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Written by William Shakespeare. 1598 – England

SONNET 154

The little Love-god lying once asleep
Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,
Whilst many nymphs that vow’d chaste life to keep
Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand
The fairest votary took up that fire
Which many legions of true hearts had warm’d;
And so the general of hot desire
Was sleeping by a virgin hand disarm’d.
This brand she quenched in a cool well by,
Which from Love’s fire took heat perpetual,
Growing a bath and healthful remedy
For men diseased; but I, my mistress’ thrall,
Came there for cure, and this by that I prove,
Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.

SONNET 135

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,
And Will to boot, and Will in overplus;
More than enough am I that vex thee still,
To thy sweet will making addition thus.
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?
Shall will in others seem right gracious,
And in my will no fair acceptance shine?
The sea, all water, yet receives rain still,
And in abundance addeth to his store;
So thou, being rich in Will, add to thy Will
One will of mine to make thy large Will more.
Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;
Think all but one, and me in that one Will.

From: The Pearl  – Volume 7 (1880)  London

Printed for the Society of Vice

 Lady Beatrice Porkingham giving an Account of her Luxurious Adventures, both before and after her Marriage with Lord Crim-Con

PART IV.

(Continued.)

“Here they are, the sly things, why Beatrice is the hottest of the lot, see she has got Charles well in her,” laughed Lady Bertha; bringing a light into the room, and followed by all the others, looking very excited, and as if some of them at least had been doing the same; in fact I could see the front of John’s trousers were undone, whilst the flushed face of Lady Montairy, and the delighted manner in which she clung to the handsome young French page, assured me that she at least was on the best of terms with her partner, added to which, in the background, Bridget and Fanny seemed as loving as any of them from their damask cheeks and sparkling eyes.

Charles was dreadfully confused, and I felt that the surprise was taking all the vigour out of him, so with the greatest presence of mind, I threw my legs over his buttocks and embraced him more firmly than ever, as I exclaimed, “It’s this naughty fellow, my dear, has taken liberties with me, that I fainted from fear, and he is in complete possession of my virginity, and having aroused all my passions to the highest pitch he wants to withdraw, slap his bottom well for me, and make him now complete my pleasure, after satisfying his own greedy lustfulness!”

He struggled hard to get away but I held him tightly, whilst all of them slapped him without mercy, making him fairly bound in the saddle to my great delight, more especially when I soon found him swelling up quite an unnatural stiffness, till his prick was almost breaking my quim, and he was furiously fucking with all his might, as he cried out for them to leave off and let him do it properly.

The noise of the slaps on his bum seemed to give me intense delight and I never remember to have had a more delicious fucking, which as he had spent twice previously lasted a long good bout, till we both came together almost frantic with delight, as our mutual essences were commingled at the same moment.

“There, don’t let me catch any two of you slipping away by themselves again,” said Lady Montairy, as she gave a last tremendous slap, which fairly made the poor fellow bound under her hand, in spite of his exhaustive spend. “It spoils half the fun, when some are so sly, and pretend to be mock-modest when at the same time they are quite or more inclined for the sport than anyone.”

All returned to the drawing-room and refreshed ourselves with champagne, jellies and other reinvigorating delicacies, as we laughed and bantered the four young fellows and the two lady’s-maids about their sweethearts and love experiences, till Bertha wrote all the names of the female members of our party on slips of paper, which she said she would hold for the boys to draw their prizes, declaring that Bridget and Fanny, if drawn, should submit to be fucked, although they protested their virginity and determination to keep it for the present, much as they enjoyed the other fun.

First of all she asked us to assist her in stripping our cavaliers quite naked, in order that we might enjoy the sight of their adolescent beauties (John, the eldest, being only nineteen). They were finely formed young fellows, but the splendid proportions of Master Charlie’s penis carried off the honours of the evening, being more than eight inches long and very thick. My lady friends were in ecstasies at the sight, and almost made the other three young fellows jealous by each wishing he might draw them for a partner.

“Now there shall be no deception or cheating; I’ve a novel idea how the lots shall be drawn,” said Bertha, drawing up her clothes till she showed the beautiful lips of her luscious cunt, just peeping out between the slit in her drawers as her legs were wide apart; then drawing me close to her side she gave me the slips of paper and whispered in my ear to arrange them in her cunt with the seven ends just sticking out. It was soon done, then our gentlemen had to kneel down in front and each one drew his paper with his mouth.

This was a jolly bit of fun, Bertha looked as if she would have liked to be fucked by all four instead of merely having them draw lots from her gap, which was so tickled as they drew out the papers that she actually spent under the novel excitement.

John drew Bridget; James, Lady Montairy; Charles, Bertha, whilst I was lucky enough to get the handsome Lucien, who had been eyeing me with a most amorous leer, which you may be sure did not in the least offend me.

Corisande and Fanny were told to fit themselves with a couple of most artistically moulded india-rubber dildoes of a very natural size and not too large, which Lady St. Aldegonde said her husband had procured for the purpose of having his lady bottom-fuck himself occasionally, when he wanted extra stimulation. “And now my dear, they will be very useful in enabling you to give these nice youths the double pleasure as they enjoy their partners.”

The ladies were now also divested of everything, till the complete party were in a state of buff, excepting the pretty boots and stockings, which I always think look far sweeter than naked legs and feet.

The interest centred in the engagement between Bertha and Charles, as the others were all anxious to see the working of his fine prick in her splendid cunt. He was in a very rampant state of anticipation, so she laid him at full length on his back, on a soft springy couch, then stretching across his legs she first bent down her head to kiss and lubricate the fine prick with her mouth, then placing herself right over him gradually sheathed his grand instrument within her longing cunt, pressing down upon him, with her lips glued to his, as she seemed to enjoy the sense of possessing it all. I motioned to her bottom with my finger, and Fanny, understanding my ideas, at once mounted up behind her mistress and brought the head of her well-cold-creamed dildoe to the charge against her brown-wrinkled bottom-hole, at the same time clasping her hands round Bertha, one hand feeling Charlie’s fine prick, whilst the fingers of her other were tickling the fine clitoris of our mistress of the ceremonies. It was a delightful tableau, and it awfully excited us all when they at once plunged into a course of most delicious fucking. Fanny was as excited as either of them as she vigorously dildoed her mistress, and kept her hands stimulating them in front. Corisande now attacked Fanny behind with her dildoe, delighting her with frigging combined.

How they screamed with delight, and spent over and over again; it is impossible to describe, but I had got Lucien’s fine prick in my hand as we were kissing and indulging in every possible caress. It throbbed in my grasp as I repeatedly drew back the foreskin, till at length fearing he would spend over my hand, I sank back on a sofa, and drew him upon me, guiding his affair to my longing cunt, whilst he clasped me round the body and kissed more ardently than ever. I could see all that was going on round the room, Lady Bertha still riding furiously on Charles, stimulated by the double exertions of Fanny and Corisande, and watched with delight the frenzied enjoyment of the lady’s-maid, as she handled and felt how Charles was going on in front, whilst her young mistress’s dildoe almost drove her to distraction by its exciting movements in her bottom.(To be continued.)

 

From: The Pearl  – Volume 1 (1879)  London

Printed for the Society of Vice

(Written by S. Johnson, LL.D.)

Spoke by Miss Bella de Lancy, on her retiring from the Stage to open a Fashionable Bawdy House.

When cunt first triumphed (as the learned suppose)
O’er failing pricks, Immortal Dildo rose,
From fucks unnumbered, still erect he drew,
Exhausted cunts, and then demanded new;
Dame Nature saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting pricks toiled after him in vain;
The laxest folds, the deepest depths he filled;
The juiciest drained; the toughest hymens drilled.
The fair lay gasping with distended limbs,
And unremitting cockstands stormed their quims.
Then Frigging came, instructed from the school,
And scorned the aid of India-rubber tool.
With restless finger, fired the dormant blood,
Till Clitoris rose, sly, peeping thro’ her hood.
“Gently was worked this titillating art,
It broke no hymen, and scarce stretched the part;
Yet lured its votaries to a sudden doom,
And stamped Consumption’s flush on Beauty’s bloom.
Sweet Gamahuche found softer ways to fame,
It asked not Dildo’s art, nor Frigging’s flame.
Tongue, not prick, now probes the central hole,
And mouth, not cunt, becomes prick’s destined goal.
It always found a sympathetic friend;
And pleased limp pricks, and those who could not spend,
No tedious wait, for laboured stand, delays
The hot and pouting cunt, which tongue allays.
The taste was luscious, tho’ the smell was strong;
The fuck was easy, and would last so long.

by Anonymous, England 1873

We caressed each other with such mutual satisfaction that nature soon drove us to a closer and more active union of the bodies. Fondly embracing one another, we approached the bed, and being equally excited threw ourselves upon it, and, in the exquisite contact of our naked flesh, enjoyed a long, long bout of love, in which my most charming companion exhibited all the resources of amorous enjoyment. Never shall I forget the luxury of that embrace. She checked my natural tendency to rush at once to a completion. I think we must have enjoyed the raptures of that embrace fully half an hour before bringing on the grand finale, in which my active companion showed the extraordinary suppleness of her delicious body by throwing her legs over my back, pushing my bottom forward with her heels, and raising and sinking her bottom in unison with each thrust of my terribly stiff prick, which seemed to swell and become thicker and harder than ever. In retiring from each thrust, her cunt seemed to close upon my prick with the force of a pair of pincers. We both came to the ecstatic moment at the same time, and both actually screamed with delight; my ardent mistress in her fury of excitement actually bit my shoulder and drew blood; but I felt it not — I was in the seventh heaven of delight, and lay for long almost insensible on her beauteous body, clasped in her loving arms. On coming to our senses: “Oh, my beloved boy,” she said, “never, never, have I experienced such pleasure. You are a perfect angel. I only fear I shall come to love you too much.” We turned on our sides without dislodging the dear instrument of our enjoyment, and my lovely friend prattled on and delighted me with her toying, embracing, and gaiety. My prick had once more swelled up, and I wished to quietly enjoy a fuck in the luxurious position in which we lay; but my lovely friend said —  “That must not be, my dear Charles, I must consider your health. You have already done more than your age warrants, and you must rise and go to your bed to recover, by a sound sleep, your strength.” “But feel how strong I am,” and I gave a forcible thrust into her glowing and well-moistened sheath. But, though she certainly was greatly excited, she suddenly turned round and unseated me, and drew away from me, refusing to take it again. As she was quite naked, the movements of her beauteous form were most graceful and enchanting, and one leg being thrown backwards left her lovely cunt full in view, and actually gaping open before me. Seized with the strongest desire to suck and kiss it, as I had done the night before, I begged that at least she would grant me that last favour, as it could not in any way do me harm. To this she readily consented, and lay down on her back, opening her glorious thighs, and with a pillow under her bottom so as to raise up her cunt into a better position for me to gamahuche her, as she called it.

Before letting me begin, she said —  “My dear Charles, do you see that little projection at the upper part of my quim, that is my clitoris, and is the site of the most exquisite sensation; you see it is rather hard, even now, but you will find as you titillate it with your tongue or suck it, that it will become harder and more projecting, so apply your lips there.” I did as my lovely mistress desired, and soon found it stiffen and stand up nearly an inch into my mouth.

The convulsive twitches of her buttocks, the pressure forward of her hand on my head, all proved the exquisite felicity my lovely friend was enjoying. I slipped my hand under my chin — the position was awkward, but I managed to thrust my thumb into her cunt. My forefinger was somewhat in the way — but finding it exactly opposite the rosy hole of her bottom, and all being very moist there, I pushed it forward and it easily entered. I could not move my hand very actively, but I continued to gently draw my finger and thumb a little back together, and then thrust forward again. It seemed to add immensely to the pleasure I was giving her; her whole body quivered with excessive excitement. My head was pressed so firmly against her cunt that I had difficulty in breathing, but I managed to keep up the action of tongue and fingers until I brought on the exquisite crisis — her buttocks rose, her hand pressed hard on my head and her two powerful and fleshy thighs closed on my cheeks on each side and fixed me as if in a vice, while she poured down into my mouth and all over my chin, neck, and hand a perfect rush of sperm, and then lay in convulsive movements of enjoyment, hardly knowing what she was doing. As she held me so fast in every way, I continued to lick up the delicious discharge, and continued at the same time to pass my tongue over her clitoris. This, by producing a new excitement, brought her senses round. So relaxing her hold of me with her thighs she said —  “Oh, my darling Charles, come up to my arms that I may kiss you for the exquisite delight you have given me.” I did so, but took care, in drawing myself up, to engroove my stiff-standing prick in the wellmoistened open cunt that lay raised on a pillow so conveniently in the way.

“Oh, you sad traitor,” cried my sweet companion. “No, I cannot, I must not allow it,” but I held her tight round the waist, and her position was too favourable for me to be easily unhorsed.

“Ah! you must not, my dear boy. If you will not consider yourself, consider me. I shall be quite exhausted.” I shut her mouth with my kisses and tongue, and soon the active movements I was making within her charming vagina exercised their usual influence on her lubricity, so as to make her as eager for the fray as myself.

“Stop, my dear Charles, and you shall have it in a new position, which will give you as much more pleasure as it will me.” “You are not going to cheat me, are you?” “Oh, no! my darling, I am now as much on fire as you are —  withdraw.” I obeyed, half in fear. My fair mistress turned herself round, and getting on her hands and knees, presented to my ardent gaze her magnificent bottom. I thought she meant me to once more put it into the rosy little orifice, and said so.

“Oh! no,” she replied, “not there”; but putting her hand under her belly, and projecting it backwards between her thighs, she said —  “Give it me and I will guide it into the proper place.” Before doing so I stooped forward and pushing my face between the glorious cheeks of her bottom, sought and found the lovely little orifice, kissed it, and thrust my tongue in.

“Oh! don’t Charles, dear, you tickle me so,” then flinching, and squeezing her buttocks together, I had nothing for it but to put my prick in her hand. She immediately guided it to and engulfed it in her burning cunt up to the very hair. I found I apparently got in fully an inch further this way — the position also gave my beautiful instructress more power of pressure on my prick — then her glorious buttocks, heaving under my movements, and exposed in all their immensity, was most exciting and beautiful. I seized her below the waist with a hand upon each hip, pressing her magnificent backside against me each time that I thrust forward. Oh! it was indeed glorious to see. I was beside myself, and furious with the excitement the view of all these charms produced upon me. My charming mistress seemed equally to enjoy it, as was evinced by the splendid movements of her body; till at last overcome by the grand finale, she sank forward on her belly, and I followed on her back, without losing the position of my throbbing prick within her. We both lay for some time incapable of movement, but the internal squeezing and convulsive pressure of her cunt on my softened, but still enlarged prick, were exquisite beyond imagining. At last she begged me to relieve her. Getting out of bed, she sighed deeply, kissed me tenderly, and said, “My dear Charles, we must not be so extravagant in future, it will destroy us both — come, let me see you to your bed.” The sight of my lovely mistress standing naked in all the glory of her beauty and perfection of form began to have its usual effect upon my prick, which showed symptoms of raising his head again; she gave it a pat, stooped down, and for a moment plunged its head into her beautiful mouth, then seizing my night-shirt, she threw it over my head and conducted me to my own bed, put me in, tucked me up, and tenderly kissing me, left the room, first unlocking my door and then locking the door of communication between the two rooms. Thus passed the first glorious night of my initiation into all the rites of Venus, and at the hands of a lovely, fresh and beautiful woman, who had only been married long enough to make her a perfect adept in the art. Never, oh never! have I passed such a night. Many and many a fine woman, perfect too in the art of fucking, have I enjoyed, but the novelty and the charm, the variety and the superiority of the teacher, all combined to make this night the ne plus ultra of erotic pleasure.

