The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Erotica

Eye of the Beholder ^{Mark Timlin}

I’d been sitting on the floor inside the walk-in closet for over an hour before I heard the key in the door of the hotel suite. I’d slid in like a ghost using a duplicate when I knew she’d left to meet him, and before I went to my hiding place I wandered around for a few minutes picking up things here and there: a used glass, an item of soiled underwear that I’d put to my face to smell her musk. I wondered what the hell I was putting myself through again. She’d left her portable CD player on repeat, playing an old Joni Mitchell album that I’d always liked, and I nodded my head in time to the music.

Inside the closet her clothes hung close to me and I could smell old perfume, old make-up and just the hint of sweat. But that might have been from me. It was hot in there and I had only cracked the sliding, mirrored doors an inch or so, just enough to see the king-size bed lit softly by the bedside lamps that she’d left burning.

The two of them had been drinking and were noisy as they came in, straight to the bedroom, where I was waiting. No messing with niceties like a schooner of sherry or an after-dinner mint. I appreciated that. The closet was getting warmer and warmer by the minute, and as they entered the room I squinted through the gap to see them both, and what they were going to do to each other.

The woman was tall and blonde in a leather coat with her hair piled up on top, and they’d obviously been having such a good time in the bar that some of it had come loose and strands hung around her face. Even so, she looked great, and even better when she did something to it at the back and it fell to her shoulders. Her hair had always been beautiful: shiny, lustrous, the colour of butter melting in the sun.

Lucky bloke, I thought as they stood by the door and kissed. She had the face of a Hollywood star on a movie poster and blue eyes that said, “Come to bed, and I mean right now.”

He was taller, older, florid, ugly, as it goes, and I felt my spine contract at the sight of his face. He was big, but not fat, in a pinstripe suit cut to make him look slimmer, a blue shirt, striped tie and black slip-on shoes. When they broke away from each other he slammed the bedroom door behind them, as she slipped off her coat to reveal the inevitable little black dress. She tossed her coat over a chair and he threw his jacket down and grabbed her again. She didn’t object when he kissed her once more, and neither did she object when he spun her round and pulled the zip of her dress down to her waist and peeled it off her shoulders so that it fell to her feet like a pool of ink before she stepped out of it.

Underneath she was wearing tart’s gear, whore’s kit. But by Christ she did look good in it. Black fuck-me shoes with five-inch heels, black nylons that gleamed in the light with thick bands of double black at their tops, then pure white thighs, the colour of fresh milk, slashed by the black bondage of suspenders, lace briefs just see-through enough to give a hint of the goodies underneath, and a black lace bra that her breasts hardly needed for support but to flaunt their beauty. To tease. Her tummy was flat as a billiard table, her waist was tiny then flared into rounded hips and when she turned round she shook the twin peaches of an arse to die for.

I could see he appreciated the sight as the front of his pinstripe trousers tented, and when she turned back she reached for his cock straight away. She seemed to be pleased with what she found and she kneeled down and unzipped him, reached in and pulled out his prick. It was long and thick, gorged with blood, and she spat on her fingers and rolled back the foreskin before taking it in her mouth, both of them groaning with pleasure.

It was getting hotter in the closet as I watched, and I felt myself harden too and I hated myself for it.

“Wait,” he said, and she stopped for a moment, releasing his prick. He kicked off his shoes, undid the button on his trousers, and pushed them and his boxer shorts off, looking comical in shirt-tails and socks. No one ever knows how silly they look having sex.

As he tugged off his tie and pulled at the buttons on his shirt, almost popping them off the material in his haste, his cock hardened even more as she took it inside her soft mouth again and she put her fingers in the bush of his pubic hair and gathered his balls into her hand. Bitch, I thought, as she sucked on his dick like a baby at a tit. Bitch. Just you wait. It didn’t help that my cock was now unbearably hard and all caught up in my underwear, and in the position I was in I couldn’t adjust the damn thing to get it comfortable.

