Best Fantastic Erotica
Edited By Cecilia Tan
CIRCLET PRESS, INC.
CAMBRIDGE, MA
Best Fantastic Erotica: Volume 1
Copyright © 2008 by Circlet Press, Inc.
Cover art by Sandy Nys
All Rights Reserved
Ebook ISBN 978-1-61390-037-6
Smashwords Edition
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c o n t e n t s
The Harrowing – Corbie Petulengro
Copperhead Renaissance – Argus Marks
The Night the New Hog Croaked, Or, The Lascivious Dr. Blonde: A Romance – Thomas S. Roche
Nocturnal Emissions – Joe Nobel
“And What Rough Beasts...” – Robert Knippenberg
Music From My Bones – Anya Levin
Opening the Veins of Jade – Renée M. Charles
Back in the Paleolithic Era, or maybe it was 1994, my partner, corwin, would read the Circlet slush pile in bed, to give each story the "one hand test." When the slush pile got too big for him to read everything (or he'd be horribly chafed and also never leave the apartment), we started inviting friends over for take-out Chinese and smut-reading parties. In those days, most of the manuscripts got rejected for being either horribly bad, lacking in sex, or lacking in science fiction/fantasy. It made editorial work efficient and easy when 80% of what we received could be rejected out of hand, 20% had to be seriously considered, and only 10% was actually acceptance-worthy out of the envelope.
But something happened over the decade that followed. As Circlet's anthologies became more and more widely read, and as our pushing of the erotic envelope in the sf/f genre began to bleed over into mainstream genre fiction, the quality of submissions in our slush pile went steadily up. Soon it had reached the point where fully 50% of the manuscripts had to be seriously considered, and even the rejections were containing fewer and fewer of the just plain bad stories. We were not only getting many submissions from writers we'd worked with before, but the pool of talented erotica writers all over the country (and in Australia and the U.K.) seemed to be growing.
I decided it was time to start a contest to seek out the "best" writers of erotic science fiction in the wake of the Bush re-election in 2004. The conservative tone of the country at the time added to the woes of erotica publishers like us, as bookstores were beginning to add shelf sections and publishers were starting new imprints for "conservative voices," and meanwhile the erotic book section was lying neglected much of the time because corporate buyers were not keen to restock too quickly. I wanted something to energize that writing community which had been filling Circlet's pages for a decade and perhaps to attract new writers to the genre.
And so the "Best Fantastic Erotica" contest was born. Many of Circlet's regulars sent in their best stories, and I was very pleased to see how many completely new writers we reached. In fact, the winner of the contest, Arinn Dembo, was not only new to us, it was her first erotic story. Outstanding writing and outstanding vision are the two common qualities of all the stories we ended up choosing. The two runners-up, "The Night the New Hog Croaked," by Thomas S. Roche and "Circe House" by Jason Rubis make a neat triangle when combined with Dembo's "Monsoon." There is humor, there is lush sensuality, there is futurism, there is kink, there is magic, there is "sci-fi," and you'll have to read the stories to find out which has which. The whole book stands as a testament to the boundaries of the genre Circlet has inhabited and defined since 1994. A testament to the erotic imagination.
Enjoy!
Cecilia Tan
It was June in Maharashtra, and the monsoon would not come. The whole district lay panting in the heat, the burning sky clapped tight overhead like the lid of a tandoor oven. Lean goats stumbled down the narrow alleyways, udders hanging slack and dry beneath them; beggars cried for water in every village. Dust-devils swept over baked clay and through the dry weeds, whistling and shrieking. Hot sand blew into the eyes of torpid bullocks as they leaned into the yoke, whips snapping over their bony backs. A single stream crept along the valley floor, shrunken and muddy, and women stood ankle deep in its shallows, beating their laundry against rocks that rippled and danced in the sun.
Benton watched those women from behind his mirror shades, their saris wringing wet and clinging like crepe to their bodies. The trip to Wainganga by Jeep was long, particularly in a Jeep so old and decrepit as this one; any distraction from the heat and the choking clouds of dust was welcome.
He held up his fist abruptly and Charanjit brought the vehicle to a shuddering, squealing halt by the side of the road, burying the two men briefly in a whirlwind of fine grit. “How long, my friend?” the driver asked. He turned his wrist proudly, showing off the glittering face of a new watch.
“Das,” Benton said, climbing out of the passenger seat with his cameras swinging around his neck. He could speak relatively decent Hindi, and Charanjit’s English was impeccable, but the two men chose to communicate in monosyllables and hand signals more often than not; they had worked together before. Charanjit would now wait ten minutes before he began to lean on the horn imperiously, demanding that Benton return.
The white man limped down the hill toward the water, his right leg aching and stiff with travel. The women continued their work in the riverbed; he crouched beside a thorn bush and took several pictures of them, focusing his lens on wet bellies... brown breasts... flexing thighs... streaming, sopping masses of black hair. It was a prosperous family, the daughters plump and smooth.
The shutter clicked and whirred like the wings of a locust. One of the younger girls looked up suddenly and saw him across the river. Her black eyes flashed. Just moments before her voice rang out in warning, Benton captured one last perfect image of her face, her pale pink tongue-tip passing over the ripe curve of her upper lip. Then all the women were standing, laughing, scowling, chattering to one another in Hindi... all the while drawing the folds of their wet saris about them, arms crossed over their conical breasts to fend off his camera.