 

Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare, 1593 C.E. England

EVEN as the sun with purple-colour’d face

Had ta’en his last leave of the weeping morn,

Rose-cheek’d Adonis hied him to the chase;

Hunting he loved, but love he laugh’d to scorn;

Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him,

And like a bold-faced suitor ‘gins to woo him.

‘Thrice-fairer than myself,’ thus she began,

‘The field’s chief flower, sweet above compare,

Stain to all nymphs, more lovely than a man,

More white and red than doves or roses are;

Nature that made thee, with herself at strife,

Saith that the world hath ending with thy life.

‘Vouchsafe, thou wonder, to alight thy steed,

And rein his proud head to the saddle-bow;

If thou wilt deign this favour, for thy meed

A thousand honey secrets shalt thou know:

Here come and sit, where never serpent hisses,

And being set, I’ll smother thee with kisses;

‘And yet not cloy thy lips with loathed satiety,

But rather famish them amid their plenty,

Making them red and pale with fresh variety,

Ten kisses short as one, one long as twenty:

A summer’s day will seem an hour but short,

Being wasted in such time-beguiling sport.’

With this she seizeth on his sweating palm,

The precedent of pith and livelihood,

And trembling in her passion, calls it balm,

Earth’s sovereign salve to do a goddess good:

Being so enraged, desire doth lend her force

Courageously to pluck him from his horse.

Over one arm the lusty courser’s rein,

Under her other was the tender boy,

Who blush’d and pouted in a dull disdain,

With leaden appetite, unapt to toy;

She red and hot as coals of glowing fire,

He red for shame, but frosty in desire.

The studded bridle on a ragged bough

Nimbly she fastens:–O, how quick is love!–

The steed is stalled up, and even now

To tie the rider she begins to prove:

Backward she push’d him, as she would be thrust,

And govern’d him in strength, though not in lust.

So soon was she along as he was down,

Each leaning on their elbows and their hips:

Now doth she stroke his cheek, now doth he frown,

And ‘gins to chide, but soon she stops his lips;

And kissing speaks, with lustful language broken,

‘If thou wilt chide, thy lips shall never open.’

He burns with bashful shame: she with her tears

Doth quench the maiden burning of his cheeks;

Then with her windy sighs and golden hairs

To fan and blow them dry again she seeks:

He saith she is immodest, blames her ‘miss;

What follows more she murders with a kiss.

Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast,

Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh and bone,

Shaking her wings, devouring all in haste,

Till either gorge be stuff’d or prey be gone;

Even so she kissed his brow, his cheek, his chin,

And where she ends she doth anew begin.

Forced to content, but never to obey,

Panting he lies and breatheth in her face;

She feedeth on the steam as on a prey,

And calls it heavenly moisture, air of grace;

Wishing her cheeks were gardens full of flowers,

So they were dew’d with such distilling showers.

Look, how a bird lies tangled in a net,

So fasten’d in her arms Adonis lies;

Pure shame and awed resistance made him fret,

Which bred more beauty in his angry eyes:

Rain added to a river that is rank

Perforce will force it overflow the bank.

Still she entreats, and prettily entreats,

For to a pretty ear she tunes her tale;

Still is he sullen, still he lours and frets,

‘Twixt crimson shame and anger ashy-pale:

Being red, she loves him best; and being white,

Her best is better’d with a more delight.

Look how he can, she cannot choose but love;

And by her fair immortal hand she swears,

From his soft bosom never to remove,

Till he take truce with her contending tears,

Which long have rain’d, making her cheeks all wet;

And one sweet kiss shall pay this countless debt.

Upon this promise did he raise his chin,

Like a dive-dapper peering through a wave,

Who, being look’d on, ducks as quickly in;

So offers he to give what she did crave;

But when her lips were ready for his pay,

He winks, and turns his lips another way.

Never did passenger in summer’s heat

More thirst for drink than she for this good turn.

Her help she sees, but help she cannot get;

She bathes in water, yet her fire must burn:

‘O, pity,’ ‘gan she cry, ‘flint-hearted boy!

‘Tis but a kiss I beg; why art thou coy?

‘I have been woo’d, as I entreat thee now,

Even by the stern and direful god of war,

Whose sinewy neck in battle ne’er did bow,

Who conquers where he comes in every jar;

Yet hath he been my captive and my slave,

And begg’d for that which thou unask’d shalt have.

‘Over my altars hath he hung his lance,

His batter’d shield, his uncontrolled crest,

And for my sake hath learn’d to sport and dance,

To toy, to wanton, dally, smile and jest,

Scorning his churlish drum and ensign red,

Making my arms his field, his tent my bed.

‘Thus he that overruled I oversway’d,

Leading him prisoner in a red-rose chain:

Strong-tempered steel his stronger strength obey’d,

Yet was he servile to my coy disdain.

O, be not proud, nor brag not of thy might,

For mastering her that foil’d the god of fight!

‘Touch but my lips with those fair lips of thine,–

Though mine be not so fair, yet are they red–

The kiss shall be thine own as well as mine.

What seest thou in the ground? hold up thy head:

Look in mine eye-balls, there thy beauty lies;

Then why not lips on lips, since eyes in eyes?

‘Art thou ashamed to kiss? then wink again,

And I will wink; so shall the day seem night;

Love keeps his revels where they are but twain;

Be bold to play, our sport is not in sight:

These blue-vein’d violets whereon we lean

Never can blab, nor know not what we mean.

‘The tender spring upon thy tempting lip

Shows thee unripe; yet mayst thou well be tasted:

Make use of time, let not advantage slip;

Beauty within itself should not be wasted:

Fair flowers that are not gather’d in their prime

Rot and consume themselves in little time.

‘Were I hard-favour’d, foul, or wrinkled-old,

Ill-nurtured, crooked, churlish, harsh in voice,

O’erworn, despised, rheumatic and cold,

Thick-sighted, barren, lean and lacking juice,

Then mightst thou pause, for then I were not for thee

But having no defects, why dost abhor me?

‘Thou canst not see one wrinkle in my brow;

Mine eyes are gray and bright and quick in turning:

My beauty as the spring doth yearly grow,

My flesh is soft and plump, my marrow burning;

My smooth moist hand, were it with thy hand felt,

Would in thy palm dissolve, or seem to melt.

‘Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear,

Or, like a fairy, trip upon the green,

Or, like a nymph, with long dishevell’d hair,

Dance on the sands, and yet no footing seen:

Love is a spirit all compact of fire,

Not gross to sink, but light, and will aspire.

‘Witness this primrose bank whereon I lie;

These forceless flowers like sturdy trees support me;

Two strengthless doves will draw me through the sky,

From morn till night, even where I list to sport me:

Is love so light, sweet boy, and may it be

That thou shouldst think it heavy unto thee?

‘Is thine own heart to thine own face affected?

Can thy right hand seize love upon thy left?

Then woo thyself, be of thyself rejected,

Steal thine own freedom and complain on theft.

Narcissus so himself himself forsook,

And died to kiss his shadow in the brook.

‘Torches are made to light, jewels to wear,

Dainties to taste, fresh beauty for the use,

Herbs for their smell, and sappy plants to bear:

Things growing to themselves are growth’s abuse:

Seeds spring from seeds and beauty breedeth beauty;

Thou wast begot; to get it is thy duty.

‘Upon the earth’s increase why shouldst thou feed,

Unless the earth with thy increase be fed?

By law of nature thou art bound to breed,

That thine may live when thou thyself art dead;

And so, in spite of death, thou dost survive,

In that thy likeness still is left alive.’

By this the love-sick queen began to sweat,

For where they lay the shadow had forsook them,

And Titan, tired in the mid-day heat,

With burning eye did hotly overlook them;

Wishing Adonis had his team to guide,

So he were like him and by Venus’ side.

And now Adonis, with a lazy spright,

And with a heavy, dark, disliking eye,

His louring brows o’erwhelming his fair sight,

Like misty vapours when they blot the sky,

Souring his cheeks cries ‘Fie, no more of love!

The sun doth burn my face: I must remove.’

‘Ay me,’ quoth Venus, ‘young, and so unkind?

What bare excuses makest thou to be gone!

I’ll sigh celestial breath, whose gentle wind

Shall cool the heat of this descending sun:

I’ll make a shadow for thee of my hairs;

If they burn too, I’ll quench them with my tears.

‘The sun that shines from heaven shines but warm,

And, lo, I lie between that sun and thee:

The heat I have from thence doth little harm,

Thine eye darts forth the fire that burneth me;

And were I not immortal, life were done

Between this heavenly and earthly sun.

‘Art thou obdurate, flinty, hard as steel,

Nay, more than flint, for stone at rain relenteth?

Art thou a woman’s son, and canst not feel

What ’tis to love? how want of love tormenteth?

O, had thy mother borne so hard a mind,

She had not brought forth thee, but died unkind.

‘What am I, that thou shouldst contemn me this?

Or what great danger dwells upon my suit?

What were thy lips the worse for one poor kiss?

Speak, fair; but speak fair words, or else be mute:

Give me one kiss, I’ll give it thee again,

And one for interest, if thou wilt have twain.

‘Fie, lifeless picture, cold and senseless stone,

Well-painted idol, image dun and dead,

Statue contenting but the eye alone,

Thing like a man, but of no woman bred!

Thou art no man, though of a man’s complexion,

For men will kiss even by their own direction.’

This said, impatience chokes her pleading tongue,

And swelling passion doth provoke a pause;

Red cheeks and fiery eyes blaze forth he wrong;

Being judge in love, she cannot right her cause:

And now she weeps, and now she fain would speak,

And now her sobs do her intendments break.

Sometimes she shakes her head and then his hand,

Now gazeth she on him, now on the ground;

Sometimes her arms infold him like a band:

She would, he will not in her arms be bound;

And when from thence he struggles to be gone,

She locks her lily fingers one in one.

‘Fondling,’ she saith, ‘since I have hemm’d thee here

Within the circuit of this ivory pale,

I’ll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;

Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale:

Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry,

Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.

Within this limit is relief enough,

Sweet bottom-grass and high delightful plain,

Round rising hillocks, brakes obscure and rough,

To shelter thee from tempest and from rain

Then be my deer, since I am such a park;

No dog shall rouse thee, though a thousand bark.’

At this Adonis smiles as in disdain,

That in each cheek appears a pretty dimple:

Love made those hollows, if himself were slain,

He might be buried in a tomb so simple;

Foreknowing well, if there he came to lie,

Why, there Love lived and there he could not die.

These lovely caves, these round enchanting pits,

Open’d their mouths to swallow Venus’ liking.

Being mad before, how doth she now for wits?

Struck dead at first, what needs a second striking?

Poor queen of love, in thine own law forlorn,

To love a cheek that smiles at thee in scorn!

Now which way shall she turn? what shall she say?

Her words are done, her woes are more increasing;

The time is spent, her object will away,

And from her twining arms doth urge releasing.

‘Pity,’ she cries, ‘some favour, some remorse!’

Away he springs and hasteth to his horse.

But, lo, from forth a copse that neighbors by,

A breeding jennet, lusty, young and proud,

Adonis’ trampling courser doth espy,

And forth she rushes, snorts and neighs aloud:

The strong-neck’d steed, being tied unto a tree,

Breaketh his rein, and to her straight goes he.

Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds,

And now his woven girths he breaks asunder;

The bearing earth with his hard hoof he wounds,

Whose hollow womb resounds like heaven’s thunder;

The iron bit he crusheth ‘tween his teeth,

Controlling what he was controlled with.

His ears up-prick’d; his braided hanging mane

Upon his compass’d crest now stand on end;

His nostrils drink the air, and forth again,

As from a furnace, vapours doth he send:

His eye, which scornfully glisters like fire,

Shows his hot courage and his high desire.

Sometime he trots, as if he told the steps,

With gentle majesty and modest pride;

Anon he rears upright, curvets and leaps,

As who should say ‘Lo, thus my strength is tried,

And this I do to captivate the eye

Of the fair breeder that is standing by.’

What recketh he his rider’s angry stir,

His flattering ‘Holla,’ or his ‘Stand, I say’?

What cares he now for curb or pricking spur?

For rich caparisons or trapping gay?

He sees his love, and nothing else he sees,

For nothing else with his proud sight agrees.

Look, when a painter would surpass the life,

In limning out a well-proportion’d steed,

His art with nature’s workmanship at strife,

As if the dead the living should exceed;

So did this horse excel a common one

In shape, in courage, colour, pace and bone.

Round-hoof’d, short-jointed, fetlocks shag and long,

Broad breast, full eye, small head and nostril wide,

High crest, short ears, straight legs and passing strong,

Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide:

Look, what a horse should have he did not lack,

Save a proud rider on so proud a back.

Sometime he scuds far off and there he stares;

Anon he starts at stirring of a feather;

To bid the wind a base he now prepares,

And whether he run or fly they know not whether;

For through his mane and tail the high wind sings,

Fanning the hairs, who wave like feather’d wings.

He looks upon his love and neighs unto her;

She answers him as if she knew his mind:

Being proud, as females are, to see him woo her,

She puts on outward strangeness, seems unkind,

Spurns at his love and scorns the heat he feels,

Beating his kind embracements with her heels.

Then, like a melancholy malcontent,

He veils his tail that, like a falling plume,

Cool shadow to his melting buttock lent:

He stamps and bites the poor flies in his fume.

His love, perceiving how he is enraged,

Grew kinder, and his fury was assuaged.

His testy master goeth about to take him;

When, lo, the unback’d breeder, full of fear,

Jealous of catching, swiftly doth forsake him,

With her the horse, and left Adonis there:

As they were mad, unto the wood they hie them,

Out-stripping crows that strive to over-fly them.

All swoln with chafing, down Adonis sits,

Banning his boisterous and unruly beast:

And now the happy season once more fits,

That love-sick Love by pleading may be blest;

For lovers say, the heart hath treble wrong

When it is barr’d the aidance of the tongue.

