Two Short Stories and Three Very Short Stories (2 page)

Emily’s manicured nails tapped the side of her glass. She hadn’t tasted it beyond a first sip when I’d proposed our mutual health. “Drink up.”

“You want to go home?” Her eyes were dark with unspoken wants.

“I think we both need a nice, hot bath.”

Her full lips parted. Slowly lifting her glass, she tilted it and drank half down with one swallow. I expected her to choke and splutter but she just smiled. “That’s good.” Her glass made a dull thud on the table as I nodded.

“I never settle for less than the best you can have…or give.” Her hand rested on the table, palm down. I covered it with mine. Her skin was still cold. Emily moved her hand so our fingers meshed. There was no mistaking the look on her eyes. She would appreciate what Alec had refused.

She bit her lower lip with one very, white tooth. “I’m glad Alec is at work.”

“So am I.” I swigged the last of my whisky almost as fast as Emily did, ignoring the burning as I swallowed.

We were back in the house in minutes and upstairs in seconds. On the landing, with its ornate railings and decorative cornice, I paused. Her room or mine?

She settled that. Sweet, quiet Emily dragged me into the bathroom. Squeezing my hand, she leaned over the claw-footed tub and turned on the taps. Steam rose, misting the gilt-framed mirror as Emily stood upright, and hesitated.

I didn’t. I reached out and released her hair from the pale blue scrunchee. As she shook her head and ran her fingers through her hair, I unbuttoned her blouse.

Did she and Alec share this tub? How hard did he get, seeing her firm, creamy skin swelling above her pink lace bra? Did he lust after her young body? Who was I kidding? They were married. They did this every night. Except when he hared off to save the day and left her alone. But today Emily wasn’t alone and she hankered for me. Her nipples weren’t hard from cold this time.

I unsnapped her bra and cupped her breasts. They were round and sweet, just like her. I pushed aside the lace and slipped the straps and her shirt off her shoulders and unsnapped her jeans. She wore a pretty lace thong that matched her bra. They ended up together on the floor. Her legs were long, her thighs smooth and her tummy flat. Her breasts hung high and firm with nipples the color of the inside of a Venus shell. I’d looked like that once, back when Alec had rejected me. Now I had crepe thighs and a belly stretched by three pregnancies but along with the cellulite, I’d gained experience and I knew what pleased women.

I eased my hands down her belly and watched her face. My mouth curled with anticipation. Emily smiled back. I didn’t wait any longer. Cupping the back of her head with my hand, I pulled her face to mine. I started soft and slow, just a brush of lips on lips but she opened her mouth and swallowed the kiss and my breath. Her lips were warm, moist and as eager as a virgin’s. Hell, she most likely was with a woman. I kissed back, trailing my other hand down to between her shoulder blades and holding her steady in my arms.

As I broke off the kiss, I whispered, “Get in the tub.” Like a good child, she obeyed. As she stepped in, I couldn’t resist skimming my hand over the curve of her lovely, smooth haunch.

“Aren’t you coming in?” When I nodded, she reached for a bottle and poured fragrant oil into the bath. The room was now filled with lavender-scented steam. I dropped my clothes on the tiled floor and joined her.

Perfumed water rose to our breasts as I sat down. Brits may not have figured out about ice in cold drinks, but they have hot baths right. As I soaped Emily’s breasts with scented foam, she closed her eyes, sighing as my fingers trailed lower. I soaped her all over like a child, having her kneel up as I washed between her legs and down her thighs.

After I rinsed her with a damp washcloth, she washed me with a touch that left me impatient and ready. Damp and heated, we patted each other dry with warm towels that wrapped us from shoulders to knees.

Emily raised her fingers to my face. “Jasmine,” she said, her voice tight and her eyes bright with curiosity and need.

“Come on!” I grabbed her hand and led her down the hallway to the room I’d slept in last night.

She tugged me in the opposite direction.

It took a couple of seconds to register where we were headed. She pulled open the door and pulled me inside. After all these years, I was, at long last, ending up in Alec Carpenter’s bed.

I grinned as I yanked back the covers and pulled Emily beside me. She tumbled onto her belly and the smooth expanse of her back and lovely curvy butt inspired me. “Don’t move! I’ll be back in a minute.”

I was down the hall to the bathroom and back with a jar of lavender lotion in less time than it takes to tell.

