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- Herausgeber: WS
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
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Need a quick bite? Here are some short stories that might satisfy you, whether your tastes run to the sweet, the savory, or even a touch of bitterness. But be forewarned: some of these amuse-bouches are as spicy as ghost peppers.
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Seitenzahl: 169
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Morsels: Tales of Love and Passion, ISBN9798889408581,is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters or plot elements to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events is purely coincidental.
Contents and cover art copyright 2024 by Sera Maddox Drake.
All rights reserved.
The moral rights of the author have been asserted.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the brief use of book quotations in a review, or in other ways that abide by Fair Use guidelines.
No generative AI was used in the conceptualization, planning, or creative writing of this work. No permission is given for the use of this material for AI training purposes.
Contents
Introductory Comments
Morsels is a collection of eros-themed short stories and micro-fiction. That does not mean all the stories contained within are works of erotica; only about half of what is in here would be defined as such, and only some of the more blatantly erotic stories are stand-alone. Two erotic short works in here are excerpts from my novel, Ancilla.
Eros is another word for love: passionate love, romantic love, desire.
Love is the subject of this anthology.
In “A Tale As Old As Time,” we get to see, for a moment anyway, a hint of the growing love Beauty has for her Beast, and vice versa. Here I intimately explore what it means to be human. Are we determined by our bodies, or by our souls? What makes a man a man? Do our bodies determine the natures of our souls, or are we souls who happen to inhabit bodies? (Spoiler: It’s the latter).
“A Rose By Any Other Name,” another spicy cupcake of a story, shows what happens when two women come together for a very extreme first date after months and months of negotiation in a long-distance relationship. It has my ex-girlfriend’s seal of approval.
“The Alpaca Yarn Incident” is a mildly spiced sex farce. When a medieval reenactor’s feast takes a turn for the “wurst,” the narrator and her lovely lady exit the scene to hold a revel of their own. Since Monty Python’s Flying Circus is involved, their two-person sewing circle becomes… something completely different. Bring out the comfy chair!
“One Of the Girls” shows what happens when an exotic dancer steals the name and sacred girdle of the Goddess of Love Herself.
The next two stories are concerned with love, as well, but they aren’t lighthearted, and while they’re erotic in nature, they’re not comfortable. These are the only two stories in this volume that come with content advisories, and they’re the equivalent of what in my youth used to be called “Very Special Episodes” in television sitcoms.
“Diving Into the Wreck” portrays what a formerly joyful BDSM relationship looks like when it has degenerated into abuse and misery – when the relationship is long over, but the two people in it can’t admit that to themselves or to each other.
“Anything For a Friend,” meanwhile, pairs BDSM with a love that is more philia than eros, and oh, by the way, the hero dies at the end of it. (That’s not a spoiler. The end of the story is right there at the top of the page when you get to it).
Onward.
“Parliament of Rooks” is a homage to Geoffrey Chaucer and, to a much lesser degree, to Neil Gaiman (who was not a controversial figure at the time I wrote the story). It’s a dream vision concerned with the origin of human love. If it doesn’t seem to provide a satisfactory explanation for why people love the way they do, well, do keep in mind that this just-so story-within-a-story is told by a bird. How well do birds really understand people?
I’ve also included two chapters from Ancilla. If they whet your appetite, you are welcome to sate yourself on the main course that is available from Amazon and other online booksellers in both print and electronic form.
Many thanks to R.A. Volt, who provided feedback on my short stories and who has been a staunch supporter of mine ever since we exchanged our manuscripts (she read Ancilla, I read The Whore – which, for the record, is excellent). May our discussions of founding an intelligent smut movement spark beauty and delight.
A Tale As Old As Time
I'm lying in my curtained bed, resting. Sort of.
Really, I’m reading, and given the somewhat strenuous subject matter (Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, not translated into French) I can’t really claim to be getting any rest, but this is supposed to be time spent on myself, used for napping or bathing or sitting on the window seat contemplating the garden outside, and I happen to be using it to get caught up on the rest of the reading list I brought with me when I came here, so I’m going to call it rest.
It isn’t the first time I’ve broken the rules, and it probably won’t be the last. So far, the invisible servants that manage this place have yet to report on my behaviour, and I have been very good about putting the books back where I’ve found them once I’m done reading them.
I want to read books to myself, in my room. It’s not that I dislike having to read to him – this morning it was a treatise by Descartes – and I appreciate the necessity of keeping the books safe in the library, but I like being able to read on my own, in bed. At home I had very little time to spend on reading, and all my books got sold when my father sold off all the other possessions to pay off his bad debts, and I had to share the attic with my sisters once we moved to our new home, so I never had any space to myself any more than I had time to myself, after that, and reading books in a room that I can call my own, in a bed that I can curtain off from the world, seems like heaven.
