Alison's Wonderland

“I was just looking,” Lily said, backing away.

“I see you,” the man continued, fixing her with fathomless gray eyes, “every morning. You look at my shoes like you’re starving.”

“Your shoes?”

“I design them,” he said.

“No shit,” said Lily.

“For women,” he said, “like you.”

“Oh,” Lily said, and looked down at her faded, raggedy Ramones T-shirt.

A smile snaked across the man’s face.

“It’s what’s underneath that matters,” he said, his eyes hooking on Lily’s chest.

If Lily had seen herself in the plate glass, she’d have seen her cheeks flare as red as the shoes. She looked down at the paving slabs and tried to think of a witty comeback.

“Come in,” the man said, pushing the door open.

Lily’s eyes flicked from the shoes to the man and back again. In her mind’s eye, she pictured the flower shop’s shutters rolling open and Margie cursing the empty street. And then, although she knew it was crazy and although she couldn’t afford to get fired from another job and although everything about the man made her feel she had sleepwalked into some surreal stage play, she followed him into the cool, palatial interior.

The whole place must have been polished by an army of women on their hands and knees, Lily thought. Every damn surface shone like a mirror. Even the light shafts that fell across the room looked glossy. The air smelt faintly of a sweet, spicy perfume, and the shop was silent. There was no sound other than the click of the man’s shoes as he walked across the marble floor to the window display.

He lifted the shoes by the straps and brought them to Lily, dangling them from his hand like a bunch of grapes he didn’t want to bruise.

“See,” he said. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

But as Lily reached out, he swung the shoes away and shook his head. He gave her a smile that made her feel dizzy.

“Not yet. You can wear them tonight. When I take you out.”

When Lily finally turned up to work half an hour late, she was clumsy and preoccupied. She knocked over a display and broke an orchid stem, gave the delivery driver a funeral wreath instead of a get-well-soon bouquet and ruined a hundred silk roses by dropping them in water.

“What is going on?” Margie bellowed. “Lily Spink, get a hold of yourself!”

By six o’clock, Lily was wired. She stood by the door of the shop, stepping from foot to foot anxiously while she waited for Hans. That was his name—the shoe man. It was about all she knew. But she’d guessed he was rich. She had an inkling he’d take her somewhere fancy, and so she’d stripped down to her spaghetti-strap vest and tried to scrub the green stains off her jeans. Her outfit wasn’t Chanel, but it was the best she could do at short notice.

When his car pulled up outside, dark, sleek and quiet, Lily whistled under her breath. It looked like a cruise ship.

“Hold on!”

Lily rolled her eyes as Margie’s foghorn voice called her back. Her boss nodded at her. “Take this, honey.”

She pressed something into Lily’s hand—a sprig of little bell-shaped white flowers nodding on a stem, tied in ribbon—and gave a tight smile.

“Lily of the valley. Your namesake.”

He drove straight to a club downtown, tucked behind the old merchants’ quarter. Hans climbed out of the car and walked around to Lily’s door to open it. When she swung her feet out, he bent forward and stilled her with one hand on her knee. Lily swallowed. Hans crouched at the curb. His hands slid down her calves and looped around her ankles. Slowly, almost daintily, he unlaced her baseball boots. When he tossed the battered boots in the gutter, Lily nearly cried out, but then she saw the hot glimmer of the red shoes and caught her breath.

Hans laid them at her feet.

“Put them on.”

As she stepped, at last, into the arched shoes, they clasped her feet like the hands of a lover, and Lily knew she was beautiful. When she climbed out of the car, her spine unrolled and her hips tipped forward, until her body was an S that leaned toward Hans. Even in her frayed old jeans and with her hair loose and tangled, Lily felt like a queen.

She’d tied Margie’s posy to the strap of her vest, and Hans’s eye caught on it as they climbed the steps.

He raised an eyebrow. “An unusual corsage.”

Lily didn’t answer. She felt a bit dazzled.

They entered the club arm in arm. Every head turned to look at them. The men’s faces were lustful and the women looked as if they’d sucked sour plums. Damn, Lily thought. These shoes work. She swayed across the marble floor, hanging from Hans’s arm. The shoes were so high they gave her vertigo, but there was also a zing and a shiver creeping through her veins. Lily’s tits tingled like they had lithium batteries attached to the nipples.

