A Most Unusual Gift

At his command she shimmied out of her panties and handed them to him.  Her cheeks flushed as he crumpled them in a ball, held them to his lips, and inhaled.  His eyes closed like he was enjoying a rose.  To him, her perfume was better and she loved knowing that.  She settled in, flinching at the cold vinyl against her bare ass.  He flicked on the headlights, lighting her way.  When she promised him anything he wanted for their anniversary, she didn't expect this.

"Get out," he said. She heard the excitement in his voice.

She tried to suppress her smile, knowing he was trying to be all big and bad, but it wasn't working.  She knew him too well; it'd been too many years.  She stepped out of the car, hiking her skirt as she sauntered towards the wall, her hips swaying the way they did when he first saw her.  The old car.  The stockings.  It was like she was a teenager again.  She felt the familiar warmth in the pit of her belly as he set up his phone on the dash.  She felt the moisture gather between her thighs as she pulled her skirt higher and leaned towards the wall, unsure what was next until she heard the car door.  Excitement speared her.  She tried to sneak a peak as his dress shoes clicked across the pavement, echoing through the alley.  His hands found her hips and he grabbed hard, digging in his fingers.  Claiming her in a way he hadn't in a while.

"Mine," he growled into her ear.  "I've never seen a finer ass.  And it's mine."

He reached down and ran a hand over her stocking clad calf then traced her garter with his rough fingertips.  A tiny moan rushed from between her lips and he smiled.  He knew they couldn't have very long, someone would stumble upon them.  He thought of his phone, of the evidence they could enjoy later as he unbuckled his belt.  He was so hard for her still after twenty years.

"Hands on the wall.  Feet apart."

He popped her ass with a sharp smack, making her gasp.  He reached around, dragging his fingers over her slit, brushing her clit until she whimpered.  Without preamble, he sunk deep into her pussy.  The moan he'd heard a thousand times sounded new.  Alive.

"Oh, God, yes," she muttered.  He smiled as they found their rhythm, her squeezing him tight in the glow of the headlights.  His hand on the small of her back pushed her  over further.  the damp chill air licked around their sweaty bodies.  Her cries echoed off the walls, like each grunt that sounded off with every thrust.  He was new.  She was new.  It was everything.

She tossed her head back the way she did when she came and he bit her ear lobe the way that made her crazy as he gave her all he had.  Slumped across her back he whispered private promises of more to come.

He was her gentleman again, lowering her skirt and escorting her to the car, thanking her with a searing kiss that curled her toes and made her want him all over again.  She climbed in and he placed a blanket over her legs, remembering now she wasn't just his lover but his best friend, the mother of his children.  She smiled at her gentle man, remembering the same.

"Happy Anniversary, baby." she whispered.

He said the same as their old car roared to life and they went back to their lives, video safely tucked away, her panties in his pocket.

They Always Come Back

I stumbled out of the sun onto the weather beaten porch.  There's no way this place should be standing after so long.  The parking lot was riddled with tumbleweeds instead of stacked with sedans.  The "Free Lunch Buffet" sign had faded from red to pink and hung by one chain from the eaves.  She'd been gone for years, of that I was sure.  And if she wasn't gone that picture sure wouldn't be the same.  I shook my head with a sad laugh and shoved open the door.  I had to see.

Haphazard Christmas lights were strung along  piles of nostalgic junk.  A silent jukebox winked at me from the back wall.  Vinyl chairs with torn seats gathered around stained tables.  At the back stood a bar with a woman behind it.  A smile warmed her pleasant face.

"Drink?"

I ran my hand over my face, trying to ditch the road-weariness.  I'd been on the road for hours before I saw the battered tin sign.  It was the same sign I saw fifteen years ago, the first time I saw the beautiful girl she was, not the exquisite woman behind the bar that she'd become.

"You were a Heineken guy if I recall."

"There's no way you could remember me."

"A girl always remembers her first."

