The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels (62 page)

“Nice clean-up job,” she commented.

“Amanda,” I said, “that was fantastic.” She smiled, gently pushing me away. She crawled back beneath the covers.

“Yeah, that was good,” she replied. “Many things are good about you. You never disappoint.”

“Well, thank you,” I said. “Do you think it’s too late to order champagne?”

“Oh,” she said, picking up the telephone, “that’s just what I had in mind!” When she hung up the phone, she pointed to the TV.

“Look!”

“Wow,” I said, recognizing the movie instantly. “It’s
The Big Sleep
, with Humphrey Bogart.”

“Who?”

“Oh, he’s a famous actor. In this one he plays Philip Marlowe, a character created by Raymond Chandler. This was the hard-boiled type of mystery fiction.”

I explained how the original story contained drug addiction, pornography, homosexuality, and nymphomania, but that had been too much for the Hollywood censors at the time. Amanda hung on every
word.

“That’s what you are?” She snuggled closer and wrapped her arm over my shoulder. “My little ‘hard-boiled’ lover!”

The only interruption we had was the arrival of the champagne. We drank, arm in arm, until the movie concluded.

“Amanda,” I asked, “would you like to do it sometime?”

“Penetration, that’s what you mean?” A sullen tone hollowed her voice.

“Yes, mistress. That is what I mean.”

“Well . . .” her voice trailed off. “I suppose so, if you need it.” She eyed me with cold disregard. Then added, “Sam, if that is what you want . . .”

“Amanda,” I interrupted. “It’s no big deal. But maybe sometime.”

“Fine, I don’t mean to, to –”

“No, please,” I cut in. “If that is uncomfortable for you, I don’t need it.”

“Listen.” She sat more up in bed. “I want it, too. It’s just that I have not had, uh, that kind of sex in five years.”

Now I was floored. She had been a dominatrix for so long. With all the sexually-charged scenes she had been in, she had not had intercourse in all that time?

“Does this have anything to do with David?” I hazarded.

“No, not at all.” She rolled away from me, facing the wall.

“My love.” I placed my hand on her shoulder. “Listen to me. You must believe that sticking my penis in you is not so important to me. Making you happy – that is
important.”

Her hand joined mine. “Thank you,” was all she said.

Just then, a low-frequency rumbling startled us. I thought we were experiencing an earthquake. Then I realized what was happening.

I bolted from the bed and threw open the blinds. Gliding above the choking city was a huge red glowing chevron. It was the Trans-World StratoLiner, its underbelly heat-shield still crimson-hot
from the friction of reentry. In a few moments it would glide to landing and disgorge its two thousand passengers. Most were from Japan. In an hour it would be refueled, outfitted with a new crew,
stuffed with more passengers, and blast itself into low earth orbit for New York. This behemoth circled the earth in ten hours, making stops at the world’s giant cities.

I felt Amanda at my side.

“That thing is huge,” she commented.

Her fear of penetration still bothered me. I would have my license soon, as well as needed security codes. Before I investigated David’s death, I had someone else in mind. Whatever was in
her past would not change my feelings toward Amanda, but I needed to know.

“Yes, Amanda,” I affirmed. “Someday, maybe, we’ll be able to afford a trip on it.”

Sam believed people claiming friendships with ex-lovers were liars. His relationships always ended badly. He even considered himself fortunate to have escaped alive from more
than a couple of them. But a brush with death was nothing compared to the loss of a cherished friend and lover.

What started as a professional relationship – a submissive man seeking the talents of a professional – grew into friendship. From there they had become closer, finally falling in
love.

This was not what he expected, the first time his penis entered her: the biting, clawing, and whipping, until her blood flowed. Sam followed Amanda’s orders without question; the more
perverted and imaginative, the happier they both were. Yet this was a level of experience he never wanted.

First Amanda stripped. Then Sam bound her wrists together, in front, palm to palm. She knelt before the bed, her hands tied to the posts.

“Your belt,” she requested. “Take it off, and beat me with it.”

Sam slipped the belt from pants. Holding the buckle, he wound it around his fist, leaving about two and a half feet free. Belts are difficult to control, so he took a practice swing at the bed.
It hit with a loud thud. Amanda’s eyes went wild at the sound. He took position behind her and let the first swing fly.

