Beautiful Losers (Modern Erotic Classics) Read online

  Born in Canada, educated in Madrid and London, Remittance Girl has spent the last twelve years of her life exiled to a small south-east Asian country. She writes and grows orchids in a house with an enormous mango tree and a psychotic cat named Seven.

  Remittance Girl has published three novellas: The Waiting Room, Gaijin and The Splinter. Her short stories have appeared in numerous erotic anthologies and in single author collection, Coming Together Presents Remittance Girl.

  She is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing.

  Modern Erotic Classics

  The Houdini Girl

  Martyn Bedford

  The Phallus of Osiris

  Valentina Cilescu

  Kiss of Death

  Valentina Cilescu

  The Flesh Constrained

  Cleo Cordell

  The Flesh Endures

  Cleo Cordell

  Hogg

  Samuel R. Delaney

  The Tides of Lust

  Samuel R. Delaney

  Sad Sister

  Florence Dugas

  The Ties That Bind

  Vanessa Duriès

  3

  Julie Hilden

  Neptune & Surf

  Marilyn Jaye Lewis

  Violent Silence

  Paul Mayersberg

  Homme Fatale

  Paul Mayersberg

  The Agency Trilogy

  David Meltzer

  Burn

  Michael Perkins

  Dark Matter

  Michael Perkins

  Evil Companions

  Michael Perkins

  Beautiful Losers

  Remittance Girl

  House of Lust

  Michael Hemmingson

  Meeting the Master

  Elissa Wald

  Beautiful Losers

  Remittance Girl

  Modern Erotic Classics

  Series Editor: Maxim Jakubowski

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  55–56 Russell Square

  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Robinson,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2012

  Copyright © Madeleine Morris, 2012

  Series Editor: Maxim Jakubowski

  The right of Remittance Girl to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in

  Publication data is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-1-47210-709-1

  eISBN: 978-1-47210-638-4

  Printed and bound in the UK

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Acknowledgements

  Don Gordon: my fearless companion, my reality checker, and the marrow in my bones. I will love you until the stars go out.

  My blog readers: patient saints and intrepid adventurers all. Thank you for believing that eroticism and intelligence are not mutually exclusive.

  The ERWA writers list, but especially Adrienne, Bob Buckley, Lisabet Sarai, Aisling Weaver, Raziel Moore and Mike Kimera, for their encouragement, honesty, fierce writing, and setting the bar higher.

  Maxim Jakubowski for taking a chance on me, repeatedly.

  Louise Fury, firebrand.

  Contents

  Chapter One: A Modest Proposal

  Chapter Two: Breathe

  Chapter Three: Geographies

  Chapter Four: Transgression

  Chapter Five: New Territory

  Chapter Six: Rules

  Chapter Seven: Sensitivities

  Chapter Eight: Driving Without a Licence

  Chapter Nine: Indiscretions

  Chapter Ten: All the News that Fit

  Chapter Eleven: Instructions

  Chapter Twelve: Shorn

  Chapter Thirteen: Soft Inside

  Chapter Fourteen: Everything to Everyone

  Chapter Fifteen: Slut

  Chapter Sixteen: Broken

  Chapter Seventeen: Outside

  Chapter Eighteen: Gift Horses

  Chapter Nineteen: Cycles

  Chapter Twenty: I Know What You Are, But What Am I?

  Chapter Twenty-one: Virgin on Canvas

  Chapter Twenty-two: Virgin on Glass

  Chapter Twenty-three: Edge

  Chapter Twenty-four: Entropy

  Chapter Twenty-five: Off the Rails

  Chapter Twenty-six: Chain Link Heart

  Chapter Twenty-seven: Frail Deeds

  CHAPTER ONE:

  A MODEST PROPOSAL

  I had never watched anyone have sex. Not in the flesh, so to speak. I’d seen a bit of porn, and I’d done it myself, of course, but that’s different.

