Microfiction: Sunset, Moonrise, Shadows Falling By T.C. Mill

Sunset, Moonrise, Shadows Falling

When she reaches for him, he responds with such passion that their desperate kiss knocks her mask askew. Below the edge of painted porcelain, carmine smears her lips. He sees its color in the last of the light, as the shadows lengthen across Carcosa.

Even as his hands settle at her laced-slender waist, his eyes dart from side to side. The courtyard on their right is empty, its inhabitants fled or cowering indoors; and as for what will come sweeping down the street on their left hand—nothing can stop that.

His fingers stroke against the rough nap of velvet. Her hair is a wig; its curled ends bounce as she takes a shuddering breath. She reaches for her collar and with a short, swift movement rips the lace apart, baring the tops of her breasts. He finds the ends of the ribbons to loosen her stays, his knuckles scraping between her back and the ancient stones of the wall.

“Kiss me again,” she demands.

He complies, not looking at what the slipped mask has bared. It doesn’t matter. The glow of the rising black stars is kind to her.

Her gloved hand cups his cheek; the leather is supple but horny, cold in the evening air. After stripping his own gloves, he reaches for her bared skin, seeking warmth. He finds her breasts heavy and firm, even hard, as smooth as quarried marble. He feels the swell of her breath, but cannot detect a pulse.

It doesn’t matter.

Her hips grind against his as her arms wrap around his shoulders, and her weight draws him down when her feet leave the ground, legs crossing behind him. He leans forward to brace her against the wall. They’re pressed close now, thigh to thigh, core to core, and surely she can feel his pulse, his growing urgency.

Circling one sharp-peaked nipple, he schools himself in patience. There is no need to rush—after they finish, there is nothing left to do—but they do not have much time, either.

As they fled the palace, following the wails of Camilla and the prophecies of Cassilda, he saw the towers behind the moon beginning to crumble.

He kisses along her jaw and neck. She sighs in his ear, high and sweet, like a song from her very soul. For a moment he thinks he might love her. He is not such a fool as to imagine the reverse, and yet—they were close, for members of the Court. There is room for passion left in their hearts, some that had not been forced out by awe and horror.

Let that passion bloom now. Let it spread and cover them, let it be the last thing they know when the King descends.

Leaving her limbs around him to support her, he puts both hands to her breasts. They move quickly, almost roughly, though she seems untroubled. His mouth travels lower, and his nostrils are filled with her perfume: the most delicate essence mixed with the rawer scent of her sweat, her fear and lust.

She rakes through his hair, catching strands, pulling. “I can feel it.” The words grate from her throat, where moments before sighs had rung. “The echo—coming—through the stone—”

She, too, is reduced to touch, who once could see so much.

“Keep hold of me.” With one hand, he moves with deliberation and swiftness: hiking her skirts, layers of satin and velvet cast up, and then pulling aside the hem of his long waistcoat and unlacing his breeches. His frock coats tails flap like wings as he pumps his hips against her.

She shifts, almost writhing, frantic to help him find her entrance.  Finally, he does, and she is slick, and hot—heat at last, there at the hungry folds that part around his cock—so hot their joining feels molten.

Their heads knock together in that first thrust, as they both strain towards each other, and as, perhaps, they each silently beg a kiss. His mask is simple felt, absorbing and softening the clack of porcelain and bone. Pain’s white sting is as welcome as pleasure in these final moments.

But her mask, connecting with his cheek and forehead, is jostled further. She throws her head from side to side as his thrusts find the right angle inside her—he hears her cry, thankful and demanding—and the mask loosens and falls. It might shatter on the cobbles below his feet; he doesn’t look.

Instead, he kisses her revealed face—modestly hidden still, because even if the shadows were not shielding her, he has sealed his eyes now. There is no more he needs to see. Instead he learns with his lips: her full mouth, her long, sharp nose with flaring nostrils, eyelids that the purse of his kiss can cup and cover. Which it does, delicately. More than passion, he finds something dark and small and warm to share: a trace almost of affection.

He is bared to her, with her, within her; he is sharing himself with someone at last, at the last. He is losing himself. Loss coils at the core of him, hot and hollow; his balls seem to swell with it, ready to pour out this last offering, a last sacrament of life, past hope.

She seems touched by it, too. He hears her shuck the glove off, and then her bare hand is against his cheek—silken scales rubbing, the finely manicured claws pressing his skin as gently as his fingers grip her gown’s yellow velvet.

