The fire wasn't my fault. Nobody ever said it was my fault. It was the damned stove. I knew it was a cheap piece of junk. Probably wired by some poor sonuvabitch making 13 cents an hour in some shithole country you never heard of. So I slept through the smoke alarms...
There's an old blue F-150 in the lot, with the tailgate down and a big crack in the windshield. Joey comes out, wiping his hands on a shop towel. He takes the box of donuts from me and looks inside. "Max is gonna be late," he says. "His kid missed the bus again. And...
Author's Note: If you don't know what Burning Man is about, I suggest you visit: BurningMan.com The naked young woman was jogging through the swirling alkali dust. Her skin was yellow — partly makeup, partly dust — with huge black polka-dots randomly accenting her...
(sequel to Paladins selected for Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, Vol 10) The Essex Street pedestrian mall throbbed with a swelling bustle of souls crowded within its confines, some in costume, some in warm weather street dress. Girls in short shorts or even shorter...
Getting the cabin was Annie's idea. She was borrowing it from a friend at work. We would have been all alone in the house anyway, since Susie and Clare had been packed off to Annie's parents' house for the weekend.. For what I wanted to do with Annie, being alone in a...
We sat naked side by side at the large mirror. She was applying make-up with dentist like precision — she picked up an eyebrow pencil, took a dab, dropped it, picked up lipstick, a quick run across her tiny, plump lips, dropped it, then eyelash brush. Drop. A...
It was the third year in a row Tim had worked for the blonde. He knew it would be his last, even before what happened actually came about. Tim had just turned eighteen and understood he'd have to go out and get a full-time job soon. That two-week summer gig just...
"Mr. Retsek?" The old man rumbled and stirred where he sat. Finally he opened one twitching eye and murmured, "Hmmph?" The nurse smiled down at him. "I'm sorry for waking you, but visiting hours are nearly over." He opened both eyes, cocked his head to the side and...
Molly sometimes wondered if the other carousel horses became jealous. She hoped not. It wasn't that the prancing, cream-coloured pony with the brown mane was so much her favourite as it was that the rest did not belong to her. Of course, it didn't really belong to...
I've always been attracted to older men. When I was sixteen my aunt Betty and her boyfriend Roger visited from England. It was a hot summer. I was wearing shorts. Driving them home in the car from the airport, we had to squish to fit in five people: my mother and aunt...