by Krissy Kneen
She refitted her mask, turned onto her stomach and hovered above the pair. They walked on the bottom of the rock pool entwined, the male clutching tight to the female’s back, its tentacle still slipped inside the female’s mantle. Leda wondered at the pleasure they might be experiencing so soon after hers. Her vagina was slick with her juices despite the wash of seawater. Did octopuses feel that kind of overwhelming joy?
She watched the spidery chase, the legs skipping over each other, stirring up a little trail of sand. The female seemed to leap up suddenly, her legs fanning out, dislodging the male in this single movement.
An orgasm of sorts? Somehow Leda doubted it. And yet the first ever deed was done. Each of them crept silently away to its side of the rock pool.
Rachel looked different now. Taller, of course, but also more tense. The softly curved outline of the child Leda remembered was completely effaced by this new, more angular body. Leda, hugging her, felt the prickly push of her shoulderblades, the hard angles of her hips.
‘It’s been too long,’ Rachel’s grin was unchanged at any rate. She held her hands out, palms upward. ‘Still here? Still living with your folks?’
‘Yeah. Well, I was never quite as wild as you.’
‘Huh! And where am I now?’
‘On the farm, I hear.’ And then Leda felt herself smile. She took her friend’s hand. It had been a long time since they had seen each other; too long, perhaps. And all that water under the bridge, separating her world from Rachel’s.
Leda picked up the heavy suitcase and dragged it into her bedroom. She had pulled her brother’s old mattress out of the storeroom, hit it with a stick as it hung over the veranda railing, aired it, exposed it to the light. Her own mattress, if she pressed her nose into the ticking and breathed in hard, still smelled very faintly of Paul.
‘I’ve missed you,’ Rachel said as Leda deposited her suitcase on the mattress. She looked around the room sadly and Leda realised she must have been remembering Paul, the way he would greet her every afternoon, the leaping and the snuffling and then that one time, the way they had made love.
‘Yeah,’ said Leda, ‘I’ve missed you too.’ Surprised by the truth of the words, she held out her hand and linked her fingers with Rachel’s.
‘You never did come back out to the farm to visit me.’
‘One day,’ she said, ‘I promise you I will.’
They left the door open because the house was theirs. Leda’s parents were away at a conference, her brother was long gone. They could have settled in the loungeroom but Leda liked her own territory, and the two of them dragged the bottle of wine and glasses onto the bedroom floor. Rachel glanced up at her framed prints.
‘How come I have never seen that one anywhere before?’
‘Hokusai.’
‘It’s awesome. Honestly Leda, I want one.’
‘I thought you were stuck on mammals.’
‘And you’re not?’
Leda sighed. ‘You know, I think I’ve been in marine biology too long.’
‘Too many fish.’ Rachel upended the last of the wine into her mouth. ‘Not enough fur.’
Leda lay back on the pillow. It felt good to have a warm knee pressing into the arch of her back. It was impossible not to think of Paul, but now there was the buffer of the years between her and the loss of him.
‘Guess what?’ Rachel leaned closer, whispered into her ear and Leda felt the warm breath disturbing the down at the nape of her neck. ‘I’ve found a human lover.’
‘Really?’
‘A man. A man like us.’
‘What?’ Leda rolled over towards Rachel.
‘I found him on the internet.’ She laughed. ‘As you do. Zoophiles. That’s what we’re called.’
Leda sat up, cocked her head to one side. ‘You mean there’s a word for it?’
Rachel reached for Leda’s laptop and dragged it down off the bed. She clicked onto the browser.
‘Watch this. I bet we can find someone close by, people for you to meet.’
‘I don’t think I want people to meet.’
Rachel rested her hand on Leda’s knee and the warmth of her palm dragged up memories from the depths of childhood. She watched as a face appeared on the screen. A man with a big bushy beard; she knew this because the lower part of his face was in frame. Mostly she was looking at a chest covered in a mat of wiry hair, a slightly distended belly and, beneath this, a small human penis. He was masturbating. Leda stared. She held her hand up over her mouth.
