The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica. Volume 3

If It Makes You Happy by Cole Riley

“You’re not so damn tough and probably not so bright either, big man.”

The woman looked directly at him when she said it. Her voice. It was the voice of a colour: deep, dark red. Fiery, suggestive, and full of passionate promises. Her voice, rich-toned and throaty, was the first thing he noticed about her and the thing he would always remember about her. Her voice of sexy, crimson hymns.

He knew the moment his eyes saw the woman that trouble would soon be on his doorstep. She was handcuffed, metal confining her wrists behind her back, silhouetted against a high white wall. The guys from Hopewell Corrections Centre were trying to figure out how she had managed to escape from her cell for three days before a traffic cop spotted her coming out of a fast-food joint. She never told how she did it. Now she was being admitted to Newton psychiatric facility for observation. Her behaviour was deemed erratic at the time of her capture. He couldn’t see it. She seemed calm and serene as she stood in custody. But it was what happened in the elevator going up to Processing that twisted his mind out of joint and started his obsession with her. With guards flanking her, she stood in front of him, her hands behind her, touching and caressing his genitals. Stroking him until his legs were almost buckling by the time the ancient elevator reached the seventh floor. She was something else, not your usual brand of woman.

“Don’t forget me,” she whispered to him as they led her away down the dimly lit corridor to the front desk.

And he didn’t forget her. He was totally fixated on her. Being a guard at the facility meant he often saw her on the grounds, in the hall, or in the cafeteria. There were always people around her, usually men, laughing and talking loudly, so he had no access to this woman who was slowly driving him mad. He watched her eat, how her mouth with its large soft lips worked, how her long tongue flicked at its corners. He watched her walk, the smooth rolling of her wide hips, the inviting space between her thighs as she moved seductively among the other inmates. Once, going up the stairs before him, she stopped, backed into him, and did a quick bending twist of her ass into his crotch. Oh, he was hooked. Totally and completely. Yet another black man bamboozled by lust and a hard dick.

“Don’t forget me, sweetheart,” she whispered to him again. An orderly, carrying a tray of meds, interrupted their chance meeting, standing watch until the couple exited the stairwell and went their separate ways. No fraternizing between staff and patients.

He never asked anyone her name. He wanted to hear it first spoken from her very own lips. In that dark red voice. The day before he tossed his life away because of lust, a vivid imagination, and a stiff libido was the first time they really talked. They squeezed into a supply room among shelves laden with towels, gowns, rubber gloves, and canisters of liquid soap. The woman was pressed close to him, too close for comfort, and notions of taking her right there flooded his mind. With her young, gorgeous, Lena Horne-looking self. The post-Cotton Club Lena, in full bloom. But everything had to be right. Exactly like he pictured it over and over every night as he lay in bed and touched himself. Her and her dark red voice.

“I see you watching me, every day, all day,” she said, her eyes locked on his. “You don’t have to say what you want. I know what you want because I want it too. But everything comes with a price. Nothing is for free, not in this world.”

“I hear that,” he replied, thrusting one hand into a pocket to subdue his growing excitement. “What is your name?”

“You know it. Don’t play dumb. I hate an ignorant man.” She stepped back some.

“I really don’t know it. I didn’t ask. I wanted to hear it from you.” That made her smile, the full soft lips parting like lush rose petals.

“Amina. What’s yours, Mister Man?”

“Terrance Stokes. My friends call me Terry. What is it you want? What is the price?”

He moved back within kissing range, so close to her that she could feel the heat of his flesh through his cheap uniform.

“I want out,” she hissed at him, the coloured heat sparking in her words. “You get me out and you can have me any way you want. Nothing is too kinky, too freaky. Anything you want but you must get me out first. Once I’m back in the world, baby, I’m yours to do with as you please. How does that sound?”

“Hey, I’m no fool,” he said, afraid to admit to himself that he was even weighing such an offer. “How do I know you’ll keep your end of the bargain? How? I’m risking everything here. My life will be fucked as soon as I break you out. It’ll be over.”

Amina laughed softly, the sound of it much like the tinkling of piano keys. She reached down, unzipped her hospital-issue pants, and inserted her fingers into herself. That got her squirming a bit and she coated her digits with her juice, laughed again, and brought them to his lips. Tart yet sweet, like the taste of an exotic fruit from a tropical island untamed.