“What are you doing?” Emily asked, looking over her shoulder as I walked through the doorway.

She hadn’t moved.

“Pleasuring you.” I squeezed out a dobbit of lotion and rubbed my hands together to warm it before easing my palms across her shoulders and down her back to the curve of her waist. She sighed with pleasure so I reached for the lotion again. I anointed her. Kissing her neck and shoulders as I stroked lotion into her back and arms. Fluttering my tongue on the soft pale skin behind her knees as I massaged her thighs and butt. She went limp and relaxed under my touch. Lovely. But I didn’t want her too loose. I needed her sweating with want as her body arched under me and her eyes blazed her need.

I rested a hand on the curve of her hip and nudged. “Roll over.”

Emily didn’t need asking twice. She flipped onto her back, giving me an uninterrupted view of her delicious, firm breasts. I ran my tongue up from her rib cage to her nipple and felt her excitement as I worked it between my lips. She gasped as I pulled it into my mouth and let out a slow moan of contentment as I worked my lips to her other nipple.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered as I pulled away.

“I won’t,” I promised.

I could smell her arousal over the scent of lavender but I took my time, running my fingertips over her curves and tasting her skin. As I rested my hand on her bush, she was whimpering with need. I spread her legs with my shoulders and opened her with my fingertips, reveling in the scent of her sex. Gently I breathed on her moist flesh and ran the tip of my tongue from fore to aft. Her head came off the pillow with a jolt, and the eyes that met mine were wide as her cunt.

“Jasmine!” It came out on the tail of a gasp. “There? No one ever…”

Can’t say I was surprised. Alec always was a selfish bastard but… “Shhh.” I didn’t say anything else. My tongue was busy.

She was sweet and fresh as morning and as ready as sunrise. I’d hoped to take longer but in minutes she climaxed with a series of little cries and frenzied jerks of her hips as frantic hands grasped my hair.

She was still gasping, her breasts rising and falling with each pant, as I eased up the bed and took her face in both hands. I kissed her very gently, letting my lips linger before opening her mouth so she could taste the joy I’d given her. She was halfway to fainting when I let her go. I settled for gathering her close, delighting in her warmth and scent and, I have to be absolutely truthful, thrilled that I’d upstaged Alec.

Nasty of me. Bitchy of me. But in the circumstances…

“Jasmine?”

“Yes.” I smiled at her as I ran my hand over her hair.

“You haven’t come?’

I shook my head. “Not yet.” It could wait. I was enjoying a different satisfaction.

Emily disagreed. Propping herself on one elbow, she bent her head to my breast and carefully worked her way down. When she reached my cunt, she delved in with the enthusiasm and ardor of a convert. I came three times before she finally paused and I insisted we take a nap. She might not need a rest at her age, but I did.

We slept the day and night around, waking as the early sun streamed in through the open curtains.

After a slow morning loving, Emily lent me Alec’s toweling robe to eat breakfast in. We sat in the bay window, sipping coffee and spreading creamy butter and tart Seville marmalade on Butteries. These were heavy, fatty pastries I’d have disliked in anyone else’s company but now they tasted of Emily.

We were debating the wisdom of more coffee, or back to bed when Alec walked in, clothes rumpled, hair on end and eyes red from lack of sleep. I was scared he’d smell the sex on us but all he seemed to notice was food. Muttering a couple of sentences about idiot crews who don’t maintain equipment properly, he wolfed down the remaining four Butteries and the better part of the second pot of coffee nice wife Emily fixed. Apparently Alec had not enjoyed the past twenty-four hours as much as his wife and I had and unfortunately he wobbled off to bed to restore himself so that put paid to an encore for us. But there were would be other times. I was a patient woman.

“So glad you two get on so well together,” Alec said that evening as we walked down the platform to my sleeper. “Some people have been unbelievably snooty. Peter hardly talks to me now.”

Can’t say I blamed Peter. He was bound to take his sister’s part. Heaven help me. Had I really loved this man? He was so self-centered, patronizing and just plain thick! I had, once, when I was young and equally thick but now I was well and truly cured. “Nice of you to ask Emmsy to your book signing in Edinburgh,” Alec went on as I hugged her goodbye.

