by Naomi West
I giggle, not laugh: my first giggle since I was sixteen, as far as I can remember. I sip my wine and cover my mouth. I find it difficult to look at him, because looking at him pushes my mind into overdrive. I finish my second glass and he drains his first. My head is starting to get woozy, hazy, soft and blanket-like.
“I’m trying to figure something out,” he says.
I look at him, eyebrow raised.
“I’m trying to figure out why I’m not seeing you on billboards or on the Internet or anything like that.”
“I have a page,” I say. “Five-hundred and twenty-two followers, not that I check it every day to see if it’s gone up, and not that I get incredibly upset if it goes down.”
“But you’re so damn good. I’ve gotta be careful here, ’cause I don’t usually drink wine and I’m in danger of coming across like some fanboy, but damn, Cora. Damn.”
“Damn is a good compliment.” I smile, pouring another glass of wine. Then I pour one for Logan. Our hands touch. Electricity transfers from his hand to mine. I feel the hairs on the back of his hand, tickling me, a little static, a little preview of what could be if I let myself go. The hunger inside of me rises, grows larger, sprouts teeth; it wants to bite and devour. He senses my lust. I read it on his face. He knows how I’m feeling and holds his hands beside mine a moment longer than is necessary, eyes locked on me.
I remove my hand.
“So you’re on the noble artist’s road, then.”
“Is there any such thing?” I ask. “I wish there was. I wish I could feel like I was making steady progress toward some Holy Grail or whatever. But sometimes it just seems like I’ll spend the rest of my life singing in dive bars, and the worst part is I don’t even have the rest of my life. I have the rest of my twenties and maybe some of my thirties before no one will want to sign me.” I point at my face. “Once this ages, you know what happens.”
“Being a woman must be so hard.” I think he’s being empathetic, but then I see his wicked grin. “I really feel for you. I might just cry because having a vagina is so difficult.”
“You’re an asshole!” I slap him playfully without thinking. He laughs. I giggle again. Something sparks between us, something unidentifiable, but it definitely carries lust with it. Lust everywhere: lust in the walls, lust in the floor, lust in the ceiling, trapping us.
“I am an asshole,” he agrees. “Does that bother you?”
“I don’t like assholes. Charles was an asshole tonight.”
“Are you saying I’m like that asshole?”
“Okay, you’ve got me. There are many different types of assholes.”
“What category do I fall into?”
“Maybe the acceptable asshole type,” I say. “You’re an asshole on the threshold of being a prick.”
He moves across the couch, sitting so close to me I can once again feel the heat emanating from him, a heat which caresses my skin and makes me wonder what it’d be like to have other parts of him pressed up against me. I swallow: wine and nerves. I try to look at him bravely but I suspect my lips tremble. I set my jaw.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Sitting.” He drains his wine. “Drinking. You can tell me to move if you want, Cora Ash.”
“I know I can. I can also slap you across the face or throw this wine at you.”
He nods. “Will you?”
I bite my lip, release it at once. He’s casting a spell on me, just like the Norse seidr, ancient practitioners of magic who could accomplish all kinds of arcane feats. Logan’s arcane feat is to get a woman who has sworn off men to be irresistibly attracted to a man, and all because of casual curly hair, a strong jaw, piercing white-blue eyes, and muscles honed to sculpted perfection. And his cocky attitude, which is perhaps the most attractive part of all of him. His grin, the light dancing in his eyes. Looking at him, I get the sense that he could give me the immense pleasure which most men are incapable of.
I realize it’s been several seconds since he spoke. “No,” I say. I sip my wine. The elixir blossoms in my belly, warmth spreading its smoky hands throughout me.
“Okay then.” He places his wine glass on the coffee table next to a book with a picture of a longship on it, and then brings his hand to my knee, laying it on me firmly. “What about now?”
My lips tremble like mad, my hands just the same. I try to exert some control over my body but my body isn’t listening, and I don’t want it to listen. The last thing I want from it is to listen. Suddenly my defenses seem cruel. Why should I withhold this man from myself? Why should I forgo those immense muscles because of a name change? It’s not like I have to marry him. I can tell myself it was the wine, the nerves, the set, whatever ... a thousand excuses, and I can wield them all if need be.