His climax comes, and before he loses himself utterly in the pleasure that wrings him, wracks him, turns his mind in circles like cosmic orbit, but cannot quite reach the chill at his heart—before this comes, he showers as many kisses as he can on her uncountable eyelids.

And the twin suns sink beneath the far shore of Lake Hali for a very long night indeed.

T.C. Mill is a freelance writer and editor in Wisconsin. Her book reviews and fiction updates can be found at TC-Mill.com.

Microfiction: The Demon’s Name by S. Maxwell

The Demon’s Name

When he was sixteen, his mother had asked him why he wouldn’t go to the school disco. ‘Aren’t you interested in girls?’ she’d asked, meaning it as a joke. He’d replied in his head only: ‘No, just women.’ Nothing had changed since then. Even now, girls his own age were still just girls: flighty, silly, irritating with their giggles and meaningful looks that meant nothing.

No, women were the thing: mature, powerful and alluring. They looked out at him from the screen of his laptop, their eyes full of dark promise, offering more than any mere girl could hope to comprehend. But women had no reason to be interested in an untested product like Jack, and his fantasies of passionate, intense encounters with femme fatales had stayed just that.

Hence the ritual. Not that he really expected it to work, but like many guys his age who were supposed to doing masses of homework and filling out college applications, he had a lot of time on his hands. The book had come to him from a friend’s dusty attic, ‘borrowed’ without its true owner (whoever that might have been) knowing. Black leather bound with weirdly pristine pages, coming from a time before there was acid in paper… Such a book had to be respected.

If it had been any more complex, he would no doubt not have bothered, but the ritual was simplicity itself: light a candle, nick your hand, pour three tiny drops of blood into the flame while saying the demon’s name three times. Cutting himself should, he knew, have been the hard part, but it wasn’t. After an hour or two of fantasising about what might happen and holding back from climax despite his ever growing excitement, he’d ended up throwing himself into the ritual with a lack of irony that surprised him. The nick was made to the skin below his thumb, and the drops of blood fell rhythmically, one, two, three, then an extra one by mistake before the tissue was applied. And all the while chanting in a low voice: her name. He leaned back. The ritual had not said how she would appear. And of course, she wouldn’t.

In a sense, she didn’t. The creature that crawled out from the dark space beneath his bed was like nothing he had imagined.

He was too terrified to scream, or move. The creature was on all fours, yet… it was undoubtedly a naked woman, her skin tinged with green, glistening in the light of his bedside lamp, her teeth thin canines, her eyes utterly black… and in every other way, a woman. Curved, soft, with breasts swaying softly as she made her lizard-like way towards him. He noticed her hands then, long and bony, her fingernails true claws, perfectly maintained and painted a deep blue… Her tongue flicked out, halfway between a human and a reptile’s. His paralysis did not abate as she flowed over him, pinning him to the ground. Her flesh was hot and dry against his skin. Her tongue searched his face, as if she were a blind woman learning his features through touch. She pinned him down, her claws raking his wrists and hands but gently, drawing no blood. Her feet pushed his legs outwards, splaying him, as if she were preparing him to be staked out on the floor.

And then she lowered herself onto his cock. He had remained rock-hard the entire time, something he hadn’t even noticed until now… Enveloped by soft, oiled muscle, held in the grip of the creature’s cunt, a grip that tightened until it hurt him, and his cock responded by engorging itself still further, as if the two organs were fighting for dominance…

Her eyes looked into his, and in the midst of his terror he was gifted with the certain knowledge that she had not come here to harm him, though she was more than capable and would have been willing under other circumstances. The nature of his fright shifted sideways, from sheer mortal terror to a partial fear of the unknown, of his own desires.

Still holding his cock in her cunt’s firm grip, she began to move, softly and gently, her oscillations an expert display of restrained violence. She could have torn him limb from limb. Her power was palpable, a presence all of its own. But beneath it, these soft, gentle movements…

He was young, and he had not masturbated that day. It did not take her long to bring him to climax. He felt for the first time the spray of his semen contained within that warm, enveloping passage, sensed her cunt drinking it avidly, as if starved of liquid sustenance.

Her tongue found his face once more, and again she looked him in the eyes as she licked his cheeks, his lips… and withdrew. She turned, crawled back towards his bed, then glanced over her shoulder as she reached the patch of darkness from whence she had emerged, and whispered a single word in a voice that make him think of snakes and honey:

‘Mine.’

