Ankle Bracelet By Ty Vossler

It was an early October Friday afternoon in Puebla, Mexico—overcast as I recall. Lucia’s lover rested on his elbows above her, his fingers stroking the side of her face as they kissed.

She reached down and I read her lips, “Get inside.” He lifted my wife’s knees and I watched as he pressed down and in. Through the thin walls of the adjoining room, I heard their pleasure. On the laptop I saw how they looked into each other’s eyes, and kissed slowly as he began stroking back and forth.

Love is a quilt—covers what you don’t wish to see. Twelve years of marriage comfort, trust, and the resulting apathy had caused me to overlook obvious signs of cheating. Even now, with my heart in my throat and jealousy gnawing at my guts, I wanted her more than ever.

Her lover lifted her petite foot to suck on a red-polished big toe, and there it was, the ankle bracelet. It was jingling against his hand as he wetted his length in her pussy. The ankle bracelet should have been a dead giveaway. The spiky new hairstyle, the expensive Weight Watchers diet, her sexy new clothes, the twice-a-month, I’ll be late tonight, routine—bells and whistles, hammers over the head and all overlooked by yours truly.

The detective’s fees were reasonable. Lucia and her lover routinely rented a room at the same motel and it was a snap for him to install wireless micro-video cameras—one in the light above the bed, another on the television that faced it. A hundred bucks guaranteed that the clerk put them in that room. Another fifty got me the room next door.

There was no audio because of the danger with feedback noise. Yet, the paper-thin walls allowed me to perceive the bass and treble of their lovemaking. Tiny cameras saw everything and recorded it to my laptop—live streaming on two windows.

Lucia rolled on top and straddled him facing away. He spread her ass cheeks and her hands rested on his hips, mouth formed an O. He arched to synchronize with her dancing hips. She wet two fingers and found her tiny clitoris. He licked a middle finger and slowly insinuated it up her ass, which stirred Lucia into a sudden frenzy. She climaxed powerfully and he answered with a primitive growl, saturating my wife with spunk. I heard the ankle bracelet tinkling through the wall.

A throbbing hard-on accompanied the rock in my throat. Lucia leaned back on his chest as he twisted her dark brown nipples and played his fingers up and down her belly. I ignored the omens—high beams in my face, an air horn in my ear, fists drumming against my stubborn temples. The image of Lucia resting on top is transferred to the memory stick. It’s hard to imagine that, inches away, he has slipped out and now they are lying side-by-side. There is a sizable circle of moisture on the comforter. If I need DNA, there’s more than enough.

I could almost feel the heat of their bodies through the wall. They were talking—perhaps he was telling her how great she felt and she’s telling him what a mess he made. She excused herself to the bathroom, where she would push his seed out into the cold water of the toilet. He rested with his arms behind his neck until she returned. They snuggled again and she closed her eyes. Lucia likes to nap after sex.

He can’t sleep. He has my beautiful, naked wife lying next to him. He touched her lightly on the back with his fingertips—kissed her shoulder and neck until it was clear to Lucia the time had come for the obligatory follow-up. Lucia’s battery takes longer to recharge, yet she went along with it. He rolled on top and slipped in easily. She said something to him, probably something like, this is just for you. Her hips moved and he got his rocks off rather quickly.

It’s all on a memory stick. When they leave, the detective will remove his equipment, I’ll make a payment and his next job will be making contact with Lucia’s lover to show him still shots. The lover’s name is Alfonso. He is married with two children, a boy and a girl. His family has sizable holdings in real estate, a hardware store, and a Chevy dealership. In order to avoid a scandal, he will pay dearly.

They took a quick shower. Knowing that her cell phone was still turned off, I sent a text. After they had dressed, she sat on the bed and turned it on and saw, INBOX (1) how was it? She sat up straight and typed rapidly. He watched, running a leisurely finger down the crack of her ass. My phone vibrated. Her reply, INBOX (1): How was what?

I didn’t answer and watched her fidgeting. She’s having doubts, wondering if the jig is up. I have the answer on a stick. Soon the answer will be added to my personal bank account minus the detective’s twenty percent.

He says something and she shakes her head. He must have seen the look on her face. As they walked passed my room I heard him ask, “Do you want to grab a bite?”

“No, I really need to get home,” she answered.

The rest of the conversation trailed down the musty hallway.

I picked our daughter, Rita, up from daycare and we drove to the tiny local zoo. I texted Lucia where we were and she wrote, Ok, Mua!  Later she tried to call but I didn’t answer. I imagined her pacing, squiggling in a chair and staring out the window. I gave her plenty of time to ruminate and stew in the juices of guilt. Sometimes the best answer is none.

Rita and I stayed longest at the monkey habitat. They were swinging, chasing each other around and Rita was laughing. They groomed each other and she thought that was funny too. The stick was stowed in my shirt pocket.

# # #

A candlelight dinner was waiting when Rita and I returned. Lucia was wearing my favorite black dress.

“What’s the occasion?”

“I just wanted to surprise you,” she replied.

I’ve had enough of surprises, I thought. “You look nice,” I said.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine, a little tired.”

Dinner was perfect and Lucia was perfect. As we cleared the dishes, she spontaneously kissed me at the kitchen sink. The hours crept along. The stick was tucked away in my socks drawer. Rita was in bed by 8:00 probably dreaming of monkeys and Lucia was showering again.

I connected the stick to the flat screen, pressed play and watched Lucia walk into the room with her lover. They stopped at the edge of the bed for a kiss. Did she love this man I wondered? Is this the end of us? Now her lover was lifting her skirt, sliding down her panty—she sits on the bed and he buries his head between her thighs.

Lucia was still showering, probably standing beneath the water with her eyes closed. What will happen with Rita if we’re through? It isn’t fair that children suffer for their parent’s mistakes.

Alfonso is balanced on his elbows for a traditional start, fingers stroking the side of her face as they kiss. Then they entered a new world together—one I have visited many times with Lucia.

The shower is still running. Perhaps Lucia is weighing her involvement with this man, getting a grip on the implications. Why did she need this? How did she meet this clown, this Alfonso? The detective said that her lover taught economics class at the university.

The ankle bracelet was jingling against Alfonso’s hand as he fucks my wife. Her eyes are closed and her mouth is open. She hooks her ankles around his back. I watch the two windows, a Birdseye and at bed-level view.

