Two Short Stories and Three Very Short Stories Read Free Page A

open curtains.
    After a slow morning loving, Emily lent me Alec’s toweling robe to eat breakfast in. We sat in the bay window, sipping coffee and spreading creamy butter and tart Seville marmalade on Butteries. These were heavy, fatty pastries I’d have disliked in anyone else’s company but now they tasted of Emily.
    We were debating the wisdom of more coffee, or back to bed when Alec walked in, clothes rumpled, hair on end and eyes red from lack of sleep. I was scared he’d smell the sex on us but all he seemed to notice was food. Muttering a couple of sentences about idiot crews who don’t maintain equipment properly, he wolfed down the remaining four Butteries and the better part of the second pot of coffee nice wife Emily fixed. Apparently Alec had not enjoyed the past twenty-four hours as much as his wife and I had and unfortunately he wobbled off to bed to restore himself so that put paid to an encore for us. But there were would be other times. I was a patient woman.
    “So glad you two get on so well together,” Alec said that evening as we walked down the platform to my sleeper. “Some people have been unbelievably snooty. Peter hardly talks to me now.”
    Can’t say I blamed Peter. He was bound to take his sister’s part. Heaven help me. Had I really loved this man? He was so self-centered, patronizing and just plain thick! I had, once, when I was young and equally thick but now I was well and truly cured. “Nice of you to ask Emmsy to your book signing in Edinburgh,” Alec went on as I hugged her goodbye.
    “It’ll be nice to see someone I know.” I gave a wave and hopped on the train. “I’ll let you know the date.” Something good had come out of the hurt of Alec Carpenter. I was going to have to call my publisher and insist they added Edinburgh to my next book tour. They wouldn’t need to provide any escort. I could arrange that. I settled back in my seat, thinking. I was a trifle torn between genuine fondness for Emily and our promising affair and the certainty that Penelope would get a kick out of knowing I’d made Alec a cuckold.

 
     
     
    This story is a vampire one I wrote for The Sweetest Kiss —an anthology of vampire erotica—and it’s once of very few stories I’ve written with an historical setting and, although heterosexual, is also first person. It just seemed to fit the male character, who, despite being unnamed really does take total control of the story and the action.

 
     
     
Nightlife
     
    © Copyright Madeleine Oh
     
     
    He caught my eye at once. I’d returned to Paris after an hiatus of seventy years or more, and on the third night, I found him in a nameless club among the tangled streets of the Butte . He was alone in the crowd, no doubt his air of despondency kept the surrounding roisterers at bay. Halfway to drunkenness, he seemed caught in the enveloping presence of humanity and the aroma of cheap wine.
    I watched as he called for another carafe, which he drank alone. Perfect. I prefer the ones without companions. No one to remember me. This one was ideal: a morose expression on his bearded face, alcohol-drenched eyes and those absurd little lenses mortals use in their vain attempt to see as well as we do.
    I sat down in the lone chair beside him.
    “Go away,” he said.
    I laughed. (Who gives orders to a vampire?) And I met his eyes. He didn’t quail or shudder as so many would. Too far gone in his cups for that, but behind the dullness, I glimpsed a wild and wayward passion, a yearning for excitement and deep traces of suppressed longing.
    I smiled. Carefully. It was too early to show my fangs. I touched his arm. “Come with me.”
    He rose and I understood the reason for his loneliness. A dwarf with the torso of a man. He looked at me, eyes bright with defiance and the expectation of rejection, as his wide mouth twisted in a warped smile. “Madame, you wish for my company tonight?”
    I didn’t waste words replying. Hadn’t I made that abundantly