Best Erotic Romance 2013 Read online

  “Really?”

  Smiling, she reaches out and runs a fingertip along the back of his hand. She’s flexible, all right, but she’s strong enough to give a clue of what she wants. “Really. That sounds…nice.”

  He catches her hand in his and holds it. Holds her gaze. “Yes, it does.”

  Before he arrives, Lissa clears the front room of her apartment, pushing the furniture aside to reveal the bare wood floor. With the lights dimmed and candles burning, soft music playing low, it looks like something out of a romance novel. Only, instead of a big, plush bed, she rolls out a thin mat. Instead of lingerie, she wears a tank top and tights.

  The buzzer rings, and she pads across the room to press the button for the intercom.

  “Hey. It’s Kevin.”

  “Come on up.”

  Something inside of her flutters.

  She opens the door to find him standing there, rolled-up mat beneath his arm, dressed much like he was the first time they met. Only a few days have passed, but the sight of his smile is a reassurance, a confirmation that everything she remembers about him is real. Tucking her hair behind her ear, she stands aside to let him in.

  He doesn’t walk right past her, though. He stops just at the threshold and leans in and presses his lips against her cheek. “It’s good to see you again.”

  Her voice stutters as she answers, “You, too.”

  Inside, his presence is as large as it was in the café. He takes a moment to look around. Somehow, with him there, the intimacy of the room grows even warmer, the candles and the music are too much. Everything’s too close.

  He sets his mat down a foot away from hers and unrolls it. As he does, she lets her eyes trail over him, admiring the way his body moves. He has a loping ease to him, a self-assuredness.

  “So.” He sits down and slides his shoes off. “What’s the plan?”

  Lissa has to shake her head to clear it. For all his comfort in his skin, he’s here to learn from her about a different way to move. A different way to be.

  She sits beside him on her own mat. “I thought I’d just take you through my usual routine?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “You still want me to correct you?”

  His grin is winsome, even as he’s admitting his lack of knowledge. “That’s why I’m here, right?”

  One of many. Her throat tight, her gaze cast down, she picks at the edge of her mat. “And you don’t mind me…touching you?”

  She glances up to find his eyes even darker than she remembered.

  “Not at all.” There’s a flash of heat and a moment of quiet. Then gruffly he asks, “Shall we?”

  She grabs the remote for the stereo and turns the volume up. It’s one of her typical playlists for when she practices, the tones of it soft but energizing. For the first time, the music sounds sensual as well, the gentle rhythms of it underscored by a hint of bass. She takes a deep breath and lets it go.

  “All right.” After a single nod at him, she closes her eyes. “Come to a comfortable seated position.”

  She crosses her legs and faces forward on her mat. Echoing the tones of countless instructors and DVDs, she narrates the movements that usually bring her so much peace and calm. But nothing can slow the galloping pace of her heart. Nothing can ease the need inside her bones.

  They flow through the first few poses easily. She keeps an eye on him as she goes, adding a quiet instruction here and there, verbal nudges when she doesn’t trust her hands.

  “Try to tuck your hip…”

  They’re twisted into trikonasana, and his alignment is entirely wrong. He shifts, but it doesn’t help.

  “Maybe narrow your stance?”

  He brings his front leg closer in, but it’s still not quite…

  “Here.” She rises and stands behind him. Even with a space between their bodies, she can feel his heat. He smells good, warm and clean with the faintest hint of hard-working muscles and sweat. Gingerly, she places a palm on the outside of his hip and presses slightly back. With her other hand, she cups his shoulder. Lifts.

  He exhales with a grunt. “Better?”

  “Much. You feel the difference?”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “All right. You can stand.”

  “Thank god.” His upper half jerks upward, and he groans.