He turned away and went back to the Jeep, half-staggering on the incline. The passenger seat had been repaired so many times with silver duct tape that none of the original upholstery could be seen. Benton sat down heavily, letting his long, lean body drop into the burning chair. He massaged his aching thigh absently and drew his filthy red bandanna up to cover his mouth; the taste of dust was thick on his tongue, but he could not slake his thirst here.
Benton had been dry since Mombasa. His original plan had been to stop in the Old Town there. Among those twisting alleys there was an oasis where the caramel-colored daughters of the Faithful could be bought as easily as a dish of fried casava or a handful of sticky dates; it was one of his favorite haunts in the city. He liked the kohl-rimmed eyes of the dancers, lustrous and burning over their filmy veils. In the leaping shadows of the back room, he had drawn aside those veils more than once to kiss the forbidden lips of a Moslem girl.
Time had not allowed for his little diversion, however, and once again in Mumbai it was the same: no brothels, just an endless hurry through passport offices and transit bureaus to get his papers in order. As the Jeep jounced and rattled along the dirt road, Benton counted the days since he had laid hands on a woman.
Half the reason for his choice of profession was the love of women; he always devoured them greedily when he was abroad. He couldn’t capture the flavor of a place until he made love there. The women were as inseparable from the mystique of a foreign land as its music, its language, its liquor and food. Every country offered a subtle variation on the eternal flavor—he sampled them all, like the alien fruit and curry in the marketplace.
The women he could not bring to his bed, he collected with his camera. If possible, he would always do both. He was paid to take pictures of mountains, rivers, rice paddies and ruins—but it was his dream to someday publish his thousands of photos of women. He would present the beauties of the world, all the bright vivid creatures from Mandalay to Manhattan: they would be his gift to the Arts.
For now, however, he was simply suffering, and it seemed that the whole earth was suffering with him. The sere hills of Pusad gave way to the Upper Bhima Valley and then the plain of Nagpur, a broad flat slab that stretched for miles in the blinding sun. The wind roared like a furnace at the nape of his neck. Dead, brittle cotton still stood in the fields; dry leaves rattled, and stinging dust slashed across the faces of water-bearers walking by the side of the road. The women and boys were black and thin beneath their ceramic jars, their arms and legs bent like wrought iron.
When the Jeep passed a town, there were always red-eyed men taking shelter in doorways, sitting on overstuffed sacks and smoking. Water salesmen pedaled along the streets, selling a single drink for three rupees. A sudden gust would turn the sky the color of dried blood; weak, irritable-looking mothers looked out their windows at the passing shadow, holding listless babies in their arms and searching the sky for clouds.
Just a few miles from Darwha, the engine began to make an ominous hiss. Charanjit clucked nervously and continued on, egging the reluctant machine into the next village while the water steadily boiled away. When at last he rolled to a stop, he reached across Benton’s lap to open the glove compartment, unwinding the piece of rusty wire that held it shut.
“No problem,” he said, giving Benton a cheery smile. He took out a pair of oven mitts.
The photographer shook his head, disgusted.
“No problem,” Charanjit repeated. He hurried around to the grill of the Jeep, putting on his oven mitts, and unlatched the hood. Steam rushed out at him in a cloud.
Benton climbed out after him. Standing beside Charanjit, he waved the billowing steam away and bent to inspect the damage. Even from this angle, he could see a long crack in the radiator; the last drops of water and antifreeze sizzled, slowly oozing from the breach and boiling away on black metal.
He straightened up, took off his baseball cap and raked a tangle of dark, sweaty hair away from his brow. “No problem,” he said sarcastically.
“My apologies, Joseph.” Charanjit was shamefaced. “I had hoped it was only the hose.”
Benton sighed, looking around him. The two men were standing in the middle of an open square. In the shelter of the buildings across the way, there was a scanty village market—a few blankets spread out on the ground, each covered with merchandise. Children were already gathering in a loose semi-circle around the Jeep, smiling shyly at Charanjit. As Benton limped away, they began pelting the friendly driver with questions.
Irritable and thirsty, Benton unscrewed his lens cap, looking for a target. An old woman caught his eye in the dust of the market; she was sitting perfectly still and straight against a mud wall. Her hair hung down to her waist, gray as ashes, and her sari was dark chocolate brown. Bright gold flashed from her hands, her feet, her neck and wrists.
He approached cautiously, making his way through the crowd toward her. She sat beside a blanket spread with shallow wooden bowls, each one filled with something different. He looked down at them, fascinated by the array of colors: deep, dark chili powder and golden brown turmeric; lentils in black, yellow, scarlet and green; sugar, salt, rice; peppercorns and cardamoms; beans and fennel; cloves and saffron and sticks of cinnamon.
The old woman herself was blind, her enormous eyes blanketed by silvery cataracts. What a face she had! The bones were sharp and delicate, still curving exquisitely beneath her withered skin—the foundation of a great aquiline beauty, heart-ripping in its youth. Rings glittered on every twig-like finger and toe; a golden serpent wound around her neck, biting its own tail. Benton squatted in the dust a few feet away and snapped a picture of her.
Instantly she turned toward him, a quick avian flick of the head. “Five rupees,” she said, in English.
“For what?” he asked, startled.
“For my picture, sir.” She spoke English with an accent; it sounded as if she had learned the language from a Scotsman. “Surely a rich tourist does not rob a poor old Indian woman?”
“Five rupees? For a picture?” He grinned. “I’m the one getting robbed!”
She smiled thinly. “One must live.”
He unbuttoned the front pocket of his shirt and pulled out a handful of coins. “What if I want pictures of your daal and dalchini as well, mother?” he said in Hindi, rattling the money in his hand.
