The Mammoth Book of Erotica presents The Best of Lucy Taylor by Lucy Taylor Page A

octopus dildo inside her, but then her vaginal muscles clenched and pushed the slippery stob back out. It slithered into her fingers.
    “Mira,
please
, the waiter’s coming over.”
    “You think he’d like to watch?”
    She closed her legs and pulled down her skirt, but didn’t bother to refasten the buttons of her blouse.
    “For God’s sake . . .”
    Mira grinned. She put the octopus tentacle between her lips and began to gobble it with noisy, smacking sounds.
    “You’re fucking drunk.”
    “I’ve had half a glass of wine.”
    “Close up your blouse. Your tits are falling out.”
    Mira giggled and undid another button, revealing small pink nipples that were celebrating their exposure with exuberant erections. She felt appalled at her audacity, astonished, and yet elated, too. There was merit, more profound than her mind could shape at present, in this loss of dignity and decorum, but if so, C.J. was blind to it. She gaped in horror at her lover as the waiter, unable to contain himself, came over and stared down at Mira’s chest.
    His eyes bugged, and he muttered something that Mira didn’t understand. Others had turned to stare now, diners abandoning their meals to ogle the impromptu cabaret act.
    “Please,” said C.J., through gritted teeth. “I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, but cover yourself up.”
    Mira stuck out her tongue at C.J., waggled it around, and slowly, so slowly that the act of covering herself became more seductive than the original unveiling, began to close the buttons.
    The diners, murmuring now among themselves, continued to stare, looking from Mira to one another and back to Mira again with an expression more of wonder than disapproval.
    A muscular young man with blindingly white teeth, evidently C.J.’s new Greek swain, approached the table with a hand held out to greet his American friend. His eyes were fixed on C.J. until, at the last moment, his gaze took a sudden detour onto Mira’s semi-naked breasts. He gulped, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, and blushed bright crimson. Murmuring something in Greek, he backed away from the table as though the barrels of two .45’s had suddenly been trained on him.
    “Stavros,” C.J. called out. “Stavros, wait.” She pulled a fistful of drachmas out of her pocket and slammed them onto the table. “Come on, Mira. If you’re not drunk, then you’re high or sick or something. I’ve got to get you out of here before you cause a riot.”
    And, at least in part, Mira agreed with her. Yet if, indeed, she’d somehow tripped or blundered over the edge of insanity, then surely this was an experience far more pleasurable than her previous, albeit limited, study of mental deviations (mostly undergraduate psych courses) would have led her to believe.
    She felt, indeed, more energetic than she had in years, infused with a heat so galvanizing that, as C.J. half dragged her along the street, Mira thought surely she must be radiating light.
    “Where are we going?” she laughed.
    “Back to the room. Where you can sober up.”
    “But I
am
sober.” Mira tried to stop giggling for C.J.’s sake, but with every effort to compose herself, the laughter only burst from her in more lusty gales. “More sober than I’ve ever been.”
    “Then you’re having some kind of breakdown. Heat prostration maybe.”
    They passed a group of men. “Wait,” cried Mira. Pulling free of C.J.’s grasp, she bent over, flipped her skirt up, and wagged her naked rump at the startled passersby. This small act seemed insufficient, however, to encompass her frivolity. Reaching back, she spread her cheeks, exposing the pink and puckered eyelet at her center.
    The men stopped in their tracks.
    “Mira!”
    C.J. yanked the skirt down. With her right hand, she cracked Mira a resounding blow across the face. “Do you want to get us both arrested? Thrown in a fucking Greek jail?”
    “Fucking Greek jail?” echoed Mira. She rubbed her stung cheek. Her face