Burn

She has been coming here – quite literally: she’s been fucking the landlord for as many summers as she’s been renting the apartment – for thirteen years now. This summer, it’s changed – the kitchen is brand new and the old, unreliable TV has been replaced with a 40″ widescreen model.

He teases her, as usual, about the colour of her skin – her legs poke out like two milk bottles from the bottom of her dress and they’ll stay that way for the rest of August – she never tans, no matter how hard she tries. He always said that was what made him notice her, that first summer – the way she looked like a stick of chalk in the middle of all those tanned bodies.

She asks when he’s free, anticipating with every word the first thrust of his cock – could they go for dinner one night this week, perhaps? Or drinks? They never fuck on the day she arrives and it makes the anticipation ever sweeter.

Sure, he says – Thursday? – and she has to force a smile. The wait makes the anticipation sweeter, but it’s only Saturday and four days of waiting is, well, bittersweet, at best.

On Tuesday, passing one of the cafés on the seafront, she sees him with someone else. Someone who is, at a guess, five years younger than her. He’s nuzzling the girl’s neck, his hands grazing her tight, pert breasts and while she watches, trying to reconcile the sudden ache in her stomach with the fact that until now she hasn’t thought about this man from one summer to another, her pistachio ice-cream starts to melt, flowing stickily down the cone and landing in a messy pale green dollop at her feet.

She should cancel Thursday but she doesn’t, the pull of the anticipation too strong now to back out. But whereas once she would have basked in the promise of seeing him – repainting her toenails, curling her hair – today she couldn’t give a fuck about either of those things. What good will it do now if she looks hot? It’s not like it’ll make a difference. And so her body goes un-preened, hair unwashed, sunscreen shoddily applied, and by the end of the day  the skin on her shoulders and cleavage is pink and raw.

In the shower, after she’s recoiled at the sight of it, she allows herself to fantasise that he’ll be equally horrified – that when he sees the state of her he’ll kiss her hot flesh tenderly and ask what the hell she was thinking. That he’ll peel her bra straps carefully from her tight and glowing shoulders and fuck her slowly while heat radiates from her, as unwelcome and painful as her feelings.

But he is late and he is horny, and he doesn’t undress her at all. Instead, after they’ve shared a bottle of rosé he bends her over the arm of the sofa (also new), pulls her knickers to one side and shunts into her from behind, until she has come from the way her clit grinds against the furniture and he has pumped her full of semen. Then he folds her skirt back down, pats her arse affectionately, and says he has to go.

The burn goes unnoticed.

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2008-2016

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2008-2010: Snicket
It’s his idea, the first time. It’s a shortcut she takes every day on the way to and from the office, but usually she’s in low heels and a suit, always in a rush. It’s never occurred to her before what it might feel like to be made to kiss the bricks, to feel her bare knees graze against them. She’s never dreamt of stopping on a double yellow to fall to her knees and suck cock, never imagined what it might feel like to have water from the hanging baskets and semen mix on her upturned face. He – David – teaches her to want all those things.

2011-2015: Jitty
Adam. Adam is the only one who uses a word for it she’s never heard before. Adam is not sure he’s up for fucking in a backstreet at all. Adam is not an exhibitionist – he prefers the feathery softness of the duvet, the soft glow of a bedside lamp. She convinces him by waking him early one morning, when the sky is awash with purple, the milk still icy cold on the doorsteps. Adam makes her come so hard that morning, lifted against the wall, legs around his waist (he’s a big guy, in more ways than one), that she swings from the lampposts as they make their way home.

2015-2016: Ginnel
Paul calls it a ginnel, and fucks her in it in broad daylight, his thrusts as harsh as the word sounds in his flat, mancunian accent. They duck into the doorways, listening for the sound of footsteps or voices approaching. It’s different in the sunshine – dirtier, somehow – and they go back there day after day, until this road, this dank, unfrequented backstreet, feels more like home to her than her neat, clean little flat. When Paul calls time on their relationship, she doesn’t cut through to work that way for three whole months.

