The Empress's New Lingerie and Other Erotic Fairy Tales (2 page)

For “Lawrence Parks,”
who has given me the gift of eroticism,
and for “Lulu,” who has blessed
me with fairy tales.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Shaye Areheart for her praise (and her patience), to Andy Mayer and everyone at becker&mayer! for their continued support (and their patience), and to Barbara Hogenson for being the kind of agent I am proud to call a friend.

…there was a young girl who lived with her mother near the edge of a forbidding wood. She had talc-white skin, lips the color of apricots, and a blazing head full of curls so coppery she was known as Little Red Riding Hood. But as she grew from a child into ripening womanhood, the heavy, shifting dunes of her breasts and the swell of her rounded hips belied the name “Little.” She became simply Red.

The time had come for Red to enter the dark forest and venture forth without the company of her mother or any other protector along the path.

“You must carry these succulent treats to Grandmother's house,” said her mother, handing the girl a laden basket. “And mind you, don't spill your treasures into the lap of some stranger along the way!”

Red started to protest, but she was hushed by a volley of teasing tongue-clicks.

“Uh uh uh, don't you deny it, young lady. I've seen the way your hips sway when you walk to market. I've seen the way you yield to the caress of the wind on your thigh or the sting of icy water on your hard little nipples when you bathe in the stream. These days you are about as likely to stray from the path of propriety as any wicked girl in the world, are you not!?”

It was true. Ever since she'd become Red she found herself unable to control certain impulses that made her blush with shame. The changes in her person—the tightening inward of a cinched waist in contrast to the sudden, unruly voluptuousness of belly and chest; the appearance of a natural and exotic perfume that rose from the folds of her breasts and armpits; the weighty, drawing, languid sensation (almost pain, but more exquisite) when, each month, her engorged womb filled and then emptied in a terrible, rhythmic flow—all these forced upon Red a new and disturbing sensitivity that plagued her day and night. She found herself suddenly aware of her own firm buttocks, her purple-dark slit and arching spine, until she had to seek private places behind the larder or under humid quilts at night to repeatedly, in a frenzy of flying fingers, seek relief from the burning self-consciousness.

But these secret acts, which always began in breathlessness and climaxed in a wash of pleasure, were inevitably followed by a sense of let-down and loathing that clung to her like a poisonous mist. She could not fully satisfy her cravings by herself. She yearned to enlist the aid of something or someone else to quench these internal fires. Yet here she was, all alone except for her decrepit mother. And now the old woman was compounding Red's wretched loneliness by sending her off, without benefit of friend or companion, on a tedious journey to Grandmother's house. It was too cruel, really. But perhaps it was exactly what she needed—something practical, something active and ruggedly physical to do—that might stop her from mooning about in a perpetual state of agitation and discontent. Maybe a vigorous walk in the woods would exorcise the demons that drove her inexorably to those desperate acts of sensual self-indulgence.

And so Red set off down the forest path, clutching her overflowing basket of luscious sweetmeats to her even sweeter bosom….

After a short while the pine-needle-strewn path took an unexpected twist. It turned away from the sunny and orderly fringes of the forest into its brambled and moist, dark depths. Here the light was dappled by dense thickets, the air felt as if it were pressing too close in a savage, insistent embrace. Strange shadows leapt at Red's feet and the abrupt flutter of an untamed bird or the eerie vibrations of a million teeming insects caused her heart to first stop then race frantically as she crept further and further into the ancient timber.

Suddenly from behind a gnarled grove of walnut trees there came a low, suggestive growl and something terrifying leapt in front of Red. She froze. Was this some hideous animal that dwelled in the forest's depths? Slowly she summoned her courage and lifted her eyes to see whatever it was that loomed so menacingly before her. But instead of a loathesome beast she found a man. An extraordinary man, perhaps—with broad shoulders and gleaming eyes, a shock of thick silver hair that swept around his neck like a fragrant pelt and a dark, toffee-colored complexion that made her own alabaster skin seem splendidly frail by contrast—but he was still just a man. He smiled, flashing his teeth like stolen gems in a pawn shop.

“Hello. My name is Wolf. May I help you carry your basket?”

“No—no thank you,” stammered Red. “It's not very heavy, really. Just a basket of treats for my grandmother.”

But for reasons she could not comprehend, her entire body trembled. She shook as if she were chilled by a blizzard, yet her ears, face, neck, and groin were flushed with heat. This was worse than the drunken fever that overtook her during her naughty little games, for this confusion went beyond her private, self-centered ravings to catch the handsome stranger in its powerful wake, making the image of his face and sinewy body enlarge and quiver and swim before her eyes in an unsteady whorl.

