The Mammoth Book of Erotica presents The Best of Donna George Storey Read online

  Donna George Storey was on maternity leave from her job as an adjunct professor of Japanese literature, in the spring of 1997. She started writing short stories during her son’s naps, with the hope of publishing in small, respectable literary magazines. Then she bought a copy of The Mammoth Book of International Erotica and realized, once she’d patted down her skirt and pulled her jaw up off the floor, that she’d discovered her true calling – to write erotic stories that arouse both the mind and the libido. Since then, she’s published over 150 erotic stories and essays in journals and anthologies such as Penthouse, CleanSheets.com, Best American Erotica, Best Women’s Erotica, Sex in the City: New York, He’s on Top, Lustfully Ever After, Bound by Lust and Dirty Girls. Many of these stories went on to appear in The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica series. She’s also the author of Amorous Woman, an erotic novel based on her own experiences living and loving in Japan. She writes a regular column at the Erotica Readers and Writers Association, “Cooking up a Storey” about her favourite topics: delicious sex, well-crafted food and mind-blowing writing. Writing erotica has enriched her life immeasurably, and she hopes her stories inspire others to explore the complexities of sexual pleasure in word and deed. Read more of her work at www.DonnaGeorgeStorey.com

  Mammoth Books presents

  Picture Perfect

  The Best of Donna George Storey: Six Erotic Stories

  Edited by Maxim Jakubowski

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  55–56 Russell Square

  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Robinson,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2012

  Copyright © Donna George Storey, 2012

  The right of Donna George Storey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in

  Publication Data is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-1-47210-048-1

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Blinded

  Picture Perfect

  Just Words

  Spring Pictures

  Being Bobby

  To Dance at the Fair

  Acknowledgements

  “Blinded” © Donna George Storey, 2005. First published in Clean Sheets. Reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 6, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Robinson, 2007), by permission of the author.

  “Picture Perfect” © Donna George Storey, 2004. First published in Taboo, edited by Violet Blue. Reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 5, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Robinson, 2006), by permission of the author.

  “Just Words” © Donna George Storey, 2006. First published in Best Women’s Erotica 2007, edited by Violet Blue. Reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 7, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Robinson, 2008), by permission of the author.

  “Spring Pictures” © Donna George Storey, 2003. First published in Scarlet Letters. Reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 4, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Robinson, 2005), by permission of the author.

  “Being Bobby” © Donna George Storey, 2009. First published in Clean Sheets. Reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 10, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Robinson, 2011), by permission of the author.

  “To Dance at the Fair” © Donna George Storey, 2008. First published in Dirty Girls: Erotica for Women, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel. Reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 9, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Robinson, 2010), by permission of the author.

  Blinded

  Donna George Storey

  I kneel down and he ties the blindfold over my eyes.

  Strictly speaking it isn’t a blindfold; it’s a silk scarf. My brother and his wife gave it to me for Christmas, a pretty thing with a floral design in crimson, deep blue and gold. But when I opened the gift, I was thinking: When will I ever wear this?

  But I gave it a try. When we got home, I spent a good fifteen minutes in front of the mirror attempting to knot it into an appealing fashion accessory. He sat on the edge of the bed and watched smugly – my brother had gotten him some Charlie Parker CD’s.

  Then I got the idea to wear the scarf as a headband, to keep my bangs off my face. Another failure.

  “I can’t do anything with this thing. I’m sure it was expensive, too. Do you think they’d get mad if I took it back?”

  He walked over. “How about this way?” He pulled the scarf down over my eyes.

  I could still see him hazily through the single layer of loose silk. He looked at me for a moment, his head tilted to one side as if he were deciding what to do. Then he kissed me. Hard.

  When we finally came up for air, my lips felt tender, a little swollen.

  I said, “Now tie it on so I can’t see.”

  That was the beginning. I’ve lost count of how many times we’ve done it since then, but it’s gotten us through this long winter. Sometimes he blindfolds me. Sometimes I blindfold him. It all depends on who comes up with a new idea. It’s never the same. That’s our unspoken rule.

  Not that it’s entirely unpredictable. He seems to prefer that I wear some sort of clothing: one of his shirts or a teddy, something he can eventually slip off me. After more than a year together, it still excites him to uncover my breasts, to weigh them in his hands as if he is touching them for the first time. That’s one of the things I like about him.

  I prefer him to be completely naked. The first time I blindfolded him, I was the one who was trembling. Although it was my idea that he kneel on the bed wearing nothing but the blindfold, when he actually began to undress with a cool smile, I almost told him to stop. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to see his big body so exposed, a band of flowered silk over his eyes with the long, loose ends falling softly down his back. I thought it might somehow diminish him.

