Nora had the evening well-choreographed. I’ll give her that. As soon as I arrived in the living room, I saw the white twisted candles lined up on the mantle, saw our leather sofa bed in place, made up with cherry-pink satin sheets. And Reese, the black-haired vixen, was right in the center of the mattress, glossy burgundy lipstick already slightly smeared around the edges of her full mouth. Some kissing had definitely been going on during the past hour, but I didn’t worry myself about that. Girls getting ready. That was all. Of course, Reese was wearing exactly the type of come-fuck-me confection that I’d imagined. Sheer and feather-trimmed. What a knockout.

  When she moved, looking over my way, she gave me the kind of dirty wink that would have made me instantly hard on any other occasion. As it was, I just got harder. Staring fixedly at the seductive scene, I stopped at the threshold, knowing that instructions would be forthcoming. Silently, I watched as Nora slid into a dainty leather harness and got on the bed with her buddy. Reese sighed and said Nora’s name quietly, reaching forward to trail her fingers over the pink plastic tool before closing her hand tightly around it in a fist.

  All right, so I had a moment to wonder how long this evening had been in the works. Nora had to go buy sex toys in preparation for the event. What did that say about my powers of observation? But then I stopped thinking about anything, as I watched my girlfriend play the aggressor in bed. First, she kissed Reese’s neck, slowly, lingering as she made her way down her best friend’s body. I took a step closer to the bed, wanting to see, wanting to really see. Nora pushed that transparent nightie up and out of the way, not bothering to take it off. Little nibbling bites to Reese’s nipples made the brunette bombshell moan and toss her head.

  Now, we were looking straight into each other’s eyes again, and I found I couldn’t look away. Not even when Nora continued down the valley of Reese’s concave belly to her waiting pussy. Oh, I wanted to watch that. I wanted to observe each motion as Nora parted what I imagined were Reese’s plump nether lips and got busy between them, but something happened to me. Rather than lose myself in the pure porno aspect of the evening, I was captivated by the look of unadulterated pleasure in Reese’s green-flecked brown eyes. And I just couldn’t look away.

  “Charlie,” she murmured, and I moved even closer, so that we were just one hot breath away from each other, and she reached out and put two fingertips on my bottom lip. Soft, girl fingers rested there so sweetly. I flicked my tongue out to touch them, to draw them into the warmth of my mouth, and I could tell that at this exact moment, Nora began tongue-fucking her. Reese arched her back and her eyes glazed and I couldn’t help myself. I leaned forward, cradling her head, wanting to fiercely kiss her, to bite her bottom lip. Necking can be so sexy sometimes. And as Nora continued to play her probe-the-pussy games down there between Reese’s lean thighs, I just kissed her friend. Tongues together, breathing meshed. She was so sweet, so ready. And fuck, I could have kissed her for hours.

  But Nora had other plans. Sitting up in bed, she slid Reese’s legs over her own and plunged inside with her strap-on tool. Reese gasped and pulled away from me, head back on the shiny pillow as Nora brought her hands up to caress her friend’s small breasts. Again, I was the observer, and I couldn’t tear my eyes from how decadent Reese looked.

  “Your cock,” she suddenly murmured.

  Yeah, my cock. I’d forgotten about it for the moment, but at the words, that thing throbbed hard against my thigh.

  “I want it,” Reese whispered. Somehow I knew exactly what she meant. She didn’t want me to fuck her, because Nora was taking care of that need with perfect ease. She wanted something to suck on. Well, I could help her out. I lost my black boxers in a heartbeat. Climbing onto the mattress, I positioned myself right next to the wild beauty and waited as she turned her head toward me, as she parted those stunning lips and introduced my cock to the warm, wet pleasures within.

  And what pleasures. Reese had a gentleness to her, a cool quality that had made me peg her in the past as a shy creature. Those large dark eyes, long lashes, sideways glances. But I was wrong. Nothing shy about her. Just a quiet depth, a sweetness to the way she played dirty. With her lips tight around my tool, she sucked hard, and then as she pulled her head back, she carefully grazed my cock with her teeth. Oh, Christ, it felt good, and I pushed against her, wanting more, but she shook her head.

  Her speed. Her methods. No pressure.

