Radical Encounters Read online

  “Yes. Yes…but I…please, I’m going to come soon.”

  “Not until I’m inside you. Put my cock between your legs. Hurry. Do it.”

  I stopped breathing. I heard a cry, a wild sound of anguished pleasure and knew she was starting to come. I shot to my feet, shouting, “Can you feel me fucking you? Can you? Can you?”

  “Yesssss,” she screamed as she orgasmed, and I quietly disconnected.

  “Jesus Christ.” My shirt was soaked with sweat. My crotch was just as wet and I wondered if I’d come. I might have. My clit was throbbing the way it did right after I climaxed, but I couldn’t remember it. It had all been her. All I could feel was being inside her while she came. I’d never been so aroused, or so satisfied. “Oh fuck.”

  What had just happened? And who the hell was she?

  I sat down and stared at the phone, willing it to ring. Call me back. Please call me back. I needed to hear her voice. I craved it like a touch. I wanted to make her come again.

  A day passed. Another. And another. The phone rang. It was always business. I took care of it with the part of my mind that was capable of functioning at top efficiency no matter what was happening around me. But my body remained poised, coiled like a tight spring, for the sound of her voice to set me off. My clit was always hard. My cunt was always wet. I didn’t masturbate, even when I lay awake tense and throbbing every night. Once I jolted awake, just after dawn, emerging from some erotic dream that left me hovering on the edge of orgasm. My clit was twitching and my brain was too slow to prevent my hand from squeezing the hot need between my thighs and I came sharply, straining to hear the sound of her voice.

  By the time a week had passed, my body was a time bomb and my mind reverberated with the mantra, Call me, Call me, Call me.

  I worked later and later every night, even later than I needed to, waiting for the call. When the phone rang close to ten one night, I snatched it up and listened in breathless silence.

  “Do you know what I’m doing?”

  “Tell me,” I ground out.

  “I’m sitting…” Her breath caught. “Sitting on the couch with your cock inside me…”

  I closed my eyes to shut out everything except her. “You’re sitting in my lap with my cock buried in your cunt.”

  “Yesss.”

  “I’m squeezing your nipples while we fuck. I’ve got a nice easy rhythm going, in deep and then almost all the way out, taking my time. Feel it?”

  “Oh God yes.” Her voice was wispy and thin. I knew what she was doing. I could see her fucking herself while she worked up her clit.

  “Stop touching your clit. I’ll do it when it’s time.”

  “Please,” she groaned.

  “Shh. Slowly. Take my cock all the way in.”

  “I’m going to come on your cock.” She said it as if it were a miraculous discovery.

  “Yes,” I growled. “You are. But not yet.”

  “I want to.”

  “Hold still. Hold my cock inside and breathe. Just breathe and feel me buried inside you.”

  “You feel so good.” She moaned. “I want to come.”

  “I know.” The blood thundered in my head and I saw red behind my closed lids. The muscles in my arms and legs ached with tension. I wanted to fuck her until she came screaming around my cock, clawing at my shoulders, biting my neck, disintegrating with pleasure. “Is your clit hard?”

  “So hard…please…I need—”

  “Fuck your clit.” She shouted my name and I lost it. “Fuck my cock! Fuck it. Fuck it. Ah, fuck. I’m going to come inside you.”

  She sounded as if she was crying and then her voice was rising, catching, tearing, and she was screaming, “I’m coming I’m coming oh God God I’m coming so hard.”

  I groaned and an orgasm skittered around the edges of my barely conscious mind. I knew I was coming but I didn’t care. I was inside her and she was coming and that’s all that mattered. Eventually I realized I was sprawled on my desk gasping, the phone still pressed to my ear. Faintly, I heard whimpering and crooning and little satisfied cries. I sucked great gulps of air, seeing her curled up with my cock still buried to the hilt inside her.

  “Sleep tight, baby,” I whispered and hung up the phone.