She knew how to close a deal, playing on his dissatisfaction with his job and life, putting a spotlight on the collection of failures and disappointments that had hounded him from the very day he graduated from high school. He was a loser. But this would change things. It was a chance to tell the whole world to kiss his black ass. The entire planet, all the doubters and badmouthers. Now he was calling the shots in his life for once.

Everybody would know his name, if only for a hot moment. His fifteen minutes of fame, coming right up.

Busting her out was not that hard. All it took was a few Benjamins for the guys at the main gate, some more for the crew on the supply truck, several lies and even more for the cat with the small plane to take them to the Texas border. The pilot, with his tiny Cessna eggbeater that shook and fluttered with every breeze, was spooky with his endless talk of the ancient Aztecs and their knack for human sacrifices. Terry didn’t want to hear that mess.

Just get them to the border. When it was all done, he was tapped out, very little green in his reserves. Spent some more bucks on a little cheap Tex-Mex grub and a run-down 1949 black Mercury Club Coupe. Slipped the Mexican guards a fistful of Yankee dollars, ensuring that they were not stopped at the border nor were their suitcases opened and searched.

“When do I get a chance to collect?” he asked while they walked in an open market among the stalls, buying sombreros and sandals in a Godforsaken, unnamed Mexican village. “When do I get my night? I’ve done my part.”

“Be patient.” She laughed, showing very few teeth. “I gave you my word.”

They crossed the street to where the car was parked, in this area where gringos were rarely seen, especially black ones. He concluded that Amina was a beautiful pit bull with a mouth-watering body and vacant eyes, more Hustler than Penthouse and Playboy. The town was essentially dead, except for the burst of activity at the market. Walking together, they entered the battered hotel, its awning hanging by a couple of bolts, and went up to the desk where the sombre man took their money and gave them a key.

“I’m beat, wore out,” Amina mumbled. “I need some sleep. A few winks and I’ll be as good as new. Then you’ll get your surprise, big man.”

She shed her clothes quickly and quietly, allowing him his first real look at her shapely brown body. It didn’t seem to matter to her that he watched her so intently. The heat was stifling. He wondered if this was normal, if it was because of the diminished ozone layer or the abundance of satellites in the atmosphere. What was he doing with this crazy woman? He knew some things about her, much of her troubled history, her dark fugue states, her loose grasp of reality. Her criminal file was sealed, so much of the information he really needed to know was lost to him. Getting off the plane, she’d hinted she was a murderer, but didn’t elaborate on that bombshell. Before she went to sleep, she told him she’d forgotten to bring her Thorazine when he broke her out of the state hospital back in St Louis.

He lay on the bed beside her as she slept, their bodies clinging together with a sensual dampness, close in spoon fashion. Through the window, he could see an old man wearing a frayed sombrero leading a swaybacked mule packed with baskets of fruit slowly across the square. His red-lidded eyes followed the man’s wobbly steps, one by one, until he disappeared from view. Amina stirred in slumber, mumbled under her breath, then flopped her curvy brown leg over his.

Gently, he took her tiny hand in his big one and kissed it, noticing the diagonal lacerations along both wrists, deep and multiple. Tributes to her madness. He felt a strange compulsion to lick her wounds, softly and lovingly, but he moved closer instead to kiss her full on the lips. Suddenly she opened her hypnotic eyes, the stare in them still vacant and unforgiving, and did nothing while he tenderly planted kisses on her heart-shaped face.

“I think you’re frightened of me,” she said. “You know I killed somebody.”

“But you explained that. You said it was an accident. You said he came at you wrong and you had to cap him. Shoot him before he raped you.”

She worried her eyes with the heels of her hands. “Yeah, right, forced vaginal entry. He wanted to pop the coochie. I told you that, but I left out some things.”

“What did you leave out, Amina?” He couldn’t afford to let her off the hook.

“Nothing I want to get into right now,” she replied flatly.

Quietly, they lay on their sides, naked and sweating from the unnatural heat, pressing their fronts against one another full length. A total body hug. This was driving him over the edge, the nearness of her and her deep red voice, the touch of her soft bronze skin. Occasionally she kissed him, near the ear and on the neck, swift and popping kisses much like a boxer’s jab. He couldn’t stand it. But then nothing had gone exactly as he’d planned it. The thought that he couldn’t go back to his old stale life lurked in the back of his mind, and then there was what she’d said: But I left some things out. What the hell did that mean?

