The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica. Volume 3

ICHI

It is that magical week when the cherry blossoms are just past the height of their fullness and their petals begin to flutter down in a fragrant, pink rain. The streets and avenues are quieter somehow, and more comfortable, as if wrapped in a rosy quilt.

The pastel-patterned sidewalk occupies Hiroe as she makes her way home from school. Her gait is dreamlike. At times she slows, lingering under the perfumed boughs, lifting up her face to feel the petals alight. They dot her cheeks and the fragile domes of her closed eyes. Each contact is like a kiss. She smiles to herself, imagining the real kisses that are soon to follow.

He waits for her at the temple. Not grand Kinkakuji or ancient Daitokoji, where the other foreigners swarm like so many pale moths, but the humble sanctuary that marks the spot where her lane joins the main thoroughfare. He is burning incense when she arrives. As always, she is reminded of the first time she saw him there, kneeling composedly, and, as far as she knew from her casual acquaintance with Jodo Buddhism, doing everything exactly right.

NI

She waited, on that first day, until he’d finished his devotions. Waited and then hurried forward as he was stepping into his shoes back on the wide, wooden verandah of the shrine.

“Ex-cu-suh me, pu-ree-suh,” she managed after a great deal of shifting from foot to foot. For the first time, Hiroe had cause to regret all those notes she kept passing during English class. But he was so beautiful. She had to say something.

When he turned she saw how wide his eyes were and, when he answered in polite, idiomatic Japanese, how elegant his smile.

“I’m sorry, Miss, could you repeat that? I didn’t understand.”

“A Kyoto accent,” she’d whispered to Rei and Asuka at school the next day. “It’s as if he’d lived here all his life.”

“Is he handsome?” Asuka urged.

Hiroe lifted her chin. “Remember Yuji from the Weiss-Kreuz anime?”

Rei gaped at her. “You mean the tall blond?”

“Exactly. And not only that, he’s smart! He’s studying history at Kyodai – politics and culture of the Muromachi era. Aunt Setsuko said he knows as many kanji as she does. He’s practically a poet.”

“How does your aunt know him?”

“That’s the very best part,” Hiroe sighed. “He’s staying at her guesthouse!”

“Right down the street from you,” breathed Rei.

“Fifty-four steps,” confirmed Hiroe with a nod of her head. “I counted.”

Rei and Asuka drew their friend into an exuberant, three-way hug. “Iyaaa!” they shrieked in unison. “You’re so lucky!”

“So, does he like you?” Rei prompted, which forced an awkward pause. Hiroe dropped her eyes, scuffing one shoe along the paving stones of the schoolyard. “I don’t know. At first I thought no, but then… How can I tell?”

“That’s easy,” said Asuka. “He buys you things.”

SAN

“Happy birthday,” John murmured as the subway gathered speed. It was a Thursday afternoon, an occasion that had shot up Hiroe’s “Favourite Times of the Week” chart ever since she’d met him by chance on his way home from classes and found that their schedules coincided. She’d lain in wait for him ever since.

From his knapsack he conjured a small, flat package, elegantly wrapped in the old style in a square of plum-coloured silk. It was a favourite trick of Aunt Setsuko’s, and Hiroe couldn’t help wondering if her aunt had taught him or if he’d figured it out himself.

She gave a small cry of happiness and then worked at the knot, concealing neither her eagerness nor her disenchantment when her long-awaited present turned out to be just a book of classical poems, and a used one at that.

How… boring, she thought. And how cheap! This was nothing like the extravagant presents from the salarymen who wooed some of her classmates.

John watched her closely and then gave a little grin. “I know, it’s not what you expected. But I’m hoping you’ll appreciate it some day.”

“No I won’t,” Hiroe pouted, squinting at the elegant type. “Who cares about standing under a straw roof in the rain?” Yet despite her moue of displeasure, she was more happy than not. Finally, after months of waiting, summer slipping into autumn, he had given her a gift. And now, a lucky break. A rude little dumpling of a boy who seemed destined for the sumo ring had wedged himself in on her other side, giving Hiroe the excuse to press up against John, hip to hip and thigh to thigh, so that, whenever the subway slowed, she could lean in to him, pretending it was her own inertia that took her.

