Torn Shapes of Desire Read online

  I draw her down next to me on the green sheets, promising myself that I will be ever so gentle with her, that she will somehow find joy in this. Chantal has gone very very still. Her eyes are now closed, and she looks frighteningly defenseless. I bend to drop butterfly kisses on her cheek, her neck, her shoulder. Carefully I avoid her lips, though I ache to kiss. Somehow I think that would be too much. For her, and for me. Her nipples are soft pools of darkness in the golden expanse of her torso. I lick my way down to them, nipping gently until they stand erect against my tongue. She has begun to move a little, confused by her body’s reactions, bewildered by this night. But she doesn’t utter a word of protest. My frail love has no way of understanding this night, her only hope to trust in me to keep her safe.

  His breathing is loud in the room, and as I kiss lower and lower on her sweet body, the first moan comes from him. It is a sound of pure frustration, and I am surprised for a moment that he would restrain himself. Then I am lost in the scent of her rising up beneath me, the brush of my breasts along her long legs, the caress of her curling hair against my cheek. And the greatest joy is that she is responding to my touch, my tongue, my kiss. She is arching underneath me, tangling her long fingers in waves, running nails across the tender places of my neck. The lamp flickers wildly in the room; as she comes moaning in my mouth we arch together suddenly still. The eye in the center of a blue–green storm.

  Chantal relaxes beneath me, her still–heavy breaths sounding. I cannot hear him, I realize. I half–raise, and twist my body up into the wind from the fan. There is enough light to see clearly that he is not there. The knife lies, discarded, well within arm’s reach. He has closed the door behind him. And suddenly I am battling the impulse to reach out and take the knife and hold it to her sweet flesh, gaining a night of unbearable pleasure as she fulfills my every desire.

  And also gaining a lifetime of hate. I shake my head, dismissing the last shreds of foolish thought. This will have to be enough. Her trust, her faith. Her slick body molded to my own. The memory of her arching against me. And the chance that this night has changed her mind about what she wants... although it will take time to know for certain. I lay back down against her, realizing that she is somehow, impossibly, asleep. I am suddenly eager to join her.

  o0o

  The phone rings. I get up to answer, knowing who it will be.

  “Forgive me.” he says. “I didn’t mean things to go so far. The knife was too much. You were both too beautiful. I got... carried away.” He pauses, embarrassed. “I’ll buy you a new shirt.”

  “Forgiven.” I say, and hang up.

  How can I condemn him? I asked him to come, after all. I go back to the bed and gather her into my arms. She murmurs in her sleep and cuddles closer. I hold her tight in a protective embrace, so that nobody will ever hurt her.

  Torn Shapes of Desire

  The shape of her love

  is gut–wrenching.

  Unspoken fear that

  this time

  will be the last

  he will go back

  to his wife

  leaving her alone

  in emptiness.

  She dances on knives

  abandoning everything

  for touch of warm hands

  fevered lips

  whispered promises.

  Though she knows

  better than anyone

  that he is a liar.

  Willingly

  she dances

  till feet lie torn

  conscience is screaming

  and guilt is the shape

  of her love.

  Fleeing Gods

  Helena struggled out of sleep, blinking her eyes hazily against the darkened room. It had been a most vivid dream. Since she’d left her spineless husband and the regular supply of dull sex, she’d often had erotic dreams. Somehow none had been quite this... explicit. A tongue had licked her instep, her toes. Teeth had nibbled on her calves. She had almost been able to feel the muscled body, the sensuous hands caressing her thighs, her hips. She could almost hear his heavy panting, and smell his strong breath.

  Actually, she could still smell that strong breath, that unmistakable mixture of strong spirits and poor oral hygiene. There was a strong scent of aroused male in the room. Helena suddenly sat up and switched on her halogen lamp, ready to grab it and crack it on the skull of any would–be rapist.

  As the light flooded the room, an immense man reared up on the bed and away from her, raising a hairy arm to block his eyes from the light.

  “Shut that off, wench! You’ll ruin the mood!”

  Wench? What kind of man calls a woman wench? Helena relaxed a little, still retaining her firm grip on the lamp, and peered at the impressive stranger in her bedroom.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked him, quite calmly, she thought.

  “Seducing you!” he thundered. “What does it look like I’m doing?” He lowered his arm a bit, piercing blue eyes blinking in the light like those of a dazed deer. Helena stared intently at him, hungrily drinking in the obvious strength in those arms, that chest. The man was positively bristling with hair, and muscles bulged under the thick brown coat. Something else bulged too, an enormous penis that stood out proudly from his naked body. Helena had been married for seven years, and bar–hopping for three, but she had never seen anything to match this before. She licked her lips.

  He blinked at her, looking a little confused. Then he seemed to gather himself together. He started shouting again.

  “Fear not, fair maiden. I am the greatest of lovers, renowned in seven kingdoms and across seventy seas. No harm will come to thee!”

  Helena winced at the volume. “Could you lower your voice a little?” she asked, as she started to shift her body, preparatory to sitting up. The man immediately flung himself down on her, pinning her to the bed. Helena just lay there, enjoying the weight of his body on hers, the teasing scritch of curly chest hair against her nipples.

