Best Erotic Romance 2014 Read online

  But that’s the only thing they make that night except for noise, except for the thump of the legs of the bench against the floor, except for the crash of his shoulders on ivory keys as she sinks down on him. He’s hard and big and just as good as she remembers, and it’s even better when he slips a hand between them, a plaintive middle C sounding out with every twitch of his forearm to stroke her where they’re joined.

  “And you said you didn’t play anymore,” she breathes, riding him hard. She slams her hands down on the keys for anything to hold on to.

  He shakes his head and drives his hips up into hers. “I said I didn’t play unless it felt like mine.”

  With his free hand curled possessively around her neck, she can’t question him. She feels like his, feels like they could play this—could play each other—forever.

  When she’s almost at her peak, he reaches up and pulls the red pencil from her hair, undoing the twist, and the locks fall down around them like a curtain from the world. He kisses her mouth and he doesn’t taste like smoke. “Sing for me.”

  She shatters like notes, shivering crystal to its bones. She crashes like hands clattering over piano keys. And when he pulls her down on him, groaning her name into her ear, it’s music, indeed.

  One year after she picked him up at a bar, he stands in front of their balcony, framed against the city’s twinkling lights as the sun sets over the horizon. He hasn’t lit up a cigarette in months, but sometimes she still thinks she smells them on him. She almost misses the curl of the smoke around his head and on his tongue.

  One year, and still, a part of her is expecting him to leave, to disappear like so many ambitions and dreams that no longer feel like hers. He doesn’t, though.

  They’re surrounded by boxes, and an upright piano now dominates the wall beside her dusty typewriter. The empty canvases are propped against the velvet-covered bench. They look good together, she thinks. Like they belong.

  He walks over to her and wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her close. A soft peck behind her ear and a tug of teeth at the lobe. “Come to bed with me?”

  “A little early for that, don’t you think?”

  “Not at all.”

  A giggle that doesn’t sound like her but sounds exactly like them spills from her lips as he lifts her bridal style. Safe in his embrace, she holds on with one arm slung around his shoulder, her other hand tangled in his hair as she kisses his temple and buries her nose in soft locks.

  He sets her down on their bed and comes to hover over her on hands and knees. He kisses her mouth, licking into it and chasing her tongue. Then he slides down. She arches her back and lets him pull at fabric with lips and teeth and fingertips. Naked, she feels as real as she ever has beneath the solidity of his hands, and she spreads her legs.

  “Kiss me?” she asks. She slides her fingertip down to swirl in a circle around her clit. “Here?”

  He tugs his shirt off and shifts to lie on his stomach between her thighs. He’s done this so many times, has ended up wet all over his mouth and down his chin, has dragged messy fingers over his own chest to rub her slick across his nipples and then to clasp around his cock before pressing in.

  With a smirk, he presses kisses to the juncture of her leg and her hip, to the inside of her knee and the back of her wrist. He licks all around her fingers when she disappears them into her body, and then finally, finally, he purses his lips around her clit. She pulls her hand away, slides shining knuckles to rest on her belly. His hand comes up to splay beside hers, flat and broad and pushing her down when she wants to buck up into that soft, lapping heat.

  And he knows how to do this so well now, knows how to twist and curl his fingers just inside, how to tease and how to make her writhe. She rises and rises with every deep push of his tongue, and she’s digging fingernails into his shoulder, everything tight and set to break and—

  “What?” She chokes on the word, clenching on nothing as her stomach plummets, so close it hurts; she’s aching and swollen and wants.

  “Shh. I know what you need.” He kneels at the foot of the bed and pulls his belt free, opens his pants and shoves everything down, gets naked and then comes to lie over her. Sliding the tip of his cock around her opening, he gets himself nice and wet, and he’s right there. Right there.

  She can’t stop the little whining noise, the hiss of satisfaction when he pushes inside, thick and perfect and bare. She curls her ankle around his calf and hitches the other leg. He puts his hand to the curve of her ass and slides it to the back of her thigh, pressing it higher, bending her and opening her, making her wide so he can drive in hard. He palms her flesh so easily, feels big and solid as he thrusts and grinds, and she’s so full.