“For six rupees, everything.” She made a magnanimous sweep of her hand over her blanket and wares, smiling again, more warmly this time. Again he saw the ghost of the girl she must have been, and she tugged at his heart. “I will give you a cinnamon stick, to show that I am not ungenerous.”
The bargain made, Benton squatted and photographed her from a variety of angles, putting the curling tube of brown bark in the corner of his mouth like a cigarette while he did his work. Just as he was rising, a little boy ran up to him, wearing a pair of ragged shorts and a short-sleeved cotton shirt.
“Here, mis-tah,” he said in English. He thrust out his hand; he was holding a fat little plastic bag, filled with green shaved ice. There was a rubber band holding it shut at the top, and a drinking straw poked deep into the middle. He waved vaguely at the crowd behind him with his free hand, smiling widely. “Mem sahib sends this to you, with her com-ple-ments.”
Benton looked over the boy’s shoulder for a mother or sister standing somewhere in the marketplace, but none of the women there seemed to be paying attention. “What is it?” He looked down at the little bag suspiciously.
“Nimbu pani,” the boy said. He held out his hand again, huge black eyes pleading. “It is very good; please try!”
Temporarily unable to remember what the Hindi words meant, Benton took the sweating bag reluctantly and put the straw to his lips. He took a tiny sip; ice-cold limeade burst on his palate, sharp and sweet.
Seeing the expression on his face, the boy smiled broadly. “Good, yes?”
Benton chuckled and reached into his pocket for coins. “Very good. How much does she charge for these?”
The boy waved his hands no, black eyes sparkling. “Mem sahib has paid already, mis-tah. I will have one for myself and five rupees too, now I have given it to you!”
The boy turned and ran away, wriggling through the press of the marketplace. Benton tried to watch where he went for a few moments, to see if he could spot his benefactress among the villagers... but there was only a glint of blue and silver in the shadowed archway where the boy had disappeared, and a flash that could have been a pale hand.
The photographer passed the bag of ice over his forehead and cheeks, and then drank more deeply from the straw, filling his mouth with chilly sour-sweet. Charanjit had disappeared briefly into a shop across the square; now he was returning with a purposeful stride.
“There is a mechanic here.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “He does not have a radiator for us, but he is traveling tonight to Darwha. I will go with him, buy the part from the dealer, and return tomorrow morning. We will be on the road again before midday.”
Benton sighed. “And what am I supposed to do until then?”
“The man has a small house. It was his sister’s; she does not live there anymore. He offers it for your use tonight.” Charanjit looked over his shoulder, and Benton saw a small white-haired man standing in the shade, watching them. “His wife will make dinner for you, for a few rupees more.”
Benton smiled and spread his hands, helpless. “No problem.” The “small house” was a single-room shack, thatched with mud and straw, which stood in the shade of a great tamarind tree. The mechanic’s compound, with its wilting garden and outbuildings surrounding the main house, stood across a dry plain of pebbles twenty yards away.
Benton ducked his head under the lintel and stepped into the room. It was bare, except for the bed: an old twin-sized iron frame and a mattress covered with rust stains. The windows were simple square holes in the north and south walls; the door was an empty rectangle facing the east. The smooth stone floor was strewn with tiny dry leaves and the red dust of the plain.
He set down his suitcase in the corner and turned to the mechanic’s wife. “It is good,” he said in Marathi, trying to be polite. “Thank you.”
She was a thick-waisted matron in her fifties, her hair wound into a sloppy knot the color of iron; her brows were thick and black, joined into a single line over the eyes. The mother of six children, her youngest son was still young enough to cling. He wore nothing but a dhoti in the heat; his sorrowful eyes and thin brown limbs gave him the look of a baby monkey.
Seeing that her guest gave the accommodations his approval, she nodded; she did not return his smile, but seemed to relax. “I will send a cloth for your bed, and water. Trusha will come for you when it is time for the meal.”
“I regret to say that I cannot come to the house to eat,” he said, switching back to Hindi—his Marathi wasn’t good enough to communicate a sophisticated thought. “I must stay with my cameras tonight. If a thief were to take these things, I would be unable to work.”
She frowned, the thunderous uni-brow descending. “We have had no trouble with thieves here.”
“A stranger can sometimes find trouble where a native of the village cannot.” He smiled sadly. “I have learned this over the years.”
She looked up to meet his eyes, and found a smile that did not falter. Despite herself, the corner of her mouth twitched upward, as if she would smile back. “Jeevan will bring your food to you,” she said firmly. As she named the boy, her hand touched his hair; he turned up his chin to look at her, eyes radiant with love, wrapping his arm tighter about the pillar of her thigh.
“Thank you. I am happy to give him a few rupees for his trouble.” Benton gave a small bow. He watched her go, her son capering along beside her as her tunic blew in the wind. Then he went to the corner and disentangled his camera bags from his neck, setting them down in the dust beside his battered suitcase.
Alone, he bent his arms and stretched his aching back. He went to the bed and quickly heaved the mattress up, hoping to startle any six- or eight-legged occupants into a panicked scuttle; there was no movement. When the mechanic’s daughter came, she found him sitting on the bare mattress, bent over with his elbows on his knees, smoking a cigarette. He looked up at the shuffle of her slippers in the dust and saw her black silhouette in the doorway. She was balancing an aluminum ewer of water on her head and a bundle of blankets on her hip.
He stood as she entered the room. She was a younger version of her mother, perhaps sixteen, with dark brows already knitted over her nose; nonetheless she smiled, as she handed him the jug, and her teeth were lovely and white. When she bent to spread a thin cotton sheet over his mattress, her brilliant persimmon-orange sari pulled tight over the round hillocks of rump and thigh; for a moment he found himself tempted to abuse his host’s hospitality.
