The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Erotica

Nothing But This ^{Kristina Lloyd}

I call him the Boy although he isn’t. He’s skinny enough, it’s true – as skinny as the kids who do backflips in the square – and there’s not a single hair on his flat brown chest. But his age is in his eyes, eyes as green as a cat’s, and when I look right at him, though we’re meant to be ignoring him, I see eyes that might be a thousand years old.

He’s been following us for half an hour, weaving among the crowds, his flip-flops slap-slapping in the dust of the souk. “Hey, mister! Hey, lady!” he keeps calling. “You wanna buy carpet? Teapot? Saffron? You wanna buy incense? Come, come! Come to meet my uncle.”

His urge to “come, come” sounds grubby and erotic and the refrain pulses in my head like some dark drumbeat, weird enough for me to wonder if it’s going to bring on one of my migraines.

“Lady, you wanna buy handbag? Real leather! The best! Hey, mister, nice wallet for you! Look this way! You are my guest. Come!” The Boy averts his eyes, head down and spinning, and the whole song and dance routine seems a pastiche of the real hustlers, an empty act he can turn off at will. No wonder he can’t look at us: we’d see right through him.

“I feel like David bloody Niven,” mutters Tom.

Tom’s posh as fuck, so self-assured and confident you don’t even notice it. He’s relaxed and ironic. A bit on the prim side, it has to be said, but I adore every hot salty inch of him. I like to draw him, standing, sitting, lying, sprawling, my futile bid to capture him in charcoal and pencils. In evening class, I learned to draw not just the object but the space around it. I learned to see absence. “What’s not there is as important as what is,” said our tutor, although personally I’d contest that with Tom. I’m quite a fan of what’s there. Naked, he’s pale and softly muscled with strong swimmer’s shoulders and thighs like hams. Sometimes I sketch his cock, big and randy or just lolling on his thigh, framed in dark curls, and when I show him the end result he’ll invariably wince. “Oh God,” he drawls, looking away and sounding slightly camp. “You’re so vulgar.” But he can’t help smiling and I know deep down he likes it.

“Pssst! ”

It’s the Boy. I can’t see him, only hear him. The medina is crammed with noise, its maze of tiny streets choked with the scents of paraffin, leather, spit-roast meats, sour sweat, baked earth and strong rough tobacco. Here and there, the souk opens out, exposing its squinting stallholders to a livid blue sky. But for now we’re in the thick of it, two clueless pink-skins in an ancient labyrinth, lost among beggars, hawkers, shoppers, mopeds, donkey carts and big wire cages squawking with heaps of angry hens. The Boy’s hiss slices through the chaos, clean as a whistle, but I can’t spot him anywhere.

I’m disappointed. I’m supposed to be relieved because the official line is, he’s been annoying us from the off, prancing around like some mad imp of consumerism, urging us to buy this, buy that, buy the other. The thing is, we do want to buy a carpet, a nice Berber runner for the hallway, but he’s probably on commission and, besides, we’d rather do it in peace.

My disappointment tempers the arousal I’m half ashamed to acknowledge. At first, I couldn’t be sure it was sexual although I suspected it was. Heck, it usually is with me. And then I knew damn well it was when my groin flickered its need and I grew aware of my inner thighs, filmy with sweat, sliding wetly as I walked, my sarong flapping around my ankles. But it’s a weird kind of sexual. It’s not as if I fancy him, this slip of a lad with the calm, creepy eyes, but I’m drawn to him in a way I can’t identify. He keeps dropping back from us to sidle among the crowd or prowl at a distance, elegant and stealthy, stalking us like prey. My money’s in a belt. I must have checked it a dozen times. I don’t think he’s a thief though.

I don’t know what he is. All I know is he’s sparked off in me some intrigue, some furtive hunger that makes me not quite trust myself. We keep walking, Tom and I, and within the humid fabric of my knickers, I’m as sticky and swollen as a Barbary fig.

“Pssst!”

His call sounds so close I actually look over my shoulder, expecting him right there, but no sign. It’s as if he’s invisible, some mythical djinni up to no good or a golem from the old Jewish quarter, laughing to himself as I pat my money belt once again.

“Seem to have shaken him off, the little shit,” Tom says mildly as he unscrews his water bottle.