2016-: Alleyway
She’s single now, and the shortcut has regained the bland, regionless name she  gave it before them – alleyway. It’s always been part of the appeal of fucking men with regional accents, the fact she doesn’t have one. Three men have fucked her here, and each one had his own name for it. Those words – snicket, jittyginnel – they feel as intimate, as personal to her now as pussy or cunt, as unique to each man as the taste of his come, the shape of his cock. She’s single now, but from time to time, in the dead of night, she’s there, alone, kissing the brick. Remembering.

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Home

old-fashioned-typewriter

By the third week of night school, the words flow so fast from Karen’s fingers that her mind wanders to Joe as she works. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, she types, and for a moment he is the fox – it fits: his hair is fiery red – and she the dog. It is like that in the mornings, when has to be up at six, and more often than not chooses her over the snooze button, her limbs still half-asleep as his hot cock presses against her thigh and he kisses the sleepy dust from her eyes. On one occasion he woke her by imitating the noises of the actual foxes that had kept them up half the night, but she soon put a stop to that – she was afraid the neighbours might think he’d completely lost it, and although he makes her laugh, even she has her limits before coffee.

Other times, she is the fox – the one who could gladly stay up all night while he is already dozing in front of the television. If foxes had opposable thumbs and could gently lift the fast-cooling mug of tea from his grasp, place it safely on the sideboard, then remove their knickers and straddle him, kissing him until he is back in the world of the living and his cock is thickening and pulsing under her steady grinding, then yeah, she can be the fox, too.

These thoughts make her restless. She shifts uncomfortably in the too-small wooden chair, and loses her place in the exercise.

She’s lucky, and she knows it – the women around her see typing skills as their route to emancipation – a job, a salary, a life of their own – and she has all those things without the keyboard skills. These classes are purely for her. She wants to write a book, and Joe is right behind her. That’s why he bought her the typewriter. That’s why he stays home with the kids while she goes to these classes. But it’s more than that. By letting her write, he’s telling her that her words matter. And it’s just not like that for so many of her friends.

So yeah, she’s lucky. She’s lucky, and she’s wet, and even though, when she crawls into bed beside him he’s already fast asleep, she can’t help herself. She rolls on her side, her hands under the duvet, reaches for his cock, and lets her fingers return to home.

0

Mirror

  
Demandez. It was the buzzword of their relationship at the start.

Ask me. Tell me. No, *beg* me. Say please.

It would help, perhaps, if it wasn’t written on the mirror. That’s how he thinks of the food now as a reflection of him – every roast chicken, every perfect patisserie, every carefully reduced sauce – it’s a slice of him on a plate. 

A slice taken out of their relationship.

Once upon a time, he’d had time for her. Had left the kitchen in fact, that night they met, to ask what she thought of the food. At least, that was what he started by asking. He finished by writing his number on a napkin. 

Napkins are disposable. 

Now, he doesn’t ask her anything, and she doesn’t ask him, either. Not the coupley stuff, like ‘What do you want for dinner?’ (He brings leftovers from the restaurant), nor the ‘Where do you want my cock?’ or the ‘Shall I come in your cunt, or your mouth?’ Where she wants his cock is in the long, stolen afternoons they used to share, not the post-midnight hours they’re confined to now, once he’s showered off the scents of his true love – the garlic, the chilli, the oil from the deep fat fryer.

She might tell herself, one day, that she made a last ditch attempt to save it. She sat in the restaurant, at the table opposite the mirror, and she even dressed like a mistress – all black, red nails, lots of cleavage. 

He stays in the kitchen. 

At six, the first guests start to arrive. She gives up her table to a party of four, and heads home. She should leave a note, she thinks, somewhere where he’ll see it.

When he comes home, in the early hours, there’s a word on the mirror, in lipstick.

Adieu x

Knees

Everybody blames their knees, says the physio, but the knees are rarely to blame. The hips and the ankle are to blame for everything that goes wrong at the knee, they rotate more, so what you’re feeling is referred pain.

