by Sandy Lowe
I reached up for her hips and ran my hands down her legs, pooling in the backs of her knees. The realization I’d never done this before settled across her eyes, and she reached for me, the palms of her hands cradling my cheeks. She pulled me to her spread legs and her fingers wound through my wet hair, guiding my tongue. I rolled that swollen, shining pink clit over and over my tongue and moved faster to her soft groans. I wrapped my hands around her, my fingers gripping and kneading the fleshy planes of her ass, my mouth opening further and further for more of what she had to give. My own cunt swelled and pulsed with Ellen’s grunts and moans and the water spilling all about us. Her hips rocked forward when she came, the walls of her pussy pulsing and throbbing around my tongue in a way that made me come, too.
Ellen pulled me up to her by my hair. Soft moans escaped her mouth as she licked her come from my face. I held on to her, hugged her tight, afraid if I let go my legs might collapse beneath me.
“You’re stronger than you think,” Ellen whispered. Her mouth closed over mine again and her hands—her hands! My God, where did she learn to do this? The water helped them to slide over my body, her fingertips feeling every ounce of me, setting my skin on fire beneath her touch. My pelvis rocked forward, desperate for her, and she obliged, plunging one finger in me, then two, circling my clit and sucking it much like she had my ear. She brought me close to the edge, closer still, then backed off. Over and over again until I felt like I might go mad.
I quickly learned she liked to hear me beg. “Please,” I whispered.
“Please what?” Her fingers dove deeper inside me while her thumb teased my clit. “Tell me what you want.”
“Your mouth on me. Please!”
When I finally came inside her mouth, the tears ran from my eyes and I groaned so deep and so long I couldn’t believe there was such a noise inside me. I collapsed against her, the water spilling over us, and the wetness of me running down the drain between our feet.
*
We met for a swim and more showers long after I placed in the triathlon and she won many more swim heats. We experimented with other areas of the locker room while the maintenance woman blared her country music and belted out the lyrics. Ellen taught me how our bodies could connect in ways I never dreamed and how my body had the power to drive her to ecstasy the same way she did me. I went through my senior year in a lust-filled Ellen haze.
Outside of the pool and locker room, Ellen and I never spoke, never called or texted, never emailed. I passed her a few times on campus; she smiled and nodded, that wicked little dimple making an appearance for me. I showed up at all of her swim meets, sliding into the top bleacher. I watched Ellen and her beautiful stroke, fingering the new colorful tattoo I got on my upper right arm with a stick-figured swimmer—Swim Girl. After the awards ceremonies and the medals clanged around her breastbone, I met her in the women’s locker room showers.
And then I graduated.
I never saw Dr. Ellen Johnston again.
Many people tell me I’ve lived out their fantasy. It seems like everyone has dreamed about sleeping with a professor at one point or another. When people ask me what I remember most, I tell them about Ellen’s strong, broad shoulders that pulled her through lap after lap and her long, long legs that went on for miles. I tell them about the Civil War and the way the water shone like sapphires in the light and washed every part of me clean. And then I tell them about the chlorine, that chemical smell that bit my nostrils and never really left me that whole year. Even now, the smell of chlorine makes my eyes tear and women in racing suits make me wet with want.
A Gift from McGovern
Lea Daley
In the staff restroom at Kensington Center, Drew Malachi washed her hands for the prescribed thirty seconds, scarcely aware of her reflection in the mirror. That fine-boned frame, shorter with each passing year. The startling silver of her hair. Fair skin sagging beneath luminous eyes and networked with more than laugh lines these days. But when she reached for a towel, the executive director zeroed in on her hands, now so aged. Exactly as she remembered her grandmother’s. And how had that happened? Sometimes it seemed only a few short years since she was young. Only months since she’d met Zoe Compton.