He gripped the cold bottle in his hand and went back in his mind.  His buddies had kidnapped him for an impromptu bachelor party and brought him here.  The club was hopping back then.  Girls danced on a stage that seemed rickety even then.  The serving girls wore high heels and cowboy hats, not a stitch else.  He laughed and said he'd have a few beers and be out the door.  But then he saw her by the jukebox.  Dark curls framed her angelic face.  Her lush mouth begged for his cock.  Her body was perfection.  He had to have her.  He did, in the back of the bar on a beat up old sofa she gave him everything.  He'd never forgotten her.  Through countless rounds of self pleasure in the shower and the flaming destruction of his marriage, this girl never left his mind.  And she was here.

"I own the place now.  Not that it's much of a place.  Some of the girls still dance on Fridays.  I leave my clothes on these days."

"Sad shame," I said with a smirk.

She smiles and sets me up with another beer as I drain the first.

I remembered the first night.  The way she felt beneath me.  Her sweet taste.  The sound of her voice.  The music thumping in the bar as I pounded into her in the back room.  The reality that never lived up to her.

I shook my head and did what I came to do.  I took off my ring and left it on the bar, there in the place I'd lost so much else.  I never had a chance.  I wanted a repeat, a second shot, but her faraway look told me I'd never get it.  I tipped my bottle in her direction and threw a handful of bills on the bar.  it was the ring she grabbed.  I watched her pull a glass jar from the bar and toss it. It disappeared among so many others.  How many, I wondered.  How many like me had she ruined?

I stumbled back out into the sun, somehow finding peace.  At least she'd remembered me for a moment.  At least I hadn't faded in asking the masses.  I may have been her first. I sure as Hell wasn't her last.

Not like she was for me.

----

A day late and way too long.  Forgive me this one, it's a bit tablet.  More of a concept than a story.

Trading Places

She waited for me.  Well, almost.  Her black panties dangled from one delicate foot. Her strap slid off one perfectly curved shoulder.  This is what I'd prayed for when I'd given her the room key, but I never thought she'd come.

She was the aggressor.  She didn't do soft and delicate.  But this one time, because I'd asked her to, because of what was at stake.

She remained quiet as I took off my watch and lay it on the cheap, hotel table, then unbuttoned my cuffs and my shirt.  Finally divesting myself of my slacks, shoes and socks until I stood before her in my boy briefs and simple cotton bra.  She tensed as I knelt at her feet, my hands resting on her taut thighs.  I nudged them open, my eyes focussed on the fine wisps of downy soft hair that covered her mound.  She fought against me for a moment, but I raised an eyebrow.  It was my turn. And she was exquisite.  I nudged her thighs apart and pressed my lips to her sweet flesh. Her fragrance assaulted me like it did every time.  Nothing made me want her more.  I swallowed hard.  This time I would taste her.  I would give her what she gives me.

I could feel her uncertainty.  Her vulnerability.  I glanced to the costume of her clothes that I had worn and understood.  Her watch.  Her slacks.  And now she lay bare to me the way I have a hundred times to her... but to me it comes easy.  She was the aggressor.  She didn't do vulnerable.

I traced my tongue along the seam of her pussy, gathering droplets of her nectar like honey.  She squirmed beneath my kiss.  Gasped.  Moaned.  I splayed my fingers across her soft white belly and held her down, deepening my kiss.

"Stop," she says.  "I can't do this.  I can't take it."

"Hush," I whisper.  "Be me. Just once, let me make you feel good."

A whimper. A twist.  Her head rocked back as I explored.  Tasted.  My hands rose to her full breasts and she thrust them against me.  Once.  Just this one time.  A tear slipped down my cheek as a flood of moisture hit my lips.  She said my name as she came.

She came for me.  She actually came.

"Stop," she said, curling on her side. 

Tears flowed freely down her face.  In ten years I'd never seen her cry.  Ten years and I'd never tasted her.  Seen pleasure twist her face..  Seen so much pain.

"I'm not you.  I'm me."

I took a deep breath, her taste still on my tongue.  The first time in ten years and it had to be the last.  If I loved her, I had to love her for who she was and nothing more.  Quietly I slid the boy shorts from my hips and handed them to my wife.  My lover.  My all.  I laid down beside her and told her the only thing she needed to hear.

I'd never ask again.