The doors closed, the train gathered speed. Hiroe dared a glance at the object of her affection.

“Now a book of love poems,” she murmured, with her toes touching prettily and her eyes as round as she could make them, “that would be an ideal gift for a girl like me. Why don’t you give me a book of love poems, John?”

He scratched his head, pretending to think. “Uh, because we’re not lovers?”

“Yes, we are. I love you, and you’re just crazy about me!”

That brought an honest laugh out of him. “Ah, Hiroe, Hiroe,” he murmured, shaking his head.

She thrilled at the way he said her name: gently, with each of the three syllables glowing as if lit up from the inside.

“We should take a honeymoon,” she declared. It was half a joke, but as always, it was also half serious.

John raised an eyebrow at her. “You’re getting ambitious. First you suggested a tryst in the park, then a love hotel, and now an honest-to-goodness trip somewhere? Hm…” he pretended to consider, “I hear Singapore’s popular. My savings could probably get us to Osaka.”

“I have money. I can pay.”

He pursed his lips and then twisted them in an expression she couldn’t understand. “You probably could at that. Tell you what. Give me a while to pick out a destination.”

“How long?”

His sweeping glance was appraising but not unkind. “How about a few years?”

Hiroe went red and looked down at her lap. The book of poems was still there, also red against the blue pleated skirt of her school uniform.

“Maybe in your backward country they have some crazy laws, but -”

He sighed and leaned back against the subway seat, fitting the heels of his palms against his closed eyes. “It’s got nothing to do with laws, Hiroe. It’s about consent, and the ability to know what you’re agreeing to – we’ve been through this before. And I wish you’d stop asking all the time.” He took down his hands and gave her a meaningful look. “Do you have any idea what thats like for me?”

“No,” she sulked, and this time her expression was real.

John turned toward her then. He put an arm around her shoulders. “Have you ever heard of the Chinese water torture?”

Hiroe was shocked and amazed. He had his arm around her! In public, no less – like they were a real couple. She fought to keep her breathing even. Betraying her excitement might dislodge him.

“Most likely some product of another barbarian culture,” she said loftily.

“Ah, the youth of today,” he sighed and ran a finger along Hiroe’s forehead, stroking the roots of her glossy black hair. “Please, allow me to educate you.”

“What does this have to do with -”

“Shh,” he whispered. “Now lie back.”

Hiroe felt a gentle tap on her forehead. She knew it was his finger, but it felt as if a drop of water had landed there. She felt another tap after a few seconds, and then another. Hiroe’s head rolled in time to the swaying of the subway car, but somehow he always managed to touch the exact same spot.

“John -”

His opposing hand on her shoulder held her in place. The tapping continued, becoming very annoying very quickly.

“Quit it!” Hiroe twisted away.

He smiled at her. “Terrible, isn’t it? The Chinese used to interrogate prisoners this way. They’d tie people down, suspend a water clock over them, and let the droplets fall, just like that, for hours or days. Sometimes people went insane.”

He leaned in close and his voice was barely a whisper. “That’s what it’s like for me when you keep asking all the time.”

SHI

Hiroe, entranced by the blossoms, has taken longer than usual on her walk home from school. Yet he is there, at the temple.

He is kneeling with his back to her, as still as a lake in winter. She doesn’t dare interrupt his meditation – at least not at first. But after a time, worry steals in. Is he angry that she is late? Did he even hear her approach? It wouldn’t do to call his name, but…

Carefully, she slips off her shoes and kneels down beside him.

“Why are you here burning incense all the time?” she whispers in the semidarkness.

“Usually it’s to ask Amida Buddha for guidance.” His measured words rise like smoke toward the wooden rafters. His gaze is also directed upward, until he directs it to her dark and shining eyes. “But sometimes I also ask for forgiveness.”

She shivers.

On the tatami mat in front of him, Hiroe sees a bag from Kyobuy, the new department store near the university.

“What’s in there?”

“You’re a curious little girl, aren’t you?”

“Is it a present for me?”