An oven that is stopp’d, or river stay’d,

Burneth more hotly, swelleth with more rage:

So of concealed sorrow may be said;

Free vent of words love’s fire doth assuage;

But when the heart’s attorney once is mute,

The client breaks, as desperate in his suit.

He sees her coming, and begins to glow,

Even as a dying coal revives with wind,

And with his bonnet hides his angry brow;

Looks on the dull earth with disturbed mind,

Taking no notice that she is so nigh,

For all askance he holds her in his eye.

O, what a sight it was, wistly to view

How she came stealing to the wayward boy!

To note the fighting conflict of her hue,

How white and red each other did destroy!

But now her cheek was pale, and by and by

It flash’d forth fire, as lightning from the sky.

Now was she just before him as he sat,

And like a lowly lover down she kneels;

With one fair hand she heaveth up his hat,

Her other tender hand his fair cheek feels:

His tenderer cheek receives her soft hand’s print,

As apt as new-fall’n snow takes any dint.

O, what a war of looks was then between them!

Her eyes petitioners to his eyes suing;

His eyes saw her eyes as they had not seen them;

Her eyes woo’d still, his eyes disdain’d the wooing:

And all this dumb play had his acts made plain

With tears, which, chorus-like, her eyes did rain.

Full gently now she takes him by the hand,

A lily prison’d in a gaol of snow,

Or ivory in an alabaster band;

So white a friend engirts so white a foe:

This beauteous combat, wilful and unwilling,

Show’d like two silver doves that sit a-billing.

Once more the engine of her thoughts began:

‘O fairest mover on this mortal round,

Would thou wert as I am, and I a man,

My heart all whole as thine, thy heart my wound;

For one sweet look thy help I would assure thee,

Though nothing but my body’s bane would cure thee!

‘Give me my hand,’ saith he, ‘why dost thou feel it?’

‘Give me my heart,’ saith she, ‘and thou shalt have it:

O, give it me, lest thy hard heart do steel it,

And being steel’d, soft sighs can never grave it:

Then love’s deep groans I never shall regard,

Because Adonis’ heart hath made mine hard.’

‘For shame,’ he cries, ‘let go, and let me go;

My day’s delight is past, my horse is gone,

And ’tis your fault I am bereft him so:

I pray you hence, and leave me here alone;

For all my mind, my thought, my busy care,

Is how to get my palfrey from the mare.’

Thus she replies: ‘Thy palfrey, as he should,

Welcomes the warm approach of sweet desire:

Affection is a coal that must be cool’d;

Else, suffer’d, it will set the heart on fire:

The sea hath bounds, but deep desire hath none;

Therefore no marvel though thy horse be gone.

‘How like a jade he stood, tied to the tree,

Servilely master’d with a leathern rein!

But when he saw his love, his youth’s fair fee,

He held such petty bondage in disdain;

Throwing the base thong from his bending crest,

Enfranchising his mouth, his back, his breast.

‘Who sees his true-love in her naked bed,

Teaching the sheets a whiter hue than white,

But, when his glutton eye so full hath fed,

His other agents aim at like delight?

Who is so faint, that dare not be so bold

To touch the fire, the weather being cold?

‘Let me excuse thy courser, gentle boy;

And learn of him, I heartily beseech thee,

To take advantage on presented joy;

Though I were dumb, yet his proceedings teach thee;

O, learn to love; the lesson is but plain,

And once made perfect, never lost again.’

I know not love,’ quoth he, ‘nor will not know it,

Unless it be a boar, and then I chase it;

‘Tis much to borrow, and I will not owe it;

My love to love is love but to disgrace it;

For I have heard it is a life in death,

That laughs and weeps, and all but with a breath.

‘Who wears a garment shapeless and unfinish’d?

Who plucks the bud before one leaf put forth?

If springing things be any jot diminish’d,

They wither in their prime, prove nothing worth:

The colt that’s back’d and burden’d being young

Loseth his pride and never waxeth strong.

‘You hurt my hand with wringing; let us part,

And leave this idle theme, this bootless chat:

Remove your siege from my unyielding heart;

To love’s alarms it will not ope the gate:

Dismiss your vows, your feigned tears, your flattery;

For where a heart is hard they make no battery.’

‘What! canst thou talk?’ quoth she, ‘hast thou a tongue?

O, would thou hadst not, or I had no hearing!

Thy mermaid’s voice hath done me double wrong;

I had my load before, now press’d with bearing:

Melodious discord, heavenly tune harshsounding,

Ear’s deep-sweet music, and heart’s deep-sore wounding.

‘Had I no eyes but ears, my ears would love

That inward beauty and invisible;

Or were I deaf, thy outward parts would move

Each part in me that were but sensible:

Though neither eyes nor ears, to hear nor see,

Yet should I be in love by touching thee.

‘Say, that the sense of feeling were bereft me,

And that I could not see, nor hear, nor touch,

And nothing but the very smell were left me,

Yet would my love to thee be still as much;

For from the stillitory of thy face excelling

Comes breath perfumed that breedeth love by

smelling.

‘But, O, what banquet wert thou to the taste,

Being nurse and feeder of the other four!

Would they not wish the feast might ever last,

And bid Suspicion double-lock the door,

Lest Jealousy, that sour unwelcome guest,

Should, by his stealing in, disturb the feast?’

Once more the ruby-colour’d portal open’d,

Which to his speech did honey passage yield;

Like a red morn, that ever yet betoken’d

Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field,

Sorrow to shepherds, woe unto the birds,

Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds.

This ill presage advisedly she marketh:

Even as the wind is hush’d before it raineth,

Or as the wolf doth grin before he barketh,

Or as the berry breaks before it staineth,

Or like the deadly bullet of a gun,

His meaning struck her ere his words begun.

And at his look she flatly falleth down,

For looks kill love and love by looks reviveth;

A smile recures the wounding of a frown;

But blessed bankrupt, that by love so thriveth!

The silly boy, believing she is dead,

Claps her pale cheek, till clapping makes it red;

And all amazed brake off his late intent,

For sharply he did think to reprehend her,

Which cunning love did wittily prevent:

Fair fall the wit that can so well defend her!

For on the grass she lies as she were slain,

Till his breath breatheth life in her again.

He wrings her nose, he strikes her on the cheeks,

He bends her fingers, holds her pulses hard,

He chafes her lips; a thousand ways he seeks

To mend the hurt that his unkindness marr’d:

He kisses her; and she, by her good will,

Will never rise, so he will kiss her still.

The night of sorrow now is turn’d to day:

Her two blue windows faintly she up-heaveth,

Like the fair sun, when in his fresh array

He cheers the morn and all the earth relieveth;

And as the bright sun glorifies the sky,

So is her face illumined with her eye;

Whose beams upon his hairless face are fix’d,

As if from thence they borrow’d all their shine.

Were never four such lamps together mix’d,

Had not his clouded with his brow’s repine;

But hers, which through the crystal tears gave light,

Shone like the moon in water seen by night.

‘O, where am I?’ quoth she, ‘in earth or heaven,

Or in the ocean drench’d, or in the fire?

What hour is this? or morn or weary even?

Do I delight to die, or life desire?

But now I lived, and life was death’s annoy;

But now I died, and death was lively joy.

‘O, thou didst kill me: kill me once again:

Thy eyes’ shrewd tutor, that hard heart of thine,

Hath taught them scornful tricks and such disdain

That they have murder’d this poor heart of mine;

And these mine eyes, true leaders to their queen,

But for thy piteous lips no more had seen.

‘Long may they kiss each other, for this cure!

O, never let their crimson liveries wear!

And as they last, their verdure still endure,

To drive infection from the dangerous year!

That the star-gazers, having writ on death,

May say, the plague is banish’d by thy breath.

‘Pure lips, sweet seals in my soft lips imprinted,

What bargains may I make, still to be sealing?

To sell myself I can be well contented,

So thou wilt buy and pay and use good dealing;

Which purchase if thou make, for fear of slips

Set thy seal-manual on my wax-red lips.

‘A thousand kisses buys my heart from me;

And pay them at thy leisure, one by one.

What is ten hundred touches unto thee?

Are they not quickly told and quickly gone?

Say, for non-payment that the debt should double,

Is twenty hundred kisses such a trouble?

‘Fair queen,’ quoth he, ‘if any love you owe me,

Measure my strangeness with my unripe years:

Before I know myself, seek not to know me;

No fisher but the ungrown fry forbears:

The mellow plum doth fall, the green sticks fast,

Or being early pluck’d is sour to taste.

‘Look, the world’s comforter, with weary gait,

His day’s hot task hath ended in the west;

The owl, night’s herald, shrieks, ”Tis very late;’

The sheep are gone to fold, birds to their nest,

And coal-black clouds that shadow heaven’s light

Do summon us to part and bid good night.

‘Now let me say ‘Good night,’ and so say you;

If you will say so, you shall have a kiss.’

‘Good night,’ quoth she, and, ere he says ‘Adieu,’

The honey fee of parting tender’d is:

Her arms do lend his neck a sweet embrace;

Incorporate then they seem; face grows to face.

Till, breathless, he disjoin’d, and backward drew

The heavenly moisture, that sweet coral mouth,

Whose precious taste her thirsty lips well knew,

Whereon they surfeit, yet complain on drouth:

He with her plenty press’d, she faint with dearth

Their lips together glued, fall to the earth.

Now quick desire hath caught the yielding prey,

And glutton-like she feeds, yet never filleth;

Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey,

Paying what ransom the insulter willeth;

Whose vulture thought doth pitch the price so high,

That she will draw his lips’ rich treasure dry:

And having felt the sweetness of the spoil,

With blindfold fury she begins to forage;

Her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil,

And careless lust stirs up a desperate courage,

Planting oblivion, beating reason back,

Forgetting shame’s pure blush and honour’s wrack.

Hot, faint, and weary, with her hard embracing,

Like a wild bird being tamed with too much handling,

Or as the fleet-foot roe that’s tired with chasing,

Or like the froward infant still’d with dandling,

He now obeys, and now no more resisteth,

While she takes all she can, not all she listeth.

What wax so frozen but dissolves with tempering,

And yields at last to every light impression?

Things out of hope are compass’d oft with venturing,

Chiefly in love, whose leave exceeds commission:

Affection faints not like a pale-faced coward,

But then woos best when most his choice is froward.

When he did frown, O, had she then gave over,

Such nectar from his lips she had not suck’d.

Foul words and frowns must not repel a lover;

What though the rose have prickles, yet ’tis pluck’d:

Were beauty under twenty locks kept fast,

Yet love breaks through and picks them all at last.

For pity now she can no more detain him;

The poor fool prays her that he may depart:

She is resolved no longer to restrain him;

Bids him farewell, and look well to her heart,

The which, by Cupid’s bow she doth protest,

He carries thence incaged in his breast.

‘Sweet boy,’ she says, ‘this night I’ll waste in sorrow,

For my sick heart commands mine eyes to watch.

Tell me, Love’s master, shall we meet to-morrow?

Say, shall we? shall we? wilt thou make the match?’

He tells her, no; to-morrow he intends

To hunt the boar with certain of his friends.

‘The boar!’ quoth she; whereat a sudden pale,

Like lawn being spread upon the blushing rose,

Usurps her cheek; she trembles at his tale,

And on his neck her yoking arms she throws:

She sinketh down, still hanging by his neck,

He on her belly falls, she on her back.

Now is she in the very lists of love,

Her champion mounted for the hot encounter:

All is imaginary she doth prove,

He will not manage her, although he mount her;

That worse than Tantalus’ is her annoy,

To clip Elysium and to lack her joy.

Even as poor birds, deceived with painted grapes,

Do surfeit by the eye and pine the maw,

Even so she languisheth in her mishaps,

As those poor birds that helpless berries saw.

The warm effects which she in him finds missing

She seeks to kindle with continual kissing.

But all in vain; good queen, it will not be:

She hath assay’d as much as may be proved;

Her pleading hath deserved a greater fee;

She’s Love, she loves, and yet she is not loved.

‘Fie, fie,’ he says, ‘you crush me; let me go;

You have no reason to withhold me so.’

‘Thou hadst been gone,’ quoth she, ‘sweet boy, ere this,

But that thou told’st me thou wouldst hunt the boar.

O, be advised! thou know’st not what it is

With javelin’s point a churlish swine to gore,

Whose tushes never sheathed he whetteth still,

Like to a mortal butcher bent to kill.

‘On his bow-back he hath a battle set

Of bristly pikes, that ever threat his foes;

His eyes, like glow-worms, shine when he doth fret;

His snout digs sepulchres where’er he goes;

Being moved, he strikes whate’er is in his way,

And whom he strikes his cruel tushes slay.

‘His brawny sides, with hairy bristles arm’d,

Are better proof than thy spear’s point can enter;

His short thick neck cannot be easily harm’d;

Being ireful, on the lion he will venture:

The thorny brambles and embracing bushes,

As fearful of him, part, through whom he rushes.

‘Alas, he nought esteems that face of thine,

To which Love’s eyes pay tributary gazes;

Nor thy soft hands, sweet lips and crystal eyne,

Whose full perfection all the world amazes;

But having thee at vantage,–wondrous dread!–

Would root these beauties as he roots the mead.

‘O, let him keep his loathsome cabin still;

Beauty hath nought to do with such foul fiends:

Come not within his danger by thy will;

They that thrive well take counsel of their friends.

When thou didst name the boar, not to dissemble,

I fear’d thy fortune, and my joints did tremble.

‘Didst thou not mark my face? was it not white?

Saw’st thou not signs of fear lurk in mine eye?

Grew I not faint? and fell I not downright?

Within my bosom, whereon thou dost lie,

My boding heart pants, beats, and takes no rest,

But, like an earthquake, shakes thee on my breast.

‘For where Love reigns, disturbing Jealousy

Doth call himself Affection’s sentinel;

Gives false alarms, suggesteth mutiny,

And in a peaceful hour doth cry ‘Kill, kill!’

Distempering gentle Love in his desire,

As air and water do abate the fire.

‘This sour informer, this bate-breeding spy,

This canker that eats up Love’s tender spring,

This carry-tale, dissentious Jealousy,

That sometime true news, sometime false doth bring,

Knocks at my heat and whispers in mine ear

That if I love thee, I thy death should fear:

‘And more than so, presenteth to mine eye

The picture of an angry-chafing boar,

Under whose sharp fangs on his back doth lie

An image like thyself, all stain’d with gore;

Whose blood upon the fresh flowers being shed

Doth make them droop with grief and hang the head.

‘What should I do, seeing thee so indeed,

That tremble at the imagination?

The thought of it doth make my faint heart bleed,

And fear doth teach it divination:

I prophesy thy death, my living sorrow,

If thou encounter with the boar to-morrow.

‘But if thou needs wilt hunt, be ruled by me;

Uncouple at the timorous flying hare,

Or at the fox which lives by subtlety,

Or at the roe which no encounter dare:

Pursue these fearful creatures o’er the downs,

And on thy well-breath’d horse keep with thy

hounds.