To be honest, he didn’t want to think about whatever she had not told him. But that was not cool either. What you didn’t know could kill you. This was their third day together.

Finally, with some coaxing, she started talking, first about her family, about herself and her hospitalizations, and once she began, there was no stopping her. Her past suicide attempts. Both wrists, pills, overdoses. A dive off a four-story balcony, a fall broken by a landing on some bushes. Her walking in front of a car on the turnpike. The things she heard and saw in her head. Paranoid, schizophrenic, slightly delusional, with psychotic thoughts. But none of that mattered. She was a beautiful black woman who had survived, was still standing despite everything, and maybe all she needed was some guy who loved her. Really loved her.

“What are we going to do if you get sick again?” he asked after the reality of her condition hit home. “We’re on the run and there ain’t a doctor or hospital for miles. Who knows what kind of care you can get down here?”

“What are you saying?” she asked, gazing up at the ceiling.

He watched her hungrily, naked, stretched out on the dingy white sheets. Her breasts and nipples seemed swollen, ripe for seduction, her long neck, her slightly rounded stomach, the triangle of short black curly hair between her damp thighs. While she chatted away, he scooted down so he could put his lips on the dark areolae of her breasts. Even from there, he could smell the exotic scent of her sex. One of his big hands could barely conceal what this delicious vision of her was doing to him, his flesh hardening and throbbing, wanting to be inside her, if just for a moment.

“You know… with all this pressure and shit… anything can happen,” he sputtered. “Hey, you haven’t been out of lock-down that long and you’re not back to your real self yet. And we don’t have any pills to cool you out if something happens. I don’t know what other junk you got in your bag.”

She glared at him, her face morphing from a mask of concern to one of growing indifference. He’d touched a nerve, fingered an old emotional wound, and she was pissed off. She got up in his face and jabbed a finger into his chest.

“Don’t come at me like that,” she snarled. “I thought you were on my side. That’s why I left with you. Don’t disappoint me. I’ve been through really bad shit. I’m due for some good times and real happiness. And if I can’t find it with you, then I’ll go elsewhere.”

Then I’ll go elsewhere. That’s what his wife had done years ago. He’d been here before. Like that time when this honey, a coworker from the facility, drunk at an office party, called his house and left a jive message on his answering machine. It’s yours if you want it, Terry. And his wife intercepted it, almost cost him his marriage then and there. She made him pay dearly for that one, went elsewhere, and for a time they both ventured outside their marriage with other lovers. New carnal thrills. She only came back to him when one of her Romeos went berserk and whipped her ass. He took her back for a time, until the whole mess started up all over again. Now he was here, waiting to collect, waiting to get the reward of a very special night. Itd better be worth it.

“Are we still cool?” she asked. “I need to know.”

He was still somewhere in his head, mulling over old terrain. He’d heard her question but didn’t answer right away.

“Hey, Terry, are we still tight or what?” she asked with teeth in her words. “You’re taking too long to answer. Don’t scare me, man. Don’t get shaky on me now, not when I need you most.”

“No problem, sweetheart,” he replied halfheartedly. “It’s all good. I’m in this to the limit, to the end. You and me.”

Close to tears, she leaned back on the bed. “Don’t fuck this up. I’m counting on you.”

That short explosion of talk had certainly altered the mood in the room, settled something between them, and now he looked at her, really looked at her. Amina. Without the fog and haze of their situation blocking his view, he saw she was possibly one of the finest women he’d ever met, a real fox. Bronze, curly black hair, classic looks, a puffed mouth that guys would love to kiss, and the leggy body of a model with full, natural breasts. No silicone, not like his insecure ex-wife.