“Perhaps. Or it might be for me. One never can tell.”

He rises fluidly, makes a final obeisance to the Buddha image, and then strides to the porch to find his shoes.

“Where are we going?” chirps Hiroe, stuffing her feet into her black tie-ups, usually fashionable but now a nuisance. She lets the laces dangle, clattering down the steps after him.

He strides quickly through the mosaic of fallen cherry blossoms, snow white in the light of the streetlamps. His pace is brisk. She has to run to catch up.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

It is in fact a teahouse in the heart of Gion, one that used to host geisha in bygone days. Hiroe is aghast at being taken to such an elegant place in her school uniform, while he’s almost unbearably handsome in his khakis and a white button-down. But when she tells him as much, he laughs.

“So I was supposed to have let you go home to change? I’m sure your mother would have just let you breeze on out again.”

Hiroe hadn’t thought of that.

“Where do your parents think you are, anyway?”

“At Rei’s house. Studying.”

“Ah, of course.” His expression is unreadable and dark somehow. For the first time, Hiroe feels a bit apprehensive.

The hostess seats them in a private room, with a black lacquered table in the centre. There is a view of the courtyard – some greenery and a pond. A heartbeat after the hostess leaves, the paper screen slides back to admit a cheerful woman with a tea service. There are cups on the tray, a pot of steaming water, and a small porcelain bowl with tea itself. As she leaves, John tips her. The yen notes are discreetly folded, but Hiroe realizes this is much more than the average gratuity.

Once their server has padded noiselessly away, John turns to her.

“Well, my dear, we’re alone now.”

She sits still, wondering what he’ll do next.

“Don’t you want to kiss me?”

She blinks. It takes a moment for her to realize that he really expects it of her, that he won’t move until she acts first. Afraid and yet mesmerized by the beautiful shape of his lips, she slides off of her cushion and crawls to where he sits quite composedly. Her first kiss is delicate – just a brush of his cheek with lips sweetly pursed – yet while he doesn’t flinch away, he doesn’t kiss her back either.

She draws nearer. She takes his face in her hands. With a thumb on each cheekbone she traces them, traces the contours of his eyes and then closes them. His nose and chin are the targets of her kisses, and then his mouth. When their lips touch he returns the kiss at last. The caress of his mouth is indeed as she imagined: as soft as the petals falling silently in the streets outside, but warmer. There is a perfume to him, too – a wonderful manly scent that she’d never noticed because she’d never come this close. His breath wafts across her nose and her lashes, causing a shiver to course through her, and a stirring, farther down.

His kisses are chaste, gentle. After a time Hiroe tries to speed them into something more passionate, but each time he draws away. She is kneeling to one side of him. He has not moved except to turn his head. The effort of rising to meet his lips is telling. Her thighs quiver with the strain of it. It makes her aware of the growing heat between them.

“Hiroe, permit me something.”

She leans against him, the top of her head against the centre of his chest, but she is looking at the tatami mats to one side and not into his lap because she’s shy about what has grown there.

“Anything.”

She can feel his smile. “Just what I wanted to hear.”

He pushes her back and dips a careful finger into the water for the tea, which is still steaming. Fleetingly, he frowns.

“I want you to sit up here on the table facing me.”

Hiroe opens her eyes. He is putting the tray with the tea things on the floor, making room.

“Sit? On the table?” It’s a preposterous suggestion, as if he’d asked her to eat dinner off a chair.

“Shh. I’m going to give you your present now.”

GO

Hiroe shuffled glumly out into the schoolyard. On either side of her, Rei and Asuka chattered merrily, but she couldn’t find it in her to join them. The chill winter air nipped at her knees and nose, reminding her that despite these weeks upon weeks of carefully spaced intervals of flirting with John and ignoring him, nothing had changed.

“Keep after him,” Asuka advised when Hiroe appealed to them for help.

“You must be like the river,” said Rei, who was hopelessly addicted to historical dramas and fond of wise-woman sayings. “The water is soft, but patient. In time, it wears down even the hardest stone.”

“Even the hardest stone, echoed Asuka, with a grin.