The shower is turned off. I ejected the stick and hid it among my socks again. Then I slipped under the covers before Lucia came in. I watched her apply various creams and lotions—products designed to keep her looking young. She saw me gazing at her and interpreted it to mean that she had a wifely duty to perform.

“Do you want to make me dirty?” She is still wearing the ankle bracelet. We’ve never fucked with it on.

“Okay,” I replied.

“You’ll need jelly,” she advises, pulling down her pajama bottom, taking just one leg out and walking to the bed.

“All right,” I reached into the drawer of the nightstand for the tube and put a smidgen on the tip of my cock.

“This is just for you,” she advised.

As I lifted her legs by the ankles the bracelet jingled. She winced as I pushed inside, still tender from her afternoon. After a few minutes, I spurted heavily. There was always a roll of toilet paper on the lamp-stand and I handed her a wad.

She returned to the bathroom for a while and then rejoined me. When the lamp was clicked off it grew dark and silent.

“What did you mean today when you wrote, how was it?” She asked.

I allowed another pregnant pause. Silence is cruel, “I don’t remember.”

She gave me a dry-toast kiss, “Goodnight darling.”

I don’t know how this will pan out. I need time to process my feelings. The stick is my trump card and even before the hush money is transferred into my account, I will need to study it over and over before I decide.

Dinner For Two By Cristiano Montanari

Needing assurance that nothing would distract her from that pivotal moment, she reached for the little black radio she kept by the kitchen counter. With a twist of her wrist the dial went down, snuffing the mellifluous voice chanting that week’s Top Forty like a mantra of sorts. Even music, her favorite distraction be it classical or bubblegum pop, had to be sacrificed for the sake of that one crucial, precious slice of time in which she would finally find out – am I good enough? Have I studied hard enough? Am I wasting time and money on nothing more than a mirage, an illusion?

Once again, the last of several instances, she considered the edge of the knife. Holding the instrument in her hand, she indulged with her eyes but dared not pass a finger along the line. She knew it was sharp, she made sure that it would be so. Nothing less would suffice.

Gathering all of her concentration, she held the flesh in place with her left hand, checking that she was not applying any more pressure than strictly necessary, while the right accompanied the blade on its way down, slicing the tissue with a single and effortless motion.

One. Two. Three. Six. With the square head of the takohiki she gently scooped up the thin slices of mackerel, a rosy pearl tone crowned by the blues and grays of the skin. She arranged the three slices in a fan, over very little garnish, and sprinkled just the right amount of sauce over the dish, now complete. She adjusted the square piece of ceramic before her, her eyes inquisitively moved from her piece to the illustration on Japanese Cooking – A Simple Art by Shizuo Tsuji.

No mistake. Her cured mackerel sashimi was a masterpiece, in everything identical to the ideal form sketched by the master chef himself. Passing her tongue across her shapely plump lips, she realised her mouth was salivating ever so lightly, and it wasn’t only because of the food. The whole process, the procession of her hands from tools to flesh, and now the finished product before her, it all led her to a kind of elation that she did not feel often; surely not while travelling, watching a movie or laying in bed with her quarterly catch. This was better than most things, and surely better than sex.

The time had come. She reached for her lacquered wood chopsticks, a costly present to herself shipped straight from Japan years before. Next to the sashimi, a kelp salad that nearly threw her flat mate into an hissy fit.

“Bwah! Seaweed?” she had blurted on her way out, slinging her cheap knockoff purse and nearly falling off her heels. She had, of course, ignored her. They did get along just fine, on most things; just not on the respective definitions of ‘classy’ or ‘worth living for’. Nothing serious, when all was said and done. Maybe that kelp salad could be a metaphor for conflicting worldviews. Some saw a delicacy, some saw seaweeds.

Itadakimasu. She picked up a slice of sashimi with the tips of the chopsticks… and the doorbell rang.

… what the?

It was nearly nine in the evening, and no one was meant to come bothering her. Hell, she had chosen this evening specifically because she would be alone in the flat. She had woken up way too early and dashed to the Asian market that very morning, in order to make sure to have the best ingredients. She had selected and cut for herself a nice little slice of peace and quiet.

And the doorbell rang.

She slid carefully the plate into an open slot in the refrigerator, hoping it wouldn’t spoil the taste too much, and jumped down from the stool she had been sitting on. She slid into her slippers and made her way to the door – a handful of steps away, given how small the flat was.

Laying against the door, she put her eye to the peephole. On the other side, a crew-cut guy in jacket, sweater and jeans was staring into the little glass eye, as if something could actually be seen from outside.

“Minnie’s out” she blurted, hoping for the nuisance to simply disappear. She never liked her flatmate’s boyfriend much, and he really had no business being there anyway. Couldn’t they at least bother to keep tabs on each other?

“Really? Didn’t know. Can I come in a sec?” she asked unassumingly.

Now, she might not have been the prettiest, most popular or most in demand among them all, but she had at least a reputation for politeness. Still pining away from her sushi platter and seeing no way out of an awkward five minutes of conversation, she opened the door and silently gestured for him to come inside. He obliged, removing his jacket and casually slinging it over the coat hanger by the entrance. That was one thing she didn’t really like about him – how he felt as if he was the master of wherever he went, and how he made no effort to dissimulate it.

“So, Minnie’s not here, huh? Though she’d at least let me know.”

“Yeah, she should have.”

The two stood then by the door, facing each other. Although he donned a rather simple attire, one could tell it was not the kind of thing that would be found in a thrift store; unlike hers, a woolen  sweater and jeans she had paid a grand amount of £10. How could she afford fresh fish and Asian ingredients otherwise?

He stared at her for a while, as if waiting for a cue she had no intention to let off. Finally, he sighed and locked eyes with hers.

Was that a tingle down her spine? Come on, let’s be serious. Not my type, she thought. Better leave Holier-Than-Thou to chicks like Minnie, who could afford reverse high maintenance.

“The polite thing to do is to offer a cup of tea” he suggested, bending his chest toward her and closing the distance between them a bit. She instinctively recoiled, which did not seem to bother him too much as he produced a mischievous grin.

“Yeah, the polite thing. Minnie won’t be back for a while I think” she spelled out.

Implied suggestion: no reason for you to hang around.

“I’ll just drink my tea extra slow.”

