Torquere Press Sips and Shots

by Anthology

  “It’s not precisely beautiful,” she said. I guess for someone as beautiful Polly, it made a big difference. “And...” She took a long swig of her drink (we were at her place, sharing a bottle of wine). “Well, I never have.”

  “Never have what?” I asked, being uncommonly thick.

  She gave me A Look. “Not a whole lot of people fancy dating girls in chairs,” she said patiently. “In fact, to put it bluntly, two people before you -- one guy, and one girl. I got as far as kissing in both relationships, but no further. Of course,” she said, her teasing smile coming out, “I still need plenty of practice at the kissing thing...”

  I might be thick, but I can take a hint as big as a mountain. I leaned over and kissed her, the arm of the wheelchair doing its usual job of jabbing me in the stomach.

  “Why don’t you come to bed?” I suggested.

  Polly could and did get around on crutches in her house, though she tended to stick to her chair. When I pointed this out to her, she gave her usual shrug. “I forget,” she said. “The chair’s so much part of me -- which,” she added thoughtfully, “is why I don’t like people touching it without asking: it feels as if they’re doing it to me -- that I don’t always remember to get out.”

  Now, however, she picked up the crutches to lever herself up and into the bedroom. I’d been in there with her before, and it was very Polly. On the face of it, very ‘pretty-pretty,’ but when you looked deeper there was a lot going on -- most of which was contradictory. Her Arsenal team photo (signed, of course) was pinned on the wall next to a purple-and-blue seascape; the flowers on one end of her windowsill were challenged by the cactus down the other end. I turned away from the room and looked at her. Her blonde hair was curling around her face; she was wearing a long velvet-y green dress and some ridiculously sparkly jewelry. Not my style at all -- and yet I loved her. Weird, really. But then, so was Polly. I ran a hand through her curls, smoothed my fingers across her cheekbone.

  “Hey, Pollyanna,” I said softly.

  She raised her head to mine and kissed me gently on the lips, then a little more firmly. I stroked my hand over her shoulder and down toward where the swell of her breasts lay under the dress. I’ve always been keen on tits, having nothing much to speak of in that direction myself, and Polly was definitely in a different class from me there. In response to me touching her, she snuggled closer in, putting an arm around my neck and pulling me into a thorough embrace. I’ve never really been much for cuddling, preferring to get on with the real business, if you know what I mean, but it was quite nice having Polly acting as a human-sized teddy-bear. Only with the stuffing much more interestingly arranged than in your average cuddly toy.

  Apparently, however, Pollyanna was as keen on moving on further as I was; she put her hands on my shirt and unfastened the buttons with slightly clumsy fingers. Funny, I’d never have thought Polly would be clumsy, but I didn’t mind. Made a change to feel like there was something I could do better than her. Except for walking, of course. When she finished, I shrugged the shirt off my shoulders. I didn’t have a bra on, for obvious reasons, and I waited for the inevitable critique from my well-endowed girlfriend. They didn’t usually say it, my partners, but you could see it in their eyes.

  “You’re gorgeous,” Polly said, though, looking at me with this kind of strange sort of admiration, and the funny thing was, with Pollyanna looking at me that way, I believed her. At first, her eyes were on the star on my shoulder. Once more, she traced its pattern with her fingers. Somehow she knew what it meant to me, though I’d never told her why. But then she bent her head and kissed each breast in turn, first the so-called curves at the top, then the nipples. Size can’t be everything, because it felt just amazing. As far as I was concerned, Polly could’ve kept on kissing them all night and she seemed to feel the same way, too. Every so often, she looked back up at me, as if she could hardly believe that this was happening. “Leigh,” she said. “You’re gorgeous.”

  “I’m really not,” I said, not being exactly used to taking compliments, but Polly only laughed at me.

  “Well, I fancy you,” she said.

  “That’s fortunate. I’d be buggered if you didn’t, now wouldn’t I?” I retorted. “Or rather, not buggered -- except we’re not blokes and I don’t expect there’s a dildo to hand. Or is there?” If there was, I knew a thing or two we could get up to, but I was just as happy to manage without...