She seemed to sense his hungry gaze on her body, and spent a few extra moments tucking the blanket. When she straightened and turned to meet his eyes, Benton forced himself to look away—whipping the beast within back into its cage. Not now. “Thank you.”
She did not speak, but turned and left him alone with the heat. Benton went to lie down on the freshly-made bed, breathing in the house smells which had saturated the smooth, polished strands of cotton. Cooking oil, cumin, sandalwood incense... He closed his eyes, listening to the thirsty wind blow through the dry leaves above. In time, the relentless sound and the hypnotic smell of perfumed smoke lulled him into fitful, sweating sleep.
He woke when the wind turned; a cool gust rolled in the door, plucking at his shirtsleeve. Benton sat up abruptly and threw his legs over the side of the bed. There had been a dream, but it was shattered into unintelligible fragments the moment he opened his eyes; now it vanished in a swirl of inner turmoil, leaving his chest and belly aching with a painful emotion for which he had no name.
His mouth had opened in his sleep, and his tongue was coated with gummy resin. He picked up his jug and drank, swallowing three great gulps of the earth-tasting water; he held the fourth until the tissues of his mouth swelled with the liquid. When his tongue was slippery again, he swallowed what remained, licked his chapped lips and set the jug down.
He stood unsteadily and reached for his cigarettes, wiping away the hot mask of sweat from his face with his shirtsleeve. The room was full of shadows, and the sky outside had gone the bruised color of a blue plum. He went to the doorway; several of his shirt buttons had opened as he slept, and now another gust of wind touched his bare neck and chest, cooling the sweat like a lover’s breath. There was a smell of rain in the air.
The monsoon was coming—this time it would not tease and then retreat. He picked up his camera in the last light of day to photograph the clouds that natives called “the army of Indra”—a towering range of rolling thunderheads, black with promise, which swept across the entire eastern horizon. Lightning glinted in the depths of the oncoming storm; Benton let the frames snap through the end of his roll, hoping multiple exposures would give him at least one perfect frame of that scintillating mass.
Thunder thrummed across the plain, still many miles distant. The tamarind tree trembled in anticipation. Benton heard the rattle of a door, and then the quick pit-pat of bare feet across the pebbles; here was Jeevan, carrying two big bowls. Benton brushed the cherry from his cigarette on the doorframe and pocketed the unlit remainder, smiling as the shy boy sidled up to his hut. He reached into his pocket, taking out two coins, and traded them for a bowl of saffron rice—pretending not to notice the distinctly child-sized bite missing from the edge of the scoop on top. Jeevan handed him a second bowl, filled with fragrant curry; three warm loaves of bhakari bread served as a lid. Then the little monkey skipped away back to his mother’s house. He held his coins in two cupped hands, like a captured cricket, and shook them next to his ear to hear them jingle.
Benton sat down cross-legged in the doorway, removing an old stainless steel spoon from his suitcase. The woman had gone out of her way to earn the ten rupees he was paying for this meal. Her curry was rich, a pool of spicy oil and chunks of tender goat’s meat—so good that he saved the last oily cake of flat bread for the end, to mop every last speck from the bowl. The rice was sweet and sticky, heavily laden with golden raisins, minced mango and crumbled almonds. He decided to save most of it for the morning, laying a pair of heavy hard-bound notebooks across the top of the bowl to keep the bugs out.
After a quick visit to the family outhouse in the garden, Benton returned to the empty little shack. Darkness had come. He sat down and took off his shoes, balling up a sock to stuff into each one before he put them down beside the bed. He relaxed, stretched out to luxuriate in a full belly and a cool breeze, smoked the remainder of his cigarette in the dark and then crushed out the stub against the wall. The ambient temperature of the room had dropped several degrees, and for the first time in days he rolled himself up in a thin blanket to sleep. He drifted off painlessly, listening to the lullaby of distant thunder and the croon of an east wind.
He woke in the pitch black, wind whipping over him in cool velvety billows. Benton sat bolt upright in bed, blinking against the darkness. His heart was beating fast and hard; the air was heavy with the weight of another human presence, and he strained to pinpoint its location.
All he could hear was the thin whisper of rain, hissing across the gravel outside, sifting through the canopy of the tall tree, trickling and dripping from the roof, the windowsills, the leaves. Lightning flared somewhere in the night, casting a split second of harsh illumination—in that light he saw her standing in the doorway, muffled and hooded in her sari.
“Who is there?” he demanded in Hindi. Brain still fuzzy from sleep, he fumbled for a name from the mechanic’s household. “Trusha?”
Her low, musical laugh trickled across the space between them. “Not Trusha.”
Thunder suddenly split the night with its roar; as if in answer, a fierce new sheet of rain swept across the village. Benton reached hastily into his shirt pocket and removed his lighter. He held it aloft and flicked it alight.
“What do you want?”
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. She was still standing in the doorway. Her body was wound in a royal blue sari, embroidered with glistening silver thread; the fabric had soaked up so much rain that it now appeared almost black. Her face was wrapped in a twist of the silk which served as both headscarf and veil. As he watched, she reached up with bare arms and unwound it, letting the sodden tail of fabric fall behind her shoulder.
His heart tumbled out of rhythm. Her face was a round soft circle the color of honey, framed with a coil of jet-black hair. Black brows arched like wings over huge, luminous eyes; no caste mark was painted between them. Her nose was straight, nostrils sweeping to the side in delicate curls. Her mouth was broad, sensuous, lips lush and full and dark. To reveal such a face was like drawing a sword. Benton had never felt quite so defenseless, sitting alone in a bed.