I can’t blame my knees. Or my hips. Or my ankle. 

I can only blame myself.

Or, to be more specific: I could blame the flushed head of your cock as it butts against my lips. I could blame your hand on my jaw, or in my hair, or between my legs. I could blame the way you smell, the way your pubes tickle my nose as I suck you. 

Or, before that, even, I could blame myself for unseeing the ring on your left hand, for not minding when you pretended to your wife that I was a conference, not a woman. I could blame the fact you said my mouth was made for sucking cock.

I could blame you. 

But, of all the things, my knees are not to blame.

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Absinthe & chartreuse

He is drying glasses behind the bar when they discuss it for the first time. They’ve been seeing each other for three months now, and lately he’s been leaving bruises on her, bruises the colour of absinthe and chartreuse. Bruises that she’s begged for, in the heat of the moment, but cannot quite yet bring herself to talk about in the cold light of day.

The cold light of day is what she’s hibernating from here, in the cosy wood-panelled quiet, under the old Campari poster, with a chilled glass of white wine, at 4p.m. on a Tuesday. When your boyfriend’s a barman, she’s learnt, there’s no point hoping for alone-time after dark.

Occasionally, she presses her fingers to her collarbone, to a mark he’s left there, until he catches sight of her and says, ‘You’re pretty fond of that, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’ There is strength in Chardonnay.

‘You like it when I hurt you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And when I fuck your arse?’

‘Hell, yes.’

He strikes a match, and the hiss of fire fills the silence. He lights the tealights on the bar, and then holds the burning match under her chin, like you would a buttercup, not close enough to burn, but close enough to remind her of his power. Only this doesn’t turn her chin yellow, this turns her cunt slick.

The tealights are well alight now, the wax beginning to soften. He blows out the match, drops it in the sink, and picks up the candle instead, swirling the molten wax so it surges up against the glass. ‘Wax play?’

‘Does it hurt?’

‘Depends. It can do, if you want it to.’

‘Maybe.’

‘OK. Rape fantasy?’

‘One day, I think. Not yet. I’m not ready.’

He chops limes into wedges. ‘I should be keeping notes.’

This reminds her of something, something unappealing. It reminds her of bloody Christian Grey. ‘No contract,’ she says. ‘That’s a definite hard limit for me. I do not want my desires neatly typed up in a bulleted list, thank you.’

He laughs. ‘Got it. No contract. What about another kind of list?’

‘What kind?’

He plucks a menu from the pile on the bar. ‘A cocktail list?’

‘Stop teasing me.’

‘I’m not. It’s perfect.’ He gestures at it, his handiwork, all flowing calligraphy and clever names. ‘See – there are soft drinks, hard drinks, and -,’ he flips it over, ‘–harder still on the back.’ He’s talking about the ones with absinthe and chartreuse rinses, the  ones she’s always terrified to order, lest she end up a teary, crumpled mess at the bar after two sips. The ones that remind her how much she loves the bruises.

‘So the things I find tempting go on the front, and the other stuff on the back?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘And what happens if I change my mind?’

He grins. ‘We change the menu.’

0

Best thing since sliced bread

bread2

She’s grown tired of him, though the affair is only a few months old. Truth be told, she was never that fond of him in the first place. It was the little things that drew her to him – the red leather chairs in his office, the way his hair smelt of Brylcreem – the little luxuries that have disappeared, one after another, since the start of the war.

He pokes fun at her for her fury at the sliced bread ban. What will it cost her, he says: a minute here, a second there? He pushes his penis deep inside her and says, of course, he should have known, a glutton like her, hungry for cock, would also require an endless stream of bread and jam. He’s joking, perhaps, trying to recall the lightheartedness of their earliest trysts, but she can barely contain herself. What would he know, pen pusher that he is, about the life of a housewife, how long it takes to make sandwiches for four hungry mouths? The knives are blunt, too, of course – another luxury she’s had to give up.

