Best Erotic Romance 2013 Read online

  He lifted the rope and wound it around his hands. “Now, let me fix you.”

  He pulled her wrists behind her. The subtle pulse that beat between her legs intensified. Every muscle in her legs threatened to turn liquid, and she wondered how long she could hold herself up. The slight touch of his fingers as he secured her and checked the knots was like fine sandpaper. When the edge of his fingernail caught slightly against her hip it stung like she’d been lashed. Not painful, but a bright, dizzying burn, as if her desire was concentrated and written into that one thin dash.

  “I’m going to fuck you so hard,” he said, his mouth up close to her ear and so quiet she hardly heard it. But she did. Her body heard it. His words struck deep in her center, and her spine curled.

  “Okay,” she said, “Mark, please.”

  She held herself tensed and steady, trying not to rock back and forth. She’d wanted him for so long, his voice and hands and mouth and cock. The memory of how good he felt and how tightly they fit together had been reignited with every phone call, every text and blurry phone video. Standing in the shade of a tall plane tree in Tunis, she’d filled a phone with dull brassy coins and stood listening to the unfamiliar dial tone, each unanswered beep like a castigation, a lament for traveling so far, for being elsewhere; a way of noting the uncountable miles that separated her from her lover.

  Now, in this antiseptic little cabin, with the anonymous sheets and the empty corridors, with the endless flow of millions of strangers around them and the thought of how many others had used this room, used this bed, her heart started to ache like it might burst.

  “I want you,” she said at last, splaying her hands against each other, feeling the chill of the air-con roughen her skin with goose bumps, seeing the faint smudge of Mark’s reflection in the shower glass and thinking how she so rarely got more than a brief taste, a furious, hurried embrace.

  “Yep,” Mark said, as if he was hardly listening. He looked her over, thoughtfully. Then he pulled the chair in close and turned it toward her.

  “Sit,” he said, tipping his head at the seat. Startled, she obeyed without thinking, and landed with a jolt. Now, he took another length of cord from the rucksack and crouched down, patting Erin’s calf. “Shift your feet.” He wrapped first one ankle, then the other, fastening them to the cold metal of the chair legs. Erin sat with her legs spread, feeling more exposed as her ability to move was gradually restricted. Mark worked quietly, as calm as if he were fixing a tarp to a trailer.

  When he was finished, he dropped his hands to his thigh and looked her over. “Test them,” he said. Erin’s eyes widened. She wasn’t used to instructions from him—this was her warm, kind, laughing Mark, all business. There was flint in his gaze, an unsettling purposefulness in his movements. His want reached her as a force, so strong that it couldn’t be deflected. Her hips had started to ache from being spread. Was he testing her? Trying to trick her into giving up control?

  “Okay,” she nodded. “I’ll play.”

  She pulled against her ties to see how far she could move. Not far. The ropes were soft, twisted cotton, and the memory of where she’d felt them before came back to her. Lead ropes. For horses. She pictured Mark walking across the back fields, the rope running through his hands and the dew wetting his boots.

  “What are you smiling at?” he asked, lifting his eyes to her face.

  “Nothing,” she said, “it’s good to see you.”

  “You like that, huh?”

  She shrugged, or tried to. “Not what I was expecting.”

  “Hmm.” He leaned forward and nuzzled at the lace edge of her bra, finding her nipple and catching it in his teeth.

  “Ah.”

  He bit gently, until she cried out again, then nipped at the other one. His mouth left wet patches. “I could eat you up,” he said, the burr of his accent softened by a whisper but still slanted with the Island accent she used to tease him about.

  He gripped her waist, now, with both hands. He worked at her, kneading her flesh, rubbing down to her splayed thighs and pressing into the tender skin there. She could feel the heat of his breath against her belly and it made her want to twitch.

  “Mark.”