  So I just had to close my eyes and wait. To let her take her time, now licking my balls, moving to get right in there. Making Nora move with her, pulling out and getting behind so that she was taking Reese doggie-style.

  Reese looked beautiful. Legs spread, hands steady, holding herself in position as Nora pumped hard inside her, then lifting her head and parting her lips so that she could draw my cock back down her throat. I stroked her soft hair away from her face, staring down at her, seeing that other slumber party in my mind. That night in which Julia had fucked Nora, my lover’s hair finally down from that severe style, tickling over her breasts as she gripped Nora’s slim waist and ravaged her. Julia had looked the way I’d always imagined she could, untamed and out of control, but as I’d watched her, I’d realized she was looking like that because of someone else. Not me.

  Now, Nora was taking over that dominant position, firmly fucking her friend while I got to enjoy the wet wonders of Reese’s mouth. She gave Reese a tentative spank on her heart-shaped ass, and I felt the vibrations on my cock as Reese swallowed hard at the sensation. Oh, the girl liked it, and Nora immediately slapped her ass again, leaving a matching pale-purple print on the other side. My cock stirred at that image, because I knew immediately what it would be like to be in Nora’s place, taking over the job. Slapping Reese’s firm, haughty ass while fucking it. Or even better, I understood what it would feel like to take the luscious raven-haired stunner over my lap, flip up that faux-innocent nightie and give her beautiful bare ass the serious and thorough spanking it deserved.

  Yet just as I pictured this, Reese changed the game. She pulled off of Nora, slid back from me, and motioned with her head for me to move.

  “What—” I murmured. Then, “Where?”

  “Take my spot—”

  I wasn’t sure. Did she want to watch Nora fuck me? Was I going to like that? But as I hesitated, I saw her slip her delicate fingers over Nora’s hips, unbuckling that harness, removing the toy. With calm movements, she strapped the slicked-up tool onto herself, and then waited. Nora and I stared at each other. What was going on? How had Reese so easily managed to usurp Nora’s power?

  In truth, it didn’t really matter how. The intensity was too great to start deciphering the situation, analyzing who should do what to whom and why. We just followed Reese’s instructions, Nora taking the spot on her back on the bed and me sliding on top of her, my cock automatically finding its way inside her thrillingly wet pussy. And then Reese—sweet, innocent-looking Reese—was behind me, maneuvering into proper position, her fingertips spreading my muscled asscheeks, trailing down the split between. And then her cock, well-lubed from her own pussy juices, pressed aggressively against my asshole.

  Oh, fuck. What was going on?

  She slid on in, despite the fact that my body tensed instantly, and that I turned my head to look over my shoulder, wanting to see her face. She just drove forward, as if she’d been ass-fucking men all her life, and I had to take it. Had to, because I wanted it like I’d never wanted anything before. Reese with her rhythm, slip-sliding her way inside me, and me, forgetting who I was or where I was, automatically fucking Nora. Just fucking her. Because I had to.

  The three of us, connected—interconnected—worked in synchronicity. Nora, with her eyes shut beneath me, taking the double force of being fucked by two people. Reese would thrust and I would thrust and Nora would groan. Then Reese would pull back, sliding almost all the way out, and I would pull back, so I wouldn’t lose contact with her, and Nora would groan again. My mind was filled with gray fog, with white noise. I looked up at the mantle, staring at the candles flickering there, trying to figure out how we’d gotten to this point so quickly.

  “Don’t try so hard,” Reese whispered in my ear, as if she knew exactly what I was thinking. “Don’t even try.”

  Then she ran the tips of her fingers along my shoulder blades and leaned all the way into me, so that I could feel her body pressed along my back. Her breath on the nape of my neck, her mouth opening, teeth searching for purchase on my skin. Wild thing, I thought, as she bit me hard. I guessed wrong. I didn’t know.

  What I did know was this: it was only the beginning. This was going to be a long, raucous evening of fun. I saw it all in my mind. But I saw something more. In this position, Nora and I could gaze at each other, and I wondered if she knew what was going to happen. Knew the way I knew.