  I was wrong. I’d never realized how beautiful his body was. Not that I hadn’t appreciated it before, but I’d always focused my gaze on his eyes, his expressions. The rest of him I knew better by touch. But now, with his eyes hidden, I could see him with a new clarity: the rich, taut curves of his arms and chest, the hint of soft flesh at his waist that I found oddly pleasing. I noticed that the hair on his belly fanned out more luxuriantly to the left, and by contrast, his right thigh was slightly more muscular, a legacy of his college fencing days. It didn’t take long for him to get hard – it never did when we used the blindfold – and I got to watch that, the delicate jerking movements of his penis as it rose and thickened, drawn upward by invisible strings which, I imagined, led straight to my hands.

  I felt like a thief.

  I felt my own desire grow in a completely new way. This time the familiar ache seemed to originate from behind my eyes, from the very sight of him unseeing. Then it seeped downward, bringing a warm flush to my cheeks and neck, making my nipples grow erect. When it finally reached my b
elly, it pooled there as a sharp, shimmering hunger.

  I bent closer to feast, on the smell of him first, the cuminy scent of crotch, sharply male, yet intimate. Intoxicating. I’d never studied a cock so carefully, the web of tiny veins embedded in the skin like red lace, the puckered ridge below the head, as if the flesh had been pinched when it was still fresh and soft. With no eyes glowing down at me, urging me to lick and suck and swallow, I could gaze into that other eye, slit vertically like a cat’s, or maybe it was more like a tiny, hairless cunt, what they’d have on Barbie if she were anatomically correct. I pressed my tongue against it, lightly, tasting bitterness and salt, the tang of soap, then took the whole smooth helmet of the head into my mouth.

  He moaned.

  At last I had the sound of him.

  When he decides the game, he often feeds me things. A dish of rice pudding in baby-sized bites. Morsels of praline truffle he pushes through my lips with his tongue. And most often, his cock. I don’t know why, but his semen tastes sweeter when I am blindfolded.

  Once he slipped a tiny wedge of soft paper between my lips, struck a match, and instructed me to inhale. It was a joint. Where did you get this? I wanted to ask, but I knew I wasn’t supposed to talk, so I just lay quietly next to him on the bed and took long drags whenever he held it to my mouth. It must have been good stuff, because soon I was tingling all over just this side of numbness, floating off the bed into the past. It had been years since I’d smoked a joint. I never bought drugs myself. They were always presented to me as an offering from a boy in exchange for what I could offer him in return. So many things had changed since then, but it took me back to a time when I was so dumb about men I might as well have been wearing a blindfold.

  It’s been a difficult winter for both of us. I knew things weren’t going well for him at work, but I didn’t realize how upset he was until that day when I came home to find him practicing with his saber.

  When we first started going out, he gave me a demonstration of fencing moves. I liked the way he looked in that white jacket, the single leather glove on his right hand, but I wasn’t so sure about the wire mesh mask. It made him look like a huge insect. Or an executioner.

  “Forget The Three Musketeers,” he told me, “what you want to do is keep the blade within an imaginary frame around your body, to move as little as possible and still protect yourself. More important, though, is reading your opponent. It’s a game of chess, move and countermove,” he said. “And when you get it just right, it’s the best feeling in the world.”

  But as I watched him, so graceful as he advanced and then retreated, it seemed less like a game than a strange and beautiful dance.

  This second time, it was different. He wore no mask and his T-shirt was stained with sweat. There was a fierceness in his concentration, his brow furrowed, his lips pale. I don’t even think he saw me at first. Again and again he lunged at his imaginary opponent: a feint to the chest, then the quick and fatal strike to the head. I could see the cold satisfaction as he watched the body crumple to the floor. Whoever it was died several times over.

  Finally he turned to me. He was too far away to touch me with the blade, but he extended his wrist toward me as if he were pointing me out to some unseen stranger.

  I frowned. “Hey, watch out, you could hurt someone with that.”

  His mouth curved into a slight smile. “That’s the idea,” he said, tilting the saber back in salute.

  I’ve been having troubles of my own: my father’s second heart attack, and talk of surgery. The first time I went to visit, he came with me. As we walked through the corridors, the pallid fluorescent light and muted antiseptic smell began to make me feel ill, so I reached for his hand, the only warm, real thing in the whole place.

  He waited in the hall while I went into the room. My father was sleeping. He looked so old, his body sprouting tubes and wires, his face all creases and shadows. My mother was sitting by the bed staring down at the book on her lap. I glanced back at him, leaning against the wall across from the doorway, arms crossed, gazing straight ahead. His expression was patient, blank. I knew he didn’t see me then. I wanted to be where he was – far, far away – but my mother pulled me back with her cool lips on my cheek.

  When she saw him, she stiffened, but, ever courteous, walked out to greet him. I watched them come together in a brief, guarded embrace, watched his lips move as he said something to her, watched her nod without really looking at him.