  His thumbs hooked under her knickers and tugged the elastic away from her body. She felt the air-conditioned air on her, heard nothing but the motionless air in the tiny space, slowly heating up and growing closer. Usually she got claustrophobic pretty quickly. Right now she wanted the walls to close in farther, to squeeze against her. The desire contained in her was turning almost violent, the immobility wildly frustrating. Waves inside her pulsed from her belly to her cunt and back again. She struggled in her seat. The tightness of her bonds was good. She fought against the rope, confident she would lose.

  “You look good like that,” he said, sitting back and leaving her with her pants half pulled down her thighs, squirming in her seat. He wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. She stared at his mouth, mesmerized.

  “Don’t make me beg you,” she said, her voice cut back to a whisper.

  “I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, you know that, babe,” he said, a familiar, lazy smile hovering over his mouth.

  Erin tilted her hips, trying to twist and press herself against the seat.

  “Poor girl. You’re in need,” he said, dropping his gaze to her lap. “How long’s it been?”

  Erin shook her head. Her cheeks were flushed and her breath was ragged.

  “Answer the question. How long?”

  “We saw each other in…April? Six weeks.”

  “Did you miss me?”

  “You know I did.”

  “Answer the question.” He reached out and pulled at her knickers, tugging the elastic against the back of her thighs so it dug lines into her skin.

  “Yes. I missed you.” Erin blushed harder.

  “Did you fuck anyone else?”

  “Mark. Of course not.”

  “Did you want to?”

  They looked at each other. “I don’t play jealous games, Mark.”

  “Who said I was jealous? I just want to know.”

  “I was working, for fuck’s sake. Sweating my way round the Sahara. Sleeping in trucks, sometimes. No, I didn’t want anyone else.”

  She looked away, biting her lip.

  “Good.” He slid one fingertip inside her, cool and gentle. Curled his hand against her, covering her pussy with his palm and a warm, maddeningly soft touch. She gasped. So slight. Her muscles tried to tighten around him.

  “Not yet,” he said. She pressed her mouth closed. Held still and took a deep breath.

  “More.” She kept her voice steady. “Please. Give me more.”

  “Funny. That’s just what I was going to ask next.” Mark leaned in close, so she could smell his hair. Mint and seaweed.

  “See, I’ve been waiting, too. It’s taken me a long while to realize. I spoke to you last week, remember?”

  Erin nodded, trying to concentrate on his words instead of his fingers.

  “And you were talking about the fixer and complaining about the coffee and the heat and it hit me.”

  “What?”

  He looked at her full in the face. “You’re never coming home, are you?”

  Erin shook her head. “Don’t do this now.”

  “We only have now, Erin.”

  “And you want to know if I’m coming home? I don’t have an answer. I don’t even know what that word means anymore. Probably not the same as it does to you. The valley. The farm. But you won’t leave, will you?”

  “Leave my work? Let my parents struggle on without me? No. That’s not possible.”

  Erin threw her head back and squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Mark, we are not possible. We’re the impossible couple. We always come back to this. But here we are. Let’s talk about this later.” She sighed. “I just want to touch you. Kiss me. Please.”

  “You know how much I want to,” he said. “But this time, not wi
thout a promise.”

  “Don’t do it. Don’t you dare.”

  “What, ask you to give it up? Oh, I’d love it. For you to turn up at the farm in the breaking dawn one morning and climb into my bed and tell me you’re never going to leave. We could just sink into each other.” He worked at her now, slowly, his fingers describing a delicate curve over her clit before pinching her, hard enough for her eyes to widen.

  “Take our time. See where we got to.” He slid his fingers inside her again, worked at the sweet spot.

  Erin closed her eyes. “There. There is good.”

  “That’s what I thought. Here. Here is good. You know why?”

  “Hmm.”

  “Believe it or not, a shoebox hotel room buried on the outskirts of Amsterdam is not my dream destination.”

  “It was the best we could do. Next time we’ll make it somewhere sexier.”

  “Next time it’s harvest, Erin, next time it’s lambing. Next time I won’t have any weekends left. But it doesn’t matter.”

  “’Course it does. But so does kissing me.”

