Age Twenty, by Joseph Allan

We gathered that night in Dan's basement, friends from high school
tethered by family elastic, sprung back to our native suburb for the
holidays, and struck sparks off each other around Dan's dad's pool
table, drinking soda amid the shelves of solvents and the old camping
gear.

Gabrielle was almost as I remembered, my tiny quiet mouse in the
corner by the washer and dryer, waiting and watching for her shot. One
detail caught and held my focus, with a ridiculously gratifying
pleasure for such a small thing: instead of her battered everyday
jeans she wore pinstriped wool suit pants that I had never seen on
her, and never saw after. And each and every time she leaned across
the edge of the table to try a long shot she obliterated my
consciousness, just straight-up blacked out my higher mental
functions, with the perfect tight fuzzy flannel curve of her
pinstriped ass. Here's a truth that was designed entirely for my
entertainment: every shot's a long one when you're barely five feet
tall.

And she was still, as before, the willing prey of my lust. She nodded
and smiled at the inanities I deployed to get her to myself, and
smiled and accepted my offer of a ride home, and smiled and agreed
that it was far too early to call it a night, and smiled and took off
her seatbelt while I parked the Civic in the gravel lot facing the
municipal airstrip.

How she writhed on my fingers, sopping and swollen in the passenger
seat, lit all in yellow by the trail of runway lights! My hand
slippery under the opened flaps of those lovely pants, and under the
white cotton beneath, as she wriggled and gasped like a happy minnow
on the pavement, mouth and greedy lips on my cock, our twin
concentrations blissful and indivisible, until the high beams of the
airport patrol truck lit the condensation on the rear window, and it
was time to move on.

Anonymous

The glass is foggy.

As I glide the razor from my ankle to my thigh in one long stroke, I feel an unexpected shiver down my spine then hardness against my left hip. I smile and turn, pressing my water-warmed body against him. He pulls tighter. Our bodies connect from loin to mouth. He hungrily gropes as hot water runs off our skin and steam rises.

Cupping my ass, he lifts me as I simultaneously wrap my legs around him. Kissing his slick lips. Fingers clutching his ropey neck muscles.

“Close your eyes,” he says. I do and slowly slide down the length of his body until my cheeks rest on the cold shower bench.

He adjusts the showerhead. Rhythmic beats of water drown out every sound as it pounds my breasts, then pools just above my bellybutton and finally rushes down like a waterfall between my lips.

In one quick movement, my legs are over his shoulders.

Running his mouth up the length of my inner thighs, he pauses at my center; his tongue and hot water run imperceptibly over my clit. My favorite orgasms are through oral sex. He knows this.

His hands glide past my stomach in search of my nipples, caressing them first, then circling. They perform in response. He pinches them. My weakness and a gasp slips.

Returning to my wetness, tongue teasing as his fingers press firmly into my thighs’ skin, coaxing them open. Further. Almost too far. Exposing even more.

His tongue’s stoke persists patiently. Continuing with intent and a precision only possible from years of dedicated practice.

My thighs burn and quiver. Deep inside it’s like a faucet is left on, filling me up too fast. And a vacuum is sucking my entire being from my fingertips and toes straight to my pulsating clit.

The water goes from too hot to cold without a moments notice. Every muscle in my body clenches.

My mind goes blank.

And I float into oblivion.

RedJim99

It is always in the touch,

fingertip hovering, almost

a touch and a drop that waits

for the moment when

with a movement so slow

we join. A drop,

an intake of breath.

--for Trifexxxtra

Ammu

She smiled, reminded of that day they first met. Alcohol, she teased him, was what did it for her. But she knew that was a lie.

No, she'd been tipsy before, but not like that day. That was a different kind of tipsy. The kind that made her feel wanton. That made her want to touch him. When she stood outside that pub and people she knew ran out to welcome her, she saw him through the glass. Just sitting there, making no effort to move, with that hint of arrogance and unmistakable hunger in his eyes.

She'd heard of him before, and he of her. She looked forward to seeing him and boy, it was all she'd hoped for and more.

But she was a tease, after all. Not one to give in easily. And he was persistent, not one to give up, at all. So came the night, 48 long hours after they met, when she stepped into his bedroom.

And he touched her. And she him. And he kissed her. And she him, feeling his hardness against her thigh. Hearing his jagged breathing. 

But she was a tease, after all. She pushed him onto the bed and stood between his legs. And undressed for him, taking all the time she needed. Unzipped her dress and unhooked her bra. Then ran her fingers up her legs, looking into his eyes and began peeling off her stockings.