But despite all of Hiroe’s efforts, John didn’t give in – not when she flirted and not when she cried and not even when she called him one desperate night after her bath.

“John, I need you.” Hiroe gripped the receiver with one hand, her other wandering. If she closed her eyes she could imagine him standing there at the common phone in the hallway at Aunt Setsuko’s.

“Aren’t you worried about your parents hearing you talking this way?”

“Mother’s having her bath, and Father’s out drinking with his colleagues. I am free to talk to my boyfriend however I please.”

A sigh from the other end. “I see. Well, you’d better hang up then, he might be trying to call you.”

“You silly…” She giggled, tracing the downy lips of her sex through a clean pair of cotton panties.

“Hiroe, I have to go. I have lots of work tonight.”

“I can help,” she offered, desperate now.

“I doubt it. My assignment is to write a poem in the style of Fujiwara no Sadai.”

“I could write it for you! On your stomach, with a brush and ink. Our lovemaking would inspire me.”

He laughed out loud. “Yes, I could just see myself untucking my shirt in front of the class tomorrow. I can hear my thesis adviser now: ‘Whose is this terrible calligraphy?’ ”

He’d meant it to be funny, but she hung up the phone in a rage.

RYOKU

Her heart was sore with the agony of yet another refusal. Still, it did not stop Hiroe from drifting past the guest house on her way to school. But when she saw him looking mussed, and as if he’d only just stepped into his shoes, Hiroe hurried past.

“Good morning,” he said with exaggerated politeness. His eyes looked small in the morning light and his shirt was wrinkled.

“Leave me alone,” she shot back.

“Well, that’s quite a change from last night.”

“I’m a changed woman,” she said airily, “one who’ll forget you by taking another lover.”

“Taking a lover, you mean.”

She quickened her pace. “There are a lot of boys at school who would kill or die to have me.” This was not precisely true, but with a bit of advertising, she could probably make it so.

“Hiroe.” He stopped walking, and after a few steps she did, too. “I told you to forget this.”

“I am.”

“No, I mean really forget it.” He sighed. “I’m tired of this.”

“Tired of what?”

“Of you trying to force everything to be the way you want it. I told you how I feel, so live with it.”

She rounded on him angrily. “I’m not going to stop my life just because you feel guilty.”

“I never told you to stop your life, Hiroe. I just want you to wait for the right time.”

“And you’re the one who gets to decide my right time? Well, forget that. I’ll just find a real boyfriend.

In two steps he was on her, hands on her upper arms.

“Don’t do this to be vindictive. All that will happen is you’ll wind up getting hurt.”

“What do you care?”

Suddenly he turned and pressed her up against the stone wall of the temple. He had an arm on either side and a leg between both of hers. His lips were close and his breathing ragged. Hiroe struggled, aghast. No one could see them now, but someone could turn the corner at any moment.

“Listen!” he said forcefully, and she was compelled to stop moving. “Maybe it’s not obvious to you, but I care quite a bit.”

They stood that way with gazes locked. Out of the corner of her eye, Hiroe could see the cherry blossoms falling to the avenue, just a few steps away.

“You want it your way?”

“It’s not -”

“Do you want it your way?!”

“If that’s how you see it, then yes!”

“Fine. Meet me at the temple after school.”

He walked off without looking back. Hiroe gazed after him, confused, her throat tight with words that had gotten stuck. The event had to be some kind of victory, yet it didn’t feel that way at all.

SHICHI

Naturally, her friends got to hear everything.

“Make sure he buys you something nice,” said Asuka, playing the role of auntie. She was only a year older, yet well versed in this type of transaction. She’d given her virginity away on four separate occasions and had found it quite profitable.

“Quiet, you girls!” commanded their teacher, and of course there was no choice but to obey.

HACHI

“You want to give me my present?” whispers Hiroe.

“That’s right.” He sweeps a hand over the table’s smooth, shiny surface. “Go on.”

Hiroe gets up, adjusts the pleats of her skirt, and then sinks uncertainly down onto the black lacquer. He is still on his cushion, gazing up at her now. She blushes furiously.