Hans led her past the jealous crowd and through a pair of long velvet curtains at the back of the club. They entered a dark, cavelike room with black walls and black marble floors, a vast glittering chandelier hanging overhead the only decor.

“Want something to drink?” Hans said, his lips brushing her ear, and Lily shivered. Everything he said made her feel as though she were swimming in syrup.

“Or shall we dance?” Hans slipped an arm around her and let his hand trip over the curve of her buttocks. Lily’s heartbeat seemed to follow his touch, and she had to force herself to breathe out. When he pulled her onto the edge of the dance floor, her feet started to twitch. Lily was restless. Antsy. She felt like there was a swarm of bees in her belly, and it was part sweet torture, part agony as the thrills spilled over and trickled through her veins.

Hans watched her. His gaze stroked down her curves, and Lily felt as though she were being wrapped in hot, wet silk. Delicious shivers ran up and down her legs, and she twisted from side to side to let the tingles travel right to the end of her fingertips. What was going on? She dropped her eyes to her feet. Was it some kind of weird acupuncture?

“Oh, God,” she said. “These shoes—these shoes are…fantastic.”

Hans circled her, still observing her body with intense interest. As she pointed her toes and flexed, like a cat trying to shake an itch out of its fur, he put his mouth to her ear.

“Dance,” he whispered, and gave her a sharp slap on the rounded cheek of her ass. The sting made her leap, and Lily whirled around, her mouth open wide in surprise. Before she could say a word, though, her attention was distracted by a low, pulsing sound. It could have been her heartbeat thumping in her ears or it could have been music, but whatever it was, the rhythm spoke directly to her body, to her hips and belly and the sweet wetness gathering between her legs.

Lily danced. She rolled back and forth and stroked herself, balancing on her tiptoes in the towering shoes. As Hans watched, she danced for him and toward him, winding around his body and rocking against him. The complex, noiseless music continued and grew louder as she ground into his crotch, lifted up tall enough on the shoes to meet the stiff length of his cock as it pressed against her, hot even through the layers of their clothes.

Deep in Lily’s thoughts, a glimmer of apprehension flared. Weren’t there any waiters, any other people wandering into the hidden ballroom? She hunted the dark corners of the room, but found nothing in the shadows except more shadows, deep and thickly layered, and the sensation she was floating underwater, drifting down beyond the depths to a place where no light would reach her. She felt caressed by the dark, just as Hans gently stroked her hips and slid his long fingers inside the waistband of her jeans, reaching down to tickle the top of her ass.

When he kissed her, it was like drinking very fine brandy—smooth and strong and dark gold. Lily smelled the perfume on his neck—civet and patchouli, something dense and elusive—as he deftly unbuttoned and pushed her jeans to her knees. Any shame she might have felt evaporated like smoke, and she closed her eyes as his swaying movements helped them dance closer to each other, until there was nothing between their skin but heat and a damp slick of perspiration.

Perhaps he slid his trousers aside as swiftly as he’d undressed her, or perhaps his clothes somehow melted away, because now Lily felt Hans’s cock, hot and hard, slide between her thighs and nudge at the seam of her pussy. She was molten wax, all liquid heat, and Hans was flowing into her like a knife into butter.

His hands circled her hips and held her fast as he pinned her on his prick, pulling her down slowly until he filled her right. But Lily couldn’t stop moving, like the beat wouldn’t leave her alone, and she squirmed against him, working herself closer and closer.

She no longer knew if she was trying to dance or fuck or swim. Her feet slid around to get purchase on the floor as he took her and lifted her up with each stroke. Lily heard moans, and wondered if they came from her mouth. Her body was wildly restless, insatiable even as she felt the blissful ache of his cock thrumming inside her.

As they worked against each other, his hands moved everywhere at once—cupping her breast, slipping over the fuzz of her pussy, pinching her clit and molding her ass. Gripped in his rough embrace and tugged and dazzled by whatever the shoes were doing to her, Lily’s head started to spin.

“You like that?” he asked, and she heard a dark thread of menace running in his voice.

“Don’t want me to stop, do you?” he asked, while his fingers strummed and rubbed and tweaked at her. She crawled upward, like she was trying to climb his body.

