Penthouse

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2001 by General Media Communications, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Warner Books, Inc.

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10017

Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

First eBook Edition: March 2010

ISBN: 978-0-446-53941-8

Heat Treatment

BY SUZANNE LICATA

It burns, always burns. So few words spoken, so little needs to be said.

The air is hot and heavy, and the air conditioner is broken. We open a window facing the ocean, and a warm, wet, humid breeze reaches toward us. But we get hotter, just keep burning.

I wear a loose white T-shirt and khaki shorts, no bra. I am barefoot. My hair is tied back, and the sweat has saturated the top half of my chest. My neck drips as if cool rain is beating upon me. But it is not cool. Hot, always hot.

He lies on an unmade bed, just pants. Beads from a nearby doorway beat together, and wind chimes sing, reminding us of the ocean breeze blowing aimlessly around the room. It never reaches us, never cools us.

I stand at the bottom of the bed and wait. A surge of juices builds between my legs.

His hands reach to my head and he loosens my hair clip. My blond hair falls around my face, in my eyes—it moves as I breathe. But I don't move. My shirt is being pulled up and he is touching my stomach, just touching and burning—l breathe harder. I need more. Wildly, I throw my head back. I'm angry, touch me. I'm so wet, hot, dripping.

He smells sweet with every breath I breathe. He has yet to kiss me, but I can taste him, his mouth so close to mine. Our eyes meet. His hands still wandering but not touching. Touch me.

The last of the sunlight has faded, and the beginning of twilight is illuminating what is left of the day, casting dark and deep shadows around the room. Three candles, fragrant and burning in the corner of the room, flicker a softer set of shadows to the far wall. A roaring ocean, so loud. Suddenly every sound and shape seems loud and sharp. But I am fucking burning. I feel weak and vulnerable and anything goes. I want so badly for him to touch me. I am so wet and hot. I want to scream—I'm angry.

He is sure of himself as he climbs off the bed. Every bit of energy that leaves my body climbs into his, empowers him, and transforms him into complete power. He possesses me. I have no control left. I am only his—what he wants me to be.

I stand in front of him now, my king, and I wait for his next command. But I find my feet moving one behind the other—I back slowly into a cool wall, afraid. The temperature has probably dropped to a cool and comfortable breeze. Probably.

I can go no further, my body completely neutral and waiting for the next move, his move. His strong hands open my shorts, zipper then button. Inside my shorts he reaches around my waist. His hands slide down each side of my hips now, down my thighs as he shimmies the shorts to the floor.

He kneels. Breathing hot breaths between my legs. I want to thrust my hotness into his face, but I know I must wait. I'm dripping, burning. He kisses my thighs as his hands massage my breasts.

He comes up quickly and suddenly. We are face to face. Tears well up in my eyes, I don't know why. He extends my arms over my head and forcefully holds them against the wall. But I dare not break free for only he can set me free.

He crashes his hips against mine, and we are moving in perfect sync. We grind harder and harder, my whole body being thrown against the wall. He rubs against me.

He is biting my mouth, my lips. Tears of pleasure roll down my face to meet the never-ending water pouring from my hair. Still so hot. I am sucking his tongue, biting, sucking hard. My hands still raised above my head. He is finally touching me. His body to mine. My eyes roll to the back of my head—my head banging against the wall.

His hands roam my body now, but I still hold my arms above my head, clutching my wrists. I forget to relax—to release.

His fingers roam into my underwear; they come up wet and find their way into my mouth. I suck them. Lick them. Bite them. I taste sweet, and he licks my tongue—we share me.

I am going crazy. He is driving me crazy. Crazy.

I turn to face the wall to get away—to regain myself. I mustn't be here. But I was born to be here. My face cooled by the cool wall, I rub hard into it. Cool. I need cool.

Our bodies never leave that sync, my ass now grinding into his penis. Moving slowly, never missing a beat.

I cry now, his fingers fondling inside me, two fingers fondling inside me. And the rest of his hand cupping my vagina and pushing my ass into his pants. I reach to undo his pants. I sense I have his permission. It is time. Somehow my shirt lies on the floor, torn.

