Drinker with a Writing Problem Read online

  Fletcher bent and kissed Lola’s fingers, her wrists below the fabric of the tie, her arms, along the curve of her shoulder, and over her collarbone. “One moment, love.” He stood up and pulled off his shoes and socks, then undressed, slow.

  Each button of his shirt yielded to his magic, a light touch of his fingertip, and they slipped open. He set his waistcoat and shirt aside, flexing his muscles as he did so. What was so damned attractive about a guy in a sleeveless white undershirt? Arms, definitely arms. Lola watched her husband undo his belt, the click of the metal buckle and the whisper of moving leather. She trembled, heat blossoming wet between her thighs.

  Fletcher pulled his undershirt up over his head. His broad palm skimmed over his pectoral muscle, each finger flicking his left nipple as it passed over the tiny nub. Lola squirmed. She was regretting being tied down—she wanted to touch him, run her hands over every inch of him. She nibbled at her bottom lip, watching him.

  His hand slid across the taught skin over the defined muscles of his stomach. Lola’s gaze met Fletcher’s. A quick whisk of blue, magic and arousal, passed over the silver color of his eyes. Fletchers palm rasped over the coarse curls of his happy trail and dipped into his pants. His head tipped back, elongating his neck, Lola sighed at the sight of his Adam’s apple, moving up and down with each moan of pleasure that passed his lips.

  Fletcher’s hand moved over the length of him, stretching the fabric of his slacks tight. Lola flexed her knee, wiggling her toes against the stiff white fitted sheet on the mattress. “Tease,” she said, breathing hard. Her pussy ached from want.

  “Am I?” He parted her thighs with his hand and ground his hips against hers. His hard cock pressed the fabric of his slacks against her engorged clit. Lola groaned, arching her hips to his. The buckle of his belt fell cold against her hip.

  “Yes.” Her voice was breathy and cracked with need.

  Fletcher smirked and kissed her. He sucked at her bottom lip, pulling it lightly with his teeth. The warm softness of his mouth moved over her breastbone, down across her belly before he buried his face in Lola’s sweet cunt.

  Lola cried out and writhed as his tongue pressed soft and wet against her sensitive mound. With his palms, Fletcher pushed her knees apart. He wrapped his arms under her thighs and pulled Lola’s hips up to his face. He sat back on his heels and lifted her bottom half off of the bed.

  Fletcher’s tongue slid between the slick fold of Lola’s pussy, he kissed one swollen lip and then the next, rough and wanting, the way he had kissed her mouth a moment ago. Sweat beaded along Lola’s skin, collecting between her breasts, droplets rolling toward her neck, her hair soaking them up.

  His tongue penetrated her, over and over, rolling around, tasting her. Lola moaned. The sound of her pulse thrummed in her ears, her arousal increasing. Fletcher pursed his lips and blew a stream of cool air over Lola’s clit, magic buzzed against her flesh. The magic filled her slit, pressing against her inner walls, rippling against them, divine. Fletcher’s lips met the lips of her cunny, kissing. With each breath he pushed magic into her and over her g-spot.

  Lola screamed with pleasure, the delicious sensation of magic filling her entire body, hardening her nipples, slicking her pussy, and pushing her closer to climax. She wanted him inside of her, stretching her to full. “Please, fuck me.”

  Fletcher drew his tongue over her clit, flicking it softly. He worked his pants and boxers down enough so that his erection sprang free, his girth nestled in soft dark curls. He kept his grip on Lola’s hips, lowering her until her wet snatch was level with his throbbing cock. Fletcher eased into her, working himself back and forth, pulling her slickness onto him.

  The tips of Lola’s toes barely touched the bed as Fletcher held her suspended in the air. Her head tipped back and she cried out as he moved in and out of her, removing himself completely before surging powerfully forward. The brass bedframe squeaked in protest as Lola tightened her grip on the one bar she could reach, giving herself some leverage to arch her back, opening herself, welcoming the pleasurable onslaught. The tie bit deliciously into her wrists. With each thrust, Lola’s pussy tightened, edging her closer and closer to climax.

