The Siren

* * *

“I don’t do this kind of thing,” Izzy said, blowing on the surface of her coffee. The café was busy, and they were sitting in a cramped side booth. Opposite her, the guy let a smile spread across his face. She got a fluttering feeling in her solar plexus. Under the table, his foot butted against her stockinged leg.

“Herbal tea more your style?” he said.

“I mean—I don’t usually go out with strangers I meet at work.”

He nodded. He let his gaze dance over her face and down to her plunging neckline, where it stuck. She had to fight not to follow the trail his eyes took with a finger.

“That’s cool,” he said. His voice dropped through the floor. “To tell you the truth, I don’t usually do this either,” he whispered, just as Izzy felt his hand brush her knee under the table. Involuntarily, she gave a sharp intake of breath. He whistled, low, under his breath.

“I don’t know what it is.”

“What what is?”

“Something about you. You make me want to do crazy things.”

“Like what?”

“Like this.”

His knuckles grazed the nylon of her tights and dragged up over the curve of her thigh. He leaned over the table and brushed his mouth over hers with the lightest of touches, just enough to make her lips buzz.

“Wow.” He pulled back and looked her over like she was a creature from outer space. “You make me feel kind of reckless. I think I like it. What about you?”

For a long moment Izzy couldn’t answer him. She wasn’t sure if she was more stunned by his audacity or by the fact that she hadn’t pulled away.

“I don’t even know your name,” she said at last.

“It’s George.”

She nodded, let the tip of her tongue play over her lips where he’d kissed her.

“Izzy,” she said. “I think I like it, too.”

He shoved a knee between her legs.

“Shall I keep going?”

Izzy answered without thinking. “Don’t stop.”

He gripped her thighs. Izzy gripped the red leather of the seat. George’s jaw tensed and he clouded over. For a minute, she thought she saw something more than the lust of a stranger in his expression. As he worked his way over her, rubbing through the layers of material and nylon, they were silent. Izzy couldn’t help breathing harder, but she stiffened her spine and moaned and tried not to move.

Behind them, the waiters shouted to each other in Italian. Outside, the city rushed past in a blur of blue traffic. Underneath the table, George’s hands kept busy.

“Oh my God,” Izzy said, eyes widening.

“You like that,” George said, pinching harder.

“No—I mean, yes.” Izzy said, struggling to breathe. “Marcella. From work, she’s right over there.”

“I should stop?”

“No. I mean, please. Please don’t.”

“Did she see you?”

“Not yet.”

“You’re blushing.”

Izzy moaned, trapped in a cozy little booth, with a stranger’s hands between her legs. Her conscious mind screamed for her to run away. It seemed her body was pinned to the seat.

Suddenly, George pulled back, straightened up and took a sip of his coffee. His hand shook a little. Izzy was left teetering on the brink and ready to scream.

“What’s going on?” Izzy said, aware that her voice sounded desperate. She was also uncomfortably aware she would probably be prepared to beg.

George puffed air through his mouth.

“Go to the ladies’ room,” he said, sliding a knife from his place setting across the table. “Take this with you.” He nudged her hand with the blunt side of the blade.

“Whoa, I’m not—”

“Cut your tights,” George said, interrupting her. “You need to make it so I can reach you properly. Please.”

Izzy opened her mouth. There were no words in it. So instead, she slid the knife into her purse and got up, hoping her legs would still support her. She walked to the toilet and shut herself in the cubicle. Her hands were awkward as she sawed a hole in the nylon. The knife was blunt and it was hard to make much of an opening. She took hold of the edges and tugged, stretching the hole wider.

As she opened the door, she was startled to find her work colleague facing her in the mirror.

“Marcella,” Izzy said. “Uh. Hi.” Her pulse banged in her ears. The other woman dabbed lipstick onto her mouth.

“You okay, Isabella?” Marcella was Spanish. “Look a little bit hot.” She rasped her aitches.

“Yeah, I’m just…I ate chili.” Izzy turned on the tap to cover her embarrassment.

Marcella frowned. “Hmm.” She zipped her lipstick back into her purse and gave Izzy a rose-red smile. “Don’t be late back.” At the door she stopped and turned. “Nice looking hombre.”

