Mack
fights to make his beautiful girlfriend see past his
polio-damaged legs. Carolee holds her lover in thrall by
indulging his fetish for red lipstick. Terrell falls hard
for his skydiving instructor, a former smokejumper who was
badly burned in a forest fire. Jim carefully romances his
skittish wife back into bed after her hysterectomy. Natalie
is trying to get pregnant. Paddy’s girlfriend already has,
and she isn’t sure how to tell him.
With her trademark mix of unflinching honesty and sexual
heat, Pushcart nominee Ann Regentin brings you thirty short
stories that take the trials of ordinary life and turn them
into something breathtakingly erotic.
EXCERPT
E-mail to Venus
Jason calls when he’s gone,
but one of his few weaknesses is that he’s lousy at phone
sex. It’s funny. He’s not the most verbal person in bed but
he’s not exactly mute, either. On the phone he gets
tongue-tied—at least that’s what he says. I don’t complain,
though, because he e-mails splendidly.
My
husband travels a lot. I knew that when I met him. It was
fun in the beginning because he took me all over the world
with him. He was busy during the day, but I could amuse
myself just fine and at night, I could give him something
else to think about. Then he’d take an extra day or a
weekend if he could and I’d take him to the best places I
found while he was in his interminable meetings. But that
time, I could not go. I was the first of many trips that
would separate us. I lived for my e-mail, checked it
obsessively, even when I woke at night, and when I saw his
name appear in my mailbox, I dropped everything, hit the
print button, and took his letter to bed.
My
Kerry,
You’d love Amsterdam.
It’s picturesque and delightfully raunchy. Here, they
offer “someone to keep you company” the way they offer
you wine. I agreed on one condition: she had to be 5’2”,
brunette, hazel eyes and very, very pregnant with my
son. They couldn’t help me. Some of the shops look
fascinating, though. I’m going to steal an hour or two
and buy you a souvenir, maybe something leather, or
something that vibrates. I haven’t decided yet. What I
really wish I could do is cut you loose with a credit
card. I’d love to see what you would have waiting for me
when I got back. I’d also love to see where you would
take me. The options here are mind-boggling and I wonder
what you would choose. I think the gods sent me here
without you to torment me. Yes, the women are beautiful
and mostly unclothed, but their bellies are flat and
that doesn’t do much for me these days. In fact, it
looks a little weird. I’m too used to you as you are.
Beautiful
She was so damned beautiful.
Too beautiful for her own good, he’d said once before she
took him seriously. Now he still said it and it still made
her laugh, but in a different way.
He sat in the doorway and
watched her as she washed the dishes. She was gorgeously
built, tall, leggy, her ass a perfect inverted heart, her
skirt brushing her bare thighs. She rarely wore panty hose
or tights and when she sat down, her hemlines rode up and up
and up, almost but not quite showing off her plain cotton
panties, floral prints that invariably clashed with the rest
of her clothes. Darya. So damned beautiful.
He came in behind her as
quietly as he could, but she heard him and turned around.
“Mack?” she asked, curious,
soap bubbles still clinging to her hands.
“Stay there,” he said.
She frowned as he backed her
up against the sink, then her mouth widened into an O and
she caught her breath, her breasts straining against the
buttons of her blouse. “Oh, Mack!” She was laughing, but she
spread her legs, let him in as he reached up, lifted the hem
of her skirt, and pushed his fingers past the elastic of her
panties.
“In the mood for a quickie?”
he asked softly.
Polio. By the time he was
born, wild polio had been virtually eliminated, but
approximately one baby in twelve million got polio from
the vaccine itself. Somebody had to make up the
statistics and one of those somebodies was Mack.
Live Through This
When I was young, I was prone
to love at first sight, with movie stars and rock stars and
such. It was sheer silliness and even then I knew it, but
for a while it was like riding a wave of sparkling air, and
I’d roll with it until I touched ground again, giddy and
breathless. It just didn’t seem like something that could
happen for real. I went out with the boys who asked me
because I liked them well enough and they liked me. My first
lover was who he was for no better reason than because I was
with him just then and it was time. We were together for a
few years, then broke up as we all did in those days,
drifting from lovers to friends in a way that, in
retrospect, was frighteningly cool. I married the last of
them and was content for ten years. I didn’t know there was
something more, something waiting for me.
His name was Harlan.
He was from Florida and I had
done some diving in the Keys so we had an unfortunate lot to
talk about, but even if we hadn’t, we still would have
clicked. It was one of those things you see in movies, where
eyes meet across a crowded room, and I knew exactly who I
wanted to spend my life with.
I didn’t want to be divorced.
I had a daughter and I loved my husband. He wasn’t a weak
man in the way these stories usually go, who failed to
satisfy me in bed. He was, in fact, a marvelous lover and a
good man, there was no great fault in him.
Harlan wasn’t better in the
way these stories usually go. He wasn’t bigger, stronger or
more commanding. In my more objective moments, I knew he was
a bit nerdy, cute but in a geeky sort of way. His hair hung
in his eyes and his smile was super-shy. It was like a gift.
It came rarely, so when it did, you knew it was special.
Second Sight
By
Ann Regentin
With thirty stories of lust,
love and complications, Second Sight explores the power of
desire to heal old wounds, inspire new hope, and uncover the
extraordinary beauty hidden in ordinary lives.
Get your copy today!
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