Dear, dear Zoe. Her best friend. Her partner for four decades. Her perfect balance in an imperfect world. Delivered to her by random fate. Because their entire history rested on a snap decision Malachi made at the University of Wisconsin during election season in 1972…
When she agreed to attend a political rally, she was in avoidance mode. Where Drew should have been was hunkered down in the library cramming for an algebra midterm. To no one’s surprise, she’d come close to flunking the exam the next morning. She wasn’t just mathematically challenged—the part of her brain meant to engage with numbers seemed to be missing altogether. In retrospect, though, she wouldn’t regret that D-minus, because the jostling throng outside Randall Stadium had shoved her hard against another student. A tall woman with incisive hazel eyes, thick brown hair, and a mesmerizing smile. Someone who wouldn’t have crossed her path anywhere else on their sprawling campus.
Thousands of political signs waved overhead and the roar was deafening. But though she believed in George McGovern and—like virtually everyone in Madison—confidently expected he’d trounce Nixon at the polls, something set her apart from other demonstrators. Drew was simply incapable of performing on command. Wondering whether she’d get a response, she looked up at her accidental companion and hollered, “I can never make myself chant!”
The woman leaned down. “Neither can I! I’m just part of the body count!” Even in a half yell, her voice was mellow, with an intriguing undertone that shivered through Drew. “I figure I’ve done my duty if I show up to wave a placard!”
Which made Drew glance at the hands holding that sign. Largish. Square and strong. Trustworthy. You airy-fairy idiot! she chastised herself. How can hands be trustworthy? And then she noticed what the woman was trying so hard to hide under her oversized sweater, her rumpled Army jacket: an hourglass figure that half the guys on campus had undoubtedly dreamed about. Malachi raised her eyes again, saw the stranger was studying her, too.
She knew what people always noticed first: Her delicate build. Gray eyes fringed with dark lashes. Clear, pale skin devoid of makeup. Long, straight hair—just then partly concealed by a fluffy pouf of a hat, protection from the chill. Much later Zoe would insist that she’d done her level best to pull back from Drew that night. Because she’d instantly concluded that this gorgeous creature was out of her league—besides, the woman didn’t look like a dyke.
Still they’d stood side by side through all the speeches, chatting in the occasional lull, feeling a thrill of tension twining between them, weaving some inexplicable connection. When the rally broke up, Drew found herself fighting the tide, working hard to stay close, succeeding.
“I’m freezing,” she announced as the crowd swept them along. “Want to join me for hot chocolate?”
Even though nothing was worse than falling for a straight woman, by then Zoe would have joined Drew for a week in hell—which she’d admit shortly thereafter. Throwing caution to the wind, she nodded. “I’d love to. I’m Zoe Compton, by the way.”
“Drew Malachi.”
The chocolate wasn’t the only thing hot that night. There was a fiery encounter with Nixon supporters after the rally. Cries of “Tricky Dick!” rose around them, quickly segueing into howls of “Dick’s a prick!” Guys from every point on the political spectrum were all jazzed up from hours of impassioned exhortation, eager for a little scrimmaging. With breathtaking speed, a testosterone-fueled scrum formed. Drew and Zoe only managed to escape that mob by dashing around the ragged outskirts. Holding hands.
Next there was the excessive heat in the Student Union—or so it had seemed to Drew, who removed article after article of clothing while both women sipped cocoa from scalding mugs. That enormous Cossack hat went first. Followed by her gloves, her crocheted
muffler. Then her heavy wool coat and a cardigan sweater. Zoe watched as those clothes piled up in their booth, visualized adding the remainder to the heap. And within a matter of hours she’d confess that she was startled when Malachi returned her steamy glances. With interest.
Zoe was completing a master’s degree in computer science, exhilarated by her new and promising field. Drew was a senior, an early childhood student, brimming with zany stories from her work-study job at the lab school. They couldn’t have been less intrigued by one another’s majors—or more turned on by their chance proximity. Long before either was ready to separate, it was time for the Student Union to close. After Drew donned all the clothing she’d shed, the pair stepped into an icy autumn night, each desperate to prolong the encounter, neither sure how to swing that.
“I have an apartment off campus,” Compton had volunteered at last, with a wary expression suggesting the offer might sound too overt, too crude.