  One week. Two weeks. Three. I was going crazy. I picked up the phone a dozen times a day and all I heard was a dial tone. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t work. I wanted to come all the time and I couldn’t. My secretary finally asked me if I was sick. I told her it was the flu. How could I tell her I was dying for a woman I’d never seen?

  I fucked a stranger I picked up in a bar, but when she came I kept listening for the sound of her voice and it wasn’t enough. I made her come again, and again, and again and again until she begged me to stop. It wasn’t her. I couldn’t come.

  It was midnight, some night, when the phone rang. I stared at it, not believing what I heard. It stopped ringing. I sobbed and held my head in my hands. The phone rang.

  “Please,” I whispered when I picked it up.

  “Do you know what I’m doing?”

  “Please.”

  “I’m waiting.”

  Fury, joy, need poured through me as I sprang to my feet. “Where?”

  “In the lounge down the hall.”

  I dropped the phone and ran. The office was empty, the hall a hollow tunnel of dim fluorescence. The echo of my footsteps raced to catch up to my wild need. I shoved through the lounge door into near darkness, but I didn’t need to see her. I could hear her breathing. At last. Quick, shallow gasps of anticipation.

  I was beside her in a second and my hands, my mouth, were on her neck, her breasts, her mouth. Her naked flesh was hot and yielding and when I kissed her, she sucked on my plundering tongue like a starving beast. I wanted to fuck her immediately. I wanted to be so far inside her she could never disappear again. My want was only a beat away from wrath and I knew I could hurt her. I could fuck her and leave her wanting and still never be free.

  I turned her in my arms until her back was against my chest. I palmed her breasts while I bit the soft triangle between her neck and shoulder, twisting her nipples until she whimpered and sagged against me. I sucked her earlobe like it was her clit while she covered my hands and squeezed my fingers hard around her breasts.

  “Do you know what I’m doing?” I whispered as I guided her by memory to the sofa that stood in the middle of the room. I pushed her forward until her belly was against the rear of the sofa, then put one hand on the back of her neck and forced her to bend over. I felt her brace herself with her arms against the cushions as I slid my free hand between her legs from behind. She was wet, raging hot, and I slipped easily inside her.

  “Do you know what I’m doing?”

  “Oh, yes,” she cried, pushing back hard against my fingers. “You’re going to fuck me until I come. I’ve waited so long. Please. Please hurry please.”

  I filled her, but I wasn’t ready to give her what she wanted. I listened to her moan as she circled her hips, recognizing the sounds she made when she needed to come. Forcing back the urge to pound myself inside her, I gently slid my thumb into her ass. She made a high keening noise and I sensed her reaching for her clit.

  “No!” I released her neck and jerked her hand away from her cunt.

  “I need to come,” she panted. “Please. Just let me touch it.”

  “No.”

  I started to fuck her, front and back, slow deep strokes that made her cry out each time I buried myself. I bent over her back, my face against the curve of her neck, and fondled her breasts. I was close to coming but I didn’t care if I did or not. I listened to her excitement grow, her cries becoming long, wavering wails of pleasure.

  “My clit…hold my clit,” she moaned. “I can’t come unless you do… squeeze it…ooh please…”

  She was so hard her clit stood straight up, and I pinched it and pulled it the way I knew she liked. Her body stiffened and she turned to fire inside.
r />   “You’re making me come,” she screamed, pushing her hips back to impale her spasming cunt on my fingers. She clamped down hard and gushed into my hand and I struggled to hold her while she shuddered and cried.

  Then we were both on the floor and I was cradling her in my arms while she sighed and kissed my neck and made all the contented sounds I’d been living to hear.

  “Good?” I murmured, still fondling her swollen breasts.

  “Mmm, a really really hard one,” she said in a faraway voice.

  A minute passed while I savored her satisfaction. Then she stirred and kissed my neck again. “I have to go to work soon.”

  “Tomorrow night,” I said. “Do you know what you’ll be doing?”

  She cupped my crotch and squeezed my cunt until I gasped. “Yes. Do you?”

  “I’ll be waiting for your call.”

