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.
NAIRNE HOLTZ is the author of This One’s Going to Last Forever, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and The Skin Beneath, which won the Alice B. Lesbian Debut Fiction Award and made the shortlist for Quebec’s McAuslan First Book Prize.
THEDA HUDSON is a writer and spiritual advisor living in Colorado with two semi-feral cats, a thousand books and a Mary Poppins outfit complete with a toy bag she’s not afraid to use. Her work will appear in M. Christian’s Best S/M 3 anthology.
Editor of The Sweetest Kiss and the Lambda Literary Award Finalist, Where the Girls Are, D. L. KING’s short stories can be found in Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Women’s Erotica, Girl Crazy and Broadly Bound, among others. She’s published two novels and edits the erotica review site, Erotica Revealed. Find her at dlkingerotica.com.
KIRSTY LOGAN lives in Glasgow with her very own bitch goddess warrior queen. Kirsty writes at the Rumpus, Filthy Gorgeous Things, the Moose & Pussy, Oysters and Chocolate and in Girl Crush. She enjoys coffee cupcakes and sticking pins in maps. Get in touch at kirstylogan.com.
CATH
ERINE LUNDOFF is the author of Crave: Tales of Lust, Love and Longing and Night’s Kiss: Lesbian Erotica and editor of Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades: Lesbian Ghost Stories. She is the coeditor, with JoSelle Vanderhooft, of Hellebore and Rue: Tales of Queer Women and Magic and teaches writing classes at The Loft Literary Center. Website: visi.com/~clundoff.
KENZIE MATHEWS lives in Alaska and works at a public library. She paints landscapes, cooks, and walks her dogs when not writing.
GISELLE RENARDE is a proud Canadian, supporter of the arts and activist for women’s and LGBT rights. For information on Giselle and her work, visit her website at gisellerenarde.webs.com.
SINCLAIR SEXSMITH runs the personal online writing project Sugarbutch Chronicles: The Sex, Gender, and Relationship Adventures of a Kinky Queer Butch Top at sugarbutch. net. Publications include: Best Lesbian Erotica, Sometimes She Lets Me: Butch/Femme Erotica and Visible: A Femmethology Volume 2. Sinclair also facilitates workshops on sex, gender and relationships.
RENÉE STRIDER has published fiction in the Erotic Interludes series, Fantasy, Read These Lips, Best Lesbian Love Stories: Summer Flings, Toe to Toe, Khimairal Ink and Girl Crazy. She has lived throughout the United States and in the Netherlands and now resides in Canada.
XAN WEST is the pseudonym of a New York City BDSM/sex educator. Xan’s “First Time Since,” won honorable mention for the 2008 NLA John Preston Short Fiction Award. Xan appears in Best SM Erotica 2 and 3, Best Women’s Erotica 2008 and 2009, Hurts So Good and Daddies. Email Xan at [email protected].
ABOUT THE EDITORS
KATHLEEN WARNOCK is a playwright, fiction writer and editor. Her erotica has appeared (under the name Kyle Walker) in Best Lesbian Erotica, A Woman’s Touch and Friction 7. Her other fiction, essays and reviews have been seen in ROCKRGRL, BUST, Ms., Metal Maidens, It’s Only Rock and Roll, Gargoyle, American Book Review, New Directions for Women and the liner notes for the Joan Jett CD Unfinished Business. Her plays have been produced in New York, the United Kingdom and regionally. Rock the Line was produced by Emerging Artists Theatre in New York and won the Robert Chesley Award for Emerging Playwright. Grieving for Genevieve won the John Golden Award for Playwriting. Some Are People won the Arts & Letters Award for Drama. She is curator of the Robert Chesley/ Jane Chambers Playwrights Project for TOSOS Theater, and Playwrights Company Manager for Emerging Artists Theater. She is Ambassador of Love for the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival and a member of the Dramatists Guild.
LEA DELARIA is a jazz musician, Broadway diva, actor, writer and stand-up comic. Her first jazz album was Play It Cool. Her second, Double Standards, debuted on the Billboard Jazz Chart at #6. The first openly gay comic to appear on national television in the United States (“Arsenio Hall,” 1993), she has toured the world with her one-of-a-kind blend of cool jazz and in-your-face comedy. Lea has recorded two comedy albums and developed specials for HBO, Showtime, Comedy Central, CBC, WNBC and Channel 4 UK. She has appeared on daytime and primetime TV and on many talk shows. Her film credits include The First Wives Club and Sgt. Bilko. Lea made an acclaimed Broadway debut in The Public Theater’s revival of On the Town. She returned to Broadway to play “Eddie” and “Dr. Scott” in The Rocky Horror Show. Her latest CD, The Live Smoke Sessions, landed her on the Grammy ballot in 2009. Her book, Lea’s Book of Rules for the World, is currently in its third printing.
Copyright © 2010 by Kathleen Warnock. Introduction copyright © 2010 by Lea DeLaria.
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in newspaper, magazine, radio, or television reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
Published in the United States by Cleis Press Inc.,
2246 Sixth Street, Berkeley, California 94710.
eISBN : 978-1-573-44689-1
“Carried Away in Santa Fe” by Charlotte Dare originally appeared on Oystersandchocolate. com; “Little Lou” is an excerpt from Gala Strip, a novel by Gala Fur (La Musardine, Paris); an earlier version of “Most Valuable Player” by Nairne Holtz was published in Delicate Friction (Bullock Publications); “Tree Hugger” by Catherine Lundoff originally appeared in Women in Uniform: Medics and Soldiers and Cops, Oh My! (Regal Crest Books); “Painted Nails and Puppy Dog Tails” by Giselle Renarde originally appeared in Lesbian Love (Xcite e-Books); a shorter version of “The Stripper and the Butch Wannabe” by Renée Strider appeared in the online anthology readtheselips.com.
Best Lesbian Erotica 2011 Page 18