A voice in her head chanted a mantra she was only half aware of. More, more, more. Lily didn’t know what she wanted more of—his cock, his fingers, his voice slithering into her ear like a trance, the brandy kiss or the wet shine of the shoes that clung to her feet. The feeling, the thick, dark, urgent and sweet feeling. The beat of the music rolling into her. Everything, everything.

Lily started to shiver. Hans fucked her steadily, decisively. She had to fight to breathe. The polished floor was slippery under her feet and she felt herself tumbling, slipping, falling as the burn of orgasm rose up through her body.

It started in her feet, red flares of sensation that burned in her veins and swarmed around her thighs, a hot crush inside her that uncurled and licked over her clit, clutched at her heart and sparked in her nipples as the man pinched them tightly. And then it was everywhere.

She closed her eyes and saw crimson, opened her mouth and screamed scarlet, felt the red crash over her and through her and shake her until there was no world anymore, no ballroom, no Lily.

The red splashed across her heart and sizzled in her fingertips.

The waves rocked her back and forth, swaying her until she was seasick. Lily unraveled and spun out like a ribbon caught in the ocean’s deep currents. She was limp, her body shaky. Ready to climb down now, to find air, to break the surface.

But Hans’s arms circled her waist and the shoes were tight on her feet. Although she was flinching, oversensitive, the cock inside her was harder and stronger than ever and her body wouldn’t stop moving against it.

“Hans,” she said, almost ready to beg for a moment’s pause. She was ignored. He rubbed relentlessly at her aching nipples, making her flinch as the too-strong sensation shot through her. She was bathed in sweat, cooling now and slick over the surface of her skin.

She tried to pull away. But she found herself tugged toward Hans, as though there were a strong magnet in her stomach. And her hips—though they ached, they kept on moving. Her body seemed possessed—though she frowned and blinked she couldn’t seem to see clearly.

“Yes,” Hans said, and his smile curdled. “Dance with me.”

“Oh,” Lily said. Her voice was faint. “I think I need a glass of water.”

Hans put his mouth to her ear.

“All you need is this. All you need is me.”

He nodded his head.

“You’re mine.”

Lily’s heart lurched. The music had become dark and hard now, it beat against her skull. Hans let his eyes drop to her shoes. He smiled, and the skin pulled taut over his cheekbones.

“The shoes belong to me. And now you belong to the shoes.”

Lily’s feet twitched and throbbed, and she realized in a split second that she was bewitched. The shoes were a poisoned chalice, a glittering prison, two seductive traps that she’d walked straight into. She pushed Hans away and dropped to a crouch, tugging at the straps on her ankles. It was as though the buckles were soldered shut. Her feet were burning now, and her breath was fighting in her throat. She looked up at Hans and saw twin fires in his eyes, a terrible, cold desire. The tip of his tongue flickered over his lips.

“Mine,” he said.

Desperate and confused, Lily reached to her throat. Her hand brushed the wilted corsage pinned to her breast, and she clutched at the stems. A burst of sweet, green perfume floated from it. Hardly aware of what she was doing, Lily gripped hold of the flowers and held on to them tight. Her head hurt. Her eyes were bleary. With fingers wet from sap, she rubbed at her eyelids.

It was like the sky opened up. A fresh breeze cut through the thick atmosphere of the ballroom, smelling of cut grass and brine and newly dug earth. Lily looked around.

Hans was a few feet from her, but he seemed to shrink as she looked at him. Her eyes were clear. There was dandruff on his shoulder and dust on the chandelier. The music faded. Lily felt an insistent pain in her feet, and looked down at the red shoes. Irritated, she kicked a shoe across the dance floor, and stepped lightly out of the other.

The floor was dusty and small pieces of grit dug into the soles of her feet, but it felt good. She flexed her toes. Lily heaved a deep sigh.

“Well, Hans, you know that was fun, but I think it’s time I got going.”

He didn’t answer, but instead made a hissing sound, like a balloon when the air is let out of it.

“No, don’t fuss, I don’t need a ride home,” Lily continued, rubbing mascara from under her eyes. “It’s been a great night. Really interesting. Although—” Lily leaned toward Hans and whispered loudly across the empty dance floor, “You might want to lay off the Viagra. Too much of a good thing, you know?”

