Author: Akiko

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I meant to say something clever. Instead I opened my mouth and a sob came out.

Not a delicate one. A great ugly gulp, in the middle of a sacred Mayan pool, with water up to my chin. I told her all of it. The gym woman. The silence in the flat. The way I still slept on one side of the bed. The way I’d stopped believing anyone would want me again.

Ana didn’t say a word. She swam close and pulled me against her chest, and I cried into her wet shoulder with the jungle going on all around us. She stroked my hair. She hummed something in Spanish.

When I’d finally run out, she tilted my face up and kissed me, softly, on each wet cheek and then on the mouth. It was salt and tenderness and nothing demanding.

“Whenever you want to stop, we stop,” she said.

“I don’t want to stop.”

We climbed out onto the warm rocks and lay on our towels in the dappled light. She undressed me with great care, as if I might break, and kissed every inch of me. When her mouth reached the place between my legs I came in about a minute, with fresh tears running into my hair, and she held me while I laughed and sobbed and shook.

We rode home in the golden evening, my arms wrapped round her waist.

I wasn’t fixed. But for the first time in a year I felt like a person who might get there.

Ending 8 of 16: Cenote Tears. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I swam over before I could talk myself out of it. The water was so cold that my skin had pulled tight, and when I put my hand on her face she was the only warm thing in the whole cave.

“Ana,” I said. “May I?”

“Please,” she whispered.

I kissed her. She kissed me back like she’d been waiting a week, her hands finding my waist, then my back, then the clasp of my bikini top. It floated away across the surface. Her mouth moved down my throat to my breast. The cold made my nipples painfully hard, and her warm tongue on them was a shock of pleasure so intense that I cried out and the cave threw the sound back at us.

She pushed me against the limestone ledge. The rock was rough on my shoulder blades. She hooked her fingers into my bikini bottoms and slid them down, and then her hand was between my legs under the water, two fingers sliding into me, her thumb on my clit, pumping slowly. My head fell back. A bird shrieked in the roots overhead. I came with a hoarse gasp, clenching round her, and she held me through it, whispering.

Then I did the same for her, in the green light, her legs wrapped round my waist, her braid floating around us like a ribbon. She came with her mouth against my neck, shuddering, laughing, saying my name.

We sunbathed afterwards on the warm stones, naked and shameless, and ate mangos she’d brought in her bag.

“Welcome,” said Ana, “to Mexico.”

Best swim of my life.

Ending 7 of 16: The Deep End. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I put a hand on her wrist. “Not on a mat with the door open. Come to Cabana 12 tonight. Nine o’clock. I’ll have wine.”

Ana smiled slowly. “I’ll bring oil.”

She did. By nine the cabana was lit by a dozen candles borrowed from the restaurant, and she arrived in a thin cotton dress with a bottle of coconut oil and the dimple at full power. We drank a glass of wine, sitting on the edge of the bed, and then she took the glass out of my hand and said, “On your front, please.”

She massaged my shoulders first, then my back, then, slowly, the backs of my thighs, her thumbs sliding up closer and closer. When she finally slipped one oiled hand between my legs from behind, I moaned into the pillow. I rolled over. She straddled my hips and I pulled her dress up, and we undressed each other with oily, laughing fingers.

It was long and slow and wet. We scissored, thigh slick against thigh, her clit grinding against mine, her hand clasped in mine on the pillow. She came first, with a whimper, and the sound set me off. We kept going until two in the morning.

Before she fell asleep she told me she was leaving for a retreat in Oaxaca on Sunday. Two years, maybe three.

I didn’t ask her to stay. I’d already had what I came for.

She kissed my forehead at dawn and left a rolled mat on the pillow.

“Breathe,” she said. “You are not trying to hide anymore.”

I wasn’t.

Ending 6 of 16: Namaste Goodbye. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I took her face in both hands and kissed her.

It was nothing like kissing a man. Ana’s mouth was soft and slow, and she tasted of mint and sun cream, and she made a small surprised sound, then a hungry one. She leaned down over me and her braid fell across my chest. I tangled my fingers in it and pulled her closer.

“Say if you want me to stop,” she murmured.

“Don’t you dare.”

She pulled my top over my head and found my nipple with her mouth, circling it with her tongue, and I arched off the mat. Her hands pushed my leggings down, and she looked at what she’d uncovered, and the look alone nearly finished me.

“You’ve been thinking about this since Tuesday,” she said, lightly.

“Since the day I got here.”

She kissed down my stomach and settled between my legs with a practised, unhurried hum. Her tongue was slow, then firm, then flicking exactly on the place that made my toes curl. Two fingers slid inside me, curved, and found a spot that made me shout. I came hard with my hand over my mouth, my hips lifting off the floor and the whole deck rocking.

Then I rolled her over and returned the favour, pulling her shorts off, tasting her, taking my time. She came with one hand locked in my hair and the other clamped over her own mouth, shaking and laughing and swearing in Spanish.

We lay in a sweaty heap under the wooden roof.

“Same time tomorrow?” Ana asked.

I’d never been so punctual in my life.

Ending 5 of 16: Sun Salutation. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I took a deep breath, looked round the circle of hopeful faces, and said, “You’re all absolutely lovely, and I’m going to bed. Alone.”

There was a pause. Then Gary started to clap. Lou kissed my cheek. “Good for you, love.” Ana squeezed my hand. Mateo bowed, solemnly, hand over his heart, and Gary said, “Do you want a strawberry for the road?”

I took two.

Back at Cabana 12 I locked the door, shut the gauze curtains, stripped off my sandy bikini, and lay across the king-size bed with the fan turning overhead, a little drunk and ludicrously turned on. Five people had wanted me tonight. Five. After a year of feeling like furniture.