  Nick of Time

  When the phone rang, I knew I shouldn’t answer. Part of me craved a diversion, and that’s exactly why I hesitated. I didn’t have time to be distracted. Zero hour, D-day, the Moment of Truth—whatever the phrase for “the clock is ticking and you’re running out of time”—was written in big bold letters across the blank screen of my computer monitor.

  Second ring. I clenched my jaws, determined to be strong.

  Third ring. I ground my teeth.

  Fourth ring. I pressed both hands hard against my thighs.

  Fifth ring. Sweat broke out on my forehead.

  Sixth—I snatched up the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Did I catch you in the middle of a workout?”

  “Nope, I’m at my desk.”

  I leaned back and closed my eyes, picturing my best friend Carly. At 10:00 at night, she’d probably be curled up on the sofa with a book, her long runner’s legs bare and her riotous red curls disheveled because she unconsciously twisted the long locks around her finger as she read. We’d met on our first day of college at freshman orientation and had been practically inseparable ever since. We’d pledged the same sorority, ended up sharing a room, and throughout most of that year shared pretty much everything, even dating the same guys, although not at the same time. All that changed one night in the middle of commiserating about the unsatisfying state of our love lives because neither of us had been able to find anyone who could kiss, or do anything else to our satisfaction. We were sitting cross-legged on her bed, facing each other, wearing what we usually wore to bed. Big, long, loose T-shirts and nothing else. I can’t remember which guys we had been complaining about, but I distinctly remember Carly stopping in mid-rant and staring at me as if she’d never seen me before. Or maybe seeing me for the first time.

  “You know, you have a fantastic mouth.”

  “What?” I said stupidly.

  “Your lips,” Carly murmured, leaning forward so our knees touched. She braced her hand on my bare thigh as if she needed to keep her balance and traced my bottom lip with the index finger of her other hand. “They’re a beautiful color and so full.” She dipped her finger ever so slightly inside, and without thinking, I caught it with my teeth. She made a little sound of approval in the back of her throat, and I felt weak and hot, as if I’d been running for hours.

  I’d seen her naked. I’d touched her casually hundreds of times. I had told her things I’d never told another human being. There were things I didn’t know about myself, or hadn’t yet admitted, but Carly—Carly, I knew. But until that moment, I had never noticed there were tiny flecks of gold around the edges of her hazel irises. I hadn’t imagined that her fingertip running along the inside of my lip could feel as if she was stroking me deep inside. I had never once dreamed that the heat of her body could consume me when we weren’t even touching.

  “Carly, what—”

  “Shh,” she whispered. “You know.”

  Her lips were hot and wet, and when her tongue slipped gently into my mouth, I whimpered helplessly, wanting things I had no clue how to express. She took my hand and guided it beneath her T-shirt to her breast. Her nipple tightened against my palm, and she shivered and gave a little cry. That tiny, vulnerable gesture gave me the courage to follow my desperate desire.

  I guided her back onto the bed, following until I was lying on top of her, my thigh between hers, my hand traveling from one breast to the other, squeezing and fondling, exploring her with breathless wonder. I kissed her and got lost in her softness, in the sweet taste of her mouth—too lost to realize what her breathless cries meant until she clutched my shoulders and arched beneath me, her legs twisting around mine.

  “I think I’m coming,” she gasped.

  I remember holding my breath, my heart pounding so fiercely I thought it might burst and not caring if it did, so long as I lived long enough to watch her face while she came. She kept her eyes open and I couldn’t have looked away if someone had held a gun to my head. She let me see everything in her eyes—her need, her fears, her pleasure. I’ve never known anyone braver, before or since. I didn’t take a breath until she started to laugh.

  “Oh my God,” Carly half laughed, half sobbed. She wrapped her arms around my waist when I tried to pull away. “Oh my God, that was unbelievable.”

  My leg was still between hers and she was wet and hot and beautiful. I was—I don’t really know what I was, because I’d never felt anything like that before. Terrified, exhilarated, aching, in awe. Carly nudged me with her knee and I shuddered. Grinning, she turned her hand over and slid it between us, down my sweat-slick belly and between my legs. My head snapped back when she closed her fingers around me, and I thought I might pass out.