  The noise vibrates through her, and she should let go. Of course she should. She doesn’t. Her hand slides down his side, from his shoulder to his waist, and then, somehow, she’s standing there, her front to his spine, his shirt clenched in her fist and his hip against her palm, and there’s just heat. Just want. For a few beats too long, she doesn’t move, and he doesn’t either. “Lissa?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Did you want—”

  It’s a quirk of his speech she’s coming to recognize—the beginning of a question that he swallows and then rephrases. Every time he goes to ask her for something, it starts that way. She doesn’t know what he’s asking of her now. And he doesn’t start again. He doesn’t speak.

  Instead he turns around, eyes burning. She lets her hands fall away, but he catches them, holds them in his own. When he releases them, it’s to ghost his fingers up the bare lengths of her arms. He curls one palm around the back of her neck and grasps her chin between his forefinger and his thumb.

  “I want—”

  His question this time is his lips, the gentle brush of his mouth against hers. With a quiet sound of surprise, she opens to him, melts into him. He’s all hard where she is soft, and then she’s falling.

  In a pile of limbs, they sink to the ground, a controlled descent inside his arms. She’s water beneath him as she wraps her legs around his hips and slides her hands along his chest. Just like she moved him, he moves her now, lifting one leg higher, pressing it almost to her shoulder and grinding down between them. His mouth is a rush of flesh and tongue, kissing and tasting. He slides his lips along her jaw, sucks at her neck, then nips his way up to her ear.

  “This isn’t what I came here for.”

  She pushes her hips up into his. “It’s not what I asked you for.”

  “But I want—”

  “Then do.”

  He proves his strength as he holds himself above her, tearing his mouth from her flesh and staring down at her. His fingertips slide along her bottom lip, probing just inside before trailing down her chest. “You’re so beautiful. And the way you move… The first time I saw you, the way your back arched…”

  “You were beautiful, too.”

  His hand cups her breast, thumb sliding in gentle strokes across the peak. “Teach me. Teach me just like you were going to.”

  She stares at him for a moment, summoning her courage. Reaching up, she threads her finger through his hair and pulls him down to her. Their lips meet softer this time, more gently.

  He whispers into the kiss, “Teach me how to touch you.”

  With a surge of want, she does just that. Shows him how she likes it when he rubs her nipple between his fingers and his thumb, how she likes his weight between her thighs. When it’s too much and not enough, she rolls them over, settling them in the swatch of floor between their mats. Hovering over him, she bares herself for him, pulls her top and bra up over her head.

  “Now, you.”

  He lifts to a half-seated position beneath her and reaches to grasp the back of the neck of his shirt. As he tugs it up, he reveals his chest to her, first the smoothly rippled flesh of his abdomen, the thin, dark trail of hair. And then there’s just muscled skin, warm and gold in the flicker of the candles, and the heaving of his ribs.

  She licks her lips. “Lie back for me.”

  Supine beneath her, he lets his hands fall to either side of his head. With a rush of power like she feels when she’s deep inside her practice, she hovers over him, thighs surrounding him. She enjoys him.

  So rarely has a lover asked her to take the lead or to teach. She takes advantage of the chance to learn.

  Raking her nails
lightly over the lines of his stomach and up his chest, she discovers every plane of him. He exhales hard when she lingers near the hollow of his hip, moans at a scratch against his nipple and tilts his head back as she slides her palms over his biceps and shoulders. When she lowers herself over him to capture his lips in another deep kiss, his hands move to her hips, big and warm. They dip lower, cupping her backside and palming her thighs. A thumb slips in between them, and she presses her face against his neck.

  “Teach me,” he insists.

  “Like this.”

  She slips his hand into the waistband of her pants, introducing him to wet, hot flesh. He curses as she slides his fingers through her sex, and the hardness against her thigh pulses. He needs no further instruction. With his other hand cupping the back of her head, keeping her mouth flush with his, he pushes his fingers inside, swirls a thumb around her clit, and she goes molten.

  Breath hot against her ear, he whispers, “I’ve wanted inside you from the second I saw you forward-fold.”

