The Mammoth Book of Erotica presents The Best of Lucy Taylor Read Online Free PDF

Myriam. “If I heal you, then you make a gift to me. Whatever you think is fair.”
    “That’s a funny way of doing business.”
    “This isn’t a business.”
    “And I won’t do it in front of an audience. It has to be in private. Just you and me.”
    She smiled. “A lot of people feel that way. But the sexual energy of others is important for the ceremony. It makes the healing faster. If you’re shy about –”
    “I’m not shy,” said Nicholas. “But I’m not performing for a bunch of perverts, either. I already know what that feels like.”
    “You know so much, then maybe you don’t need me.” With surprising strength, she put a hand on his chest and shoved past him.
    Contrite and frightened, he went after her. “No, wait. I’m sorry. Please. I need your help.”
    She glared at him a moment, then her features softened and she drew a long, slow breath. “Tomorrow night, then. Not here, though. Never in the same place twice. I hope you have a good memory. I never write anything down.”
    “It’s good enough,” said Nicholas, and she told him an address.
    “Take your clothes off and lie down with me,” said Myriam. They were in a third floor efficiency of a squalid hotel off Dundas Street that catered to transients, addicts, and hookers, who rented the rooms by the hour. It occupied a tiny nook between a take-away Chinese joint and moss-encrusted St Benedict’s Cathedral on the corner and, although Nicholas had cruised this area a hundred times, he didn’t remember ever noticing the place before.
    Now, awkwardly, as though he were stripping for some unpleasant physical exam, Nicholas undressed and crawled into bed next to Myriam. He laid a hand on her breast, but she only continued staring at the ceiling, her expression meditative, pensive.
    “Now what?” he said angrily.
    “Do you believe in God, Nicholas?”
    “No.”
    “Do you believe that
I’m
God?”
    “Of course not.”
    “That
you’re
God?”
    “What is this? Is this about getting it on or are we having a fucking prayer meeting?”
    She turned onto her side, breasts lolling in great vanilla mounds. “You’re here because you believe – even a little bit – that I might have the power to cure you. That isn’t rational, Nicholas. And clearly you’re a rational man, who doesn’t believe in God, who doesn’t expect miracles. So maybe you’re just here for one last good fuck.” She traced a fingernail around his nipple, teasing it erect. “So what are you waiting for, Nicholas? Don’t you want to fuck me?”
    “Damn right,” he said, affecting his old bravado from the past, but unconvincingly so. As her fingers played with the curls of his chest hair, fear did a counterpoint jig on his spine.
    “I told you what’s wrong with me,” he said. “You don’t want to use protection?”
    Merriment danced in her green eyes, in the creases at the corners of her smile. “I already have protection, Nicholas.”
    She pulled his face to hers, kissed him long and wetly. Tongue rimming the roof of his mouth, the tender edge of his gums. Licked his eyelids and throat, filled his ear with the heat of her breath. Her meaty body felt heavy and powerful. Her smell enveloped him, old odors and fragrances, scents of passion and longing and loss. He wanted to fuck her and he wanted to weep, and the juxtaposition of those two conflicting sensations brought up his anger, a sense of brute self-preservation.
    He rolled her over, got on top and thrust her open. So she didn’t need protection from his disease? Fine: maybe she needed it from him. He rammed his way inside her. Their skin squeaked together. He could hear the thumping of their bellies, the slurp and sputter of moist flesh.
    But the instant that he entered her, he felt her grasp him almost to the point of pain, her inner muscles pulling him inside. Tugging his penis, but also something else – his essence, his energy, his very Nicholas-ness – for which his dick seemed to be becoming