She smiled slowly, and in her eyes he read the wicked intent of every woman since Eve. “What do you want?” she said, touching her dark lip with a rosy tongue. She had simply repeated his words, but her softly teasing tone made him shiver. She turned her head to the side, one hand slipping to her nape, and suddenly her hair was free, spooling down her slim neck. She closed her eyes, thick black lashes stark against her pale cheek, and teased the rope with her fingers; the strands separated into fat, looping serpents.
The beast inside him answered with a roar. He sat stock still, breathing deeply, as her delicate hand went to the brooch just below her left shoulder. If she released that pin, the sari would fall; she cocked her head at him coquettishly, her eyes asking the question— “Should I?” For a moment he let his eyes drop from her lascivious face to the soft abundance of breast and belly below. The wet folds of her dress muffled her curves, but even at this distance he could see her nipples standing hard beneath the silk.
He raised the lighter’s flame higher and made a beckoning gesture with his free hand.
She came to him slowly, sinuous hips shifting as she moved with the rhythm of the whipping rain. He looked down at her little feet, and the heavy, sodden hem leaving a dark trail across the floor; it was odd that she wore no rings on her toes or fingers. Looking up, he found her standing beside the bed; he inhaled sharply as she bent to kiss him, her eyes half-closed. Her lips were cool and soft. The smell of rain was powerful. Her hand touched his, and he suddenly realized that the burning hot metal of the lighter was scorching his thumb; the flame winked out as it fell from his hand, clattering to the floor.
Her mouth parted over his, the tip of her tongue touching him softly; her wet hand found his hot neck and trailed down the open shirt-front to the matted hair of his chest. Hungrily he reached down, finding his own buttons easily in the dark. With both hands she pressed the shirt back over his shoulders; she broke her kiss as she pushed it down his arms and then tossed it away. He gasped with pleasure as her lips found his shoulder and neck; already her mouth was growing warmer.
With her palms she forced him back onto his elbows; there was something ferocious about the way she pulled the blanket away from his legs, twisting her way down his belly with open-mouthed kisses. He found himself hissing each breath between clenched teeth, lips drawn back into a half-snarl. He put his hand to the back of her head, holding her for a moment as her tongue trailed along the border of his waistband and her fingers worked busily at the zipper of his pants. Already he was rampant and aching for her, thinking of the moment when those sweet lips would engulf him; he could feel himself drip in anticipation of that pleasure.
“Wait.” He tried to stop her, seized by sudden doubt. A whirlwind of fears went through him, not least the length of time that had passed since he had a proper shower.
“I cannot. I must taste you, ishta.” Despite himself he shook at the sound of her husky voice; he could hear the need in it, as stark and urgent as his own. Her lips found him, even through the barrier of thin cotton, and hungrily kissed the length of him. His hand clenched involuntarily in her hair, and he lifted his hips for her as she skinned off his jeans.
She cooed gently, and her cheek rubbed against his erection in a slow, sensual circle. She kissed his thigh, worried his skin softly with her little teeth; he made a sound low in his chest as she traced the shape of his member through his briefs with her fingertips, cupped his testicles in the curve of her palm.
“Come here.” He drew her up, wrapped his arms around her waist as she knelt astride his body. The brooch of her sari made a musical sound as it skittered across the floor, and suddenly the cold wet silk was slithering down, falling away from her skin; she unbound the tie at her hip and drew the whole rasping cocoon of fabric away, freeing herself.
Benton pressed his face into her belly, hoping to nuzzle deep into a soft mound, but he found the curve beneath his lips as hard as a drum. Marveling at it, his fingertips passed over the taut bowl, sweeping downward to the sensuous tickle of the hair on her mons, up again to the heavy fruit of her breasts and the tightly wrinkled pebbles of nipple.
She sighed, her nails trailing over his back. Finding softness, he buried his face between her breasts, kissing and mouthing the cool, yielding flesh. He took them in his hands, growling at the weight, and brushed one tender aureola with the bristles of his unshaven cheek. She hissed, nails running up the nape of his neck with a deeper bite, and he grinned in the dark.
When he took her nipple into his mouth, he could taste the new flavor—a creamy sweetness on the tongue. She gripped him tighter with a cry, is if to press him further into her flesh, and obligingly he increased the pressure of the suction—then made a sharp, muffled exclamation of surprise in the back of his throat, as his mouth filled with hot liquid.
She moaned with pleasure. Despite himself, he drew back. He held the mouthful for a moment, rolling it over his tongue—a thin warm syrup, like oil and honey mixed together. She made another pleading sound, a high-pitched sigh, and the tide of his blood rose high enough to howl in his ears; he had never made love to a pregnant woman before, but the thought was surprisingly arousing. He took as much of her breast into his mouth as he could, sucking hard and swallowing greedily—as if he were the child that she would bear.
She pressed him down onto his back and squatted above him to mount, her heels digging deeply into the mattress. He caressed her round belly with his hands as she reached behind to grasp his member, teasing herself with its heavy head, greasing him with slippery dew. Here at last her skin was warm, even feverishly hot; he could feel the fierce heat of the swollen folds as he passed back and forth between them, and finally slid home into the depths of her body.
The storm was directly overhead now, and the lightning was nearly continuous, lashing back and forth through the violent sky. By the flickering light Benton reached up to her pale breasts, round as two moons above him. As she slowly began to ride, he kneaded them, harder as he felt the answering flood that rushed down his length inside her, hard enough to make her lips part with a sharp cry of pleasure that could be heard above the cannon’s roar of thunder.