‘Well helloooo ladies.’ The man’s voice was deep and rich and as he spoke he began to stroke his penis more rapidly. ‘Where have you two been all my life?’
‘Playing in the barn?’ Rachel grinned, nudged Leda in the ribs.
‘I’d like to get you two playing in my barn. I’d get my big one-eyed snake out for you two delicious fillies.’
‘What animal would you like to see us with?’ It was clear Rachel had done this before.
‘You don’t need animals. I’ll be your animal.’
And Rachel shrugged and tapped a button and the man’s penis disappeared from the screen.
‘Sometimes people pretend to be zoo,’ she said dismissively, ‘just to look at you like you are a freak-show or something. You can always tell. They want to talk about their cocks more than the horse, hang on, here we go…Is someone there?’
Leda watched as the letters flashed up on the bottom of the dark screen. The words spelled out a sentence. Yes, they said, I don’t like to show myself but I can see you fine. My name is Susanna Nabokov.
‘Can you hear us all right?’
Sure.
‘And you’re a girl?’
Yes.
‘And you’re zoo like us?’
Not exclusively. But sometimes I like to play with animals.
‘What do you play with, Susanna?’
I’ll tell you if you both take off your clothes. Do you have a pet you can show me on the webcam?
‘No. Not right now. We do have some horses back at the farm, and a kelpie.’
Do you have sex with the puppy?
‘Actually, it’s more like he has sex with me.’
How do you do that?
‘See, he jumps on my back to show me that he wants me. I get down on all fours.’
Can you show me?
Rachel glanced at Leda, who was shaking her head.
You know, I’d really like it if you just took your clothes off and showed me. I don’t get to see other girls do it. I’d like to know if it is the same as when I do it.
‘Susanna, I don’t have a dog here right now.’ She winked at Leda.
The other lady? Could the other lady pretend she was that kelpie? Do you do it together sometimes?
‘We used to do it together,’ Rachel looked towards Leda, one eyebrow raised. A question.
‘We do it together sometimes still.’ Leda leaned up close to the screen. ‘I suppose we could pretend together now.’
She knew it was insane. The text on the screen could be anybody, an old man, a young boy; a woman who was friends with her own mother. She knew the risks, but she was pulled back into the wake of Rachel’s playfulness. She reached towards Rachel’s shirt. The buttons were pearly white and cold to the touch. Leda undid each one, the fabric falling away to reveal a lacy white bra. Rachel’s nipples were hard and pink beneath the lace.
Rachel liked her nipples licked. Leda remembered how she would lie on her back and let the dog nip and bite at them, her eyelids half-closed in delight, her breathing hard and irregular. She bent her head, licked at the delicate white fabric and heard her friend’s breath catch in her throat.
Leda remembered the webcam. She turned Rachel to face it and eased her shirt off her shoulders. Susanna would be treated to the sight of her friend’s breasts. She would see how full and round they were, how large and hard the nipples had become when she licked them. Leda wondered if Susanna would be excited; she could feel her own cunt dampening at the s
ight. She reached out to Rachel’s back and unclipped the bra. Rachel shrugged it off her shoulders and her breasts swayed as she stood to let Leda unclip the buckle on her belt.
Leda looked back to the computer, she stood behind her friend and eased the jeans down over Rachel’s hips. The knickers caught on the denim and the neatly trimmed fur of pubic hair was exposed to the gaze of the camera. Leda pressed her cheek against the soft round flesh of Rachel’s bottom, reaching around to stroke her finger against her friend’s clitoris, turning gentle circles before spreading the labia, presenting a pretty line of pink flesh for the camera to see.
‘Remember how I used to lick you here sometimes?’
Leda saw Rachel nod, felt the gentle caress of a hand stoking her long dark hair.