He stands behind me naked. He turns me. I move my face along his as I fall deeper and deeper into the passion. He affixes a gaze into my eyes and lifts me, wrapping my legs around his waist. I am swept to his bed and into the night. Holding my hair in his hands, forcefully mashing it against my head as our kiss becomes wildly passionate.

Each part of my body comes to life under this touch, giving me what I need, have needed… and when I need it. I shiver and burn. He knows how to handle me, almost calculating but with certain unpredictability. I am the most alive I will ever be.

I run my fingers through his hair, down his back, around his waist, and, finally, between his legs. I stroke him. I breathe down his neck and kiss his chest and lick around his nipples. I move slowly and his groans edge me a little farther to his stomach, where I stop before taking him in my mouth. I lick up and down and twirl my tongue around the top of his penis. I finally send him down my throat and bob my head between his legs. I go farther below and moisten the area beneath but quickly return to his pulsating penis. Above I roll my finger around his tongue, which has just returned from being buried deep inside me.

I stop, I can't wait to kiss him. He towers over me as our positions change. He holds my ass up in the air, bringing my body to his mouth, and begins to drink me. I am so wet, and his tongue turns me inside out. He returns to me, but now the look in his eye turns from passion to savage. I sense he has gone mad with this fever, and it spawns an animalistic state of ferociousness and rage within my soul.

We fall off the bed onto the floor. We play a game of cat and mouse. I try to get away, and at every attempt, his grip tightens. I crawl backward on my hands, now sinking to my elbows. He crawls on top of me, keeping my body between his legs and increasing my drive for escaping him.

He plunges himself between my spread legs, and I fall lifelessly into bliss. He pumps my body up and down and lets the passion back in. My nails run down his spine. He pumps harder and harder as I beg. My entire body is being lifted from the floor. His teeth are clenched. We explode.

Ecstasy of this magnitude has an energy all its own. Our souls touch briefly as the climactic peak of this episode flows.

The air cools now, almost chilling. There is less to be said now than when we started. Yet his look and touch will live inside me forever.

The Bath

BY SARAH KATHERINE

I didn't mean to walk in on him—it was all an accident. I got to his apartment and found the door unlocked. I walked in and called out for him, but there was no answer. I knew that he usually did not leave his place unlocked— he would often remind me that we are in New York and we should be careful. I decided to check around; maybe he was asleep. I pictured myself walking into his bedroom and finding him dozing peacefully in his bed, sleeping off the afternoon high.

I entered his room; it was empty. I saw his clothes strewn about, the room in its usual state of disorder. I did not notice at the time the pair of silk panties and the tiny skirt clumped in the corner—it was not until later that this fact would be recalled. Now all that I noticed was the pile of boxers and socks that was forever growing on the floor until we finally went to the Laundromat together. A small smile crept across my face as I remembered him plopping me down onto the vibrating washer and kissing me passionately as the vibrations spread throughout our bodies, bringing me to near ecstasy in the public laundry.

I continued my walk through the apartment. It was not until I reached the little nook off of which there is a bath that I heard him. Muffled noises were coming from behind the shut bathroom door, and (was that giggling I heard?) the water was running for the shower.

I knocked on the door to the bath. "Gary!" I shouted to him. "It's me. Gary? Honey?" I heard a panicked scrambling going on behind the bathroom door. "Coming!" he screamed back, and (was that another giggle?) I heard the doorknob rattle as he unlocked it.

His head peered from behind the door. "Hey, what are you doing here?" he said to me.

"Just thought I'd drop in on you," I responded defensively. The door opened wider, and I caught a glimpse of someone else crouched behind Gary. "Who's there?" I questioned, and then I demanded, "What the fuck!" as the door opened wider, revealing another girl standing behind my Gary. Both of them were naked and still dripping from the shower. A blast of steam waved across my face as I stood in the doorway, aghast.

The girl was thin and blond, in contrast to my heavy frame and dark features. She looked frail and delicate, her breasts smallish and round, her little hips smoothly curved, surrounding her neatly trimmed pussy. She was wet, dripping with soapy water, leaving little puddly footprints all over the bathroom floor as she squirmed about under my glare. Her eyes were red from pot and she looked uncomfortable, as if she might be stifling a fit of the giggles.