Her breasts ran with excitement as he squeezed them, sending a slow flow of oil down over the backs of his hands, his wrists, his forearms. By the time she had finished, there were twin pools in the hollow of each collarbone, on his chest... and when she collapsed into his waiting arms, she laughed and lapped them up.
The rain and the love-making did not stop for the remainder of the night. Despite her condition, the woman was an avid, agile lover, and her playful hands and tongue resurrected him more times than he would have thought possible on such short acquaintance.
At last the storm seemed to mellow, the lightning and thunder giving way to a steady downpour. Benton cradled her in his arms, caressing her silky body in the dark, letting the endless glossy length of her hair glide between his fingers. She sighed, nestling beneath his arm in the narrow bed, her pregnant belly pressed into his hip, her soft lips open against his skin.
“What is your name?” He spoke softly. For hours he had been afraid to speak.
“You may call me Neha.” He felt her smile in the dark.
He gave her nipple one last playful tweak. “Why did you come to me, Neha?”
She yawned. “Because you were thirsty, ishta.”
“Where do you come from? Do you live in this town?
She let her nails glide over his chest and belly gently. “Ask Charanjit in the morning,” she suggested playfully.
He smiled; his driver knew him too well. Surprising that he would have chosen a pregnant prostitute, of course—but perhaps she was the only one in the village.
“You are beautiful, Neha.”
“You please me, Joseph,” she replied. “Now sleep.”
When he woke, the dawn light had suffused the clouds with silver-gray. He sat up in bed just in time to see her hesitate in the doorway, the folds of her sari gathered carelessly about her; she had not bothered to tie it, but simply held it to her breasts like a bed sheet.
For a moment he just looked at her: the sensuous raven’s-wing tumble of hair, the cello curve of her bare back, the sweet dimples where her broad hips flared from a slim waist. She looked back over her shoulder, half-turning to smile.
“Let me take your picture.” He jumped naked out of bed at the impulse, went to his camera bag, pulled out the Nikon—he knew it was loaded. “I want to remember you.”
Her eyes sparkled with humor. “You will, ishta.” She made a careless, exquisite gesture with her hand, twirling it like a dancer. “But you may take your picture nonetheless.”
He opened the lens cap, adjusted the focus, squatted on his heels to put her into the frame—letting his years of experience guide him as he adjusted the aperture for the light. He clicked the shutter again and again. With each moment, she seemed more perfectly beautiful.
At last the roll was finished, and without a word she turned and walked away in the rain, disappearing almost instantly into the mist.
Benton returned to his bed and slept again, satiated for the first time in weeks.
Charanjit came to the door as Benton sat eating the last of his sweet rice, sometime around noon. “We are ready to roll, my friend.” His clothes were soaked from head to toe and his puttees were spattered with mud, but his smile was cheerful. “The radiator is fixed.”
“Good.” Benton smiled back. “I owe you for last night.”
Charanjit cocked his head. “It is nothing. Only a trip to Darwha—you have already paid for the radiator.”
Benton chuckled. “No, not that. I was talking about the woman. You’ll have to tell me what I owe you—whatever you paid, it was not enough. She was very fine.”
Charanjit frowned. “What woman, Joseph? I did not pay for a woman.” He looked over his shoulder nervously, at the mechanic’s house. “Perhaps we must leave very fast, yes?”
“She said that you knew her. I assumed you had paid her to come to me.” Benton paused, taking another bite of rice. “Perhaps she was a friend of yours?”
Charanjit shook his head. “I do not know anyone in this village, Joseph. Of this I am sure.”
Benton let the spoon drop into the bowl, annoyed. “When I asked her who she was, she said ‘Ask Charanjit in the morning.’ You must know her from somewhere, for godsakes.”
The driver’s eyes narrowed. “Tell me about this woman.”
Benton paused, a warm flush rising up his chest. For some reason he suddenly felt shy, embarrassed—reluctant to say more. It was nonsense. Charanjit knew him and had seen him do things far worse.
“She was... beautiful.” He smiled. “Amazingly beautiful. Black hair, black eyes—her skin was light, but she had no caste mark. Wearing a blue sari embroidered with silver thread....” Seeing no flicker of recognition in Charanjit’s eyes, he coughed and added, “About six months pregnant, I would say....”
The driver shrugged helplessly. “Did she tell you her name—?”
Benton hesitated. “She said I could call her Neha.” A chill crept over his arms, and when he looked down he could see the hair stood on end. “She knew your name, Charanjit. And mine. I don’t believe Neha was really her name, come to think of it.”
Charanjit looked grave. “It is common enough. Neha is ‘love,’ in Hindi, or ‘rain’—we use the same word for both. A good name for a girl.”
Benton fell silent, looking down into his empty bowl. “So you didn’t pay her, then.”
“No, my friend.”
“And you don’t know her.”
Charanjit silently shook his head, and Benton glanced over at the pile of his camera bags in the corner. They didn’t look as if they had been disturbed, but he sighed nonetheless. “Best to see if she took anything, then.” Even speaking the words made his chest feel hollow.
The driver stepped over the threshold, tracking red mud onto the floor, and began to pace about awkwardly as Benton squatted to search his baggage. Suddenly, he bent and picked something up from the floor. “What is this?”
Benton glanced over. Charanjit held a glittering object between his fingers. “I don’t know. Probably the pin that held her sari.”
The driver turned it over in his fingers, musing. “Most unusual. In the shape of the vajra. Solid silver, I believe... and this stone might be a sapphire.”
