The Light of Dying Flames by Anthony Beal

email: nightknight@moonman.com

 

She didn't like to kiss when they made love, and wondered whether that made her seem dispassionate or just odd. She didn't care enough to do anything for it, but she wondered, nonetheless.

Britt watched his mouth, flavored with nicotine and pussy, descend in search of hers as they lay together, his hardness nestling between her nether lips. She fancied her own taste well enough, but if her desire were for the hint of ashes in her mouth, Britt's renting a flat above a pub meant there'd always be an available ashtray to lick. Little difference lie between that act and kissing Ford, and so her lips were not there when his came down.

Everything was the same and everything was different tonight. Ford, although maintaining his typical sweaty, bullish presence inside her, seemed as emotionally invested in the act as a man might seem in polishing his shoes. There were nights when the jarring cadences of his pelvic jabs proved feral enough to make Britt sing in genuine shivers and sighs. Tonight was no such evening. Tonight, they fucked contentiously, without words, without any pretense of love, because their era of mutual self-delusion was declining, receding a bit farther into nothingness with each shove of his cock. Besides, being in love was perhaps the one hallucination under which they'd never labored.

It seemed like years ago instead of weeks; their golden age, the days before the callousness set in on both sides, before caressing gave way to groping, back when "affection" and "affliction" seemed less synonymous. For Britt and Ford, romance, while no stranger to either of them, seemed less firmly rooted in unbridled ardor than in performance art, and wasn't exhibitionist love grand? They were soulmates from their first night together, each relishing the curious gaping of onlookers as the couple would nestle into a tavern booth or theater box and pet each other feverish, drink themselves giddy. On nights such as those, they might well have been in love, if love's benchmark was merely the hunger to press flesh to flesh.

These days, Ford's kisses cared nothing for Britt's lacking reciprocation, just as his cock cared nothing for her usual lack of orgasm. His manner told her as much; shouted it everytime he smeared his sour lips across her unpuckered mouth. So fuckin' what if she didn't always get to come too, or if he didn't always call the following day? His kisses were always deep, always lingering when he and Britt were naked and tangled in each other; deep and lingering, even after coming in her mouth. She was to count herself lucky that in this day, a twice-divorced adulterer thirty-two years her senior should even ask an exotic dance goth her name, much less extend any such amenity as a kiss before seeking to ram himself between her thighs.

Some nights, he'd only fuck her in handcuffs. Other nights, he'd go over to her place and pout until she came to bed in her stage persona of Estherian, Mistress of the Sensual Macabre: black lipstick, magenta-colored wig uncurled down to her ass, henna spiderweb "tattoos" inking her face and tits, iridescent contact lenses, crotchless leather and lace stretched across her physical charms. He'd call her "Estherian". He'd do things to her that hurt, and want them reciprocated, and Britt would reciprocate the pain not so much because she knew it pleased him, but sheerly for the sake of restitution.

Tonight, Ford was having to make do, not with Estherian the frothing hellcat, but with blonde, green-eyed, un-tattooed Britt. And not a word passed between them as they humped each other obscenely, maliciously. Britt folded her legs around Ford's bouncing hips and crushed, hoping her grip visited as much hurt upon him as it did upon her inner thighs. And that face Britt once found so wickedly handsome for its severe slopes and angles was simply looking more wicked. And those silver-streaked ashen curls that once framed his features with such luster were looking thinned and jaundiced by poorly-applied color treatments. And with his every scowling thrust, that curt confidence with which Ford infused his every word and stride was showing itself for the ill-disguised arrogance it had been all along.

When Ford came, he did so with a snarl that bared every tooth in his head. The expression would have looked just as much at home upon the face of a man who'd just broken an enemy's neck; there was triumph there, and lust, and righteous indignation. Britt could sense these, one and all, his semen burning with them as it splattered her pubic bush unceremoniously, dripping between her thighs. It seemed the ex-Marine in him still thirsted for the occasional skirmish and would take his enemies however, wherever they could be found; even if it meant making new ones in bed.

His pink, sweaty bulk folded as Ford pushed the last fat bead of cum from his wilting cock. He fell over onto the pillows beside Britt, huffing like a dying rhinoceros. Britt had never noticed just how pink he was.

He looked at her, gave her that slanted, self-celebrating smirk-grin that all men put on immediately after a loveless fuck or a really satisfying belch.