She darted into the blackness, and he knew she was gone. The room grew still. He looked down at his cock: it was still rock hard, and no trace of his semen remained. She had taken it all. Why? Where?

When he summoned her tomorrow night, perhaps he would find the courage to ask.

Microfiction: Fear-Desire-Love by Annabeth Leong

Fear-Desire-Love

When I took Ru Hi Na to dinner at my parents’ home, my father noticed at once the way hir scenting tendrils flicked always in my direction no matter where hir many eyes pointed. He asked me for help in the kitchen, and when I got there, he gripped both my shoulders. “What’s going on with you and that alien?”

“Nothing,” I said firmly, as if the word, pronounced with sufficient emphasis, could convince us both. But my blood escaped my control. I could feel the rush of it through my ears, the blush heating my neck, chest, and cheeks.

My father turned and spat in the sink.

***

Ru Hi Na and I went for a long walk along the river after we left the house. Ze trailed hir scent tendrils before and behind us and let hir eyes drift shut. At last, ze said my name in hir voice made of sighs, the three syllables simultaneous, winding around each other as they formed. I loved hearing it that way, and I’d once spent hours playing with audio software, trying to construct a proper pronunciation of hir tripartite name in my voice.

“Ru Hi Na,” I answered teasingly. Ze told me once that ze likes how I separate hir name, as if I’m calling to each of hir three parts individually. My father was right, I thought. We were fascinated with each other.

“Tonight-at dinner-always with me, the smell-name-breath of you is anxious-expectant-sad. Why?”

I took a moment to savor hir intertwined thoughts as the poetry they were, delivered in the mix of hir language and mine that we had invented together. Then I untangled them painstakingly in my mind, careful not to drop any of the threads.

My father’s disapproval had made me feel rebellious enough to be honest. I answered in my stuttering approximation of hir words, the sentiments isolated in my mouth, though they mingled in my chest. “Fear-desire-love.”

Hir three-fingered hand brushed the back of mine. I caught and held it in the way of human lovers, and I knew ze understood because I could feel hir swallowing the scent of me with every one of hir throats.

***

We went together to hir room, where I stripped for hir. I had no idea whether my body would be attractive to hir. Human ideals of loveliness had never accounted for the light-and-shadow vision of hir people or their exquisite sense of smell. Hir scent tendrils licked through the humid interior of my mouth, tickled my armpits, then settled between my legs.

“Unknown-thrilling-uncertain,” ze sighed.

“I don’t know how to do this either,” I admitted.

Ze bared hirself as well, turning hir kaleidoscopic skin inside out to reveal its vulnerable pink underside, the nerve endings visible and quivering. For me, the question of beauty did not matter. There was only intimacy, the deeper knowing I had always desired with hir.

I had once tried to read a PhD thesis on the anatomy of Ru Hi Na’s people, but the descriptions had been too human, too separate. It seemed incorrect by nature to examine Ru Hi Na a piece at a time when ze embodied multitudes.

I despaired of this human limitation as I attempted to create a way of making love to hir. I wanted to put my hands everywhere at once, but I recalled that ze enjoyed my humanity. I could not be with hir as one of hir own. I could only be myself.

I eyed those exposed nerves. Did ze want me to look at them? Smell them? Lick them? I didn’t want to hurt hir, but I’d also been with too many lovers who’d seen me as fragile and weren’t willing to do the rough things I enjoyed. “What do you want me to do?”

I didn’t know the words ze breathed in reply. For a moment, we stood helplessly, farther apart than ever in this moment when I desperately wanted to bring us close.

Then ze reached for me and brought me into hir. My body settled against hir soft, pink skin, and hir nerves moved against me. They felt like the ends of pencil erasers. I imagined them removing all traces of other lovers, all previous ideas of what love was supposed to be and how I was supposed to behave.

Ze made an unholy sound as ze did this, trembling everywhere in the sweaty throes of the thing beyond pain and pleasure that is sometimes called ecstasy but ought to be known as revelation.

Was this how hir people ordinarily made love, or something ze did now only for me? Beneath my desire for a territory that belonged only to us, however, was an older knowing, that there is absolutely nothing new. Lovers have always discovered each other, have always searched together for the place where pain and pleasure no longer matter.

I rubbed my cheek against one of hir nerves. I caught the scent of my sex on my fingers and lifted it to hir questing scent tendrils. Ru Hi Na wouldn’t expect me to do what humans usually did, and there was no need to approximate the practices that had always seemed imperfectly fit to me.