Benton frowned. “Let me see that.”
Charanjit dropped it into his hand—and seemed curiously glad to be rid of it. Benton held the brooch up, turning it in the light. It was heavier than it looked, shaped like a lightning bolt—the blue gem in the center was nearly the size of a quarter.
He whistled. “She’ll be wanting this back, that’s for certain. It looks valuable.”
Charanjit had backed away; when Benton looked up, the driver was strangely pale. “I do not believe you will see her again, my friend.” He glanced anxiously out through the doorway. “It is a gift, I think. You should put it away before her husband sees it.”
Benton raised his eyebrows. “If you say so.” He put the brooch into the pocket of his jeans. “You think she was rich, then? The wife of someone powerful?”
“I think he might be more powerful than you imagine.” Charanjit shivered. “I have heard stories of such things before. Come, my friend—let us leave this place. You said you wanted tigers, and we have many miles to go to Chikhaldara.”
Benton shrugged. It took only a few minutes to look through all his equipment—entirely unmolested, so far as he could tell. He hiked through the muddy village to the Jeep. The rain had never abated, and it continued now in a steady, gentle shower that might not stop for days or weeks.
As the two men returned to the main road, Benton looked back at the village. The children were out, running together in the rain, laughing and splashing; the earth had already soaked up as much water as it could hold in the night, and now the streets were flowing rivers of mud.
As they drove through the countryside, he stopped the Jeep occasionally to take pictures of the rain’s passage. He had seen the end of the dry season before, but this time it struck him with particular force. He wanted to capture the sense of relief, the weight that lifted when the heat was vanquished. Everywhere he turned his lens, there was a man or a beast that stooped at last to drink, eyes closed in bliss. For the first time it occurred to him: the rain is a gift.
Within a few weeks, he had put Neha out of his thoughts; hunting tigers with an arsenal of 35 millimeter cameras took all his attention. It was only when he returned home the next month that he found her silver clasp again, carelessly thrown into a bag with the countless rolls of film he had shot on the trip.
He smiled slightly, closing his eyes. For a vivid moment he could feel her cool flesh against his skin, smell the rain in her hair—taste the warm, ecstatic juices on his tongue. He sorted through the little black film containers to find the one marked “NF6-2”: Nikon F6, second roll. He always pre-marked the film canisters before he left home; it made various sequences easier to find.
There was only one subject on this roll. He grinned, tossed it up and caught it in the air boyishly. Yes, this one should definitely be developed first; Neha was by far the most beautiful thing he had seen in India.
When the film was finally dry, he unclipped the long strip from the clothes-line and held it up to the light. He frowned immediately as he scanned the repeated image—definitely something wrong there.
There was a cold, queasy tickle in his stomach, but the photographer remained methodical in his work. He laid out the contact sheet: as the white page passed from one bath of chemicals to the next, his heart rate steadily increased. He couldn’t wait for the image in the last bath to sharpen completely; he whipped it out of the tub, scanning the images in the blood-red light of the darkroom.
No. Impossible.
In the end he had to make prints of every negative to be absolutely sure. For some reason he kept telling himself that in one of the thirty-six shots he had taken, the woman would still be there: standing in the doorway, looking back over her bare brown shoulder. Those huge, shimmering, merciful eyes... the smile of a satisfied lover on her lips.
But no matter how many prints he made, the image remained the same. The empty rectangle of gray light—the dark earthen wall enclosing it like the borders of a grave. No matter what he did, the doorway was empty.
There was nothing there but the monsoon.
Those last few hours before Amelia left the house were always hell.
Years ago, Winston had thought the waiting would get easier with time. But he still clenched his fists. He still ground his teeth. And he still had to bang one out in the john so that he could peck his wife goodbye without a raging boner giving everything away. Even after she’d collected her bags and drifted, barge-like, down their front walk, he would wait another hour to make sure she hadn’t forgotten her shuttle ticket. The last time, the shock of her unexpected return had nearly done him in.
But once she was out of the house the waiting got a little easier. He fixed himself a drink and sprawled, leonine, on the couch in the den. The grid was on. A spoken command let him access the all-skin network and it wasn’t long before he was bobbing on a pleasant sea of tits and cunts and asses, of hungry mouths and rigid, pink dicks. Winston rubbed his own through his designer slacks and checked the clock again. It was almost time.
Once his self-imposed period of waiting was up, he rose and padded to the bathroom. The third shelf of their medicine cabinet held some peachy lozenges in a plain-looking bottle. He shook three out and took them dry.
Amelia thought they were for his heart. In a way, it was the truth.
The peach chemistry was an added expense, but it put the necessary distance between him and reality. There had to be something to take the edge off his senses, to soothe that doubting part of his mind, otherwise playtime was no damn fun at all.
He went back, poured another drink, and then watched the grid until the world got fuzzy and warm.
“Power off,” he slurred. He had to say it again before the voice-rec software caught on. After that Winston ambled around the house one last time, turning off most of the lights and making sure all the locks were engaged. Then he drifted downstairs, way down. Down to a place that Amelia didn’t know existed. But he could always find it. His cock knew the way.
Behind a shelf in their cellar was a bare room; just a desk and chair in one corner, a bed against one wall, and a trunk at the foot of it. Matte black and slate gray were the colors of choice. That way, his secret room could become anything he dreamed.
A keypad was set into one wall. He punched the release code and held his retina to the reader, shivering as the doors slid aside and chilly vapor flowed down over his toes. Waking her up. He always hated this part.
Letitia.