  “My apologies, maiden, but I cannot have you turning into a bull, or a swan, or trying to run away” he said, in a voice slightly softer than before.

  A bull? A swan? A strange suspicion started dancing through Helena’s head. “Just what did you say your name was?” she asked him.

  The man’s chest swelled proudly, incidentally crushing her breasts beneath it. “I am Zeus, ruler of Olympus, seducer of maidens, wielder of the thunderbolt... and you shall not escape me!”

  “Why would I want to?” Helena practically cooed, as she laced her arms around his thick neck. That would explain how he got into her locked bedroom, the odd dream she’d been having... it would explain a lot of things. She began rubbing her naked body against his, maneuvering so he could slide that gorgeous tool into the place where it belonged.

  “Sorry?” he said. His voice suddenly seemed much less like massive thundering, and more like a pitiful squeak. He held his body very stiff as he stared down at her. While stiff was good in some ways, his stillness was somewhat of a problem now, as she couldn’t get to quite the position she needed. “Are you not afraid of me? Will you not shift your form into a thousand others so as to escape? Will you not turn into a tree, a pebble, a breath of breeze?”

  “Honey, I can’t shift my form into even one other.” Helena replied. She raked her nails along his back, and writhed her body underneath his, hoping to stimulate a response. His response wasn’t quite what she expected.

  “But it is simple. Even the shepherd maids of Greece knew how. Let me show you,” he said. And with that, she felt an odd sort of twist in her brain, strange enough to make her pause a second in her feverish groping. Suddenly she knew how to change forms, how to become a thousand creatures of wind and flesh and earth. Zeus smiled in triumph above her. “Now, will you run?” he asked.

  “Mmm... I don’t think so,” Helena said. With that, she used her newfound knowledge to stretch her body, adding several inches to her height, and not so incidentally enabling her to finally slip th
at stiff penis inside her dripping cunt. Helena gasped then, and bit down on his rock–hard shoulder. She started to slide back and forth, almost gnawing on his skin as she did so.

  “But they always run,” Zeus said. He sounded dismayed. “I cannot believe women have changed so in the mere millennia that Hera and I spent travelling... surely you are unnatural, a freak?”

  Helena kept moving as she replied, “Well, my appetite’s maybe a bit bigger than most women’s, but I think I’m pretty typical nowadays.” Suddenly, that feeling of delicious fullness started to disappear. Helena looked up in sudden suspicion. “Hey, if you’re a god, surely you can keep it up?”

  Zeus started to pull himself away. “You are a hellish imitation of a true woman. I will go and find a more feminine being in whom to spend my heavenly seed. You cannot expect me to perform with a creature as unwomanly as yourself. It would be... unnatural!”

  Helena suddenly clung even harder, wrapping her long (extremely long) legs around his muscular form. “Not so fast, boy. You look to be the best lay I’ve had in a long time.” Helena’s mind continued the sentence; ‘with potentially infinite endurance.’ “You’re not getting away until I get what you promised earlier. And not until I get it several times.”

  Zeus moaned in dismay, and suddenly changed himself into a porcupine. But Helena changed her skin into an odd fur, and stuck to him like Velcro. He wailed in horror, and changed himself into a lightning bolt. But she changed into a storm, and blew out all the windows as she surrounded him. Zeus moaned as he turned into a waterfall, pouring out of her forty–seventh floor windows. But she turned into a river right below him, and engulfed his sweet essence. It was then that he really started to run.

  Helena chased him down the highway, causing the early morning traffic jams to become early morning wrecking sites, as the heavenly dawn filled the sky. Irate businessmen in suits leaning out their car windows could hear a male voice, whimpering on the wind as the pair disappeared over the horizon. It was clearly calling, “Hera? Saaaaaaaave meeeeeeeee...” The ones who listened carefully even heard a soft chuckle of what might have been goddess laughter as they hurriedly pulled their heads back inside, and quickly rolled up the windows.

  Cobalt Blue

  By late September, I will be gone, and that

  love that wraps us now in warm arms may wither

  under the weight of time. I know that as well as you,

  even though I hide behind closed eyes.

  Gather me close, my dear. For a little while

  let me pretend belief in forever, in happily ever

  after. After all, such are the fairy tales of love’s

  sweet sorcery on which we are raised. That hearts can

  stop time together, that distance is powerless.

  Green grass and summer sun lie still before us.

  One still November night we met, and though I admit it

  bitter that less than a single year is to be ours,

  let us not waste the seasons we have in

  early sorrow. If my next November is to be as blue as

  the glasses you once gave me, the memory of

  summer will light my rooms, and I will raise a glass to you.

  Acknowledgements

  As this is my first book, I have an awful lot of people to thank, and I’m going to try really hard to get them all, though I’ll undoubtedly forget some. So here goes...

  My parents — they may not quite appreciate all of what I do, but they always had complete faith in my ability to do it...

  B.J. and Luci, two of the best teachers a very bookish high school student with impossible dreams of being a writer could have...

