Best Erotic Romance 2013 Read online

  I smiled.

  “You look terrified.”

  I laughed. “I am.”

  “Of me?”

  I shook my head. I felt as if a pill were stuck in my throat. I swallowed. “Of me. Of…of what I might want.”

  He looked at me for a long time, trying to read my face. Then he drew a deep breath and leaned at an angle, elbow on the work surface, making his body softer, his height lower than mine, unthreatening. “Have you ever been tied up?” he asked.

  Hail Mary, mother of Jesus! Have I what? The room whirled, streaks of halogen whizzing past blurred granite, flying knives, swooping saucepans, and a pine table on its hind legs, dancing pirouettes among the shifting white lights. My knee bones did a runner and between my thighs, I melted like butter on a skillet.

  “I…” I began.

  Did I accidentally drink all his wine? Was this me? Why was I shaking?

  “I…no.” I pictured a joint of ham trussed up with string, its pig-pale skin bulging against the bonds. “No, no.”

  He smiled kindly. “I would never do anything you didn’t want me to.”

  Never? Never forever?

  I shook my head, fighting a rising panic.

  Will stood, walked into the adjoining room then out through a door leading deeper into the house. Was he going to his bedroom? Was he expecting me to follow? Well, I wouldn’t. I didn’t think my legs would carry me anyway. Besides, wanting a wrong thing was bad enough; acting on the want could have no justification. Oh, but I thought of many excuses while Will was gone: I don’t love my husband and I doubt he loves me; what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him, like the tree he doesn’t see; how can I know if the grass is greener if I don’t even try the other side?

  Will returned, grinning, loops of rope in one hand, jacket off, tie loosened. “Just in case,” he said, and he tossed the coils at my feet. They landed with a clatter.

  He stood inches in front of me. The world froze and so did my heart. He must do this all the time, I thought. An expert, and me the lamb to his slaughter. I could see the faint prick of his nipples through his white cotton shirt. Then everything started thundering as his face moved toward mine, or perhaps mine to his. His features grew large then his lips on mine were warm, moist and mobile.

  For the first few seconds, I was tense and self-conscious. My mouth wouldn’t yield. I’d forgotten how to kiss. Then instinct took over and I was gone, slipping toward delirium, heat flaring in my face. I closed my eyes and behind my lids, a blue sun blazed in a pitch-black night, receding and surging. Between my thighs I grew hotter and wetter, plump tissue parting with treacherous ease. I embraced him, needing the support of his bulk and wanting his weight pressed against me. Running my hands over the slab of his back, I plucked his shirt from his waistband, my fingers seeming to move of their own accord. His body was warm and clammy, muscles shifting below thick skin as he raised his arms to thrust his fingers into my hair. Wisps of hair on his shoulder blades brushed my fingertips. He held my head still, clamped, so I couldn’t escape his kiss. Not that I wanted to. His hands were good there. I fancied if he let go of me, I might dissolve into a puddle of lust.

  When he pulled away, he had a new look of seriousness to him, eyes and mouth sagging, lips gleaming.

  “Oh god, I shouldn’t,” I whispered.

  Ignoring me, he dropped to his knees, hands sliding down my legs.

  “I shouldn’t,” I said again, even quieter now.

  Slowly, his broad hands rose higher, back up my legs to bunch my skirt around my hips. He kissed the skin on my thighs, making my breath flutter faster, then his mouth was on my underwear, lace shielding my pubis like an ornate gate of silk. No trespassers, please. But inside the fabric I was swollen to fatness, fluids seeping to reveal my need and welcome him in. He traced a single finger over my damp patch, making my groin pulse so insistently I thought my heart had lost its moorings and plummeted to a new place. He nudged into my briefs and I felt him, his flesh on mine, touching me where only my husband was supposed to touch. He skimmed my lips, tickling fronds of hair and when he split me open, I groaned deeply and so did he.

  I couldn’t remember when I’d last been so wet.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer and he didn’t wait. He slid a finger along my crease, slicking milkiness back and forth while tugging down my underwear with his free hand. I stepped awkwardly out of the flimsy scraps, committed now. I heard my voice say, “No,” but even I didn’t believe it.