She didn’t bother retorting; she vaguely gestured toward the living room, in which he had been numerous times already, and went to the kitchen to do the polite thing. While putting the kettle on the flame and arranging tea bags into a pair of cups, she took time alone to stew her irritation.

Not only he interrupts her long planned Japanese dinner, but he also comes in and makes himself at home just like it was – his – home, which it wasn’t. Just because he had been dating Minnie for a few months it did not mean he could just kick back and relax in their living room, while she served him tea like some kind of housemaid. You ask ‘is Minnie here?’, I answer ‘sorry she’s out’ and you go after her. Simple.

She conveniently ignored, at first, the aftertaste of that tingling sensation, stinging like fresh wasabi and equally difficult to ignore. Was there any specific reason why, since the very beginning, she could not simply dismiss this one guy as the latest nobody, one more name in the procession of cute assholes Minnie had brought over in the two years in which they roomed together? Something that plucked a string she had always hoped not to have in her?

It would have been better for all of them if he just guzzled his tea and left. There was a slight chance Minnie could be back early, and she was notoriously jealous about her boys, sometimes violently so.

She poured the boiling water into the cups, which she put on a battered tray along with the sugar jar and the carton of milk. Balancing the whole on one hand, she made her way to the living room, in which the light was on. Well, at least he had the sense to save on electricity and left the corridor lights off. Minnie always ‘forgot’ to pay her own share of the bills on time.

Just before entering the living room, she stopped on her tracks. As silently as possible she laid the tray on the floor, crouched by the door slightly open and observed the fairly unexpected scene before her.

Now, neither her nor her flatmate were particularly tidy people. Clean, yes; tidy, not so much. No matter how hard she tried to look after the well being of her own possessions, random stuff always seemed to find its way in the most random corners of the flat – brushes, shirts, empty cups of tea, you name it. Shoes, especially. Shoes seemed to have a life of their own.

And it was a shoe that he was now holding in his hand, while sitting cross-legged on the fluffy carpet. And not any shoe: it was the left one of her only pair of real good shoes, low-heel red sandals she bought as a present for herself two birthdays ago. He manipulated the object as if it were some kind of precious foreign artifact, in his eyes a glimmer that was difficult to interpret, something between elation and cautious, measured fascination.

She stood there, watching him. What the hell was he doing? What… what’s the deal? Yet, she felt no compulsion to barge into the living room and stop him dead in his tracks. She had completely forgotten about the delicacy waiting for her in the fridge, the tea getting cold or the fact that she could no stand the guy. In fact, for the first time she felt… interest. Apparently, his mysterious gesture had managed to do what his arrogant attitude could not achieve.

She saw him holding the shoe in his hand, cradling it between his slender fingers. Then, without as much as a look behind his shoulders or any attempt to dissimulate, neared the red sandal to his mouth and gave a tiny, almost imperceptible kiss to the insole. It made no sound. He passed the tip of the tongue upon his lips, a triumphant look in his eyes.

He did it again, this time with more impetus. His lips – which were, she had to admit, somewhat plump yet rather well shaped – produced a little snappy sound this time around, as they parted from the leathery surface.

What was he so happy about?

Well, of course she did know. She wasn’t born yesterday, and she did know that a grown man passionately making out with a shoe could only mean one thing. But, in her house? With… with her shoes?

A third time he neared the piece of footwear to his mouth; yet, this time, a chaste kiss was not enough. He stuck his tongue out and carefully moved it across the insole surface, with calm and controlled movements. From the point where string and leather crossed, all the way to the heel, he covered the distance in one swift movement. The living room was tiny, and so she could see all the way from her hiding spot the glistening of his saliva on the insole.

Ok, that was more than enough. She picked up the tray and entered the room, trying to look as calm and nonplussed as possible.

“Those are my shoes, not Minnie’s.”

She had not expected any kind of embarrassment or awkwardness from a guy like that. She had expected arrogant misdirection.

“I thought so.”

She had not expected that. Neither she had expected a kind of gentleness, of tenderness in his voice, a change from his usual smug register.

“… Still want that tea?” was all she could muster as a reply.

“In a bit. Why don’t you come a little closer?”

He invited her with a gesture of his hand, and she obliged. This would have been the time to yell, to punch him in the face, to kick him out of her flat and maybe tell Minnie on him. But she did none of that, and she had no intention to.

Because, she admitted to herself, she was curious. She was curious to see where this preposterous scene would lead her. Where it would lead them.

“Minnie is all about platforms, stilts and the likes” he continued. “She could never have the class for these.”

“You shouldn’t take like that about your girlfriend.”

“My girlfriend? The one who is currently fucking one of her classmates, and will do so for the whole night?”

…

“I knew it would only be you here and… don’t look at me like that! Had no intention to make a move but, now… those” he said, gesturing toward me with the shoe still cradled in his hands. “I was dying to see you wearing them.”

“I had them on at the last group party” she objected, though she fully know what he really meant. She sat on the secondhand armchair, crossing her legs so that her left slipper was hovering mere centimeters from his face.

Minutes of awkward silence, before she spoke.

“Just so we’re clear, I decide when it’s too far” she said, injecting as much ice as she could in her voice. “In case you didn’t notice, I am not that kind of girl.”

“Oh, I noticed plenty” he replied. “Stern, serious, dedicated to her craft, always sitting two arms apart from the nearest person at parties. A rare find, nowadays.”

She gestured as if to remove her slipper, but he coiled forward and put his hand, bony and nervous, between hers and her foot.

“Nope. I get to do it, thank you very much” he blurted out, sounding actually concerned. Pretty specific we are, she thought while giggling to herself. If she made sure to be forceful enough should things go too far, this could actually turn out quite entertaining.

Blame it on my artist’s inspiration, she thought.

“See, I can read the kind of person one is from the shoes she wears” he mused while he removed her slipper and woolen sock, tossing them in a corner. He held in his hand, with the same gentleness he displayed to the shoe, her left foot – contemplating it as if it were a holy relic, just as much as the sandal.

“Sandalomancy? That has to be a new one.”

He smirked. “Already, the choice of a sandal displays a keen sense of balance, knowing exactly what and how much to show. The low heel gives your ankle just the right inclination needed to reflect your balance personality, your sense of measure and restrained, yet flowing sensuality. The woven nature of the strings also lighten up what would be, otherwise, an excessively serious piece of footwear. I’m sure you can lighten up too when needed, right?”

