Best Women's Erotica of the Year Volume 3 Read online

  “O-okay. You’re the artist,” I’d whimpered, totally helpless. I remembered the slight pressure of her hand there, how intense the lack of direct contact had been. I was used to waiting to come—Neil made me wait sometimes for hours—but it had been nearly unbearable to be displayed to Gena that way without any relief in sight.

  She held my clit captive between her middle and index fingers as she reached one-handed for the brush and sea-blue ink. She used a much smaller brush this time, with a fine point. She painted down the center of the hood, then the sides. Though it wasn’t visible on camera, my toes had curled.

  Just to be thorough, she dragged the blue down to outline the opening of my vagina. The blue mingled with the pink already soaking my skin, creating a striking violet.

  She released me slowly, so the different colors wouldn’t combine too much. “Okay. I think we’re ready. Don’t move. I cannot stress that enough.”

  “Not moving,” I promised.

  My inner thighs visibly trembled as she laid the paper over my vulva and carefully pressed it into place.

  “Did you get it?” I heard myself asking on the video.

  “What do you think?” The view was obscured by the back of the paper as she held it up to show me. “Tell me honestly.”

  “Honestly? If you don’t make me come soon, I’m going to do it myself. Right here in your studio.”

  “Good lord,” Neil breathed.

  “Shh, it’s not over,” I promised him. “It’s not even the best part.”

  We watched as Gena picked up the paintbrush again and used it to tease my clit in a repetitive, unhurried downstroke.

  “I wish I would have thought of that,” Neil mused over the soft panting sounds on camera.

  No matter who the idea came from, I’d already reaped the benefits. And that was just fine by me.

  “You want to come?” Gena had asked, and her voice over the sound system now raised prickles along my arms.

  “Yes, please,” my breathless reply was almost lost to the creak of the massage table as I writhed on it.

  The camera stayed on my pussy, on Gena’s fingers, and the brush just barely teasing my clit. I throbbed as I watched my hips rock on the screen. Slowly, with one finger, Gena drew back the hood of my clit, completely exposing the sensitive bump. The feeling of the soft bristles against my raw nerve endings had made me buck and almost clamp my legs together.

  “I recognize that reaction,” Neil said wryly. There was a reason he usually restrained my legs when he went down on me; he was afraid I would snap his neck with my thighs.

  She swirled her fingers around the lube coating my vulva and pressed two inside. She’d crooked them upward, pressing hard on my G-spot, and I’d curled up from the table. It was a shame we hadn’t gotten a shot of that. My moan of relief was so loud, I looked around to make sure no one had overheard it on the speakers. But Neil and I were all alone in the house.

  Beside me, he moaned, too, his hand quickening its pace as he watched Gena finger me. She dropped the paintbrush and circled my clit with one fingertip, tugging the hood around and around. I almost covered my face at the wet, obscene sounds that had been picked up on the recording, but I needed my hands to touch myself. I reached between my legs and mimicked Gena’s actions on the screen.

  “Now I don’t know where to look.” Neil laughed, his gaze flicking between the hand between my legs and the action in the video.

  I was too caught up in the moment to make any kind of witty retort.

  “How’s this?” she asked, her soft, sexy voice curling around my senses even now. I tipped my head back and remembered her hands on me, her skin. The softness of her body against mine as we’d lain together in her bed later, exhausted from sex that had been at times playful, at others, deeply sensual.

  I’d never answered the question she asked on the video. I hadn’t been able to speak through the building, swelling pleasure, but I’d certainly made plenty of noise.

  “Come for me, Sophie,” Gena purred, her hand picking up speed. She’d also added plenty of pressure against my G-spot and moved her fingers in an unrelenting swirl. The sensation had been overwhelming, too big and tight and hot to be contained in me, just the way I felt now, with my fingers dancing over my flesh.

  Screen-Sophie and real-Sophie came together, the former squirting around Gena’s fingers to wet the table beneath her.