‘And when thou hast on foot the purblind hare,

Mark the poor wretch, to overshoot his troubles

How he outruns the wind and with what care

He cranks and crosses with a thousand doubles:

The many musets through the which he goes

Are like a labyrinth to amaze his foes.

‘Sometime he runs among a flock of sheep,

To make the cunning hounds mistake their smell,

And sometime where earth-delving conies keep,

To stop the loud pursuers in their yell,

And sometime sorteth with a herd of deer:

Danger deviseth shifts; wit waits on fear:

‘For there his smell with others being mingled,

The hot scent-snuffing hounds are driven to doubt,

Ceasing their clamorous cry till they have singled

With much ado the cold fault cleanly out;

Then do they spend their mouths: Echo replies,

As if another chase were in the skies.

‘By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill,

Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear,

To harken if his foes pursue him still:

Anon their loud alarums he doth hear;

And now his grief may be compared well

To one sore sick that hears the passing-bell.

‘Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch

Turn, and return, indenting with the way;

Each envious brier his weary legs doth scratch,

Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay:

For misery is trodden on by many,

And being low never relieved by any.

‘Lie quietly, and hear a little more;

Nay, do not struggle, for thou shalt not rise:

To make thee hate the hunting of the boar,

Unlike myself thou hear’st me moralize,

Applying this to that, and so to so;

For love can comment upon every woe.

‘Where did I leave?’ ‘No matter where,’ quoth he,

‘Leave me, and then the story aptly ends:

The night is spent.’ ‘Why, what of that?’ quoth she.

‘I am,’ quoth he, ‘expected of my friends;

And now ’tis dark, and going I shall fall.’

‘In night,’ quoth she, ‘desire sees best of all

‘But if thou fall, O, then imagine this,

The earth, in love with thee, thy footing trips,

And all is but to rob thee of a kiss.

Rich preys make true men thieves; so do thy lips

Make modest Dian cloudy and forlorn,

Lest she should steal a kiss and die forsworn.

‘Now of this dark night I perceive the reason:

Cynthia for shame obscures her silver shine,

Till forging Nature be condemn’d of treason,

For stealing moulds from heaven that were divine;

Wherein she framed thee in high heaven’s despite,

To shame the sun by day and her by night.

‘And therefore hath she bribed the Destinies

To cross the curious workmanship of nature,

To mingle beauty with infirmities,

And pure perfection with impure defeature,

Making it subject to the tyranny

Of mad mischances and much misery;

‘As burning fevers, agues pale and faint,

Life-poisoning pestilence and frenzies wood,

The marrow-eating sickness, whose attaint

Disorder breeds by heating of the blood:

Surfeits, imposthumes, grief, and damn’d despair,

Swear nature’s death for framing thee so fair.

‘And not the least of all these maladies

But in one minute’s fight brings beauty under:

Both favour, savour, hue and qualities,

Whereat the impartial gazer late did wonder,

Are on the sudden wasted, thaw’d and done,

As mountain-snow melts with the midday sun.

‘Therefore, despite of fruitless chastity,

Love-lacking vestals and self-loving nuns,

That on the earth would breed a scarcity

And barren dearth of daughters and of sons,

Be prodigal: the lamp that burns by night

Dries up his oil to lend the world his light.

‘What is thy body but a swallowing grave,

Seeming to bury that posterity

Which by the rights of time thou needs must have,

If thou destroy them not in dark obscurity?

If so, the world will hold thee in disdain,

Sith in thy pride so fair a hope is slain.

‘So in thyself thyself art made away;

A mischief worse than civil home-bred strife,

Or theirs whose desperate hands themselves do slay,

Or butcher-sire that reaves his son of life.

Foul-cankering rust the hidden treasure frets,

But gold that’s put to use more gold begets.’

‘Nay, then,’ quoth Adon, ‘you will fall again

Into your idle over-handled theme:

The kiss I gave you is bestow’d in vain,

And all in vain you strive against the stream;

For, by this black-faced night, desire’s foul nurse,

Your treatise makes me like you worse and worse.

‘If love have lent you twenty thousand tongues,

And every tongue more moving than your own,

Bewitching like the wanton mermaid’s songs,

Yet from mine ear the tempting tune is blown

For know, my heart stands armed in mine ear,

And will not let a false sound enter there;

‘Lest the deceiving harmony should run

Into the quiet closure of my breast;

And then my little heart were quite undone,

In his bedchamber to be barr’d of rest.

No, lady, no; my heart longs not to groan,

But soundly sleeps, while now it sleeps alone.

‘What have you urged that I cannot reprove?

The path is smooth that leadeth on to danger:

I hate not love, but your device in love,

That lends embracements unto every stranger.

You do it for increase: O strange excuse,

When reason is the bawd to lust’s abuse!

‘Call it not love, for Love to heaven is fled,

Since sweating Lust on earth usurp’d his name;

Under whose simple semblance he hath fed

Upon fresh beauty, blotting it with blame;

Which the hot tyrant stains and soon bereaves,

As caterpillars do the tender leaves.

‘Love comforteth like sunshine after rain,

But Lust’s effect is tempest after sun;

Love’s gentle spring doth always fresh remain,

Lust’s winter comes ere summer half be done;

Love surfeits not, Lust like a glutton dies;

Love is all truth, Lust full of forged lies.

‘More I could tell, but more I dare not say;

The text is old, the orator too green.

Therefore, in sadness, now I will away;

My face is full of shame, my heart of teen:

Mine ears, that to your wanton talk attended,

Do burn themselves for having so offended.’

With this, he breaketh from the sweet embrace,

Of those fair arms which bound him to her breast,

And homeward through the dark laund runs apace;

Leaves Love upon her back deeply distress’d.

Look, how a bright star shooteth from the sky,

So glides he in the night from Venus’ eye.

Which after him she darts, as one on shore

Gazing upon a late-embarked friend,

Till the wild waves will have him seen no more,

Whose ridges with the meeting clouds contend:

So did the merciless and pitchy night

Fold in the object that did feed her sight.

Whereat amazed, as one that unaware

Hath dropp’d a precious jewel in the flood,

Or stonish’d as night-wanderers often are,

Their light blown out in some mistrustful wood,

Even so confounded in the dark she lay,

Having lost the fair discovery of her way.

And now she beats her heart, whereat it groans,

That all the neighbour caves, as seeming troubled,

Make verbal repetition of her moans;

Passion on passion deeply is redoubled:

‘Ay me!’ she cries, and twenty times ‘Woe, woe!’

And twenty echoes twenty times cry so.

She marking them begins a wailing note

And sings extemporally a woeful ditty;

How love makes young men thrall and old men dote;

How love is wise in folly, foolish-witty:

Her heavy anthem still concludes in woe,

And still the choir of echoes answer so.

Her song was tedious and outwore the night,

For lovers’ hours are long, though seeming short:

If pleased themselves, others, they think, delight

In such-like circumstance, with suchlike sport:

Their copious stories oftentimes begun

End without audience and are never done.

For who hath she to spend the night withal

But idle sounds resembling parasites,

Like shrill-tongued tapsters answering every call,

Soothing the humour of fantastic wits?

She says ”Tis so:’ they answer all ”Tis so;’

And would say after her, if she said ‘No.’

Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest,

From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,

And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast

The sun ariseth in his majesty;

Who doth the world so gloriously behold

That cedar-tops and hills seem burnish’d gold.

Venus salutes him with this fair good-morrow:

‘O thou clear god, and patron of all light,

From whom each lamp and shining star doth borrow

The beauteous influence that makes him bright,

There lives a son that suck’d an earthly mother,

May lend thee light, as thou dost lend to other.’

This said, she hasteth to a myrtle grove,

Musing the morning is so much o’erworn,

And yet she hears no tidings of her love:

She hearkens for his hounds and for his horn:

Anon she hears them chant it lustily,

And all in haste she coasteth to the cry.

And as she runs, the bushes in the way

Some catch her by the neck, some kiss her face,

Some twine about her thigh to make her stay:

She wildly breaketh from their strict embrace,

Like a milch doe, whose swelling dugs do ache,

Hasting to feed her fawn hid in some brake.

By this, she hears the hounds are at a bay;

Whereat she starts, like one that spies an adder

Wreathed up in fatal folds just in his way,

The fear whereof doth make him shake and shudder;

Even so the timorous yelping of the hounds

Appals her senses and her spirit confounds.

For now she knows it is no gentle chase,

But the blunt boar, rough bear, or lion proud,

Because the cry remaineth in one place,

Where fearfully the dogs exclaim aloud:

Finding their enemy to be so curst,

They all strain courtesy who shall cope him first.

This dismal cry rings sadly in her ear,

Through which it enters to surprise her heart;

Who, overcome by doubt and bloodless fear,

With cold-pale weakness numbs each feeling part:

Like soldiers, when their captain once doth yield,

They basely fly and dare not stay the field.

Thus stands she in a trembling ecstasy;

Till, cheering up her senses all dismay’d,

She tells them ’tis a causeless fantasy,

And childish error, that they are afraid;

Bids them leave quaking, bids them fear no more:–

And with that word she spied the hunted boar,

Whose frothy mouth, bepainted all with red,

Like milk and blood being mingled both together,

A second fear through all her sinews spread,

Which madly hurries her she knows not whither:

This way runs, and now she will no further,

But back retires to rate the boar for murther.

A thousand spleens bear her a thousand ways;

She treads the path that she untreads again;

Her more than haste is mated with delays,

Like the proceedings of a drunken brain,

Full of respects, yet nought at all respecting;

In hand with all things, nought at all effecting.

Here kennell’d in a brake she finds a hound,

And asks the weary caitiff for his master,

And there another licking of his wound,

‘Gainst venom’d sores the only sovereign plaster;

And here she meets another sadly scowling,

To whom she speaks, and he replies with howling.

When he hath ceased his ill-resounding noise,

Another flap-mouth’d mourner, black and grim,

Against the welkin volleys out his voice;

Another and another answer him,

Clapping their proud tails to the ground below,

Shaking their scratch’d ears, bleeding as they go.

Look, how the world’s poor people are amazed

At apparitions, signs and prodigies,

Whereon with fearful eyes they long have gazed,

Infusing them with dreadful prophecies;

So she at these sad signs draws up her breath

And sighing it again, exclaims on Death.

‘Hard-favour’d tyrant, ugly, meagre, lean,

Hateful divorce of love,’–thus chides she Death,–

‘Grim-grinning ghost, earth’s worm, what dost thou mean

To stifle beauty and to steal his breath,

Who when he lived, his breath and beauty set

Gloss on the rose, smell to the violet?

‘If he be dead,–O no, it cannot be,

Seeing his beauty, thou shouldst strike at it:–

O yes, it may; thou hast no eyes to see,

But hatefully at random dost thou hit.

Thy mark is feeble age, but thy false dart

Mistakes that aim and cleaves an infant’s heart.

‘Hadst thou but bid beware, then he had spoke,

And, hearing him, thy power had lost his power.

The Destinies will curse thee for this stroke;

They bid thee crop a weed, thou pluck’st a flower:

Love’s golden arrow at him should have fled,

And not Death’s ebon dart, to strike dead.

‘Dost thou drink tears, that thou provokest such weeping?

What may a heavy groan advantage thee?

Why hast thou cast into eternal sleeping

Those eyes that taught all other eyes to see?

Now Nature cares not for thy mortal vigour,

Since her best work is ruin’d with thy rigour.’

Here overcome, as one full of despair,

She vail’d her eyelids, who, like sluices, stopt

The crystal tide that from her two cheeks fair

In the sweet channel of her bosom dropt;

But through the flood-gates breaks the silver rain,

And with his strong course opens them again.

O, how her eyes and tears did lend and borrow!

Her eyes seen in the tears, tears in her eye;

Both crystals, where they view’d each other’s sorrow,

Sorrow that friendly sighs sought still to dry;

But like a stormy day, now wind, now rain,

Sighs dry her cheeks, tears make them wet again.

Variable passions throng her constant woe,

As striving who should best become her grief;

All entertain’d, each passion labours so,

That every present sorrow seemeth chief,

But none is best: then join they all together,

Like many clouds consulting for foul weather.

By this, far off she hears some huntsman hollo;

A nurse’s song ne’er pleased her babe so well:

The dire imagination she did follow

This sound of hope doth labour to expel;

For now reviving joy bids her rejoice,

And flatters her it is Adonis’ voice.

Whereat her tears began to turn their tide,

Being prison’d in her eye like pearls in glass;

Yet sometimes falls an orient drop beside,

Which her cheek melts, as scorning it should pass,

To wash the foul face of the sluttish ground,

Who is but drunken when she seemeth drown’d.

O hard-believing love, how strange it seems

Not to believe, and yet too credulous!

Thy weal and woe are both of them extremes;

Despair and hope makes thee ridiculous:

The one doth flatter thee in thoughts unlikely,

In likely thoughts the other kills thee quickly.

Now she unweaves the web that she hath wrought;

Adonis lives, and Death is not to blame;

It was not she that call’d him, all-to naught:

Now she adds honours to his hateful name;

She clepes him king of graves and grave for kings,

Imperious supreme of all mortal things.

‘No, no,’ quoth she, ‘sweet Death, I did but jest;

Yet pardon me I felt a kind of fear

When as I met the boar, that bloody beast,

Which knows no pity, but is still severe;

Then, gentle shadow,–truth I must confess,–

I rail’d on thee, fearing my love’s decease.

”Tis not my fault: the boar provoked my tongue;

Be wreak’d on him, invisible commander;

‘Tis he, foul creature, that hath done thee wrong;

I did but act, he’s author of thy slander:

Grief hath two tongues, and never woman yet

Could rule them both without ten women’s wit.’

Thus hoping that Adonis is alive,

Her rash suspect she doth extenuate;

And that his beauty may the better thrive,

With Death she humbly doth insinuate;

Tells him of trophies, statues, tombs, and stories

His victories, his triumphs and his glories.

‘O Jove,’ quoth she, ‘how much a fool was I

To be of such a weak and silly mind

To wail his death who lives and must not die

Till mutual overthrow of mortal kind!

For he being dead, with him is beauty slain,

And, beauty dead, black chaos comes again.

‘Fie, fie, fond love, thou art so full of fear

As one with treasure laden, hemm’d thieves;

Trifles, unwitnessed with eye or ear,

Thy coward heart with false bethinking grieves.’

Even at this word she hears a merry horn,

Whereat she leaps that was but late forlorn.

