmth, though, a gentle pulsation that rippled slowly downwards like a tentative hand on a first date, sliding down my belly, slipping beneath my waistband, and down beneath my skirt.
I dared a glance at the bed. One of the nurses had left. What had he seen, on his way out of the room? I flushed even hotter, thinking of it. The doctor and the other nurse blocked my view of James and were oblivious to my presence. I hoped. Or did I hope that?
I barely breathed. Faint sounds of a body moving against sheets – James – registered as pleasure, not pain. Perhaps it was. I would ask him later, after I’d told him he was a bastard. I would ask him if concentrating on the poppet had helped him with pain management. But the scientific aspect of the poppet was far from the center of my attention at the moment, as a sensation like a giant hand rippled and pressed over my abdomen, causing sympathetic ripples inside like precursors of orgasm. And the poppet was easing down between my legs.
It was pressing itself against me. The first time he saw them, James had laughed at the satiny purple panties I was wearing, before he became fascinated as I grew wet and the patch of fabric between my legs darkened in color and bloomed with musky scent. Now, the fabric felt hot.
Spread thin, the poppet rippled along my lower lips. I let my thighs fall ever-so-slightly apart to allow more access. James took advantage, fluttering the poppet like strokes of his tongue. Where had he achieved such control? He’d not had it before. Then I knew. Here. Hours to wait and nothing but fantasy, time he’d spent thinking. Thinking of me.
I looked down and saw the poppet coalescing again, pressing harder. I didn’t think it would manage to enter me; that sort of delicate manipulation would be difficult; but the thought and its possibilities made my heart pound. The poppet pressed warmly against my clit, sucking, sucking. It didn’t take much. Inexorably, my body tightened – only a moment longer – then released in waves, through which I felt the poppet clinging, all the touch James could give me.
When I could concentrate on my surroundings again, the room looked as if nothing had changed. Hurriedly, I tugged the poppet free of my shirt and concealed it between my hands. The protean plastic had cooled and was beginning to toughen. We’d used it up with all that enthusiastic subtle movement.
We’d have to work on that. James would be glad to have a project with which he could experiment while recuperating. I would be glad to help out, I thought, dreamily, as the nurse exited and the doctor made some encouraging comments to James.
It might not help our credibility to sell a poppet as a sex toy, but then we needn’t call it that. Toy would be enough. Another way for the disabled to interact with their environment, distract themselves from pain, all sorts of things like that. We could garner publicity and more funding, I was sure of it, and continue to explore the wondrous possibilities. Our future was secure.
Just Words
Donna George Storey
I told him words wouldn’t do it.
Not X-rated e-mails.
Or sizzling phone sex.
Or “You know how much I love you, babe.”
And certainly not “I’m sorry I have to give up three weeks of great sex with you to go to Europe to kiss client ass for my fat boss who will pocket all the profit and maybe if I’m lucky give me a measly bonus at the end of the fiscal year” – although a little honesty about what’s really going on here with his new job would be a step in the right direction.
What I needed was flesh. Heat. The music of his moans in my ear. His sturdy hands stroking my breasts. His finger teasing my asshole. His cock buried so deep inside my red, grasping mouth of a cunt, I didn’t feel hungry anymore.
He couldn’t take me there with just words.
To his credit, he did deliver the goods the evening before he left for London. It was just like the early days, when we spent whole weekends tangled together in the sheets, staggering out of bed only to get another bottle of wine or pay the pizza delivery guy. He made me come five times, twice riding his cock, twice on his tongue and once as he pinched my nipples and spanked my ass while I “secretly” rubbed my pussy against the mattress. I treated him to a postprandial crème de menthe blow job, along with my usual repertory of tricks to tease his tender parts. I liked the way he groaned and called out my name, but I really hoped our fuckfest would make him say other words.
Such as: “Fuck them, I’m staying with you.”
Instead, he stumbled off to the airport, with a bleary-eyed wink and a promise he’d e-mail every morning and night, and we’d have a nice long phone call – on the company’s dollar – every Saturday afternoon.
Still floating in the afterglow, I convinced myself that it was enough, that we could make it through three weeks apart with just words.
Until I got his first e-mail.
He wrote that he was really looking forward to our “date” on Saturday, but in the meantime he wanted me to refrain from any self-pleasuring activity – he actually used that lady-librarian expression – for the rest of the week. To make it all the hotter when he finally brought me off over the phone.
Yeah, right.
I gave a nasty little laugh, pulled my nightgown up to my waist, and jilled off right in front of the computer. Now and then I’d take a break and type a few more sentences of my reply.
Hey, lover boy. I think it’s time for a little confession. When you’re gone I keep myself plenty satisfied with the help of two tireless lovers. At night they take turns: One strokes my nipples into hard little points, while the other goes down to do the slip-slide in my wet pussy. Every morning, I wake up with a tight ache between my legs – don’t kid yourself, girls don’t rise at dawn, it’s just hidden away inside. So me and my fuck buddies do it then, too, and I’m feeling so sexy from my morning quickie I put on a short skirt and boots, or the jeans that push right up in my crotch to go to work at the bookstore. You’d never let me out of the apartment dressed that way, but you aren’t here to stop me, are you? I get so itchy I can’t help but shake my butt when I guide the grey-haired married men over to the finance section. And I always make sure the cute young guys need a book from the lowest shelf, so I can bend over and give them an eyeful of ass or cleavage, depending on the angle. Yesterday, I snuck off to the alcove by the poetry journals, where I let lover number one climb under my skirt, while number two yanked my sweater over my tits and tweaked and pinched them until I came so hard my head practically blew off. Moments after I straightened my clothes, a really hot guy – one of those ponytailed literary types – walked
in and gave me a long, knowing look. I’m sure he knew what I’d been doing. He could probably smell me, too. The idea got me so turned on I had another encounter in the ladies’ room. But maybe next time I’ll just fuck the guy against the bookshelf. The truth is, I’m having such a wild time I don’t miss you at all. Why would I give up all this fun for an hour of yakety-yak phone sex with you?
Think again, buddy.
I clicked the Send icon, spread my legs wider around the chair, and climaxed right then and there on my dancing finger. Loudly.
Sure, maybe I was taunting him, but it served him right. Besides, a lot of what I wrote was true. I did get turned on when I was working at the bookstore. I wouldn’t admit it to him, but it wasn’t so much the customers as the words that excited me, especially when they were packaged between the covers of a new book. I loved to stroke its crisp pages, then spread it open wide and bend to breathe in the perfume of fresh paper and ink. I rarely started reading it at the beginning – I wanted to take a book by surprise, slip right inside its soft middle. The good ones always got under my skin to lift me, transport me, to another time, another place, another body. A steamy sex scene would always send me straight to the staff ladies’ room for relief.
And when he was away, I usually did soothe myself to sleep with some action between my legs, then woke up horny and took the necessary steps to quench that fire, too. But busy as they were, my hands never quite stilled the longing deep in my belly the way he could do with his fingers, tongue, and cock.
And so, I had to admit, the last part of the e-mail was a bald-faced lie. I did miss him. Bad.
When I saw his reply in my in-box the next morning, I felt a twinge of worry that I’d gone too far with the insatiable-slut revenge fantasy. But he didn’t seem mad. In fact he apologized and agreed he had no right to put limits on my private activities, especially since he couldn’t help jacking off after he read the part about me playing with myself in the poetry annex. While he stroked his cock, he imagined he’d been the one to catch me with my hand up my skirt and pictured all the ways he’d “punish” me for it.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 7 Page 48
