The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels (23 page)

And it comes to me. “She came to see you.”

Maggie nods.

“You sent her to me?”

“She sent herself.”

“Her deepest desire?”

She looks down and shrugs.

“Wait. You mean to tell me she came to me for ‘mind-numbing sex’ at your suggestion?”

Maggie takes in a deep breath and looks up, focusing those large green eyes at me.

“You have a right to know, I suppose.”

“Yeah.”

“She didn’t go to you for ‘mind-numbing sex’.”

“Then what for?”

“A child,” she says.

And I can hear my heart beating as I stand in the doorway. It sounds like thunder.

THE BANISHING

Mark Ramsden

ONE

“Did we miss anything out?” said Amanda Wood, a Junoesque brunette whose close-cropped hairstyle highlighted her beguiling green eyes and full lips.

“Not much,” said John, who was anything but beautiful, with his craggy face and hair shaved almost to the bone. There were some intriguing scars marking his bullet-shaped head but it
was his cold blue eyes which most people remembered, sometimes before shaking their heads to banish the memory. He seemed to have seen too much for his own peace of mind and that was often as much
as people needed to know.

“You make us sound like a couple of perverts, if you ask me,” he said, almost smiling for once. “And it doesn’t really say what we look like.”

“Don’t want to frighten anyone off,” said Amanda. “Do we?”

John looked at his long-standing partner, the person he sometimes called the love of his life and sometimes called all the names under the sun. He scowled and narrowed his eyes but she had known
him too long to be troubled by his fierce expression. She poked the tip of her tongue out of her mouth and smiled. His face didn’t soften but he was nonetheless thankful that he could still
feel his cold heart melt.

From the erotic journal of John and Amanda:

What Amanda Wood thinks John Palmer looks like

It doesn
’
t matter. Standard bloke
,
I suppose
,
but taller than most. He has all his hair but shaves it brutally anyway. His face is full of character –
piercing eyes and full lips that always seem ready to twitch into a sardonic smile. The point of him is power. Life force. Zest. Vigour. A certain devil-may-care insouciance. And humour
,
although he is so deadpan you can hardly tell when he
’
s joking. Always that steely glint in his eye. Who cares if he
’
s no pin-up? Attraction is all about chemicals and
the way you think their personality might complement yours. And knowing that he looks after himself and that he could look after me
,
if necessary. I don
’
t want a hurt little boy
looking for reassurance
,
I want a man. And I
’
ve got one.

I wanted him to fuck me
,
the first time I saw him in action in the gym. He was obviously more interested in getting fit than preening himself in front of the mirror. He had solid
muscle but he wasn
’
t ripped or cut like the bum-boys who usually feature in any magazine article about fitness centres.

It doesn
’
t take very long for any S&M enthusiast to talk about bums and we might as well discuss John
’
s as it
’
s just about perfect.
It
’
s tight and taut
,
no hair. His face is rugged
,
to put it mildly
,
but I prefer that to your average olive-skinned Adonis.

He trains to win
,
whether it
’
s running
,
chess or tiddlywinks. There
’
s a cruel streak in there
,
too
,
but that
’
s fine by me. I
don
’
t want a house-trained moggy with fleas and no claws. I want a lion. Someone who is going to scratch. And yet someone secure enough to submit to me without turning into one of the
dickless wonders who crawl round the floor at fetish clubs. There are times I want to push him past his limits and for that I want a strong man. A real man. Which is what I
’
ve
got.

What John Palmer thinks Amanda Wood looks like

Gorgeous. But wounded
,
too. Haunted eyes that betray the same nervy intelligence that Gillian Anderson has used to captivate most of the planet
’
s male occupants. (Although
I can never sit through the increasingly inane and implausible
X-Files
.) Now Amanda is going to rip my heart out and eat it in front of me because I have transgressed the first commandment.
Thou shalt not mention any women other than me. Thou shalt also not even acknowledge or be aware of their existence. And if thou dost
,
there shall not be enough flowers and triple-goo ice
cream in the whole world to make up for it. But she need have no fear of any mortal woman. To look at Amanda is to be captivated by her green eyes
,
which seem to hint at some Asiatic
ancestors – pulp novelists usually refer to
“
almond-shaped eyes
”
at this point
,
and I don
’
t seem to come up with anything better
,
so it
will have to stand.

It is one of life
’
s little ironies that she has breasts large enough to make the average doltish male deliriously happy but my own obsession is with bottoms. While I never tire
of rubbing my face into her soft
,
bouncing breasts and teasing her nipples with my tongue
,
my attention will probably be more fixed on her bottom and its globes of endlessly
squeezable and kiss able flesh. Our lovemaking often starts with one of my hands stroking her moist vulva while I gratefully kiss and nibble at the deep
,
majestic divide of her bottom.
Perhaps I haven
’
t said much about what Amanda looks like but the only thing that needs to be known is that her eyes seem endlessly deep
,
endlessly understanding. She
doesn
’
t like her snub nose or the cute gap in her front teeth but it
’
s hard to find anyone who actually likes what they look like these days. I was certainly never
interested in the brain-dead model types that are on the cover of every men
’
s magazine. I don
’
t like football
,
expensive cars or fighting either
;
I sometimes
wonder if I am really a man at all
,
by the current media definition. Anyway
,
Amanda certainly needs to have no fear from any of the women we occasionally invite to join us
,
but
open marriages are hard work – perhaps even harder to sustain than the conventional model.

And here Amanda has scrawled, “Tell me about it.”

