Alison's Wonderland. Alison Tyler
strummed and rubbed and tweaked at her. She crawled upward, like she was trying to climb his body.
A voice in her head chanted a mantra she was only half aware of. More, more, more. Lily didn’t know what she wanted more of—his cock, his fingers, his voice slithering into her ear like a trance, the brandy kiss or the wet shine of the shoes that clung to her feet. The feeling, the thick, dark, urgent and sweet feeling. The beat of the music rolling into her. Everything, everything.
Lily started to shiver. Hans fucked her steadily, decisively. She had to fight to breathe. The polished floor was slippery under her feet and she felt herself tumbling, slipping, falling as the burn of orgasm rose up through her body.
It started in her feet, red flares of sensation that burned in her veins and swarmed around her thighs, a hot crush inside her that uncurled and licked over her clit, clutched at her heart and sparked in her nipples as the man pinched them tightly. And then it was everywhere.
She closed her eyes and saw crimson, opened her mouth and screamed scarlet, felt the red crash over her and through her and shake her until there was no world anymore, no ballroom, no Lily.
The red splashed across her heart and sizzled in her fingertips.
The waves rocked her back and forth, swaying her until she was seasick. Lily unraveled and spun out like a ribbon caught in the ocean’s deep currents. She was limp, her body shaky. Ready to climb down now, to find air, to break the surface.
But Hans’s arms circled her waist and the shoes were tight on her feet. Although she was flinching, oversensitive, the cock inside her was harder and stronger than ever and her body wouldn’t stop moving against it.
“Hans,” she said, almost ready to beg for a moment’s pause. She was ignored. He rubbed relentlessly at her aching nipples, making her flinch as the too-strong sensation shot through her. She was bathed in sweat, cooling now and slick over the surface of her skin.
She tried to pull away. But she found herself tugged toward Hans, as though there were a strong magnet in her stomach. And her hips—though they ached, they kept on moving. Her body seemed possessed—though she frowned and blinked she couldn’t seem to see clearly.
“Yes,” Hans said, and his smile curdled. “Dance with me.”
“Oh,” Lily said. Her voice was faint. “I think I need a glass of water.”
Hans put his mouth to her ear.
“All you need is this. All you need is me.”
He nodded his head.
“You’re mine.”
Lily’s heart lurched. The music had become dark and hard now, it beat against her skull. Hans let his eyes drop to her shoes. He smiled, and the skin pulled taut over his cheekbones.
“The shoes belong to me. And now you belong to the shoes.”
Lily’s feet twitched and throbbed, and she realized in a split second that she was bewitched. The shoes were a poisoned chalice, a glittering prison, two seductive traps that she’d walked straight into. She pushed Hans away and dropped to a crouch, tugging at the straps on her ankles. It was as though the buckles were soldered shut. Her feet were burning now, and her breath was fighting in her throat. She looked up at Hans and saw twin fires in his eyes, a terrible, cold desire. The tip of his tongue flickered over his lips.
“Mine,” he said.
Desperate and confused, Lily reached to her throat. Her hand brushed the wilted corsage pinned to her breast, and she clutched at the stems. A burst of sweet, green perfume floated from it. Hardly aware of what she was doing, Lily gripped hold of the flowers and held on to them tight. Her head hurt. Her eyes were bleary. With fingers wet from sap, she rubbed at her eyelids.
It was like the sky opened up. A fresh breeze cut through the thick atmosphere of the ballroom, smelling of cut grass and brine and newly dug earth. Lily looked around.
Hans was a few feet from her, but he seemed to shrink as she looked at him. Her eyes were clear. There was dandruff on his shoulder and dust on the chandelier. The music faded. Lily felt an insistent pain in her feet, and looked down at the red shoes. Irritated, she kicked a shoe across the dance floor, and stepped lightly out of the other.
The floor was dusty and small pieces of grit dug into the soles of her feet, but it felt good. She flexed her toes. Lily heaved a deep sigh.
“Well, Hans, you know that was fun, but I think it’s time I got going.”
He didn’t answer, but instead made a hissing sound, like a balloon when the air is let out of it.
“No, don’t fuss, I don’t need a ride home,” Lily continued, rubbing mascara from under her eyes. “It’s been a great night. Really interesting. Although—” Lily leaned toward Hans and whispered loudly across the empty dance floor, “You might want to lay off the Viagra. Too much of a good thing, you know?”
With that, she blew him a light kiss off the end of her fingertips, turned and left.
Fool’s Gold
Shanna Germain
Spin a Yarn
It was a random boast. Too many gin and tonics, too aware of how my ass looked in a new pair of dark jeans. Far too aware of how he’d been watching me across the loud space of a bar table all night, long fingers reaching up to push a few strands of dark hair away from his blue eyes. Not a close friend, but still a friend. And for long enough you’d think I’d have noticed him that way before. But sometimes that’s how it happens, a flip switches, and the guy at the edge slips into the center. He is suddenly all you can see.
This flip was the conversation that turned from usual drunken rants to sex. Specifically to bondage sex. After a few minutes of the boys around the table laughing and the girls not really saying much, I pushed the lime into my gin and tonic with the end of my stir stick. “I don’t know what the big deal is.” I imagined being stuck somewhere, seat-belted in, unable to reach the drink holders or turn the knobs on the dashboard. “I like to move when I have sex. Why be tied down?”
Suddenly, the quiet man that I mostly knew from group nights out was leaning across the table, creating near-perfect paper strips from the bar napkin, talking about ropes and twine and knots in a power voice, a low light flickering in his eyes. He wasn’t talking to me, not specifically, but his gaze flicked to my wrists as he talked. “There’s freedom in constraints.”
I curled my hands around my glass, the bones feeling exposed, the pulse thump-thumping beneath the skin. “There’s constraint in constraints.” My words had made more sense in my head.
He followed the movement of my hand with his eyes, tearing another near-perfect strip from the edge of his napkin as he waved my comment away. “But it’s not really about what you use to tie someone down. At least, not the physical thing you use to tie someone.”
He laid the thin strip of torn napkin over my wrist, holding the edges with a few fingers to the table, as though paper and pressure was enough to keep me there.
“It’s other things. Isn’t it, Elly?” His eyes settled on mine. Such intense blue, like a weight all their own, trying to keep me against the overly warm bar seat.
I dropped my gaze to watch the lime floating in my drink, raising both shoulders in a shrug, my wrist slipping along beneath the paper. “You’re asking the wrong girl,” I said, when I could finally meet his eyes again.
He arched a brow, the low bar lights flaring in his gaze as he shifted his head. “Am I?”
“Yes.” The others faded away. Did they grow quiet on their own or just slip into the edges of my vision, sliding into the place he’d occupied so recently? “I’ve never been bound to anything. Man or bed or chair. And I don’t intend to be.”
He stood suddenly, the lean movement of predator, still holding the napkin