  Beside me, Neil stiffened, and I turned my head. Pearly threads of come slashed across his stomach with each jerky upward tug of his hips, until his body relaxed. I reached for the remote and turned off the projector, then slowly brought the lights up.

  “So, I take it you like your present?” I asked him, and leaned over for a long, slow kiss.

  When I pulled back, he responded, “Darling, it is better than anything I could have hoped for.”

  “Really?” I beamed at him.

  “Absolutely.”

  I drew my fingertip through the mess on his stomach in tiny figure eights. “Well, you’ll really like the rest of your gift.”

  He gave me his cocky half smile. “Will I? What is it?”

  I lifted my hand and sucked my finger clean, smirking down at him. Then I leaned close, as though I would kiss him again, and whispered against his lips, “That’s not the end of the video.”

  WEIGHTLESS

  Rachel Woe

  “It’s too blue,” I said, shaking my head. “I should’ve gone with eggshell.”

  Jackson stirred the can of paint, scraping the sides and dragging the solids up from the bottom.

  “It’ll look great,” he said. “Trust me.”

  “If by ‘great’ you mean, like a nursery, then I believe you.”

  He tapped the excess paint from the paddle and poured some into a plastic tray. “Zoe, your den is eggshell, your kitchen is eggshell, your goddamn foyer is eggshell with duck-white trim. I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let you turn this house into a doctor’s office.”

  I cringed as he rolled a robin’s-egg blue stripe onto the drywall. “I’m pretty sure I saw an unopened bucket of ceiling white in the garage.”

  “Shh . . . Just let it happen.” Jackson smiled, the same self-assured grin he’d used to get his way with teachers and administrators when we were teens.

  I sat down on the tarp and watched him work, sipping the coffee he’d brought. Jackson moved with a careful confidence, like he knew his own strength and how to meter it. For years, I’d been the taller, sturdier one, until the summer he sailed past six feet and started working for his dad as a roofer. Even at five-seven and 220 pounds, I felt almost petite beside him.

  “What if we only painted one wall blue?” I said. “They do that all the time on HGTV.”

  “Contrast walls are for people who can’t commit.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Chris always wanted a blue bath room. Now he wants a second sink in the master, like I suggested.”

  “When did he say that?”

  I blew air onto my coffee, stalling for time. He wasn’t going to like my answer. “Last night.”

  Jackson paused mid-roll. “You’re still talking to that asshole?”

  “He wanted to know if I thought you’d do it for cheap, as a favor.”

  “In other words, can he dump you and still get all the perks of being your boyfriend?”

  “Pretty much.” I sighed. “Of course, he started off all concerned. ‘How are you doing? How’ve you been sleeping?’”

  “That’s none of his goddamn business.”

  “I appreciate the showing of loyalty, but you don’t have to take sides.”

  “You’re right. I don’t.”

  But, of course, he took mine anyway.

  I smiled and set my mug on the floor amidst the supplies. “Anyway, the real reason he called was to ask when he could drop off the rest of my stuff before his new girlfriend moves in. I moved out three months ago; I haven’t been on a single date and he’s already cohabitating.”

  “Maybe he need
s help with rent.”

  “Very funny.” I tossed a roll of painter’s tape at Jackson’s back. Last fall, Chris’s start-up sold its Angry Birds knockoff to Google for a nice chunk of change. He could afford to live wherever he wanted, alone or otherwise. As of one week ago, he’d chosen otherwise.

  My scalp ached from the weight of the bun I’d been sporting since early that morning. I loosened it, letting the dark, dense waves tumble down my back. Chris used to love running his hands through it; he often joked that my hair was what he loved most about me. I’d been brushing it in front of the mirror when Chris ended our engagement, which meant I got to watch the shock creep across my face. Afterward, he pulled me close so he could comb his fingers through it one last time.

  “I feel lighter already,” he said.

  I, for one, had never felt more encumbered.

  The afternoon sun tinted my bedroom walls a light seafoam green—a color better suited to bathrooms. Jackson insisted I would love it when it was done. Nearly two coats of robin’s-egg blue later, I was still unconvinced.