Her breath shortened. Her knees could not bend to move her forward or backward on the sullied path. The man bent closer to Red and his salty, aromatic breath seemed to set her flesh on fire. Her hands could no longer grip the basket and it slipped to the ground. Sweetmeats and sticky buns and ripe, bursting pomegranates rolled this way and that, but neither Red nor the fire-breathing man seemed to notice. Her snow-drift cheeks blushed as crimson as her celebrated mane, then drained again of all color. She almost passed out. But instead of succumbing to the faint her body just kept repeating the cycle of shivering and blistering until she grew exhausted. Finally she sank to her knees on the mat of pine needles below. The beautiful dragon-man knelt to catch her.

“What is your name?” he whispered.

“Red.”

“Red…ruby Red…cherry Red….” he moaned, as he lifted and cupped handfuls of her flaming hair in his fists. He kissed and nuzzled and even gently bit this cascade, handling each burnished lock as if it had a nervous system of its own.

Eyes closed, mouth slack with ecstasy, he slowly drew a curl across his upper lip to feel its silken texture. Then he opened his eyes and stared with a crazy intensity into hers. He spread his fingers wide, stretched to hurting, as they fought through the auburn tangle, preening and combing and playing almost roughly in the fragrant mass with a desperate fervor. Suddenly he let his fingers go limp and gently settle on her neck, barely touching the hidden whiteness with his fingertips until she felt her bony spine melt into a column of shimmering liquid.

These alternating caresses drove her mad. One minute he was hotly inflamed by the feel, the smell, even the grain of her tresses, and his strokes would grow more and more frantic as he tousled them about like she was a rag doll made solely for his pleasure. She could do nothing to resist; she was pinned to the spot as his roaming fingers and probing mouth toyed with her hair, neck, ears, lips, collarbone, always returning to nestle again in the blazing mane of hair as he sighed, “Red, my unplucked rose, my blood-colored angel….” It was almost frightening—she felt like a tiny, defenseless rabbit that had been caught, trussed up, slit open, and turned inside out to be stripped of its precious coat. But no one had ever worshipped her fiery ringlets like this before, and even as she feared it, she thrilled to his violent touch.

Then, just as she was becoming lit by the flame of his passion, he would cool, suddenly pulling back with a terrible sort of detachment as he wound one long lock of hair around his forefinger. Using her entrapped strand of hair like a lasso, he gently, slowly, tugged his prey closer and closer to his hungry lips. The kiss of this wild and worshipful Wolf man assured her that at last she'd found the one who could fulfill her and end her loneliness and self-obsession. Gratefully, she tumbled into his lair….

Wolf carried Red the rest of the way through the woods to Grandmother's house. When they arrived, the elderly dame was nowhere in sight. Wolf set Red upon the bed, stripped her of her skirts and undergarments, and laid bare her second crowning glory—the spread of redheaded curls that adorned her mound and fringed the edges of her crimson labia and pulsing, swollen clit. The sight of such a luxuriance of Titian pubic hair nestled against the plump whiteness of exposed belly and thighs made her lover salivate, so delicious did this strawberries-and-cream delicacy appear. Just as he was about to bury his face deep within she caught sight of his giant, supple tongue as it curled and quivered in anticipation of the waiting feast.

“Oh! What a big tongue you have!” she cried.

“The better to eat you with, my darling Red!”

This frightened the tender Red. Eat her? What exactly could he mean? She struggled to get away from the fearsome tongue as it lashed about preparing to dive. When he'd kissed her back in the woods this organ had seemed quite normal—hot and wet and hungry, yes, but of average size. Now as he contemplated her unveiled sex, which was as moist and ripe as a Caribbean fruit, this very same tongue seemed to swell and grow to outrageous proportions, transforming from a velvet sliver into a gigantic muscular thing with a pointed pink tip waving about like a diviner's rod searching for a tap spring.

Just at the moment she was about to be devoured by this slippery snake demanding its succulent meal, she cried out. And as luck would have it, an intrepid woodcutter was passing by. He heard her desperate cry and burst through the cottage door to save her, but it was too late. Wolf had pinned Red's knees open wide and his powerful, beastly tongue was already burrowing deep into her flesh with a force and rhythm that seemed heaven-sent.

The woodcutter wanted to do something, he really meant to do something noble and brave to spare this young maiden from her gentle rape. But the sight of Wolf eating out the luscious Red left him weak and useless and unable to move. The knob between his legs began to swell almost as large as Wolf's tongue and he stood there like a fool, his ax limp in one hand, his penis erect in the other.

Now Red was no longer crying in fear. Instead, she was moaning low, throaty sounds of pleasure. Her eyes rolled back in her head, her eyelids began to flutter and close in a languorous sweep. But before she shut them entirely, she spied the randy woodcutter standing by the bed. When her eyes met his, it gave him the strength he'd been missing to raise his ax high above Wolf's neck. But before he could bring it down hard, Red murmured, “No, wait….”