Right now, she’d quite like to stab him with one of her blunt knives.

Two months later, the anger is replaced with delight. The ban is lifted, its savings apparently negligible.

In his office, the following day, his mood is black. The whole thing has made him look a fool. Even the headlines jest about all the housewives’ thumbs that will be saved as a result. It gives her an idea.

As she kneels on the plush carpet and takes him in her mouth, he groans. He’s needed this, she imagines. He closes his eyes, puts his hands on the back of her head, and, feigning the need to breathe, she pulls away for a moment and spits into her palm. She rubs the saliva between finger and thumb, and as his breathing grows faster, she slides her thumb inside him.

He gasps, surprised and overwhelmed. Before he can protest, he’s spurting into her mouth. His come trickles from her mouth as she looks up at him, grins, and spits what’s left into her handkerchief.

It’s the last time she sees him. Their affair has gone stale.

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‘How a bad girl fell in love’ competition (of sorts): winner

Slightly (very) guttingly, in the end there was only one entry for this competition. In the hope that that says more about my current absence from Twitter, and therefore a lack of competition promotion on my part, rather than a lack of interest in the competition in general, I decided not to extend the deadline, and instead to award the prize to Jo at Teachers Have Sex, since her entry was outstanding and would no doubt have been a strong contender for the winning place even if there had been more entries. You can read her (superbly titled) story below…

Underground Eruptions Could Cause Quakes Months Later

Sitting on a KTX train bound for Daegu, I see my own reflection absentmindedly staring out the window at the mountains passing by.  As so often happens when I’m not thinking of anything in particular, my thoughts drift to you.  To your strong fingers, your expressive brown eyes, your dirty words whispered lovingly into my ears.  Your mouth on my nipple, seen from above as I’m straddling you.  Your sex and heat and body odor-mingled scent in the late morning after an all-night fuck marathon.

You often joked with me how you’d want to see me right off the train or bus because long-distance transit makes me insatiably horny.  I don’t know why; the rumblings of the engine or the bumps in the road, the freedom of my mind to wander now that I’m far from home, the shadows crossing my face as we enter and exit tunnels.

I’m thinking of you and I remember (or did I dream it?) coming home one night after a weekend away to find you lounging on my couch, reading a book.  Waiting for me.  I didn’t expect to see you.  Didn’t expect for you to stride over to me without saying anything, kiss me full on the lips (god your lips), and then ask if my bus ride was good.  I couldn’t muster an answer as I was too busy dropping my bag, fumbling with the buttons on your shirt, and barely getting my own pants down a bit before you picked me up and put me on my kitchen counter, pushed my pants off with your foot, and grabbed the back of my hips to pull me forward enough for you to slide into me.  I came hard that night with my head banging against my cupboard, clutching your back as though I hadn’t seen you in years, feeling a hunger in my cunt for more and more of you.

Now, sitting on the train and thinking of your body pressed against me, I feel my lips swell, blood pulsing deep inside me.  Sometimes I think that if I fantasize hard enough I can make myself come – but not having accomplished that yet, I stand up suddenly, push by the passenger next to me, and enclose myself in the train bathroom.  Still standing, I move my hand into my panties and dip my fingers inside, drawing up my own lube, and rub two fingers in circles around my clit, breath coming hard, biting my own lip.  It doesn’t take long.  My whole body shakes soundlessly, vibrating against the bathroom wall.  A series of powerful contractions takes my breath away, and my body relaxes.  I see myself tremble in the bathroom mirror and I think, sorrowful for just a moment, about how much I’d like to come home to you.  You’re 7,000 miles away now, but you still erupt inside of me now and then, spilling out of me, aftershocks stretching out into the night.

Six men in the kitchen (The Lady, October 2015) & competition reminder

Someone once told her that she only needed six things in her kitchen: a food processor, a microplane grater, a good set of knives, digital scales, a stand mixer and a vegetable peeler.