In Case of Emergency

She was in the tub, as expected.  What I didn't expect was being rendered breathless.  Incapable of taking action. This should have been easy.  I slip in while she is relaxing in the tub.  I quickly slip the cloth over her mouth and control her brief struggles.  I gently push her under the water and watch for air bubbles.  Pay day.  Yet this... her dark hair spilling over the rolled rim of the claw foot tub. Her small, high breasts peeking through the white bubbly foam.  I didn't expect that it was her.

"It's only fitting," she said.

:"I swear. I didn't realize it was you."

She smiled a sad, wise smile and I was uncertain that she believed me.  I was uncertain that I believed myself.  I pulled my gun out of the inside pocket of my jacket and laid it on the back of the toilet tank.  Her eyes opened wide.  It wasn't my usual style.

"Emergancies only," I explained.

I didn't want to ask my question.  I didn't want her answer.  Yet, I couldn't help it.  I moved to sit on the edge of the tub, removed one glove, and reached beneath the water to trace a single fingertip down her arm.  Her entire body tensed.  I can't say that I blamed her.  Mine did too.

"What... what did you do?"

She closed her eyes and whispered, "I slept with another man."

The pang in my chest was that it wasn't me.  Not anymore.  I waited, knowing that there was more.  They'd both cheated.  I half expected that the boss knew about she and I.  Maybe he did.  Maybe this job was his justice.

"His brother," she continued.  "I fucked Johnny.  That was the end.  I've been waiting for you ever since."

My cuff dipped into the water as I traced her breast.  I tugged on her nipple the way that always used to make her whimper.  Her eyes closed and her breath escaped in a rush.

"You're here to kill me," she says.

My mouth opens, but the words hang on my tongue.  I can"t lie to her.  I never could; that was the problem.

"Get out of the tub."

"If you don't kill me, he'll kill you."

I know this deep into my bones.

"Get out of the tub.  Please.  Let me touch you.  Let me kiss you.   Please... one more time."

She does.  Her small, wet body was in my arms.  Her tongue slid along mine, sparring and dancing.  I palmed her small breasts and took her nipples in my mouth.  I did everything that she loved.  And for that moment, I loved her the way I used to.  I loved her until she moaned around my cock.  Until she whispered my name as she came.  Then I loved her again.

I collected myself, tugging my glove on, knowing I'd still smell her on my fingertips when I took it off again.  I picked up my gun.  She didn't flinch this time.

We walked to the hallway, where she lifted on her tiptoes and kissed me again.  She saw it.  I gave myself away.  I single tear fell down my cheek.  She wiped it away.

"I'm glad that it was you," she said.

"Me too."

I stepped back, leveled the gun, and pulled the trigger.  There was no moment of shocked outrage on her face.  No false hope.  Only a tear to match my own.

I stepped over her body and out of their lives, tucking away my gun and locking the door behind me.  I shook my head.

"Emergencies only."

Glory Days

He held the bong between his naked thighs.  I loved to watch his dick twitch as I fit my mouth to the blown glass tube.  I'd pull the bowl and take a hit and he would pull my mouth up to his.  He loved a good shotgun.  I wrapped my hand around the glass and pulled it from between his thighs.  My knuckles grazed his cock and he flinched.  My mouth curled into a slow smile.

"I know what I'd like to wrap my lips around."

I leaned in as he reached up, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.  That's when I knew that I loved him.  Unfortunately, I had loved someone else first.  So had he.  None of that mattered that first night.  I took him between my lips and the world fell away.  It rained that night.  We lay wrapped tight in each other in the back of his old bus.  The roof took a good pounding and so did I.  But then I cried.  I laid in his arms and wept of the thought of losing him.  There was nothing we could do.  

His body moved over mine and eased my sorrow.  His touch was a symphony that drowned out the rain.  He brought me over and over.  In the morning I left his bus and returned to my world with the promise of next year.  It happened.  It happened each year for four years.  I left my life, he left his, and we met at the music festival.

I waited in our spot the fifth year.  I squealed and clapped as his bus pulled in.  He kept driving.  He wrapped around and parked a little ways down. He wasn't alone.  She slid from the cab and grabbed the baby.  I sat and watched until he saw me.  All he did was shake his head, but I saw it.  I saw that it hurt him, ending things that way. 

I came back the following year.  Even the year after that.  He didn't.