As falcon to the lure, away she flies;

The grass stoops not, she treads on it so light;

And in her haste unfortunately spies

The foul boar’s conquest on her fair delight;

Which seen, her eyes, as murder’d with the view,

Like stars ashamed of day, themselves withdrew;

Or, as the snail, whose tender horns being hit,

Shrinks backward in his shelly cave with pain,

And there, all smother’d up, in shade doth sit,

Long after fearing to creep forth again;

So, at his bloody view, her eyes are fled

Into the deep dark cabins of her head:

Where they resign their office and their light

To the disposing of her troubled brain;

Who bids them still consort with ugly night,

And never wound the heart with looks again;

Who like a king perplexed in his throne,

By their suggestion gives a deadly groan,

Whereat each tributary subject quakes;

As when the wind, imprison’d in the ground,

Struggling for passage, earth’s foundation shakes,

Which with cold terror doth men’s minds confound.

This mutiny each part doth so surprise

That from their dark beds once more leap her eyes;

And, being open’d, threw unwilling light

Upon the wide wound that the boar had trench’d

In his soft flank; whose wonted lily white

With purple tears, that his wound wept, was drench’d:

No flower was nigh, no grass, herb, leaf, or weed,

But stole his blood and seem’d with him to bleed.

This solemn sympathy poor Venus noteth;

Over one shoulder doth she hang her head;

Dumbly she passions, franticly she doteth;

She thinks he could not die, he is not dead:

Her voice is stopt, her joints forget to bow;

Her eyes are mad that they have wept til now.

Upon his hurt she looks so steadfastly,

That her sight dazzling makes the wound seem three;

And then she reprehends her mangling eye,

That makes more gashes where no breach should be:

His face seems twain, each several limb is doubled;

For oft the eye mistakes, the brain being troubled.

‘My tongue cannot express my grief for one,

And yet,’ quoth she, ‘behold two Adons dead!

My sighs are blown away, my salt tears gone,

Mine eyes are turn’d to fire, my heart to lead:

Heavy heart’s lead, melt at mine eyes’ red fire!

So shall I die by drops of hot desire.

‘Alas, poor world, what treasure hast thou lost!

What face remains alive that’s worth the viewing?

Whose tongue is music now? what canst thou boast

Of things long since, or any thing ensuing?

The flowers are sweet, their colours fresh and trim;

But true-sweet beauty lived and died with him.

‘Bonnet nor veil henceforth no creature wear!

Nor sun nor wind will ever strive to kiss you:

Having no fair to lose, you need not fear;

The sun doth scorn you and the wind doth hiss you:

But when Adonis lived, sun and sharp air

Lurk’d like two thieves, to rob him of his fair:

‘And therefore would he put his bonnet on,

Under whose brim the gaudy sun would peep;

The wind would blow it off and, being gone,

Play with his locks: then would Adonis weep;

And straight, in pity of his tender years,

They both would strive who first should dry his tears.

‘To see his face the lion walk’d along

Behind some hedge, because he would not fear him;

To recreate himself when he hath sung,

The tiger would be tame and gently hear him;

If he had spoke, the wolf would leave his prey

And never fright the silly lamb that day.

‘When he beheld his shadow in the brook,

The fishes spread on it their golden gills;

When he was by, the birds such pleasure took,

That some would sing, some other in their bills

Would bring him mulberries and ripe-red cherries;

He fed them with his sight, they him with berries.

‘But this foul, grim, and urchin-snouted boar,

Whose downward eye still looketh for a grave,

Ne’er saw the beauteous livery that he wore;

Witness the entertainment that he gave:

If he did see his face, why then I know

He thought to kiss him, and hath kill’d him so.

”Tis true, ’tis true; thus was Adonis slain:

He ran upon the boar with his sharp spear,

Who did not whet his teeth at him again,

But by a kiss thought to persuade him there;

And nuzzling in his flank, the loving swine

Sheathed unaware the tusk in his soft groin.

‘Had I been tooth’d like him, I must confess,

With kissing him I should have kill’d him first;

But he is dead, and never did he bless

My youth with his; the more am I accurst.’

With this, she falleth in the place she stood,

And stains her face with his congealed blood.

She looks upon his lips, and they are pale;

She takes him by the hand, and that is cold;

She whispers in his ears a heavy tale,

As if they heard the woeful words she told;

She lifts the coffer-lids that close his eyes,

Where, lo, two lamps, burnt out, in darkness lies;

Two glasses, where herself herself beheld

A thousand times, and now no more reflect;

Their virtue lost, wherein they late excell’d,

And every beauty robb’d of his effect:

‘Wonder of time,’ quoth she, ‘this is my spite,

That, thou being dead, the day should yet be light.

‘Since thou art dead, lo, here I prophesy:

Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend:

It shall be waited on with jealousy,

Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end,

Ne’er settled equally, but high or low,

That all love’s pleasure shall not match his woe.

‘It shall be fickle, false and full of fraud,

Bud and be blasted in a breathing-while;

The bottom poison, and the top o’erstraw’d

With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile:

The strongest body shall it make most weak,

Strike the wise dumb and teach the fool to speak.

‘It shall be sparing and too full of riot,

Teaching decrepit age to tread the measures;

The staring ruffian shall it keep in quiet,

Pluck down the rich, enrich the poor with treasures;

It shall be raging-mad and silly-mild,

Make the young old, the old become a child.

‘It shall suspect where is no cause of fear;

It shall not fear where it should most mistrust;

It shall be merciful and too severe,

And most deceiving when it seems most just;

Perverse it shall be where it shows most toward,

Put fear to valour, courage to the coward.

‘It shall be cause of war and dire events,

And set dissension ‘twixt the son and sire;

Subject and servile to all discontents,

As dry combustious matter is to fire:

Sith in his prime Death doth my love destroy,

They that love best their loves shall not enjoy.’

By this, the boy that by her side lay kill’d

Was melted like a vapour from her sight,

And in his blood that on the ground lay spill’d,

A purple flower sprung up, chequer’d with white,

Resembling well his pale cheeks and the blood

Which in round drops upon their whiteness stood.

She bows her head, the new-sprung flower to smell,

Comparing it to her Adonis’ breath,

And says, within her bosom it shall dwell,

Since he himself is reft from her by death:

She crops the stalk, and in the breach appears

Green dropping sap, which she compares to tears.

‘Poor flower,’ quoth she, ‘this was thy fathers guise–

Sweet issue of a more sweet-smelling sire–

For every little grief to wet his eyes:

To grow unto himself was his desire,

And so ’tis thine; but know, it is as good

To wither in my breast as in his blood.

‘Here was thy father’s bed, here in my breast;

Thou art the next of blood, and ’tis thy right:

Lo, in this hollow cradle take thy rest,

My throbbing heart shall rock thee day and night:

There shall not be one minute in an hour

Wherein I will not kiss my sweet love’s flower.’

Thus weary of the world, away she hies,

And yokes her silver doves; by whose swift aid

Their mistress mounted through the empty skies

In her light chariot quickly is convey’d;

Holding their course to Paphos, where their queen

Means to immure herself and not be seen.

By Melissa MacNeal

To purchase the novel and read it in its entirety visit Blushing Books Publications http://www.blushingbooks.com/
For more about the Author Melissa MacNeal visit http://www.melissamacneal.com/

I had stolen a few kisses in my day, and wished for many more, imagining how a man might feel as he enfolded me in his arms and claimed my mouth with his. I’d had every intention of stringing Tripplehorn along–playing the experienced bitch in heat who kept a young pup panting for it–but my desperation betrayed me. I’d been caught, hook, line, and sinker the first time Billy cast his glance my way, and his kiss only sealed my fate.

My moan inspired him, and his hands slipped beneath my dressing gown to explore my skin. He let his palms float along the curves at my waist, inciting little riots of static electricity that raised goosebumps all over my body. Wanting more, I greedily pressed into him, rubbing his chest with my peaked breasts, reveling in the secretive rustle of the wiry hair that whispered its provocative song.

Billy pulled me close, his tongue deepening the kiss, his low moans answering mine. Despite the heat that scorched my belly and that nether region below, which rubbed suggestively against his erection, my young lover lingered over my lips, drinking from them like a man long denied water– sipping and licking and then drawing up from the well of my desire to satisfy his curiosity while driving us both to want far more.

Lord, what a luxury, to have a man hold me as though he couldn’t let me go, until he knew everything about me…as though he wanted to take a lifetime to do that.

Foolish thoughts, for a woman old enough to know the ways of men–especially after I’d seen this one pumping Lucy Legg, and then playing along with the wild desires the Sisters had whispered in his ear. He lived for the chase! He wanted nothing beyond the next cunt that came along–a legacy passed down from every male in his family, as evidenced by the facial features of many children now residing in the orphanage.

Yet I set that reality aside and let him woo me. Gratifying, the way he ignored skin less supple than Lucy’s and breasts put to shame by Pandora’s. He caressed me with hands that roamed at raucous will now, over my back and beneath the cushion of my ass, to pull me closer to him.

“Andrea,” he whispered again, brushing my ear with feathery, teasing kisses. “God, I’ve got to have you, woman! Let’s give this pussy something to purr about.”

I sucked air at the first touch of his fingertips. While he held me spellbound with his bottomless brown eyes and a commanding browline framed in unruly curls, his hand cupped my mound. Then he slowly spread my wetness around the fevered, slick skin until my slit was weeping with want. Never had I become so inflamed at a touch, and “and I opened farther to invite him inside–to beg for more of this divine torture, which was only a foretaste of the glories to come.

Or so I hoped. What if I shrank away in fear, or shame? What if I cried out in pain and gave away my innocent state–me, a woman who should’ve had her share of lovers by now? What if I laughed at the wrong time? Or made a stupid move to break the mood, and lost him forever?

He slipped a finger inside me. And then another.

“Oh, Billy…Billy, please….”
“My plea floated around us like a phantom, and my back arched of its own accord. With exquisite, deliberate strokes he was setting my insides on fire, fanning the flames with each wet caress–and watching the sensations play upon my face with the smug certainty of bigger and better things to come. His thumb found that button high up in front and I cried out with the startling need it inspired.

“Tell me how bad you want it, Andrea,” he crooned, a magician about to entrance me with his wand. “Clench your cunt for ‘yes’…open your hole for ‘no.'”

My muscles locked around his fingers and the inner spirals began. I recognized them from my own probings–and from those times Cerise and the twins had played their naughty games–but now, with Billy holding me, taking total control with the arm he wrapped around me and the fingers thrust inside, I was a woman lost. My body convulsed in a series of heated seizures, spurred on by his thrusts and the rubbing of his thumb. Before I realized how far gone I was, my cries were echoing around us. I became a mindless machine fueled by “young wizard’s next tricks. He was brushing my white robe aside, gazing hungrily at my bared breasts–teasing the nipples to attention as he slowly drew his hands down over my midsection… toward that place between my legs that felt sopping wet, where his thigh now kept the sensations alive, bubbling just beneath the surface.

“Perhaps Alex and the others don’t really know me,” I replied, wondering where that thought came from. Good God, everyone here could predict my emotions and actions before I knew them myself! But how nice, to have a handsome man marvel over my reaction to him! “Or perhaps they just never held the key to that horny little hole you’ve found. Every lover’s different–and each partner creates another response, another little world, where only the two of them can belong, you know.”

His indulgent smile told me he was beyond my middle-aged philosophizing. “Your cat’s got so much cream on her lips, my cock might drown in it before he even enters. I’d better lap it up, don’t you think?”

By Amanda Artemis

Buy the book on Amazon

This book is for the hipsters who love to lust, the daydreamers at work who pretend they’re merely thinking about entering numbers into a spreadsheet or making a halfway decent cappuccino, and for every one of my friends who dared read this novella before it went to print. MP, NV, CWC and EG.

 *

Café Revival is exactly where you’re thinking it is: a cozy, abandoned church. The pews have been converted to form long, picnic-table style seating, the Wi-Fi is inconsistent, and the baristas believe that yes, their coffee is the best. And while I admit, the baristas make a stellar latte, I never thought they were the end-all, be-all to my espresso needs. Until Marlin’s text message left me needing to both caffeinate and inebriate myself.

I’d been reveling in the solitude of my apartment, as my roommates Mariah and Katie had taken the week off to go out of town on a BFF adventure. By reveling, I mean before they’d even left I’d whipped out my phone, zipped through some of Marlin’s dirty sexts as a primer, then pulled up one of my favorite not-safe-for-work emails from him…a long, sexy story. By the time the girls were gone, I had my vibrator at the ready:

Hey doll. You know what I want to be doing to you right now? Grabbing your hair and pulling your face down to my crotch, watching you squirm a little as you feel my rock hard dick lingering below my jeans. At first you’re fighting me but you feel how warm it is, how much it wants your mouth. With my other hand I undo my zipper and pull my pants down. Before I can ask, you start licking my shaft. I jerk your head away, staring down at you. “Not until I say so, baby.” You whimper, still not quite sure and still fighting me a little. With your hair still wrapped in my hand I pull off my jeans, then press your body against my leg. I can feel your warmth through your skirt, probably a little wet even though you wish you weren’t. I wiggle my leg against you and find your clit a little hard. I keep pressing my leg into you, your lips close to my cock. I watch as you go from intimidated to hot, making sure you won’t back down. “Now, baby.” You start sucking my dick slowly, taking it all in then pulling it all out. Tease. You’re grinding my leg now, and I can feel definite wetness as your skirt slides up and just your panties are between your pussy and my skin. Then  –

Only I didn’t get any farther, or get off, because a text pinged in from Marlin himself. And this one was not sext-y. It said, I gotta cancel tonight, Cora. He never calls me by my name. I ask why, and if he’s okay. He responds, I think I gotta cancel every night. I pause, vibrator still in hand as I text back,  Am I reading this right? Are you trying to tell me you’re ending our relationship?

He responds, Yeah, that.

So he broke up with me via text message in a bizarre moment. Cool. One second you’re getting off to your boyfriend’s sexty-sweet words, the next, you’re single.

In the wake of the breakup, I spent a day in bed with my phone on silent watching When Harry Met Sally and Under the Tuscan Sun on repeat, reminding myself that yes, there is hope for my future. Sure, I told myself over and over, I’m twenty-eight years and seven months old (but who’s counting?) and harboring five failed long-term relationships since the start of my adult life (still not counting). And sure, by this time in her own aging process my mom had been married to my dad for three years and they were expecting their first baby, my perfect sister Joyanne (but who’s comparing?). And sure, my best friends from high school and college are all either married, engaged, or engaged to be engaged – which seriously sounds even more ridiculous than and as useless as a training bra. I probably say that only because I’ve never been engaged to be engaged. Or had a training bra.

*

After the twenty-four hour grace period I gave myself to cry hysterically and wallow sans judgment, not put on eyeliner and not bother to shower, I did get out of bed. Determined to not move any more than I had to, I laid down and scouted my café options. I need the absolute closest one that Marlin was sure not to show up at. A quick check on my map app told me Revival was exactly 0.2 miles closer than any other bar or coffee house, so I hop in the shower to freshen up – a feat which didn’t work as all I did was cry and think about how Marlin first told me he loved me in the shower while I was acting like a fountain and spitting water on him.