  Fletcher’s balls smacked against Lola’s bare ass, sweat slickened his skin. He tightened his grip on her ass, his fingers digging into her plump cheeks. Fletcher’s hips ground against her, deep, every inch of him buried in her sweet slit. He exploded inside of her, coming hard. Magic tingled across his skin and onto Lola’s, the vibration carrying her over the edge. She screamed, her pussy pulsing, a fast heart beat pulling the dregs of his climax from him.

  They gazed at each other, breathless. Fletcher lowered Lola’s hips to the bed and untied her hands. “I love you.” He kissed her and eased off of the bed, pulling his boxers and pants up.

  Lola grinned at him and rubbed the skin of her wrists. She ran her fingers through her hair, sweeping the damp locks away from her face, and lay back on the pillow. Lola looked up at the headboard and froze. “Fletcher,” she whispered.

  “Hmm?”

  On the top of the headboard, two monstrous looking creatures, no bigger than one of those green Army man toys, stared down at Lola with beady red eyes. A pink tongue lolled out of the Sprite on the left and the semi-transparent wings of the one on the right flittered, briefly displaying a rainbow of colors. The tongue lolling one grinned, a mouthful of sharp pointed yellow teeth, and began to move toward Lola.

  Lola jumped, the whole bed shook, and a sticky crunch resounded when Fletcher slapped the headboard with the gigantic green book from the bedside table. “Holy shit.” Lola scrambled to the side of the bed, kicking sheets, comforters, and clothing as she went.

  “It’s okay, they’re dead.” Fletcher carefully moved the book, pulling a trail of slimy guts, some of which fell on the white sheets. He wrinkled his nose when he turned the book over. There was a wing stuck to the bookmark tassel.

  “There’s only two in the house, right?” Lola blew breath through her clenched teeth and did the shaky Fletcher-come-kill-this-giant-bug-dance that was a sort of ritual in their marriage.

  “Yep. There are never more than two.” He dropped the book into the wastebasket, and it sounded more like a cinder block than a book.

  “We’re done here?” Lola rested her hand on her hips.

  “Yep.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “We could go back to the office,” Fletcher said.

  Lola smirked and threw a pillow at him.

  Heart Stone

  Not until I was dangling thirty meters in the air, a deadly distance to fall, did I realize the major flaw in my beautiful design. The idea to build a subterranean exploration vessel came to me one fine May morning while strolling the University’s freshly clipped verge. I collided with a strange dark brown cloud eking from the wall of a gardening shed—hundreds and hundreds of spiderlings ballooning, catching the wind with their miniscule threads of silk—were suddenly attached to me. My reaction to the sudden onslaught could be described as hysteria, but I do not consider myself a hysteric. Eager to identify the species, I found myself in the library with a few remaining specimens I had collected after the fray, and was delighted to find the University kept books on the identification of common Arachnida of England. I happened upon meta mendari—nonpoisonous and known to the layman as a cave spider.

  Thus was born the Spider-mole, a miracle of machinery; eight segmented legs allowed for a fuller range of motion and better balance than the average wheel. A drill of the most ingenious design was mounted to the prow of the ship, allowing subterranean exploration. The body of the vessel served as living quarters for its crew of engineers and geologists—the latter of which was the category I fell into. Should I lose my grip now, I would literally fall to my death.

  Lydia, how did you get yourself into this mess? I mused, knowing perfectly well the answer to that question.

  His name is Jasper Aloysius Drake and he is as brilliant of mind as he i
s fine of form. I first met Jasper when I was employed by Professor Eugene Wilhelm Fisher as a secretary of sorts. He required the assistance of two bright young minds. It was the good professor who had, through his genteel connections, secured the funds and means to build the Spider-mole, and embark on an expedition to explore the inner depth of the earth’s crust.

  Moisture, my own or condensation—it mattered naught—collected between my palms and the pipe. My wool skirt and petticoat flapped about my dangling legs. As I hung so close to ruin and willed myself to not envision the nasty fall that would soundly break my body should I lose my grip, I reflected upon Jasper. If I was doomed to have a single thought before I died, I wished it to be of him.