‘I licked you in return sometimes. I liked you wet with Paul’s saliva, or after you had just had sex. There’s nothing like the taste of his semen mixed with your juices. The smell of him inside you…’
Leda felt the wetness coating her finger. Her friend was excited. She could smell it. She shuffled closer, sniffed at the carefully cropped pubic hair. She pressed her nose against Rachel’s clitoris and breathed in. The smell transported her to a sweeter time. She opened her mouth and traced the lips of Rachel’s cunt, collecting a generous serve of juice, savouring it at the back of her palate before swallowing.
Rachel groaned and pushed Leda’s head gently away, ‘Careful or I will come too quickly. I want to play the dog.’ She turned towards the computer. ‘Do you want to see me take her clothes off now? Then I will lick her like my puppy licks me. And I’ll mount her.’ Leda could see how excited Rachel was becoming, the slow spread of juice on her inner thigh, the way she shifted her hips, responding to her rising lust.
Please do. I would like to see that.
Leda knew her own knickers would be soaking already, and when Rachel slipped them off from under her dress she held the cotton up to the webcam, letting the light catch and sparkle in the damp crotch. She stripped Leda’s dress off roughly and bounced around her, nipping at the dark tips of Leda’s breasts, rubbing her nose in her wild thick pubic hair.
Rachel had transformed, a delightful tilt of her head, and then that excited snuffling. Not like Paul, more like old Racer, who still limped about on the porch next door. Her performance was like a younger, sprightly Racer. Rachel sniffed Leda’s thigh, her hip, and pushed her nose rudely between Leda’s legs. The same licking of her cunt lips, ‘tasting the scent of her’ they used to call it, the same excited bouncing, resting her paws on Leda’s back, thrusting her hips excitedly as if she had a stiff red cock slipping out from the furry sheath between her legs.
I wish you had a dildo, a strap-on, a candle, anything to be like a dog’s cock.
The words might have been flashing there for minutes before the girls discovered them, lost as they were in their game of dog and lover.
Rachel crawled over to the computer, and crouched in front of the webcam.
‘Do you want me to mount her for real? Do you want me to put something inside her for you to see?’
I would rather you had a dog dick, the unseen other typed, and Rachel shrugged.
‘Do you have a dog cock at your place? Is that how you do it? With your family pet?’
Sure, I have a dog. Two dogs actually.
‘Do you take them both at once?’
No. One of them is female and one of them is male. I watch them fucking and I like to suck him off while he is doing it. Then when he’s done I take her place, it doesn’t take them long sometimes to want to go again. She is a licker. I suppose you know how that is. Can you show me how your dog likes to lick you? Can you show me how he does it to your friend?
‘I can show you if you like, but how come we can’t see you? How come we can’t see you having sex with your dogs? I’d like to see that.’
I used to show myself before. But something spooked me.
‘What? What frightened you?’
I don’t want to tell you.
‘Why not?’
Because I don’t want you to get frightened too. At least not before I see you being the dog and licking her and mounting her and using something, the handle of a bicycle, a perfume bottle, something long and thin like a dog cock to put inside her. You don’t know how good it is to see you being the dog. There are so few women on this site. It is all men putting their dicks in goats and cows and once even a pig.
‘Okay, Susanna. We’ll show you, won’t we, Leda?’
Ah, typed Susanna, Leda and the Swan.
‘I’m the dog again now, and Leda has sat down in the grass…’
Rachel snuffled up to her friend, buried her head in her crotch. It was true, Rachel performed it very well. The same sniffing excitement, the same wet lolling tongue and when she began to lick her between her legs, Leda opened her thighs wider and lay back and began to remember. Rachel in the barn, sucking on the horse, throwing herself into her own masturbation with the excited energy of a pup. Rachel hunkered down beneath her, licking her clitoris, her lips, her thighs as Paul pumped excitedly into her.
It was ridiculous that she had put a stop to something that they had all enjoyed. She began to feel the warmth spreading out over her thighs, her body responding to Rachel’s licking with a hot flush that made her breasts ache. She wiggled against her friend’s tongue. She remembered and, even in the rising heat of her desire, Leda was overwhelmed by a regret. She had broken up the pack with her petty jealousies. She knew that now and felt ashamed.