  She groans and pulls his hand from her. Rising up onto her knees, she tugs off the rest of her clothes. He takes her cue and does the same, and when she lays herself on top of him again, it’s flesh to flesh, his cock hot and naked between them. Before she can spare another thought, she lifts up, lifts him up, and then she’s sinking down on him.

  With a muffled gasp, she feels him fill her, feels the pressure of his hands around her hips and the wetness of his lips.

  “So good.” He holds her flush against him. “You feel so good.”

  Together, they flow. Poses she’s practiced a hundred times echo their names inside her skull as she moves over him, taking him into her again and again. There’s the arching spine of cobra and the deep backbend of ustrasana.

  “That’s it, baby. Ride me.”

  Her spine releases as she curls herself back over him, arms braced against his shoulders. She rolls him until he lies on top of her, still buried deep, then bites his ear and scrapes her nails down the length of his side.

  Together, they find ananda balasana and sphinx. He curses and grinds his pelvis hard against her. In a merging of his strength and her fluidity, he pushes her legs back as he withdraws. She feels every inch as he sinks in and in. In a few rough thrusts, he fills her, brings her close.

  And then he’s gone.

  “Up.”

  He puts her on her hands and knees and grabs her hair, arching her spine to bitilasana before driving back home. His one hand reaches around her hip to circle her clit. The heat flows through every part of her, a gathering storm in muscles and nerves. She bites down and drops her head.

  “Close,” she pants.

  He kisses her throat and then her ear. “Get there.”

  Three more hard thrusts, and she’s done. Exploding from her center out, she screams his name and pulses, pleasure crushing all her senses into blackness, to nothing but the push of his body into hers.

  She collapses down, slides her arms out on the wood. For brutal, blissful seconds, she gives and lets him take, until with a deep groan he throbs and stills, hips tight against her. When he finally relaxes, breathing hard, he molds his chest to her spine and kisses all along her shoulder.

  He laughs and exhales hard. “You really are flexible.”

  “And you really are strong.”

  He rubs her arm and slides his hand down her torso to squeeze her hip. With a low sound, deep in his throat, he pulls away from her, rolling to lie on her mat. He curls his finger at her and grins. “Come here.”

  She finds a home inside the juncture of his shoulder and his collarbone, presses her lips against his throat as she snuggles into his arms.

  He squeezes her tightly and kisses her brow.

  “Seems like we have a lot to teach each other,” he says quietly. “Yoga. Rock-climbing… Sex.”

  Tracing lazy shapes on his chest, she glows from the inside. “I don’t know. That sounds like it might take a while.”

  “I’m counting on it.”

  She isn’t very good at this, she thinks.

  Reaching overhead, she makes her hand connect with a worn plastic grip and hauls herself up.

  “Good, good. You’re doing great.” Kevin’s fifteen feet below her, his voice warm and encouraging. “There’s a foothold right underneath you.”

  She glances down to find the spot he’s telling her about. Holding on for dear life, she kicks her leg out and connects with artificial rock.

  He wants to take her to a real mountain soon, but for now she’s fine with his climbing gym, with padded mats beneath her and a rope she can trust clipped into the harness at her hips. At least for as long as she’s still learning.

  In the past few weeks, they’ve taught each other quite a lot. His trikonasana is perfect now, and her climbing is starting to get better.

  The sex was fantastic from the start, but they’ve practiced at it all the same. Diligently. And repeatedly.

  “Just one more, beautiful.”

  The compliment makes her flush with warmth, infusing her with strength she never knew she had as she reaches for the final hold. Gripping tight, she lifts from the knees, pushes up, and with a grunt of triumph, she slaps the top bar. She breaks out into a brilliant smile and holds onto her rope as she looks down. His gaze is full of pride as he stands beneath her, anchoring the other end of the line with his weight.

  “Very nice. Very nice.” His wandering eyes tell her he’s talking about her ass as much as he is about her climb. “You ready to come down now?”