  There was Jean, fine-boned and slight. Every gesture, every movement had the carefully choreographed swish of an electric eel in a very small pond. He had taken to black cherry with a passion – his hair, his lips, his nails. He once sighed over a line of cosmetics on the ground floor of a well-known department store and whispered, ‘So many shades of black, so little time.’

  Then there was Sebastian, who rendered me insignificant in the way extremely beautiful women manage to make my existence tenuous. He was so very beautiful: six foot something and pale as alabaster, shocks of blue-black hair in a state of immaculate rebellion. He had the young dead poet thing down pat. Languid would be a vast understatement.

  How I came to be sitting on the floor in the corner of Jean’s ultra-minimalist bedroom doesn’t require much explanation: he was my best friend. The boy force-fed me martinis and then plucked my eyebrows into the kind of peaked arches that a 1950s film star would kill for. He used to perch on the side of the bath, joint in his manicured hand, and supervise my leg-shaving technique. I loved Jean. I loved him in ways that, if he knew, would probably have turned his stomach. There were frustratingly minor anatomical reasons why Jean couldn’t be my lesbian lover or why I couldn’t fuck him like a man. Minor, yet sadly insurmountable.

  Why, on this specific occasion, I was sitting on the floor in the corner of Jean’s bedroom had to do with Sebastian being a surprisingly magnanimous person. We’d gone out to dinner at the French Provençal restaurant, Jean’s favourite place to eat very little, and it was while we were indulging in a plate of Strawberries Fascist the question came up – rather out of the blue, I thought – though it could have been that I was paying more attention to my second glass of port than anything else.

  ‘Would you like to watch us fuck?’ The question was Sebastian’s. I choked unattractively on a strawberry.

  ‘What?’ I croaked, too loudly, trying to dislodge the piece of fruit.

  Sebastian leaned over his place setting, his chin propped on his slender interlaced fingers. ‘Do you want to watch us fuck?’

  ‘That’s what I thought you asked.’

  ‘Well?’

  I looked around desperately for the waiter. ‘Can I have another glass of the Dow’s ’77, please?’ Even he noticed the desperation in my voice and gave me a quizzical look. ‘Um, now, please?’

  I looked back at Sebastian, who was feeding Jean another chocolate-coated strawberry. It was incongruously shaped with a cleft that looked a lot like the head of a cock. Jean was letting him push it slowly between his lips.

  ‘Jesus! Stop doing that for a sec,
you guys. I have to think!’ Luckily, my port arrived in time and I downed it faster than is strictly proper, considering it was a ’83.

  ‘What’s there to think about?’ asked Sebastian who, not satisfied to publicly penetrate my friend with a strawberry, had taken to teasingly sliding it in and out of his mouth.

  ‘Well, Jean for one.’

  ‘It was Jean who suggested it.’ A crooked smile played at the edge of Sebastian’s lips.

  I swivelled around to face my friend, my might-have-been lesbian lover, my companion in the depilatory arts. ‘Did you?’

  ‘Mm-m!’

  ‘Either eat the fucking strawberry or spit it out! I want a proper answer.’

  Sharp, white incisors decapitated the brown-shirted berry. Crimson juice took a path along the length of Jean’s lips and trickled down one side of his mouth onto his chin. He made a convincing newbie vampire.

  ‘Don’t you want to, Shira? I thought you might like it. He has a very beautiful body, you know.’ The last sentence was, of course, not directed at me but aimed lewdly at Sebastian.

  Sebastian stood up and moved behind Jean’s chair. He pulled his lover’s jaw up with one hand, bent over him and licked up the spilt red juice with the flat of his tongue. ‘Thank you,’ Sebastian murmured.

  ‘My pleasure.’ Jean gazed up with heavy-lidded eyes.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, let’s get the bill.’ I looked around for the waiter again, only to find half the dining room staring at us. Admittedly, we were a pretty sight but I didn’t think that was why they were staring. Goths don’t generally patronize expensive French restaurants and, if they do, they usually don’t put on gay floorshows for the customers.