I realize Tom’s not hearing what I hear, making me question my senses. The heat in this place stupefies me and I haven’t been sleeping well either. At night, after an evening of jugglers, magicians, fire-eaters and snake-charmers, the bedsheets tangle themselves around my legs, cobras for the pipe-player, and my mind whirls with madness and enchantments. To soothe me, I think of the stillness beyond the town: snow-capped mountains, endless deserts and a black velvet night sprayed with silver stars. But I sleep fitfully, slipping in and out of dreamscapes, grotesque and lewd, and I wake each morning sloppy with desire. When I sink onto Tom’s cock, drowsy and heavy, I feel fucked already, post-coitally limp, as if I’ve been possessed by an incubus, a gleeful demon who screwed me senseless as I slept. My limbs seem to liquefy as I ride Tom, awash with vagueness, remembering feral creatures, how they pawed at my flesh, and priapic monsters with gas-mask faces, rutting in steamy swamps.

I don’t imagine we’ll buy a carpet today. I’m not really in the mood. Feeling a tad psychotic, to tell the truth. But I hide it well. I’m probably just premenstrual.

A few minutes later and the Boy’s with us again. I don’t see him but I smell him, a pungent sexual whiff as we pass stalls selling metalware, shards of sunlight glancing off pewter, copper and brass. Then, in the shadows behind, I see two green beads peering out from the gloom, points of luminescence, freakishly bright. My heart pumps faster. Among so many brown-eyed folk, those eyes are hauntingly strange, non-human almost. He doesn’t belong to these people, I think. An outsider, perhaps; a man who leaps across gullies high in the Atlas mountains, surviving on thin air.

“Oh, God, there’s that smell again,” complains Tom.

A few yards ahead, the Boy darts beneath a tatty awning. He’s wearing filthy, calf-length shorts and his legs, I notice, are dark with hair. He’s a youth, I think, and then some. Old enough, I’m quite sure, to go snuffling under my sarong.

“It’s foul,” says Tom. “Really fucking rank.”

I think he’s talking about the Boy. I think he’s smelled his appetite and is repulsed. Then it dawns on me he’s talking about the tannery. When we were last here, I was about ready to retch with the stink of it but now the tannery’s just a backnote and it’s the Boy’s odour I’m getting. It’s as if my senses are tuning in to him, to the sound, smell and sight of him, and everything else recedes. The whole thing’s starting to make me nervous.

Tom offers me the water before taking a swig himself. He has beautiful manners, partly because he’s from Surrey but stemming too from a naturally submissive streak he doesn’t fully acknowledge. He’s no pushover, believe me, but his gentle manner combined with a curious intellect, makes him tend to the deferential or at least a fascinated passivity. Give him a good book and he’s lost for hours. Give him a good woman – or better still a bad one – and he’s lost for months. I took him away from someone else. Well, he left her for me at any rate. Two years down the line and we’re still in love, half daft and quite besotted.

But I’m no fool. I know damn well if some other woman caught his heart he’d be gone in a flash, leaving me spitting with rage. I like Tom a lot. I want to hang on to him. I want to keep him mine. But all I can do is hope for the best. And meanwhile, I try to catch him as I can, all those impossible charcoals and pencils, all that seductive permanent ink.

My favourite sketches are the ones I do in bed at night, Tom lying there with his mouth agape, dreaming eyeballs quivering beneath his lids. I love him so much when he’s fast asleep, when he doesn’t even know he exists. Tom doesn’t realize I do this. I keep the sketches well hidden, my treasured possessions, proof of all the hours I stole from him while I watched him sleep. I have bouts of insomnia, you see. It’s not only out here.

“Half a mo’. Batteries,” says Tom. He edges past slow, swathed people, and I wait for him by a spice stall. Black strips of tamarind and threaded figs hang like jungle vegetation over sacks heaped with nuts, dried fruit, tea leaves and herbs. SNORING CURE – never fail! says a sign and aphrodisiac for the KING! proclaims another. The air is powder dry and colours catch in my throat: scarlet, copper, ochre and rust, an earthy rainbow of seasonings that makes me cough like a hag. “I have medicine! Never fail!” cries a djellaba-hooded man, and I protest my health, realizing there’s some seriously dodgy shit for sale here: a turtle strapped to the canopy’s scaffold, bunches of goats’ feet, dried hedgehogs, chameleons, snake skins and live lizards flicking around in giant-sized jars.

“Pssst! Lady!”