Carefully, I showed hir how to give me the feeling I truly craved, how to touch me in the places I’d been taught never to let anyone touch me. An orgasm spilled from me unexpectedly, almost incidental to hir touch.

I knew I could never answer my father’s question. The explanation for what was going on with me and Ru Hi Na would require more words than even ze could intertwine.

Three Circlet Press titles are Lambda Award Finalists!

We’re very excited to announce that three titles we published in 2014 have made the finalists lists for the prestigious Lambda Literary Awards.

Best Bi Short Stories, edited by Sheela Lambert was published in May 2014 after a successful Kickstarter campaign. The first-ever anthology of bisexual-themed literary fiction, Best Bi Short Stories seeks to combat bisexual invisibility on the bookstore shelves while showing the incredible quality, breadth, and depth of bisexual literary talent. BBSS has made the finalist list for the Bisexual Fiction Lammy award. *Buy Paperback* *Ebook*

Incubus Tales by Hushicho originally ran as a web serial here on circlet.com, and was collected into an omnibus ebook and paperback edition in 2014. Also a finalist for the Rainbow Award this past year, Incubus Tales features the same protagonist as the Incubus Tales webcomic, the sweet and sexy Dhiar, incubus, shopkeeper, and erotic philosopher. Incubus Tales is up for the Lammy Award in Gay Erotica. *Buy Paperback* *Ebook*

Leather Spirit Stallion by Raven Kaldera is also up for the Gay Erotica award! Raven is a longtime Circlet Press author and this book highlights the intense BDSM relationship between a modern Mongolian shaman and his partner. Not your typical “pony play.” *Buy Paperback* *“>Ebook*

Good luck to all! We’ll find out the winners on June 1st at the gala awards ceremony in New York City. This is the 27th year for the Lambda Literary Awards. For more information check out the Lambda Literary Foundation website.

Best Bi Short Stories
edited by Sheela Lambert

Best Bi Short Stories is the first book of its kind, a literary anthology bringing together the finest representations of bisexuality in fiction. With an all-star author lineup ranging from Katherine Forrest to Jane Rule, Ann Herendeen to Jan Steckel, and curated by longtime bi activist Sheela Lambert, Best Bi Short Stories encompasses the diversity and richness of bi experience and imagination. Also available in paperback.
Price: $9.99
Format :

Incubus Tales
by Hushicho

Welcome to the intriguing city of dreams, Noctemberg, where it is always night, and to Phantasies, a very special shop run by Dhiar, proprietor and gay incubus. Sensuality is more than just Dhiar's stock in trade, it is his raison d'etre. In Incubus Tales: A Thousand Words, Dhiar meets new loves, rekindles relationships, and bring his special brand of sexual healing to lovers and readers alike.
Also available in paperback!
Price: $5.99
Format :

Leather Spirit Stallion
by Raven Kaldera

Gay BDSM with a spiritual twist. When Erlik Solongo--modern Mongolian shaman, broke grad student, and experienced dominant--saves the life of a young man named Paj, the two men are instantly drawn to each other. They begin a sexual relationship that might even turn into something more. But Erlik wants a partner he can be open about, while Paj worries about disapproval from his traditional family.
Buy the paperback edition!
Price: $3.99
Format :

Microfiction: The Arena by Niki Crow

The Arena

I make my way through lamp-lit streets. It’s the middle of the night but I woke up with a craving I couldn’t quench.

I can see it just up ahead—the Arena Club. I’ve been on this planet a year now and I’ve been a member for nearly as long. In fact, I became a member the same day I first heard about the place. It’s housed in a modern building, with big signs telling everyone what’s inside. This is a fancy neighborhood; on Moha it isn’t shameful to have sex. So unlike the people of Earth, the Mohans don’t hide away to make love.

I’m at the entrance to the club now, and I can feel the pulse in my pussy, filling my clit with blood, engorging it and making it sensitive. How I love that feeling of anticipation! I hurry inside and choose my usual seat at the back of the female only section. For me, it’s as much of a thrill to watch other women bringing themselves to orgasm as it is to watch what goes on on the stage. There’s nothing quite as beautiful as a woman touching herself, watching her as she spreads her legs and pushes her pelvis forward to expose her clit, or to watch her fuck herself with any kind of object. There’s nothing quite as beautiful as the look of utter pleasure on her face as she comes. It’s remarkably similar in all humanoid species.