  Did I want to? That had a complicated answer. On one hand, who in their right mind would pass up something so aesthetically pleasing? On the other hand, I had some half-formed idea that sex was for doing and not for watching; voyeurism had never called to me much. Also, there was the little problem of what my relationship with Jean was going to be like after. Might this fuck it up? Lastly, I was ashamed to admit, it kind of freaked me out. I had a lot of gay friends, but the finer details of how they fucked remained something of a camera obscura to me.

  We paid our bill and left a restaurant full of scandalized patrons, half of whom were probably glad that the tablecloths hid their erections.

  On the street outside, we waited to flag a taxi in silence. It was cold and the air smelled like rain. A group of jocks sauntered down the street, drunk-ugly from an evening of sitting in the bars.

  ‘Oh shit, here comes trouble,’ said Jean in a small, singsong voice.

  As the mob pulled level with us, they stared and sneered. ‘Fucking faggots!’ yelled one.

  ‘Ass-fucking perverts!’ spat another. ‘I hope you die of AIDS.’

  A tall guy in a golf shirt moved closer. ‘You come ’round my neighbourhood, I’ll blow your friggin’ head off. Sick fucks.’

  My anger and protectiveness rose instantly. I glared belligerently from one stupid, hateful face to the next. A cab slid up to the kerb in front of us. Jean walked around to the other door and got in; Sebastian opened the one in front of me. The port and the brutal ugliness of the rednecks finally got the better of me.

  ‘We may be losers, but at least we’re beautiful, you fuckheads!’ I yelled after them. Sebastian grabbed me by the neck and shoved me into the back seat like a sack of potatoes.

  Uncomfortable and awkward in the middle of the back seat of the taxi, I felt just the tiniest bit hemmed in. ‘It’s not like there isn’t a perfectly good front seat.’ I fumed at no one in particular, lacking a worthy target for my unspent aggression.

  Jean put an arm around my neck and stroked my cheek with a silver-ringed thumb. Sebastian draped a long leg over mine, leaned back and nuzzled my shoulder.

  ‘She’s grouchy because she’s scared. This is how she hides it,’ said Jean. My best friend was taking liberties with my confidences.

  ‘That much is obvious. Tell her we aren’t going to traumatize her or anything.’

  ‘Hey, I’m right here! And, really, it’s bloody rude to evaluate my fight or flight reactions in front of me.’ I turned to Jean who had perched his chin on my left shoulder. ‘Clichés like “three’s a crowd” usually have some basis in fact, you know. You’re only doing this because you feel sorry for me for being single. It’s very patronizing.’

  Jean gave me a comic begging puppy-dog look. ‘That’s such shit and you know it. Anyway, I want you there. Do it for me, Shira, as a friend.’

  I felt my resistance weaken. How could I be such an easily manipulated sucker? I made one last and, in my view very brave, effort. ‘What’s going to happen afterwards . . . to our friendship? It’ll be weird.’

  A cool hand cupped my cheek and pulled my head around. In the back of the car, in a darkness punctuated by passing street lights, Sebastian’s eyes glinted like polished onyx. ‘Shira? Sweetheart? Darling dear? Shut the fuck up. You think way too much.’

  ‘It’s true. I do.’

  The room was full of candles; they covered a good portion of the floor and practically every elevated surface. Jean walked around lighting them as if he were officiating at a vigil. I sat on the floor in the corner and made myself as small as possible. Sebastian sat perched on the edge of the bed and watched me, which pretty well defeated my effort to blend into the decor. It got silly when they both sat on the frame of Jean’s waterbed and stared.

  ‘I told you this was gonna be weird,’ I muttered, then stood up and walked into the kitchen.

  Jean kept his weed in the freezer along with his gourmet coffee. Humming something inane, I rolled the fattest spliff I could, lit it and took a deep hit. Then, just to be extra protected, I grabbed the frozen bottle of vodka. I stalked into the living room and sorted through Jean’s music until I found something I considered suitable for two men to fuck to, put it on and returned the bedroom.