She pressed the sole of her foot flat onto his face and pushed forward; he had to prop with his arms in order not to tumble on the floor. Playful banter, since she hadn’t pushed very hard, and for him it probably had been more of a treat than a punishment anyway. He resumed his position and grinned, taking hold of her left foot with a slightly stronger grip.

Part of why she wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as she should have been, she realised, was that she had always liked her own feet. They were the one part of her body she really had nothing to blame for: they were fairly long yet neither flat nor excessively arched; the toes, lined so to form a perfect curve, were slim and perfectly shaped. Thanks to her obsessive body hygiene, the soles were only slightly rougher than the skin of the back and her nails left their natural color but trimmed and polished. Strong in the conviction of having feet much better than he deserved, she stretched the left one in his hand, so as to give him a better grip.

More than you can handle?

He conjoined foot and shoe, an enthralled look on his face. Letting go of the former, he slid it into the sandal until it fit perfectly and effortlessly; then, proceeded to tie the strings around her ankle, with a calm and gentleness she couldn’t help but admire. In spite of her reservation, she was almost starting to like the guy. Almost.

Once done, still kneeled on the floor, he stood back a little so to enjoy his own craftsmanship. Between his hands laid her left foot, perfectly clad in that red, low-heeled sandal.

“Fantastic” he muttered in amazement. “Although I could object on the rather commonplace choice of colour.”

“This sandal’s heel could hurt more than my bare foot” she retorted way too gently, letting her hands run from her knee to her ankle, grazing the shoe’s laces. He reached with his own hand, hesitated for an instant and then met hers just where ankle and laces crossed. From his lower position, he looked at her with eyes that still retained a tinge of their former arrogance, yet were now touched by a hint of – hope? Expectation?

“I’m hungry.”

… Huh?

“I said I’m hungry”

How was she meant to interpret that? Well, she hadn’t meant to let him go that far but, at this point, she thought, I might as well give him a little more before closing the lid. After all, it’s not like we could really see each other again… after that. Her stern self-righteousness would never allow that.

Reluctantly, she moved her sandal-clad foot forward a bit, closer to his mouth. He showed no intention to do what she assumed he wanted to, namely lick it or at least suck on her toes. Instead, he got up and moved as if to leave the room.

“I will be back in a second” he said, and disappeared in the hallway.

The next couple of minutes were, without a doubt, the most nervous lapse of time she had experienced in quite a while. Not even the trial of slicing sashimi to perfection could compare. Aside from life drawing class, she never took anything more seriously than cooking; yet, those two minutes were the most serious she had in quite a while, as she stood sitting on the armchair with one foot in a sandal, and one in sock and slipper. A ridiculous, comical sight for someone who hadn’t seen the whole. Kind of like most moments in life, she thought.

He came back into the room with a plate and a tiny bowl. He sat once again in front of her, laying the plate and the bowl onto the carpet with great care, so that none of the content would spill. Inside the bowl she could see a dark, brownish liquid; it was the soy and sesame sauce she had prepared just a while ago. On the plate…

… Her sashimi! He had stolen her precious masterpiece!

She very nearly jumped off the armchair, and would have done so if not for fear of knocking over the culinary display on the carpet.

“Who told you you could touch that?”

“It’s all there was ready inside the fridge” he answered with absolute calm. “I will take you out for dinner some evening, to make up for it. Deal?”

The sashimi had gone in and out of the fridge once, already too much. Besides, it had to be eaten one way or another.

“Fine. But we split even.”

“Alright” he proclaimed cheerfully, picking up the bowl of Asian sauce. He dipped an index finger into the opaque liquid, and then let it drip over the back of her foot. The droplets ran down her smooth skin until each encountered a string, forming little pools all over the surface.

He extended his tongue and ran the full length from toes to ankle, digging in every crevice and nook, moving in circles or serpentines according to the path designed by the leather lace. With each movement he picked up a droplet of sauce, which he would then let run all over the tongue, savoring it gently.

“Me too” she muttered, hardly dissimulating the pleasurable sensation of feeling her skin explored by his tongue. He once again dipped a finger into the sauce, and then raised his arm to let it drip on her tongue.

“Did you make it yourself?”

“Yes.”

“It’s pretty good.”

“Tastes even better along with the dish it’s meant for.”

“I bet.”

He had been thoughtful enough to bring also the chopsticks. He picked them up and held them nimbly in his hands, opening and closing them a few times as if to test the grip. He gently picked up the sashimi, one slice at a time, and laid just about half of them on the back of her foot. Following the previous procedure, he sprinkled some more sauce both on those slices, and the leftover ones.

“Those are for you” he said, gesturing toward the plate. “If you manage to stand still.”

Wouldn’t have taken much effort, she thought. The fish itself, and the sauce made for rather sticky surfaces. She would have to actively try screwing up, and she had no intention to. This was the kind of game that was only fun if both of them won.

She stood perfectly still as he took hold of her ankle and gently neared her foot to his mouth. He puckered his lips and, one by one, he sucked in the thin slices of sashimi. Each subtle movement of both the food and his tongue across her skin surface, by now entirely moist, sent waves of squirming please up her leg, all the way to her crotch and torso. A few times she had to forcefully tighten her lips as to not let out a faint sigh.

She had done the right thing, letting things play out for once, going with the flow. Even after the sashimi on her had all been eaten, she pressed her foot forward attempting to squeeze every final drop of pleasure from his tongue. Once there was nothing left to savor, he stood up with the plate of leftover in his hands.

“You’ve been pretty good. Have you done this before?”

“Hmm, not exactly this.”

She wasn’t going to spill the beans on her private life so easily, but truth to be told there wouldn’t have been much to spill. A couple of episodes of forceful sex, blindfolds here and there, tied wrists once; none of those even compared with the pleasurable amusement she had just experienced.

“Well, good job. Now it’s your turn” he chimed, picking up a slice of fish and some kelp with his fingers. He moved forward and pointed a knee on the armchair, pressing her against the back. They were now at centimeters from each other. She could feel his breath, a clean and fresh smell mixed with the acrid aroma of the sauce. Surprisingly pleasant.