Gary took a step back from me, his half-erect cock bouncing lightly against his left thigh when he moved. His eyes were redder than the girl's, only without the laughter behind them. He lowered them away from my stare as if in shame. I stared at his body; I knew it so well. His earlobes, his neck (now covered with someone else's hickeys), his chest (upon which little beads of water were slipping down), his small, perfect little stomach which lay flat in contrast to his wild, wiry pubic hair, out of which his dick poked limply. His legs were firm and tan, and his feet, on which I had nibbled and sucked on numerous occasions, stood in their own little puddles on the cold, hard tile.

I moved into the bathroom. I was no longer thinking, just acting. I should have been angry, and maybe I was, but I was also intrigued, and it was this that pushed me out of the doorway and into the steamy, damp bath. I forced them both back into the cheap little bathroom cabinet, lining them up side by side. I was aware of their nakedness, and I felt a certain power that went with not being exposed as they were. I was leaning against the opposite wall, regarding them with a steady stare, when a wave of peevish curiosity overtook me.

I reached out to the blonde and grabbed her nipple, squeezing it between my fingers firmly. She let out a small gasp. I grabbed her erect tit and rolled it around in between my fingers. I twisted it lightly, making her areola squinch up into a little, tight ball of pink flesh. I circled her nipple with the palm of my hand, and soon I was using both hands to stimulate her firm little breasts. The blonde was making little noises under her breath and arching her back to make herself more accessible to me.

Gary hadn't moved an inch, although I did notice that his penis had become erect. I leaned back against the wall and stared at his crotch. I could see the minute little throbbing movements his cock was making, causing it to bounce up and down very slightly. The blond girl cast her eyes down at the tile, but my gaze remained fixated on my lover's stiff cock.

My hands found my own breasts, and I began stroking them beneath the thin fabric of my T-shirt. I teased my nipples, causing them to stand out like the blonde's, making two little peaks under my shirt. I ripped my top off over my head, revealing my smooth white breasts and shocking red nipples. I pulled one of my breasts up toward my mouth, able to get a part of my nipple sucked in my teeth. My hand fumbled with the zipper on my shorts until they fell to my ankles. I freed my breast from my clenched teeth and pushed my underwear down, stepping out of my clothes piled on the floor, leaving myself naked as well.

I took a step toward Gary. Neither he nor his friend had dared to move while I stripped out of my clothes; they simply stood across from me in complete bewilderment. I kneeled down in front of Gary, surveying his cock up close from my new position. I bent down a little farther and opened my mouth to receive his right testicle. I sucked in air through my teeth, creating enough of a vacuum for his ball to slip gently into my mouth. I rolled my tongue across the bottom of it, swirling it around over the light fuzz that encases his nuts. Gary moaned, a noise that was small and meek. I then ran my tongue up his ball sac and licked the base of his cock, feeling the head bounce lightly across my eyes as I tongued the bottom of his prick. I continued to lick him, tracing the little vein that goes up the underside of his penis to the very top. It was there that I stopped, opening my mouth wide to receive him entirely.

I felt the smooth head of his penis slipping down the roof of my mouth back toward my throat. I fought back a small gag as I took the tip of his cock into my throat, making swallowing motions to help it go down. I forced my tongue to the front, sliding it over the underside of his cock as I sucked and massaged his stiff prick. I edged his penis in and out of my pursed lips, his hand grabbing my long hair and using it as a way of guiding my head back and forth. I looked up and my eyes met first his, then the blonde's. It was on her that I rested my gaze; she looked uncomfortable, uncertain. It was then that I made my next move.

I inched over to where the blonde was standing, my knees hurting on the hard tile. I looked at her for a moment, surveying her nakedness with a naughty smile forming on my lips. Suddenly, before I could change my mind, I dove my head into her pussy, my tongue parting her lips. I knew exactly where her clit was and went for it, grabbing it lightly between my teeth, nibbling and sucking. My hand crept up her inner thigh, making its way to her now dripping cunt. I inserted my finger into her, feeling my way up the slick walls of her vagina until I reached her cervix. I ran the tip of my finger along the base of it, feeling its smooth arch. I inserted another finger into her cunt and began ramming my hand in and out of her. I increased the pace at which I was licking her clitoris, and I could feel the walls of her cunt beginning to tremble. Her knees went weak and she collapsed a little, forcing her hot dripping cunt to slip and slide all over my face.