  Thankfully, things had progressed. They were out of their clothes. The sight of their white skin against the black sheets pulled a grin at the side of my mouth. They were lying on their sides, facing each other, legs entwined, kissing; it was rather sweet, really. I took my spot back in the corner on the floor.

  ‘Don’t we get some of that, too? And bring the bottle.’ Sebastian’s lanky arm reached up into the air, his fingers curled a demand.

  Almost begrudgingly, I walked over to the bed and offered him the joint. He grabbed my wrist instead and smiled up at me through the mess of Jean’s lipstick.

  ‘Sit.’

  ‘Yeah, sit,’ Jean echoed.

  I did. It was hard to argue with two very pretty, naked boys with black cherry lipstick everywhere. I kicked off my shoes and crawled to a free spot at the bottom of the bed. The bed responded by rippling and moving beneath us. As we passed around the joint, I got the feeling that perhaps this was just a little uncomfortable for them too. Somehow that thought made me feel better. I cracked the bottle of vodka and leaned back, propping myself up on my elbows.

  They began to kiss again. It started lazy and slow, but built intensity rather quickly. It was impossible to look away; it was hypnotic. Then I noticed the erections – both of them. Well, of course, I hadn’t thought much about the details. It made it all a lot more concrete, and – oh, God – very fucking sexy. I watched them touch each other’s cock. I envied their lack of hesitation and the familiarity that comes only with having the matching equipment. I’m sure it was the spliff that made me giggle.

  Jean turned his head to look at me. ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s just . . .’ Streams of hot blood crept up the sides of my neck and stung my cheeks. I couldn’t tell if it was embarrassment or arousal. ‘It’s just weird. Two erections.’

  ‘Did you think one of us would be anatomically incorrect?’ Sebastian wasn’t all that intelligible with his face nuzzled in the crook of Jean’s neck.

  Jean pumped his hips, pushing his cock through Sebastian’s curled fingers, b
ut he was looking at me. ‘You’re blushing, Shira. You’re getting all bashful!’

  The connection between my brain and my mouth was not cooperating. ‘Am not!’ I blurted out, before noticing that I sounded like a four-year-old.

  All the voyeurs I’d read about in novels watched scenes in stoic silence with unreadable expressions on their faces. Why couldn’t I be like that?

  Sebastian left off Jean’s neck and looked me over. ‘She’s not bashful, she’s turned on.’

  If I denied the accusation vociferously it would appear suspicious, so I kicked his leg instead which was, of course, so much more sophisticated.

  Jean giggled. ‘Oh, you are! You are!’

  ‘Just shut up. I’m supposed to be watching, not having a conversation. Wasn’t that the deal?’ I made a show of resettling myself modestly. The heat between my thighs was growing uncomfortable, but there was one heck of a pleasant buzz in my head.

  They moved over each other like snakes, lithe and sinuous, touching everything with hands, lips, tongues. The noise Jean made when Sebastian took his cock into his mouth was just adorable – like a newborn kitten mewing and blind and insatiably hungry. He squirmed his way around until he found Sebastian’s hard-on and engulfed it with his lipstick-smeared mouth.

  There was something about all the gluttonous, liquid sounds of sucking, interspersed with moaning, that turned me on with frightening intensity. It was far more effective than any visual. Although the sight of Sebastian’s fingers digging into the back of Jean’s thighs did compete impressively. So did all the undulations.

  The vodka simply slid down my throat like water. Its icy shock stopped me from whimpering. This was, undeniably, the most erotic thing I’d ever seen in my life. My nipples weren’t just erect – they actually hurt. I occurred to me to be heartily thankful that most men are not multi-orgasmic. If they came this way, I figured, I could take my leave, rush home, and wank myself into unconsciousness.

  The sucking pop dashed my hopes of a fast exit. Sebastian rolled over onto his stomach and reached for something on the nightstand. He held a tube of lube and a strip of condoms in his hand. Sitting up, he ripped one open with his teeth, and fished the condom out. Then he glanced up at me.