  “Perfect,” he murmurs, lips touching hers with each syllable.

  With each glide of flesh, each rock of hips against hips, he gets her back to the top of that precipice, pressure just where she needs it as he stays flush, buried deep. He surges, the rhythm one she knows so well and yet still feels new. Brightness coils, then tingles of feeling and the promise of the rush of pleasure, the overtaking wave. When it finally hits her, it’s tidal, pulling her under. She heaves and curls herself up, fixes her teeth to his shoulder and bites down hard.

  He doesn’t make her stop, just helps her through it, and when she’s lax and easy again, opening her jaw for breath, he lets her leg go and wraps his fingers around her throat. It’s light, no threat there as he pushes her back onto the mattress. He keeps his eyes open as his thrusts go long again, the steady pace of the way her fucks her slowly giving way until it’s erratic and breathless, and she writes the words I love you on his skin as he closes his eyes.

  He drops both palms to the mattress just before he tenses, before his voice breaks and he pulses, making everything wetter and warmer. He drags himself out and falls to his side, one arm curled loosely over her waist. With his face pressed to her shoulder, he breathes and breathes and breathes, and she thinks maybe she can keep this. Maybe this is what she needed, and maybe it’s just for her.

  Coming back to himself, he lifts his face and presses a kiss to the point of her jaw. It’s so simple, comfortable in a way she never expected intimacy to be. She never expected to be this happy.

  He rolls onto his back, tugging her to move with him. She ends up lying on her side, head tucked up under his chin, staring at her own hand as she traces invisible lines against his side, feeling wrapped up and safe.

  He breaks the silence, asking quietly, voice rough, “That first night. Why did you pick me?”

  The whole scene at the bar has morphed over the course of this year. What she once thought of as just a whim she now sees in softer hues. He was pretty; he still is. But there was more to it than that. She’d liked the way he moved, as if he were part of the beat.

  She gets the words out before she can stop them. “Because I saw music under your skin.”

  Humming, he lets out a little chuckle and closes his hand around her side.

  The silence only lasts a minute this time before she clears her throat. “That first morning. Why did you stay?”

  He drags his knuckles over her cheek. “Because I heard paintings under yours.”

  She smiles and nestles in deeper.

  At some point, she drifts off to the feeling of his fingers playing music on her ribs. She wakes to a dark room, to full night beyond the open curtains of her window.

  She wakes to the sound of a song.

  She finds the robe she wore their first morning together and pulls it on, tying the sash at her waist and hugging herself against the chill as she tiptoes out into the living room.

  He’s there, hair in his eyes, long fingers arched as they make chords and trills of notes that fill the room. As he opens his mouth, the softest baritone sweeps over her. And she knows him. She knows him as well as she’s ever known a lover, knows the taste of his mouth and the weight of his body and the cadence of his thoughts.

  On another level, though, she’s never
known him before this moment.

  He’s beautiful, gorgeous in lines and shades and shadow-drenched planes, and she doesn’t want to interrupt him. Doesn’t want to change anything about this moment except to make it last.

  She wants to make something.

  From the jar of pencils on the console, she withdraws one with a dull red barrel, scratched and bitten and worn from a year of use. She finds a notebook under one of the piles. With quiet steps, she makes her way over to their couch and sits, tucking bare feet under the corner of a cushion to keep them warm, and opens the notebook to a page that’s as naked as she was, moments before. A page that’s as naked as she feels.

  She wets the tip of the pencil with her tongue. And then she begins to draw.

  SHOW ME

  D. R. Slaten

  I could feel his eyes on me. I could feel how they moved over me. I knew what he saw. Just as I knew what he wanted.

  The heat of his gaze shot through me.

  He remained quiet. Watching. Waiting. Still. As if the slightest noise, the most minute of movements would spook me.

