Read Online The Mammoth Book of Women's Erotic Fantasies by Sonia Florens - Free Book Online

animal. Nothing in this world but the heavenly darkness of this animal. Lovely darkness.
    He licks me clean. Kisses me all over my face and brushes my lips with his horn. He tidies the rug and I sleep.
    Later I notice he’s left the tip of his horn embedded in the bark of the tree.
    Frame 6. Alan does not like the painting. Says it’s rubbish. Says I’m getting more and more off the wall. Who says artists had to be accessible – whatever
that means?
    Frame 7. July, and I float on the heat. Hate summer. Love fall and spring. At times hate my life. It is certain that the colours of another woman blot out his own colours. I
don’t know the man I married. He is scarlet. All scarlet, an angry frantic scarlet. I pretend blindness, deafness and no sense of smell.
    We again walk down to the ravine. We have company tonight and I need some cress. At least at midday the mosquitoes should be sleeping. I hope. The house is too hot to bear. We walk silently for
a while; eventually, as if he’s been waiting for the right time, he says, “Been thinking: we may as well sell and move into the city.”
    “What?”
    “Saw Watkins yesterday. I’m going to be more and more in the city. Can’t get on with all this travelling, it isn’t good for me. We should get a good price for this place
and pick up something convenient for the subway. The children would prefer the city too.”
    “You think so? Have you asked them?”
    “No point in asking – we’ve no choice.”
    “There’s always choice.”
    “Not for us.”
    “Is that what you really think? You really think I have no choice and the children have no choices?”
    “Have to be in the city; nothing more to say about it.”
    “It’s you that has to be in the city, not me, and not the children.”
    What is this man talking about? Do I know him? My painting is a grey canvas with huge blotches of red as if someone has been shot through it. We’re at the same spot where I had painted my
unicorn. The grass is still flattened.
    He says, shaking his head, “I don’t understand you at all.”
    Anger bubbles. “I think you do. When it suits you – then you understand me very well. You can go to hell. You can go to your city and leave me and the children here.”
    “Can’t be done.”
    Something funny in his voice: there’s a dead certainty, a sureness, an authority even greater than is usual for him.
    “And why can’t this be done?” Be patient. Give him time. Let him speak.
    “I need the money from the house.”
    “What?”
    “Said I need the money from the house and we have to sell it. There’s no question or choice for any of us.”
    “Go and find an apartment somewhere – like others do when they find family life too much.”
    “I don’t understand any of this. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, it’s as if I’m the one who’s being illogical and stupid.” He stands right in
front of me and looms above me. I’m a fly waiting for the swatter. “This is silly. Only yesterday you were normal. Today you’re acting like a goat.” He smiles and his eyes
become blue and clear as the stream. “All this rubbish about you keeping the children and the house, and me finding an apartment. . . . I don’t know where it comes from.” He
laughs in a friendly, normal manner. Strokes my face. He strokes the cat the same way. Harder and harder all the time until the cat jumps away.
    I move his hand from my face. “It sounds a sensible thing for people to do when they’re splitting up.”
    “Wake up, and stop this stupidity!” The bully in his voice. I do not like this painting. Will change it and start another.
    “I think I have just woken up,” I say too loudly.
    I’m a tiny speck compared to his elephantine size. That white, blank face . . . Have seen this look twice before and each time he struck me. I brace by pushing myself against the tree. I
swore I would leave if it ever happened again. Silence!
    “Bitch! Don’t know who or what you think