Page 23 of H Is for Hardcore

I told him he could take them off, which he wasted no time doing, tossing the socks asunder in order to give more attention to my feet. His lips felt sweet as he kissed my feet. I watched his tongue slither in and out of the grooves of plump piggies. Grimaced darkly as he sucked and slurped at toenails, as he beat off searching my face for a response to his filthy act. He bit at my meaty heels, gnawed on my toes like a disobedient puppy. He inhaled my soles like they were bottles of Rush. I watched as his dick grew harder with every sniff, with every toe that he took into his bearded mouth. We ended the night with him coming all over himself. Semen staining faded jeans. We went our separate ways with the aftermath of my feet on his tongue. I dismissed myself upstairs to a booth where I beat off to some cheesy porn movie.

David reminded me of that bearded guy. It’s the way he liked lapping at my toes, sucking away. I pressed my socked foot against his chest grown with snow-white fur that felt rough against the flatness of my soles. My dick was stiff, but not enough for David to notice. He kissed the big toe, licked along the thick, hearty part of it. He searched my face but I had no expression to give. I could’ve kicked him in the face if I wanted. I’d had such a day of it. David looked so stupid sitting there with my foot in his mouth. Damn freak. He worked on the other toes. Got my whole foot wet with spit, but I didn’t care. We all have our vices. David made an attempt to fit all my toes in. Man was crazy. I held on to the top of the paper-towel dispenser and the metal railing as I forced my toes in his mouth. I talked dirty to him—told him to take it, to eat my toes. His face was a swell shade of blush; tears welled up in those hazel eyes. Felt guilty, like I was hurting David, so I slowly pulled out of his big mouth. I used my toes to fidget with his nipples. He liked it when I did that. My legs were becoming a four-alarm fire, so we switched positions. I sat upon the throne of the commode while he was on bended knee. Ran my foot along his aging face. I worked the other out of the flip-flop. He pressed his mug into my feet, licking at all ten of my piggies. I once thought I had a thing for feet, but that lasted all of two minutes when I couldn’t get past the dude’s hairy toes. The mischievous part of me wanted to make David bleed, but the angel won over the devil, and I fed him my toes with gentle ease. He got them good and wet like last time. Lapped at them like a back-alley mutt. His tongue tickled like you would not believe. Took everything in me not to laugh. I looked down as he worked his dick between his thighs. All that white pubic hair along the groin. David never looked hotter than with my feet in his mouth. Nothing was going right for me that day. Nothing except for that. Fucked his face with my size thirteens. A far cry from my well-endowed norm I would have preferred him to lick and suck upon. I wanted him to come for me. He liked me most when I would tell him what to do. Goddamn masochist.

“Faster,” I told him. I didn’t have all day. Dirty little monkey. I looked at him and thought of bad poppers, men wrestling, and Jay Leno. He grunted as he came. Sweat trickled along his face. I pulled my feet out of his mouth and pushed him naked and spent against the stall wall that was defaced with gang insignia. Held my feet beneath the faucet and rinsed them clean of David’s aftermath. I worked them back into my flip-flops, grabbed my bag and sauntered out into the lobby, leaving David drained and naked on the basement bathroom floor. Yeah, he picked the wrong day that day, bothering someone who didn’t want to be bothered.

TERESA NOELLE ROBERTS

ON A KNIFE EDGE

HONED STEEL SURROUNDED ME, and the sharp tang of the oil used to protect carbon steel filled my nostrils as I walked in the door of Anderson’s Artisan Knives. Located in an out-of-the way corner of a neighborhood filled with galleries and high-end artisans’ shops, the store—long and skinny and about the size of a good-sized closet—was quite unlike any place I’d been before in my quest for the perfect knife. None of the familiar Henckels and Wüsthof found in kitchen stores—not that I didn’t love the heft and balance of my ten-inch Henckels professional chef’s knife or the substantial feel of my Chinese cleaver, for culinary purposes, but they were mass-produced, impersonal. None of the same-old, same-old hunting knives and pocket knives I’d seen in half a dozen Army-Navy stores—perfectly good blades, useful for any number of purposes, but soulless.

