“Fuck, oh, fuck,” I mutter. She squeezes me tight in resistance and desperation, and it gets me so hot, so hard, I start building up faster, harder.
I place my hand over her mouth as she gets louder. I’m groaning too, fucking harder, and I just can’t keep her quiet when we get to this point, I can’t; she starts moaning and gasping and a few heads turn, but we’re oblivious to where we are. People steal glances over to our dark corner, squint, try to make out our figures, shifting their angle a little to get a better view, tapping their friends and nodding over toward us. I’m hoping my pants won’t fall down past my ass any farther, hoping her skirt is concealing us a little, her leg up and wrapped around my hip. I can only see the room from my peripheral vision, but Kristen has a good view, and she wraps her arms around my shoulders and looks out at the room as if for the first time, makes eye contact with someone, just for a second.
She shivers. Runs her fingers through the hair on the back of my head, grips my shoulders.
I can’t stop; I’m working in her harder, again and again, getting all worked up, and we lose ourselves in it. We forget where we are.
Suddenly she’s close. So close. I can feel it, her legs shake and open in a different way. I wrap my arms around her tightly, shove inside her hard, fast, and she’s coming, suddenly, it washes over her without anticipation, just suddenly unleashed, muscles quivering and she’s gasping in my ear, trying not to yell, clawing at my shoulders. Her cunt grips so hard when she comes I have to work to stay inside, grunting a little; I can feel sweat on my neck and lower back from the exertion, and I press hard into her, I don’t let up, and she keeps coming, gasping one more time, surrendering, then releases against me with a long sigh.
We stay wrapped in the bliss of it all for a minute longer until we notice a waiter approaching, doing rounds. Kristen straightens up a bit, smoothes her hair, her skirt; I step back and zip.
“You two okay here?” he asks, as he does his drive-by.
Kristen picks up her gin gimlet, catches my eye as she sips on it.
“We’re great,” I say, and swig the rest of the melted ice in my glass of Jameson.
WITCH
Kirsty Logan
I met Baba Yaga at the end of childhood—when I was past pigtails and fairy tales, but not quite ready to give up on make-believe. We had always known that she was there. She was the center of every scary story our parents told us. They said she had a thousand eyes and watched us as we slept; she had goats’ feet and a rooster’s beak and creepy-crawlies in her hair. She had a fence made of bones and a huge cast-iron oven for roasting nosy children. Every detail made us want to see her more. I dreamed of breaking through her hedge of thorns to find out what she kept at the top of her chicken-legged hut.
“I dare you,” said my friend Emmy one night, and that was all it took. No double dare needed. At eighteen, it was very important to be louche.
“Sure,” I said, my mind exploding with the secrets of the chicken legs and the goats’ feet. I could already picture Baba Yaga’s face, waxy lipstick smeared and hair a rosebush tangle.
I knew Emmy had only dared me to get a reaction. We’d fooled around a few weeks before, and now she was being all weird, playing mind-fuck games. The way I saw it, she had started it all, plying me with booze stolen from her mum and sucking my tongue on the roundabout in the children’s playground. Everything was spinning so fast, I’d had to kiss her back to keep from falling off the edge of the world. Her mouth tasted of alcohol and peach lip-gloss. She kissed like a bank robber, like she was trying to get in and out as fast as possible. Even with the grope up my top and through the zip of my jeans, she was done before the roundabout had slowed to a stop. I’d wandered home, street-lit and frustrated, then rubbed my clit while thinking of Emmy straddling me on the swings: the heat of her; the soft skin; the secret wet places. And then it wasn’t Emmy but someone else, a woman, not a girl, older and stronger, knowledge seeping out of her and into me like the sweet drip of honey, and I came so hard, gasping out a name, and ever since then it had been weird between Emmy and me.
Two weeks later, on a Tuesday night toward the end of the summer holidays, we were bored. It was August, still warm in the twilight of 9:00 p.m. We’d made the most of a bottle of Jack, passing it back and forth and sipping as we wandered the suburban streets. For a while we’d peeped in windows, but it was too early for anyone to be in bed, and that was the only room that interested us.
It didn’t take long for us to bump up against the woods. They weren’t even woods really, just a few acres of scrubby trees bordering the town.
“That’s where Baba Yaga lives,” said Emmy, her voice thick and slow from the alcohol. In my mind, Baba Yaga was the bitch goddess warrior queen. She terrified and fascinated me.
“I dare you,” said Emmy, and I was lost.
“When I come back, you’re buying the vodka.”
“If you come back.” Emmy drained the bottle then pressed her lips against mine. The whisky burned, and I pulled away and walked into the woods without looking back. I pictured Emmy, so small among the trees with the empty bottle in her hand. She’d wait for me.
I planned to walk to the other side of the woods, then come around the side and creep up on Emmy to give her a fright. She was pissing me off, but I still wanted to fuck her, and I figured making her squeal and jump into my arms was a good start.
It should only take about twenty minutes to walk around the edge of the trees. I grinned at the thought of Emmy, still waiting there. She’d already be regretting her dare. She was probably wishing we were back at hers, sprawled on her bedroom floor, smoking joints and sliding our tongues into each other’s mouths. Even though we had to jump apart every time her mum thumped up the stairs, messing around with Emmy still did it for me. Once I’d given her a good scare, maybe I’d let her take me home.
It was darker there among the trees, and the sounds of the town were muted. I could smell wet earth and wood smoke. At first my progress had been stilted, every other step kicking into a bit of litter or clump of twigs, but the farther I got into the woods the clearer the way became. The humidity was getting to me, my T-shirt sticking to the small of my back. I wiped the sweat off my forehead with my palm, feeling the burrs and bits of dead leaf stuck in my hair. Without realizing, I was walking more carefully, trying not to make the leaves crunch under my feet. The woods looked the same in every direction, and it seemed like darkness was falling faster. I started to wonder if I’d somehow turned myself around. Digging my feet down into the carpet of leaves, I closed my eyes and listened. Maybe if I could hear some noise from the town, I’d be able to figure out where I was. Soon I heard something that was not a night bird or a burrowing rodent or the distant murmur of traffic. It was the noise I had dreamed of Emmy making.
I opened my eyes and crept toward the noise as quietly as I could. The moans and rustles grew louder, and I ducked down when I saw the gleam of naked skin. I held my breath and watched. Through the screen of thin branches I couldn’t tell what combination of male and female I was watching, but I knew the rhythm of that motion. The moaning turned into words, a vague mumbling, Oh-god-oh-god-oh-yes-oh-fuck. I shifted my position, squatting so that my heel pressed up against my swelling clit. I rocked as I watched, thinking about how Emmy was going to make those noises later when I slid my fingers inside her. I imagined the sweat on the couple’s skin, bellies sliding together as they thrust, the feeling of being filled, of slickness and hardness, and I pressed my heel harder against the knot of fabric in the crotch of my jeans, feeling it grind on my clit, and I thought about sucking earlobes and kissing throats and biting lips. I felt a pressure building, the air catching in my throat, the throbbing growing to a peak, and as orgasm shuddered through me like a wave across a rock, my foot slid out across the leaves.