  “Shut up,” said Polly, kissing me to make sure I did what I was told.

  It worked, too. I was quite happy to shut up and be snogged. However, there was something else I wanted, too.

  “My turn now,” I said, pulling at the hem of her dress to drag it up.

  Polly gave a wriggle to help me get it over her arse, but when I’d got it off her, she blushed a bit. I didn’t know anyone still did that these days.

  “I feel ever so naked, Leigh,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest self-mockingly.

  “Not enough,” I teased, pulling open her unresisting arms and running my fingers over her silky bra, teasing her nipples until they stood out proudly beneath the thin material. Her knickers were of the same deep green satin as the bra, I noticed. That was very Pollyanna -- even when I did bother with a bra, it was pretty much whatever I pulled out of a drawer. I’d always thought it was silly to make a fuss about something most people wouldn’t even see, but somehow it looked right on Polly.

  “I wasn’t complaining about being naked,” she whispered, nibbling the top of my ear.

  “I was, about the ‘not enough,’” I said. “Nice undies, Pollyanna, but even nicer off.”

  “You’d better do something about it, then,” she said, and I could hear the smile in her voice.

  Reckoning that since Polly hadn’t done this before I ought to give her something to remember, I kissed my way down her body, licking a path over her belly and biting her gently on the inside of her thighs. I’d kind of thought she might taste of flowers or something, but Pollyanna never did what I expected of her. She was salty and smooth and very, very, real. In a good way. She lay back contentedly as I grabbed her knickers with my teeth and pulled them over her legs. It was a bit odd, the way one leg could move and the other just lay there waiting to be prodded out of the way, but it was just like anything else, really -- I had non-existent tits, Pollyanna had a leg that didn’t work.

  And just as Polly had been quite encouraging about my breasts, I found myself thinking that even her wasted leg was gorgeous, because it was Polly’s. She looked like she wanted to hide it away -- under the bedclothes if necessary -- but I wasn’t having that. I wanted to make love to all of Polly, to show her that she was bloody attractive just the way she was. I kept one hand on her bad leg, stroking it, to make sure she couldn’t pull the covers over it. Between us, we managed to get her out of her kit, which, as I told her, I’d been waiting to do for quite a while, and then I got busy.

  Loads of people say I’m really mouthy at any time, but when it comes to sex, I reckon being good with your mouth is a pretty useful talent. Can’t say I’m up there with the sexy talk -- I tried it once, felt like a right idiot -- but when it comes to bringing someone off, I’m not half bad. Anyway, Polly didn’t seem to have any complaints, seeing as she was making these incredible little moan-y noises that really did it for me. I mean, I know you’re probably supposed to concentrate on one thing at a time, but I couldn’t help having one of my hands between my own legs, even as I was busy on her. There was her clit to play with, of course, but I also quite liked having my tongue deep inside her -- and so did she. Her Polly-taste was even stronger here: female and sensual. She came all of a sudden, giving this long gasping breath, and then when she was breathing fairly normally again, she dragged me up beside her.

  “You’re still in jeans,” she pointed out. “Not fair.”

  “You’d better do something about it, then,” I mocked.

  Her eyes lit up with the challenge. “Okay.”

  Polly was
n’t bad at the undressing bit; her fingers were a bit fumbly, but I wasn’t sure whether that was accidental or a good excuse to cop a feel. When I asked her, she just grinned at me wickedly.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” When I was lying there naked, though, she had a bit of a crisis of confidence. “I won’t be as good as you,” she said, her hand resting uncertainly on my belly.

  I grinned, seeing an opportunity to get my own back. “Most people aren’t.”

  She gave me a shove, but I reckon it helped her get over her nerves. Turned out she shouldn’t have had any -- she could’ve told me she’d had plenty of girls before me and I’d have believed her. Frankly, after the first minute or so, I didn’t give a damn what or who she’d done before in her life, because she was doing me more than well enough. To start with, Pollyanna had this great look of concentration on her face, like she was learning to drive or something. It was kind of cute, too, her face being all serious while her hands ran over my body with eager anticipation.