  Because, really, it wasn’t my fault. I didn’t plan it. Didn’t ask to be invited to this bedroom tryst. But in the morning, as Reese packed her tiny nightie away and gave the two of us quick hot kisses good-bye, I understood that I’d be packing soon, as well. That within a week, I’d be at Reese’s door, my heart racing as I pictured the way her body would feel next to mine. As I imagined her buckling on a black leather harness, taking me for another ride.

  Nora should have known better. Should have understood what it would mean not only to invite a girl into our bed, but into my head.

  Pink elephants?

  No, man. Just the taste, the glimmer of something new, something that won’t let you sleep until you have it again.

  The Space Between

  HELENA SETTIMANA

  I make coffee in my kitchen while the wan light of early morning on the lake filters through the louvers of the Venetian blinds in the cottage. It’s the last of my Blue Mountain, a gift from the griot, Kayode “Kayo” Mackenzie of Hilton Head Island. I want it for myself and I fear I’ll wake Charmaine, who is still asleep in the loft, and I’ll have to share my last drop of him. I roll its liquor on my tongue. Strange that I’d feel that way about something as mundane as coffee, but that’s the way it is. It’s bitter and sweet; something like the man. Something like all that followed our brief acquaintance. The screen door is squeaky and I try not to let it bang as I step out onto the flagstone patio into the dim morning. The air is fresh, and frosted with the resinous smell of pine, like the interior of a cathedral after mass is said. It is still as a church too, hemmed in by trees some seventy feet tall. It’s almost light. Soon the morning chorus will begin. Soon the lake will buzz with boat motors and cries of water-skiers. Soon Charmaine will be getting up, stretching, looking for me.

  Last night she lay in the space between my thighs and stabbed at my emptiness with her tongue until it was filled loosely, like water outflowing a cracked vessel. I am empty because she is using me. I know that. I’m using her too. We are like mutually supporting parasites. It’s his fault. She is using me because I once had the almost-famous Mackenzie, whom she desires. She has not had the pleasure despite tracking him like a camp follower. Of this I am certain.

  “I’ve been in love with that man for a decade,” she confessed over Cuba Libres at the old Bam Boo Club in downtown Toronto. Some people idolize singers. Charmaine was like that with poets and artists. So am I, I confess. She responded to Kayo the way women my mother’s age swooned over Leonard Cohen. Striped by shade from one of the club’s namesake grasses, she swung one sandaled foot under the patio table, her purple-painted toenails coming perilously close to my bare shin. “It’s more than lust. It’s lo-ove.” She flapped her fingers like an excited teenager. I tried not to stare at her cleavage. “I’ve seen him every time he comes up here. I’ve even seen him perform here,” she enthused, waving to take in the whole of the club. “Then I go home and single-handedly console myself that the streets are not paved with talented and handsome men like him, sensitive guys just ripe for the plucking. Any girl should get one. But no,” she sucked her teeth, “those ones are rare and worth the wait, not that a girl should go without some while she is waiting.”

  We laughed, but I was a bit put out. I wished she wasn’t so transparently smitten, even if I agreed wholeheartedly with her assessment of Kayo’s worth. A girl shouldn’t go without a bit of something. I could be that something for her. Like Charmaine, I’m in love with words and most recently with her words. My guru says I shouldn’t trust what people say, only what they do, but I’m susceptible to art and sweet talk. I’d been working at bedding Charmaine for six months now, ever since the writers’ conference where we met. She’s brilliant—a poet as well. I’m a sucker for that sort of shine; that sort of smart-hot. She had always been willing to come out to talk, to shop or share, but I’d wanted more for a long time. I searched her face and the shifting plains and hills of her body for clues, but had found no evidence of my desire returned. That she was so indifferent to me hurt. She thrummed with passion. I quivered back. She was edible. I was hungry. I stared across the table. She looked away. She had broad, high cheekbones, a diamond-shaped face that spoke of her jambalaya roots: Trini, French, Indian, African. Creole. Red. Her eyes were large, and the corners curled down slightly. This was beautiful. But it was her body; the queenly heft of it, and the way she moved her high chest and broad behind with grace upon slender legs like stalks of grass that I found so compelling. Her ass jutted one way, her tits, belly and chin the other, like those African carvings of dancing girls with long shins and a hand on one hip. That and the words. The words.