Izzy tried not to check as she walked back to the table. Was Marcella nearby? Had anyone else cottoned on to them? What if the waiter came? Her train of worries was cut short as George grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her down next to him. Suddenly she forgot all the good reasons to leave.

All she could think of was how she’d like to kiss the smile right off his face.

“Don’t move,” George said under his breath. He tucked his hand between her legs. “Now remind me what’s happening here.”

“We’re having coffee,” Izzy said, swallowing.

“I was on my way to a concert,” George said, one hand brushing gently, almost casually, against her inner thigh. “But I the theatre over-booked.”

“Yeah. I fucked up. Everything went haywire. So right now you should be listening to baroque cellos,” Izzy said, her eyelids dropping low. “And I should be eating a cheese-and-pickle sandwich in the staff room.”

“And instead,” George said, as his fingers made contact with her bare flesh. Izzy jumped so hard she banged her knee on the underside of the table.

“On edge?” he said, grinning.

“Just barely,” she said, narrowing her eyes. She shifted in her seat, moved closer to him. George hooked the edge of her knickers and pulled them away from her, so that she squirmed from the lack of friction, the absence of pressure.

At last, he rewarded her with a single, gentle stroke of his index finger, running up the wetness of her seam. Twisting his hand, he placed two fingers tentatively over her clit and held them there while she pulsed against him, trying to wriggle and grind herself against his hand. He inhaled slowly.

“Man,” he said. “You’re so impatient.”

“God, yes,” Izzy said, trying not to growl. Unable to help herself, she rocked back and forth against his blunt fingertips. Bent over his hand, half of her hoped it wasn’t obvious what they were doing, and half of her didn’t give a flying fuck. Still, it wasn’t enough.

Not until he pushed a fingertip inside her, curling it up slowly until Izzy thought she would scream, did she catch a glimpse of the orgasm she was so desperate to find. With his thumb he pushed at her clit, nudging it insistently.

“That’s probably why you screwed up,” George said.

“How can you…talk?” Izzy said, gasping.

“You know you can learn. To concentrate,” George said. “If you practice.”

“Oh, yes.”

“You want to?”

“Oh yes, please.”

“You make me feel kind of dizzy, Izzy.”

“God, you’re making me want to come,” Izzy said, her voice rising.

“Cool.” George bit his lip and watched her. In the kitchen, a waiter shouted, someone dropped a knife on the floor. The world was small, loud and busy.

“So do it.”

Izzy looked at him. He smiled. His fingers pressed hard. And she did.

I Dare You

By Emma Hillman

“I dare you,” he said, his eyes glinting as he pushed his sunglasses up to rest on his head. He was sitting half-turned toward me, his left forearm casually draped across the steering wheel. He looked at ease, comfortable even. You wouldn’t believe he’d just told me to strip and straddle him. In the middle of the day. In a Walmart parking lot.

“Are you kidding?”

“You know I’m not.”

I wasn’t sure about this. Oh, I wanted him. I always did. But, right here? “Are you sure? Josh, it’s the middle of the day—”

He cut me off. “We’re just passing through. It’s not like we’re going to see any of them ever again. Come on, baby, where’s your sense of fun?”

Gone out the window, it appeared. I bit my lower lip as I thought of the logistics involved. “I want you, but I’m not sure about this.”

“Why not?” he countered straightaway. His right hand found my knee, and I shivered when it began moving up my thigh.

“I can’t get naked. Everyone would see me!”

“Ah, so that’s what’s stopping you,” he mused. “It’s the naked bit, not the sex bit.”

“Never the sex bit,” I replied. He was too damn good for that.

He smirked, obviously knowing what I was thinking. “What if I offer you a compromise?”

“Like what?”

“You only get your bottom half naked. That way, you’ll be hidden below the window.”

“Oh.” I licked my lips, thought it over for all of two seconds, then nodded. “You’re on.”

A wide smile graced his face. “Perfect. Hop on then, Jamie.” He snapped his pants open with agile fingers, his cock soon slapping against his T-shirt-covered abs. “I’m ready.”

“You don’t say.” He looked ready as hell, precome already leaking from his tip. I caught the drop with my finger and put it in my mouth, making him groan.