“No,” I whisper, placing my wine glass next to his and sitting up so that our faces are close.
He moves his hand slowly up my thigh, so slowly that in almost half a minute he’s only at my inner leg.
“Kiss me,” I say, voice breaking just a tiny bit.
“Maybe I like seeing you hungry for it.” His breath touches my face.
“Yeah, but I don’t.”
I lurch forward, pressing my lips against his, and in my mind I see the well-built walls crumbling like dust, billowing clouds of dust rising into the air and miniature mushrooms skating along the ground. I will them to dust, and in their place I bring pleasure. I bring a clit which burns and nipples which are so hard all I can think about is Logan sucking them. Our kiss is immediately passionate. Maybe it’s the wine or just how attracted we are to each other, but there is no fumbling like I’ve experienced before. It is not a graceful kiss—our teeth click together, our lips smack—but it is a kiss full of pent-up energy. We press our mouths against each other, eating each other, our tongues meeting in the middle and stroking as though we are starving.
Then he breaks it off, looking down at me. “I need to know that you want this,” he says. “Because you’re so damn sexy I’m about to turn an animal on you, Viking lady, and I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop.”
“I want it,” I say, body screaming out for him. “I want it fucking badly.”
He darts his hand down between my legs, no longer teasing me. Eyes still locked on my face, watching every change of expression as though taking as much excitement from my pleasure as from his own, he rubs his hand up and down the crotch of my jeans. The rough denim scrapes against my panties, the panties against my clit and my lips, all of it squashed in my jeans. I close my eyes, listening to my moaning rather than moaning it. The raspy singing fills the room and he rubs me faster, harder, pressing down with such pressure that there’s some pain from the rough fabric. I grind against his hand, propping my hands on the arm of the couch and moving my hips in a circle.
“Ah, ah, ah ...” I sigh, the memory of celibacy and good-girl behavior seeming distant now.
I open my eyes and look down at his crotch. He’s rock-hard, as hard as a sword hilt, as hard as a man ready to fuck raw, and fuck mad. I press my hand against it, gripping it through the denim, feeling the immense size of him. It’s difficult to tell in the denim but he must be ten inches, maybe bigger, pressing so hard against his zipper that the button looks like it might pop free. I undo the button and pull down the zipper and then wedge his underwear under his balls. His cock springs up, and it’s Thor’s hammer: huge, powerful. A vein runs down one side. The helmet bulges.
“Oh, fuck,” I moan, gripping his cock and moving my hand up and down to his balls and to the tip. Pre-come smears my palm and even that is sexy. I rub the pre-come up and down, up and down, watching his cock as it twinges and bulges. He keeps rubbing me, his fingers pressed hard against my clit, crushing it.
I stand up and so does he. Both of us know what to do. We don’t discuss it. We don’t say anything. We just undress ourselves and each other, eyes locked the entire time. I pull his T-shirt over his head and he yanks my jeans down around my ankles. In a matter of seco
nds, both of us are naked. He looks magnificent, dangerous, and handsome all at once. He looks half-wild with his longish hair. His muscles are even more intimidating without clothes covering them. His chest is tight, his belly solid and square, ridges marking it, his pubic bone a triangle from his fatless belly to his cock, and his cock is huge, pointing almost straight up: a ten-inch rod of power. He studies me as closely as I study him, taking in my beasts, my pussy with its tuft of brown hair, my legs with a small gap in the middle.
“Fuck.” He growls. “Fuck,” he repeats.
“I thought that was the idea,” I say, panting with anticipation.
He leaps forward and grabs me by the hips, half-tackles me to the couch, and then falls to his knees before me. “I need to taste your fuckin’ cunt,” he snarls. “I need to feel you come, Cora.”