What a night it was! He punished her for making him wait, for making him tremble with desire. What delightful punishment it was! His hands and his tongue. And the rasp of his stubble against her thigh.
And him, inside her, when she begged and moaned. The way he moved and the way she...

... "Your coffee, miss!" "Thankyou", she rasped out, her throat dry, sighing as she checked the time, waiting for the man she bedded and wedded six years ago.

Every single time

I like to imagine I'm the kind of thing you don't get too often. When I recall the length of your fingers, I think about what it would be like to tug at the button of your jeans, strained tight over your cock. I'm not sure you've ever been with someone like me. And I think, without knowing, of course, that I could be good for you.

I imagine your head thrown back, eyes closed, and I wonder how many girls have gotten on their knees for you. My lips pass over your velvety skin, and I breathe you in. I draw my tongue up the length of you as we seek out and find the shared rhythm between us.

I don't know how long we could stay drunk on the newness of it, but I imagine it would be a very sweet high.  Don't tell me you don't think about it, too.

I imagine you tangling your fingers into my hair, thrusting yourself into my mouth. I think about catching your eye with my own, smiling and moaning. I don't need the lights off, and I don't need the blankets pulled tight. I told you—I'm something you've never had before.

There's a lot of talk about power and head. As far as I'm concerned, there are at least two ways of looking at it. You could either say you're fucking my mouth or you could say I've got your cock between my teeth. Or you could take the sum of the parts, recognize the vulnerability on one side, the power on the other, and the fact that we both keep coming back here. Your fingers in my hair and my lips the shape of a secret, the strength of your hardness and the wetness of my cunt remind me that we're both getting something from this.

And that gets me off every single time.

Anonymous

“This party is boring.” She groaned to Carolyn as they sipped martinis.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him moving towards her. He’d been looking at her for an hour while pretending to talk sports with the guys. She knew that look.

Feeling him graze the small of her back, he swiftly grabbed her hand pulling her wordlessly towards the door. She stumbled in her heels behind him. Setting her drink down with a smile.

He still hadn’t said a word when they entered the house. Spinning her around, he used their bodies to quickly close the door. With his body pressed against hers, his hands wandered to her bare thighs then her behind. She felt his hardness as his touch explored her dampness. Both were breathless in their quiet house.

Taking her hand, less firmly this time, he led her upstairs.

“Lay down. Let me undress for you.”

And she did.

Slowly.

As he watched mesmerized.

Touching her bare skin deliberately as her black dress slipped down her body, she stood before him in black pushup bra, black lace thong and black heels.

She crossed the space and straddled him. His erection was pushing against his zipper.

Removing his shirt, button by button, then his belt, she crawled down the length of his body pulling off his pants and underwear in one tug.

Kissing his inner thighs, she began making her way up leisurely. Past his stomach, pausing at his ribs, nibbling both nipples, finally reaching his neck. She whispered, “I love you” into his parted lips before taking his tongue in her mouth.

He pressed against her thong desperate to enter her.

Swiftly flipping her, he started at her neck feeling his way all the way down her center. Shivers engaged her every nerve ending as his tongue found everything.

And he didn’t stop caressing her with his hands or mouth until he got the answer they both wanted.

Her back arched.

He pushed inside.

Slowly.

K.G. Waite

Tom sprawled naked upon the countertop. Catherine rummaged through the house looking for a length of twine. She glanced at her watch nervously: at any moment the doorbell might ring. She found the twine and quickly bound Tom's legs before dipping both hands in the melted butter.

“Derrick,” she shouted.

“Yeah?”

“Can you open the oven? It's time to get the turkey in.”

Anonymous

It doesn’t take me much. A hair flick, the way he raises his eyebrow, quizzically or mischievously and suddenly I’m there. I’m ready to go. He knows this about me, about his ability to turn me on. He wears white ribbed tank tops with a small notch cut just right in the center and will reveal the secret to me when I least expect it. That tank top with the little notch cut out, making it incredibly easy for me to rip off his body, becomes all I can see. He knows the power he wields over me at any given moment.

That’s why I’ve agreed to this game of his. He wants to see how far he can push me until I yield and give in. We’re at a party, and he’s watching me from a distance, wondering just when I’ll succumb to my need to ravage him. I’m sure it’s driving him mad, that I’m not driven mad at that very moment. He’s probably thumbing the little remote control in his pocket madly trying to adjust the speed on the mechanism that’s between my legs. It would probably be thrumming with maddening pressure, forcing me to demure from the conversation I’m currently having with a striking blond girl, and find him across the room. I know he wants me to beg him to take me back to our hotel room and finish what the night has started. I feel his eyes on me as I continue to flirt with the blond in front of me allowing her to put her hand on my knee, returning the gesture. He thinks he has me. We wants to have me. I can feel that need from him, that confusion. I should be his by now. That’s why we’re doing this, why he wants to do this, why he’s doing this to me. But what he doesn’t know is that earlier I took the batteries out. The power is mine now. So is he.