Before I could chicken out, I popped the button of my shorts open, slid down the zipper and wriggled out of them. I was only wearing a sheer lace thong so it was even easier to discard it. I let everything fall to the floor then looked up to find Josh staring at me, his right hand curled around his length. He caught my gaze and smirked, knowing how much I loved watching him masturbate.

“You don’t play fair,” I said, feeling juices spread across the seat beneath me.

“Ah, but what would be the point in that?” He let go of his cock and grabbed my hand. “You’re so fucking sexy, I can’t help but want to fuck you all the time. Did you like your present?”

I smiled. He’d bought me a collection of erotic stories, and I’d been reading for the past hour or so. I guessed he’d seen me fidget in my seat. The lusty words had kept me entranced, my imagination going wild as I thought of the different positions portrayed and how it would feel if Josh did…certain things to me. I licked my lips.

He growled, “Come over here, baby. I need to fuck you.”

I went.

I shoved him back so he could recline in his seat, and then I grabbed his cock and aligned myself. I sat down, taking him inside me, inch by slow inch. I gasped when he finally hit my cervix, but Josh chose that moment to start kissing me. He licked into my mouth, his fingers slipping under my top to pull my bra down. He pinched my nipples, the rough caress too much, too soon.

But my boyfriend knew me well. By the time his hands palmed my heavy breasts, I was so far gone I’d completely forgotten about the people around us. I heard voices in the distance, trunks being slammed shut, shopping carts being wheeled back. For someone who’d been scared of men seeing her naked, I didn’t even stop to think before moving onto my knees, one perched on the door’s armrest and the other on the console separating our seats.

Josh broke the kiss and growled, “Yes, baby, ride me. You’re so fucking tight. Oh yes, that’s it.”

I loved it when he talked dirty, I thought to myself as I rocked up and down. I clasped my arms around his shoulders and held tight, widening my stance a little so his pubic bone brushed against my clit. I moaned at the sensation and did it all over again.

Josh’s hands slid down to cup my butt, his nails digging into the soft flesh with apparent relish. He tilted his head down and whispered in my ear, “As soon as we stop for the night, I’m fucking your ass. Consider yourself warned.”

He knew what he was doing. Between his husky promise and his fingers burrowing into my cleft, it didn’t take long for that sweet fire to spread throughout me.

“I’m gonna come!”

“Race you there,” he panted as he rocked his hips up.

I screamed when my orgasm hit me. Screamed some more when Josh’s seed hit the end of me.

It was too bad we’d forgotten to close the windows. The good thing was that we didn’t get arrested. The car’s leather seats, however, will never be the same. Every time I see those dark spots, I remember our road trip and what happened. And then, I get wet and Josh notices, and well, let’s just say we’ve now learned our lesson. We always remember to close the windows.

Well, nearly always…

Two Ways

By Dante Davidson

Noel is watching me.

I can feel her eyes. I am naked and exposed. There is no place to hide. I know what I am supposed to do, but my hands might as well be tied behind my back. I am paralyzed, standing in front of the closet door, staring at my reflection in the mirror. I wish I didn’t have to. I don’t like to look at myself in this way. But she wants scrutiny, and I always try to give her what she wants.

Silently, I turn to the left. Then, I slowly work my way down my reflection, as if I’m looking at some other man—some hot guy I’ve just caught sight of in line at the movies. Except naked. I take in the tattoos on my arms, the muscles that ripple and flex when I move. I know she finds me attractive, but I don’t always see what she sees.

There’s a bottle of lube on the dresser table. I don’t want to go and get the K-Y, yet I do. There were explicit directions waiting for me when I came home from work. I won’t let her down. I grab up the bottle, pour a handful of gloss into my palm and then start to jack my cock. I’m semi-erect already, even though I tell myself that I’m not doing this for me. I’m doing this for her.

I stare into the mirror, and I work my hand up and down the length of my cock. Sometimes I feel like an object when I do this.

“You are an object,” she tells me. “An object of art. An object of lust.”

I’ve been manhandling the equipment for long enough to know how to give myself pleasure. But there is always something new about doing this for her. I’m the performer, and she’s the audience. I want to give her a good show.