  Jasper, with his handsome square jaw, always with a dusting of unshorn hair no matter the hour of the day, and his cupid’s bow lips—oh the way the very edge of his marvelous pearl white teeth (all his own, I imagine) skimmed along his bottom lip when he was being particularly roguish. He kept his black curls a shade too long, long enough to cover his ears when he wore a hat. I had never seen a problem with his ears, they were beautiful and perfectly proportioned with his divine aquiline nose. Jasper’s eyes were a very light frosted blue, bordering on silver. I had traded many a knowing glance with those lovely eyes, we shared a sometimes tiresome love for Professor Fischer—whose antics were known to be quite…spontaneous.

  I had always thought my employment with the professor akin to having a small child. For all of his unruly white hair and well-earned wrinkles, Professor Fisher was frequently delighted with everything the world offered. His curious mind devoured everything scientific in any -ology. I smiled, I should have liked to have a child with Jasper, but a solemn look at the toes of my boots hanging in the air obliterated the dream.

  The realization that my own hubris would prevent me from ever seeing Jasper, from gazing longingly at his broad shoulders, trim waist, and the hug of his trousers over his supple bottom. My perfect machine had failed me, and the inevitable landing of the Spider-mole either on rock or the depths of hell, would be the death of us all. Just as I was preparing to start sobbing over my own untimely demise, the Spider-mole tipped and began to roll as though it were a hoop in a children’s trundling game. My stomach lurched with weightlessness as the vehicle tumbled through the air. Whap. Roll, roll, roll, crunch. My poor machine.

  The centripetal force loosened my grip and flung me against the wall of the compartment. I may have been screaming, but above the unholy sound of banging metal, the rattling of gears, and protesting squeals of springs, the sound of my own voice was not audible.

  After what felt like an eternity, but could have been no longer than five seconds or so, the Spider-mole came to rest on its side. I lay panting against the wall, desperately searching for my long lost bearings. In the wall behind me, steam hissed through the pipes, setting gears to whirring. I had designed the mechanics of the Spider-mole in such a way that the interior compartments would always remain at a horizontal angle to the outer hull’s position. The vehicle could be hanging upside down, but the inside would remain right-side up. However, as I had observed during the fall, my design did not account for rapid changes in gravity.

  The compartment once again correctly oriented, the lamps wheezed and flickered on. I stood, checked my body for injuries, and thanked God that I was still breathing and not dead, lying in a broken heap. I was mostly unscathed, save for a lost hairpin and a raw ache in my throat. I prayed my shipmates had been as lucky as I.

  The emergency hatch closest by required a greater amount of force than anticipated, and I was relieved when it opened from the outside. Jasper, emergency lantern in one hand, peered down at me. “Lydia, are you alright?” He offered his assistance and lifted me to the surface of the Spider-mole.

  “No worse for wear, Jasper.” I whirled about, my mussy hair falling down over my shoulders, assessing our plight as the exterior lanterns on the Spider-mole’s hull gasped and flamed to brightness. My machine had fallen through the earth’s crust above and rolled along the rock wall of a large cavern, three times the height of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Far above, I could nearly make out the hole from which we had plummeted.

  “It seems we’ve taken quite a tumble.” The professor appeared from another open hatch closer to the bow of the ship, scrambled up onto the hull, set down the emergency lantern he held, took various instruments and his journal from the inside pocket of his jacket, and began recording data. Jasper and I exchanged a knowing look.

  We left the professor to his observations and moved across the length of the ship’s hull. Other crew members were emerging form other hatches, and I was delighted to see that there were no life-threatening injuries. With each step, I mourned my beautiful machine. When we reached the prow, I froze. The carefully measured and exquisitely crafted drill was grossly bent like a broken arm, much of it dipped toward the cave floor while its slim tip pointed toward the ceiling. The damage was upsetting enough to warrant an unladylike curse and the first vestiges of a faint.

  “Shall we go down and assess the damage?” Jasper was at my elbow, a gentle hand on my arm to steady me.

  Perhaps you would like to loosen my stays? I nodded my head and made for the service ladder that would allow for the easiest decent. The height of the ladder above the ground required that I jump a distance of approximately a meter from the Spider-mole to the cavern floor. My boots hit solidly against stone and I kicked at a few pebbles, listening to the scattering sound echo from the cavern walls.

