A Is for Amour Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  ARRAN’S LURE

  STRINGS

  ALL ABOUT US

  AN UNEXPECTED LOVE STORY

  THE BLONDE IN 1812

  PARKER’S MUSTACHE

  LE PETIT DÉJEUNER

  SHARING THE LOVE

  TOYS

  AN ORDINARY LOVE

  MY SOMETIMES GIRLFRIEND

  ABOVE YOU

  ABOUT THE EDITOR

  Copyright Page

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Appreciative Applause goes to:

  Adam Nevill

  Barbara Pizio

  Felice Newman

  Frédérique Delacoste

  Diane Levinson

  Violet Blue

  and SAM, always.

  Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.

  Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes.

  Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers’ tears.

  What is it else?

  A madness most discreet, a choking gall and a preserving sweet.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  Why won’t you ever know that I’m in love with you?

  That I’m in love with you?

  —THE CURE

  INTRODUCTION

  All you need is love.

  Love is a many splendored thing.

  Love makes the world go ’round.

  ALL RIGHT. So all of those statements are true. And yet none even begin to describe what love truly is. Love is simply one of those words that means entirely different things to different people. I’ve known this for years. Anyone who listens to rock ’n’ roll as obsessively as I do understands that love is a contradiction all by itself—elusive, fleeting, transitory, all-consuming, endless, explosive, unavoidable, and necessary.

  Still, when I put out a call for submissions with the vague theme of “Amour,” I found myself surprised by the range of love affairs that writers conjured. From Tsaurah Litzky’s “Sharing the Love,” which deals with a risqué three-way between two committed partners and their longtime friend to Jolene Hui’s “Parker’s Mustache,” which focuses on a love of facial hair (facial hair belonging to the narrator’s brother-in-law), these creative authors showed me the love in completely unexpected ways.

  Love is longing in Saskia Walker’s “Arran’s Lure”: “‘Face it, girl, you’ve got it bad,’” she murmured…. And the worst of it was that it hurt. Hurt bad. Being in love was a screwed-up painful thing, if you were apart from the one you loved.”

  Love is lust in Radclyffe’s “All about Us”: “When I skimmed her nipples, already puckered and hard, she moaned and jacked me faster.

  “ ‘You don’t want to do that so hard, baby,’ I warned breathlessly. ‘Not unless you want me to come in my pants right now.’”

  Love is blind, blind enough to make Cleveland seem like Paris, as in “Le Petit Déjeuner” by Jeremy Edwards: “When no one is looking, we refer to the immediate neighborhood as the arrondissement. The bookshelves are sprinkled with Balzac and Asterix. Unassuming Rhône wines haunt the kitchen counter, echoing the mood of the lazy still life that freshens the living room with flowers and peaches.”

  These stories approach love from all angles. The downside. The upside. The wanting so bad you can’t sleep. Which is when A Is for Amour comes in handy. Flick on your bedside lamp. Crack the spine. And get ready to fall in love.

  XXX,

  Alison Tyler

  SASKIA WALKER

  ARRAN’S LURE

  ALONE IN HER BED, Juliet lay with her sheets twisted between her arms and legs, thinking about Christopher. Wanting him. Craving him. There was a point where her physical desire for him had turned into an all-consuming hunger. Since then, she had been continually restless with need. Finding sleep was no longer easy. The longing she felt for that one person whose shared passion would provide her lifeline, her relief, had long since become overwhelming.

  “Christopher Bardsley, what on earth have you done to me?” she whispered into the night, and a smile passed over her lips.

  She felt high at times, at others wretched. Her fierce physical desire also manifested itself in a painful, gnawing ache that emanated out from between her thighs, through her core, as far as her throat and mind, where she was tortured with memory and longing. Her fingers tightened on her rumpled sheets, as did her thighs, her body rolling restlessly. Masturbation just left her hungry for what she couldn’t have, a particularly cruel twist of fate. She needed to express herself to him, to join their bodies together again. And he was so far away. Over four hundred miles, to be precise. It might as well have been ten thousand, the way she felt.

  She was at home in London, trying unsuccessfully to focus on her freelance journalism—her one and only love before she met him—and he was off the coast of Scotland, on the Isle of Arran. That’s where she’d met him, interviewing him as part of a series of features on unusual people who had forced their careers to fit their lives, instead of allowing the opposite to happen.

  Christopher owned and ran a major Internet provisions company. He’d built it up from nothing, but when he’d inherited his uncle’s farming land in the south of Arran, he’d decided to up sticks and move there. He managed his Internet company from an entirely different kind of base, in order to maintain the traditions of his family line, making both aspects of his life work.

  Juliet had traveled up by train and ferry to meet him, and found herself stunned by the beauty of Arran, even as she looked at it from the windswept ferry on the approach to the port of Brodick. It was this landscape that had motivated his monumental move, his choice to oversee the farm, meshing a long-standing farming lifestyle with that of a modern day businessman.