  “Just hold on,” Carly whispered as she held me and stroked me until I couldn’t hold on anymore. Then she held me and stroked me as I lay quivering in her arms.

  “Do you think this means…?” Carly whispered after a long time, and I answered, “I don’t know.”

  I wasn’t ready, but Carly was, and I’d never known Carly to run away from anything. So she ran toward her truth while I stumbled along behind. I took too long and she found a girlfriend. There have been a lot of girlfriends in the six years since then. For both of us. But the one constant in my life has been Carly.

  “You don’t sound like you’re working.” Carly’s voice called me back to the present. “You sound breathless.”

  I hadn’t been before, but I was now. I concentrated on sounding normal. “Actually, the correct term would be trying to work.”

  “You’re stuck?” Carly asked incredulously.

  I never suffered from writer’s block, and she knew it. It wasn’t writer’s block precisely, it was…boredom. “Not exactly. I’m just having trouble getting motivated.”

  “What are you writing?”

  I sighed. “I promised Vanessa a selection for her next anthology.”

  “The fantasy thing?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one.”

  “When is it due?”

  “Uh…” I glanced at the time on my computer. “In about two hours.”

  Carly burst out laughing. “I can’t believe you waited this long. You always get everything done weeks in advance. It’s disgusting.”

  “I know,” I said miserably. “I’ve been putting it off.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged and then realized she couldn’t see me. “It’s weird. Every time I sit down to write, my mind goes blank.”

  “No fantasies, hmmm?” Carly teased.

  I laughed. “Oh, I’ve got plenty of fantasies. But this isn’t supposed to be true confessions.”

  “You just need to get primed. Do a spinoff of one of yours.” Her voice held a note of challenge. “Come on, let’s practice. What’s your favorite fantasy?”

  “Forget it, Carly. I don’t do autobiographical erotica.”

  “I didn’t say write it. I said tell me. Or are you chicken?”

  “Chicken?” I heard a muffled sound as if the phone had been dropped. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting comfortable on the couch.
Stretching out so you can tell me a story.”

  I’d sat on that couch dozens of times, watching television with her, eating popcorn and sharing a bottle of wine. Sometimes she fell asleep. Sometimes we both did and woke up leaning against each other, as comfortable in each other’s space as a long-term couple. I pushed back my swivel chair and propped my feet on my desk. I always worked in sweats, so I felt pretty relaxed too.

  “Maybe I should write about one of your true-life adventures,” I goaded.

  “Like you’d know.”

  I’m not sure exactly why I said what I said next. I could tell she wanted me to do something, say something, but I wasn’t sure what. She was always a step ahead of me, and I was tired of trying to catch up and always getting there too late.

  “Well, there’s the night Lucy Carmichael went down on you in the middle of a pledge party.”

  I heard a gasp, then total silence, and I started to worry.

  “Carly?”

  “How did you know that? I never told anyone.”

  I suddenly realized I’d made a big mistake. As close as we were, there were still secrets between us. And I had just told Carly that something she thought had been a secret, wasn’t. I searched for a plausible story. But this was Carly, and though there might have been things I hadn’t told her, I wouldn’t lie.

  “I watched you.”

  “Where?” she whispered.

  I closed my eyes, picturing the dark room with a bed in the middle piled high with coats. There was just enough moonlight to see my way around the furniture as I crossed toward the bathroom. The party was in full swing downstairs, and when I’d finally gotten fed up with watching Lucy fall all over Carly, I decided to take a break upstairs. Just as I reached a hand inside the bathroom, feeling along the wall for the light switch, the bedroom door behind me banged open and two women stumbled in. Almost by instinct, I ducked into the dark bathroom. And then I recognized Carly’s voice. I peeked around the corner and saw she was with Lucy.

  “Whoa, hey, in a hurry?” Carly laughed as Lucy threw her down on the bed.