He reaches up to stroke the tender flesh of one calf, to run his hand over her fashionably bunchy sock and slide it down to her ankle so he can kiss the smooth flesh he has laid bare. The other sock promptly follows, and when both her legs are naked, he begins kissing his way slowly up one and then the other, in careful increments calculated to tease. Whenever his lips reach a new level, he pauses long enough for her to draw a breath and then switches to the other leg, starting at the bottom and moving steadily up. At the level of her knees, he feels resistance. Her legs close in on either side of his head, forcing him away.

He sits back.

She’s the very image of timidity, there on the table with her eyes closed and her head turned to one side. Her knees are together now and the last knuckle of her middle finger is pressed against her lips. It’s almost a caricature, really, and John doesn’t know which is stronger, his irritation or his mad urge to laugh.

“Come on. Don’t tell me you’re going to play the blushing maiden now, after all this.”

Her eyes flutter open. “What?”

He sighs and looks smilingly ceiling-ward. “Amida Buddha, grant me the patience to -”

“Oh no you don’t,” she laughs, ending his prayer with a kiss.

When they finally come up for air, he grins at her. “Ah, there’s my impetuous darling.”

“I’m not impetuous.”

“Of course you are,” he says, kissing her knees. “And also predisposed to theatrical displays of hyperfemininity. But you’re young and Japanese, so I’ll forgive the second flaw.”

“And the first?”

He grins. “You’ll learn that in time. Want your present now?”

“Yes,” she husks, making every effort to look at him directly.

“Then spread your legs.”

He leans into her then, bunching her pleated skirt in his hands as his questing lips find the source of her secrecy. Her nether lips are held closed by a thin cotton veil and he kisses her through the white eyelets. A moment later he feels her begin to dissolve. Her legs relax on either side of him. Her hands sink into the pool of his wavy blond hair, combing it out and stroking it as he licks her. The first touch of his tongue tip feels to Hiroe as if one of the cherry petals has alighted at the base of her mons, where the bud of her womanhood would jut if it weren’t wrapped in cotton and imprisoned between the pouting lips of her sex. The next touch is a slow, broad stroke of his tongue along her dewy furrow. After two more strokes it’s unclear how much of the dew is coming from within and how much from without. But the scent of her guides him. John breathes her in, filling himself with the scent that reminds him of an ocean breeze after the rains in late summer.

A dovelike sound from above encourages John to explore further. His licks are deliberate. No matter how she rolls her hips or presses into him, he keeps his own pace, nuzzling her stiffened bud or nibbling at her sweet lips or pointing his tongue and, only when she is no longer expecting it, pushing it into her cranny.

At last, a pause. He stops to watch her. She is adrift on a cloud-sea of pleasure, with her eyes closed, swaying gently on the table. Tenderly he collects Hiroe from her uncertain perch and gathers her into his arms. It is a sweet feeling to have her there, this warm, heavy, girl-shaped bundle with her temple pressed up against his chin.

He touches her cheek and she nuzzles, catlike, against his hand. He traces the outline of her lower lip – the very fullest, pinkest part. Her mouth opens and, fluidly, his thumb slides in. At the new sensation, her eyes open as well. They follow the path of his digit as he draws it away and glosses her lips with it. So he lets her have it back, and her eyes fall closed once more.

“That’s a good girl. Suck it.”

Another small sound escapes Hiroe. Her hands tighten on his knees.

“Suck. With that pretty mouth and those cheeks all hollow. Do you have any idea how many times you’ve shown up in my dreams like this, you little carp?”

She moans for real this time, wanting nothing more than for him to slide his hands down under her skirt, under everything, to touch the very core of her and finish what he has started. All those nights she had lain in her bed, with her own hands wandering through her garden, are nothing compared to the distilled essence of desire that is coursing through her now.

And so her need expresses itself in the movements of her lips. They close upon the narrow part of his thumb and he twists, enjoying the feeling of her tongue fluttering against its very tip – a heady sensation, even without her pert bottom pressed enticingly into his groin. Still, he knows Hiroe is expecting her gift, so he lets the digit pop free and uses his hands to slide her panties down. He tucks the hem of her skirt carefully into its waistband and gazes down at her from above, at her mound and the beautiful thatch of hair that graces it. Hiroe feels open and exposed, but the rustle of the paper bag distracts her.