She opened her mouth wide, sticking her tongue out; he offered her a slice, putting it in her mouth along with the tip of his fingers. Her lips closed down on them, sucking them dry as he pulled them out. The second slice went in, and her mouth suctioned even harder, as if trying to restrain him.

Then it was the turn of the final slice. As his hand moved forward she grabbed his wrist and forced his fingers deeper inside her mouth, all the way down to their final joint. He had to actively pull out, and left her slightly gasping for air, her eyes gleaming behind the glass frames.

“You are a pretty good cook.”

“I practice a lot.”

“Perhaps you could cook for me again, someday.”

“Don’t forget, you owe me a dinner first.”

Out of the blue, close to each other they both burst into laughter, a cathartic diffusion of the accumulated tension. Necessary, she thought. It would have been either that, or raw sex on that very armchair, and she wasn’t up for the latter. He was someone else’s boyfriend and, in spite of what had just happened, she still had a soupçon of self-respect left in her.

“I should get going now” he said, getting up on his feet. “Before, you know… we let ourselves go too far.”

“Yup.”

“We are both way too decent, aren’t we?”

“Debatable.”

“You’re right! Where are my manners!”

He walked across the room and picked up the sock and slipper he had thrown away casually moments before. He brought them over to her, kneeled again.

“Please allow me to.”

Slowly he untied the heeled sandal, making sure to pull the shoe gently. Yet one more time he pulled her foot to himself, and with great care licked every single inch of it, until there was no trace of sauce left on the skin. Then, he straightened out the sock and slid her foot inside it, ruffling the wool around the ankle. Finally, the slipper, back in place.

He helped her off the armchair, and the two reached the apartment door. She opened it for him, he made his exit but not before indulging a bit on the doorstep.

“I’ll pay for the dry cleaning.”

“Huh?”

“The shoes. You can’t leave them like that.”

“Ah, yeah. No problem, I can still afford that much.”

“Cool. Well, then… if there will be a next time.”

How could she know? In twenty minutes she went from annoyance to almost wanting him to stay. Too much stuff to think about.

“We’ll see.”

He then turned around and went down the staircase, disappearing from sight. She shut the door, and set about straightening up the mess. She picked up the plates, the tea tray and brought them over to the kitchen sink. She ripped a corner from a piece of paper and stuck it at the mackerel sashimi page of Shizuo Tsuji’s cookbook. She then perched on a stool by the counter, and laid her head upon her crossed arms.

Moved her tongue up and down her lips. Felt the taste of her supreme cuisine, of his fingertips.

Not bad at all.

 

A Dream’s Reality By Charles E.J. Moulton

So it came to pass that Sophie Fernandez again lay in her Kensington art-studio loft, sleeping. She looked like a Goddess, maybe Aphrodite, maybe Artemis, maybe Hera. In any case, her custom of painting in the nude had resulted in a dormant oasis.

After finishing her work, she simply passed out, her jugs full and ripe, her unshaved pussy wet, the locks of her pubic hair curling and waiting for a long and hard cock, her fuckable body resembling mountain-hillsides of creamy canyons.

One empty bottle of Ribera del Duero 2004 stood on the table, a remnant of a solitary celebration. She had made sure to buy the best and favorite Rioja for the completion of a fine artistic reproduction. After all, a British lass of Spanish decent should always drink Rioja wine. So, Olé! Or as the case may have been: Voila! Her painting was finished. She was ready for sex. That was a sweet cause for celebration, indeed.

She looked just as much like a work of art as what she painted. Tall, brown eyed, nougat complexion, enticing hair, long fingernails, soft seductive eyelashes, pink cheeks, her aura peaceful, as peaceful as the softer passages in the Water Music by Händel that had been playing on a loop for God knows how long.

It soothed her subconscious as she slept on that old large couch with no back or ends. Alone, sleeping out an afternoon hangover, dreaming interesting dreams where a man she did not know visited her and told her that he had written a story about her.

Sophie’s one leg lay across the green cloth, emulating the position she lay in within her dream, the foot resting on the fabric, and the other plopped down upon the parquet floor, her pink nailpolish catching the light of the sunrays as her toes twitched. her right hand stretched back above her head and the other softly touching her sleeping cheek, her bare skin sprinkled by little specks of paint, her nipples now bearing a small coat of greens and reds, parts of her tits sprinkled in blues and yellows, wishing for that strange man to come and add some sperm to the color.

It was as if Sophie Fernandez was a part of the art she painted.

It seemed decadent, of course, painting in the nude, drinking wine, eating chocolate, but the kicked off blanket displayed a tanned body: two orbs of glorious mammaries, lickable, shagable, soft, round, bouncy, hot, cool, spermhungry, tit-job-willing, softly leaning to each side, her shaved genitals heaving and sinking along with her suntanned stomach. That slight snore, audible only if a person stood completely still next to her, transporting serenity, sexiness, fertility and, ultimately, love.

She didn’t know it, but someone was in there with her, flying in and out between her dreams and her reality. That spirit, the Goddess of love, Aphrodite, someone that knew more than she did about who she was: someone watched her intently as she slept. That spirit heard Georg Friedrich Händel’s Water Music blasting through the speakers, the tired body of that struggling artists strained, limbs aching, eyes numb from the endless concentration of gazing on a large canvas.

Meticulously, Sophie had spent the last three weeks perfecting a replica.

“The Arrival of Maria de Medici at Marseilles”, on display in Paris at the Louvres, was still her favorite of Rubens entire cycle of 24 paintings for the Queen and mother of Louis XIII, so it came as no surprise that she jumped at the chance to reproduce it. Her rich customer in Oxford, who had ordered the painting, would sure get his money’s worth.

Sophie Fernandez lay there like a drunken swan, the London breeze tickling her aching muscles, the reproduction on display in a room, empty of furniture, filled with paintings, wine and, yes, a stereo.

Sophie woke up, gasping for air, realizing that she had passed out after that last gulp of the delicious wine, the glass still on the table. She felt the breeze caressing her body, the chill feeling a bit like a tongue finger caressing her shoulder. Sophie ruffled her hair, uttered a well formed: “Oooh!” and closed her eyes, protecting her sensitive eyes, and leaned against her hands. Breathing into her palms, she sat there for longer than she could recall, and thought about the dream. Had it been a dream at all?