  “I came to look at the place, and I experienced the lure of the island. I’d visited as a child, and I had very fond memories of the farm, but as an adult who has traveled the world, it just took hold of me.” He observed her as he spoke, turning a heavy tumbler in his hand, warming the rich local malt whisky it contained.

  She nodded, feeling the place and its master instill their lure in her, too. Sitting opposite him on the sofa, sipping the fine scotch, her desire ran rampant. From his hand nursing the glass, to the strong outline of his thighs through his black jeans, he drew her attention in every way. Desire thrummed in her every pulse point, her blood racing, her lips eager to brush against the firm line of his mouth.

  As soon as she saw him, she wanted him. He said it was the same for him, too. She’d booked into a B&B, but never spent a single night there. Arriving at his house, she saw him in action, instructing the land workers for the following day, answering a call from Denmark in the next moment.

  “What drives you?” she asked, later that evening, as they sat in his comfortable sitting room after a dinner prepared by his housekeeper. It was a question she’d asked all the men and women she had interviewed for the series.

  “The need to make the impossible work.” He paused, and the corners of his mouth lifted in an insinuating smile. “What drives you?”

  No one had ever turned the question on her before, and it wasn’t something she had ever thought about, but still she knew the answer. “The need to express myself, I guess.”

  He nodded. “I’ve read your work; you express yourself well. I’d like to see more than that, though.” His gray-green eyes twinkled. He asked her questions, found out things she didn’t even know about herself.

  “Are you interviewing me now?”

  He smiled. “Kind of.” He looked her over with an unambiguous stare. “I’m sure I could find you an appropriate position.” The expression he wore was filled with raw, uncompromising sexuality, that aspect of
his personality just as forthright as every other.

  She gave a soft laugh. “I’m sure you could.” They both knew it was going to happen, but they talked on, savoring the rich sense of anticipation that built between them.

  What was it about him?

  She’d never met a man so intensely male, that was for sure. There was an inbuilt sense of power about him, and yet he wasn’t blatant or egotistical. It was a calm, self-assured way that he had. He wasn’t classically handsome, either. His dark hair was unruly, his body built large and strong. He’d had a rough childhood, but that only seemed to make him steadfast and sure of what he wanted in life. She ached to have him over her, to feel him thrusting into her.

  “What’s life without a few risks,” he commented, and she knew he wasn’t just talking about business ventures. He put his glass down and reached out to touch her face.

  She’d never been shy about letting a man know what she wanted. “I’m right with you on that one.” She turned her face into the palm of his hand, kissing it, opening her mouth to taste his skin.

  Their kisses were raw, needy, while they stripped each other with eager hands. The first time was hard and fast, right there on the rug in front of the log fire. She welcomed the hard strength his body, hungry for it, her cunt hot and grabbing, holding him tight as he pulled back and lunged. As they got closer to the climax, he raised up on his arms, looking down at her with searching eyes, and she latched her legs over his shoulders, sucking him ever deeper. The climax hit her in a dizzy, wild rush, and he followed fast, one hand pressing her pubic bone down onto his cock, the pressure releasing a second wave of pleasure through her.

  Her fingers knotted in his hair when he lay over her, holding him close. Something unstoppable had been set in motion between them. He’d kissed and touched her everywhere, before he carried her to his bed and fucked her again, slowly, taking shallow strides, making her mad for it. He laughed softly when she begged him for more, looking at her in the light that spilled in through the large picture window. The sound of the waves crashing against the cliffs was all that had anchored her to the reality of the moment, when he drove the length of his cock inside her, filling her to overfull.

  She’d phoned the agency, called in sick, something she’d never done before, lengthening her stay on the island, lengthening her time with him.

  “Tell me now, what do you want?” he said against her ear, whilst he screwed her from behind.

  “I want it to last and last,” she’d cried out, poised on the edge of her orgasm. “I want to feel your cock right through me.” Moaning loudly, she drove back onto him, spilling down her thighs as she came. He’d pulled out, pacing himself when he got too close, giving her exactly what she wanted. He possessed her over again, until she could barely move and her cunt was blissfully sore, riotous with sensation from fucking, her mind and body senseless with multiple, rolling orgasms. When she collapsed on the bed, he knelt over her, taking his cock in his hand. She caught sight of the pent-up ecstasy and pain of his held-back release in his expression. In that moment she saw it all: this was a man who got what he wanted, who worked for it, no matter how hard, no matter what the sacrifice. He came over her belly. Panting hard, he bent over her, rubbing his semen over her breasts and torso.

  “Yes, yes,” she begged, “stain me, mark me.”

  His expression was fiercely possessive as he marked his territory, the ritualized action making her feel gloriously proud as she lay sated in his arms.

  They barely slept, afraid to waste the precious time together. Instead they fucked hard, then made love slow. They lay awake in the moonlight communicating with mouths, fingers, and tongues. They explored each other almost continually, talking endlessly, then rolling together, his mouth on her pussy and hers on his cock, devouring each other.

  “Why did you come here?” he whispered with a dark smile, one night, in the midst of their passion.

  “I’m not so sure anymore,” she replied, joyous laughter escaping her mouth.