By the time their advert was published they had just returned from a late summer holiday in Syracuse, Sicily, where they had taken a house near the sea. They had planned to
spend the sparkling, starry nights invoking Pan, the god of sex and wine. They could recover on the beach the next day; watching the fishing boats bobbing up and down on the warm Mediterranean. But
it had been anything but idyllic. They had spent most of their time arguing, while teenage psychopaths screeched around the tiny streets on their mopeds. It was even a relief to return to the grey
skies of London and their house in Hampstead. From here they could at least look down on the people trapped in the centre of the city while they poured themselves another glass of something
expensive and planned their next elegant debauch.

It was that hour of the day where they really had to decide to do something or they were lost, but they were still idling over a late breakfast on the terrace. There had been more tension
between them ever since they had arranged to meet one of the women who had replied to their advert.

“Have you noticed that couples in pornography never argue?” said Amanda, leafing through the contact mag where they had placed their ad.

John almost smiled. He was still angry, for reasons that are rarely mentioned in fantasy fiction of any kind; close proximity to a long-standing partner, the personal habits and little
behavioural tics that tend to grate as you enter your second decade of cohabitation.

“That’s because erotic fiction describes an ideal world that doesn’t exist,” said John, trying not to sound too wistful. After all, he had been lucky to find a woman like
Amanda. She was beautiful, infinitely wise, even capable of sustaining an open marriage with a minimum of plate-throwing and screaming. Although their relationship was presently mired in something
best not analysed too closely, at least they both still thought they were better off together than apart.

“Never mind,” said Amanda. “I’m sure this new plaything of yours will be the answer to our problems. And you won’t go falling in love with her. Will you?”

These comments were dripping with so much irony that John judged it safer to stay silent for the moment. Adding new partners to an established relationship was indeed a dangerous remedy;
sometimes the patient didn’t survive. And it was always hard to judge when infatuation with the new-found object of desire became love. Even when it did, how could this be allowed to
flourish? For there was too much invested in their own partnership to risk getting in too deep with anyone new.

Amanda obviously thought that John had spent too much time contemplating Victoria Lambert’s letter and photograph. She did indeed have a flawless body, a beautiful face and, according to
her, an undying thirst for sensual exploration. It seemed too good to be true. Particularly as she reminded John of a lost love he had never told Amanda about.

He couldn’t quite make up his mind whether to ring her or not, not because she was unattractive – far from it – but he was worried about upsetting the delicate balance of their
relationship, which had to continue long after whatever happened with Victoria. Like an alcoholic seated before a foaming beer that remained undrunk, trembling on the brink, John spent many furtive
moments staring at the photo of a shyly smiling young blonde woman. She seemed eager to embody a type of unquestioning acquiescence that exists more often in the minds of men than in reality.
Amanda was unimpressed, as well she might be.

“She’s just what you need,” she said scornfully. “A younger, dumber blonde version of me. A docile little blonde slave you can tutor in the ways of
righteousness.”

John kept his face absolutely rigid but there may have been a flicker of something in his eyes, for she smiled knowingly. “I knew you would fancy that,” she said. She liked showing
just how well she knew him. Precisely because it rubbed him up the wrong way.

“I like the
Withnail and I
quote,” he said.

“Hmm,” she murmured, not at all convinced and not shy about letting him know it. “Anyway. Are you sure she’s right for us? She might be a bit
too
dumb.”

John raised an eyebrow as he awaited an expert demolition of Victoria’s tastes, dreams and aspirations. “She’s a dancer, apparently,” said Amanda, her tone lightly
ironic. “She was in West End Musicals.”

She looked at him as if she had just furnished proof that Victoria had just served ten years for the especially brutal murder of a bald man called John, the first in a series of ingeniously
cruel slayings of blokes called John, particularly those who placed contact ads in sex magazines.

When he didn’t rise to the bait, Amanda waved the letter in the air and started again, her eyes just that little bit wider and her voice just that little bit louder. “She can’t
resist telling us she was in
Cats
. Or was, until she injured herself.”

John nodded, ignoring her corrosive tone, thinking back to when he had been foolish enough to invest in the theatre. Dancing was a hell of a life and yet young girls still flocked to prove
themselves in this most exacting and cruel of professions. All for a pittance and the chance to dance to some of the worst music ever written, in front of tourists and coach parties. These young
women did of course have very finely shaped legs and bottoms, an inexhaustible wellspring of excess energy and a certain desire for applause and recognition that made them almost pathetically eager
to please. But this was hardly the sort of insight he wanted to share with Amanda.

“It means she will be very fit,” said John, who was trying not to sound too smitten. “And also determined to get what she wants. A hard worker. And . . . at least she can
spell. And write in English.”

They exchanged a glance. Considering the state of some of the mail they had got, perhaps Amanda had been wrong to condescend to her just because she was a dancer.

“Let’s audition her, then,” said Amanda. “You obviously won’t be happy until you’ve fucked her.”

“What was that about
Cats
?’ said John, making a feline, yowling sound and scratching at the air between them.

“Don’t make me scratch you,” said Amanda. Their eyes locked as they came to a decision. An experimental kiss sharpened their hunger for each other. And soon they were making as
much noise as the average feline couple in the throes of some rooftop tryst.

It was a night shortly after a full moon when Victoria knocked on their door. Her blonde hair shone; her clear blue eyes seemed innocent of any guile or deceit. It was
altogether ridiculous that such a stunning woman should have to answer an advert in a contact magazine. But then where else could she safely seek to explore the dark desires within her? Hanging
around in squalid, noisy clubs was hardly a sensible solution, as John and Amanda knew to their cost. The dull repetitive music was often painfully loud to those not using ecstasy and most of those
dancing were merely sensation-seekers who thought it was a big thrill to wear tight-fitting lycra in a night club.