I am all of them, and none of them, at once: Hudson and Columbus, Vespucci and Verrazzano, Magellan and Raleigh; Amundsen, too, and Scott and Peary, Heyerdahl and Hillary. You are the globe, the unknown waters; and I will test and chart you. I use all the instruments at my disposal: eyes, fingers, legs, lips,…

The artist looks at his canvas, runs his fingers over it. The model murmurs softly: she likes being touched, and this inspires him further. He selects a brush and begins to paint her: he watches her nipple stiffen when the brush touches down, circling slowly the way she likes, arching her back and pursing her…

Whenever she met someone new, she wondered what the relationship would be: Fleeting, a pleasant hour or two over a drink to be soon forgotten? Or a major influence on her life, on her way of thinking (and thinking about the world)? How would she enter his orbit? How might he affect hers? Would they…

My tongue circles first one areola, then the other. I can feel the gooseflesh rising under my lingual ministrations; and for good measure I exhale gently, the cool air causing the nipples to stiffen more quickly and the gooseflesh to become more pronounced, before going back with my mouth: tongue circles, teeth graze and gently…

The lyric is stuck in my head, and perhaps in yours too. It is desire and demand, promise and passion. It is, more than anything, salacious in its expression. Give meYour dirty loveLike you might surrenderTo some dragon in your dreams I will consume all that you offer, all that you have. Already our shared…

“Who the hell are you?” The hazy memories of last night drained away, taking the smile on her face with them. She pulled the sheet up closer, covering her breasts, feeling suddenly too vulnerable, too exposed, too much the sort of girl she’d promised herself she’d never be. “Melissa. Jesus, how do you not know…

When she woke, she looked around: dazed, momentarily, by not only by the sunlight streaming through the unfamiliar window, but the hazily returning memory of the night before. Her companion, sprawled beside her on the bed, shifted and murmured, and threw an arm over her. Gently, she slid her feet to the floor and picked…

“Why don’t you like this dress?” she pouted. It actually wasn’t that he didn’t like it; rather, her neediness in this (and many other) departments was becoming a drag on their limited time together. Between her obligations and his scheduling was a challenge — worthwhile, certainly — and he didn’t like to waste what time…

“In the room, the children come and go — talking of Bozo.” He repeated it to himself, smiling despite his discomfort in the clown suit. There was something creepy about clowns — the Bozos, the Barnum and Bailey archetypes with their floppy shoes and red bulb noses. He preferred the clowns of Shakespeare: Feste, and…

“No,” Arianne was saying. Scott tried to relax his face. He didn’t need to display his disappointment; she knew, and that was more than enough. He wondered, sometimes, if it was deliberate on her part, rejecting vacation ideas simply because they were his ideas. They had been together so long, long past long enough to…