I remind myself to keep the stills of her like this: flush and tousled from lovemaking. Serious from thought.
But she’s an enigma. A 3-D puzzle picture that I can’t capture and set in two-dimensional glass. Am I afraid?
I look away from the questions in her eyes as we drink frozen margaritas and listen to cicadas drone in the darkness. Beyond the lights of the porch there’s nothing to see; nothing to frame and save for later.
“I only meant to stay a week,” I say. “And it’s been far longer than that.”
Her release of breath is so soft it might just be a breath of wind.
“I know,” is all she replies.
After a while, she stands up and takes my hand. She leads me inside.
After the still-heavy heat of the night, the bedroom is cold. Her nipples pucker, and I trace a finger down raised hairs on her arm. She turns to me and catches my hands and we sink down on her bed. I kiss her pretty nose and her lips and her chin.
She arches her neck and I kiss her breasts and the half-moon shadows beneath them. I follow the shape of her ribs with my tongue and listen to her shallow breaths, coming faster as my lips touch her belly and then her mound. I’ve tasted her now so much, I know her taste better than some lovers will know each other in a lifetime, and still I catch my breath—trembling inside with wonder at the way I can make her move under my mouth, the way I can make her twist and grimace and bite her lips.
I love the taste of her clit. My brain knows it’s just another bit of skin and nerve endings, scented with her wetness, but it’s something else on my tongue, a delicacy that I can savor, but never have enough of. Is this what love feels like?
Raising myself to an elbow, I replace lips with fingers, because I want to lie beside her and watch her body move from tense stillness to sudden fitful motion; watch her face.
She begs me to fuck her and fuck her and I do, until the sex becomes hell. I wanted to stop on the second day when we’d been fucking nearly constantly, bitches in heat, and I could tell from her grimace and the agony in her soft, half-stifled moans that she was too sore. That pleasure had become laced with pain. But I couldn’t stop.
Then, like now, my own cunt tightened greedily, enjoying her torment. And I could see the same greed mingled with pain in her eyes as I touched her. She wouldn’t have let me stop anyway.
By now, I know what she wants. I know how far to push. When to stop and tease with the edge of a fingernail until her breathing becomes ragged, when to pinch and when to slap so that she squeaks and her tanned skin flushes red. When to kiss her and steal her breath and massage her abused flesh until she rises and throbs beneath my palm. Then I kiss away the salty tears of release from the corners of her eyes and run my fingers through her hair.
I wrap my fingers in the strands, heavy and soft even after days of scorching sun. I twist until my hand is bound with brown-gold silk, and pull her head around until she faces me. Color still stains her cheeks. Her eyes shimmer under wet lashes.
A portrait, etched on my memory like a woodcut, deep in the grain where it won’t fade, can’t be forgotten.
I ask her the question that isn’t a question, my voice rebelling with some emotion I don’t really want to figure out.
“But you aren’t gonna let me go.”
“I can’t make you stay,” she whispers, bitter and passionate and sweet.
I release her hair, strands clinging to my fingers like errant silk, roll over on my back with a sigh. She crawls over me and doesn’t make a sound as she pushes my thighs apart.
I tell myself I’m an old dog trying to learn the impossible. Browsing the shelves of a bookstore, I find a used paperback copy of Death in Venice. I buy it and put it on the front row of my bookshelf. It will make her laugh. She’ll tell me I’m a fool as she kisses me.
I do things like that on purpose. Planning what to say to her, anticipating the toss of her head, or how she’ll lean on the back of a chair in the awkward, sexy way that makes my stomach clench. How she looks at me, saying nothing at all.
I save it all up, hoarding every snapshot. Keeping pictures in my head. Always.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
ANAMIKA has published three novels (one on women’s football) and some stories in the UK and India. She is also a contributor to Delhi Noir, an anthology of original stories. She lives in India.
BETTY BLUE credits that story she read as a child about the angels in Sodom and Gomorrah with her fetish for naughty angel sex. Betty’s writing has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Lesbian Love Stories, Best Women’s Erotica, Tough Girls, Blood Sisters and More 5 Minute Erotica. Visit her website at bettyblue.org.
HEIDI CHAMPA’s work has appeared in Best Women’s Erotica 2010, Girl Fun One, Frenzy and Girl Crush. She has also steamed up the pages of Bust magazine. If you prefer your erotica in electronic form, she can be found at Clean Sheets, Ravenous Romance, Oysters & Chocolate and The Erotic Woman. More at heidichampa.blogspot.com.
RACHEL CHARMAN is a freelance writer, journalist and broadcaster from Southend, England. She writes on politics, technology, sex and LGBT issues. This is her first story to be published in an anthology.
CHARLOTTE DARE’s erotic fiction has appeared in Lesbian Cowboys, Where the Girls Are, Girl Crazy, Island Girls, Wetter, Purple Panties, Ultimate Lesbian Erotica 2008 & 2009 and Tales of Travelrotica for Lesbians Volume 2. Visit Charlotte at myspace.com/charlotte_dare.
KIKI DELOVELY is a queer femme performer/writer who has performed and lived all over the United States, as well as internationally, and is now focusing on making her home in Durham, NC. She loves artichokes and taking on research for her writing. This is her first published story.
SARAH ELLEN lives in Bristol, England, and has been published in Hot & Bothered: Short Short Fiction on Lesbian Desire 4 and Island Girls: Tropical Lesbian Erotica. A self-confessed thrill seeker, she finds writing as exciting as parachuting, bobsleighing, wakeboarding and skiing. Her less adventurous, loving, civil partner would rather she just wrote more.
A. D. R. FORTE is the author of erotic short fiction and erotic fantasy that appears in numerous anthologies, including Where the Girls Are and Best Women’s Erotica. For more information see adrforte.com
GALA FUR has contributed to hip French magazines and her signature is familiar to readers of the Parisian erotic press. As a director, she made many short movies on BDSM. Her erotica has been published internationally. She has also published BDSM novels including Confessions of a Left-Bank Dominatrix and Gala Strip (in French).
ERICA GIMPELEVICH’s first publishing credit came in Best Lesbian Erotica 2009. Since then, Erica has mostly sat around other people’s apartments mumbling incoherent fragments about “patriarchy” and “the gender binary” while eating all their vegan food and watching queer porn. Only after having memorized the lines of said porn was Erica roused to write more smut.