Author: Marcus van Heller

About: Author van Heller is a legend among writers of erotic fiction, so good that his name and craft were often imitated, but never duplicated. With Open Mouth begins almost sweetly, with an innocent boy gazing at (and dreaming about) a nude woman from the city who's visiting his town.

From there our hero travels with her, receives the attentions of her friends, learns about brothels, gangsters, crime and drugs, eventually fleeing to a gypsy camp.

Excerpt:

The woman had seen him coming in towards her and had relaxed her vain efforts. She watched as he approached, with an expression of uncertainty. Her beach jacket reached only a few inches down her thighs.

By the time Avelino reached the spot some yards from the ledge at which the towel had disappeared, it was drifting down through the depths—a hazy shimmer of colour.

He dived without hesitation, realising in the instant that his naked buttocks must have momentarily met the woman's gaze.

With the towel in his hands he came to the surface. He indicated he would throw it to the woman and she held out her hands with a smile. He threw and the heavy wet ball was caught deftly in her arms.

"Thank you very much," she called out in Spanish, above the wash of the surf.

"It was nothing," he called back, dark eyes lighting up in a nervous smile.

The woman spread the towel out on the rocks and he began to swim away, feeling the strangeness of the occurrence at that particular time.

Seeing that he was swimming off, out to sea, the woman cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted:

"Would you like a glass of wine?"

Avelino could hardly believe that what he had heard was true. His immediate reaction was to pretend he had not heard, but that would have been too embarrassing as she was looking straight at him.

He hesitated, mind searching frantically for a reason for refusal. And then he called out the truth.

"I have no swimming trunks."

The woman laughed merrily and even from there he could see the evenness of her teeth. She didn't seem the slightest disturbed.

"It is much better swimming without them," she called back. "But I have another towel here that you can wrap round you. I won't look while you climb out."

Avelino was astonished, in the first place by the fluency of her Spanish, in the second by the ease of her manner which made the boldness of her words—unacceptable from a Spanish girl—seem perfectly natural.

The ardour-dampening wash of the sea had dispelled much of his nervousness, even his desire and he called back:

"I don't want to disturb your reading."

"Not at all," the woman shouted. "I'm tired of reading."

"Very well. Where is the towel?"

The woman indicated the dry towel and placed it along the ledge at some distance from her.

With a spurt of energy, Avelino raced in to the ledge. Grasping it above his head, he glanced along at the woman. She was staring in the opposite direction, into the bay of the far side of which the white houses of the town shone in the sun. He hauled himself onto the ledge and wrapped the towel tightly around his waist. His nervousness suddenly returned.

"May I turn around?" the woman asked.

"Yes," he said. And his voice sounded thick.

When she turned towards him and he found himself so close to the object of his surreptitious desire, Avelino felt an acute embarrassment. He could think of nothing to say. But the woman was prepared to do all the immediate talking.

"I'm afraid I would have lost that towel if it hadn't been for you," she said as she poured the wine into a glass. "I was too slow and I hate swimming underwater."

Avelino smiled. He could think of no answer.

The woman seemed more beautiful at close quarters. She had a large, rounded forehead, a straight, thin nose and a firm, but not aggressive chin. Her possible age became more of a mystery to him. She was free from wrinkles and the whites of her eyes were almost luminously clear. Yet, somehow he had the feeling she was well over thirty.

"You swim almost as well as you sing," the woman said, smiling as she handed him the glass.

Avelino stared at her in surprise.

"You recognise me?" he said. Never during the dances had the woman appeared to even glance in his direction.

"Of course," she replied. "How could I hear such a voice and not want to look at the owner."

"Oh, no!" Avelino gave a little laugh of self-disparagement.

"Oh yes!" The woman laughed back at him. "You have a beautiful voice. In England I think you would be a hit!"

Avelino felt highly flattered although he did not believe the woman. Perhaps she did like his voice, but the rest could not be true.

However, he began to find the woman was easy to talk to and his self-confidence slowly returned. She had another bottle of wine and they both drank luxuriously while they talked—or, rather, while she questioned him and he answered.

They sat almost side by side on the ledge and with the return of self-confidence, Avelino was aware of the return of desire.

Occasionally as they talked the woman's eyes gazed out over the sea at a distant ship on its way to Barcelona and then he would drop his eyes from her face to the brown, bulging skin of her upper breasts in the deep V of the beach jacket. She seemed to be not the slightest perturbed at the flimsiness of her covering, at the fact that the length of the jacket barely covered the junction of hips and thighs.

After a while, Avelino had forgotten how much wine he'd drunk—the wine at home was neither so strong nor so plentiful—and his face was hot with a more urgent heat than that from the sun. Under the towel which draped his slim hips his penis had risen into a stiff cudgel of flesh which bulged obviously against the covering, try as he would to conceal it.

"Do you often swim here?" the woman asked, eventually, turning to him with a lift of her thin, finely-drawn eyebrows.

"I never have before," Avelino answered, trying to cross one leg over the other to hide the enormous mound at his loins.

"I'm glad you swam here today. How did you come to?"

Avelino looked into the hazel eyes, serious and holding him. Could it be that he imagined a flicker of invitation? She too had drunk a lot. He stared down at the lipstick on the opposite side of their one glass which he now held.

"Why did you swim here today?" the woman repeated softly, as if she knew the answer, wanted it confirmed.

"Because I knew you were here and I wanted to speak to you," he blurted.

"You knew I was here—but how?" Her thoughts were intumed, racing back over the meaning of what he had said.

Made honest with the wine and almost uncaring, Avelino replied with the truth.

"I have watched you from the top of the rocks behind us for the last three days," he admitted.

There was a moment's silence and then the woman's gentle little laugh cadenced softly amongst the rocks. She looked at him again and her eyes took in the bulge at his hips as if he had given her a signal.

"What a pity you watched from so far for so long," she said as the laugh faded.

Avelino gulped back the dregs of wine in the glass and looked at her. It seemed there was no mistaking her tone, but he had no idea what to do. Now, in fact, he felt a little more frightened than he had before. It occurred to him suddenly that she was, perhaps, being sarcastic, but her next words dispelled the thought.

"Have you ever made love to a woman?"

"No," he admitted, taken aback at the bluntness of the question.