  It probably would. I was nervous. Scared. I felt laid open. Completely bared. Not just naked but naked.

  I had never done anything like this before. Wasn’t real sure I would do anything like this again. If you asked me where I got the nerve, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I wasn’t that girl. I just wasn’t.

  It might have been the day. It was so hot outside that the asphalt was sending up waves of heat. It was a lazy day, not by choice but by necessity. It was the kind of heat for which the siesta was invented.

  It might have been the time. Not quite midday. Not quite early evening. It was the in-between time. The point in the day that went from being high energy to just winding down.

  It might have been the sun. It lay heavy in the sky. It was just moving down, fighting the slow slide into the horizon.

  Nothing made sense. Nothing tipped me off as to why I was willing to do what I was doing, when I had balked before.

  I was sweating. As much from the heat outside as from the heat within me. I watched as a drop of sweat rolled down from my collarbone through the valley of my breasts and then wound its way to my belly button where it got captured. Lost in the deep groove.

  I walked slowly over to my bed. The bed reflected an aspect of my personality that had never surfaced. Not in real life. The deep-red color, the luxuriousness of the fabric, the softness of the feather bed. It screamed of a sensuality that I wasn’t sure I possessed.

  Except today. Apparently I possessed that sensuality today. Today I was willing to step out of my comfort zone. Today, I was willing to own that I was a sensual, sometimes wanton creature.

  Nothing about the day was overly special. Nothing about it screamed now. Let it be now.

  I lay down on my bed, smoothing my hands over the rich, soft velvet duvet and feeling how it covered an equally soft down comforter as my hands sank into it. So soft. I stopped to enjoy the tactile feel of it in my hands.

  I slid on my belly the final few inches that would allow me to stretch out completely. Caressing my entire body and rubbing my nipples over the fabric. The friction from the slide creating more heat. Without and within.

  My body screamed for more. But I was in no hurry. I savored. Sipped of pleasure. Tasting it slowly.

  I felt my nipples catch as they pebbled from the contact. At the shot of arousal, I burrowed my head into the pillow and took a breath to slow down my drumming heart. It didn’t help. My heart continued to be beat hard and loud.

  I slowly rolled over. Cupping my breasts as I spread my legs. Exposed. Bare.

  “Show me,” he whispered. So softly that I had to strain to hear the words he spoke. “Let me see, baby. Show me more.”

  I kept my eyes downcast. I couldn’t look at him. My nerve wouldn’t have withstood his direct gaze.

  I hadn’t realized how much I would like his eyes on my body, watching me. But even as I knew that I liked that he stared at me, I still couldn’t look at him.

  I took one of my hands from my breasts, leaving the other to tug and pull on my nipple. I slid my finger through the wetness coating the inside of my thighs. Brushing past my clit, jerking when I did. My juices had been leaking since I walked out from the bathroom. I knew I would leave a spot. I didn’t care. It was a small price to pay for the largeness of what I felt.

  My pussy had flowered. My inner lips spread outward in enticement, in invitation. I let my finger glide between my inner lips to reach the heart of me. The entrance that wept in welcome. I pushed one finger, then two into me. I let the heel of my hand move against my clit, pressing that button until I could feel the contractions within me.

  I mimicked the sexual act with my fingers, pumping them in and out. Each time I pulled out, I brought more wetness with me.

  I could hear his breath increase, watching me. I knew that his eyes were focused between my legs. I heard the rasp of his zipper as he unzipped his pants.

  If I had looked up, I would have been able to see him take out his cock. Instead I remained with my eyes averted. I could only imagine his beautiful cock pulled out of his pants. His hands on himself as mine were on me.

  That he liked what I was doing enough to have to take himself in hand added to my arousal. His pleasure gave me pleasure. Knowing that it was my pleasure that began his tripped my triggers. Almost too much.

  I pulled harder on my nipples. I could feel each pull deep in my pussy. So deep, my fingers couldn’t reach that far.

