Free Stolen Moments by Radclyffe

another blanket. “Did what help?”
    “This.” There was a brief pause before Blaise gave a husky laugh. “Did it take your mind off your fear of flying?”
    “Funny. But yes, it did, come to think of it. It took my mind off that and pretty much everything else.”
    “Everything?”
    “Well, almost everything.” Corazon kissed her lightly.
    “Mmm, I know.” Blaise gave a warm smile, tenderness replacing lust. “Everything but you.”

Punch-Drunk
RM Pryor

    She was stalking me in the bar where I worked. She was stalking me for a week before she met some friends in there and I became a bet. I was a bet for a week before I knew about it. She sat in my bar long after her friends were gone. She sat in my bar until closing time and the big Samoan security guard took her beer away and threw it down the sink. She was drunk and concerned about the wasted beer. I was sober and worried about trying to get this chick out of my bar without arousing security’s aggression, handing her the note with my number written on it without the bar staff seeing, and hoping to hell no one knew what was going on.
    She rang me in the morning. She apologized for whatever it was she might or might not have done in her drunken state; she sounded foggy and hopeful and my stomach had tied itself into knots a sailor wouldn’t understand. We arranged to meet for a beer the next day and I think my stomach was trying to strangle me. I put down the phone and ripped my wardrobe apart trying to find that perfect something with just the right amount of casual cool to wow her. An hour later I discovered I didn’t possess any amount of cool, casual or not, and I started hoping to hell she would ring and cancel so I could go shopping. I spent the next half hour cursing myself for tempting karma and praying to every god I knew the name of that she didn’t ring to cancel. I went to bed exhausted but I still couldn’t sleep.
    I woke up bouncing. The hours dragged by until I couldn’t take it any longer and went to the pub an hour and a half early. I bought a beer and read Catch-22 until she got there. We drank beer and I talked. I talked this nervous talk that is mostly just dribbling shit and trying a little too hard to be funny and interesting and cool and like someone you’d really want to hang out with if you just got to know…
    I must have sounded like a raving lunatic. I think I condensed my life story into comic book form and told it to her complete with actions. To this day I wonder why she answered any of my calls after that.
    I felt naughty. I felt like a confused, horny teenaged boy trying his mom??s panties on. I’d been in a heterosexual relationship and we’d broken up—well, I’d broken up and he was still in the house. I snuck around for a few weeks, trying in some twisted way to save him the pain of knowledge, but then I got mad. Four years I’d tried the right way. Four years I hated myself, and now I was free and I still had this dead thing from a past life haunting my house. I was over it. I was over being nice and considerate and trying to save tears. I wanted to be evil, mean, and dirty. I shaved my head. I hurt him for my wasted years and I didn’t feel bad one bit. I got another tattoo. The truth is a valid excuse…  I just told him I met a girl that got me all wet to think about her. Found me a girl who’s soft and beautiful. Found me a girl… What boy can argue with that? He knew when he met me what my tendencies were. Freedom is a beautiful thing. I hadn’t even kissed her yet.
    We didn’t kiss for weeks. I wanted to kiss her so bad… I’d see her and it was all I could do not to pull her into the closest room and kiss those lips. Fascinated with her lips. She’d talk and all I could do was focus on how her mouth moved to form the words, how her tongue darted out quickly to wet her lips, how her lips pushed the breath out, twitched, smiled. How her teeth pulled at her bottom lip when she was deep in thought,