Before getting dressed, I stick my arm out of my window, wondering if there will be goosebumps or sweat beads when I bring it back inside. The answer is neither. It’s warm outside, which is surprising as the last time I had stepped foot out of doors it was overcast and bordering on cool. The California coast is a peculiar place weather-wise (hence the arm-out-the-window test). Everyone expects it to be beach-style hot all the time, and it’s not. In fact, it is far too often foggy here, which makes me wonder why I chose to go to both college and graduate school in this town, and stay afterward, too. Fog and no jobs? What a deal.

I stroll down to Revival without makeup, not trusting myself to manage holding back tears in public. Besides, accentuating the pouf of red around my eyes doesn’t sound awesome. My auburn hair dries in the sun during my foot-commute to the coffee shop. As I walk through the heavy arched wooden front doors, I’m greeted with a cool breeze of stale air – Revival never seems to get the stench of God out of the place – but nothing more. The girl baristas with their dreadlocked tresses ignore me, and the guy baristas with their over-shiny long hair follow suit.

Regardless, I order a glass of white sangria and a chocolate macaroon, not caring if the pairing is getting raised eyebrows from the mustachioed man handing it to me with no trace of humanity on his face.

Fuck him.

“The back patio is open,” he murmurs, his voice barely audible above the banjo-heavy, accordion-laden folk rock Revival has pulsing through the speakers from the pulpit. A band with similar instrumentation is setting up on the stage, and though I’m open to new music, I’d really prefer the company of a podcast right about now.

“Thanks,“ I reply. Scooping up my beverage, which inexplicably came in a pint glass, I’m out the side door and in the garden before any more of the baristas’ soulful, hound-dog eyes can judge me. He must be so deep. In an effort to look unapproachable, I put in my headphones, drop my sunglasses over my eyes, and start drinking to Ira Glass’s nasally soothing voice.

To be fair, the band sounds better than I expected the music starts. Wait, that makes no sense if I hated them before. Oh, that’s because an empty stomach plus a pint of sangria means I’m drunk.

Home I go, alone.

*

The next morning I wake up not even hungover, which is depressing. The least I could do is have a hangover to nurse, a reason to stay in bed. Without one, though, and with text messages from friends piling up unanswered (it appears Marlin unrelationshipped us on Facebook), Revival is again my best bet for escape. This time I pull on a sweatshirt, skip the shower and the teeth brushing, think about makeup but forget about it, and make my way to the café, laptop in tow.

Outside is overcast. Once again, the folk music greets me, as does the sound of no human voices calling out hello. Once again, the same pretty-haired boy rings me up, handing me an iced Americano and a chocolate macaroon. This time, though, his humanity betrays him.

“Your breath smells like sangria,” he says after I thank him for taking my money.

“Yeah,” I reply.

“And your hair is everywhere.”

“Where are you going with this?” I ask.

“I’m just wondering if you would like to borrow a hair tie,” he says. “I’ve got one in my apron.” He reaches his fingers down into the pocket of his black apron and procures an elastic band, holding it up almost as though it were an eyelash for me to make a wish on and blow away from us both.

Instead of blowing though, I pluck the band away from him. “Thanks for the brutal honesty.”

I sit down next to a stained glass window, where roses and birds of paradise live in harmonious transparent color. Revival replaced only some of the religious stained glass testaments to its churchy heritage with neutral, secular imagery like flowers and nautical scenes. The rest of the windows remained: three wise men (or are they kings? I should read the Bible’s CliffsNotes someday), an ark full of animals in pairs and a lion, a witch and a wardrobe. Even the creatures on Noah’s watch were paired off, I think as I pull my hair back into a knot high upon my head.

Marlin hated this hairstyle, probably because it drew attention to my long neck, which thankfully naturally has grace and style without my ever having taken a ballet class or attended a yoga session. His theory was anyone else paying attention to me meant I might pay attention to them instead of him. Which in retrospect sounds a lot like a red flag. I open my laptop.

Jobs aren’t plentiful but they aren’t quite MIA, either. I tackle online applications, navigating a variety of step-by-step forms through a plethora of apps meant to make applying for employment easy. Really though, I miss the days of simply turning in a cover letter and resume. This whole hoop-jumping, creating accounts with passwords, and unique questioning is time-consuming. And given my unemployed status, not fruitful either.

Mr. Mustachio walks by, refilling my iced coffee. I look around and notice Café Revival is hopping. People are everywhere. Meetings are being held that almost look like impromptu prayer groups what with the pews. Other solo sitters have computers, tablets, and honest-to-god real books taking their attention. There’s even a well-groomed seeing eye dog in training lying below a gaggle of women, all besides that dog-owner with babies like accessories in those little baby-holder things that look like high-tech baskets.

I turn my attention back to my screen, but can’t bring myself to focus. My heart hurts a little; my head doesn’t hurt at all. I go back to the Craigslist homepage and click on “Casual Encounters.” With no intention of actually taking a guy up on his NSA offer, I may as well check out the fantasy stories some men write and share.

Of course, there’s a filtering process. Titles such as This Tuesday is Open and Hey wanna f*ck (really, as if there is some reason not to be crass in a forum titled Casual Encounters?) I skip. But Licking Saloon gets a click, though it’s not a scenario, and from there I move onto Did you call a handyman? which very well might be good:

You placed the call hours ago – your washing machine went kaput and no one ever came to fix it. Though in your satin robe, you answer the door when I ring the bell, tool box in hand, I’m apologizing multiple times as my previous job went longer than planned and my cell phone had fallen into a sink full soapy water and dishes so I couldn’t call. You’re put at ease by my apologies, and any frustration is gone. You offer me some tea and I reply, “Sure, but after a day like today, I won’t be mad if you slip whiskey in there.” You smile and say, “I know what you mean.”

Before I start working on your machine, I look it up and down, running my hands over it, opening the lid and checking every hose, knob, nook, and cranny. You watch for a few moments before handing me a cup of tea with yes, a shot of whiskey. 

“You’re very thorough,” you say. I look you up and down as I take the tea from you.

“You’re both in good condition,” I reply. Instead of being offended, you’re charmed. Maybe it’s the satin rubbing against your nipples, or maybe it’s the two glasses of wine you had after work, but you’re not in the mood for women’s rights. No, you’re in the mood to get fucked.

With the same level of attention I brought to the machine, I start examining your body. I run my hands up each of your legs, starting with your toes and stopping just at the crease where your thigh becomes your sweet, wet slit. You’re quiet at first, letting me run my tests. Breasts – firm. Nape of the neck – smooth. Ears – licking them makes you moan.

“This is going to be fun,” I whisper. I then flip you around so you’re bent over the washing machine. The coolness of the metal presses against your legs, and I disrobe you so your torso and tits feel a full sense of chill. You gasp in shock at the temperature, and worried you’ll try to get away I push your head onto the top of the machine, the chilliness on your cheek even more of a turn-on as you feel my hot breath in your other ear. “If you struggle, it’s more fun for me,” I say.

Keeping your head pressed down with one hand around your neck, I use my other hand to start fingering your clit. Your hips gyrate downward and it feels like you’re trying to get my fingers inside of you. But I have other plans. I pull down my pants and slide my raging manrod into you. You’re so wet and ready that the usual sharp inhale that accompanies a first thrust doesn’t happen, and within thirty seconds of me fucking you an orgasm has rippled across your body and escaped through your lips.

I keep going, placing one hand on your clit and rubbing while I keep fucking you from behind. Your hands are resting on the machine now, and we pant together until I’m about to come. I yank my dick out and with one hand jerk off over your ass crack, my other hand still rubbing you and fingering you to replace what you’ve lost. As we both cum you jerk wildly, and all of a sudden the machine starts up.

“Told you I’d fix it,” I say to your backside as I pull up my pants.

Call me if you want this to happen to you.

Just as I’m finishing the post, and I feel my own slit a tiny bit wet, I see that damn barista in my screen’s reflection. He’s looking over my shoulder, and I wonder how long he’s been standing there.

“Ummm. If your internet time runs out, you’ll have to order something else. You only get a few hours with every purchase,” he says. With that much to say, I assume he saw I was reading what amounts to porn.

“Not a problem. I was just leaving.” I tear out of Revival, but back at home I can’t concentrate on trying to get myself off. My fingers fumble, my heart continues to hurt. Even looking for work sounds better than this.

*

The week goes by, and I’m at Revival at least twice a day for hours at a time. Morning coffee and evening sangria lead to me recognizing regulars, and I notice there are even a few that have penetrated the barista wall of solitude. Like homeless men, who some baristas give their free lunches to. Mr. Mustachio gives his free meal away every day to one of many guitar-carrying, supposedly veteran men. No wonder he’s so ridiculously skinny. And here I thought he just looks so skinny because he wears the world’s smallest jeans.

I don’t hear from Marlin. I don’t respond to text messages from my friends, except the cursory “I’m fine, just want to wallow alone for a bit” response to ease their worry. I don’t hear back about jobs in the accounting field, as an administrative secretary, or as a dishwasher. I consider trying to find out just how long unemployment checks will be coming in, but then I decide I don’t really want to know. I consider asking the apathetic baristas at Revival if their manager is hiring, but I’m not sure I want to be associated with them. Fine, I admit it. I am worried I’d get the job and they wouldn’t want to be associated with me.

My roommates, Mariah and Katie, return home at the end of the weekend. Once they’re done unpacking, we meet in the living room with a few bottles of wine to catch up. I’m pouring glasses of sparkling wine for myself, Mariah has a Malbec she’s excited about, and Katie is drinking Strawberry Hill for nostalgia’s sake (so she says).

In true “us” fashion, we’ve blatantly ignored sitting on the couches in favor of nesting on the floor. We’re nestled on top of an array of blankets – there’s an Afghan, a comforter, a quilt, and a few fleeces in plain sight – plus throw pillows and body pillows that look straight out of our teenage years. I’m guessing only single girls hang on to body pillows, and yes, that lavender one is clearly mine. The girls have boyfriends – they’re dating twin brothers, actually.

“How come you two aren’t with Connor and Caleb?” I ask. “I thought you’d be jonesing for them.”

Mariah tilted her neck toward me, her cocoa skin creasing just slightly at the collarbone. “We are, but they’re out of town visiting their grandparents.”

“Okay, first, their grandparents are still alive? Lucky!” I say.

“Right?” chimes in Katie.

“And second, you’re going to speak for Katie on her level of jonesing?”

Without missing a beat, Mariah says, “Cora, we’re best friends. I know everything about her. Naturally I’m speaking on her behalf.”

I look at Katie. “Is she right?”

“Yeah. Except I don’t think she knows everything about me.” Katie stands up, her tiny pajama shorts riding up, slightly showing off the very bottom curve of her ass.

“Oh?” says Mariah teasingly. “What exactly aren’t you telling me?”

“You know. Stuff,” Katie says vaguely, her dusky-blonde bangs swooping over her eyes as she refills our glasses carefully.

We click on the television – we’d refused to purchase cable and had been one of those we-don’t-have-TV households until we’d discovered free full-access cable was still somehow hooked up – and find ourselves laughing through reality TV reruns of something Kardashian related.

As a fourth episode rolled onto the screen and our wine bottles were noticeably almost empty, Katie gigglingly asks, “Which Kardashian is the hottest?”

“Is this what you’ve never told me?” Mariah asks. “That you have a Kardashian crush?”

“I’ve got to say Kourtney,” I say.

“Really? Not Kim?” That Katie has ignored Mariah’s question doesn’t make M very happy.

Mariah visibly pouts, puffing her mahogany lips in an exaggerated manner.

“Seriously Katie, what don’t I know about you?”

“They’re all nice to look at,” I say diplomatically. “I mean, they’re all hot. And if any one of them said ‘let’s make out’ at a bar I’d be so there. But Kourtney just looks the most real.”

“Katie, really. What is it?” Mariah isn’t letting this go, and I can’t tell if Katie is simply too tipsy to notice or if her best friend’s insistence is merely a nuisance.

“I guess her chest does look the most real,” Katie says thoughtfully, as though she’s been given some insight she never had before.

“Kayyy-teeee,” Mariah whines softly, almost under her breath.

Katie finally turns her attention to Mariah. “You don’t know what my pussy feels like,” she says plainly.

Mariah’s eyes widen, and try as I might to remain nonplussed, mine do too. “So?

Neither does Cora,” Mariah says.

“Hey, don’t bring me – ,“ I start but am interrupted by Katie.

“Actually, she does. See, something else you don’t know about me.”

There’s silence. The TV, which was muted for commercials, is still on silent, the Kardashian sisters prancing about doing their Kardashian thing. The room is heavy with breathing. Mariah can’t seem to decide if she wants to glare at Katie or at me, so she’s switching back and forth. I’m watching Mariah between staring down at my toes. And Katie…well, Katie’s lounged back with her eyes closed, looking completely peaceful.

Like a cat on the prowl, Mariah slowly crawls toward Katie. She lowers her lips to Katie’s ankles and begins kissing the indentation right before the ankle bone. Katie’s slender legs seem to lengthen under the touch, her rose-colored toes stretching as Mariah continues to lick, nip, and kiss up Katie’s legs.

I watch, entranced.

When Mariah reaches the hem of Katie’s tiny shorts, she takes some time to run her fingers around the bottom of the cloth, to dance her tongue right there, to pull on the hem with her teeth just a little. I see Mariah look up toward Katie, who still has her eyes closed and a look of contentment across her face. Mariah proceeds to weasel her way up, gracefully ignoring Katie’s crotch except for the slightest brush of her breast as she moves toward Katie’s chest and lips. The moment is almost tender.

Then Mariah grabs Katie’s single braid and jerks her head. Katie’s eyes flash open with a look of pure shock, but she’s put herself in a vulnerable position. Using her hair, Mariah maneuvers Katie onto her stomach, then sits on top of her so she can’t move. She leans forward and softly whispers, “She knows what mine feels like, too, miss.”

Katie whimpers as Mariah finagles the elastic waist of those tiny shorts down, her pale ass exposed. Delicately, Mariah traces Katie’s rear up and down. Just watching sends shivers down my spine. As though a timed dance, Mariah releases Katie’s hair and spanks her immediately. Once. Twice. Smack. Smack. There’s a pause, then, smack. The spanks are harder, not softer, as Mariah goes on.

I hear a noise from Katie, but I can’t tell if it’s another whimper or a moan. The spanking continues, and I see Mariah is grinding against the back of Katie’s knees while she’s doing it. Katie’s ass is turning bright pink from the beating.

“Turn over,” Mariah says, and Katie obliges without hesitation. I see tears glistening from her eyes, which Mariah ignores. “Let’s even the playing field with your tongue.”

