The Siren. Tiffany Reisz
on the van bonnet.
“That’s a very handsome offer. Don’t suppose you have ice?”
“Alas, no.” I stand, and I am very close to him, close enough to feel his warmth and smell a mannish combination of toil and aftershave and breath mints. The base of his throat, disappearing down inside the loosened collar, is flushed. He has full lips but his eyes are tired. I forget what I was going to say. “Um.”
“As it comes is fine,” he prompts, and I galvanize my sluggish self, heading inside the van to the coolbox.
Something has happened to me, I think, trying to put my finger on what it might be. Everything seems to have moved slightly, my perception of my surroundings smudged like a charcoal drawing. Is it a paradigm shift? I keep having those. I think it’s something to do with him. Whoever he is.
When I pour him his double measure of the spirit my hand shakes, and he has to keep moving the cup around underneath the glugging neck of the bottle.
“Sorry,” I mutter. I can’t look at him.
“You’re nervous.” He puts a steadying hand on my forearm. I drop the bottle.
“Shit!”
In my panic I simply stare up at him, breathing in jagged arrhythmic gasps. The thought comes to me. I can have you. If I want to. Nothing stands in my way but your permission.
“What’s the matter?” His voice is gentle and his fingers are still on my sleeve.
“I’ve never been—” I stammer, trying to frame the thought and failing. “I could do anything,” I finish lamely.
He blinks.
“I mean, I’ve been trapped for years and now I’m not, and there are things I want to do, but I’m not used to doing things I want to do, and when I look at you, you make me realize I want to do them…”
“Things like this?” He bends his head and kisses me.
I hold the breath, hold the kiss inside me, stare at him in wonder. He understands.
“Exactly. Exactly like that.”
“Then do them.”
Yes. I put my hand on his cheek, hold his face still and cover his lips with mine. He tastes better than whisky, smokier, more fiery. I want to drink him up, explore him inside and out, take and lock that man shape and size of him in my memory. It’s a lush, fat feeling, and I grow lush and fat between my legs with each new collision of mouth, teeth, tongue. His hand fits the small of my back perfectly, and I mold myself around him, maintaining and deepening the connection until our bodies are so close there is nowhere else to go, no other border to cross except that final, ultimate line. And that is the one I want to cross the most.
“I want to be bad,” I tell him, wrapped up and coiled around him, my lips against his ear. “I’ve never been bad. Will you be bad with me?”
“You don’t need to ask me.”
We manage a four-legged tumble into the van where my narrow bed lies white and neat, ready for mussing. I am on top of him, horizontal, pinning him down, having my way with him. The novelty of being near an attractive man who wants me spurs me on, makes my hands unbutton and stroke, makes my mouth nip and lick and kiss, makes my legs spread and rub. Lust chases nerves away, and I seek and find his weakest spots, relishing the throaty sounds of abandonment I win from my passionate stranger. He likes pressure behind his ears and gentle sucking bites on the soft flesh of his neck. He likes my palm, flat against his hot chest, jumping slightly with each thud of his heart. He likes my pelvis, nudging the hard mound in his trousers, grinding and teasing it until I have to take pity and unbuckle his belt.
Space is tight in the camper, and every maneuver brings a clash of elbows or a bump of heads, but we don’t care; we laugh at the discomfort then muffle our laughter with kisses. Between grunts and squeezes, between pinches and ouches, we lose our clothes and our inhibitions. Down to our underwear, we slither and slide, trying to fit body parts wherever they will go. He has freckled shoulders broad enough to hang on to and a stomach that could never be used as a washboard, but who wants to use a stomach as a washboard anyway? I enjoy his yielding flesh, squashing my breasts up against it before sitting up on my knees, straightening my back and letting him look at me. I have been afraid to let men look at me, but now, seeing the hunger in his eyes, I can’t think why I hid myself for so long.
“Get that bra off, you hot little minx,” he says, in such an upper-crust accent that I want to squeal and giggle. The combination of cut-glass vowels and filthy talk is potent; I reach behind and unclip. Release the breasts. Feel his eager hands on them, the rough skin catching my nipples in a way that ignites my crotch. I moan and sway on top of him, grinding down on him, inviting him inside. “Do you let just any man undress you and feel your tits?” he asks politely, steadying me with a hand on my bum.
“Yes,” I groan, losing myself inside this fantastical reality, this real fantasy.
“And do you let them take off your knickers and fuck you hard, too?”
“All the time.”
“Good. Because that’s what’s going to happen.”
We grab for each other’s waistbands simultaneously, ripping off the final barriers before my mystery man quickly adds a prophylactic one of his own, then we are preparing, circling, inch by inch, closer, closer, then we are touching, the bulbous head stroking my soaked underlips, prodding my clit, taunting me. This is what you could have. This is what you want. This is what you need. What is he waiting for? I gasp urgently and try to wriggle into position so that I can impale myself on his mocking tool, but he is waiting for something. Waiting for what?
“Do you want this?”
Oh! Permission!
“God, yes, please, put it in me, fuck me.”
“All I needed to hear.” So easily he speeds inside, so quickly he fills me to the brim. I laugh with the unexpected delight of it, a person on a mystery tour finding herself at her dream destination. I work him, he works me, we work together until we come, hard, slapping each other’s arses, swearing and howling and making the van rock on its wheels.
“I’m Nick, by the way,” he pants afterwards. “I don’t know where you’re going, but if you want company…”
“I’m Lisa.” I kiss his salty forehead and think. Just me, a cup of tea and the open road? Or just me, a man and the open road?
I’ve had my fill of tea.
Star Fucker
By John Albert
Richard had never planned on coming to a strange place like Los Angeles. When the envelope arrived, the twenty-five-year-old part-time bricklayer and full time Millwall Football club supporter had all but forgotten the day he and some of his hooligan mates had applied for the Green Card lottery. But a year later he was a world away from of London’s dreary East End, living in sunbathed Los Angeles and hunting celebrities. Paparazzi was what the rest of the world called them.
* * *
Still in her twenties, Melisa should have had a long career ahead of her. Her first few movies, a set of teen horror films, an innocuous romantic comedy and a critically heralded art film, had all been successes, and the one-time child beauty pageant contestant was earning millions. But now all that was in jeopardy as she descended into the typical Hollywood rabbit hole of drugs and public debauchery. After drunkenly collapsing on sidewalks, crashing a car into a taco stand and an arrest outside an after-hours club with a bag of Ecstasy in her purse, she was on the run from the paparazzi. Her handlers had persuaded her to lay low and wait out the media frenzy, which, of course, only made her image that much more valuable.
In the month since her drug arrest, it was Richard alone who had twice caught her. The first was a shot of her smoking a joint in a friend’s backyard, the second time, he found her on the crowded