“It’ll be nice to see someone I know.” I gave a wave and hopped on the train. “I’ll let you know the date.” Something good had come out of the hurt of Alec Carpenter. I was going to have to call my publisher and insist they added Edinburgh to my next book tour. They wouldn’t need to provide any escort. I could arrange that. I settled back in my seat, thinking. I was a trifle torn between genuine fondness for Emily and our promising affair and the certainty that Penelope would get a kick out of knowing I’d made Alec a cuckold.

This story is a vampire one I wrote for
The Sweetest Kiss
—an anthology of vampire erotica—and it’s once of very few stories I’ve written with an historical setting and, although heterosexual, is also first person. It just seemed to fit the male character, who, despite being unnamed really does take total control of the story and the action.

© Copyright Madeleine Oh

He caught my eye at once. I’d returned to Paris after an hiatus of seventy years or more, and on the third night, I found him in a nameless club among the tangled streets of the
Butte
. He was alone in the crowd, no doubt his air of despondency kept the surrounding roisterers at bay. Halfway to drunkenness, he seemed caught in the enveloping presence of humanity and the aroma of cheap wine.

I watched as he called for another carafe, which he drank alone. Perfect. I prefer the ones without companions. No one to remember me. This one was ideal: a morose expression on his bearded face, alcohol-drenched eyes and those absurd little lenses mortals use in their vain attempt to see as well as we do.

I sat down in the lone chair beside him.

“Go away,” he said.

I laughed. (Who gives orders to a vampire?) And I met his eyes. He didn’t quail or shudder as so many would. Too far gone in his cups for that, but behind the dullness, I glimpsed a wild and wayward passion, a yearning for excitement and deep traces of suppressed longing.

I smiled. Carefully. It was too early to show my fangs. I touched his arm. “Come with me.”

He rose and I understood the reason for his loneliness. A dwarf with the torso of a man. He looked at me, eyes bright with defiance and the expectation of rejection, as his wide mouth twisted in a warped smile. “Madame, you wish for my company tonight?”

I didn’t waste words replying. Hadn’t I made that abundantly clear, even to a half-drunken mortal? “Come,” I repeated, keeping hold of his arm. “I offer a sweeter oblivion than cheap, Algerian wine.”

He laughed at that: a deep peal of mirth rooted in pain and awareness of the farce of mortal life. “Not a patch on the wines of Galliac, I agree but it serves its purpose.”

“I offer better.”

We were in the street now. He tightened his coat against a gust of wind and looked at me. “Don’t you feel the cold?”

Maybe a satin dress and a light stole were a little brief for January but I shook my head. “My kind do not feel heat or cold. Come.”

He came. Few mortals can resist a vampire’s call. We turned corners and crossed narrow streets. The scurrying rats and the stench of refuse belonged to the city of a hundred years ago. This was a Paris far removed from the wide, clean boulevards of Haussmann’s new city. Not that the mortal noticed, too intent on the imagined pleasures ahead no doubt. But he did hesitate climbing the stairs to the rooms I’d acquired. Was it difficulty mounting the stairs on his attenuated legs? Or some inner sense that I was not the usual woman of the night?

He didn’t hesitate long. Men: rich, poor, strong or crippled all want the same from a woman. I give them that and take much more than they could ever imagine.

He looked around my room, surprised perhaps that a woman he perceived to be of easy and available charms lived in such comfort. I did not choose to explain.

To forestall any conversation, I tossed my stole on a chair and removed my dress.

“Madame,” he said, “you have a name as well as fine breasts?”

I walked over to him, to underscore my words and distract him from conversation. “I prefer sharing my breasts to sharing my name.”

Curious and briefly alarmed, he asked, “I’ve never seen you before. Are you known in this
quartier
?”

“Not at all. I have been out of Paris for many years.” Before he or his father was born.

“Many?” he echoed, a wry smile on his wide mouth. “Not so many, I think,
madame
. Unless you left in your nurse’s arms.”

Gallant in its way, I suppose, but I hadn’t picked him for his charm. Why had I chosen him, the cripple, from a club peopled with healthy, upright men, anyone of whom would gladly remove his trousers for me? What caught my eye? Apart from the briefly glimpsed passion behind his eyes, did I suspect a wild desire reined in behind his wall of pain and arrogance? Was I drawn to the quiet need traced on every line of his face? Perhaps it was simply a whim to stroke the rough darkness of his beard?