With that, she blew him a light kiss off the end of her fingertips, turned and left.

Fool’s Gold

Shanna Germain

Spin a Yarn

It was a random boast. Too many gin and tonics, too aware of how my ass looked in a new pair of dark jeans. Far too aware of how he’d been watching me across the loud space of a bar table all night, long fingers reaching up to push a few strands of dark hair away from his blue eyes. Not a close friend, but still a friend. And for long enough you’d think I’d have noticed him that way before. But sometimes that’s how it happens, a flip switches, and the guy at the edge slips into the center. He is suddenly all you can see.

This flip was the conversation that turned from usual drunken rants to sex. Specifically to bondage sex. After a few minutes of the boys around the table laughing and the girls not really saying much, I pushed the lime into my gin and tonic with the end of my stir stick. “I don’t know what the big deal is.” I imagined being stuck somewhere, seat-belted in, unable to reach the drink holders or turn the knobs on the dashboard. “I like to move when I have sex. Why be tied down?”

Suddenly, the quiet man that I mostly knew from group nights out was leaning across the table, creating near-perfect paper strips from the bar napkin, talking about ropes and twine and knots in a power voice, a low light flickering in his eyes. He wasn’t talking to me, not specifically, but his gaze flicked to my wrists as he talked. “There’s freedom in constraints.”

I curled my hands around my glass, the bones feeling exposed, the pulse thump-thumping beneath the skin. “There’s constraint in constraints.” My words had made more sense in my head.

He followed the movement of my hand with his eyes, tearing another near-perfect strip from the edge of his napkin as he waved my comment away. “But it’s not really about what you use to tie someone down. At least, not the physical thing you use to tie someone.”

He laid the thin strip of torn napkin over my wrist, holding the edges with a few fingers to the table, as though paper and pressure was enough to keep me there.

“It’s other things. Isn’t it, Elly?” His eyes settled on mine. Such intense blue, like a weight all their own, trying to keep me against the overly warm bar seat.

I dropped my gaze to watch the lime floating in my drink, raising both shoulders in a shrug, my wrist slipping along beneath the paper. “You’re asking the wrong girl,” I said, when I could finally meet his eyes again.

He arched a brow, the low bar lights flaring in his gaze as he shifted his head. “Am I?”

“Yes.” The others faded away. Did they grow quiet on their own or just slip into the edges of my vision, sliding into the place he’d occupied so recently? “I’ve never been bound to anything. Man or bed or chair. And I don’t intend to be.”

He stood suddenly, the lean movement of predator, still holding the napkin strip across my wrist with one hand. His other hand snaked forward to tighten into the length of my blond hair, fisting his fingers at the nape of my neck to pull my head back slightly. My mouth gasped open—I couldn’t help it—and then I was looking up at those blue eyes. Darkening to near black on the edges. “No?”

A single word. A challenge. Something that I would have ignored most times. If not for the drinks. Or for the fact that his fingers were still on either side of my wrist, tightening in, capturing my skin between them. If not for the way my body suddenly responded, a dizzy spin of want that left me hollow and wet.

“No.” Fingers digging into my head, holding me. I tugged my head forward, but his grip only tightened. So tight I saw threads of black and gold through my vision, and still the blue of his eyes through it all.

“You’ve never…” I didn’t know if the others could hear him, even though he was leaning down slightly, the press of his fingers keeping me there. “…called someone master?”

I pulled my body away although my hand, inexplicably, didn’t follow. I was sure I’d meant it to. “Hell, no. And I never will.”

“Shall we bet on that?” he asked. I was sure the others could hear him now, as well as my own bitten-back moan in response. What was my body doing to me? Betrayer.

Still, I suddenly and desperately wanted to prove this man wrong. I didn’t know if it was to knock his ego a notch or soothe my own pulse, which was thumping hard beneath my skin.

I took a deep, unsteady inhale. “What do I get if I win?”

“You won’t,” he said.

“Then there’s no reason to bet, is there?”

He laughed and let go of my hair, touching a single finger to the corner of my mouth as he bent and said softly, his lips whispering along the curve of my ear, “What’s my name, Elly?”