  She’d never expressed herself so thoroughly, giving everything, opening herself in ways that she hadn’t even considered possible. He confessed he was stubbornly independent, and she knew that alone made this hard for him. She recognized that was why he was alone. Too focused for his own good.

  In the daytime, he drove her across the island to the rougher landscape of the north, where he took her down to the cliffs. The blustery autumnal winds nudged them up against shoreline. Their words and laughter were lifted on the whirling wind around their heads before disappearing.

  “Come here, I have to be inside you now,” he’d said, and backed her against the cliff wall. He opened her coat and lifted her skirt, his hands moving fast into the heat of her. Over his shoulder she saw that the tide was coming in, the waves rolling over the sand in the timeless embrace between land and sea.

  “Now?” she replied, weak with desire, emotion catching in her throat.

  He answered by stripping her underwear down her legs, knocking off one shoe and lifting one leg in his hand, before plunging deep inside her.

  She was acutely aware of the rough rock at her back as he rode her against the ancient cliff face, lifting her bodily with each thrust. “The tide is coming in,” she cried, her hands around his head.

  “There’s enough time,” he replied, hoarsely, and she gave in to his overwhelming need.

  She’d never been fucked the way he fucked her, like he was claiming her to the core, to the very soul. And now, lying alone in her bed in London, it was driving her slowly insane with need.

  Now.

  I want that now.

  Flinging the sheet away, she got up and pulled on a T-shirt. Uselessly, she wandered to her desk, where she nudged the mouse. The screen flickered into life as she sat down. There was an email from the main news agency she took assignments from. She’d been ignoring it all day. They were asking if she’d finished the Arran article yet, and if they could have the title, ASAP.

  Sighing, she clicked over to the unfinished document. At first, she told herself that when she finished up the article, she’d get over it. Only then would the pain and the intense desire begin to fade. Then, as she found how hard it was to finish, she realized she didn’t actually want to, because she didn’t want to break that connection with Christopher.

  “Face it, girl, you’ve got it bad,” she murmured, as she looked over the copy. And the worst of it was that it hurt. Hurt bad. Being in love was a screwed-up painful thing, if you were apart from the one you loved.

  Her phone bleeped into life. Picking it up, her spirits lifted and she smiled at the name on the screen.

  “I didn’t wake you did I?” His voice.

  “Hey you,” she said. “Nope. I can’t sleep. Thinking about you.”

  He gave a soft growl. “Good.”

  “I can hear the sea. Where are you?”

  “In the bedroom, standing by the window, looking at the empty bed, wishing you were in it.”

  “Wanting to make the impossible work?” she teased.

  “With a fury.”

  His tone had a low intensity about it that melted her. She bit her lip, her head dropping back. She could just picture him. Reaching over, she flicked her monitor off, allowing the enveloping darkness to take over. If he were by the window in his bedroom, the moonlight would be at his back. In her mind’s eye, she touched his outline, reaching out for him with every atom of her body. Between her thighs she was hot and wet, her inner flesh clutching rhythmically, wanting him there.

  “Touch yourself, now,” he instructed.

  The pulse in her groin beat wildly in response to his words. Her free hand moved between her thighs, her fingers dipping into her well of slick heat, the palm of her hand crushing her clit.

  “Do you want me there?” His tone was demanding, almost desperate.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Make yourself come, let me hear you.”

  She put one foot up on the edge of the desk, opening her
legs wide. He was breathing close to the mouthpiece, and the sound fueled her.

  “Describe it, tell me how it feels.”

  “I’m swollen, I’ve been thinking of you all evening. My clit is hard, so sensitive.” Almost too sensitive, it stung as she flicked it. “Oh God.”

  “Come, please…let me hear you.”

  She moved her hand, her cunt locking on one hard finger, hips moving back and forth, palm rocking against her clit. Her moan of release was long and breathless.

  “I wish I was there.”

  She laughed breathlessly. “So do I, believe me.”

  “It’s not getting any easier, is it?” he commented, with a dry laugh.

  “No,” she agreed. “I’m going to finish the article tonight,” she whispered, before she said good-bye.

  “That’s bad isn’t it?”

  She couldn’t help smiling. He knew that she had been dragging her heels. How had he come to know her so well? A feeling of destiny surrounded her. “No. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I’m not going to let it be a bad thing, Christopher.” In the moment of silence, she sensed his relief.

  “Remember what I said.”

  Her heart brimmed. On their last night together they had lain silently in each other’s arms, talking whilst barely speaking, drinking each other in through their eyes. When dawn broke through, he’d fed her breakfast in bed before taking her out to walk across the land. On the hilltop, there was an early morning mist that seemed to hold them to the ground they stood upon. He told her then that he wanted her to come back, that he’d be there for her. Deep inside, she already knew that. She put her fingers to his lips and sank into his embrace, wishing they could stay shrouded in the mist forever. Far too soon, the midmorning sun broke through and it was time for her to catch the ferry to the mainland.

  “I remember everything you said,” she whispered into the phone. “And you’re right. You always were. What’s life without a few risks? I want to be with you.”