“Lucky you,” Drew replied, knowing her roommate was already asleep, already snoring lustily.
“It’s just a few blocks away. If we went there, we could keep talking…”
“Not to mention…” Malachi said, looking directly into Zoe’s smoldering hazel eyes.
“I’m thinking the same thing.”
Zoe had only slept with earthbound mortals in the Math Department. And Drew had only fantasized about being with a woman. Feared that. Longed for it. Just inside Compton’s door, she said, “I haven’t done this before. Have you?”
“A few times,” Zoe answered, unwinding Drew’s muffler, removing the hat. “Never with anyone like you.”
“Then you can show me how it’s done.” Not feeling frightened at all.
“It begins like this,” Compton murmured, bending to kiss Drew, then breaking away, visibly shaken by the surge of feeling that flooded her.
But Drew stood on tiptoe, offering pliant lips. “I think I’d like more, please.”
The very things Zoe was most self-conscious about—those breasts, those hips, that profusion of curls at the juncture of her thighs—were the things Drew luxuriated in. And every feature she thought inadequate in herself was a marvel to Zoe. The trimness of her waist. The sculpted ribs. Her high, round breasts.
Lying on a mattress in the corner of an attic room, surrounded by stacks of books, they held one another in wavering candlelight, Zoe tracing the subtle curves of Drew’s body, Drew nestling into the lushness of Zoe. And it was Malachi who transformed the moment from cuddling sweetness to electric intensity. Taking one of Zoe’s nipples into her mouth, drawing it into tautness with her teeth, closing eager fingers around its mate. Feeling warmth pour through and out of her. Knowing she’d found her rightful place in the universe.
“Jesus God!” Compton cried. “This can’t be your first time!”
“I swear it. Show me what comes next.”
Which was Zoe’s mouth on every molecule of Drew’s flesh. Zoe’s tongue tantalizing every opening. Zoe’s strong hands lifting her hips. Zoe’s deft fingers finding a home inside her. Zoe tweaking every nerve ending until Drew’s climax went on forever.
She recovered slowly, then sat astride Compton, giving voice to words she’d never imagined speaking: “Do you feel how wet I am? That’s how much I want you still. That’s how wet I’ll make you.”
But too late. Because Zoe was already melting, and Drew’s hands slipped effortlessly over every secret part of that voluptuous body. And her tongue had to taste it. And her lips had to explore. And when Zoe came—moaning, shuddering in her arms—Malachi was astonished to find herself coming again. Writhing, bucking, weeping from joy.
It wasn’t so much that they knew instinctively how to please one another. It was that they knew how to ask, how to listen. No one had guessed that big, bold Zoe needed to be cradled gently, caressed softly, cherished. No one had suspected that Drew hungered for raw passion, yearned to consume and be consumed. No one understood how eager she was to shed that fraudulent aura of fragility.
In the middle of the night, she’d whispered, “Do you believe in love at first sight?”
“Never before,” Zoe answered, pulling her close, “but you make it easy to believe.”
“Ditto.”
At dawn, reluctant to separate, the women promised to meet for lunch. What they actually meant was they never wanted to let one another go. Yet by eight, Zoe had left to commune with her beloved machines and Drew was cutting across campus to change clothes before tackling the dreaded algebra test.
To Malachi’s everlasting mortification, the remainder of that day hadn’t unfolded as she and Zoe planned. Which was entirely her fault—she’d screwed things up almost beyond repair. When the women finally reunited, Drew learned exactly how much pain she’d inflicted. Because as she listened to Zoe describe every awful second since they’d said good-bye with almost cinematic detail, Drew felt she’d witnessed the damage firsthand.
That bleak night, red-eyed and distraught, Zoe had joined a longtime friend at a favored pizza place. She was pretending to scarf down her share of a supreme with extra cheese, but Rick wasn’t dumb. “You’re awfully quiet, Compton—even for you,” he said.
Unable to hold back any longer, Zoe told him about the McGovern rally, about meeting someone incredible, then taking her home.