I leave everything but my favorite dildo in the locker room, and make my way to my seat. I have a clear view of the stage, but what goes on there– an ordinary guy-girl fuck–can’t hold my attention. There’s someone in the seat next to mine, and she’s mesmerizing. Her shapes are soft and rounded, her skin as dark as the night, and there’s a thin sheen of sweat covering her forehead. Her legs are flung up on the armrests of her seat and she’s slowly pushing a pink dildo into herself. I can’t help myself; I lean forward to get a better view. She notices, of course, but only smiles at me. God, how I want to touch her! I want to rub her clit, suck those prominent nipples, and drive that dildo deep inside her. But there’s no touching in the Arena Club, no sex allowed unless you’re on stage. But I bend the rules, just a little, and reach out to touch her thigh.

“Wanna play?” I ask.

I’ve never been up on the stage before—not that I haven’t received invitations—but I’ve been happy watching and touching myself. Until now.

Her smile broadens and she leaves the dildo halfway inside her to tap on the panel next to her seat. A moment later, a light flashes on my own panel—her invitation. I accept and we’re entered into the queue.  There’s no going back now, and as the couple leaves the stage to make room for three Mohan men, both our panels flash again. We’re up next.

In the props room, I choose a strap-on with a built-in vibrator for the wearer. I put it on and align the vibrator. The metal against my clit feels wonderful and I brace myself not to start it just yet.

The guys don’t take long, and before we know it, it’s our turn. She takes my hand as we enter the stage.

“I’m Anna, by the way,” she whispers.

“Rita,” I reply.

And then we’re on. Anna lies down on the padded table in the center of the well-lit stage, and spreads her legs. She’s flexible, giving the audience a great view of her gorgeous, wet pussy. I put the tip of the dildo against her and push inside, slowly. I can feel the eyes of the audience on us, and it’s turning me on like crazy. Why have I never been on stage before?  I set the vibrator on slow and fuck Anna in an equally slow pace, in rhythm with the suggestive alien music, pushing upward with every stroke to touch her G-spot. All the while I rub her clit with my thumb, and she’s pinching her nipples.

It doesn’t take long before we’re both about to come. I push harder into her, speed up the pace, and amp up the vibrator to maximum. Seconds later, we’re shouting out loud as our bodies lock in spasms and I’m swept away into oblivion. It’s divine. It’s heavenly and  it’s without a doubt the best orgasm I’ve ever had.

I catch my breath for a second and then I meet her eyes. I want more, I’m not ready to get off the stage just yet. And as I remove the strap-on and move to straddle her face, I know for certain that I’ll never spend my nights at the Arena Club cooped up in a seat in the back again.

 

Win a paperback copy of LIPS LIKE ICE by Peggy Barnett

Enter this giveaway on Goodreads before March 17th and you could win one of 10 copies of LIPS LIKE ICE that are up for giveaway to readers in the US or Canada! https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/127299-lips-like-ice

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Lips Like Ice by Peggy  Barnett

Lips Like Ice

by Peggy Barnett

Giveaway ends March 17, 2015.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Microfiction: Custom Made by Tuulia Saaritsa

Custom Made

The brain is a sexual organ.

Mine sloshes in its container, a pretty metal casing, its outer layer shaped like a skull. My skin (another organ) stretches over it, pulled by a minute network of wires. I am smiling up at my lover.

Tonight, she’s a bear.

I bury my face in her coarse fur, my fingers at her shoulders, searching out the slip of leather on metal. The skin is real, but not alive like my organic skin, which fires up at the feel of thousands of single hairs pricking my thighs. We couldn’t afford more than one real skin apiece; we’re not old enough. Decades to go yet on the assembly line before my next promotion, putting together radios, motors, escape pod control panels; tiny intricate metal entrails.

“Screw me in both holes?” I pant, the bellows in my chest drawing in cooling air, and she flips me over. Her claws dig into my hips.

She is enormous as the sky, and the familiar purring of her machinery picks up pace as her desire heats her core engine. I spread my legs and bury my head in our pillows as she skewers my oiled cunts with her many-jointed pricks.

Goldilocks, she calls me through our neural link, and I imagine a young woman of gooey flesh, spread willingly on the bedsheets by a creature of muscle and bone. Fantasies. Always fantasies. It wouldn’t work otherwise.

We grind together, hard enough to dent, and my brain lights up like fireworks.