  “Just stop for a minute.” He pulled away suddenly, and Erin gave a sharp intake of breath. “Listen.” He turned and rifled in his jean pockets, pulled out a condom and tore it open. He kept talking as he unrolled the rubber onto his cock.

  “Here is good because a six-thirty flight from Tunis can get you to within touching distance of a two-hour flight from Aberdeen. Here is good because you are here and that’s the only place I really want to be.”

  As he talked, he maneuvered himself so that the tip of his cock was pointed directly at her crotch.

  “With you.” He buried a hand in her hair. “In you.”

  “Yes.” She spoke without thinking, and he entered her at the same time, sliding inside in one movement, meeting the resistance and overcoming it until he was as deep as he could go. Erin opened her mouth but made no sound at all. She fought to inhale. As he started to pull back and fuck her rhythmically, slowly but decisively, the cabin filled with the sound of their scorched breath.

  With one hand still holding a handful of her hair, he held her in position. Although she wanted to rub against him, to push all the burning points of her body at the taut, hard surfaces of his, Erin could only twist in her ropes. The plastic chair was slippery and her skin stuck to it.

  “Please,” she said, willing him for more. They were fixed together on his terms, his tempo, and there was nothing she could do about it. The imbalance made her want to scream, but then she looked at his face, the curve of his cheekbone and his slightly open mouth, the taut muscle of his arm as he tensed in position. His eyes stuck on hers. For once, she held still.

  “Yes,” she said, and gave in. At once her body brimmed with sensation. Pleasure flooded through her, sweet and hopeless. He fucked her faster and she could have cried with gratitude.

  When his fingers slid between them and pinched at her clit, she ground her teeth together. Now they were tangled so thick and deep she felt the buildup start. It had the same force as a plane bowling down a runway. The sensation of irresistible pressure overtook her, and they were no longer just two bodies writhing together, no longer all clit and cock and cunt. He pressed hard against her, rough and desperate, fucking her with his teeth gritted, and then he was still. She called his name. As in a lucid dream, she sensed the ground fall away, and they were suddenly weightless.

  The moment of lightness, then, as always, was shocking in its impossibility. It lifted her into another place, somewhere wordless and free. As Mark came inside her, she rested her cheek on his shoulder and felt the orgasm shake through her body and echo in his. He gave a low gasp. For a minute or two they stayed like that, drifting.

  They laughed as they broke apart, Mark unfolding himself slowly, bumping against the furniture.

  “What was the promise?” Erin asked. “I’d say yes to anything right now.”

  “Thank god for that.”

  Erin opened her eyes. Mark was kneeling in front of her, hunching his hands into his pockets. He held out his hand, palm up. A ring. A bright, glittering stone.

  It was just a circle of metal and a piece of pretty rock. It couldn’t weigh more than a few grams. Maybe it was just the unexpectedness of it that made her want to cry. Erin felt all the swimming emotion go out of her, flow down her arms and legs and center on this brilliant point of light.

  She wanted to reach out then, but the ropes held her steady. Suddenly she needed to be out, to be free. She tensed against the bindings.

  “Mark, let me go now.”

  He looked up. “If that’s what you want.”

  Erin’s belly flipped as if she’d just hit a pocket of turbulence. “I don’t mean us,” she said, throwing a nod behind her. “I mean this, these knots.”

  “I do mean us,” Mark said softly. “If you want, I’ll let you go. Otherwise, take the ring. I don’t care where you are, Erin. If you’ll wear this, I’ll know you’ll come home again.”

  She looked up. Her voice was soft. “I don’t know how we can make it work.”

  “Are you saying no?”

  Outside, a group of women made their way noisily along the corridor, tried the door handle. “Sorry,” someone shouted, and someone else laughed.

  Erin shook her head.

  “I’m saying I don’t know if I can give you what you want.”

  Mark’s hand closed shut. Erin stared at his curled fingers. “I don’t want to lose you,” she said at last. “But I know I can’t ask you to wait for me.”

  She looked up. Mark’s long, lazy smile was working its way onto his mouth. His eyes were sky blue, she thought, suddenly. How had she never noticed that before?