He takes out an ordinary sea sponge, golden and no larger than his palm.

She wants to ask, tries to, but he shakes his head no, and the movement is transmitted along his jaw and through the obsidian waterfall of her hair. Her eyes trace every movement of the sponge, from the bag, in a low arc past the table, to the floor with its tray and teacups and kettle of water, no longer steaming, only warm. The kettle is as shallow as her breathing. It has a wide opening in the top, large enough for him to dip the entire sponge inside. He soaks it and squeezes just slightly. There is no other sound in the room, in the teahouse, or perhaps in the entire world.

Water is falling in drops now, from the sponge and onto her young and sensate skin. The first two drops, fat and rapid, alight on her stomach and splatter there. He goes back and squeezes out the sponge a little more. The next few drops are slower. They fall on her belly, her mons, and then on her pink and jutting centre. She hisses at the teasing contact. She struggles to get free, beating her stockinged feet against the tatami. But his other arm is locked about her waist and there is no way to free herself without hurting him.

He waits, with the sponge in his upturned palm, until she is finished struggling. Then he turns his hand over and begins again.

The next drop falls exactly where he wants it, and so he braces his forearm against her bent knee and lets the sponge hover there as he watches the subtle interplay of gravity and tension. Hiroe is keening softly in his arms. He soothes her with murmured words. Nonetheless, each tiny impact makes her body jerk. Soon she is digging her nails into the long muscles of his thigh, and of the arm that binds her, her head rolling from side to side. He goes back for more water. Again he lets it drip against her core and again the struggle begins. But after a time, her breathing quiets down. He can feel her heart slowing and, in the tiny movements of her eyes, sense her attention wandering from the sponge between drops. The water is cool now, as it trickles along her slit to the sodden pillow beneath her. She cools as well, and her sighs are frustrated.

“What’s the matter?”

“John, I – I don’t think I can____________________”

“Don’t think you can what?”

“You know,” she says shyly, half-turning to press her cheek into the row of buttons on his shirt.

“You can say it.”

A sigh. “Come,” she breathes at last. “I don’t think I can come like this.”

“Well, who said you were supposed to?”

She pulls away to look at him. “But -”

“But what?” he remarks, tenderly untucking her skirt and smoothing her hair into a semblance of order. “Oh, I see. You thought that due to the elegance of the surroundings I was going to, maybe, deflower you here?”

“I -”

“Or perhaps that this was all about your pleasure? That there wasn’t something bigger wrapped up in all of this?” John regards her with a bemused expression as he squeezes out the last of the water and returns the sponge to its paper home.

“But… you want to.” She reaches for that forbidden part of him, and at her delicate touch he springs instantly back to full erection.

“You,” he says, pointedly removing her hand, “need to learn some patience.”

She regards him with a dark, shifting kind of expression. “All this time I’ve waited for you and you’re telling me I need to learn patience?” “All these months of teasing me, you mean.”

“Teasing you?” Her expression hardens and she chokes the words out, rising up onto her knees, small fists angled away from her body.

The instant stretches out into a moment and then into a longer time. The dim lighting along the floor etches years into her face and her frame trembles, but it is her eyes that finally enlighten. The pain in them – he’d never seen it before.

He opens his arms then. She is reluctant at first but then comes into that longed-for circle. A kiss and she trembles in every part. A hand beneath her skirt and she sighs. This time he goes directly to her slippery cleft, working her still-swollen nub with a trio of careful fingers until she gasps, until her hands tighten on his crisp, white sleeves and she coats him with her essence, at last turning to muffle her impassioned cries against his chest.

When her eyes blink open, he has another kiss for her, soft as a cherry blossom on the sacred space between her brows.

“Hiroe,” he says at last. “I’m sorry. I promise – no more games.”

So that when her small hand closes around the hardness that still pulses at the root of him, and when that member leaps in her hand like a fish, he surrenders, at last.