The note said to strip down and jerk myself off in front of the mirror. I’ll admit I felt a deep shiver, a fierce thrill of anticipation, from reading her neatly printed handwriting, those straight up-and-down lines spelling out such dirty deeds. She leaves me notes often. Sometimes she likes to watch me take a shower. Sometimes she watches me sleep.

I pump my fist up and down on my cock. I tighten my fingers at the head. I’m good at this. She doesn’t have to tell me that.

What brings me closer to orgasm is the knowledge that she’s watching. She’s sitting on a chair on the other side of our two-way mirror. We had the mirror specially installed so that she could do precisely this: watch me. When one side of the mirror (within the closet) is dark, and the other side (the bedroom) is brightly lit, she can see me but I can’t see her. Sure, I know that she’s there. Still, I find the situation a bit disconcerting, to stare into my eyes and know that she’s staring back.

These mirrors are called one-way or two-way—like flammable and inflammable, and shelled and unshelled mean the same thing (look it up if you don’t believe me). I know which term I prefer. One way means that this is all about her pleasure. She gets off watching me masturbate. One way means I don’t count at all.

When she first told me she wanted to watch, I didn’t understand. I’d never met a girl like Noel before. She is forceful with her desires, shows no fear of her fetishes. She sat me down and said, “If we’re going to do this—if we’re going to be together—then there are some things about me that you should know.”

I thought she’d confess the usual types of secrets. Maybe she was deep in debt, or a former drug user, or perhaps she’d put herself through college by stripping or even turning tricks. I’d heard stories like those from all of my exes. This girl was different.

“I like to watch,” she said, and then she tilted my head up so that I was looking into her hazel eyes. “I mean,” she continued, “I need to watch.”

“Watch?” I repeated, dumbly, thinking TV or movies or sports…

“I’m a voyeur,” she said next, and I rolled the word around in my mind. I’d heard the term, but tossed out casually, not like this. She was serious. She was naming herself. “I need to watch my men in order to reach orgasm. Will you let me watch you? Will you let me watch you when you’re showering, when you’re dressing, when you’re playing with yourself?”

I said, “Yes,” automatically, before I even knew what I was agreeing to. I love her. That’s the truth. And her words were turning me on. That’s the bigger truth.

I know she’s in there right now, in the dark, touching her pussy. I imagine her leaning up against the cold glass so that she can be as close to me as a closet door will allow.

My hand pumps faster. I am growing more aroused by the second.

At first, I didn’t realize how serious she was about her fetish. I didn’t understand that sometimes when I was getting dressed in the morning she’d stand in the hall and peek through the crack in the door. But I became accustomed to her sly little ways, and I’ve grown good at putting on a proper performance. She has a fetish, but she makes me feel worth watching.

My fist works fiercely, a blur of flesh on flesh. I close my eyes and groan. I’m right there, on the cusp. I give her a warning, “I’m going to…” and then I come, hard, against the polished silver of the mirror. I hear her sigh in response, and that makes me smile.

She gets off and I get off.

In this case, there are two ways about it.

Manners

By Georgia E. Jones

The dream made sense in the way all dreams make sense, which is to say that everything that occurred seemed eminently plausible, while upon waking the conscious mind can make neither heads nor tails of events.

In Amanda’s dream she was walking across a meadow. Her feet were moving, yet there was no effort involved so it felt a bit floaty, yet entirely pleasant. It was warm and sunny, a dream meadow that clearly had never met an English spring, so sharp the crocuses had barely dared to put their heads above ground. Suddenly she was in a hot-air balloon, the basket lined with crystals and the balloon itself in stripes of purple and fuchsia, making it look like a balloon owned by Barbara Cartland, were she still alive and had she owned a hot-air balloon (in the dream it all made sense).

The balloon floated over the tops of the trees and Amanda was wondering how high it would go and whether or not she should be nervous when a handsome hot-air balloon pilot appeared at her side. “Don’t worry,” he said reassuringly, “I’ve done this before.”

She did not know him, but of course felt at once that she did. He stared at her with piercing, dark eyes. He looked rather how she imagined Heathcliff would look, but a great deal less mopey and tragic, and also more heavily muscled, though Heathcliff worked out of doors, so perhaps this was a facet of his personna that Bronte had simply failed to mention.