I ran my hand over my breasts and down my stomach and thought about all of it. Mateo’s mouth. Ana’s thumbs on my hips. Lou’s green eyes and Gary’s low groan. I slid two fingers inside, slow and wet, and rubbed my clit with the other hand, and I imagined every combination I could think of.

I came hard, thighs shaking, a long moaning cry I made no effort to muffle. Then I did it again, because I could.

At breakfast the retired Canadians in the next cabana were staring into their muesli.

“Walls are thin,” said the husband, going pink.

“Sorry,” I said, cheerfully, taking a croissant.

The wife leaned across. “No, dear,” she whispered. “Don’t be. Well done.”

Ending 4 of 16: None of the Above. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I took a breath. “Yes. All of us. Right now.”

Gary whooped. Lou kissed me. Ana took my hand, and Mateo, laughing, got up and grabbed the bottle. We tore through the resort gardens like teenagers and fell into Villa Nine’s hot tub, in a cloud of steam and shrieking and strawberries.

Clothes landed in the palms. Lou’s mouth was on my neck. Ana’s hand slid down my belly to my clit, slow and sure, and I came apart against her palm with a cry that startled a bird. Mateo knelt on the edge, and I took him in my mouth while Ana kissed my shoulders and Lou pulled Gary in by the hair and kissed him till he groaned.

Then it all went gloriously to chaos. Ana pushed her face between my thighs on the hot tub steps. Lou rode Mateo on a sun lounger, Gary stood behind her, kissing her spine, and I was somehow kissing all three of them at once. I sucked Gary while Ana’s fingers curled inside me. I got fucked in the shallows by Mateo, from behind, one leg up, while Lou and Ana kissed over my head. A condom wrapper hit Gary in the eye. Mateo got a cramp. Someone lost a flip-flop in the filter.

We finished at four in the morning, boneless and giggling, all five of us in a pile on the villa floor.

“Ten out of ten,” said Ana. “Would stretch again.”

At breakfast the waiter asked if we’d all like the usual.

I had never loved a wristband more.

Ending 3 of 16: All Inclusive. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I let go of him and put my hand on his chest, over his heart. “More than one night,” I said. “If that’s all right.”

His face did something complicated and then lit up like a Christmas tree. “More. Yes. Absolutely more.”

So we took it slowly. He took off the last of my clothes like he was unwrapping something he planned to keep. I undressed him. We lay on our sides, facing one another, and I put him inside me with my leg over his hip, his hand cupped round my cheek, his eyes never leaving mine. It was unhurried and glorious. Every roll of his hips pressed him deep and found a place inside me that made me gasp. I came softly, then again, my forehead on his, whispering his name. He held on until I begged him to let go, and then he shook and came inside the condom with a groan that sounded almost like a laugh.

We slept tangled. At dawn he left for his shift and kissed me goodbye with proper, wonderful, daylight tenderness.

The rest of the week was a blur of beach and bed. He took me to the market in Playa. I met his sister. He taught me to curse in Spanish. At the airport he said, “You come back at Christmas, I’ll have the bar quiet.”

I rebooked my flight on the plane home.

And I’m already deciding what to wear.

Ending 2 of 16: Something More. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I tightened my fingers round him and said it straight. “Tonight. All of it. Tomorrow I’m a tourist again.”

“Understood,” Mateo said, and kissed me like a man who’d been given a deadline and a gift.

He rolled on a condom from his pocket, and I pushed him onto his back and straddled him. I held his cock upright and sank down onto it an inch at a time, slow, feeling every thick, hot inch stretch me open. We both groaned. His hands gripped my hips. I started to ride him, rolling my hips, my breasts bouncing in the moonlight, and he watched with his lips parted like he couldn’t believe his luck.

“Mierda, Sophie. Look at you.”

“Shut up and fuck me.”

He did. He flipped me over and drove into me from behind, one hand fisted in my hair, the other under me rubbing my clit in tight little circles. The bed slammed against the cabana post. I bit the pillow and came, clenching round him, and he followed with a shout and a long shuddering thrust that went on and on.

We did it twice more. Once against the wall, once in the outdoor shower with the water running cold and my leg hooked round his waist.

At five-thirty he kissed my shoulder and dressed in the dark. “Best night shift of my life,” he whispered.

At the bar at noon he made me a margarita, no salt, extra lime, and winked. I tipped him a hundred pesos and an excellent view of my cleavage. We never spoke of it again. We never had to.

Ending 1 of 16: One Night Only. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.

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I pocketed the key and went to find a drink, because that is what I always do when something frightening and exciting happens at the same time.

The ballroom was roaring. A swing band, chandeliers, a Napoleon dancing with a skeleton, Tom himself as Dracula by the punch bowl, bellowing at somebody about the cloak. I fought my way to the bar and found the only gap, beside a woman in a scarlet silk dress and a red domino mask, with dark curls pinned up and lips painted the colour of a fire engine.

“Vampires,” she said to nobody, watching Tom. “The word came into English from German, via Serbian. Not Transylvanian. Somebody should tell him.”

“I’ll tell him,” I said. “Right after I’ve been told I’m wrong.”

“You’re not wrong, you’re just not me.” She turned. Behind the red mask her eyes were dark and quick and amused, and they dropped to my left wrist. To the black ribbon. To the pocket where the key sat heavy against my thigh.

“Ah,” she said softly. “She’s picked you.”

She leaned in until her mouth was at my ear. I felt the heat of her breath on my neck, and everything south of my belt tightened.

“Red ribbon,” she whispered. “End of the corridor. Ten minutes. I am not telling you my name and you’re not telling me yours. Come and find out what I do instead.”

She took her drink and walked away through the crowd, hips swinging.

→ I go upstairs and look for the red door

→ I lose my nerve and head for the kitchen