He has me on my back, thighs gripped in his hands, legs parted. He brings his face to my pussy and licks my clit, brushing his warm tongue against it. I reach down and slide my hand into his hair, gripping fistfuls of it, pushing him closer to my pussy. He goes berserk on me with his tongue, really eating my pussy, gnawing on it, making out with it. I close my legs around his head and throw my hands back. My pussy tingles like crazy, and then the tingling gets louder and louder until all I feel is a monolithic heat, like a hot iron poker buried inside of me. I close my eyes and see red, and all at once it’s like something is going to release; everything is going to release.
“Fuck, fuck ...”
I bite my lip as the orgasm tears through me, starting as a tiny point in my clit and then erupting like the Big Bang throughout the rest of me, stars of pleasure through to my toes and my fingers, my nipples and my belly: my belly most of all, because the heat is most intense there. I wriggle on the couch, unable to stay still as wave after wave of star-hot pleasure consumes me, cheeks flushed, lips feeling like they might burst. I think I draw blood from my lip. I’m not sure. I don’t care. Then it’s over, and I’m left deflated, drawing in desperate lungfuls of breath.
Logan stands up, staring down at me with crazed eyes. “Turn over,” he says in a commanding tone. “Get on your hands and knees.”
From any other man, that would seem absurd. But from Logan, it’s anything but. A thrill runs through me, reinvigorating me. Fresh sexual energy infuses me and I do as he says, rolling over and propping my hands on the back of the couch and my knees on the cushion. I can see the front door; there’s something wildly dirty about that. I stick my ass out, baring my pussy for him, feeling myself open up.
He brings his hand to my ass, gripping onto my flesh, pressing my ass cheeks together. “You have no damn idea how fuckin’ sexy you look right now.”
“Fuck me, baby,” I moan, wriggling my hips from side to side. “Fuck me. Hard.”
“You can take it hard?”
“Yes. Yes.”
His brings his cock to my wet pussy, pressing the head against my hole and pushing so that he spears inside of me, so big that my first instinct is to move away, to flee. But then I push back against him, grinding down the length of him, and my pussy opens up and warmth floods into me. His cock is so massive, it presses down on my sweet spot: that spot which is secret and deep and the source of so much pleasure. It presses down on it with power for a long time. Logan just holds his cock there, and then he growls, “Are you sure you can take it hard?”
“Yes!” I cry.
“All right.”
Logan Birch fucks me harder than I have ever been fucked, so hard that I have to reevaluate what it means to be fucked hard. He grips onto my ass cheeks and rams into me over and over, each thrust harder than the last, my ass cheeks pressing flat against his stomach muscles. I tear at the couch with my fingernails, with my teeth, bucking in time with his thrusts. We fall into a rhythm at once, both of us losing ourselves in the frantic motions of screwing. I think about the biker I saw watching me during my set, and how that biker is inside of me right now, and it seems so naughty, so stolen, so illicit. The pleasure doubles, trebles, because of the sense of danger that comes with it. I grind up and down his massive length, feeling every stone-hard inch of him.
He moans and I scream into the couch, both of us utterly captive. I push all the way back on his cock until I feel his balls squashed against my clit, and then push back even harder, taking all of him inside of me. He moans and growls and makes animal sounds which tell me he’s struggling to contain his pleasure, and I keep grinding, and he keeps fucking. Warmth rises all through me. It must be ninety-five degrees in here anyway but it feels double that, so hot my head boils and thought becomes impossible. I close my eyes, seeing red, and then black, and then nothing at all. I don’t see or think; I only feel.
He pounds into me so hard that I collapse forward and almost fall. I would fall, but he catches me, wrapping his arm around me and cupping my breast as he drills inside of me. The orgasm approaches, and then all at once it is on me, leaping like a wolf. The orgasm tears at me with its teeth. I gasp, and then I can’t breathe.
“Fu ... fu ... fu ...”
“Come for me,” he commands. “Come hard.”
“I am!” I scream.