  Then again, I heard, “No, oh, god, no,” but it was a no of incredulity as he penetrated me with slow, thick fingers, hooking his rough tips on my soft spot. No, it was impossible for this to feel so good. I widened my stance, elbows on the granite top, whimpering as he made magic with his fingers. He enveloped my clit with gentle, sucking lips then glided his tongue over my nerve-knotted plumpness.

  My juices made a faint ticking noise as he worked me, tongue rubbing, arm pumping with escalating vigor. He didn’t drive up and down but back and forth, slamming his curled fingers onto my G-spot, jerking his buried fingers toward himself almost as if he wanted to extract something from me.

  I had to tell him, had to speak before I lost the capacity. “Listen, I can’t…oh, god.”

  This was new. I felt a part of me offering itself up to him, his powerful fingers curving hard into an untouched space.

  “I have to tell you…”

  The world started falling away from me.

  “I can’t,” I panted. “Please, I can’t come when I’m standing up.”

  He moved his mouth away. “Relax,” he murmured. His tongue rocked my clit then, “First time for everything.”

  “No,” I said, and I meant it. I understood my body’s ways and knew I couldn’t climax when I was using my leg muscles to stay upright. “I need to sit. Or lie. Please let me. Or…oh, sweet lord.”

  He moved his mouth from my clit but kept pounding with his curved fingers. I leaned back heavily on my elbows, my hips sinking to meet his hard thrusts. Inside me, a spongy tenderness blossomed to quick tightness. He pumped harder, faster, making my walls grip his fingers. Then something loosened, and I was suddenly sloppy, my juices sounding crude and loud above the nice music in his nice kitchen. I wailed, unable to stop anything as a cascade of inner wetness fired a release of pleasure, the deep, diffuse reach of it melting into my thighs.

  I hardly knew what had happened. I felt dizzy, close to collapse.

  Will pulled away from me and looked up. His mouth was glossed with moisture. “So you’re a squirter,” he said. His hand glistened to the wrist and the floor was sprinkled with liquid. A splash darkened his white shirt.

  I struggled to speak. Eventually, I managed a breathless, “What a horrible word.”

  “Beautiful to see,” he said. “So horny.”

  It was a horrible word, blunt and coarse, and not at all matched to the experience it described. “I feel…that’s never happened to me before,” I said. “Never. I don’t know what you did but—”

  He smiled, obviously proud, and who could blame him?

  “Did you come?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “No, it was different. Not as, I dunno, not as intense as coming. Intense but not as…oh, god. Did I really do that? I think I’m embarrassed.”

  “I want to make you come,” he whispered. He rubbed my thigh with his soaked hand. “If coming’s more intense then, wow.”

  “Standing up,” I said. “I can’t come when I’m…honestly, I can’t.”

  “Then let’s make you safe,” he said, and he reached for the rope.

  My legs almost buckled as he stood. I’d forgotten about his rope. He laughed to see my consternation, dropped the ropes on the work surface, then pulled three foil-wrapped rubbers from his pocket. He cast them onto the rope where they shone like cheap trinkets. I winced, wishing they weren’t there. You can’t kid yourself you got carried away when you’ve put your condoms on the table.

 
; “Come here,” he said lustily. I staggered as he drew me to him with an arm around my waist. His mood changed as if what had just happened had been nothing but a polite introduction. Boisterous and carefree, he twisted me sideways, tipped me over his forearm, and pulled my skirt high to bare my buttocks. “Great ass.”

  He swiped a cheek with a sharp, glancing upstroke, once, twice, three times. My flesh wobbled and I squealed, shocked to breathlessness. The crack of his hand echoed in my head as he clawed his fingers into the sting, shaking me hard. “Lovely.” A fourth thwack before he transferred his attention to my other cheek, cuffing upward to hit me at my roundest point. I was weak with hunger, ten thousand pulses galloping between my thighs.

  “Now then,” he said, collecting the rope. On unsteady legs, I allowed him to guide me to the big pine table, its unvarnished top as scarred as an old chopping board. He moved chairs aside and I flopped forward as directed, grateful to feel the table’s solidity beneath me.

  Will raised my skirt. “Legs apart.” He knocked my ankles wider with his foot. “If you want me to stop at any point, say ‘red.’”