“My name is—” the pilot said. The steady streaming of the wind stole the words from his lips, but it did not matter. He put his hand on her arm, warmly suggestive.

Because Amanda was a person who spent much of her free time with Gaskell, Austen and the Brontes (minus Branwell), the words that sprang to mind were, “Sir, you mistake me!” A phrase quite unlike one any a modern woman (which she undeniably was, despite her choice of reading material) would employ. But his hand was large and warm, and the weight of it created a little frisson of excitement in the pit of her stomach and she thought she mightn’t say either of those things. After all, it was only his hand, and it was only resting, quite inoffensively, on her arm.

The balloon rose higher, seeming to require little attention from its pilot, who continued to study her intently. The treetops receded, becoming like the miniature trees she had seen at the train museum in the Vale of the White Horse, but she was no longer nervous. “May I kiss you?” the pilot asked. Amanda had never been asked for her permission. It seemed to be something men no longer did. They simply assumed you would, without bothering to actually find out, which perversely made her want to refuse. Being asked had the opposite effect.

“Yes,” she said. The wind carried the word away, but he had been watching her lips and lowered his head to cover them with his own. It was like being kissed for the first time, with the proviso that all the participants knew exactly what they were about. Amanda felt (and was slightly ashamed for feeling so) that kissing was oftentimes an arduous business, as if men were St. Bernards and she was a new squeaky toy. But the pilot was patient, waiting for her to open her mouth to him. He stepped closer, sealing their bodies together so the baffled wind must go around them. He kissed her slowly, open-mouthed, and it was so lovely she did not want it to end. He lifted her to sit on the edge of the basket, all well and good, except there was nothing but air below her.

“It’s all right,” he said in her ear. “We’re coming down.” She twisted her head and saw that this was true, but now it was water below them, not land. Amanda only had an instant to be alarmed by this prospect when the balloon turned into a boat, cleaving smoothly through a white-capped ocean. The pink-and-fuchsia balloon dissolved into streamers that flung themselves out behind the boat, a joyous capitulation to freedom. Quite naturally, they were on a bed and the pilot went on kissing her, as if that was all he intended ever to do. He held her face in his hands, angling her head back to kiss beneath her jaw, nipping at the delicate skin until she moved restlessly between his hands.

Usually by this point she was panicky, not because she wanted to stop, but because she disliked being rushed and men were over-eager to put their appendages in whatever location they most favored. Amanda had no objections to any of these places, but it was nice to be included in the scheme. Sex, for the most part, left her with the feeling that the gentlemen in question (she used the term euphemistically, being of the opinion that there were few males in the United Kingdom deserving of the honorific) had behaved immodestly and would not be entertained again.

Amanda was beset by an unfamiliar, strident urgency. She wrapped her legs around his hips, pushing herself against him. She was, to her dismay, beginning to pant. Just when she was thinking that their clothing was a nuisance, it disappeared, leaving her skin-to-marvelous-skin with the pilot. He seemed to know what she wanted and entered her slowly, before she could ask, pausing every so often to see that she was in agreement. She had a brief and hilarious thought of Oliver Twist saying, “Please, sir, could I have some more?” as she took all of him (anatomically speaking, a considerable amount) into her body. He moved with her; everything he did to please her pleasing him equally well, a delightful result of their combined efforts.

There was a sweaty, desperate minute when the striving threatened to overwhelm her—that despite his perfect attentions, she would not be able to achieve orgasm—and he stilled both of them and said, “No, look. Like this,” in the same way that a sighted person would direct a blind one. And he did something that later she could never remember, but which at once tipped her over the edge into a convulsive, shuddering climax that seemed to go on and on for a very long time.

Amanda woke, alert to the world. She lay in bed for a time, reflecting on the dream. She did not sleep with strangers, either in real life or in dreams, and certainly had never had an orgasm during one. She had read that some women did, but had dismissed it out of hand as the kind of clap-trap people thought up in order to sell magazines. She was reluctant to rise, lest moving dispelled the feelings, but it was Sunday and her garden beckoned.