It was time to collect. Through the window, he could see the full golden moon rising in the dark blue of the Mexican sky, an Aztec night with infinite possibilities. Her hand on his rod broke him out of his thoughts and it sprang back to life, lengthening. He scooted back to her again, landing quick feather kisses at the soft base of her neck, up on her eyelids, and then down around her nipples. Slipping one nipple at a time into his mouth, he worked on them with consummate skill, all the while stroking her between the legs, teasing her clit with his thumb. She seemed to relax, submitting to her body’s urges, her eyes rolling back in her head, ecstatic, as he trailed his tongue along the smooth flesh of her inner thigh, sending a long surge of heat up into her stomach. When he traced his tongue in soft motion along the soft, meaty folds of her sex, she wiggled underneath him, her hips lifting off the bed. He parted her restless legs even more with his rough hands, his nose pressed against that precious slit, his mouth relentless against it. Her moans increased in volume as he slipped expertly deeper down into the wet, fragrant cleft between her legs, the pink snake in his mouth exploring the sensitive nerves just inside her box, rotating and caressing her into new levels of desire, until she grabbed his head and held him hard and fast there. After her moist body trembled a second and third time, she broke off his oral assault on her and told him it was her turn to please.

Slowly, she moved over him on all fours, her butt high in the air, stopping only when her face was mere inches from his dick. She gripped it at the base, squeezing the engorged flesh until it became this monstrous thing of a deep violet hue with thick veins crisscrossing its shaft. Giggling to herself, she took him into her mouth, sucking and humming, head bobbing, bathing it with hot breath on her tantalizing downstroke. His legs quivered and bounced on the bed from the waves of pleasure rushing through his entire body. Her hands cupping his ass, she drove him deep into her throat, as if she was determined to swallow him whole.

“Easy, baby, easy,” he mumbled, feeling himself close to the brink. “Stand up, follow me. I don’t want to get my knees scraped up.”

She followed his lead and got up, with him watching her every sultry move. It was as if they were young lovers, unable to keep their hands off each other: their first night of passion together. He cleared off the top of a wobbly wooden table against the far wall, knocking everything in haste onto the floor. Neither of them spoke. He motioned for her to come, kneel over the chair onto the table, with her smooth, unblemished brown ass turned toward him. When he rasped for her to show it to him before he entered her softness, she did as he asked. Ravishing thugass thoughts. Of taking her long and strong.

Passively, she showed it to him longer, her glistening pinkness. He moved in behind her, breathing in short bursts, entering her gently, grinding against her with purpose, each hand gripping a finely formed butt cheek. Each plunge was rapture. He accelerated his rhythm, picked up the pace as she arched up to meet his thrusts, her hands powerfully grasping the table.

“Tell me you love me,” she said in that deep red voice. “Tell me, Terry.”

He didn’t want to appear soft, a wimp, so he said nothing. He kept busy, rolling his hips, feeling himself pulse inside her. She reared back, opened her legs wider, letting him slip even farther into her, into her sweetness, making a hissing sound much as an agitated cat would do. She wanted him.

He gasped, gripped her shoulders now as he urgently pumped into the back of her womb. At the same time, he felt her change her tempo, rocking her plump ass against him in faster, wilder circles. They banged harder into one another, lunges, and this was crazy love. Maddening, animal passion like he’d never experienced before. He felt her dripping, wet on him to the base, tightening around him. She vibrated again and again like an unruly tuning fork, as though she sensed every throbbing inch of him inside her, her fingers moving slow and intense on the swollen nub where the centre of her pleasure lived.

“Say it, please,” she pleaded. “Tell me you love me.”

He finally conceded and said the magic words while she rode him as if she couldn’t get enough. It had been a long time for the both of them and never like this. His dick filled her again and again, to the hilt, withdrew and then went back inside to the point of her muffled shout. His thrusts became faster and harder still as they rushed toward climax, their moans in harmony as they soared together, their sexes matching thrust for thrust.

Soon she was peaking once more in an intense burst of pleasure, overcome so strongly with the power of a clitoral explosion coupled with his continued pounding, coming so hard that she lost her senses for a moment. Her eyes went wild, crazed. When the raging storm of desire finally subsided, she stared at him like she wanted to kill him. Her eyes burned into him, dark and brooding. Eventually, her mood passed and she eased into his arms, lying still, mouth to mouth. It was evident that something had snapped inside her. But I left some things out. That was the last thought he had before sleep seduced him.

A few hours later, they got a bite to eat, beef tacos, beans and yellow rice, chased with three chilled bottles of Corona beer. She wanted to walk around town after the meal, although the sun was still strong and very few people were out. He relented and let her have her way. On the outskirts of town, they rented horses from a wizened old man who thought they were gringos, albeit “Los Negroes Americanos”, brought in to repair the roof of the ancient cathedral there. They rode out into the flatlands several miles away, following a dusty trail that ran south along the river. She laughed when his horse, a brown stallion, whinnied loudly from thirst and stopped to drink the grimy water. He stayed atop the animal, clutching the reins tightly, feeling its warmth and bulk beneath him. She dismounted and walked in front of her horse, near the ragged sagebrush and cactus. For him, it was good hearing her laugh.