His voice goes straight to my cunt. The sensation’s so strong he might have tongued me there. My senses reel and I turn, catching a glimpse of sharp brown shoulder blades before he’s swallowed up by the crowd. Across the way, Tom’s holding a pack of batteries, appealing to a stallholder who looks out with a half-blind gaze, his eyes veiled with cataracts. A woman with a wispy beard jostles me. Instinctively, I check my money belt and I see the Boy just feet away, throwing a backwards glance, an invitation to follow. I cannot refuse him. I don’t even question my options. I just go.

As I move, Tom turns. He catches my eyes, nodding acknowledgement of my direction. It’s fine, he’s cool. He rarely makes a fuss. And, should we lose each other, we’ve both got our phones. An image comes to me of my mobile trilling away, whiskery rats nosing the screen where the words “ Tom calling…” glow for no one. I push the image away. It’s not important. But the Boy is.

Anxious not to lose him, I squirm through the crowds, keeping his shorn head in my sights. A man with a monkey distracts me briefly and for a terrible moment I think I’ve lost him. Frantic, I whirl around, a vortex of faces blurring past me, colours racing. He’s gone, he’s gone. But seconds later, I have him again. I watch as he vanishes into an archway so narrow that at first I think he’s ghost-walked through a wall. Panicking, I hurry, elbowing people aside. Somebody curses me but I don’t care. I’m high with fear. I don’t know why I’m following him. I only know I can’t stop. Dark eyes flash around me, and my cunt’s pumping nearly as hard as my heart. I’m in the grip of something scary, my juices are hot, and I try to remember if I’ve eaten something funny. Maybe I stood too close to those desiccated hedgehogs. God knows what they were for. God knows what I’m doing.

In the alley, I pause to catch my breath. I’ve got the Boy in view again. The alley’s cool and whitewashed, not much wider than a person, and a few feet in, the racket of the souk goes dead. There’s no one around but us. Suddenly, it is so still. So silent. My own breath surrounds me, a whispering rush like a seashell to my ear. I walk on and yet I don’t think I move. I just pant. The sun doesn’t fall here, but the alley seems to shine with its own light, the white walls reflecting each other in a numinous glow, and I wonder if this is it. I wonder if I’m dying on an operating table, my soul sailing up to enter the kingdom of heaven, or to at least try tapping on its door. I want to look back to see where I’ve come from but my head’s far too heavy. I can’t turn.

There is nothing but this: me, my breath and the Boy. It’s as if I’ve slipped into a chink in the world.

Several yards ahead, half crouched, he creeps along with cautious grace. His slender torso is sweet and supple, the rack of his ribs visible beneath grimy, fudge-brown skin. The scent of him drifts in his wake, pheromonal and ripe. Civet, perhaps, or musk. How pliant his body must be, I think. How smooth his skin, how eager his hands, how tireless those beautiful, plum-coloured lips.

I follow, both of us keeping a steady pace, then the Boy stops, poised low. His arched spine protrudes in a knobbly ridge and the stubble of his hair prickles with light. I freeze, feeling I ought to, and realize I’m barely breathing. Then, slowly, the Boy swivels his head around to face me. And that’s when I nearly keel over. Because the eyes that look into mine belong to no man on earth. For several stunned seconds, I stare back. They are cat’s eyes: green as gooseberries with black, slit pupils.

Fear thumps me in the gut but I cannot scream. I cannot move either. I can’t do anything. I just gawp, rooted to the spot.

He smirks and turns away. I think I must be in one of my dreams. Soon, I tell myself, I’ll wake at the hotel and I’ll straddle Tom’s cock in a trance of remembering. I’ll rock back and forth, head swimming with a post-human dystopia, a stinking medieval market peopled with DNA freaks or inter-species offspring. Look around and they all seem perfectly normal till you spot their webbed feet, forked tongues, folded wings or dog-fang teeth. And I’ll climax and so will Tom. Then we’ll get up, have breakfast, take a bus to a town with tiled palaces, koi carp and orange trees, and we’ll buy something lovely in Spanish leather or cedar wood and everything will be all right.

The Boy creeps forward. I’m so scared and I’m so wet. But wet is winning. I follow, turning a corner then another until he ducks into a small archway in the wall. Moments later, I’m there too, head down and heart hammering as I descend three worn white steps.