But here was Rachel back in her room, forgiving her, the same way dogs forgive, with a generous and open heart. Leda felt her lust piqued by a heady mix of shame and regret. She rolled over then and raised her rump and Rachel began to sniff and lick excitedly, her thighs, her rump, her anus, which she lapped with equal vigour. Rachel had none of Leda’s own human failings, no jealousy, no grudges held; just an animal commitment to the pleasures of the flesh. Leda opened herself wide to her friend, becoming lost in the sensations before looking up to see the words glowing, pulsing slightly, on the black screen.
Use something inside her. Let me see that dog cock slipping in to her human cunt.
There was a bottle of nail polish on her bedside table. Small, but red like the soft inner flesh of a dog’s penis. Leda stretched forward, plucked the little bottle from the table, passed it back between her legs for her friend to take.
Rachel turned Leda around, a better position for the camera, and parted her spit-slicked lips with a finger. She pushed the labia wide to reveal the pink inner folds there, slipped the lipstick bottle inside. Too easy; she pulled it out and pushed it in, a tickling little entry, nothing like the excited thrusting that she experienced on their afternoons with Racer and Paul.
‘It’s not the same.’ Leda let her rump drop down to her feet. She knelt and looked around the room, ‘We need something larger. A dog’s cock is much larger and there’s the knot that forms when he comes.’
Do you ever get stuck on that? Like when dogs get stuck after mating?
‘No. Not yet. Do you?’
Almost, once. Sometimes that knot just lodges up there.
Rachel clapped her hands. ‘It’s the best, isn’t it? I think I like that more than anything in the world. I wish we had a dog here now. We used to like to share. One after another. We could kneel like this so you could see both our rumps, Susanna, and the dog would sniff from one to the other and then mount us, one at a time. You’d stay and wait till he got his second wind, right? You’d watch till he did it for a second time?’
I’ll give you my Skype address if you like. I don’t usually give out that kind of thing, but I would love to see you guys with a dog. Could you get one by tomorrow? I’m so turned on at the thought of you girls with that dog.
‘Would you come with me, Leda? Another visit to the farm?’
Leda nodded. She could feel her rising excitement, the memory of the stable, the smell of the hay. It was Friday, she could call in sick on Mo
nday, stay for the long weekend.
Rachel reached for a pen. She waited for Susanna to type the address and wrote it down, AaronFitzgerald, underlining the letters, circling them, with a questioning look at the webcam.
That’s my brother’s name. I use his Skype address to protect myself from creeps. I won’t be able to sleep tonight. I know I am going to be excited all day.
‘It’s good to meet another zoophile, isn’t it? I met my partner like this, on the internet.’
I am so glad I met you. Tomorrow then. I will be waiting.
They waved to the computer and Leda had a sudden flash of how it would look, two women in their late twenties, naked and smeared with each other’s juices, grinning broadly as they waved into a little camera above a blank screen. Rachel snapped the computer shut, rolled onto her back and giggled, still just as puppy-playful as the child she had been. She reached out to Leda, pulled her down and snuffled into her neck.
‘You can’t imagine how much I’ve missed you.’
Leda snuggled into the hug. The warmth, the idea that there could be more of them, a pack. Rachel’s partner; all those internet zoophiles; maybe even Susanna if they could convince her to join them. Leda wondered if she could overcome her jealousy. Such a human failing.
Rachel licked her neck and the hairs there began to bristle. Her nipples stood up at attention. She turned and locked her mouth with Rachel’s, all tongue and teeth and a warm mammal hunger. When Leda pulled back to take breath she laughed a little.
‘You know, it’s been nothing but fish for so many years, I had almost forgotten how to kiss.’
‘Fish.’ Rachel glanced up towards the framed Hokusai on the wall above the bed. ‘You might have to show me how that works for you, darling.’
Darling.
‘I love you, Rachel. I’m sorry I…’
‘I’ve always known that.’ Rachel hugged her tightly. ‘We were a part of the same pack. How could we not love each other?’
‘A zoo family,’ Leda said, and Rachel laughed.
‘Of course. The family zoo.’