  Polly was a natural -- she seemed to know all the places to touch, all the range of touches. I guess you could say she knew all about slap and tickle. She also -- and this shouldn’t have surprised me -- was an expert in teasing me ‘til I wanted to scream out, “Just fuck me now!” But she knew when to stop teasing, too, and to get on with the action. Soon, she was lying beside me, propped up on one arm with the other hand diving inside me, her breasts jiggling like they were begging to be sucked -- something that I was more than willing to do for her (okay, and for me.) And by that time, her face was bloody amazing. The seriousness was gone, and instead... well, you know when you say “her face was a picture”? I’ll tell you what, you’d have known from Pollyanna’s face alone that it was a porno picture. Hot didn’t cover it. She seemed to be having as much pleasure out of giving as I was from getting. Mind you, pretty soon after that, I stopped thinking about anything but me, and what she was doing. Did I mention ‘amazing’?

  I came twice and she came three times. She told me she’d save my next one for later. Later sounded good to me.

  Afterward, we went down to the Black Griffin and watched Arsenal play Liverpool. Arsenal scored six. Turns out Pollyanna’s good at everything.

  Leila

  Elizabeth Reeve

  I had assumed that Lesbians in Literature would be an easy A. I’m a lesbian, I like to read, and I needed another humanities course to fill the last of my general education requirements. But after spending three nights in a row at the library trying to find sources for my term paper, I was starting to wish I had chosen a different class.

  I was staring at the catalog search screen for the fiftieth time, trying to figure out where I’d gone wrong with my keywords, when I heard a soft, husky voice. “You look like you need help.”

  I looked up. There was a woman standing behind me, with one eyebrow raised. She had gorgeous blonde hair hanging in soft, shiny waves down past her shoulders. When I was a kid, I had desperately wished I was blonde, but my mother never let me bleach my hair. I finally tried it my first year of college, and discovered that I actually preferred myself as a brunette. Turns out I didn’t want to be blonde so much as I wanted to sleep with blondes. I still haven’t brought that one up with Mom yet.

  I realized I was staring. “I’m sorry,” I stammered. “You startled me. I thought I was alone up here.”

  “The library’s never really empty,” she said mildly. Her lips quirked at one corner, like her eyebrow. “What are you looking for?”

  “Vampires.” Both her eyebrows were raised now, and I blushed, quickly adding, “I mean, vampire stories. And analysis. I’m doing a paper for a class, on Carmilla, by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. Do you know it?”

  “Ah, Carmilla. Of course.” The woman nodded, and leaned past me to use the keyboard, her body curving around mine. Her perfume surrounded me, something exotic and floral with just a hint of musk, and one thick lock of her hair tumbled down over her shoulder and brushed the side of my face. I closed my eyes and breathed her in deeply, as though her scent could fill my body.

  I was suddenly, exquisitely conscious of my own breasts, their weight, the way they were cradled in my bra. I was wearing a t-shirt and jeans, and under that the plainest, most boring underwear possible, but I was keenly aware of the texture of the stretch-cotton weave of my bra against my nipples, of the way the seam of my jeans rested almost-but-not-quite over my clitoris.

  “There you are,” the woman said.

  My eyes snapped open, and I blinked a few times, embarrassed. Here was this stranger being so helpful, and I was sitting there getting wet over her perfume.

  Well, not just her perfume. Her, with her pale hair, full, red-painted lips, and bright green eyes. Green eyes with elegant eyebrows above them, rising again as she waited for me to respond to her, instead of staring like a jerk.

  “Thanks,” I said. I made myself look away from her, and back to the screen. It was full of information now, titles and authors and call numbers ready for my perusal. I grinned. “Really, thanks so much. I appreciate your help, Ms…?”

  “Call me Leila,” she said, offering her hand.

  I shook it. “I’m Megan.”

  “Megan.” The handshake was lasting a long time. “You have beautiful skin.”