In front of me, a cool cavernous chamber opens out. Hung with tapestries and oil lamps, its edges are banked with stacks of carpets, and in a far corner stands a cluster of earthenware jugs alongside sacks of grain. Sunbeams, soft and fuzzed with dust, slant down from high plasterwork arches, a tranquil light for prayer. It smells of straw and mice.

I catch a glimpse of the Boy as he flits from one stone pillar to another then stays there, hiding. Sitting cross-legged on a tall pile of carpets is a bald, muscular man with dark skin and heavy brows, his jawline shadowed with bristles. He’s bare-chested, whorls of black hair clouding his pecs and making a seam over his neatly rounded paunch. He looks like a cross between the Buddha and a thug. It’s not a look I’m familiar with but I do like it. He has a small, neat smile, and he’s observing me steadily, chin propped on his fist. I get the feeling he’s been expecting me.

“Hi,” I say, trying to sound brave.

I walk deeper into the chamber, across the flagstone floor, shoulders back. I know this man is going to fuck me and, frankly, I’m ready for it.

No one replies. The man keeps watching me, smiling. Though I’m still scared, I have an inkling of a new confidence. I’m starting to feel powerful and ageless, like some whore of the Old Testament. The Boy emerges from behind his pillar to lean against it, arms folded and smirking. His attitude’s changed. He has the jaded, haughty air of a rent boy, hard faced and sleazy. It’s attractive in a sick kind of way. His eyes are normal too. Well, relatively speaking. They are the most astonishing sea green – National Geographic eyes – but they are normal in that they are human. I must have been seeing things earlier, a trick of the light, nothing more.

They both watch me as I sashay forward. I feel deliciously easy. I’m a harlot, houri, concubine, slave. I could dance like Salome, seduce them with a strip show, except I don’t have seven veils, just sarong, vest and Birkenstocks.

Besides, my guess is, these guys really don’t need seducing.

“You chose well,” says the man, addressing the Boy.

Now hang on, I think. Didn’t I just walk here myself of my own free will? Then I correct myself. Who am I trying to kid? I’ve been picked up, haven’t I?

“My uncle.” The Boy grins and nods at the man.

Uncle tips up his chin in a curt greeting. “Show her to me,” he says to the Boy.

Barefoot, the Boy saunters forward. He parts my sarong, exposing my legs, and presses his hand between my thigh. All the weight of my body is suddenly in my cunt, resting in that skinny hand. My gusset is damp and he paddles his fingers there, grinning at me before latching onto my clit. He rubs through the fabric, judging my expression. I want to appear impassive but the smell and touch of him make me dizzy with longing. Truly, I can’t remember ever feeling so horny. I guess I don’t manage to pull off the cool, composed look because the Boy chuckles softly. In a whisper, he says, “Ah, you like that, don’t you? Hot little bitch.”

Well, you got me there, I think.

“She’s OK, Uncle,” announces the Boy. “Nice and wet.” He tucks the gusset aside then pushes two fingers up inside me. My knees nearly buckle. “Really wet,” he adds, stirring his two fingers around. In the silence, I hear my juices clicking.

“Excellent,” says Uncle in a thick, languid voice. “We have a willing woman.”

“A willing slut,” says the Boy, “who wants to get fucked.” He seems to be relishing the words, testing their strangeness like an adolescent keen to rid himself of innocence.

I’m relishing them too. I like being objectified. It takes the heat off having to be yourself.

The Boy, still working me with his fingers, slips his other hand up my top. He strokes me through my bra before pushing up the cups to squeeze and massage. My nipples are crinkled tight and he flicks and rocks them, bringing my nerve endings to seething life. Then, just as I start to feel I’m losing myself, falling open to ecstasy, the Boy pulls away and crosses the floor to Uncle.

It’s a cruel, desolate moment. I’m about to protest but, before I can utter a word, the Boy has sprung up onto the carpets, leaping from a standstill like a mighty ballet dancer. On his haunches, he straddles Uncle who reclines, mouth parted, to suck on the Boy’s fingers, offered like dangling grapes. The Boy cups the man’s shiny head, supporting it, and Uncle goes slack with surrender, eyes closed in bliss, as he slurps and snuffles on a sample of my snatch.