  We were talking American poets. Slammers. The import Dub set. Spoken-word traditionalists. That’s her thing. She brought up Kayo’s name and I sat for a long time contemplating my drink and the plate of over-sour escoveitched snapper steaming in front of me. In this moment I sensed a shift about to occur, some rending of the fabric of my universe. “I know him,” I said, finally, “personally….”

  She looked at me with surprise.

  “How come you never said so? No. Don’t shit me.”

  “I guess it never occurred to me. We had an affair a year ago.”

  She weighed this statement against what she believed. “No. No way…he’d never. He’s a separatist. He’s all for la raza, Leni.”

  I shrugged, burning inwardly. Truth was often stranger than art. We invent some of our truths. I couldn’t keep my trap shut. Fuck her if she thought I couldn’t be telling the truth because he was out there saying he wouldn’t touch whitey. There I was, shoving one sacred cow in her face. I wished to fuck she wanted me. There, take that. I attempted the fish. The vinegar rankled in my nostrils and burned my tongue. I pushed it away, called the waiter and asked to see the menu again….

  “Well, he did. We did. The only thing he was separating then were my legs. Not long, not deep…not love I’m afraid….” She stared at me, disbelieving. “I met him in Charleston. I was doing that article for Saturday Night. I have some pictures. Maybe I’ll show you. You can come over.”

  I did have pictures; there was not much to divine from them. They didn’t show us, or anyone else fucking. But there is always a story behind an image. In my favorite, he is standing on a narrow, cobbled lane in Charleston, under a huge hanging fern, his bald head turned to one side, his cheek laid across one shoulder. The flash glints off of one earring, dangling along his cheek. The fern stands on the side of his head, looking like a great green jester’s cap; a woodland king’s crown, sliding off. A church spire rises in the distance at the end of the alley. He is smiling, gap-toothed, goofily at the camera. That was the day after we met. We’d shared breakfast without touching.

  I’d been pulled by a bill posted on a telephone pole to attend a slam of Island poets in a backstreet club. I thought, great, I could do an extra article on contemporary Gullah culture alive and well in South Carolina. It’s why I was there, after all—dredging stories. I went into that place, shining like the North Star. It was fantastic: hot, angry, exuberant. There was much shouting and later, pressing of flesh, the knocking of knuckles in acknowledgment of the groove. I was talking to the performers and he, sliding past my table after his set, did a double take and asked if I had got lost. I laughed and said no. He was very tall, and dark like espresso, with a split in his smile that made him look like an overgrown boy. I was not lost. I was there for the show. Spur of the moment, I asked if I could interview him. He sat down and talked, and that was the beginning. He said to come for breakfast at his hotel. What the hell…I did. We drove in his old truck to the Island, after.

  Some men are so facile with their charm they astound me. I love that much moxie. He asked. I went. Simple. His sunglasses made him look professorial. He smiled a tiny, tiny inscrutable smile the whole way. We didn’t talk on the drive. Not much. I mouthed some appreciation of the raw power of his words. He waxed philosophical and stressed how important his work is to the culture of the Island. The ego—but I got that he wasn’t making it up. I suggested we save it for the interview proper. Pausing in speech, he had the distracting habit of touching his tongue to his upper lip. It made my insides twitchy. I looked out the window. I watched his hands, slid my eyes to the side and examined his belly; the tented folds of his loose trousers. If I wasn’t conscious of it before, I acknowledged it now: I’d sleep with him, should that occasion arise.

  We stopped for groceries. The clerk eyed me with some interest and looked pointedly at Mackenzie, but he offered no explanation of my presence. When we left, I felt the cashier’s eyes on my back and didn’t turn around.

  He stayed on the Island in a beach house, where the ocean raced up to meet the land, and the wind battered the thin grass flat. Sandpipers raced ahead of the surf and chased it back as it sucked in upon itself, sighing. They peeped as they ran. Palmettoes spiked the grainy ground around the house. I thought it was a miracle the place still stood, a survivor of countless storms. The pale yellow paint peeled on the clapboard. I walked up the tall steps, the house high on its pilings, its hedge against the cruelty of the sea. A pelican stood on the roof. I stood outside for several minutes before stepping in.