He says he’s not keeping me from taking books to my room out of jealousy, but out of a desire to keep the books safe. He says that. I’m not so sure. If my hands had been changed into wolf paws, with claws that shred paper when they try to turn pages, I’d be jealous of anyone who could hold a book properly to read it.
The bell chimes. Evening has been announced.
I put down Marlowe and slide my legs onto the footstool that has been provided to help me get in and out of bed. Once I am on the floor, the cold marble under my bare feet makes me shiver, but soon I’ll be in slippers.
Off with my chemise.
The invisible servants open the door of the wardrobe, and show me a selection of dresses. Red, green, black, yellow. The yellow dress is cut lower than I would ordinarily like, but I can always drape a shawl over my shoulders, and the roses embroidered on it in gold and silver and white thread are so lovely that I sigh with longing.
“That one.” It has to be that one.
They choose slippers, petticoats, cage, and panniers for me, and a pale corset that lifts my miniscule breasts and actually makes it seem like I have a figure, then waft the dress over my body and tighten it in back. They do all this silently. If I hadn’t been able to see the clothing moving out of the wardrobe, and if I hadn’t heard them whispering at night when they thought I was asleep, I’d have thought my mind was playing tricks on me.
I don’t know why their whispers somehow make them seem more real, less a product of mad delusion, but they do. I know the servants are real because they try to hide their voices from me.
Once I have been dressed, they direct me to the ballroom, lighting candles before me to indicate the way. By now, I could probably figure out the way on my own – I’ve been to the ballroom every night for the past two months – but having the candles lit for me is a courtesy. It is also, I suspect, a way to keep an eye on me, and to make sure that I don’t try to leave the chateau without making my intentions known well in advance. I am allowed to leave, not that I would want to by the terms of the original agreement, but I cannot sneak away.
He is waiting for me. He is wearing the blue velvet coat and breeches that match his eyes, and go so well with his otherworldly silvery white fur. He’s been dressed in this ensemble a few times before. I think he chooses it because he knows it takes my breath away.
“Shall we dance?” he asks, and extends a paw to me.
I gulp, and then nod. I have the right to refuse. I have not refused him yet. I don’t think I have it in me to refuse him. “Yes,” I reply, and walk toward him, and allow him to take me by the hand and circle my waist with one of his arms.
There will be no music played. It’s not that sort of dancing we are about to do.
His breath is hot on my neck as he takes my flesh in his muzzle. Soft fur, sharp teeth. I gasp. He’s not going to tear me apart and feast on me. He’s not. He’s never done it, and he won’t do it. This has to be true. He’s done far harsher things to me during the day, for his amusement, and he’s always been able to hold himself in check. But his teeth are so sharp. They gnaw into me, and I bleed, and I shudder as his tongue laps at the blood trickling down my neck onto my back and chest.
He crushes me against him with his arm as he gets his taste of me. The cage under my dress does nothing to get in between me and his erection.
The dress is coming off, but it’s already been ruined with my blood. Silk rips under his claws. The straps that hold the corset and cage on are next, and my torn clothing is flung to the side. My petticoats hang ridiculously from my hips. He pushes at them, snarls, and rends them. Blood on my thigh. He’s raked me again. I still haven’t healed from the last time he did that.
“Free me,” he growls. I have to help him out of his breeches.
And then he is on me and in me and I cry out as he thrusts in deep and sinks his teeth in my chest and holds me down with his weight as I struggle. I can’t help myself. I want him, but he is a creature, and my body rebels against this and fights this dance of ours every time we play it out. I kick, and I push with my legs and arms, and scream, and his only response is to seize my wrists in between his paws and pin my arms under his and take me harder.
It doesn’t last long. He’s too aroused by my struggles.
“Ma belle cherie,” he murmurs, when he is spent. “Why must you fight me so?”
“I don’t know.” I really can’t help myself. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re not finished yet, are you?”
“No.”
“Of course not. I lost control too soon. Spread your legs.”
I put my hands under my knees and spread myself apart for him, and he puts his head down and laps at me, working me with his tongue and furry muzzle until orgasm overtakes me and I convulse with pleasure and then lie on my back on the parquet floor, gasping, the mirrors and burning chandelier candles and the room itself spinning around me.
He has himself curled around me now, his arm draped over me possessively. I love it when he cuddles me like this. One winter when I was very little, there was a pack of wolves in the forest near our town, and I cried when my father joined the other hunters to exterminate the wolf pack; to me, they were not a threat, they were family, and I had dreamed of going into the woods and curling up next to them in the snow. It’s silly, but I imagine the Beast curled against my body now feels like what the wolves of my childhood would have been, as companions.
I tense myself against what’s going to come next.
“Ma belle, will you marry me?”
“No, Beast.”
He always asks this. He knows I can’t marry him.
But we can’t let each other go.
The servants have cleaned up the shreds of my gown and underclothing, and left me a plain velvet dress to cover myself with. I pull it over my head and arms. I am past being embarrassed that they witness what goes on between me and my captor, but I draw the line at their helping me dress immediately after we have engaged in certain activities.