Her crèche was a clear ovoid filled with the waters that cushioned her, nourished her, and kept her eternally, illegally young. That was reason enough for his secrecy, even without the color of her skin, which he’d specified from the catalog as 041 mahogany. Still, Winston never failed to think about how Amelia would react to this particular feature of his little toy. Little inner-city girls like this were supposed to be cared for in her hospitals and schooled in her shelters, not kept to serve the lusts of some privileged white ape.
Ah, but Amelia wasn’t here right now. She was off to a dinner party, halfway around the world, where a plate of food cost thousands. A half-empty plate of food, at that.
“Playtime,” he said to the console at the side of the crèche. An orange light flashed on and a countdown started.
He pulled open the trunk to choose what his baby would wear that night. A pair of tiny plastic shorts caught his eye. They were ones like the street-girls wore. He fingered them, imagining how they’d ride up between her asscheeks and her pussy lips, too. But wait! Here was a complete uniform for Waverly, the city’s best private school. Not that a girl like Letitia could ever be a student there—not after the riots. Still, the fantasy never lost its charm.
But here, oh here, was a whole new package of scanties he hadn’t even opened yet.
He tore at the wrapper like a breathless birthday boy. Out fell a cheap neon costume. It was a dancer’s getup: lime green stockings, shocking pink heels, a lacy orange garter belt, and a sheer lemon set of bra and panties. He went back to the crèche and laid it all out for her, thankful that she could now dress herself. Before her latest soft-ware upgrade, he’d spent up to an hour just dressing his love goddess—a chore he’d hated, since it meant being up to his elbows in chilly bio-gel. He couldn’t even pause to fondle her tits or slip a curious finger into her crevice. That was downright nasty when she was cold.
Ambiance was next. He’d dressed her like one of those hot little dancers at an inner-city clubs, the kind of place where girls were numbered like food in a Chinese restaurant. That meant the room would need colored strobes and some kind of music. Eagerly, he stumbled over to the entertainment cube on the desk to pick out a light show. He also dialed up an extended dance mix, something with an urgent backbeat and raw subsonics.
Then, a dance sequence for her. And then....
Winston sat down in the desk chair. It wasn’t easy keeping his hands off himself, but he resisted. It was a present for his little girl. Yet despite his excitement, Winston didn’t watch as Letitia stepped out of the crèche. He knew he’d see his Venus rising, the gel sliding off her lithe, young body. But her movements were always too jerky in the first few moments. It gave everything away.
So he waited until she got up onto the matte black surface of his desk and started swaying to the rhythm. Then he watched her, traced his meat with an idle hand, and melted into the fantasy.
They were at one of those clubs in the core zone, a place he’d only ever seen on the grid. Not like he could go there for real, oh no. They’d take just one look at his tailored suit and his face, glowing with health. Then they’d tear him apart.
But here, it was all just fine. This was his club. He could come here anytime and feel the pounding rhythms. He could sit here and get offered any of a dozen drugs. Not the sanitary, engineered ones that were relaxing him right now. The old ones, the messy ones, the ones that you injected or smoked or stuck up your ass. He could drink too. The barkeep knew his tastes and there was always something smooth and mellow on a cocktail napkin at his side.
Of course, all that was nothing compared to the candy.
Cock-candy, that’s what he called them. Silky-smooth—every one recruited personally. Like this one on stage right now, the one with the pink heels and the fountain of kinky hair. She’d come in last month wearing some rubber skirt with two big holes in the back that let her asscheeks show. God, what an eyeful! Just the sight of those plump, juicy mounds had almost been enough to make him shoot his wad. But that didn’t mean she was hired, oh no. Only after she’d spent an hour worshipping his rod did he agree to let her dance.
And hey, wasn’t it that same piece up on stage now? Yeah, that was her. She was the only one who could slink around on her heels like that, the only one who could start his pre-come leaking just by licking her lips.
He watched her smile and shake her little titties. Yeah honey, oh yeah.
The roar of the crowd came to him then; the shouts and catcalls of two hundred core-zone goons. They’d packed themselves in here good and tight. Obviously, news about Letitia had gotten around. But they couldn’t afford her. Best they could do was just sit and stare at her firm, high knockers, her slim thighs. Even the gangsters, the drug lords—they’d have to settle for somebody else. He’d reserved Letitia. She was only dancing because he got off on showing her around.
Winston’s pole swelled and twitched.
He beckoned and she got off that little stage of hers, a platform that looked sort of like a desk. She came over and he pushed her down onto her knees. God, she looked tarty in those clothes. What a perfect little fuck doll. He ought to take it out right here and feed it to her! Right in front of all these goons—give ’em an extra show!
She didn’t do anything when he took it out. Just knelt and waited for him to part her glistening, rosebud lips. He slid all the way in, all the way back to the trigger at the back of her throat. That got her sucking. And licking. Just slow, nothing fancy, but oh fuck, it was so right.
What a marvelous little tramp! It didn’t matter who was watching. She just kept at it. Even when he leaned forward, even when he grabbed her head with both hands and just went all out—pumping and groaning and filling her up with jet after hot jet of pearly, white cream. He pulled out and glossed her lips with it. Then lifted her onto his lap and tongued it off. Yeah, bet they were all polishing their knobs by now.
But he’d had enough of this sitting around. It was time for a little horizontal action. It was time to lie back on the bed, this private bed, so convenient just behind the stage. Time to watch while she crouched over him and called his softened prick back to attention. God, she could tempt a saint, especially with her pussy dripping and her hand so lubed up with juices that some of it ran down and coated his balls.