Anyway, after she’d feasted on his prick for a few minutes she let it slip out of her mouth and it was all shiny with spit and they went over to the bed and really got down to it after he’d pulled off those stupid socks. First, off comes her bra and by God she’s got a pair of tits. He held them in his big hands and started sucking on each nipple until they were as pink and hard as pencil erasers, and she started wanking his cock in her hand and I was worried he was going to come all over her and I’d be stuck in that damned closet until he could get it up again. But she knew just how to get him to the peak of orgasm before she let him slip back.

He was loving all that, squeezing her breasts and rolling her nipples between his fingers, making her cry out half in pain, half in pleasure. After a minute or two he went for the main event, running his hand down her belly and inside her knickers and he obviously liked what he found as I could see his fingers were slippery with cunt juice, and he took a big lick and then kissed her again, a long, lingering snog, and at the same time pulled her pants over her hips and down those long legs and let her kick them off. She opened her legs wide and I could see that her cunt was shaven close to the skin which somehow made her look even more naked, like a young girl, even though she was still wearing the suspender belt, nylons and those shiny black shoes. So now was the time for them to start fucking. The man lay on his back and she climbed on top, her favourite position, and she guided his prick up inside her and slid down hard.

Come on, I thought, get on with it. We haven’t got all day. But she took her time, riding him like a jockey, her head thrown back, eyes closed, her hands clenched tightly in the hairs on his barrel chest, until she froze solid, gripping him tighter inside, and came with a whoop. They stayed like that, a human tableau, for a moment that seemed to go on for ever before she rolled off onto her side, her cunt opened to my eyes, all red and wet and raw inside before she leaned up on one elbow and looked directly at the closet door. I imagined she was looking straight into my eyes but she gave no sign that she could see me or anything else after her climax. Maybe she was admiring herself in the mirror, or may be she just didn’t give a damn.

But the man wasn’t going to allow her a rest. His fat, red cock was still erect. Still ready to shoot his spunk up into her belly. Good job, I thought, as he grabbed her again and stuck his face between her legs, slurping like a pig at the trough, then with dripping lips, covered her face with her own juice and threw her down onto the bed. I waited until he climbed on top and pushed his cock deep inside and started to move. As he rose and fell I could see her cunt bulge from the girth of his knob and his huge balls banging against the crack of her arse, and I swear I could smell the stink of their sex clear across the room.

They both began to moan as they approached climax, she for the second time, he for the first. Hers a slight whimper from the back of the throat and his harsher, louder, just as I had expected, and was waiting for. There was no chance they could hear as I gently slid the closet door open, its runners carefully greased earlier. I stood up slowly, the surgical gloves on my hands hot and damp inside, much like her vagina, I thought, but dismissed the thought immediately. On rubber soles I crossed the carpet silently, and just as he was beginning on the short strokes I tapped him on his big, bare, suntanned shoulder with the silencer on the end of the .22 automatic I held tightly, but not too tightly, in my right hand.

He stopped in mid-thrust and turned his head with a look of astonishment on his heavy features.

“Hi. How’s it going?” I asked, “Having a good time?”

“What…?” was the only word I let him say before I stuck the barrel of the pistol in his ear and fired once. The report was no louder than a virgin’s sigh, but I could imagine the small, powerful bullet ripping around inside his skull, scrambling his brains into a bloody mush, as his eyes almost popped from their sockets from the pressure within his head. He collapsed onto the woman’s body.

She screamed a small scream then, not as loud as the one she’d made when she’d orgasmed a few minutes before, and tried to heave his dead weight off herself. I put the smoking barrel of the gun to her forehead and smiled a smile I was glad I couldn’t see, and she flinched as I knew she would when my finger tightened on the trigger again.

We stayed like that for a brief moment before I said, “Come on,” in a voice I hardly recognized as my own, as I eased off the pressure and removed the gun from her face. “We’ve done what we were paid for, let’s get this place cleaned up and get out of here.”

“You didn’t even let the poor bastard come,” she said as she pushed at his torso and I helped her roll him over, his almost flaccid cock popping out of her cunt like a cork from a bottle. “You could’ve at least let him do that.”

“Fuck him,” I said, “No one comes into my wife but me.”