  Red like meat and blood and wine. Red like the color of my ass, no doubt. My face too, burning with guilty need.

  Will knelt to loop rope around one ankle, fixing me to the table leg. I shivered, a flash of lucidity making me fear this could be dangerous. I hardly knew him. Supposing he turned nasty or something went wrong? What if he wouldn’t release me before I turned into a pumpkin? What perverse darkness in him might emerge when I was trapped? Would he listen if I cried red?

  Despite my misgivings, when he told me to raise my arms, I obeyed. He tossed the rope below the table and secured the wrist diagonally opposite my bound ankle. The rope was awkwardly long, its end flicking wildly, roughness threading through roughness as he made loops around my other wrist, working with a brisk, focused fervor. All I could do was wait, my cheek resting on the wood, arms outstretched, legs spread in display. With every touch and tug of the rope, I dropped deeper into surrender.

  Will slipped two fingers inside the bond, checking it wasn’t too tight, before winding the rope around the table leg. “You okay there?” he asked, voice close to my ear. I nodded, feeling soft and half drugged. “Good,” he said. “My dick’s so hard right now. Going to keep you tied up till I’ve fucked you senseless.”

  His words made me whimper. I jerked at my bondage, instinctively wanting the ability to protect myself. Pointless. Finally, Will ran the remaining length to my free leg, making, I imagined, an X of rope below the table to match the X of my half-exposed body. His hand on my ankle was firm as he wrapped, tested, and fastened my last limb to the fourth table leg.

  He stood and I felt his appraising eyes on me. He didn’t touch me although I craved his hands. The lack of contact made me an exhibit, a thing on a slab arranged and pinned for a meat trader’s gaze. The forced openness at the juncture of my thighs was vulgar and shamefully hot. I felt shyer than I had when he’d crammed his fingers into my depths.

  I listened to him undressing behind me. Strange that I was still largely clothed, that we hadn’t disrobed and smeared skin to sticky skin; hadn’t explored each other’s contours, battle scars and the idiosyncratic places that make us tingle when touched. The nape of my neck, Will. Touch me there, one day, please.

  Yet the apparent lack of intimacy in my exposure and in his distance created a deeper, more profound connection. How crazy we could both agree to act like this, virtual strangers showing aspects of ourselves others might recoil from or mock. Though I was the one strapped to a table, the vulnerability wasn’t mine alone. It’s easy to explore bodies, the psyche less so. We all have secrets it’s safer to guard. Already I felt this man had seen a truth in me to which my husband was blind.

  I sensed Will move closer. My heart and groin quickened. Inside, I was still swollen from his fingers, closed up with tenderness, thick with lust. He stroked the curve of my ass then let his sheathed, weighty cock rest in the crevice of my buttocks. I moaned as he sawed back and forth, teasing me with what I wanted but couldn’t claim. I pulled at the ropes, relishing my immobility. Each loop was a cold, unyielding embrace. Being held in Will’s bonds made me feel safe even though anxiety stippled my skin with goose bumps.

  He jerked my hips, pulling me a few inches closer. The head of his cock nuzzled at my entrance, stout and round. He held himself, using a more deliberate approach to waggle my lips apart. He drove in with excruciating slowness, groaning long and low as he filled me with his solid girth.

  “You’re so tight,” he breathed, and I was because of what he’d done to me earlier. My flesh clung to him and when he glided away, it felt as if my body were trying to stop him with suction. He plunged in again, pressing at my pulpy resistance, a hand on the small of my back by my rucked-up skirt. Inside me he was enormous. He thrust steadily at first then with increasing strength, making my wetness run faster.

  When he dropped a hand to my clit, I was so engorged with sensitivity that my inner thighs quivered with ripples of abandonment. A shoal of tiny thrills drew denser and closer. I bleated as he rubbed and fucked, growling his own pleasures without a trace of inhibition.

  “There, there,” I panted, fearing he might change what he was doing.

  He didn’t, and moments later I was there too, poised at my peak. I coasted across heavens then tumbled into bliss, crying aloud in a voice I didn’t recognize. Sensation unleashed itself, shooting pathways of ecstasy from my core to my toes.