  “Finish it, baby.” His whispered voice still held the element of command.

  How he could tell that I needed more was mystifying. But he did. And I did.

  I pulled my fingers from my pussy and dragged them back up toward my clit. Slowly at first, I circled it. I was dripping wet. Which made stimulating my clit both easier and harder all at the same time.

  As the pressure built, as the pleasure grew, my fingers moved faster. Not harder. Not softer. Just faster. I pulled and rolled my nipple in time with my fingers on my clit. Both my hands working to bring me over.

  I could feel the buildup, the tension within me stretching tight. My womb contracting so violently that my lower belly rippled.

  I was poised on the edge of the precipice. Riding the crest of the coming waves of orgasm. I held it back as long as I could. I wanted to hold on to the feeling. I didn’t want to let it go.

  It was his soft groan that tipped my want into need. Then I let it go. And wave upon wave of contractions took me from almost there, to there. I was there. I moaned, the exhalation of pent-up need released all at once.

  It was at the moment of my climax that my eyes flew up to stare at him. I had to look at him, my eyes widening in shocked pleasure, as if I had never experienced orgasm before. He stared at my mouth as it opened to moan.

  My body jerked as I continued to work my clit. I rubbed my palm over my beaded nipple, milking every last drop from my body.

  “Beautiful Dani,” he said and moved toward me.

  His face went to my pussy. He drank from me then. Lapping up my wetness like the offering it was. I had come for him.

  He moved up my body once he had his fill. Kissing my belly, dipping his tongue into the crevice that the drop of salty sweat had disappeared into. He licked and sucked my nipples until they both glistened from his mouth, tightened in a way they never did just for me.

  He kissed my throat, my neck and finally…finally my mouth. I tasted myself on his tongue. I tasted him as well. The taste of the two of us together was delicious.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  I knew his thank-you was my reward for being brave enough to let him watch me masturbate. He had been asking for a while. He wanted to see how I pleasured myself. He wanted to know how I brought myself off. He was interested in what I did and how I did it. And he was interested in how I touched myself so that he could learn what I liked, as much as he was just interested in watching me do it. Maybe more.

>   If he had loved watching me half as much as I love watching him, then it was all good. It almost seems like I can feel it when he strokes himself in front of me. He is not shy about touching himself. Not at all.

  “I didn’t think it would turn me on as much as it did. To do that for you. To let you see me,” I told him.

  “Yeah?” he asked. His eyes were still hot. Hotter even than it was outside. “Why today?”

  “Not sure. I just felt it. The heat is getting to me. I didn’t want to put clothes on after the shower. I saw you in the hallway. Then my brain just jumped right in and said, now, show him now,” I confessed.

  He was still hard and hot against me. He had held back when I came. I could feel him rubbing against me.

  “I need to fuck you, Dani. But if I get inside you right now, with the vision of you fucking yourself, I’ll come as soon as I enter you,” he told me.

  His cock was leaving a trail of precum on my leg, helping it glide against my skin. Although with my sweat already there, his precum wasn’t really necessary.

  I trailed my fingers down the side of his body. My thumb caressed his hip bone and began to move toward his cock. I wanted to touch him. To stroke him.

  “Hands above your head, Dani. Grab the headboard,” he told me. “If you touch me now, it’ll all be over.”

  I removed my hands from him and reached above my head to comply. The position arched my back and pressed my breasts against his chest. The small amount of chest hair he had was teasing me. I moved slowly back and forth to increase the sensation.

  I had just come, but I was still aroused. Incredibly aroused. It might have been my thoughts of him watching me as I brought myself off, or it might have been the thought of him about to fuck me. It probably was a combination of both.

  I could feel the wetness between my legs pooling underneath my ass. I was ready for him now. Had been ready for a while.

  Still, I waited. Waited for him to be ready as well.

  He made my wait worthwhile.

  He grasped his cock by the root and fitted himself against my entrance. There was more than enough wetness between his leaking cock and the copious amount of juices flowing from my pussy.