She looked up, realizing how loud she had set the CD-player and wondered that she had been able to sleep through all of that. She walked across the room and turned down the music, saw her white kimono hanging on the wall, put it on, but kept the recording running in its own loop.

Blinking into the open room, Sophie wondered. Two hours? Three? Four? What time was it? Sophie glanced over at the Dali clock, closing her robe, studying the clock, designed to look like it was melting, and saw that it was five in the afternoon. Sophie had fallen asleep, drunk, at one. Oh, my.

Mom only knew that Sophie was very successful, but living a free and bohemian lifestyle. Not that she emptied a bottle of Rioja and a box of chocolates every day, but only in order to celebrate the finishing touches of her painting. The gentleman paid £ 4500 for the replica, which gave Sophie something to celebrate. She would buy her mom something special. A computer or something. A good one. Or a tablet. Maybe she would ask her dad to come over alone and she would paint a portrait of him for mom. Maybe she would paint them both. Maybe she would create a sculpture for them. A sculpture of love.

Dazzled, tired, half-drunk, aching and a bit dizzy, the sunrays triggered those dark lucious eyes. Sophie stood there for a moment, basking in the sunshine, letting the silhouettes of the London houses seduce her. London seemed like a good way to celebrate a good month’s work, catapulting out into the familiar funloving life.

Then she remembered her dream. The man. The story. She felt like researching who this charming man had been who had visited her in her dream. It seemed so real and yet like a mystery waiting to be solved, especially since the man in her dream had told her that Sophie had him in the painting.

In that Rubens painting? She had added a face of her own, to be sure.
Mischievous, to be sure. Mischievous to paint an extra face on a painting that was supposed to be an exact replica. But people expected it by now. Ever since grade school, even then she had tried to copy other work, adding something of her own in it. Now it had become her trademark. Even in her replicas of Mona Lisa, her fans tried to find out what element was new in her replica. A tree that wasn’t there in the original? A mountain that had another color? A river that meandered east instead of west? Her fans had become almost like Hitchcocks fans, who waited for his appearance in his own movies. What has Sophie Fernandez planned now?

That’s what they were saying.

Now, in that Maria de Medici painting, Sophie had painted an extra face: the face of a sea-man, a merman if you will, not a mermaid, splashing around next to King Neptune and his chubby sea nymphs. This face had been totally her own invention. She hadn’t even chosen a friend or an associate to pose for the painting. The sea creature had a sympathetic, intellectual face, one that would be her own signature, her own trademark for this special replica.

The new owner of the replica, the rich man from Oxford who paid her £ 4500 for the artwork, had in fact kept saying how eager he was to find out where the new element would lie hidden.

Now, this man in her dream claimed that this face was the face of the dream man named Charles E.J. Moulton. Thoughtfully, Sophie Fernandez walked up to her canvas, reaching for the Mozart-Kugeln, looking thoughtfully at the face, how it smiled at her. Those chocolate covered candy sweets, that lay so a sensually on the table next to the canvas, seemed to be screaming: “Eat me!” at the top of their lungs, as if they had any. They were as candescent as the dream, as rich as the wine, as lucious and her own breasts, as mysteriously candescent as sin.

That face, could it be the face of that person the woman had spoken about? Charles E.J. Moulton? Did a person like that exist? Was this the face of Charles E.J. Moulton? Hmm. Sophie let the chocolate melt in her mouth slowly, picking up the wine and looking at the bottle. Some of her friends claimed that only French wines were real wines and that anything else was a fermented grape juice. Be that as it may, to Sophie Rioja was a work of art. A dangerous work of art, it seemed. After all, one bottle of alcoholic fermented grape juice could produce quite a few strange hallucinations. The effects of wine, however, were just as mysterious as the effects that dreams had on the soul. The names were real memories from dormant dreams though, and Sophie kept remembering those names.

A dream man had just fucked her in her sleep.

Who was he?

As Sophie stepped into the shower that day, rubbing off the paint off her naked body, she wondered. Sophie slipped into her Victorias Secret lingerie, floated into that black Gucci skirt and let that white Versace blouse produce the crowning glory of her looks. Like a perfect recipe for a successful apple pie, Sophie, with that Water Music by Händel still blasting through the speakers, put on her L’Oreal eyshadow and her Revlon lipstick and her Jade rouge and sprinkled herself with some Chopard perfume, turning herself into a work of art, just as much a mystery as a dreamy wine.

When she walked out of the bathroom, she glanced one last time on her reproduction and smiled. She did not have the answers as to what the dream meant, but she maybe the answers would come to her. Maybe she would take some time tomorrow and research who these people were and if they existed at all.

“£4500, she whispered to herself. There’s a good reason to fuck.”

Turning off the stereo and letting that German dude from Halle take the royal break of his sexy afternoon and let King George be a stranger, she strode royally, like the sexy Queen she could be, toward her penthouse door, ready to leave her art loft, ready to experience amorous salvation.

The small “bleede-leep” of her laptop indicated that someone waited for her. Sophie wanted to ignore that someone and just leave, go where ever the wind took her, take her Porsche and just forget about the strenuous detail-obsessed paintbrush-picking and the endless chit-chat of her neurotic voices. After all, London waited for her to rediscover her.

London, the mistress, the casanova, the blowjob.

Sophie glanced over a well formed shoulder, looking over at her Samsung PC, how it blinked and winked at her, telling her that perhaps a new customer was knocking at her virtual door, hoping that she would say yes to an offer.

That familiarly uneasy feeling of being drawn between profession and leisure kept her doing a small fandango of sorts in her doorway, back towards possible work and forth towards a possible one-night-stand. Sophie looked at the decending sun, inspecting it for a moment, making believe that it spoke to her:

“Come to me and I will lead you to my friend: the night, the sun said. Come and dance, wine and dine, sing and laugh. You’ve earned it.”

This time, though, Sophie Fernandez really knew in her heart that this mail couldn’t wait. She quickly walked up to the PC, her heels seductively clicking on the parquet floor.
Impatiently clicking on the keys of the keyboard, Sophie finally and proverbially arrived in her mail programme in an art forum she had joined a month ago. Commercials for a seminar. Her mail site had gone bing just to show her how great a companion this art forum could be. Spam? Nothing but spam?