Gary moved behind me. He sat down on the floor and began to tongue my pussy. I felt his hard little tongue darting about all over my cunt, lingering a little on my clitoris and popping in and out of my hole. His mouth found my clit, and he began sucking me as ravenously as I was sucking the blonde. I could no longer keep my balance between the girl's pussy on my face and Gary's mouth on my cunt, and I toppled over sideways onto the floor of the bath.

Gary and the girl fell over with me; he never missed a stroke of his tongue during our maneuver, although the rhythm I was keeping on the girl was interrupted. She then moved over to my breasts, burying her head in between them and sucking hard on each nipple. She pressed my tits together and took both nipples in her mouth simultaneously as Gary increased the pace at which he was vehemently lapping at my cunt.

The muscles in my body suddenly became tense and then released in pulsing motions, causing me to twist about on the floor in ecstasy. I was not moaning, but grunting and yelping, unable to stay cool in the face of this immense pleasure. I felt Gary's fingers and then his cock slide into my pulsating, orgasmic pussy, which clenched and released his prick in quick little motions. The sensation of his thick, wonderful cock pushing its way into my coming cunt caused me to come again. I noticed the blonde pulling away from me; perhaps I was being too loud, but nothing at this point could faze me.

Gary did not waste any time. He began pumping my hot, quivering pussy with quick, hard thrusts. My eyes screwed shut with the pleasure of my lover fucking me. Then I noticed another feeling. My cunt was becoming wetter, and there was something adding additional pleasure to my already hyperstimulated twat. I managed to open my eyes enough to register the image of the blonde—her head was crammed in between Gary's and my pelvises, and she was attempting to both lick my clit and suck Gary while he was fucking me. I felt her finger slip into my hole in addition to Gary's cock, and she began to stroke the head of his dick while it was in me, or at least that was how it felt inside me. Occasionally her tongue would slide over my clit, and she was moving her finger around the walls of my cunt. It was more than I could take. I had to make them stop.

I took control of the situation and maneuvered their bodies so that Gary could easily fuck the blonde and I had a clear view of his cock actually penetrating her. They were both lying on their sides, facing each other. I took Gary's cock in hand and inserted it into the blonde's cunt, which was still soaking from my saliva and her juices. The sight of my lover's stiff dick sinking into another girl's cunt at my command was strangely erotic. I found myself wishing that I had never given up Gary's dick, so in return I plunked myself down over the blonde's face and commanded her to suck me.

She did without hesitation. Gary was able to finger me and massage my body as he fucked her. She eagerly ate my cunt, occasionally stopping to moan with the pleasure that Gary was giving her pussy. I inserted my fingers into her cunt this time, being certain to stroke Gary's cock in all of the places that I knew he liked. He was calling my name, but his voice sounded far away because I was coming, too. I felt his name being formed on my lips, although I do not remember actually saying it. My cunt began to gush, and a rippling sensation ran throughout my entire self. My vision blurred, my body flailed, and Gary and I both peaked simultaneously (the blonde evidently had reached her own satisfaction a few minutes before). We all collapsed on the floor, spent, our sweaty bodies sticking a bit uncomfortably to the tile. My eyes blinked in the steamy bath. I noticed that the shower was still running and the bathroom had the steamy wet quality of a rain forest. "Kate, this is Michelle," Gary said to me. I looked at the blonde Michelle through the mist and thought, Some introduction, but I only smiled.

Crystal Underground

BY JANE MERRILL

Sammy understood, thought Crystal, and she rubbed the supple cartilage of her jumbo Maine coon cat's thick fur. Sammy's golden eyes glowed. Crystal's tapered fingers caressed the rabbity fur under his chin, feeling for the vibration of his silent purr. At that instant the subway car seemed to buckle on its tracks. Big Sammy responded to the movement of the car with a second of rigidity, but quickly went limp and languorous in her arms. Only his big, round head evidenced signs of life as he buffed his cheek against the silk of his mistress's blouse and pressed his flat pink nose against the plump nipple that puckered out the silk.