Eventually, they tied up the horses, took off their clothes and waded out into the river. The water went up to their necks, briefly cooling them. She swam closer to him, smiling, and put her arms around his neck. Her weight made him slip and he went under, the water going into his nose and mouth before he could resurface. They laughed and kissed after he got his breath back. He watched her swim out into the middle of the river with short, powerful strokes, the water shimmering as it rolled off her back and neck. Twice she dived under the surface of the water, with her exposed sex pointed up toward the heavens. He swam out to meet her and they played like kids, swimming side by side, floating on their backs and splashing water on each other.

When the frolicking was over they swam back to shore, where she took a blanket from her animal and brought it out to the riverbank. They sprawled on the blanket, ate the last of the dry tacos, shared the remaining warm beer, and cleaned sand from their toes. She kissed him and closed her eyes, holding an arm over her face to shield it from the blazing sun. He lay there silent beside her, enjoying her company.

After a time she moved close to him, touching his face. “Baby, I left some things out.”

“Huh? What?”

She said nothing else. Her full, soft mouth covered his own and her tongue slid easily between his lips. Maybe his leaving everything behind was not so bad. His ex-wife was never this hot or spontaneous. Everything was planned, thought out to dullness, according to schedule.

“The man I killed was my husband.” Her voice was drab, lifeless. “He deserved to die. He wouldn’t give me a divorce. I was in love with another man and he knew it. He made my life hell. I only turned to someone else because he was such a mean bastard. My young lover left me too, walked out, after I killed my husband for him. Something went haywire in my head. The doctors said I had a complete psychotic break, totally nuts. Lost my mind completely. Do you hate me now? Do you still love me?”

“Yes, I still love you,” he stammered. But he had some doubts and fears.

“Does this change anything with us?”

“Not really.” He examined her face carefully for obvious signs of madness and found none.

“I really am nuts, you know,” she said, taking his hand to suck on his fingers until he pulled away. He could feel his sap rise along with his dread of her.

Later, they made love all night, going at it in every variation possible, until they collapsed exhausted in the juice-soaked sheets, totally sated. He slept the sleep of the dead, as the saying goes. When he awoke, Amina was gone, all of her belongings as well. Most of his remaining money was gone from his wallet. She had left him chump change, a few dollars. Panicked, he raced down to the street to see if everything was gone, and yes, his precious black 1949 Mercury Club Coupe had been stolen too. His woman with the deep red voice. Damn her!

While he stood bare-chested in his shorts in the spot where his car had been parked, a very pretty Mexican woman with dark features carrying a basket of white plastic skulls approached him, holding something. An envelope. She stood and watched him open it.

The letter consisted of four sentences, hurriedly scribbled in childish handwriting. His hand trembled with anger as he read its painful black-widow message:

I still left some things out. I am crazy and you could get hurt. I really like you. There have been others, before you, like you. This is the best way, for both of us.

He stood there dumbfounded, completely confused, like he had been slapped three or four times in the face with a blackjack. Or knifed in the heart. A real fool. Threw everything away for one night of pleasure, his entire life. Across the square, he saw three people in skeleton outfits marching in a group toward the empty market. A truck full of mariachi musicians, fully dressed in their stage costumes with guitars, pulled up and the men jumped off and walked into the hotel. One of them held a large skull in his hand.

Tomorrow was the start of the two-day Mexican Day of the Dead festival, the celebration of Death and its many wonders – how appropriate for him right now.

And maybe he was crying a bit because the cute Mexican woman patted him softly on the shoulder and said: “Mujeres, ellas dan mucha lata.” Which loosely means: Women can sometimes be a pain in the neck. Possibly true, if you don’t know where and how to pick them. But not in this case. Amina knew who she was and what she was about. He was the one who didn’t know anything about himself. She did him a favour, walking away before she took his life too, and added his scalp to the others. A real blessing, her gift of his life after that night of miracles. In his hands was this new start, this fresh possibility, Aminas gift. All he would do now was wash up, eat, and take another accounting of his few assets, and then there was time to think about tomorrow and the day after that.