  My eyes widened with surprise, just as though I hadn’t been cataloging all of her gorgeous features in my own pervy mind, and I dropped her hand. “I, uh. I should check some of these out and head home before it gets any later.”

  “Of course,” Leila said. “Good luck with your paper.”

  I couldn’t help it. I stared some more as she walked away.

  * * *

  That night, I dreamed. I was in my room, in my bed, wearing a sheer, white nightgown that was nothing like the boxers and t-shirt that I remembered putting on. The gown shifted as I sat up, sliding coolly across my skin, and I marveled at how different my bedroom could look by candlelight. I didn’t even own any candles. The flames flickered as a breeze played through the room, and I looked to the open window and the woman silhouetted there against the moonlight.

  “Leila,” I said.

  Her laughter was low and throaty. “Yes. May I come in?”

  “Yes.” She meant into my room, obviously, but I parted my knees as I nodded my acceptance, making further invitation.

  She crossed the room quickly, though she didn’t seem to hurry. She was so graceful. She knelt between my thighs and kissed me, her fingers stroking against my face, my neck, pushing at the straps of my nightgown until it slid down over my shoulders, baring my breasts. I moaned as she released my lips, bending her head to lap at the skin of my throat. She pressed a kiss onto my clavicle and then ran her tongue between my breasts before turning to capture one nipple delicately between her teeth. She looked up at me, watching my face as she slowly, tenderly bit down.

  And I woke up, sweating, with my hand between my thighs.

  * * *

  I didn’t really need any more sources for my term paper, but I went back to the library that weekend anyway. I browsed the stacks for a while, starting on the fifth floor, where I’d been when Leila had approached me the first time. There was no sign of her. I killed an hour, nearly two, picking books up and flipping through them before putting them back on their shelves. I wasn’t really looking at any of them, my eyes sliding right over blocks of text and illustrations alike, scanning the aisles as I walked for a hint of shining hair.

  I’d given up and decided to go home, and then maybe out to a bar or something like a normal college student, when I heard her voice.

  “Megan. Hunting for vampires again?”

  I spun around, nearly dropping the latest book I’d been not-looking at. “No.” I shook my head, and then nodded. “I mean, yes.”

  She looked at me, probably waiting for me to say something sensible.

  “I mean, I have enough material for my paper. And thank you again, by the way. For your help with that. But I wanted to...” Ask you ou
t. “Know more. For myself.”

  “A thirst like that should be rewarded,” Leila said, smiling slowly. “Let me help you.”

  I smiled back, and said, “Please.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  I said the first thing that came to mind. “Dreams. In the story. Laura has dreams about Carmilla, and that’s where some of the, uh, eroticism happens. The metaphorical penetration and so on.”

  “Not entirely metaphorical,” Leila pointed out. “And, of course, lesbian sexuality isn’t necessarily dependent on penetration.”

  I grinned. This was what I was writing my paper about, and I didn’t mind having a chance to show off a little at all. “Right, no, but it was written in 1872, and by a man, and most of the ‘action,’ as it were, is veiled references. Lots of hand-holding standing in for heavy petting, that kind of thing.”

  Leila laughed. “I like the way you phrased that. But it sounds like you’ve taken everything you need from the story already.”

  “No,” I said quickly. “I still want, uh...” You. “More of the background. Context. Carmilla was one of the very first vampire stories as we recognize them now, so the ideas about what vampirism is had to come from somewhere else. Like, the thing with the dreams. That wasn’t part of the folkloric background, was it?”

  “Ah, what you want is succubi, I think,” Leila said, nodding decisively. She led the way toward one of the computers located near the elevators, and bent to type some information into the keyword search bar.

  I tried not to stare at her hips and ass as she walked, and mostly failed. Her waist wasn’t narrow, exactly, but it was trim, and her hips were lush and full, her ass rounded above thighs that I could see were shapely under the thin material of her skirt as it pulled against her legs. When she leaned down to type, I wanted to step up close behind her, press my body against hers, feel a little of what it might be like to do her from behind with a strap-on.