  I’d known from the beginning that she didn’t really approve of him. Does he love you? she asked me once, almost under her breath. I shrugged because that was the only answer I could give.

  I wonder if she could have understood if I had told her about the blindfold?

  One of my best ideas came from my mother. Going through her sewing box, she pulled out a square of deep red velvet and said, “Remember this? It’s from that dress I made you for Christmas when you were – how old – eight?” The fabric was soft with age and I instinctively rubbed it over my hand, up over my wrist. It felt especially nice when I ran a velvet-covered finger along the inside of my arm. I was so lost in my sweet memories of that dress, how grown-up and glamorous I felt when I wore it to church on Christmas morning that I didn’t realize for several moments that I held in my hand the perfect surprise for our next game.

  It was a good one. After I blindfolded him, I had him lie face down on the bed and guess what I was rubbing over his skin: the tip of my nose along his spine, the loose end of the blindfold across his shoulders, my finger in the valley of his ass, my breasts across the back of his knees. I saved the velvet until last and stroked the length of him with it like I was polishing a precious, breakable object. He usually didn’t make much noise when we made love, but by the time I was done with the back of him, he was almost mewing. And more than ready to turn over.

  I dusted his chest and the discs of his nipples, then forced myself to linger at his belly, soothing the skin in small circles, ignoring the cock that reared and twitched with each new caress. At last I wrapped the velvet around it and began to polish it like a newel post, with careful attention to the glossy knob. It was then I told him about the dress, about how I wore it with white tights and patent leather shoes and had a bow with holly on it in my hair, and about how thrilled I was when all of the adults told me I looked so pretty.

  “I’ll bet you were cute,” he said as I lowered myself onto him and started my slow ride.

  So cute, I told him, that even my oldest cousin – the one I had a crush on, the one who lives in Texas now – gallantly offered me a turn with his train set. Before I’d always had to beg and whine. But that day, I felt like a princess. And in trying to figure out what was different about it, I had my first inkling that the way to get something from boys is to look pretty. Then they’ll do anything for you. “Isn’t that true?” I asked him.

  “Uh huh,” he replied, arching back into the pillow.

  Not long after that he asked me to kneel when he put on the blindfold. Then he went on to position my body with his hands, telling me to keep my back straight, my shoulders down, my chin up. He told me not to move, not even to smile. He proceeded to caress me, starting at my cheeks just below the edge of the blindfold. He traced my lips with one fingertip, drew ovals on my chin, brushed my neck and collarbone with feathery strokes. I managed to hold myself still until his hands moved to my breasts. That’s when he had to remind me of the rules and rearrange my body in the proper position. He even reprimanded me for breathing too quickly. “Slow, baby, nice and slow,” he whispered, smoothing the tension from my lips and jaw until I was quiet.

  But then he started up again, rolling my nipples between his fingers like he was fine-tuning a radio, rubbing one breast then the other with a spit-moistened palm. He knew my body. I had my proof then, if there was any doubt before. And all I could do was squeeze my eyes shut tighter and tighter under the blindfold as my cheeks began to burn and a fine sweat rose like lubricant on the skin beneath his ha
nds. Soon my chest was throbbing so violently my ribs ached. By then he’d moved down to my belly, drawing strange shapes that sometimes – just sometimes – extended farther down. Then he’d come back to tease my belly button with a wet finger, stroking, circling, slipping softly inside.

  All the while my clit was growing heavy and hot. I imagined he could see it, poking out between my lips, flushed scarlet, shameless in its need. When he finally did touch it, I shuddered, earning me another scolding.

  “Now, now. Don’t you remember? Good girls keep still and quiet while their wet, swollen clits are being rubbed.”

  By then there was nothing I could do to stop myself from whimpering, Please, oh, please, I think I’m gonna come, but I guess the rules suddenly changed, because he pushed me back on the bed and entered me with an urgency that surprised me, that tiny part of me that was still capable of coherent thought. How could just touching me – a statue – excite him so much?

  The experience of orgasm in general is something I can easily conjure in my mind, but specific ones elude me. Even when I remember the circumstances of the lovemaking, the things we said and did, the climax blurs into a vague bliss. An ending. But that orgasm is one I still remember in my body, a searing rush of pleasure bursting free, my skull blasted open to the rush of night wind, the chilled fire of the stars. I remember marveling afterwards that we had done it: We had found a way to make each time better than the last.

  Of course it couldn’t go on forever.

  Earlier tonight I convinced him to watch an episode of an English TV series about a king with too many wives, one of my favorite shows as a child. But as I watched it again, I realized there was a lot I didn’t remember. The growing sense of doom, the ugly marital quarrels, the political intrigue, the scene where the queen’s musician was blinded under torture with a knotted rope. It was altogether too gloomy, so I didn’t complain when he started reading something halfway through. I decided to be satisfied he was there with me, idly rubbing my toes with one hand, holding the magazine with the other.