Now, I’m not averse to a spot of guy-on-guy action but I’ve only just arrived and I’m feeling a touch neglected. So I walk towards them because, dammit, I want to play too. As I near, they stop their weird feeding and, holding the pose, look down at me with benign curiosity, blinking heavily. It’s as if they’ve never seen me before. Jesus, it’s creepy. Without smiling, they continue to stare and blink for what seems like an age. A pair of green eyes and a pair of bright brown ones.

Then Uncle perks up, his expression changing to a villainous leer. He looks seriously gorgeous, like he ought to be behind bars. Sneering, he sits straight, swinging his legs over the edge of the carpet pile, and delves into the crotch of his baggy pants. His pants are slate-blue silk, and a materialistic impulse asserts itself because that’s just the shade I want in the hallway. I consider asking for a thread so I can choose a carpet with a matching weave but the moment passes. I have a different object of desire, other needs to gratify.

“Suck my dick for me,” says the man, grinning. He releases a big fat erection, wanking it gently, the muscles of his beefy arm flexing under dark skin. It’s a beautiful brute of a cock, arrogant and obscenely large.

“Dirty bitch,” adds the Boy. He still sounds like a kid trying out rude words. “Suck the man’s dick.”

I’m happy to oblige. The stack of carpets are almost shoulder height and all I need do is lower my head to engulf him. His pubes tickle my nose and, butting deep within my mouth, he’s superbly stout and powerful. My head bobs between his thighs and I’m getting weaker and wetter as I dream how it’ll be when this beast slides into me. The Boy drops to the floor and I feel him at my feet, nuzzling my ankles then crawling under my sarong. I spread my legs for him and feel him rising, the heat of him on my skin, his shorn, silky head, his tongue trailing a path up my inner thighs. He pulls down my knickers and I feel him between my legs, his hot breath on my cunt before his tongue, so delicate and perfect, dances over my clit and squirms into my folds.

Oh, my. That tongue has truly been places. Like his eyes, it could be a thousand years old, a tongue that’s pleasured Geisha girls, ladyboys and Babylonian whores. Fingers fill my cunt, a thumb rubs my arsehole and moments later I’m coming hard, gasping around Uncle’s cock, Uncle clutching my head, keeping me steady for fear I neglect his pleasure in favour of my own.

“She’s a slippery little bitch, isn’t she, huh?”

Uncle’s voice is loud enough to carry across the chamber. He’s talking to someone else; not to the Boy, and certainly not to me. I pull back and turn, wiping saliva from my mouth.

Tom, of course. Hell’s teeth, I’d forgotten him. He’s standing within the white stone archway, looking somewhat dazed. Really, I’d completely forgotten him, forgotten the man I love. Well, I guess fresh meat can do that to a girl.

Tom stares, mouth sagging dumbly. I worry for a moment, fearing my blue-eyed boy is going to be appalled, but I can see he’s interested, absorbing the scene. It’s that fascinated passivity again. “My God,” I can almost hear him say. “You’re so vulgar.”

“Come, come,” cries Uncle, jumping down from the carpets. “Welcome, my brother!” He pumps Tom’s hand and claps him on the shoulder as if they’re the best of mates. “You want her to suck your dick too, huh?” Pleased with himself, Uncle laughs over-loudly.

I think Tom’s had a hit of whatever I’ve had, the scent of dried hedgehog or something. He smiles. I know exactly what he’s going to say. He’s going to say, “ I don’t mind,” in that sing-song way he does when I say, “Shall we have coffee here or there? Rice for dinner or pasta?” It can get a bit annoying, to tell the truth. He looks at me; his smile’s ironic. “I don’t mind,” he says, and I realize he knew that I knew he was going to say that, and his tongue’s in his cheek because he knows all that knowing will amuse me. Long-term relationships can be so nice.

The Boy, on his hands and knees, peeps out from under my sarong to edge a cautious pace forward. Then he’s motionless, watching as Uncle leads Tom to a low bank of carpets, stacked at three levels like a shallow flight of steps. A hazy shaft of sunlight falls across them, revealing tiny squalls of dust as the men clamber and sprawl across this wool-woven stage. Uncle sits on the higher level, legs akimbo, and Tom lolls within his silk-clad thighs, head resting there as he yields to an off-centre shoulder massage. Uncle bows forward, murmurs in Tom’s ear, and Tom smiles gently, stretching his spine in a discreet arch, his pleasure private and contained, as the man kneads with big oafish hands.