I spill come onto his pounding cock, my pussy going tight and my head flooding with ecstasy. I twist my hips, grinding his cock at the perfect angle, the orgasm coming in waves that unleash one after another quickly, pleasure spiking and then subsiding and then spiking again. I bite down so hard on the couch, I tear a chunk out of it, but I don’t care. All I care about is the orgasm, consuming me. I reach back and touch his belly, feeling the strength of the abs, pumping tirelessly. His hand grips my ass so hard I’m sure there will be a red mark there. He spanks me, and that does it: another explosive orgasm rends me, splits me in half, cutting me down the middle and sending pleasure flooding to both halves. I moan one final time and then lie still for a moment.
I rise once my orgasm is completely gone, my pussy still buzzing with the after-feeling, and buck and twist on his cock, hungry for his come, wanting him to experience the same pleasure I just did.
It only takes a moment, because he’s been withholding himself for me. “Fuck,” he grunts, leaning forward and biting into my shoulder, thrusting deeply one final time and spilling himself inside of me. “Jesus fucking Christ.” He slides aside, and I slide away, and for a second we just sit like that.
Later we order food and fall asleep together in front of the TV. For a short while it’s almost like we’re a couple. But as my eyes fall closed to the infomercial playing at eleven p.m., I can’t but feel like it’s a mistake to let him stay here, that it sends the wrong message. If I want to keep my distance I should wake him up and ask him to leave.
But the crook of his arm is too warm and my belly is too full of pizza.
Chapter Seven
Logan
I wake around half past six. Maybe it’s my one-night-stand instincts kicking in. This is usually the time I’d sneak out like a real piece of shit, not wanting to deal with all that morning-after bullshit, all those questions: “Do you want to stay for breakfast? When will we see each other again? Last night was fun, wasn’t it?” But when I look down at Cora, half-naked, with her pert breasts rising toward her nipples, I find I don’t feel like leaving. I’ll wait until she wakes up and I’ll let the questions come. I’ll let events run their course. If that means some scary intimacy, maybe I can deal with that. I don’t know what’s come over me. I just can’t get that water-snake dancing out of my head, or that water-snake sex, the way she shifted and writhed and twitched as though caught up in some ancient ritual.
I go into the kitchen and make myself some coffee, checking my phone as I wait for the water to boil. I don’t have any texts or calls, which is good. Lately it seems like all I do is wait for texts or calls from the club or Mom. The club means violence, and maybe bloodshed. And Mom might just mean the same one of these days. I push that thought away and stir the instant coffee into the water, pour in some milk and then take a sip. I feel oddly comfor
table here. I’d never dream of swaggering into the kitchen in any other woman’s apartment and—
“What is that?” she asks, standing at the kitchen divider. She’s thrown on her T-shirt but not her bra; her nipples poke through the material. I try to look at her face but damn, it’s hard.
“Coffee,” I say, lifting the mug as if that makes it more obvious. “I’ll buy you a new jar if it’s that important.”
She’s looking at me like I’ve just gone into her bedroom and sniffed her panties. “You just made yourself a mug.”
“Yeah. I wanted coffee. I didn’t shit in your bathtub.”
“You think you can just make yourself a mug without asking, then.”
“Well, you know, I figured since I’d been balls-deep inside of you, we were past the asking-for-coffee stage. Apparently I was wrong.” I can’t hide the annoyance in my voice, though usually I would. I try and summon my usual coldness, but it’s nowhere to be found. Surely she can’t bend over, bounce on my prick, and then talk to me like I’m scum on her shoe.
“Wow, what a lovely way to put it.” Even the way she holds herself is argumentative, shoulders back, lips curled. I can’t tell if she really hates me or if she’s just trying to. “I don’t think it’s very polite to go into someone’s kitchen and make yourself coffee without asking.”
“Then I don’t know what the goddamn rules are, princess, ’cause the way I was raised, if you’re comfortable enough to fuck someone, you’re comfortable enough to offer them some coffee. We shared a pizza last night. Do pizza and coffee have different rules? Maybe you ought to draw me a list. It seems pretty damn complicated.”
“It’s my coffee!” she snaps.
I laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “Fair enough.” I pour it down the sink, even rinse out the mug and place it on the draining board. “Are you happy? Maybe you’ll be able to sleep easy now.”
