Free Bitten: Dark Erotic Stories by Susie Bright Page A

still kneeling back at the tripod, hands on his camera. My finger found my clit again, jerking faster until I was practically clawing myself and sobbing with pleasure.
    “Come for me, baby,” Don crooned. “I’ll catch it for you and keep it right here.”
    A flurry of clicks, then the long, lazy purr of film rewinding.
    For once he kept his promise.
    Afterward, he came over and ran his fingers over the velvet beneath me. “You’ve made quite a puddle, haven’t you?”
    “Sorry about that.”
    He smiled and kissed my forehead. “Silly girl. You were terrific. May I make love to you now?” His tone was proper, almost Victorian, but there was no mistaking the hard-on in his jeans.
    And so he took me there on the chair, pushing my knees up to my shoulders, eyes fixed at the place where our bodies joined and parted, using me the way a man uses a picture, for his pleasure alone.
    * * *
    We’d been back in the city a month when Don handed me a package wrapped in pink paper with a cream satin bow. It was a photo album of fine leather.
    I knew the story, but was curious to see how it would unfold.
    I wouldn’t exactly call myself “beautiful” down there. But I did see things I’d never noticed in a few furtive glimpses of myself in a hand mirror. How the cowl of my clitoris veered to the left. How the inner lips flared out in petals, one slightly thicker. Each page revealed ever deeper layers, another smooth inner mouth and beyond, the rugged muscles of my vagina. Watching myself change and swell brought it all back—the vegetal smell of lake water, the softness of the velvet on my bare skin. I felt my cheeks flush. Such a naughty girl I was, turned on by pictures of my own pussy. Then I heard a click. I looked up, surprise on my face. Don took a picture of that, too.
    * * *
    A year later, I ran into Meg at the gallery where I’d taken a job after Don and I broke up. I would have left it at hellos, but she insisted we go for drinks. She told me Don had come by himself to the lake that summer and that he seemed sad. Somehow that news didn’t make me feel as good as I thought it would.
    On the third drink, she got to the confession. I was the only person in the world she could tell. At the lake, she and Trevor had an awful fight and she ran to Don for sympathy. They got roaring drunk and then she let him—well, actually, asked him—to take her picture. They didn’t screw. Just pictures.
    “You know,” she said, “like that book he told us about.”
    “The cunt book? That was just some story Don made up.”
    “No, I saw it. That old uncle must have finally died.”
    “Were there pictures of lots of different women?”
    She shrugged. “It just looked like a bunch of pussies. I was pretty drunk.”
    “Faces, too?”
    Meg peered into my face. For a moment I was sure she knew, but then she shook her head.
    Relief made me generous. After another martini, I admitted I’d done it, too, and Meg seemed glad not to be alone. We even joked about starting a club, Uncle Jacques’ Crazy Cunts, membership always open.
    We both left the bar happy. For the first time in months, I felt good about that sorry little dream of my time with Don.
    I liked being part of a legacy.

THE UNFAMILIAR
    Allison Lawless
W HEN SHE WAS TWENTY-TWO, Mariah learned the danger of reading aloud from books she found lying around her aunt’s study. She didn’t realize she was doing a summoning chant until it was too late.
    After her boyfriend Jason dumped her the week before college graduation, Mariah wanted to hole up somewhere and figure out what to do with the rest of her life. She now had a four-year degree in journalism, a big student loan to repay, and no job applications out yet. Jason’s defection had staggered her so much that all her plans had fallen to pieces.
    Her aunt’s house on the lake seemed like the perfect hideout. Far from everybody who might ask painful questions, close to a place she could swim every morning, and living