I’m sure I looked at him like he was stupid. How long had we been friends? Of course I knew his name.

“Jackson,” I said. At the same time, I pulled my wrist up, breaking the napkin.

As the paper split, releasing my wrist, he bowed down again to drag his teeth along the curve of my ear. “That’s one.”

Spinning Round

Time goes, as it does. I didn’t see him for nearly six months. I’m sure I didn’t think of him. Or his bet. Or the way I sometimes thought I felt his fingers in my hair, tangling me up.

And then, at a wedding, there he was. Tuxed up in a way that changed him once again. Prince maybe. Or young king, before he leans old and weary. He turned, halfway through the ceremony, looked into me with those blue eyes, and I forgot his name. Forgot my own. I had an image of my wrist held to the table with no more than a paper strip, remembered his fingers threaded in my hair. The heat that filled my cheeks—I knew I was turning the same color as the blood-red dress I wore, and I dropped my head, my blond hair falling forward around me. Closing my eyes for so long, I missed the bride coming up the aisle.

At the reception, he stepped beside me near the dance floor, keeping a careful distance. He touched me lightly on the inside of my arm. Even his voice was soft.

“Come and dance?”

Soft hands, safe hands around my back, careful how he touched me. He brushed a few strands of my hair from my face, his fingertips barely touching my skin, soft as silk. I looked in his eyes, waiting for him to say something like he did before.

“How have you been?” is what he asked.

So formal, so regal and considerate, I wanted to scream. I wanted to arch my hips against him and beg him for…what? I didn’t know. I wanted to see what he would do with a paper napkin, a wedding streamer, the straps of my dress, the bride’s veil.

I bit my lip instead, answered with the one word I could find. “Fine.”

I couldn’t think how to turn the conversation, so I danced with him, aching. I draped my wrists along his shoulders, turning them softly, just to see. I let my long blond hair brush his shoulders. My eyes on him, silent desire, but he merely tucked my cheek to his chest lightly, swayed to the bad music without touching his hips to mine. Every touch so soft, I couldn’t help but bend my body toward it. By the end of the song, I decided I must have confused that night. Or his comments. He’d been drunk. So had I. Perhaps our conversation had been something for only the dark of a backlit bar. Perhaps he’d forgotten our bet.

Besides, I told myself as he maneuvered me around the floor, I hadn’t wanted that, right? No bondage. No stupid calling someone master. Why did I care? I chalked it up to the soft whisper of fabric as his hips edged along mine and to the feel of his breath along my cheek.

As the dance ended, he stepped away with a gentle smile. The quiet press of his hand to my shoulder was so formal that I again thought of kings and royalty. Then he reached and curled a hand to the back of my neck, the blue of his gaze hardening as his eyes settled on mine. His hold was so strong and sudden that I yanked my head forward, pulling it from his grip. Too late, I realized what I’d done.

He dropped his head, mouth edging to the curl of my ear as he laughed quietly along my skin. “What’s my name, sweet Elly?”

“Prick,” I sputtered, so in want and confused that I was sure the dance floor was swaying beneath me.

He winked at me before he pulled away and left me standing in the middle of the floor by myself, only his words remaining. “That’s two.”

Spun to Gold

I spent two weeks arguing with myself. Wearing my seat belt extra tight in the car to remind myself why I didn’t want it. Didn’t want him. But all I could see were his blue eyes reflected in the sky of my windshield.

I called him. Some faltering tone in my voice about dinner, or drinks. I looked at my wrists while I held the phone, their fine bones, the thin length of them. I bent my head forward and touched a few fingers to the nape of my neck.

“Tell me where you live,” he said, and I did.

I slipped into jeans. Then a sundress. Then a T-shirt and a soft yellow skirt that swirled around my thighs. I paced, touching things, asking myself what I wanted. Unable to say the answer aloud.

When he got there, I opened the door, unsure whether I’d find predator or king. Or perhaps just the man I’d known for so long, before that night at the bar.

He was neither. And all three. Leaning against my door frame in jeans and a shirt that fit his wide shoulders. Arms crossed, those long fingers hidden from view, he slid in through the door finally, gesturing to the couch without a word.

I sat, fiddling with my skirt. Wishing I was anywhere else.