I stand there, entranced, hardly able to believe what I’m seeing. The Boy edges closer, moving gingerly as if wary of disturbing them. Sitting back on his heels, he watches intently as Tom relaxes deeper into the massage, occasionally grunting.

When Tom and I fuck, a glazed expression sometimes settles on his face. His eyes close, his mouth drops open, and he looks completely gone, blanked out with bliss as I move on top. He’s got that slightly dead quality about him now, and when Uncle reaches forward to remove his T-shirt, Tom acquiesces, raising his arms, as docile and obliging as a sleepy child. He doesn’t even protest when the Boy pads forward to nuzzle his pale chest. All he does is smile fondly and, like a basking chimp, he stretches his arms back, exposing their white undersides, tendons taut, his dark patches of armpit hair attracting the Boy who tentatively sniffs, a hand sweeping broad caresses over Tom’s flexing body. Tom is clearly loving it.

Well, you sly old tart, I think.

I can’t take my eyes off him. I wonder if they’ve drugged him. And then I’m clearly not thinking straight myself because soon I’m wondering whether it actually is Tom. Perhaps someone – or something – has got inside his body because I’ve never seen him like this before. Tom likes to size up situations, to tread carefully, to fret unnecessarily; and he’s never shown even the slightest interest in men. And now look at him, pushing the boundaries of his experience as if it were a walk in the park. I start to fear I may never get him back.

But then I notice his smile fading and he moistens his lips, a small moment of nervous desire. It’s exquisite, so tender and Tom-like, and I feel I know who he is again. I see his Adam’s apple bob in his throat and, in his neck, a hint of tension, as he tests the air for a kiss. The Boy bends over him, their lips meet, and lust flares in my groin. I watch a knot of muscle shifting in the Boy’s jaw, movement in Tom’s neck, and I’m all eyes as, without breaking the kiss, the Boy reaches down to unzip Tom’s fly. Tom’s erection springs out, weighty and lascivious.

I don’t know what I want to do most: watch or join in.

Then Uncle grins at me, rummaging around in his silky blue crotch. He exposes his cock and moves it against Tom’s face, tipping it back and forth like a windscreen wiper. “Come here,” Uncle says to me. “Bring us titties.”

He’s dead right: I want to join in. So I cross to them, whipping off my top half as I do so. Greedy and urgent, I scramble up onto the carpets and Uncle welcomes me by holding out a brawny arm. He opens his mouth and I fill it immediately with soft, pink breast, pressing a hand to his crisp chest hair, my body pushing against the bulk of his belly. His tongue lashes my nipple and he delves under my sarong, searching eagerly for my hole. With a force that makes me gasp, he plugs my wetness with thick, crude fingers. Grinning up at me, he holds my nipple between his teeth and gently pulls on it, stretching my flesh. I hold his gaze, daring him to keep right on going.

For the first time, I notice how stunning his eyes are. They’re a hard amber brown, sparkling up at me like topaz. But this is no time to be romanticizing because the guy’s moving us into position, my sarong and belt are off, and I’m utterly naked, poised above that prodigious cock, buttocks split in his big, rough hands, cunt wide open. With heavy luxury, I sink down on him, groaning all the way until I’m stretched and stuffed to capacity.

Truly, it’s a beautiful moment, made more beautiful by the fact that beside me is Tom, being sucked off by the Boy. They’re both naked too, Tom with his knees apart, the Boy’s shorn head bobbing in his crotch, his pert little butt stuck up in the air. Sprawled against the carpets, Tom has an arm flung wide, eyes closed, mouth open. I’ve never seen him looking quite so dead. I wonder if his expression’s the same when I go down on him. My guess is not. All the same, I try to commit that face to memory, thinking maybe I can reproduce it some time in charcoal and pencil.

Tom must sense me looking because, as I start to slide on Uncle’s cock, he reaches out with a blind hand to stroke my arse. In that tiny affectionate gesture, I feel such a connection with him, such warmth. And I feel free to fuck like there’s no tomorrow, knowing Tom and I are united, mutual support in mutual depravity; for richer, for poorer; for better, for worse.

Uncle clasps my hips, bouncing me up and down, and I’m as light as a doll in his hands. This man can do what he wants with me, I think. And I don’t mind if he does. It’s a while since I’ve been overpowered. The two of us mash and grind, silk hissing beneath me, sweat forming on my back where sunlight heats my skin.