The cat was crafty. Sammy did not want to be returned to the canine carrier. (At fifteen pounds he was too hefty for a cat carrier.) His sandpapery tongue flicked out in appreciation. What Sammy could not understand was that he was moistening Crystal's best blouse. She had just managed to get a very compromising stain out of it from her last trip with Sammy to the vet, and since the blouse had been such a wild success with the ordinarily aloof, good-looking veterinarian, she had worn it again today. Only today the female partner of the veterinary practice had been on duty, so there had been no following Dr. Padillo to the lavatory for a drink of water and shimmying up onto the side of the big tub to receive his kisses.

With the blouse on her mind, Crystal caught Sammy by the back of the neck and under the belly and tossed him back into the carrier. There he crouched in silent misery. A few cat hairs lingered on the rises of her full, high breasts. She brushed them off the silk with a gingerly sweep of her fanning fingers, yet even in this simple tidying up, her gesture was more sensual than was required, more than wise in an occupied subway car. She let her fingers skim her nipples, find her breasts' curving contours. She might have been in front of the mirror of the vanity in her bedroom.

Crystal's heart began to race and her breath quickened as a well-built, bald stranger wearing a black T-shirt and black jeans, with a earring in one ear, followed her with his eyes. Her hands lifted an inch away from her chest and hovered, like a lead curtain impeding his X-ray vision. The stranger gave her a thin but very cognizant smile. Crystal had really been very disappointed that the tiny escapade with Dr. Padillo had not been repeated at greater leisure, say, at his lunch hour. She consoled herself that she might have had the best of him. When the vet had stuck it into her, his thrusts had been enthusiastic, but she had sensed the kind of straight-shooter who has no technique. Thinking of Dr. Padillo, Crystal sighed. She was so revved up today she would have taken sex gratefully, any way he wanted. She laughed at herself, I'm shameful.

Perhaps she could wander back with Sammy as a pretext and see the vet another day soon. However, she could hardly lug Sammy nearly a hundred blocks downtown for no particular reason these days, when Fen was home so much in the daytime. Fen had been trained as a physician in Copenhagen, but he was a foreigner outside the AMA guild here in America. His various impressive medical credentials were invalid in the United States. Therefore, at forty, Fen worked nights at the hospital as a technician in the lab and studied insanely hard. When he was off, he came immediately home, and when Crystal got home from her nurse's job in a doctor's office, he wolfed down the dinner she'd prepared and returned to his books. He set a stop clock at 9:00 P.M. with six hours on it—hours when he studied between sleeping fitfully, until he had used up all of them.

Crystal forgot Sammy and her surroundings as she puzzled over Fen. Her husband had been as handsome as a Teutonic god when she met him. He was the color of tallow wax now, and his bloodshot gray eyes were ringed with blue bruises. A year ago he was jumping on her constantly, engaging her in delicious sex—too much of it, so her pelvis burned and ached. This year, as the September exam date approached, she had to waylay Fen into sex. She was resorting to being the aggressor—something new. For example, jumping on his lap in front of the television set and massaging his thing out of its torpor.

At first she had credited her escalating desire to Fen's neglect. But she felt the quiver of her sexual divining rod from a source deeper underground, more mysterious than hitherto. She dreamed of her sexual organs blowing up like balloons at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, billowing and bouncing as she moved about her day. The shoulder bag she took to work was stuffed with underwear. Every time a handsome man twinkled his eyes at her, she creamed and had to change panties. And only her tighter bras cinched in the disturbingly protuberant erection of her nipples, which drenched her D-cup brassieres as well. I'm all twat, she thought half proudly, but wondering—a little worried, too—where her increased sexual urge would end.

Crystal had also noticed that the more wildly she thrashed on Fen's axis of love, the more needy she got. Satisfaction seemed to be losing its meaning for her. Instead, the act of sex hoisted her to a new plateau of heightened yearning. For the past week, when she and Fen made love, Crystal grew wild for an encore. And this she did not usually get. The vet had been her first infidelity. She and Fen made love in the morning when he was hyped from hitting the books. That one morning, as soon as he'd pulled out of her, she bounced out of bed and took Sammy to Dr. Padillo's. The appointment was for nine-thirty, and there was no time to crown sex with Fen by masturbating on the bathroom rug. That was probably what set things off with Padillo—her sheer, insatiable needs. But she wanted to be careful. With a doctor for a husband, so much was at stake that she was no longer seeking out men.