“Harder! Use the buckle!” Amanda yelled. “I can’t feel shit!”

He rewrapped the belt, letting the buckle swing free. After a few strokes, welts covered her backside. Sam worked hard to keep aim, but the belt kept missing its mark, hitting back, thighs, and
lower back.

An icy stillness possessed her, even as the sharp burr of the buckle cut through her skin.

The art of blood-play was one if Amanda’s specialities. One night she dressed as a vampire, with Sam her helpless victim. With a sterile scalpel she opened a slit in Sam’s
iodine-cleaned wrist. She guided his flowing blood to a shot glass. She painted her lips with his blood. These exclusive ceremonies were always safe, clean, and sanitized. They were not horrible,
painful, or brutal, as this scene was fast becoming.

Amanda let loose a scream. She hurled insults and gibberish at Sam, but never their safe-word.

“Harder – harder, you fuck!” Then, “I’ll kill you, kill me! kill me . . .” Her legs spread wider, she pushed herself closer. She turned her head.

“Fuck me!”

Sam dropped the belt. He pulled off his pants. Amazingly, he was hard! He reached for her hips and pulled her close. He impaled her fiercely, entering her; his strokes merged with the struggles
of her body.

Sam could not concentrate. He had done the background check on her, and he now cursed himself for that. Amanda’s rape had happened shortly after David died. He saw police reports, pictures
of the crime scene, the lab tests and lineups, even the trial. Brutal detail after detail, all displayed in the coldness of his computer screen, even a mug-shot of the monster. It was a miracle she
had survived. She had endured all of it, alone.

Amanda fell forward, pulling free. She collapsed in a sobbing heap on her arms.

Sam was transfixed by the sight of her backside. Something was flowing out from between her legs. It was his come, but he had experienced no orgasm.

“Untie me.”

Sam was obedient, as always, but a violent wave of nausea hit him. A bolus of vomit caught mid-way up his throat. He bolted from the room, a fan of puke spraying through the spaces between his
fingers. He collapsed over the toilet bowl, dumping the contents of his stomach. He fell hard to the floor, resting his back against the cold tiled wall. He rested. His hands shook. He grabbed a
section of toilet paper and cleaned off the mucus edging its way over the side of the bowl. He stood up. An apparition with a blood-smeared crotch was staring back from the mirror.

The second he returned to the room, Amanda sprang on him. She went for his eyes.

“No, Amanda!” He snatched her arms. She nearly overpowered him. She twisted, sinking her teeth into the flesh of his chest. For a moment, he submitted to this attack. Her teeth sank
too deep. He shouted, pushing her off as her teeth cut under his nipple. Sam jumped back in panic. Amanda scrambled away, grabbing a blanket off the bed. She crawled to the corner and covered
herself.

I will not leave you, Sam thought, no matter what you do to me – I will not let you suffer alone. He was her submissive, and he loved her. He was thankful for his inhumanly high pain
threshold, for tonight it would be tested. He took a few deep breaths to help prepare for whatever pain was coming. Put the pain somewhere else, he said to himself. He sat next to her. She was
sobbing under the blanket.

“Amanda, please let me help.”

“Go. Get the hell out of here – now!”

He had no protection from that level of pain.

Sam did not call her the next day. A week crept by, but still he kept away. Finally he broke down and left a message with her service. She did not call back.

One night, he found himself parked in the familiar lot next to the abandoned cars. It was chilly and well into fall. Even the weed trees,
Ailanthus altissima
, the “Tree of
Heaven”, had lost leaves of their crown-of-thorns branches. Most businesses had moved from this building, and closing time had passed for the remaining ones. But, at the top floor, light was
peeking through the shades. It was her office, the dungeons. It crossed his mind to jump on the elevator, to go to the twelfth floor, and just walk in. But he successfully fought the impulse.

Back at his apartment, he found a message waiting. An hour later, they were speaking on the telephone. Amanda’s voice came halting and stilted. They agreed to meet the next day, at a diner
by the university.