  Jackson’s phone vibrated on the floor beside me. The screen lit up with a text bubble from an unknown number: Last weekend was fun. U free tonight?

  He read the message but didn’t respond. Soon after, his phone buzzed with an incoming call from Unknown.

  “Aren’t you going to answer it?” I asked. Jackson always answered my calls, unless he was working. Then again, painting my fixer-upper probably qualified as work, even on a Saturday.

  “Nah.” His phone beeped, signaling a new voice mail message. A text and a voice mail in less than five minutes? Somebody had it bad. Not that I could blame her, whoever she was.

  In the months before I moved out of Chris’s condo, he’d made a point of answering his calls and texts within eye- and earshot. Suddenly, the guy who’d seemed content to binge-watch Netflix all weekend was going out every Saturday, having the time of his life, living it to the fullest, YOLO! I wanted to throat-punch him. He didn’t ask me to move out. He simply told me to make myself scarce so he could start bringing home dates.

  One morning, he came into the kitchen and flat-out told me how thrilled he was to be single again, mingling with spontaneous people who were open to trying new things.

  The unspoken inference: Unlike you, Zoe.

  “You need to get out of there,” Jackson said over pizza one night when I’d been sexiled. “You’re always welcome on my couch, but I think you should look into something more permanent. Not to mention comfortable.”

  “But I’m so over renting.”

  “So buy a house,” he said.

  “Right. Like it’s that simple.”

  “You’ve got no debt and a steady income. My twice-bankrupt foreman just bought a foreclosure property for under sixty grand.”

  “Don’t those usually need a ton of work?”

  “Only if you’re lucky.”

  Jackson took me house hunting a week later. The first place boasted features like black mold and termite damage, and the next two weren’t much better. But it wasn’t the price tag or lousy conditions that had me dragging my feet. Sleeping on Jackson’s couch was like camping: no matter how poorly I slept tonight, at least I’d be back in my own bed tomorrow. Buying a house meant facing the breakup, the change in routine, the upheaval.

  The fifth house was smaller than the others and in need of major cosmetic repairs, but it had good bones, according to Jackson.

  “I’ve got a great feeling about this one,” he’d said as we climbed into his silver pickup.

  I shrugged in response.

  Jackson sighed heavily, and then did something unchar-acteristic of a man who’d sooner recaulk your tub than dry your tears. Taking my hands in his, he said, “Zoe, I get it. Change is hard. Letting go is harder. But clinging to the past is only gonna drag you down.” His grip tightened. “You deserve to be happy.”

  I stared at my hands, folded inside his larger ones. I was afraid I’d start crying if I met his gaze or do something crazy in my desperation to latch on to anything within reach. Jackson had always been good-looking, and I’d be lying if I claimed that after twenty years of friendship, a part of me had never wondered what if . . . but I could never rebound with him, not with all that history between us.

  He insisted on bringing an inspector for our return visit. Knowing my fondness for lists, he even sketched out a detailed renovation plan. Six weeks later, I signed on the dotted line.

  Now the house was more or less exactly how we’d envisioned it: crown molding, floor-to-ceiling windows in the den, screened-in porch off the back. It was all coming together.

  But watching Jackson roll layer after layer of paint on my bedroom wall—a wall that would’ve been white had I gotten my way—I couldn’t help wondering if Chris was right about me. Was I boring? Would Jackson have rather been off having fun with Unknown?

  “You should call her back,” I said, checking the time on Jackson’s phone. It was nearly six o’clock. I had promised to buy him dinner on the days he came here to work; it was the only form of payment he’d accept. “Don’t feel like you have to stick around tonight if you’d rather go out.”

  “You want me to go?” He set the roller in the tray and came over to rummage through the supplies on the floor.

  “I just don’t want you to feel like you have to be here.”

  “I know I don’t.” He scrutinized my face. “Did that asshole say something to you?”

  “Not exactly . . . He said I was boring. Not in so many words, but maybe he’s right. If life were a Sherwin Williams color display, I’d be eggshell.”