  With a soft grunt of impact, Jasper landed on his feet at my side. “Let’s see what a mess we’ve got.” He strode in the direction of the vessel’s stern and I followed at a close clip.

  My gaze wandered over the hull of my wonderful Spider-mole, rue to see that three of its eight legs were bent at varying angles in the segments between joints, and that two of the legs had been torn away from the vessel entirely. “Where is the eighth appendage?” I wondered aloud.

  “There,” Jasper said, pointing to the cavern wall about twenty meters up.

  I looked where he indicated and gasped when I saw the jagged rocks above; one particularly sharp hook shaped point had speared the Spider-mole’s leg in the soft canvas covering the coxa—the joint of the leg closest to the body—and ripped the entire appendage from the hull. My eyes stung with frustration and I peered around the enormous cavern, attempting to both clear my mind and stifle my feminine urge to sob inconsolably at our wretched plight.

  A glint of ruby red caught my attention. I stared. Mere centimeters from the metal mess of the Spider-mole’s hull stood a pedestal shaped rock formation. On the flat top of the structure lay a near perfect cordiform crystal. I gazed intently, watching the light from the emergency lamps play on the stone.

  “Jasper, I’ve found something curious.” My fingers glided over the surface of the crystal and the thrill of a new discovery thrum through my body.

  “A stone,” Jasper said. He was close, to me, close enough that the heat of him seeped onto my skin through the thin material of my blouse. He was near enough that if I stood on tip-toe, my lips would touch his, but I wanted him to kiss me, not the other way ‘round.

  “Not just a stone,” I said. “A heart stone.” The heart in my palm warmed and the heart in my chest beat like a raging drum in my ears. Kiss me.

  Jasper’s hand snared me around the waist, pulling me into him. His chest…and other parts…were firm against me. His lips pressed against mine, rough and needing. Jasper’s grip pushed lower, giving my bottom a tantalizing squeeze.

  We moved, I stepped back, he chased me with hot kisses—his lips on mine, then moving to my throat as his fingers loosened the buttons of my blouse. “Jasper,” I panted, my grip on the stone tightened. “Is now the time?” I very much wanted it to be.

  “Lydia, my darling, moments ago we cheated death. I’m not wasting another moment. I want to know you, intimately.” He spoke to my now bare shoulder, his warm breath sending sparks of want from t
he top of my head down to the heat blossoming between my thighs.

  Yes. I moaned as his lips skimmed over the top of my breasts above my corset.

  “Lydia,” he whispered my name over and over, louder until he was yelling it. He shook me hard. I lost my grip on the stone and it tumbled to the cavern floor.

  I blinked rapidly, trying to reorient myself. I wasn’t leaning against the ship, my blouse was securely buttoned, and Jasper stared at me—ashen faced. “What happened?”

  “You went into a state of catatonia, Lydia. You tell me what’s wrong.”

  I glanced down at the heart-shaped stone laying at my feet and tapped it gingerly with the toe of my boot. “This stone, I picked it up and then I had a…” I felt a hot flush move up from my belly and bring color to my cheeks.

  “A what?”

  “A vision,” I said firmly.

  Jasper’s mouth formed into a perfect O shape, and I realized ruefully that his amorous affections occurred only in my mind, as per usual. He stooped down and plucked the stone from the ground.

  “It is warm to the touch,” he said, smiling at me. A peculiarity occurred. Jasper’s mouth flattened into a straight line, pulling his face into severe, but still beautiful angles.

  I observed, waiting for some sign that he may be experiencing the same phenomenon that I had only moments ago. There was no blatant indication that this was so, and I swiftly removed my attention from the front of his trousers.

  “Jasper?” I asked once, and when he did not respond I asked again. This must be the catatonia to which he had referred. Gently, I shook his shoulder and watched as his fist tightened around the stone in his palm. I shook harder, to no avail. The only solution seemed to be to physically pry open his grip. The task proved more exertive that I expected, and I exhaled with relief when the stone dropped to the cavern floor.