Mariah slides up to Katie’s mouth and rests herself against her. She’s wearing only black panties and a t-shirt. Katie shakes her a head a little, her nose rubbing right where Mariah’s clit should be. Her lips begin to move, and I can see she’s trying to back away now, but Mariah leans into her. “Do it,” she says.

Katie starts mouthing the black panties, softly. I see Mariah has her hand in Katie’s hair again, trapping her. Katie’s getting more into it, whether because she has no choice or because she’s succumbing to the ungraceful seduction and turn of events. I watch as Mariah moves her panties over so Katie can access her cunt.

Mariah begins to moan. “That’s it,” she coos. “Keep going.”  As Katie continues, I move my eyes down her body. Her shorts are still half way down, and her completely bare pussy is exposed. She waxes – who knew?

Images of Marlin flash in my mind, followed by an overwhelming sense of freedom. He’d never be okay with me watching this scene, let alone joining in. But hey, he’s gone. And even if he was coming back, I’m not taking him back.

Careful not to disturb Mariah, I advance toward Katie’s pussy, which seems to have almost a tractor beam effect. I can’t take my eyes off of it, or stop thinking about what she might taste like. I lower myself onto her slit and start licking, surprised to find she’s wet. Her hips rise, and I don’t bother to look if Mariah’s seen me yet.

Katie tastes like sweet lemon tart, and the lips of her pussy are rather shallow. Her pink hole isn’t hidden, and it takes zero effort to have my tongue pulsing on her clit. I move my tongue in circles, dropping it down to taste her then pulling it back up. I run my hand up her leg, just where Mariah had been, but I keep going until my fingers find her slit.

I lift my mouth for a break and see Mariah has now turned around on Katie’s face and is watching me. She leans forward, licks Katie’s juice off my chin, and says, “My turn.” My fingers fucking Katie, I lie next to her as Mariah’s pussy comes toward me. Katie is wiggling back and forth, moaning now and enjoying herself.

“She started moaning on my clit,” Mariah says to me. “You thought you’d be sneaky, but you weren’t.” I’m a little intimidated. Mariah isn’t all natural, but she does have well groomed hair surrounding her woman parts. Her pussy is in my face and I realize the hair actually is a fun change of pace. I can smell both her and Katie’s scents mixing together. Mariah is a bit more faint, almost musty like the most comforting of libraries or cozy cabins.

Katie continues to moan, and once I start running my tongue over Mariah’s labia lips, she starts to moan too. She’s gingerly humping my face, her incredible ass just centimeters from me. I open my eyes and up her back, a smooth surface begging to be touched. With my free hand, I lightly run my fingers down her back.

Mariah removes my hand from Katie, and I can only hope she’s replaced them with her own. With two hands free, I reach around Mariah and start patting her clit. I tap first, and she seems to buck a little, so I tap harder. I keep tapping until I’m patting it like you would a cat who likes a firm touch. I pat harder and more insistent, over and over. Mariah is getting louder, as is Katie.

Suddenly, Mariah is off of me and she pulls Katie up, keeping one hand inside of her. Without missing a beat, I reach for Mariah’s pussy. Katie in turn reaches for mine, which has been screaming for someone to touch it and my hands have been well, full. We finger fuck each other to orgasm, first Katie screaming, then Mariah wailing, and finally me…faking it with a hushed whimper and a shudder.

“Now we’re all on the same page,” Katie says.

*

The next morning, I wake in my own bed and recount last night’s events. Contrary to all statements made, I hadn’t touched either girl prior to their conversation, and I can’t help but wonder if it was all a tactic to get me to join in their fun. Best not think too hard on such topics.

The hangover isn’t as vicious as a bottle of wine should have induced, and just as with every awakening since Marlin broke up with me, I’m disappointed. I shower, brush my teeth, and walk downstairs to find the girls spooning on the floor, looking like two slumber-partied out adolescents, hints of innocence screened over their faces. The Kardashian marathon is still going strong, and the sisters are on the screen, silenced by the powers of mute.

As I cross the threshold of Revival, I wonder if I’ll be struck down for my sins. Even if this is no longer a place of worship, it seems possible God continues to lurk about, watching for people like me. I enter unharmed, and Mr. Mustachio hands me my espresso without me having to ask.

“You look relieved,” he says. He always has something to say.

“I guess I sort of thought God might strike me down this morning,” I say. “Pretty pleased I’ve remained lightning bolt free.”

“Guess you’re not trying hard enough,” he says, handing me my macaroon. “Though from the looks of what you read in the shop, I’d have thought you were.”

I feel the heat rise up in my cheeks, and even though I’m wearing a sundress I suddenly feel too hot, like I’ve been in the sun all day. Without a word I seat myself in the corner of the café, take out my laptop, and try to concentrate. Only every time I look over the top of my screen, there’s the barista. Sometimes he’s helping a customer, sometimes he’s making coffee. I watch him give a woman in ramshackle clothes a sandwich.

I’ve never been so aware of my body. My breasts feel exposed despite being covered. My shoulders feel like lighthouses on a dark evening, calling ships home. The hair on my arms keeps rising up when he glances at me, and my entire body tenses when he brings me more coffee only to release when he leaves. Is it even possible I’m attracted to this man? This guy who listens to broody-moody music (I’ve seen him make the iPod selections), who hangs around willingly with the too-cool-for-everyone-even-each-other barista crowd, whose mustache would probably tickle my thighs if he ever went down on me?

Yes, yes I am. I get up and race home without looking him in the face. What the hell is wrong with me?

*

However, my need for a drink has me back at Revival’s doors later that evening. There’s a jazz band playing standards switch hitting with a beat poet – a nice change of pace from the emo-driven musicians I’ve been witnessing since I made this my everyday (and night) hang out spot.

I sit in a pew, book in one hand and sangria in the other. The aisle has been lit with candelabras, and if it weren’t for the din of music and laughter, I’d almost believe I was in church. The feeling is too eerie, and I go check out the patio scene. It’s chilly, but there’s an oven furnace offering solace from the cold.

Just my luck, Mr. Mustache is sitting there too, a book in one hand, a beer in the other.

“I thought you’d be back,” he says.

I look back toward the door inside, wondering if this is my cue to leave. But he looks at me with those liquid amber eyes showing off a smirk not found on his lips, and I quietly sit. We “cheers!” and keep reading our books until our drinks are both finished, and he offers to get me a second.

When he’s settled back down, he starts talking. Literally, Mr. Mustache asks me questions about literature, about bicycles, and he tells me about his sister who has Down’s syndrome. We even discuss how our culture’s fascination with spectrums these days (hello, sexual spectrum, Autism spectrum and the like), while simultaneously discussing where on the Down’s syndrome spectrum she rests.

The talking leads to touching. His hands are a bit rough with calluses at the base of his fingers. I smooth my palm over them, and he notes that pulling espresso shots has led to the deterioration of his hands. I pull them to my mouth and kiss them to show I’m not turned off and catch a whiff of coffee. There is obviously a bonus to being near a barista: his continual aroma of one of my favorite beverages. He laughs when I tell him this, then grazes my hair with his hand.

“Let’s get out of here.”

His studio apartment surprises me. For one, I didn’t know baristas made enough to live on their own. Two, it’s meticulously neat and rather sparse. There is one piece of obligatory California state art on the walls (I swear, no hipster pad is complete without showing off local love) and when I step into the bathroom I note more beauty products than I own lining the built-in shelves. Other than that, there is a non-descript bed, desk, night table, dresser, and that is all. The shoot-off kitchen proves to be a different world though, with red accent tiles and a photo of a delicious-looking fried egg and fried chicken sandwich.

I consider commenting on his style, but before I can think of something to say he’s stripping off his skinny jeans, revealing a physique that is far more muscular than I’d thought possible. I walk over to him and carefully undo each button of his cowboy-inspired shirt, feeling his cock start to rise underneath his navy blue boxer briefs. With him nearly undressed and me still cinched into my clothes we start to kiss.

He leads me over to the bed and sits down, trying to lift my dress to get access to other parts of me. I sit next to him and lick the underside of his lips, which stops him short. He holds still as I suck on his top lip, then kiss the corners of his mouth before making my way to his earlobe and sucking on the bottom of his ear. I run my tongue up the curves of his ear, then enter the surely more tender inner area. He remains still, his breathing getting heavier as I suckle his ear.

Still sitting next to him, my tongue moving down his neck, I remove my cardigan. I pull away and stand up, offering him my zipper, which he undoes eagerly, then pulls the straps down and my dress falls to the floor in a puddle of clothing. He stares at me like my body is the best present he’s ever opened, but doesn’t say a word.

I step over the dress and push him down, making sure our parts line up. “How long have you wanted me?” I ask, before busying myself licking his nipples.

“Longer than you’ve wanted me,” he replies.

I pinch his nipples lightly, and he takes my hand and presses my fingers together more firmly. “Like that,” he instructs releasing his hands. I take feedback well, and while he moves my mouth away so he can caress my breasts, I continue rubbing his nipples, brushing them strongly and occasionally pinching them, as he rolls me over onto my back.

He puts his face between my tits and sucks one breast while squeezing the other. I feel a drop of wetness pressing into me from his hard cock, and I realize his pre-cum has leaked onto his underwear, creating a dark spot right where the head of his dick is.

His hands wander down my body, his mouth still absorbed in my breasts, and he slips down my panties confidently. How does he know I want him so much? Or does he simply want me so much he just doesn’t care? He presses his finger inside of me, just the tip at first. His fingers are so different than the girls’ were – theirs were delicate and small, while his knuckles are thick and manly. My pussy feels secure in his grip which makes me even hotter.

I begin petting his dick on top of his underwear, letting my hand linger over the wet spot that I know is because of me. I let my hands grope on top of him until I can no longer wait, then reach under his boxer briefs for the real thing. His cock stands tall, like being trapped under clothing was stifling it. I rub pre-cum over the head of his dick and he emits a low tone of pleasure.

He looks down at me and again I imagine that mustache tickling my thighs, but instead of lowering his face he moves up toward the nightstand, grabbing a condom. I keep one hand around his dick and the other hovering near my clit while he unwraps the protection slowly, as though he’s trying to torture me a little more. Once it’s on he moves down again, using his cock to push my hand out of the way and starting to rub the head of it on my clit.

I gasp, then grab his dick and slide it to my opening. He starts entering me slowly, all sense of his bravado gone for a moment. He pulls almost all the way out, then goes back in, then out, then in further, then out, then in further, then pushes all the way into me and releases everything I’ve been wanting to feel.

We become fevered with each other, kissing while he pumps. His torso is pressing against my clit, and I feel myself getting more and more reckless, abandoning all sensibility and boundaries. He tries to switch positions. “Just keep going,” I beg. “Keep doing that.”

He obliges, pulling one of my legs up and letting his body rub against mine. Within moments there is darkness and light all at the same time, a burst of color and of black and white. My moans are practically screams and it’s only after I’ve been coming that I realize he’s coming too, our noises blending into one another.

Christ. Finally.

Many thanks to CW for editing, blushing, and editing some more.

And to ST, for not thinking this was completely bonkers.

Adventures in Real Sexts:

Check out a sext convo that one of our seriously saucy Pleasure Pledgers sent into us last month. We were impressed by the combo of openness, playfulness, and HOTNESS (and her clever use of pictures only when and of what was comfortable for her!). They follow most of the rules; and when grammar and autocorrect get in the way they acknowledge the silliness and move right back into the good stuff. Hope you enjoy!Names have been changed to respect the anonymity of these hot communicators.

Context: Mel (sexy lady) and Eduardo (seriously hot dude) met at a charming little pub. M was just in the city for a visit. After some intense weeks at work she was in serious need of a release…she had thought it would come in the form of a few good glasses of wine and some silly dancing. Then, a few drinks in but before dancing, M met E.  It turned out that he was immediately into M and up for dancing and much more…

The next morning, M woke up with her head on E’s chest. She had a sudden understanding that her bag, which contained her phone and wallet, were no-where to be found. Rather than panic she ceased the moment, had more fun with E, and then used his laptop to email her friend about meeting up at a brunch spot around the corner. Whilst the women were brunching, E called M’s friend and left the sweetest message….He thanked M for the fun, apologized for having to leave her before she found her belongings (he had to go to a family reunion that morning!) and said to please have M call him to let him know she was okay.

M and her friend re-traced their whereabouts, snuck into the last dance spot they’ been at and recovered all of M’s items. It was one of those 24hrs stints that everything worked out just as it should have.

Here’s the texting that followed – enjoy!

The next morning/afternoon

M: Bag and all contents found!!

E: Yes!!!
Wow… Great news!!!
Other than that… What a fun evening and morning 🙂
Cheeks are sore from laughing

M: Great news and super fun indeed!

M: Aw, still tickled from your text. And realize that my cheeks are sore too. Hope you’ve had a great family reunion!

E: The rest of my body is a bit sore as well from spin on Thurs and sex last night and this morning…
Too bad you’re not sucking on me now… (wink)

M: Rest of me rather tired too (blush face)

E: Where are you? What are you wearing?

M: Having a nice little snooze. Don’t believe in pajamas.

E: When you going to suck on me again?

Next day:

M: Heading back from a day in the vineyards… But could be out for a another good glass before the week starts.

E: I have to do a bit of work now (sad face)
Otherwise I’d have you over for some wine

M: Fair enough, good luck w prepping for the week!

E: Stuck on hold for 20 minutes with United. UGH. We could have been squeezing in a session right now…

New day/evening:

E: How are you doing sexy??

M: Hey hey.
Damn. Was just around the corner from you but decided it was late and that I wouldn’t pester you

E: You should have. Have you had your orgasm for the day?? (blush face)

M: No!! No wonder I am so cranky today!

E: I’m sure my tongue and lips could have helped!!

M: Damn. I took myself for a glass near your place and came so close to popping into that pub we met at.

E: And I was so close to headed to the wine bar instead but ended up at the pub with a co-worker.

E: It felt great kissing you as I was inside of you (wink face)

M: Ugh!! Sorry to have just missed you by being at the place across the street…

M: And that made me smile too. You made a morning that could have been about a lost bag and a fuzzy head super delightful instead.

E: Why aren’t you sucking on me right now?? (blush smile)

M: Damn. Would have been fun to get a drink and some naughtiness in w you.

E: I should have come inside of you so you could feel a bit of my deep inside of you for the rest of the day… (wink)

M: That was on you if I recall correctly (wink)

E: Oh, I know…
I really wanted you to suck every last drop out of me as I came… The best!!

M: Now I’m all hot and bothered and I missed you by just a moment. Though I don’t know if I could have survived the blushing had you had to introduce me to a co-worker…

E: Haha
And have my throbbing cock in your mouth as I nibble your clit
You feeling my cock growing as your soft moist lips are wrapped around me
(blush face)
Tasting your sweetness as it melts in my mouth Mmmmm

M: Mmmmmm have gone back to the memory of sucking on you many times in the past few days… whilst I also pretend it’s your fingers sliding along my wet slit

E: Damn… I bet your sweet peach is nice and wet… Clit throbbing and swelling up.. Reaching out for my tongue or lips
Bend you over so I can lick your slippery wet pussy and tight sweet asshole from behind. Mmmm…
Spreading your legs so my tongue can dig for the sweetness
Do you enjoy the thought of sucking my hard cock?