Now here I am, waiting for him again.  A chance meeting fifteen years later.  I was buying concert tickets.  He was buying a CD.  Same band.  He wasn't wearing a ring and mine was long gone.  I hear a familiar sound and laugh as the old bus rattles into the parking lot.  I felt it again when I saw him, that old spark.  The one that still made me blush when I recalled that first night.  He walks in and a I smile.  I always thought those were our glory days.  He smiles back.  I was wrong.  I think these will be.

The Hunger

His eyes may be different, but the hunger is the same.  He watches from a distance.  It's the other him that she watches for.  This, this flimsy handsome body is harmless.  As harmless as hers.

She made her way through the desolate woods.  It was time to take her basket to Grandma's.  She was warned.  Her step father warned her with his own wolfish leer to avoid strangers.  Stay pure.  Fear the wolf.  She did.  She feared him every night.  These woods, they were barren.  Creepy.  But the wolf she feared the most wasn't in them.  The wolf in the woods was a great shaggy beast with powerful fast claws and sharp flesh-tearing teeth.  He snarled and howled.  She would know him by the hunger in his gaze.  She laughed to herself.  No, she knew real predators.  This mythic beast instilled no fear in her.

He skulked behind the trees, watching.  Waiting.  She slowed.  With a furtive glance, she removed her cloak with a flourish and spread it out on the ground.  Grandma wouldn't miss just one currant roll.  She sat on her cloak for a nibble.

He wore simple clothes.  Modern.  Unobtrusive.  It was part of the magic.  Whenever he turned, he kept his clothing with him.  He was just a young man.  His eyes maybe different, but the hunger was the same.  Not the same.  As fierce, but not the same.

She pulled out a second bun.  She saw him watching, this handsome young man.  He must be hungry.  Starving, really.  She held out the roll and he crept close, forgetting his form.  She thought him odd.  Isolated. Handsome.  He took the food from her hand with a smile.  She's done this before.

She shook her head.  Handsome.  Beautiful.  Hunger.  she kissed him.  He tried to walk away, but there was no way now.  Not when she bared her her ripe ivory breasts with nipples like juicy cherries.  Not when he could sink his teeth into her plump ass.  She was warned.  But it was her that howled as he took her on the red cloak.  Her touch on his human skin.  Her wet heat around him.  A tangle of frail human flesh.  a mess of hunger and need.  But only she was warned.

The knife was quick.  A flash of silver.  His warm blood on her hands.  Shock and pain twisted his face.  At least she'd let him cum, she thought.  She pushed him off her to watch him change.  His nose elongated into a grey muzzle.  His skin covered with thick, grey-black fur.  His beautifully powerful limbs curled into a silent leap.  She wiped the blade on the ground and fixed her clothes.  She gathered Grandma's basket.

She shook off a brief sting of sadness.  No, she wasn't afraid.  She knew real predators

The Canvas

Something had to give.  She'd grown so weary of her dispassionate gaze and her insidious perfection.  It wasn't always like this.  They'd been something to one another once.  She slipped her own blouse down over her arms, mirroring the black coat of her former lover.  While she continued and let her blouse slip to the floor, she left the other woman's arms trapped at her sides.

"You will not be placed on a canvas today," she said.  "You will be the canvas."

The artist grabbed a soft sable brush and dipped it into a glob of cerulean paint that matched the model's heavy-lidded eyes.  She began a long line from the hollow of her flawless collarbone and extended between her breasts.  Her expression was unwavering.  Her own hands trembled as she gripped the brush.  She remembered when the brush was her fingertips, when the paint was the tip of her greedy tongue.  She swirled her brush around the globe of one breast, then the other.  Her model remained as still as an actual canvas, though goosebumps bloomed across her ivory skin.  She took a deep breath and dipped her fingertips in another pool of paint before sweeping them in an arc across her abdomen. A deep ache registered in her gut as she recalled the silken flesh below.  How it felt beneath her fingers.  Her sweet, smoky taste.  She was trying so hard to pull out something in her former lover, but there was nothing.  Stroke after stroke across her skin, and nothing came at all.  Finally, she uttered her name.

"Annabelle..."

With a barely perceptible shudder, the model replied, "Are we done?"

"Yes.  We're done."

The brush clattered to the floor.  Tears filled the artist's eyes.

The model slowly walked away.