He’s still wearing his velvet coat. I have to help him into his breeches, because he can’t put them on himself, and there are no servants around to dress him. No one but me.
He’s so beautiful in blue.
Later, we eat our dinner together. He likes the company. He must have been very lonely before my father stumbled into his garden, and they worked out the agreement that had me sent here as a hostage. I used to be repulsed by the Beast’s dining habits, but his tearing into platefuls of raw meat no longer bothers me. It’s not his fault he can’t get his paws to hold a knife and fork properly, after all. He said he initially had his servants cut his meat up for him and feed him, but it just didn’t feel right.
After dinner it will be time for me to retire to my bed and sleep. The servants will lead the way by lighting candles.
I’m starting to wish I didn’t sleep in the great bed alone.
A Rose By Any Other Name
I have the lasagna in the oven, and a tossed salad of mixed spring greens, mint leaves, and pansies chilling in the refrigerator, also a cruet of blackberry-infused oil. It’s a little early for blackberries, but fortunately I had some left in the freezer from last summer. A cheesecake made with three different kinds of chocolate waits on the shelf beneath. I’ve baked a decent, if not overpowering, mixture of ghost pepper sauce and sriracha sauce into it. It sounds weird, but it tastes rather good – you don’t actually taste the pepper so much as feel it. It makes your mouth tingle and sting a little bit, and meanwhile, your taste buds get opened up so that you’re more aware of the chocolate. A boiled artichoke sits on the counter, meanwhile, kept warm by a covering bowl, next to some lemon-and-garlic butter dipping sauce.
I don’t believe in letting my guests go hungry.
“GRUNT: Pigorian Chant” plays on the CD player. I thought it would lighten things up a little while I cooked, while not actually being distracting later on. It sounds just like ordinary Gregorian chant unless you actually look at the lyric sheet – well, aside from the fact that the language used is pig Latin (what else?) Played low, you can’t detect anything at all unusual in the chanting.
And now I’m putting the last touches on a foliage arrangement – long-stemmed roses, river birch branches, bamboo, all freshly harvested from my gardens, which are finally mature enough to use for cuttings. The cuttings go in a large urn, which I place on the dining table.
I have the house to myself for the weekend. That was a minor miracle, for which I am deeply grateful.
There is a knock at the door. I stop endlessly moving cuttings into new positions to answer it.
It’s her, of course.
I take her overnight bag and make more busy work for myself by putting it in the hall closet for her, which takes all of a few seconds. I offer her chilled white wine. I load up the plates with food and put them on the table, which has already been set twice. I am a bundle of nerves and I am probably not good at hiding it. I hope that doesn’t ruin things for her. Some people like the illusion of absolute self-assurance, and I have never been good at playing along with that. Acting is not my forte. With me, what you see is what you get.
Eating an artichoke properly is a rather involved process. The outside of the artichoke globe is very woody. You start by pulling off a leaf; then you dip the tender part into the butter, and you use your front teeth to strip the tender part of the artichoke leaf from the rest of it. As you work your way inward, the leaves gradually get tenderer until you get to the centre, the heart, which is soft enough to eat in its entirety without doing any stripping.
It can be an extremely sensuous experience.
Having finished our salads and our lasagna, we are down to the artichoke, and about halfway into it, I decide to start feeding her the leaves myself.
I tickle her lips gently with the soft end of an artichoke leaf before letting her nibble off the leaf end. Her lips are buttery. My fingers, too, are getting covered with butter, so after she is done swallowing her leaf, I give her my index finger to lick clean.
She smiles a little, and takes it into her mouth, sucking the butter off. Without being bidden, she does the same thing with my middle finger, then my ring finger, before finally licking the butter off where it has begun to dribble down my wrist.
That’s good.
I swallow a large ball of nerves – they threaten to stick in my throat and choke me, but they go down – and bend toward her to sample her lips. They are soft and warm, and taste of flavoured butter, which is delightful, so I start slowly licking off the butter, occasionally biting down to see how she responds. Soft moans. Soft gasps. I move in and circle around her tongue, exploring. She is shaking now. I’ll take that.
“This is delicious,” I say, “but it distracts from dessert.”
“What’s dessert?” she asks.
“You.”
Her, accompanied by a few other ingredients, to be more specific.
I stand up and take the black silk scarf out of my apron pocket, the scarf I’ve designated as the blindfold for the evening. It’s probably more melodramatic than it needs to be, which is a point in its favour. No, we’re not going very far, the living room is right by the dining room table – there isn’t enough room to swing a cat in the bedroom, let alone anything else – but a few steps of blindness can be very interesting, and besides, she looks cute blindfolded.
“I need your body to be disrobed. Strip,” I murmur, and she gets about halfway done taking off her blouse and skirt before I start to help her anyway, because fumbling with buttons and bra straps gives me an excuse to fumble with a few other things. Oh, well.