  Writers and readers from my first newsgroups (alt.callahans, rec.arts.poems, rec.arts.erotica (back when Tim Pierce moderated it) and alt.sex.stories); their support helped me to believe that maybe I could write just a bit better than the average net.writer.wannabe...

  The online Writers Workshop, for hundreds of readings and critiques and encouragement (especially the then–moderator, Rheal Nadeau, of inexhaustible patience and good sense)...

  John McMullen and Brian T., my able assistants in the Erotica Writers Workshop, great friends, and impressive authors in their own right...

  Dale L. Larson, Cecilia Tan, Gary Bowen and Jeff Chudyk, editors extraordinaire...

  I must thank Dean, Manny, Kira, Paul, Mort, Kevin, Kirsten, Adam, Karina, Joe, Alex, Clive, Marek, Jeff, Michael, Bethany, Kathryn, David and Sherman. This would have been a very different book without their contributions...

  And finally, fresh thanks to Christopher Harrison and Katherine Eliska Kimbriel, for proofreading this new edition, Jennifer Stevenson, for bringing me to Book View Café, Deborah Ross, whose organizational skills helped bring this edition to the light of day, and Julianne Lee, formatting goddess.

  Appendix: Material from the First Edition

  Foreword

  By Dale L. Larson

  I never thought I’d be publishing “dirty stories.” It’s not that I’m a prude; I was just surprised to find myself in a situation where the issue came up at all. I’m a software engineer turned computer publisher, so how’d I end up editing and publishing a book with “erotica” in the title? And why am I so proud of it?

  For ten years, I’ve lived a significant portion of my life in cyberspace. In addition to using the net during those years, electronically communicating with people around the world, I’ve worked on some of the software the net is made with, consulted for people expanding the net, and I’m the author of a book and several articles about networking and the Internet. So I paid special attention when a few members of the far–right started pushing an awful net bill through the United States Congress. The so–called “Communications Decency Act” (CDA) attempts to reduce all material on the Internet to a level appropriate for children, making it impossible for so adults to communicate about important issues.

  A new law isn’t needed. The net is already subject to the same laws against obscenity and child pornography that apply to any media. The Internet is interactive; you must set out to find what you’re looking for. So adults can decide for themselves what they want to see. Parents can control what their children access on the net, by direct supervision or by software which denies access based on parental criteria. (Surfwatch and NetNanny, for example, not only have a set of categories they automatically screen for, but can also be tailored to avoid anything else a parent finds objectionable.)

  The CDA criminalizes network speech that is constitutionally protected in print and available from any bookstore or library: material that is “indecent” or “patently offensive.” Both terms are unconstitutionally vague (they have no absolute legal definition, referring to “community standards”, what standards apply to a global Internet is not clear) and overbroad (less restrictive means would obtain the desired effect). The ridiculous result is that, for example, you could be jailed or fined for creating Web sites containing the full text of the Supreme Court’s Pacifica Decision (which includes a transcript of George Carlin’s “dirty words” that broadcasters aren’t supposed to use). Not knowing exactly what might be indecent has an incredibly chilling effect, worse than the actual censorship itself. Law–abiding citizens are forced to second–guess the prosecutors, and must err on the side of the conservative. Under the CDA, don’t bother trying to create a legally acceptable Web site that deals with issues like the prevention of rape or the spread of AIDS or other serious issues. Under the CDA, this essay is probably illegal to post on the net (because later I use the word “pissed”).

  Perhaps most importantly, the global nature of the Internet and the technology of which it is constructed makes it impossible for a U.S. law regarding content to have much useful effect. Any “objectionable” material will still be on servers in Amsterdam and elsewhere, still available to anyone in the world. (An interesting aside is that various projects undertaken on the net provide the full text of books banned anywhere in the world, so they ar
e available everywhere in the world.) Thus, the CDA can’t possibly have its intended effect of eliminating material from the net. While it can serve to repress what U.S. citizens say on the net, it can’t repress what they read on the net.

  The battle against the CDA has been waged by an overwhelming collection of common citizens, corporations and experts against a small number of radical right–wing kooks and a misguided Congress. Some of the plaintiffs in the lawsuits seeking to overturn the act include: the American Library Association; the American Society of Newspaper Editors; America Online, Inc.; American Booksellers Association, Inc.; American Civil Liberties Union; Apple Computer, Inc.; Association of American Publishers, Inc.; CompuServe Incorporated; Electronic Frontier Foundation; Health Sciences Libraries Consortium; Magazine Publishers of America, Inc.; Microsoft Corporation; National Press Photographers Association; Newspaper Association of America; Planned Parenthood; Prodigy Services Company; the Society of Professional Journalists; and the Citizens Internet Empowerment Coalition, representing nearly 50,000 individual Internet users.

  This June, a Philadelphia federal appeals court struck down the CDA, saying in part, “Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech the First Amendment protects... As the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet deserves the highest protection from government intrusion.” A second federal appeals court (in New York) came to similar conclusions soon after. Those decisions are being appealed by the government to the U.S. Supreme Court, so this particular fight is not yet over. Even if we prevail here, we must always be ready to defend our rights. There will always be those who think their morality should be forced on the rest of us by the government.