  “Yes, please.”

  He gives her some slack and she kicks off, rappelling down in a slow, easy glide. Finally, her feet alight on solid ground. She unclips herself and turns and then falls into his arms.

  In a low whisper at her ear, he tells her, “You look so incredibly sexy on the top of a wall.”

  “As sexy as you look in upward-facing dog?”

  His only answer is a growl. Then his mouth meets hers in a kiss that’s deep and warm.

  She smiles against his lips.

  Kissing is one thing both of them are good at. No instruction required.

  LAST HUNDRED DAYS

  Geneva King

  I’ve got a secret. I’m fucking my husband.

  Okay, I know what you’re thinking: isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Let me rephrase. I’m fucking my soon-to-be ex-husband.

  I don’t really know how it happened. Seven months ago, we were standing before the judge, citing “irreconcilable differences” and screaming at each other over who got the house, money, and condo by the beach. I don’t even like that place. It’s drafty and there’s a family of mice living in the walls. But he loved it and anything he wanted—well, you get the point. What’s that expression…it’s cheaper to keep her? I was determined to show the bastard exactly how much cheaper it was going to be.

  And yet, here I am fresh from the shower, dabbing perfume on my body, ears cocked for the sound of his truck in the driveway.

  It’s all my friend Helen’s fault really. A few months ago, we were supposed to meet for dinner but then she dumped me for some twenty-two-year-old stock boy. I didn’t want to sit alone all night, so I decided to take myself out to my favorite Japanese steakhouse restaurant, the kind where the chef cooks the food in front of you.

  I was seated with four other people and at the last minute, a lone man joined our table. Imagine my shock when I realized it was Darren.

  “Well,” he said after a long moment. “Well.”

  Too late, I remembered how many times we’d come here over the course of our marriage. I licked my lips nervously. “I thought I got custody of all the places this side of town?”

  He looked taken aback and stepped away. “I’ll leave. You were here first.”

  I should have just nodded and let him walk away, but instead my hand patted the seat next to me. “No need. Surely we can share chicken and shrimp without legal intervention.”

  He eyed me warily like he didn’t
believe me—hell, I wasn’t sure I believed me—but he sat. My mind was a mess of jumbled thoughts. I think every woman frets over running into her ex post-breakup. What you’ll be wearing, who you’ll be with. Who he’ll be with. And if she’ll be prettier than you. My fantasies involved me looking beautiful and fabulous, preferably on the arm of a new man, and him, shocked, jealous and regretful. Instead, I’m the poster child for pathetic singles, dining alone in an old sundress with a tattered book beside my plate.

  If I’m allowed to brag, we did well. We didn’t try to kill each other. We even smiled, albeit awkwardly. We made small talk with the other guests. The women next to Darren were a mother-daughter duo, tired after a day of moving the daughter into her first apartment. The two people across from me were newlyweds, recently returned from their honeymoon.

  I half listened as the new bride chattered about their wedding cruise, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her husband. The look of adoration on his face as he watched his wife talk clenched my heart.

  “So what about y’all?”

  The question jerked me out of my trance. “I’m sorry?”

  She giggled. “I’m sorry, I know I talk too much. I asked how long you’ve been together.”

  Her husband poked her side. “Honey—”

  But she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “It’s just so beautiful, you know? On the cruise, there was a couple who’d been married for forty-nine years! Isn’t that amazing?”

  She paused to beam at us. Darren looked as bemused as I felt.

  “So, how long has it been?”

  The last thing I wanted to do was ruin her innocence about marriage; after all, I’d been the same once upon a time. But before I could answer, Darren spoke up.

  “We got married four years ago.”

  Everyone smiled at us. “That’s so exciting,” the mom chimed in.

  The newlywed lady nodded. “And you know, they say the first five years are the hardest. But if you survive that, the rest is a piece of cake.” She snapped her fingers.