“Hey, brother,” calls Uncle, addressing Tom. “Does she like it in her ass? Huh? A big prick in her tiny little asshole?”

Tom’s too zonked to reply immediately. He just sprawls there, half dead, before his head rolls sideways, eyes still closed. When he finally speaks, it sounds as if it’s costing him an enormous effort. “Probably,” he croaks.

The Boy pulls away from him. Tom groans in despair.

“Dirty little slut,” says the Boy excitedly. His cock is ramrod stiff, its ruddy tip gleaming, and against his scrawny frame it looks grotesquely large. He springs off the carpets, takes a small copper can from near an Aladdin’s lamp, and pours thick clear liquid into the palm of his hand. “Uncle,” he says. “You in her pussy, me in her ass. Bam, bam, bam. We fuck her hard, yes?”

Uncle laughs lightly.

“No,” I whisper. Then louder: “Yes. God, yes.”

The Boy leaps back onto the carpets, lubricating his cock with lamp oil. Tom groans again. I reach out, feeling sorry for him, and Uncle, gent that he is, shuffles us closer. I lean over to kiss Tom and he responds eagerly, our tongues lashing awkwardly as Uncle pounds into me. Sweat dribbles down my back into the crack of my buttocks and I feel the Boy’s greasy fingers press against my arsehole. He wriggles a finger past my entrance and I’m groaning into Tom’s mouth as the Boy opens me out, forcing the ring of my muscles wider, making me slick and ready.

“Keep her still,” urges the Boy, and Uncle obliges, his cock lodged high.

“Lean forward,” orders the Boy and I obey. His knob nudges my arsehole and pushes into my resistance. I think I’m going to be too small for him, my other hole too full, and that it’s all going to hurt like hell. I make a feeble cry of protest.

“Don’t pretend,” snaps the Boy. He grasps my hips then there’s a flash of pain and, with a sudden slippery rush, he’s fully inside me, and I’m swamped by dark, fierce pleasure. Uncle calls out triumphantly. I feel I’m on the brink of collapse, the intensity of having both holes packed so solidly taking me to a place I didn’t know existed. I gasp into Tom’s mouth, quite beyond kisses now, as the two men start to drive into me. Bam, bam, bam, as the Boy said. I have to pull away from Tom. I need air. I need to groan and wail.

Beneath me, Uncle’s face is flushed with exertion. He spots me looking at him and he grins, meeting my eye with a deliberate gaze. There’s the weirdest kind of friction going on inside me, the two men jostling my body as they fuck. And then I know I’ve lost it. I know pleasure has reduced me to lunacy because I see something wild in Uncle’s eyes. His pupils contract and, for a moment, they are like the Boy’s: bright with black, slit pupils.

It’s the light, I tell myself, the light, the light. And I can’t bear to look. I flop forward onto Tom, seeking a kiss, wanting the reassurance of his mouth, his nose, his face. I’m close to coming and so is Tom because the Boy, gorgeous greedy creature, is sucking him off again. As the two cocks shove fast and hard inside me, I nudge my clit and then gasp into Tom’s mouth, our lips so hot, so wet and loose: “I’m coming, I’m coming.” That sets him off and he groans and pants, his body twitching as he peaks. My orgasm rolls on and on, and Tom is still gasping into my mouth, still coming. It feels sublime, orgasm-without-end. Our lips slide and smear, and nothing else can touch us. It’s as if we’re melting into each other at every breath. And I am him and he is me, and we are all ecstasy, all delirium, all gone.

Sex, I think, will never be the same again.

We didn’t buy a carpet for the hallway that holiday. But sometimes it’s like that. You go out hoping to buy one thing and come home with something totally different. I’ve stopped drawing Tom in the middle of the night as well. I don’t feel the need any more. I don’t have that yearning to capture him. Because I have my Tom, I have him entirely, from now until the end of time. And if I ever start to doubt it, I just need to picture his face, glazed with rapture at the point of climax. He doesn’t know what he looks like. I don’t know what I look like either. People don’t, generally speaking, do they?

All I know is that he’ll never look at another woman like that; he’ll never be able to. Because when he comes, something shifts in his eyes. He rides the wave, annihilated with bliss, the two of us breathing so hard and so deep. And when he looks at me, his beautiful blue eyes have black, slit pupils. And I am him and he is me. And I know we are possessed.