Matala by Craig Holden

didn’t know exactly what Maurice’s business was, nor did I really want to. I knew that Justine had been involved in it once upon a time but hadn’t been at least since I’d known her.
    â€œIt’s warm. There are long beaches, and it’s so cheap you can’t believe it. Huge seafood dinners for a quid or two. Get yourself drunk as a lord for change. Rooms cost nothing. And plenty of others show up there as well—Americans, English, Aussies. It’ll be a big Christmas bash, the whole place. And you’ve never seen a sky like that.”
    I’d never been, though we’d talked about it. It was a long way to Greece, and longer still out to the middle of the ocean. It would cost some money to get there, so we were surely not going just for the sun or the beaches or the Christmas parties. But, still, we were going. It warmed me simply thinking about it, and it warmed me more that Justine somehow had come back, in these past couple of days, from the edge of the abyss over which she’d been perched. She had not thrown herself off but had rallied, had responded to my good work, my bringing in of the girl, and had made it work for us, had made herself work on the work she did, which was to use other people for her own gain. And now we were off to Crete.

    W E TOOK A NAP IN the afternoon, the three of us again lined up front to back on the smallish bed, as we had slept the night before—Justine facing me and me facing Darcy. But it was different now. Justine was wired for one thing and couldn’t really sleep. She kind of dozed, but it was so shallow that she shifted constantly, talking to herself, making noises in her throat, moving her feet so that you knew she was in a running dream somewhere. Her hands played against my back. The first couple of times I looked at her, but she lay with her eyes closed, apparently unaware as she had seemed unaware of so much that happened between us.
    She was a sadist by nature, Justine was. What she enjoyed in sex was being in control, whether that meant inflicting pain or bondage or just giving orders. I was not then particularly inclined to submissiveness, nor am I now, but I had learned to play that role with her. I did not find that it enhanced the experience, as I imagine true subs or masochists do, but it did change it and perhaps intensified it in some ways. For Justine, though, without playing the role of the controller, the inflictor, the web spinner, sex was flat. Enjoyable, perhaps, but in the way, say, a back rub is enjoyable. It held no spark for her.
    The nap was different with Darcy, too, not because of how she slept but because of how we had awakened that morning. Justine was gone; she had been gone for some time, I thought, though her early rising hadn’t awakened me. When I opened my eyes, I found Darcy awake already and lying with her face near mine, looking at me.
    â€œHi,” she said.
    She touched my face and then turned over and pressed her back into me. We’d started out the night clothed and on top of the bed covers but at some point crawled underneath, and when she did, she took off her jeans so that all I felt when I touched her was the skin of her legs and the thin strap of her panties. Now she moved against me so earnestly that for a moment, as I was still coming awake, I was certain it was a dream. I put a hand on her hip and pressed back into her, moving now with her rhythm.
    â€œTouch me,” she said. I fumbled with her panties. She said, “Hurry.”
    I slipped my fingers under the thin fabric and into her, and she said, “Ah!” and proceeded, apparently, to have the most immediate female orgasm I’d ever been privy to.
    She had just turned back toward me and unbuttoned my jeans when I heard the door and pushed myself away, far enough that we weren’t touching, and lay still. Justine came in, and after a moment Darcy seemed to wake. She stretched and yawned and greeted