  “Well, you know, I wouldn’t be spending my whole time writing poetry on a lonely hillock in the rain. I might be able to function without you for—how long is the longest we’ve gone?”

  “Twelve. Twelve weeks.”

  “Yeah. Given emails and a couple of naked video calls.”

  Erin bit back her own smile. “And what then?”

  “Did I say I was psychic? I said I was in love with you.”

  “No you didn’t. You said—”

  “Don’t split hairs, smart-ass. He took her chin in his hand and held her face steady. “I don’t know what next. I don’t know where or how. I just know who. We’ll work the rest out. Don’t you think?”

  Erin smiled.

  “Is that a yes? A yes for the moment? A yes and we’ll see?”

  “It’s a yes. A yes, please. On one condition.”

  “Name it.”

  “Next time we’re going to have a serious discussion, you’re the one tied to a chair.”

  She darted forward and caught his mouth. He looped his arms around her back, loosed the knot at her wrists and untied her while he kissed her. They both closed their eyes and for a while, forgot where they were altogether.

  SWEET MEMORIES

  Kristina Wright

  I turned the shower up as hot as it would go, rolling my aching shoulders under the spray. If anyone had asked, I would have said I wasn’t thinking about anything except my five-year-old Garrett’s birthday party. It was that afternoon at the park near our house and I had thirty guests coming, half of them kids, and the clouds were threatening rain. I was working out the details in my head, running my fingers through my tangled hair as I applied shampoo, then conditioner. And then, I was crying. Not just crying, sobbing. Great wracking sobs that echoed off the shower walls. Thankfully, the boys were at my mother’s house and Brett was—well, that just made me sob some more. I thought Brett was picking up the birthday cake and the deli and fruit trays I’d ordered, but I couldn’t be sure where he was. Not really. I couldn’t be sure of anything anymore. Of course, neither could he.

  It’s funny what you remember over the course of a relationship. What lingers and what falls away. What seems important in the midst of a fight and what seems trivial when you’re lying in each other’s arms after three sweat
y hours of lovemaking. When you sit back and inventory the moments, put them in plus and minus columns and look at the bottom line—what’s left? Is it a bucket full of regrets and heartache, or is it a flood of sweet memories?

  Sometimes it’s both.

  Sometimes, the happily ever after comes with a heaping helping of hurt and heartache. Sometimes, once you’re gone, out of the relationship and moving on, you look back and wish for a do over. You can’t go back, of course, and you can’t do it over. It doesn’t work that way. But sometimes you take a chance anyway and throw caution to the wind, knowing you’re going to get hurt—and it’s going to hurt like hell, just like it used to—but knowing the good times will be the best you ever had. Sometimes we take the pain for the chance at pleasure. Sometimes the pain is pleasure.

  Books and movies rarely ever get it right. Oh, sure, they show the push-and-pull of a new relationship, the getting to know you, the misunderstandings. Sometimes they show the moment of reckless infidelity or casual cruelty that leads to the breakup—it’s not a very good book or movie if there’s no conflict, right?—but within fifty pages or twenty minutes, it’s all resolved. Neatly, completely, and everyone lives happily ever after. The book ends, the movie fades to black and they never show you what happens after. After the hurt and the heartache, after the reconciliation.

  And that’s where I was. Where we were, Brett and me. There in that place of reconciliation. Of apologies and forgiveness, of insecurities and doubts, of tender, barely scabbed wounds still being nursed while we raised our two kids and shared the same house, if not the same bed. It had started with a drunken threesome gone awry—he spun it off into a twosome on nights he supposedly worked late and then I found my own hot, young cowboy to go two-stepping with on weekends when Brett took the boys camping or fishing. I think we both knew what was going on and didn’t care. For a little while, I think we were even happy with the setup, though neither of us was open minded enough to broach it. Our own sex life ramped up in a way it hadn’t since before our oldest, already seven years old, was born. Having our cake and eating it, too? Yeah, we gorged on cake and it made us both sick.