New Release - The Last Amanuensis

It's Sunday again, but the story I want to share with you today doesn't contain any kisses. The Last Amanuensis is a dystopian erotic tale I composed for the just released anthology Written on Skin: An Anthology of Etched Desire, edited by my idol, Remittance Girl, with Aisling Weaver and Raziel Moore. The theme of this collection is the eroticism of tattoos and body modification.

My story falls into the speculative genre. After a militant Empire takes power, fiction and poetry are banned as frivolous pursuits. Infractions are strictly punished. But the creative spirit cannot be suppressed, and poetry goes underground.

Adele, a widow from the Emperor's endless wars, takes a position as secretary to a mysterious Professor. As he comes to trust her, he instructs her in the most personal of her duties: tattooing the Professor's poems onto his aging body and turning him into a living book.

Here's a snippet:

Poetry is like blood - you can't hold it back


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“Tonight's poem was the last, Adele. As of tomorrow, your services will no longer required.”

“No – please – don't send me away...” I seize his illuminated thigh, making new marks with my fingernails. Only when I see the pain in his eyes do I release my grip. I know that the bloody crescents I've carved are not responsible for his distress. “I need you, sir. I can't live without you.”

“Nonsense! You're young, strong, full of life. You have a bright future, if you can manage to get out of this hellish country. As for me, my last days are ticking away. And I have accomplished what I set out to do – with your help, my dear.”

He reaches out to brush my cheek with his fingers – only the second or third time he has ever deliberately touched me – and I dissolve into tears. I fling my arms around his neck, mashing my breasts against his tattooed chest, and flatten him to the bed. He gasps as the mattress presses against tonight's work, but for once I ignore his pain. In an instant I'm straddling him, fighting to remove my voluminous nightdress and bare my own skin to his gaze.

“Adele...get hold of yourself!” he admonishes in his most professorial tones. Still, he does not resist as I grasp his cock and stroke him to full hardness. I take him into me, swaddling him in my wet heat. His eyes grow wide as I clench around his surprising bulk and ride him as I've dreamed of doing for so many months – since that first night, really, when he trusted me with his secrets.

He's used to pain, my professor, but not to pleasure. I coax him toward his peak, using my hands when his cock begins to soften. Sometimes I lean forward to dangle my breasts in his face, or sweep them across his nipples. He arches up with an anguished moan when I fasten my mouth on one of those little nubs, burrowing my nose into his poems as I suck. I imagine I'm feasting on his penis, swirling my tongue, raking his flesh with my teeth. He moves inside me, caught in my furious rhythm, helpless in the face of my lust.

I picture his cock, a rod of pale ivory, burrowing into my slick, blood-red folds. I think about writing a poem of my own on that still-virgin skin and fly off into a climax so fierce and sudden that the world goes black.

He doesn't come. When I regain my senses, he's holding me close, stroking my hair, breathing in my ear. His cock droops outside my drenched sex. I fumble between us, squeezing his reluctant organ back into my cleft, to no avail. My own juices coat my fingers, but the more viscous texture of semen is absent.

“I'm sorry, sir... I could take you in my mouth...”

“Hush. Don't be sorry, Adele. You've given me another great gift. Just be quiet for a while.”

My rebellion has burned itself out with my desire. I settle into his arms, with my head on his shoulder. If I squint, I can just make out the line of a poem.

He sends me back to my room before dawn, as he has so many times before. I go meekly, knowing I need to sleep. I leave the gold. We can discuss that later. After my success in seducing my beloved professor, I believe I can to sway him. I will convince him to let me stay. Now that we are lovers, how can he refuse?

You can buy Written On Skin from the publisher Burning Book Press, Drive Thru Fiction, and Amazon.