  Will withdrew from my clit and gripped both my buttocks. He thrust wild and hard, banging into my pinkness, grunts getting louder as he chased his own climax. His fingers dug into my cheeks and I thought I ought to warn him not to mark me. But I didn’t want to put him off when he was close, and anyway, I hardly cared. His hands were too good. I’d find an excuse for bruises once I was back to reality.

  Seconds before he came, Will grabbed my buttocks with such a forceful claw that I yelled in pain. He did it again, making me cry louder, then he was making his own noises, three distinct roars of triumph ringing in my ears like corrupted church bells. I felt him shudder as he lodged himself deep for the liberation of his white heat, hands still clutching my asscheeks.

  We were still for a while, two soft, exhausted statues, then he gently withdrew.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Fuck,” he gasped.

  He set about untying me, rubbing rope marks from my limbs with each unloosening. I watched him with greedy eyes, seeing his naked body for the first time, splendid, hairy and handsome. My own clothes felt awkward and out of place, so I stripped and joined him in his freedom.

  We hugged, wrapping each other tight in the glory of flesh to flesh, kissing lightly, stroking softly. When we pulled away, Will padded across the kitchen to fetch our wineglasses. I followed him, took mine then sank to sit on the cool floor, back against a cupboard door. Will did likewise.

  We clinked glasses.

  “Bottoms up,” said Will.

  I laughed. “I’ll drink to that.”

  We stayed there for too long, talking with lazy ease, touching and smirking, smugly conspiratorial in our postcoital glow.

  Then, inevitably, “Time is it?” I asked.

  Will twisted round to a wall clock. “Quarter to midnight.”

  “I’m late,” I said without moving. I sipped my wine then rested my head against the cupboard.

  Will ran a hand over my raised knee. “You are,” he said. “Very. We should have met years ago.”

  I didn’t return to the butcher’s for several months. I knew I’d blush as red as the meat behind the glass, as red as our word for “stop.”

  After weeks of deliberation, I told my husband I was leaving him. “We can’t afford to separate,” he’d said.

  “We can’t afford not to,” I’d replied.

  I didn’t leave because I’d cheated on him. I’d cheated on him because I was leaving, although I didn’
t see that at the time. When the tree had fallen in the forest, I was there. I was the tree. I’d felt the break. I could hide it from my husband but not from myself.

  I rented a small studio flat two miles away. When I was settled, I went to the butcher’s on Friday after work, just as I used to before the fall. Will’s grin was as broad as his hands.

  “Two Welsh beef and red wine sausages, please,” I said.

  “Only two?” With his tongs, he placed two sausages on the filmy wrap on the scale.

  “It’s enough for one,” I replied.

  He plucked two more sausages from the tray, smiling to himself. “I’ll join you,” he said. Blue eyes twinkling, he looked at me. I smiled back, my cheeks aching with joy. Then he folded the film over the fat fingers of meat, as carefully and tenderly as if he were wrapping up my heart.

  CHOCOLATE CAKE AND YOU

  Victoria Blisse

  Dark, delicious, tempting…all words I could use to describe chocolate cake. Three weeks into my New Year’s resolution and I’m already craving my worst enemy. She’s the wicked temptress who calls to me at all hours of night and day and who makes me pile on pounds just by thinking of her.

  So cake, chocolate and all other things tasty and delicious are off my list of permitted foods. I’m eating vegetables and queen-noah or at least that is the way the health-store lady pronounces it. It looks like rice gone wrong to me and doesn’t taste much better. I really, really, really want a slice of cake. A big, thick chunk of chocolate buttercream–covered goodness. But my fat ass and wobbly tummy need trimming, so I can’t have it.

  Not that it’s any old piece of cake I’m longing for, no, it’s a particular cake baked by a particular man. Ryan. The only man who’s ever cooked for me, the only man who’s ever really loved me just as I am, jiggly bits included. Ryan, who I dumped in a fit of idiocy just before Christmas. I saw him in our local pub the night of my work’s Christmas do and he was at the bar standing next to an incredibly attractive blonde. She was tall, thin, suave and elegant. Everything I am not. She touched his arm, then he put his hand over hers. Well that was it. In my slightly tipsy going on for drunken mind that was tantamount to shagging over the nearest table so I walked over, slapped him around the face, called her a slag and stormed home.