"Got any beer?" he asked, speaking only after his eyes had closed again.

"Fridge."

"Light or dark?"

"Dark."

"You want one?"; again, spoken without seeing her, and in a tone suggesting that bringing back an extra beer would pose an imposition only slightly greater than would an organ donation and frontal lobotomy combined.

"Pass."

"Be right back."

Britt watched him go and realized she didn't give a damn whether he returned or not. Ford's bare feet against her floor sounded like uncooked fish being slapped along the tiles as he made for her kitchen. Britt stretched, wadded a fistful of bedsheet and used it to wipe Ford's cum from between her legs. He returned to the room just in time to catch her doing it, and leisurely closed the distance between them, sauntering.

"You always manage to show me a good time, Jen." Ford said, returning to drop himself ass-first upon Britt's mattress. Dark beer foamed from his bottle, sloshed onto Britt's bedsheets which had never once borne a beer stain before she'd allowed this man onto them. God, he was pink and sweaty! Wiping his beer bottle along his jaw and chest to steal a little coolness from it, Ford swallowed the brew with an expert swiftness born of a lifelong affinity for drinking. Trivialities such as spillage---whether it be beer upon her bedsheets or cum in her hair---could wait, though. Britt sat up in her bed to ponder a larger concern: what had he called her a moment ago?

"Jen". He'd called her "Jen". His wife's name was Cheryl.

Britt's ears had not deceived her; the hell they had. "Jen". It hurt a little. Britt wondered how he treated "Jen" in bed. She wondered whether he insisted on barebacking with "Jen" the way he did with her. Britt thought of sucking Ford's cock; all the times she'd gone down on him after a shag in his car, in her bed, in the alley behind the pub downstairs. How many times had she sucked "Jen's" pussy juices off his cock?

"Kiss me," Britt said, surprising herself because she really did want to feel his lips, and suddenly, wanted to make him feel something in return. The shock was not lost on Ford, who looked at her like he was appraising a newly broken pony. So, now the little bitch wants to kiss and spoil the taste of my beer, his expression gloated silently. Britt liked that; it made the thing she was about to do that much easier.

"Now?" he said, incredulously, "Why?"

"Because I love you," Britt lied.

"Ready for another round, are you?" he said after emptying his bottle and dropping it over the edge of her bed, onto the floor and his discarded pants. His cock twitched and began to thicken at the suggestion of fucking again so soon. Britt read the message behind his eyes loud and clear: they'd shag again if she really needed it, but they'd do it his way; she'd take it however he chose to give it to her, and keep her bleedin' mouth shut; just swallow and count herself lucky a man like him would even soil his cock on a pole-dancing tart like her.

As for Ford, he was to count himself lucky that Britt possessed but one pair of lips beyond which teeth lay waiting.

He kissed Britt, his tongue possessive as he pushed it forth, selfishly invading her mouth with it, his lips shoving hers apart without love. Britt caught his lower lip between her teeth and sucked as much of his lip and chin into her mouth as she could. Ford groaned in approval an instant before Britt bit down ferociously, severing the warm, slack muscles of his lower lip on her very first attempt. Her teeth burst smoothly through his flesh, his blood and spit washing her lips and teeth as she rent the tough, ropy meat and vessels of his face; it was like tearing into one of the raw steaks she used in her stage act as Estherian, Mistress of the Sensual Macabre.

Ford's mouth filled with blood as he started to scream, no longer approving the lust of his feral mistress of darkness. In his last moment of consciousness, the woman sitting astride him spit his lower lip back in his face, and Ford wondered whether she was the truth and Estherian was fiction, or whether just maybe it was the other way around.

about the author: Born and raised in NY where he lives with his wife, Anthony Beal is a published erotic/horror author and poet whose short fiction has appeared in such online publications as Dark Muse, Terror Tales, The Murder Hole, Morbid Musings, and House of Pain. His dark, sensual poetry has appeared in such print magazines as Mojo Risin', The Ultimate Unknown, Cthulhu Sex Magazine, and The Nocturnal Lyric, and online with Dark Moon Rising Magazine, Ophelia’s Muse, and Fear of the Dark Webzine. Forthcoming works of his are scheduled to be published in and Space and Time Magazine. Anthony Beal is an affiliate member of the Horror Writer's Association.