Лорен Хендерсон: The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Erotica

She laughs. “What else?”

“Just the game and stuff.”

She rolls her eyes. “You boys have no imagination.”

He bangs the front door open and stomps inside. Naked, his wife sits backwards on his favourite armchair, her breasts pressed to the chair back. Her legs are spread side, and the crack of her ass holds communion with the seat. Tattoos of naked women cover her back. “Oh, honey,” she looks at him over her shoulder. “Look what I got done today. I was out shopping for pumps, you know with the arch support like I need? Which reminds me, I need to take my glucosamine later. Anyway, I just felt like something a little more fun, y’know? Some good ole retail therapy. The grind’s really getting to me lately. I started with stilettos, and wound up with ink, and a nipple and a guiche piercing, too. I just figured, why not go the whole nine yards? Come see.” She swivels around and slouches low in the chair, hooking her legs up over the arms to give him a full display. “Slather some ointment on me, and then fuck me up the ass, hard as you can, OK? And tomorrow we’ll get you something fun, too. Maybe a cock ring. Although,” she muses, “it might be tough to find one big enough for you. Maybe special order? ”

“You don’t think so, huh?”

She snaps the book shut. “Try me.”

“What’ve you got on under that nightie?” Tonight it’s the daisy-print flannel. The nursing one she bought by mistake, with lots of convenient buttons that she starts to undo.

“Guess, Mr. Cocky Brainstorm.”

“Nothing.”

“Bingo.”

“My favourite.”

“What’d you boys really talk about? Were they at it again? All with anal sex on their mind but too afraid to ask about it? Like it makes them pansies or something?”

She still wants to talk. He’s in no hurry. It’s one of those things all those sex movies fail to mention: the small talk. He shifts closer towards her. He knows what this is, these superficial questions of hers. To someone else it might seem like idle chit-chat, meaningless dithering going nowhere. But he recognizes it for what it is: foreplay. Getting reacquainted again after the daily separations of a humdrum life. A casual reconnection before the more intimate one that he knows is around the next bend. Step on the gas and try to cut a corner and it’s all over before it started. She’ll cut the engine.

“They think I’m having a threesome.”

She looks around the room. “There’s always the cat.”

“That’s not the pussy I had in mind.”

“No?”

His hand creeps up under her nightie, finds her inner thigh, and he lets it rest there, just shy of his ultimate target. Her hand simultaneously finds his fly, and she starts undoing the buttons with one hand. All that typing has at least helped keep her fingers strong.

“I was thinking,” he says, his hands just brushing the tips of her pubic hair. “Maybe I’ll write a story.”

“Oh, sure, everyone thinks it’s easy. But try coming up with new ideas all the time.”

“Yeah,” he says, his finger finding the bull’s-eye, “that must be tough.”

Maxim Jakubowskiis a London-based novelist and editor. He was born in the UK and educated in France. Following a career in book publishing, he opened the world-famous Murder One bookshop in London. He now writes full-time. He has edited over twenty-five bestselling erotic anthologies and books on erotic photography, as well as many acclaimed crime collections. His novels include It’s You That I Want to Kiss , Because She Thought She Loved Me and On Tenderness Express , all three collected and reprinted in the USA as Skin in Darkness . Other books include Life in the World of Women , The State of Montana , Kiss Me Sadly , Confessions of a Romantic Pornographer , Fools For Lust , I Was Waiting For You and Ekaterina and the Night . In 2006 he published American Casanova , a major erotic novel which he edited and on which fifteen of the top erotic writers in the world have collaborated. He compiles two annual acclaimed series for the Mammoth list: Best New Erotica and Best British Crime . He is a winner of the Anthony and the Karel Awards, a frequent TV and radio broadcaster, a past crime columnist for the Guardian newspaper and Literary Director of London’s Crime Scene Festival.

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CHAPTERS IN A PAST LIFE © 1993 by Marilyn Jaye-Lewis

L’ENFER © 1992 by Alice Joanou

EROTOPHOBIA © 1998 by O’Neil De Noux

ENTERTAINING MR ORTON © 1998 by Poppy Z. Brite

WORTH MORE THAN A THOUSAND WORDS © 1998 by Lawrence Schimel

MRS FOX © 1996 by Michael Crawley

SWEATING PROFUSELY IN MÉRIDA: A MEMOIR © 1994 by Carol Queen

TAROT © 1998 by Florence Dugas

BLACK LILY © 1996 by Thomas S. Roche

THE PRESCRIPTION © 1998 by Carol Anne Davis

PLAGUE LOVERS © 1998 by Lucy Taylor

NIGHT MOVES © 2000 by Michael Perkins

MOVEMENTS © 2000 by Michael Hemmingson

DO WHAT YOU LOVE © 2000 by Susannah Indigo

ONLY CONNECT © 2000 by Lauren Henderson

BOTTOMLESS ON BOURBON © 2000 by Maxim Jakubowski

PAYING MY FRIENDS FOR SEX © 2001 by Matt Thorne

GATORS © 2001 by Vicki Hendricks

THE COLOUR OF LUST © 2002 by M. Christian

THE END OF DAPHNE GREENWOOD’S TRAVEL CAREER © 2003 by Tara Alton

EYE OF THE BEHOLDER © 2003 by Mark Timlin

AMERICAN HOLIDAYS © 2003 by Mike Kimera

SCREEN PLAY © 2004 by A. F. Waddell

SECRETLY WISHING FOR RAIN © 2004 by Claude Lalumière

WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT GIRL © 2005 by Marie Lyn Bernard

BLINDED © 2005 by Donna George Storey

THE PENIS OF MY BELOVED © 2006 by Ian Watson and Roberto Quaglia

NOTHING BUT THIS © 2006 by Kristina Lloyd

DON’T LOOK BACK © 2006 by Alison Tyler

THE EROTICA WRITER’S HUSBAND © 2007 by Jennifer D. Munro

Constable & Robinson Ltd

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First published in the UK by Robinson, an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2012

Copyright © Maxim Jakubowski 2012 (unless otherwise stated)

The right of Maxim Jakubowski to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988