Maxim Jakubowski - The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels

I made my way slowly through the crowd back to the bar, feeling self-conscious about my nakedness, feet avoiding people with shoes on, my chest brushing against fabric, fingers hooked in the towel so it wouldn’t come unknotted. I got another drink at the bar and sat down on a nearby couch.

I tried to remember what it was like to pick up a woman, how it was done in the movies and on television. I hadn’t tried to pick up anyone since high school. As I remembered, it was no fun.

If Vy had walked in the room right then, I would have climbed all over her.

After a while, I found myself staring at a Puerto Rican woman in a clinging black dress who was sitting on the other end of the couch. She had a nice, shy smile and a diamond ring on her finger, and she was watching her husband – a muscular man with more cleavage showing than most of the women in the room – flirt with a blonde dancing in front of him. The blonde was attracting an audience of still-clothed men who stood around, whispering their admiration, but she was playing to the Puerto Rican hunk. She wore a black lace camisole and one thin strap kept falling off her shoulder, baring a small, firm round breast; as she whirled, she flipped up the front of her undergarment, revealing plump boyish buttocks and pale straw pubic hair shaved in the form of a heart.

Seeing her husband so transfixed, the Puerto Rican woman moved toward me on the couch. I smiled cautiously and looked into eyes as round and bright as new black buttons. Thinking that no one was looking, that her husband was preoccupied with the blonde, I put my hand on her knee. She looked pleased but nervous.

I was wrong about her husband. The next thing I knew, he was angrily knocking my hand away and hissing at me. Spitting words of warning. I’m sure I blushed. I muttered my apologies and turned my head back to the dance floor.

Mora had predicted that people would loosen up as it got later, and they did. Those who’d come to gawk were leaving, clothes were disappearing, and towels were slipping provocatively. I didn’t see Mora anywhere. The Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” bounced around the room like a badminton ball on moving jets of water. The smoothness of disco music, its continuous, creamy beat, its plaintive voices echoing forever the rhythmic invitation to dance, pulled me to my feet.

Mora wasn’t in the swing rooms, so I went to the steamy, wet room where three whirlpool baths churned in semi-darkness. Couples cavorted in the bubbly water. I saw Mora and started to join her. A man next to me came to life.

“Couples only,” he growled, pointing to a sign above the door that the rising steam had obscured. I noted his thick biceps and stepped back, but a small boy inside me jumped up and down in protest.

“But I’m half of a couple. The other half is in there, and I want to say hello to her.”

“Maybe she don’t want to see you right now. Wait till she comes out. Be a gentleman.”

I took a deep breath and nodded. There was nothing to do but wait for her at the bar. All that mattered was that one of us was having a good time, I told myself. The booze made the lie somewhat more palatable.

I tried to strike up conversations with various women at the bar, but they could smell my desperation, the way dogs smell fear. Mora emerged at last, wrapped in a white towel. She glowed. Her pupils were bright, and her damp skin was red from the heat of the whirlpool. Her small hands were water-wrinkled.

“ Whew! I am wiped out, Richard.”

She put her arms around my waist and nuzzled her damp forehead into my shoulder like a puppy.

“I saw you in there – you were very busy.”

“I don’t have the words to express it… You know how, when you’re a kid, you don’t think you belong anywhere?”

“I do, sure.”

“Richard, I felt like I belonged , like there was a secret society of people like me…”

I was upset. “Like a stamp club?”

She stepped back. “Oh, shit, Richard. If you don’t understand, I don’t know who will.”

“I’ve been feeling like an outcast from that secret society of yours.”

“I’m really sorry I was gone so long. Why didn’t you join us?”

I told her about the bouncer and she frowned.

“Come on, we’ll go back in. We’ll stay together.”

Our bare feet squished on the wet carpeting of the whirlpool room. I blinked my eyes to adjust to the darkness. She dropped her towel and lowered herself into the swirling water slowly, until she was covered up to the neck. Hazy amber lights set into the side of the tub made her look silver, like a mermaid shimmering in the warm water. I settled next to her, my genitals floating free. We were alone, although small groups of people nearby were groaning and splashing about enthusiastically.

She beamed like a kid at Christmas and fondled me, her hand making waves in the water. We kissed long and slowly, and didn’t come up for air until we heard splashing in the water near us.

“I think we’ve got company,” Mora whispered in my ear, the point of her tongue playing warmly in its whorls.

When I looked up, I saw the blonde from the dance floor sitting between Stanley’s legs. He grinned at me like a benevolent pasha and winked at Mora. I stared at the blonde’s long slender legs and the heart-shaped pubic hair between them, and she smiled back at me with curiosity in her eyes.

“People are talking about you two,” Stanley said.

“Who?” I was skeptical.

“The regulars. People in the scene.”

“Maybe they’re talking about Mora, but I’ve been batting zero.”

“Shyness turns women on. Tracey noticed you.”

Bullshit she’d noticed me, but I didn’t care – for some reason, Stanley had brought her along, she was sitting not four feet away, and all I had to do was figure out some clever way of crossing the ocean between us.

She made it easy by speaking first, in a squeaky voice that managed to make Brooklyn sound sexy. “I saw your mustache, and I just adore mustaches, and Stanley said you were probably a really nice guy, so when he asked me to come in here with him for just a minute I decided to forget that it was two in the morning because I like nice people more than I like going home in a cab by myself – don’t you think Plato’s is really neat? I feel right at home…”

Mora and I looked at each other in disbelief, and then turned to study Tracey from top to bottom. It was true: she was indeed one of the most beautiful women either of us had seen outside of the pages of Playboy . The important details were all in place: her firm breasts and plump buttocks belonged in a centerfold, her skin was smooth and soft, and she was without wrinkles or scars. She even wrinkled her nose like a cheerleader.

I looked her straight in the eyes, all at once sure where I had hesitated before.

“Tracey,” I said. “You are a goddess. I say that without a doubt in my mind.”

She cooed. “I knew you were going to be a sweety! I can always pick them out – and nice equals sexy.”

I felt buoyant. Maybe it was the water, but I think it was relief. I reached for her ankle and she let me hold it while Stanley floated through the water to Mora. Then she took my hand and placed it on her belly. “I want to feel you in my belly, filling me up.”

I couldn’t believe my luck. Like a kid about to raid the cookie jar, I looked around to see if anyone was watching. Mora was riding Stanley in the water, holding on to his shoulders with her fingertips and looking into his eyes. I touched Tracey’s breasts and felt electricity course through my palm and wrist and up my arm. I thought I heard her purring when I kissed her inner thighs, and then she folded herself into me, hands braced against the edge of the tub, and we became deep sea divers, carrying on like estrous dolphins.