Julia Staley

Julia Staley's blog is having some difficulties, and she didn't want to leave her partner hanging, so we're posting her response here!

Charts and optimal dates and preferential temperatures. One line or two.

As if she could summon whatever it is that makes up the human soul as easily as she could a cab on a busy New York avenue.

Why can’t he see it? Her shoes slipped in the early slush.  I’m no lab result.

He had tried to tell her:

“The human heart is as unfamiliar to me as the new life forms I study.”

Hive minds, queen bees and honey.  She knew he preferred that to talks of love anyday.

She was just his assistant, transparent as a beaker.

~*~

In celebration of their 1-year anniversary, Trifecta Writing Challenge is teaming up with Velvet Verbosity this week.

So the prompt for the anniversary challenge was:

"Charts and optimal dates and preferential temperatures. One line or two.  As if she could summon whatever it is that makes up the human soul as easily as she could a cab on a busy New York avenue."

I'll be honest, I was really off-put when I read that.  I had no idea what to do with it, and it wasn't my usual writing style.    I immediately had to Google "preferential temperatures" because I needed to know what sort of a person might be talking about that.  Well, my results gave me articles about insects.  The rest followed.

My partner in the challenge is Natalie Amatera... her part will follow,and I will add a link once it is complete! (And probably just post a complete version here because that way it will flow.)

This was a lot of fun.

Behold, a Revenant Revelation

--C.D. Tolliver



Zora,


Once a


Maiden was


Buried alive, though thought


In


Extremis. She


Awoke


Perplexed. And came


Out of the


Crypt, confused, barely


Ambulatory, where she had


Lain twenty


Years,


Paralyzed,


Sleeping. The


End

Stay Dead!

NO! Not again!

Those fools, playing with nature.
The dead are supposed to stay dead!
This poor woman, mindless and naked.
She never knew what she was getting into.
Just let them die!

--By Swirls

Something Wicked

Reluctantly, Elle had agreed to go to this new club. Sydney had been begging for weeks, but it wasn't really Elle's scene. She was more into pencil skirts, stockings and 5 inch heels. But Sydney always came out with Elle to her clubs, so it was time to grunge it up a bit, break out the fishnets and smudge the eyeliner.

There was a slight line outside when they arrived, obviously Goth inspired, just up Sydney's alley. At the office, Sydney dressed like everyone else, just a bit heavier on the eyeliner and mascara. But after hours, she let loose and played by her own rules. Elle looked up to Sydney for her sense of freedom and not letting anyone tell her what to do. Yet as Sydney was fearless, Elle was disciplined and together, they made a good team.

They shuffled through the line and finally made it to the entrance. The bouncer at the door checked their IDs and scowled them through. After stopping to pay the cover charge, at an old fashioned ticket booth to a man with a studded collar, they were finally in.

They took a few steps and felt a slight dip in the floor. At the same time, a cloud of smoke, almost like fog, engulfed them in it's mist. Sputtering and coughing, they stumbled through to collapse into a couple of chairs by the bar. When they caught their breath, Elle looked at Sydney and saw she was covered in a fine glitter. "Am I covered in glitter too?" Elle asked. "Yeah!", Sydney giggled.

Elle looked out around the club and saw a girl she was standing in line behind, who was also covered in the strange glitter. Only, she didn't look quite right. Her face looked distorted and sinister. Looking around, she saw that everyone was starting to look like that. Elle turned to ask Sydney, only to find the same look on her too. What was this place?

Famous Fears and False Phobias

--C.D. Tolliver

Sinister sinusoidal slitherers:

Odious ophidiophobia.

Barking baleful beasts:

Syncopated cynophobia.

Mewling maniacal menaces:

Awful ailurophobia.

Fiendish finny phantasms:

Icky ichthyphobia.

Scorpizophobia:

Scary scatterings or scorpions?

Platypodophobia:

Fatal philosophical flat-footedness?

Pantophobia:

Dangerous denim dungarees?

Stranger in the Attic (The Piano Man)

--C.D. Tolliver

The piano sat, undusted, in the corner of the room. Everything else was meticulously spotless. There was something dark in the mahogany – a vague feeling of unease that deflected the casual viewer and terrified the cleaning staff.