It’s not true, she realises now. Sometimes you need other things. Sometimes you need six men, all of whom you’ve bedded, leaning against your worktop – not because you have doubts, but because you want a reminder of how you got here.

Her hen do was supposed to be mixed, but it has separated out, somehow – the girls and the plastic, novelty cocks in the living room, the boys – and their real flesh and blood ones – in the kitchen. She intends to flit between the two groups, but there’s an easiness to hanging out with the men. She’s never been one for slick, organised parties; she’s certainly never been one for pin-the-dick-on-the-fireman.

Instead, she plays her own game. She weaves between the guys, topping up their champagne, and for each one, she challenges herself to remember a specific moment or detail about the way they fucked.

Jamie’s fingers, and the way they curved against her G-spot until she drenched his sheets.

Max, who taught her to love face slapping, though she can’t for the life of her remember what made them try it in the first place.

Edward, bestower of tiny yellow thumbprint bruises all over her tits, and bigger, purple ones on her arse.

Stephen, the biggest of the six, who liked to slide into her before she was quite wet enough, stretching her wide around his cock.

Zac, who she only fucked once, at uni, when she was so drunk she can barely remember it, but whose pale arse, disappearing out of her bedroom door the following morning, will stay with her forever.

Fraser, who made so much noise when he came, the neighbours complained. More than once.

She’s found a man who is all these things for her now, but she would’t have got there, without these men. She wouldn’t have known that these things mattered to her.

*

The day itself doubles the contents of her kitchen cabinets. There are vegetable steamers, beautiful stoneware casserole dishes, cheese knives, and, from her grandma, cutlery for best, a concept that is still beyond her.

The boys don’t bring gifts – it’s not their style. Besides, they don’t need to – over the past ten years they’ve given her more than she could ever have hoped for.

For obvious reasons, this isn’t an entry for my competition to win a signed copy of Girl on the Net’s new book, but it is a reminder that you only have four and a bit days left to enter.

I’ll put up a separate post linking to the entries as soon as I have a few more, but for now, check out this epically-titled entry by Jo at Teachers have Sex.

Wierd

She finds it screwed up at the back of the wardrobe, twenty years later. Sugar paper. Christ, how long it seems since sugar paper and handwritten projects, photos printed out, guillotined neatly, and stuck down with Pritt Stick. It didn’t suit the perfectionist in her – too hard to make it look good.

Not that she expected to still be doing projects like that at seventeen.

It was meant to ease them in gradually, she supposes. Start of sixth form, something easy to make the classroom look pretty. A poster, for fuck’s sake. She wanted to get her teeth into the real work, to learn new stuff.

She’d learned new stuff with him.

With him, there’d been no easing in gradually. No steady working their way up through the bases. They covered them all in one night – first kiss mid-afternoon and her virginity gone by midnight. Though she liked him more than the hurry suggested. A lot more.

If he was nervous, he didn’t let on – she liked that – but he wasn’t cocky, either. He touched her the same way she imagined he’d handle a new phone – as if he still had a lot to learn but the basics weren’t beyond him – as if he trusted his ability to get to grips with her body.

School started again before she had the chance to find out, and the project, shitty though it was, gave them an excuse to pair up, a reason why he’d be in her bedroom of an evening, a reason for him to slide his hands up her top as she rendered the title in perfect bubble letters.

‘Stop,’ she laughed, batting his hands away, ‘we need to finish this first!’

He was rock hard in his jeans, distracted no doubt, as he captioned a photo of a ‘weird and wonderful museum’ in deepest Wales.

Her back was turned, and then, ‘Wierd?! You idiot! You’ve ruined it now!’

He stormed out, the front door slamming behind him. In class the next day, he’d moved seats, tippexed out their intertwined names from his pencil case. Her cunt couldn’t forget him so fast, and the B they got for their efforts was poor compensation for the empty ache inside her.

Eventually she thinks she’s forgotten him. She no longer wanks over his memory, his too-big boxer shorts, his thick cock. There are other men, of course.

But she’s kinder to the ones who can’t spell.

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