The knives here were art. Real art, not like the stupid “art knives” made to appeal to people’s inner teenage boys, with crap blades that won’t take an edge and pretty handles in the form of dragons or naked women that don’t actually fit your hand. No, these were exquisite, like something you’d see in a museum: not overly decorated, but a perfect fusion of form and function.

Knives with elaborately incised but functional bone handles, or handles of richly grained wood, clean lined and unadorned and perfect in their simplicity.

Knives tiny enough to hide in your palm.

Knives that were almost swords.

Knives that looked like they belonged in a museum, with a label something along the lines of Fifth century. Found in bog in Denmark with apparent human sacrifice.

Carbon-steel blades, dark and, in some cases, clearly handmade, the marks of the forge and the hammer apparent on them.

My mind buzzed with questions, but the proprietor was nowhere to be seen.

I wandered from display case to display case, all but salivating over the wares. My heart was beating faster than normal. My palms were sweating.

And my palms weren’t all that was damp. All that steel was getting to me.

My fascination with knives has never been purely that of a collector. In the presence of a well-made knife with a sharp, well-honed blade, I can’t help imagining its cold kiss on my skin. First a caress, a mere brush with the flatside—running over my nipples and bringing them to instant, hard arousal. Then a tease, no pain, but that edge of anticipation, of pleasurable fear, as the sharp edge passes lightly over the surface of my skin, trailing goose bumps and ecstasy behind it.

Then comes the cutting. My skin parting behind it. The brief lapse between cut and pain you get with a truly sharp knife. The bright jeweled blood, not a fountain or a gush, but a fine, delicate tracery welling from the cut, beautiful as rubies.

Not that I’ve done this, not deliberately anyway, and cutting myself by accident just stings (although I admit the time I cut myself in the kitchen with a very sharp Henckels and didn’t notice until I saw blood dripping onto the carrots had a hallucinatory fascination). The fantasy involves someone else doing it, occasionally varied with me doing it to someone else. In either case, he’s faceless but the knife isn’t. Its details vary somewhat, but it’s always exquisite.

And very like the knife I was looking at now, with its knotworkcarved bone handle and its slightly curved, very functional blade. It was fairly small, scaled well for my hand, and I could imagine it in the hand of some Viking woman, who’d use it during the day to cut meat or leather….

And at night to mark her man so he wouldn’t forget her while he was off raiding Ireland or something. Then he’d return the favor, although maybe he’d use the matching knife, larger-bladed and scaled for a man’s hand, in the case next to it.

Runes marked into soft flesh. Marks of possession and passion, made with a beautiful knife.

My knees weakened, my cunt throbbed, and I had to lean against the counter to steady myself.

And a Viking god emerged from a back room.

Did I say “god,” generic?

I mean Loki, the trickster, the seducer, the most capricious and dangerous of the Norse pantheon. The long reddish hair, the twinkle in his blue eyes that could equally well be called roguish or sadistic, the mischief in his ruggedly planed face, a face that wasn’t conventionally handsome but caught my attention more than if it had been. Trouble was written all over him. Might be fun trouble, might be dangerous trouble.

Might, if I were lucky, be both.

Not that I was likely to find out for real, but I couldn’t help thinking that the faceless man in my knife-edge fantasies had found a face.

“May I help you?” he asked. A trace of Scandinavia burred his voice, and my knees went even weaker.

“I’m looking for a very special knife.” I managed not to squeak as I said it, but it wasn’t exactly a helpful answer. Of course I was looking for a special knife—why else would I be in his shop?

“All my knives are special in some way. Some I’ve made myself. Others are from other artisans, some American, some Swedish, Norwegian, German. For what purpose do you want this blade?” His voice was gentle, with a hint of tolerant amusement, but something in his eyes, his smile, told me that he knew—knew—what I wanted. And liked it.

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