Tammy stared at it. There was a black man in the wood, surrounded by shadow dressed in the darkness of night. Light fled his presence. Tammy was 3 years old. She had watched as her parents burned to death in their car after the accident, helpless. She wasn’t afraid of anything except white-tailed deer on the road on rainy nights – and Sponge Bob, of course.

It was a bright day and Tammy was mesmerized by the black figure, cloaked in dread, staring at her from the wood through the film, with dust bunnies at his feet. He looked, she decided, like a combination of Wally Cox and Jim Parsons, only taller, with ebony hair and anthracite skin, and eyes like raccoons when a car’s lights hit them at night, bright and red.

“You’re not my imaginary friend,” she said with certainty. After all, the black man wasn’t pale blue, and he didn’t have fangs so much as rows of slate shark teeth. “I’ll get a rag.” She left the room and came back with furniture polish and an old t-shirt. She carefully dusted the piano so she could see him, but not a millimeter more, because she wasn’t a servant. “That’s better,” she said. “Do you hunt deer?”

The black man flowed out of the piano like a genie and stared at her. “Generally, I eat maids,” he admitted with a smile, which would have been disturbing to Tammy’s parents, if they still lived.

“I think you are a good demon, like Socrates’, not a bad ghost," Tammy replied. Three is such an awkward age to know things. “Will you be my friend and bring me the heads of the deer that killed Mommy and Daddy?” “Of course, I will. We’re going to be good friends.”

C.D. Tolliver

On the count of three...
You run out there and draw the aliens’ attention, while we throw balloons full of salt water and Head and Shoulders at them. It’ll destroy them. I saw it in a movie once.
--C.D. Tolliver

Swirls

"On the count of three..."

"Three!"
"Wait, what happened to one and two?"
"Why wait?'
"Because waiting can be fun"
"Not always"
"No, but it's the anticipation"
"I've waited long enough!"
"Yes, now let us change that!"

by Swirls

C.D. Tolliver

--C.D. Tolliver
Nicodemus and Zebedee found the pale-green horse in the family plot, eating the day lilies and their grandmother’s prize Rose of Sharon. “I wonder where she came from,” mused Nicodemus. The horse shied away from them as they approached and neighed at them, stomping her iron-shod feet on the grave of their father. Things had changed since the grey man had moved into town with his red-eared snowy-white hounds. “We should just close the gate and call Ma,” said Zebedee seeing the gate was firmly locked. “Yeah … call Ma,” echoed Nicodemus noticing his brother’s stare.

“Ma! There’s a peculiar green horse in the cemetery!” they called upon reaching the house. It was decorated for Halloween with bed-sheet ghosts and macramé spider webs. Kittens were climbing the webs like so many spiders, except spiders don’t usually hiss and get their toes caught in the webs.

“What’s all this ruckus about?” called the twin’s mother. The gray man had come to call once when she was tending the ravens, but departed disappointed. “What’s this about a green horse?” She approached and squinted at cemetery.

“Oh. It’s just her. He must be early,” she said, turning back toward the kitchen.

“Who’s he and why’s he early?” the boys asked in unison.

“He’s the one that came for your father, and that batch of pups the delinquents killed.” Seeing the boys’ incomprehension, she added, “There’s a time for reaping the harvest. The grey man came last month to find the evil doers and now he’s come to collect the chosen few.” She pointed out the window as a black-robed skeletal figure jumped from the gate house and crossed over to the locked gate.

“Death is usually unexpected, but he appears to have been summoned early.” Their mother raised her hands and a flock of ravens joined Death as he mounted the pale horse. “It’s not our business tonight, boys,” she said, as Death’s scythe caught the last ray of sunlight and the first terrors of night.

Thomas MacInnes

This is my first crack at your contest. Hopefully, I don’t embarass myself too badly. Be gentle, good folks.

Deep within this gnarled and knotted paradise reside the souls of every child who, when released for recess play, were told that the joy of childhood comes rooted in the safety of grass.

Editor's Note: This submission came into our possession just a touch too late to be included in this weekend's linkup.

Matthew Lowe

And the boxes were stacked in a haphazard fashion like the plot of the film Batman Forever featuring Val Kilmer, Tommy Lee Jones, Jim Carrey, and also starring Nicole Kidman and Chris O'Donnell.

Lions and Minors and Bears, Oh my!

Lions and Minors and Bears, Oh my!
--C.D. Tolliver

The puma gave a thunderous silent purr. The girl kept opening the bear can for candy, and the bears were watching. The girl would be easy pickings next time, when the bears charged.