M: Right now I am wildly impressed how hot your texting skills are and worried I’ll never get any rest
And yes
Sucking your cokck and knowing how much you like it turns me on massively

E: You will because I also need some rest
Stroking it as you lick and suck on my nicely shaved balls.. Your pussy melting all over my mouth Mmm
Licking the droplets of my precum with the tip of your tongue Mmm
Eagerly asking you to cum in my mouth… Begging you Mmm

M: I want you to be licking on my tits and rubbing my clit and then flying me so hard but so sweetly
(hehehe, autocorrect turns fucking into flying)

E: I’ll suck on one nipple and tit while you do the other one
Then spin you around and fuck you from behind as you watch yourself being pleased in my full length closet mirrored doors
Sliding my thumb in your tight ass as I pound you slow but hard and deep from behind
Damn, I’d love to see how wet your pretty soaked pussy looks right now Mmmmm

M: She’s both very pleased and very teased

E: Mmm
What would you really want me to do if I were there?

Next morning

M: I fell asleep and woke up dripping wet… have a good day handsome

E: Wow.. Were you pleasing yourself when you fell asleep…
What are you doing naughty girl?

M: Just finished some solo naughtiness actually… Now off to write a report. Think it’s a good ordering of events.

E: Mmmmm should have let me know so I could have helped you before heading out (wink)

M: You did help out (blush)

E: haha
How did I help out??

M: Good memories…

E: So you like my texting skills??
haha
What memories made you wet?
Also, you are a total sweetheart… to me.

M: Aw, Seriouslys, aw. Thank you

E: Want to have you cum in my mouth soon (blush)

M: I’m down with that (wink)

E: Have you ride and fuck my mouth until you cum Mmmm

M: I’m trying to complete a work report on deadline!!
But damn, that sounds gooooood

E: Nibble on your clit

E: Hello?

M: Hey hey:) I had to turn off the phone to write this proposal! Due in two hours..

E: 2 hours? Fk them!!

M: Aren’t you watching a boxing thing or something?

E: It’s on later… Still want me to cum deep inside of you?

Too bad you’re not here… I’m stroking my hard throbbing cock thinking of the way you rode it Mmmm

M now back home (several thousand miles away from E)

M: Oh I want you HERE

E: Is that right?? For what??

M: I want you in my bed fucking me, clearly! “I’m stroking my hard throbbing cock thinking of the way you rode it Mmmm” I’m now so wet I can barely stand it

E: Spread your legs and show me where you want my hard cock
I’ll grab you by the ankles and spread your legs wide as I suck on your pulsating clit with my soft lips
Sliding 2 fingers in and out as I lick your clit

M: Woke up to these then came sooooo good when thinking of your tongue and fingers… And cock

E: You should be sucking on my hard thick cock right now… what are you wearing?

M: That got me so hot and bothered that I had to take a break from errands and get back in bed…

E: Let me see a quick picture… Please…

M: Maybe later… If your good….

E: I’ve been very good

M: True and I’m the one who mis-spelled you’re.. So…
But I’m back to errands… What are you hoping for?

E: Something naughty

(M sends face and nothing else selfies)

M: Yum Can I see those gorgeous tits and amazing pussy please????
Is this after you came?
When are you back so I can cum in your wet pussy?
You’ll have to suck every last drop of my cum after I explode in you…
Deal?

M: Not sure when I’m back, but deal…

E: What are you doing?

M: Just opened a good bottle of red and about to sip it while thinking of you rubbing my clit

E: Nibbling your clit as you suck my cock
Show me your clit

M: (sends pic of tits in very low cut bright pink tank top)
Shit… My tits are even turning me on;)

E: Stroking my cock for you right now
When I see you we will just fuck forevvverhh
Wow

E: How is your pretty pussy? I’m stroking my hard throbbing cock while looking at your pictures…

M: My pretty pussy is missing you

E: Oh really… Are you rubbing it?
Let me see it
I need a couple more pics please

M: (sends rather suggestive pics of torso and a hand slipping under the covers)

E: Yummm Let me see your nipples
Imagining me licking your wet pussy?
With my hard cock in your mouth

M: (sends a faceless pic of her grabbing a breast)

E: Mmm Where would you want me to cum if I were there

M: Fuck. I want you to want me and to have you cum all over me

E: Mmm Fuck your pretty mouth while I tease and pinch your erect nipples
Watch you lick off the dops of my precum with your tongue
I came 3 times this morning Mmmm
What are you doing to your pussy?

M: I want to make you come like that in the morning…
I’m turned on but not as wet as I would be if you were here
Licking me…

E: Watching yourself in my mirrors as I lick your pussy with your legs up in the air and spread wide open

M: Yes. Yes please!

E: Then I’d put you on your knees as I’m standing… Watching yourself in my mirror sucking on my hard cock like a naughty and good girl

M: Sorry for delay… took me a minute to come to that

E: Mmmm

M: I like when you grab my knees and ankles

E: And pound your pussy
Nice and deep

M: Mmmm

E: your legs on my shoulders as I kiss and suck on your lips and nipples
What else really drives you crazy?
Like me squeezing your throat with my hands a bit?

M: My throat is a bit tender but I do like the idea of you taking control and having your way with me

E: Flip you over and shove the head of my throbbing cock in your tightness Mmmm

A few days later

E: At the pub we met at
What you wearing??

M: Favorite outfit…

Also would feel so much better w your throbbing hard cock inside me… Yes, I want that…

E: Let me see what outfit you’re wearing
Bend you over.. Pulling your hair and spanking your ass
Then have you such on my hard cock before shoving it back inside you

M: My damn phone… Been trying to show you how much I want you but it’s not recording…

E: Show me your beautiful nipples and wet pink pussy where you want me to cum

M: (Sends pic of her face as she was coming)

E: What are you doing to your wet pussy?

M: Imagining your cock in me
Thrusting and pounding
And surprising me w so much hard and powerful goodness

E: Your legs on my shoulders, going deeper and deeper
My hands wrapped around your neck and you hold onto my triceps. Then wrists
Let me see how wet your pussy is

M: God, your triceps…
And deeper
Pinning my wrists back

E: Pinning you down and doing whatever I want to you

M: My pussy is dripping

E: Let me see
I’d pull my cock out of your dripping wet pussy to fuck your mouth as you’re still pinned
Stroking my hard cock right now

M: So many tried photos of my sopping pussy and hard as fuck nipples

E: Mmmm

M: But it’s dark and I’m all riled up
And my phone is driving me nuts and is not letting me capture it
But I’m writhing

E: Mmmmmm

M: And just want you to take charge

Following late morning

E: What are you wearing? (blush)
What are you doing hottie?

M: Just woke up from a nap… Jeans around my ankles…;)

E: Mmmm wish my cock were in your sweat soaked pussy

M: Mmmmm yes yes yes

E: Kissing you and pounding your pussy…
Still craving my cum in your pretty pink pussy?

M: Soooooooooo much

E: Only if you promise to suck the last drops out…
If you were here I’d make sure you’d also have some of my cum inside you Mmmmm

M: I promise (blush face)

E: Send me a naughty pic

M: Patience…

E: Why?

M: Cause I like thinking of you waiting impatiently….

E: Naughty girl
You’re going to get spanked hard for that
Or you can picture me stroking my hard cock to your pictures…
What panties are you wearing right now?

M: Um… Nada. And I may be a bit naughty at times but I never lie

E: Let me see naughty girl
How many times have you played with your pretty pink pussy today?

M: Twice
As you know, I get frisky when I wake up…

E: I played twice as well
It felt great when you were on top of me Mmmmm
Turned on even more when you wanted me to cum inside of me even though you’re not on the pill
How many times did you cum?

M: I’m pretty tuned into my cycle… Just couldn’t express that in the that moment…
I honestly can’t remember… And that is a very very good thing

E: Why is that a very very good thing?
Do you remember sucking on me? That also felt damn good

M: Because it was too high of a number, I lost count
I do…

E: Wish you were sucking on me right now
Cock is throbbing for you right now
Send me a little something naughty please

M: (sends selfie raising a glass of wine to him) Out having a glass whilst working but still hope this helps

E: Out and about with no panties
Can’t wait to fuck your wet pussy out in public soon… Find a dark alley or something (blush)

M: Out and about w no panties… Don’t tell!

E: I dare you to rub your clit next time you’re in the restroom

M: If I do that, I might not be able to stop

E: And??
Bite your lip and think of me

M: I might have to go the restroom just to do this… I have to work!!!

E: It’s Saturday!!
I would be so turned if someone were watching you suck on me.. Then I’d bend you over so they can watch you cum over and over (blush face)
Dare you!!
Be a good girl and do as you are told!
blush face
That’s what naughty girls get for leaving the house with no panties…
Stroking my hard cock thinking of you rubbing your throbbing clit Mmmmm

M: Wondering if my computer is safe enough for me to leave it here to go to the bathroom…
Rub and think of my sucking and slurping and loving having you so hard and desiring of my mouth

E: Fucking your mouth
The head of my cock going into your throat

M: Do it
My pussy is throbbing against my jeans

E: Tighten your pussy and imagine me being in it
I’d love to bend you over and fuck your wet pussy as I slide my thumb in and out of your ass Mmmm
Going to tie your hands behind your back and do whatever I want to you (blush face)

M: Fuck me!!!!!!

E: Make your pretty pussy explode all over my cock!

M: I want to ex…… ploooooooooode!!!!!

E: Me too…. Where would you want me to explode??

M: In me (because you said that’s what felt the most amazing to you…)
And I like making you feel amazing

E: And what makes you feel amazing?

M: Honestly… Depending on the moment, you powerfully fucking me from behind.. and aslo you lapping up my juices with your talented lips and tongue
But I also love getting your cock throbbing in my mouth

E: Mmmmm
I can picture licking your pussy lips and clit very eagerly and begging you to cum in my mouth (blush)

M: (sends picture of the “washroom” sign in the restroom)
did as I was told
And can picture that too… And did twice today… And suspect thrice rather soon…

E: Mmmm
Take a couple of naughty pics for me
I need proof! (wink)
Get any work done??? Haha

M: More than I would have thought considering I had this hottie from the East Coast turning me on all afternoon…

E: Hahaha
Did you play or tease yourself in the restroom?
wink

M: Both

Next morning

E: You please yourself yet this morning? (blush face)
When do I get to cum in your wet pussy?

M: No soon enough…

E: Where are you right now?
I’m craving to hear your voice as we cum…

M: I’m in bed… Wish I’d just recorded myself…

E: Want to play again?
I’m stroking my cock

M: Yes, but I’m still recovering and I have a business call starting now!!!!
Stroke it and think of me sucking you

E: Postpone it for really good phone sex

M: Tempting… !
But sadly I can’t

E: Or send me a naughty pic so I can cum looking at it
I’d love to see your pretty pink satisfied pussy
You’re going to have to suck every last drop out of me for not doing as you’re told (blush face)

M:…..

E: When did you last suck a real man dry??

M: Yours was the last cock in my mouth

E: Have you had another cock in your pussy since?
The truth

M: Nope
I swear

E: Just a fantasy but I’d love to have someone watch you suck on my hard throbbing cock Mmmmm
Imagine my hard cock in your wet pussy… Your legs on my shoulders as I pound you hard
Show me your pussy nice and wet as you’re on your call…

M: I’m at a cafe now..

E: Well… you know what that means (blush)
Go to the bathroom and take off your panties
And send me a pic of them

M: (no pic sent) Haha.. I’m going to be in so much trouble the next time I see you…

E: Trouble? Haha
You’re going to be my hot submissive girl day and night (blush face)
I have a blindfold and tie I want to use on you (blush face)

M: I’m nervous, but in (blush face)

E: Does your pussy get wet thinking about being submissive to me?? (blush face)
What naughty things would you like to try with me?

M: I want you to tie me to the bed and tell me to stay still…
And then have you make that impossible

E: Going to have to cover your mouth too
I can picture teasing and eating your pussy forever… Ice cubes… Pinching and slapping your amazing tits and ass
Rubbing my hard hard cock and shaved balls all over your body… especially your face…
Taking pictures and video of it on your phone so you can watch when you’re at home

M: Sounds rather memorable…!
And amazing.. And now I’m going to have to go home sopping wet…

E: Send me a picture of that wet pussy now… Do as you are told and go to the bathroom

M: I like keeping you wanting….

E: Well… You’re going to be punished for that! And by punished I mean utterly delighted….

Next day

E: And how’s your day been?

M: Big meeting in 20min, don’t distract me!
(Had to take a lunch break to further imagine your blind fold offer… )

E: Hahahahaha
Ok I’ll behave only this once!! I’ll be a really good boy (blush face)

M: Good (blush face)

E: I think that in itself deserves a reward
How did it go?

M: You get a reward
I missed dinner…

E: Why?
How was your lunch ‘break’?

M: Break was delightful and thank goodness for it

E: And what did you do and think about?

M: My dinner/ your cock

E: What about my cock?

M: It’s what I thought about at lunch and wanted for dinner….

E: What would you do with my cock if you had it right now?

M: I just keep remembering how dizzy I was when I woke up on you and yet how much fun I had going straight to your cock…

E: What did you enjoy about my cock?
It’s nice and hard right now
What are you wearing?

M: Low cut blue dress

E: Mmm
Let me see

M: (Sends pic of her from lips to upper torso)

E: I want to cum on those amazing tits
Let me see your beautiful nipples
Or that pretty pink wet pussy
PLEASE
How is your pretty pussy this evening?

M: Just read through this chain and everything is throbbing

E: blush face
How far back did you read?

M: All the way..
Why on Earth did I bother doing other things when I could have just spent that time at your place…

E: wink
Could have sent you off full of my cum

M: Right?! Damn… And I remember being at the wine bar thinking, “wish he and his cock would walk in and say sweet nothings and then fuck me too.”

E: And I was across the street
Haha
Show me a few more naughty pics

M: (Sends a selfie blowing a kiss)
Night night

E: Naughtier

M: (Sends a selfie lying back in bed)

E: You going to play with yourself now before going to sleep
Or did you already?

M: A little bit of both
I got mad at you earlier… Mad that you didn’t make sure to fuck me again before I left your city…
That’s why you didn’t get a better pic of my tits tonight…;)

E: Well…
I’m still keeping you wet and horny
wink face

M: That’s true… Very very true
And truthfully I couldn’t stay mad at you

E: I think I deserve pictures of your beautiful tits, nipples and pussy…

M: You probably do… night night