  “Nah. You’d be crisp linen for sure. Or cultured pearl.” I threw my head back and groaned.

  “And now you’re robin’s-egg blue,” he said. “Or, at least, your hair is.”

  “Huh?” I pivoted. Sure enough, I’d accidentally dipped my ends into the paint tray. “Dammit.”

  “Don’t worry, it’ll wash out.” Jackson handed me a roll of paper towels from the pile. “Or we could chop it off.”

  “Can’t say I’m not tempted,” I joked.

  He eyed me thoughtfully. “You ever think about cutting it?”

  I shrugged. Come summertime, if my hair wasn’t frizzing or tangling, it was dripping sweat into my eyes and required a minimum of five strongly scented products to wrangle it into submission. “Whenever I brought it up, Chris would get this pouty look on his face and beg me not to.”

  “All the more reason to cut it then.” He smirked. “I’ll do it for you, if you want.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Hell yeah.” He stood up and offered his hand, looking like a giant from where I was sitting. “Time for a change.”

  “Ha,” I said without mirth. Change. I’d had enough change to last me a lifetime. What I wanted was a plan I could stick to and the reassurance that everything would unfold accordingly.

  But glancing down at the tangle of chalky blue strands and my paint-spattered T-shirt, I realized it didn’t matter if I had no talent for being in flux. Life was going to go on, with or without me. I could cling like hell to my cumbersome past, or I could let it go.

  I grasped Jackson’s hand. “I’ll get the scissors.”

  He ran out to his truck for something while I carried a stool from the kitchen up to the master bath. I brought out a pair of fabric scissors that were sharper than my regular ones and placed them alongside my brush and comb near the sink.

  “All set?” Jackson plugged his electric trimmer into the wall outlet.

  I nodded, gathering my hair at my nape and securing it with an elastic. “What’s the trimmer for?”

  “Figured I’d take care of mine while we’re at it.” He ruffled his own dark mop. “How short do you want to go?”

  I hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Maybe just above my shoulders?”

  He stepped behind me and tugged gently on my ponytail, sliding the elastic lower. I looked at myself in the mirror and then glanced awa
y, afraid I’d chicken out if I thought too hard about the outcome. Jackson brushed my ponytail, sectioning a portion of it over my shoulder.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Braiding it. Should keep it from getting tangled after it’s cut.”

  “You know how to braid?”

  He scoffed. “I’ll have you know my niece says I braid better than my sister.”

  “Sorry.” I chuckled. “I shouldn’t have doubted you.”

  “Damn right. Seriously, though, I’ve been cutting my own hair for years. I can’t promise you it’ll be stylish, but it will be straight.”

  Jackson secured the braid and reached for the scissors. A nervous chill cantered down my spine.

  “I can’t watch,” I said, closing my eyes.

  He pulled my braid taut. I hunched my shoulders as the blades crunched through the strands, then bit my lips together as he worked the scissors all the way through.

  “Hold out your hands,” he said.

  My head floated. I offered up my palms, and he rested the braid across them. It was heavier than I expected. I coiled it around my hand and kept my eyes closed as Jackson trimmed up my ends.

  “All right,” he said. “Moment of truth.”

  I cracked one eye, then the other, and gasped. My hair was short. Shorter than I could ever recall it being. It framed my face like a winter hat with side flaps. I hardly recognized myself.

  “What’s the verdict?” he asked.

  I wasn’t sure. However, the plea was, without a doubt, temporary insanity. I shook my head and let the strands fly, tickling my cheeks. I looked like someone else. Someone buoyant, resilient, unburdened.

  “More.”

  Jackson’s brow arched. “You sure?”

  I nodded. He reached for the scissors, and this time, I kept my eyes open. He trimmed another half inch, and then another, checking with me each time. I told him to keep going. Eventually, he grabbed the trimmer. My breath caught as he touched the whirring blades to the back of my neck.

  “Someone fancies themselves a barber,” I teased.