Sophie pursed her lips, both pairs: facial-lips and pussy-lips, shaking her head in anger, and was just about to close the computer when she saw a strangely familiar name flashing across the screen. It was familiar to her, at least familiar within her dreams. It was an anglo-saxon name, but she was not really sure if the person bearing that name actually was Anglo-Saxon. This man could be British or Australian. International.

Charles E.J. Moulton.

If he existed, was he worth a fuck?

At first the name seemed distant, as if she hadn’t dreamt about that man at all.
Slowly and ever so carefully, Sophie sat down and read the excerpt that was flashing across the screen. The New Members section of the info mail from the art forum now had a new budding trainee: a man in the prime of his life who displayed his paintings in a British art forum. At first, it scared Sophie. She could feel her heart flutter. How come then that this man now appeared on the flashing computer screen in her penthouse? Thoughts of hallucination and conspiracy came to mind. Scary thoughts of possession and obsession meandered through her brainstem and hit her fluttering heart.

Her hands began to shake, her forehead produced light sweat drops that now trickled down her elegantly made up face, ruining her make-up. Sophie felt herself stiffen like a corpse. She felt like laying down, curing the hangover that she again felt. Had she heard that name prior to the dream? No, she had never heard that name. Then why was this name now here on the screen? She didn’t know why, but this scared her.

Carefully, her painted fingernails shaking so hard that they clicked repeatedly against the keys of the computer keyboard, she clicked on the painting that came with the name: a Bob Rossian kind of painting with the red and yellow colors mingled together and black silhouettes of elephants and palm trees gracing the front. The screen waited, bleeped and searched for its source and soon the artist bio presented itself.

The text ran on for quite a bit and she saw that the man was a Renaissance Man of sorts. Sophie felt herself gasping for air, leaned back in her chair and slapped her right hand against her mouth. Uncontrollably, she began laughing. It was a high chuckle, one that helped the initial fear actually transform itself into joy.

Someone was here with her. Aphrodite. How could one otherwise explain the fact that two such unique names presented themselves to her in her sleep and then showed themselves in black and white on the screen.

It didn’t take long to find out that Charles had written a short story named “A Venus Born in London” about a succulent British-Hispanic reproductive artist named Sophie Fernandez. What was this? Demonic possession? Angelic magic? A sign from above?
Had this man been prying in on her life? On the other hand, with the web as prominent as it was, it was not difficult to guess that he had found something about her and decided to write a story about her. But … Sophie winced, looked out toward the London dusk and tried to figure this one out. How could that be?

Sophie completely forgot about time. She walked in to her kitchen and brought out another bottle of wine, a French Bordeaux one this time, a 2006 Chateau Latour. Taking her first sip with her right hand, she clicked on Charles Facebook-site with the other.
She clicked on Charles name, requested for him to be a friend, not really knowing what was happening to her and why she was so afraid. She actually wanted to run out into the open street and leave in her expensive car and forget that this was happening.

She nearly jumped out of her seat, jumping almost as high as her art studio ceiling, when she saw that Charles not only answered her request, but also that he was online.
Sophie laughed again, this time even more uncontrollably.

And suddenly, the urge to eject into the London party scene vanished with the afternoon breeze and was replaced by solving a mystery.

“Hello, my name is Sophie Fernandez,” she wrote. “I would like to be your friend.”
“Hello back,” Charles responded, “that sounds nice. Do I know you?”

“I am not sure,” Sophie answered.

“Tell me something about yourself,” Charles added.

“I live in London,” Sophie wrote, “this is all very confusing, Charles. Who are you?”

“I am an actor, an author, a singer, a painter. I’ll ask you again: do I know you?”

“I would think so. I mean, you wrote a story about me,” Sophie laughed.

“What? How so?”

“Your story ‘A Venus Born in London’ is about a British-Hispanic artist living in London. She paints replicas of famous paintings. That is what I do. That is who I am. You must’ve done a lot of research about me.”

Charles crooned: “Hold on, Sophie. I made those characters up. That all came from my own imagination. I even made sure that the website that I made up in that story didnt exist. I checked and double-checked it. You’re telling me you exist?”

Sophie shook her head and spat: “This is spooky. You mean, you have never really heard of me? That can’t be. You’re putting me on.”

“No.”

“Look, I dreamt about you, Charles. In my dream, I heard your name and a spirit told me I had painted your face into my replica of the Rubens painting.”

The long wait in the online conversation had Sophie thinking that Charles had left for good. Then, the shock. The amazing coincidence. Aphrodite’s prediction. The dream man.

“Sophie,” Charles wrote.

“Yes?”

“I’m in London right now,” he said. “If you tell me where you live I could come over. I mean, if I wrote a story about you and you painted my face into the painting, we should meet. I mean, I would love to meet you.”

“I just showered,” Sophie mused. “I could get naked for you. I mean, I was sort of looking for someone to fuck.”

“Okay.”

“Kensington High Street 45. Fernandez.”

“I’ll be there in 30 minutes.”

Sophie trembled like a crazy cat in a snowstorm for that remaining half hour. This had to be real, though. She looked at the pictures of Charles in the net and realized she had painted his face into the painting without knowing it. Then he must’ve invented the story about her without knowing that she was real. Aphrodite had been here.

Sophie stripped naked and waited, combing her pubic hair and massaging her tits a bit, ruffling her hair. When the doorbell rang, Sophie jumped, feeling like a schoolgirl meeting the man of her dreams for the first time, his voice mellow, his face grinning. Crazy thing to strip naked for a strange man, but Aphrodite had brought her someone she could fuck.

The mystery man.

He arrived, that mystery man, saw her naked and smiled. They kissed, he touched her breasts, two strangers who had met before. Sophie showed Charles her painting and his face gracing the corner. Then and there, they realized it was time to fuck.

Fate had brought them together.

Sophie looked down upon the growing bulge in Charles’ jeans.

“What’s that?”

Charles shrugged.

“Something for you.”

“Is it Christmas?”

She wrinkled her nose a bit, making her cheeks dimple, her tongue licking her lips.

Slowly, she took a few steps up toward Charles, her high heels clicking against the floor. As she dwindled down upon her knees, her ass swayed in a way that reminded Charles of a flowers swaying in the wind. Using her long nails as tools to unzip his pants, she made him feel like a lamb on the way to the slaughter. If that hadn’t been enough, she now pulled down the trousers all the way to the ground using only her mouth.