“Who?”
“You wouldn’t know her—she’s in early ed. Name’s Drew Malachi.”
“A sweet, petite natural blonde? I met her when the Kappa Sigs painted classrooms at the lab school—and she’s memorable, to say the least. I can’t believe you got into her pants! How the hell did you manage that?”
Compton laughed through her grief. “I have charms of which you know naught.” Then she’d gritted her teeth and confessed the rest: “Malachi ditched me mere hours later.”
“Come again?”
“We were supposed to get together for lunch—”
“And?”
“I got to the Student Union early…” Zoe’s voice had trailed off while she silently reviewed her devastating afternoon. She’d been ravenous when she arrived, but not for any offering on the steam tables. At noon, heart pounding with excitement, she’d stared fixedly at the entrance. But forty terrifying minutes later, she was dashing inside the cafeteria, scanning the crowd for that singular fall of platinum hair. Finally she’d had to accept the obvious. Clearing her throat, Zoe said, “I got there early and stayed late, but the woman was a no-show.”
“Hell, Compton! You should have known it was too good to be true—just one more straight coed having the regulation lezzie fling before graduation.”
“She’s not like that, man!”
“As if you’d know right off the bat.”
“I do know…it was different…special…”
“Christ, Zoe! A woman like that wouldn’t have the slightest clue about your work…or your after-hours predilections.”
Zoe flashed back to that timeless interlude with Drew. To tingling thighs and spicy scents. To wet, wet fingers tracing indelible lines on her body, her heart, her mind. “I’ll give you half credit on that one, Rick.”
He unleashed a salacious grin. “Which half?”
“Watch yourself, old pal…before you’re a former friend.”
“Whoa! She dumps you, but I’m chopped liver?”
“She’ll be back.”
“In your dreams, sucker.”
“I can feel it,” Zoe insisted. “Something must have freaked her out. But she’ll work through it.”
Rick shook his head. “You’re delusional, babe. Give it up.”
Compton tore into her pizza to keep from tearing into Rick. One thing was certain: Malachi would have to make an effort to find her. They wouldn’t meet accidentally. The campus was too huge, their worlds too separate. And Zoe was way too proud to go looking for her.
Although Drew allowed three hellish days to pass without making contact, Zoe had been unable to take Rick’s advice. She simply couldn’t stop believing Malachi
would return. To complicate matters, she’d said, she couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. So she did what she always did in distress—she buried herself in programming, debugging every bit of code she could lay her hands on. Then she volunteered her services to all comers, introducing a clutch of clueless undergrads to the mysteries of the flow chart. And her instincts were sound. Malachi had finally phoned, sounding frantic.
“I’m so, so sorry, Zoe. Will you please see me? Will you let me explain?”
“If you promise not to touch me while we talk.”
“I promise,” Drew agreed, but slowly—so slowly—that Compton had felt a spark of hope.
They’d met at a coffee shop off campus, where again Drew removed that hat, her gloves, her jacket. Then she’d lowered her gaze. “I’m such a coward!”
“Because you bailed on me?”
“Because I didn’t tell you why.”
“You had your fun and now you’re done?”
Stormy eyes flashed in a pallid face. “You don’t believe that!”
“Is there another interpretation?” Asked in a voice like shattered glass.
“How about this: I tried, but failed, to choose my career over you?”
“Meaning?”
“As my roommate pointed out, Zoe, lesbians aren’t exactly top pick to teach preschoolers.”
“You told your roommate about us?”
Drew nodded, a hint of defiance in her posture. Even though that ugly exchange had cycled relentlessly through her mind for three bewildering days, she wouldn’t share the details. She’d made the mistake of confiding in Pam when she was still adrift in a dreamy haze conjured by her sensuous encounter with Zoe. To her friend, who was shocked that she’d slept with a butch like Compton on first meeting, Drew said only, “I didn’t see the point of waiting when it felt so right.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Pam had thundered. “You’re a child development major! Who lets dykes work with little kids?”
“But—”