Quiver

“You going to kill me with that?” he asked in a broad Aussie accent. He was the sexiest thing I had ever seen. Afterward I had to beg him to replace the silver but he insisted on taking all the insured items and I insisted that he tie me up.

I’ve done apartments, houses, houseboats and caravans. I’m addicted to that moment when you first push open the door and you’re standing in the dark, the scent of a family, of completely unknown lives all around you, just before you switch on the light.

Ever since then I’ve found myself seeking out the unfamiliar. Maybe I want to get back to that instance. To be him. The housebreaker in a strange but intimate environment.

THE LOVER

We were running down a back lane. I knew it was close to her house, but I didn’t realize just how close. Anyway, I wasn’t going to let him know about that side of my life. I like to keep things in separate boxes. You’d never find me planting orchids next to foxgloves.

Next thing I know, Simon’s over the fence and into the backyard. He moves like a professional: a quick, silent leg swung over, then a big jump, like a cat. It turns me on, makes me an accomplice.

“Why this place?”

“Because it looks so straight…virginal.”

Then he puts his fist through the very window I’d fixed only the week before. The light in the kitchen is on. Please be out. Please. The cat rubs itself against my leg.

“Should have guessed you’d have a way with animals.”

He grins wryly. I shrug. This time the two satellites are orbiting out. This time my heart is beating so fast I’m frightened it will show in my voice.

He pushes me up the narrow stairs toward the attic bedroom. He’s playing rough tonight, short man gets tough. I let him use his weight against my frame as I walk ahead of him, his hands grabbing at my ass.

In the darkness of the room I turn a photo of myself flat against the desk. The scent of her comes up through the sheets as he pushes me down onto the bed and straddles my chest.

“You mak

e me hard just to look at you.”

“How hard?”

“This hard.” His cock pushes against my lips.

My head floods with images, her hair, his hair, all mixing up as he reaches down and pulls me free. In the dark, this dark I know to be hers. He takes me into his mouth as he pushes down hard into the back of my throat. His fingers plunge into me, and soon there is nothing but this, the pleasure of the moment. He draws me closer and closer and then pulls back, holding me tightly at the base, stopping me. Sweat welds us as we slip across each other’s bodies. Somewhere in the distance I hear the click of the front door.

THE GIRLFRIEND

As soon as I opened the front door I felt the draught coming in from the kitchen. The house is small, a worker’s cottage from the last century. It was Dee who suggested that we strip the floorboards and convert the attic into a bedroom. I loved those times with him; I’d be in one room, he’d be in the room next to me. I’d be hammering a nail in while, on the other side of the wall, he’d be painting. It was like we could feel each other through the plaster.

I love the size of my house. I can feel its perimeters, it’s manageable. I have always felt safe. Until now. Fragments of glass lie scattered across the kitchen floor. There’s blood on the edges of the smashed window.

Above me I can hear the creaking of bedsprings. I creep up the stairs, step by step, placing my feet carefully to avoid the loose floorboards.

Groaning. I know that groan, that quick intake of breath. Dee. For one mad second I think that maybe he’s broken in to masturbate in my bed. The groaning gets louder. Another voice joins him, male. Something twists inside my body. But I have to look. I have to know.

LOOKING FOR STRANGE

She stands at the end of the bed, her eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness. Dim light falls across two bodies, transforming them into pale ribbons of moving flesh. She holds her breath. It doesn’t make sense to her at first. It doesn’t seem logical. Her lover lies stretched across the white sheets, his dark skin in stark contrast to the pale, smaller male. Long ginger hair falls across the black tendrils of his groin. She thinks of centaurs. Of war. Of the beauty of the masculine back, glistening with sweat and gripped by hard hands. Angry in its energy. She does not recognize the man on the bed as her lover. She has never seen this passivity, this demure arching of his body as he is entered. She has never even imagined it. But there is a reverberation, an expression her body echoes: to receive. And in that she finds him beautiful, with the blood high in his cheeks, his hair pulled back violently as the smaller man rides him, drives himself further and further into his body.

“Dee?”

His eyes slowly draw focus. Her voice is left hanging between the groans and the sound of flesh hitting flesh.

“Dee?” She lifts her hand and touches his face. The scent on her wrist jolts him back into the present.

“Get out!”

“But I don’t want to.”