Sam found her seated in a back booth. Her coat rested on the seat. She wore a synthetic black alligator-skin dress, one he had never seen. It was short, clinging tight to her body, coming up
around her neck, leaving her strong arms bare. Mirrored sunglasses hid any emotion Sam might glean from her eyes. After uncomfortable pleasantries, they ordered coffee.

“Sam, you don’t really know me,” Amanda started. Sam was speechless as she began to talk about her rape. She recounted every detail. He wished she would stop. But he was
frozen. When finally through, she asked if they could be “just friends” for a while.

“So that’s it, Amanda?” Sam said, rising from table. “Crush us like a couple of bugs!”

“What?” Amanda asked, looking up in surprise.

Sam stood from the table, and stormed from the restaurant.

“Great, another relationship down the tubes,” Amanda taunted herself.

Sam had only taken a few sips of his coffee. She turned the cup around, running her thumb over the part that had touched his lips. She paid the bill and left the restaurant.

She hesitated outside the diner, fiddling with her clothes. It was getting cold. She pulled her coat tightly. From the corner of her eye, she saw Sam. He was lurking in shadows off the alley.
She stopped, keeping her back toward him.

Please, please, say something, Sam, she begged to herself. Just come back and tell me I’m wrong: call me inhuman, an asshole, a cunt. She shouted this in her head, as if she were ordering
around some buggy software in her EOS.

His footsteps trailed off. He would never see the tears sneaking under her sunglasses, down her face and bouncing off the exoskeleton of her dress. Amanda’s walk was now faster; the breeze
caused her hair to dance behind.

She hadn’t planned to bring up the rape. Her therapist had claimed she had gotten over it the best she could. But, somehow, Sam could see through her, even more than David ever could.

She started speaking aloud to the head wind.

“So, to break up with Sam, I had to stab him with the truth.”

She started up the block for the post office. The movie she had ordered for him had arrived. It was a film called
Five Came Back
. It was that B-movie about the people stranded in the
jungle, the one they had watched in the hotel. She would send it back, keep it, or give it to someone else.

The wind would not let up. She hurried; the cold was catching up to her.

I’m harder, now, she understood. At least it will be easier next time.

Amanda hated being late.

The meeting with the Japanese businessmen had run long. Their offer was solid, but not solid enough to be set up for life. They were eager to get their hands on the Darkling hat. She knew their
scientists would backward-engineer the device and, in a few years, the technology would be copied. She believed no one government should have control of it. David would have approved.

She did not know why she agreed to a session with Sam. But he went on and on about how good she was and that he could find no one as talented. That was true. Amanda knew she was the best. It had
been months since she had seen him, and she was curious to see how his investigative career was going. Yet this scene was going to be strictly business. Sam had one hour, then he was out the
door.

But he was nowhere in sight. There were no messages. If he cancelled, it gave her the night off. Amanda pulled the Darkling hat out of her bag and placed it on the table.

“Well, if Sam skips out,” she told herself, “I can’t blame him.”

She went to the whipping room, where she kept a change of clothes. The second she entered the room, something moved behind her.

CRACK.

The left side of her face exploded in a spray of blood. She screamed, covering her head.

It was Sam. He had the bullwhip!

She dropped to the floor. The whip again sliced the air.

CRACK.

This time it missed, slicing the air in a supersonic backlash just above her head.

“No, Sam,” Amanda pleaded. “Please, stop!”

Blood was pouring through her fingers as she covered her eye. She could barely see. Through the red fog, she could see Sam drop the whip.

“Amanda, I . . .” He bent over, looking as if he was getting sick.

“Why, Sam?” Amanda asked, with inexplicable calm. He answered by running from the room.

Blasting pain and adrenaline crashed the EOS; it could not call for help. Amanda fought a wave of dizziness while struggling to her office. She grabbed the phone. The dispatcher promised an
ambulance in three minutes. She slumped into her beautiful regal chair. Blood ran down her face, leaking through her hands, dripping on her breasts. She pressed the wound, trying to stop the flow
of blood. Then she thought of the hat. She had to hide it.

The front door was open. Sam was gone – and so was the Darkling hat.

Sam was in darkness. His eyes were open, but he could not see. The ground was moist, like mud under his fingers. The air was hot and stunk of ammonia. He was in a deep cavern.
He crawled forward, his fingers squishing the gook under him. He heard a sound in the distance.