Red elegant fingernails grasping glory, she opened her eyes wide, making a very indicative “Ooh!”-movement with her lips upon seeing what was waiting for her. Her one index finger grabbed the buckle of his belt and seductively felt how hard it was.

With a very spiritual and candescent looking grin, a six inch gender literally catapulted out of his pants into her face.

“It’s huge.”

“20 centimetres.”

Sophie carefully opened her mouth and wrapped her elegant cocksucker lips around his shaft, making little squeaking noises and smacking her lips in the process. That fabulous sensation made her see stars. She licked his cock, gave him deep throat, sucked on his balls, ready to be a submissive whore, letting that game of hide-and-seek go and just become the cock sucking hooker that she knew she could be.

With enthusiastic lips and swirling tongue, Sophie boobing her head back and forth like a regular slut, she gave Charles the blowjob of his life, tasting that salty sausage and feeling its length tickling her tonsils.

The sun was setting as he inserted his tongue into Sophie’s snatch for the first time, giving her the feeling that he buried his face deeper and deeper into her clit by the second, probing her like an oil-drill. So deep, in fact, that Sophie soon only saw his hair looking like an extension of her pubic hair. The sound he was made was quite similar to the sound a man made while drinking beer. The slurping and licking made her think that there were gallons of clitty-juice in there – and there probably was.

She laughed to herself, aroused by this amazing sensation.

Soon enough, Charles turned Sophie around and stuck in his cock from behind. Sophie knew that her ass-cheeks wobbled as he fucked her. Well, Charles fucked her through and through right then and there and she bet he really enjoyed seeing how wobbly her butt could be while he pounded her. No tightness there. Just a nice wobbly butt that loved being fucked like the cocklover’s ass it was.

It didn’t take very long for Charles to change holes, so to speak.

For every thrust Sophie’s horny lust grew more insatiable and Charles’ dick harder, Sophie’s back entrance tight and lovely. They were getting into a steady rhythm now, sort of a marching beat: thrust in, slide out, thrust in, slide out. For every time he thrust in, her boobs bounced to and fro, causing her to look only to moan and yelp and their almost choreographical dancing beat giving her a second orgasm. Charles bent over to lick her back as he fucked her ass. It turned into an amazing ballet of cock and butt, tongues and tits.

With a fantastic smacking sound, Charles slid out his cock out of her asshole, jerking off quicker and faster than Sophie had ever had seen anyone jerk off before. His manhood grew so big that she literally felt like watching a tower erupt out of the ground.

“Come on, mystery man,” she gasped, “squirt on my face!”

Shockwaves of bloodshots came racing down from his chest, the sperm factory now preparing for a spectalar lift-off.

“With pleasure, fictional fuck!”

One gigantic load pinpointed her open tongue, sliding down into her throat. The second shot spread onto her happy laughing cheek. The third came flying across her forehead, landing on a lock of her hair.

It was then that Sophie woke up, realizing that she had been dreaming.

That evening, she turned on the computer and found Charles’ name in the web.

The rest is history.

For The Love Of Legs And Feet By Michael F.

I no longer know how to stand.

It is the way she is seated on the bench by prearrangement, her husband on the other side of her with his newspaper turned open as he feigns to read the latest headlines when in fact his eyes are perusing me.

My body aches its way toward the vacant spot next to her on the bench.  My hand then does as we originally discussed, moving slowly, lightly, as casually as a leaf in the breeze, toward the nylon clad thigh that awaits there, the smooth knee beneath the mesh, the rising and tapering calf, the foot deep into a wave of straps and spike and leather, flitting unceremoniously back and forth near the walkway where the pigeons gather restlessly for remnants of some other stranger’s crumbs.

When my fingertips make first contact with the nylon I am a fountain of arousal, the sensation extending as if through my bloodstream down into my legs which weaken with it, my heart beating out a military cadence, my throat as arid as Sahara, my passion rising so that I must cross my legs in order not to divulge it.  Divulging it would go against the rules that we have predetermined.

This is to be casual, her husband’s gravelly voice demanded, it is to be innocent while at once be fiery with suppressed desire.  For the love of legs and feet, of stockings and leathers, is alternately arousing and hidden in the nature of our society.  There are many like me who wander about day to day, dazzled by the click of certain footsteps on the walks, the faint pungency of a shoe half dangled from a stocking foot, the gentle arch of said same foot like a triumphal passage into a conquerable and conquered city.

My reach extends further onto her thigh and even slightly up the skirt which has convenient slits along the sides for such surreptitious inspection, my hand flat against her hip, my body sorely tempted to drift over to her, closer to her, when it must not.

As if anticipating my anxiety she adjusts closer to me and the pressure of my hand against her hip grows more fervent, stronger, deeper, warmer and more proximate.  She opens her legs ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly to the passing eye but to me it is the parting of the Red Sea, a biblical proportion of exposure, almost as if I could smell the oceanic conjure of her desire in the deep crevasse between her legs.

In another setting, in a closed room, I would surely by now be down upon my knees, rubbing my hands against her thighs in order to open them still further, burying my face deep within her, rending a tiny slit within the crotch of her panties so that I might taste the full pungency of her desire.

Instead I must content myself with the hand deflecting off and brushing along her calf as I traverse my way downward, falsifying motions like I am offering a crumb to one of the bobble headed pigeons nearby when I am in fact now caressing the heel of her shoe and seeking to open it ever so slightly, for all of this is about opening, all of it is about the concealment of this special form of lust and then opening it in all its raw red beauty to the world around us so that it must forcibly accept it once and for all, so that there are no more assignations on park benches to leave its occupants to later masturbate in darkened rooms.

No instead there should be a full exposure of the shoe, the foot, the leg, the nylons, so that there might be full exposure of my desire as well, and then hers, so that the pornography, the atomization of the body into these component parts, at last bears a connection to the tongues and fingers and penises and vaginas that will bring the entirety of the figures into total climax.

Instead I recognize the gesture of the husband folding his newspaper to tuck beneath his arm, his hand encasing his bride’s, the two of them standing up and dusting themselves off as if from my contact, he nodding, she nodding, I nodding, all of us like ridiculous wind-up dolls bobbing and nodding as we depart from one another sans climax, sans satisfaction, just bearing memories that we will take to other rooms and other lovers and scatter them like pollen in the covers to plant deeper seeds within our souls.