Best Lesbian Erotica 2015

by Laura Antoniou

  THE LAST LAST TIME

  BD Swain

  It was the sound of her boots on the sidewalk that buckled me. Goddamn her. Coffee. Seemed innocent. “Let’s talk,” she said, as if we could manage that without the sudden swerve and crash. Big fucking joke. Every time I saw her face, I thought, Too much damage, and then fell right into the middle of it all again. Over and over. The swerve. The crash. All that damage.

  We sat there. She stared at her coffee. Poured too much milk and too much sugar in. “Candy coffee,” I said, like I always said, and kicked my own goddamn shin under the table for saying something I always said. I drank my tea. Fuck her and her coffee. She mumbled. I had to ask her to repeat herself. She stared up at me, sad eyed, and mumbled something about how things were good with her and her new girlfriend. And I thought, Fuck you and your fucking girlfriend, and said, “That’s cool. I’m good too.” And then she stared back down at her coffee and stirred it and sipped it a little and wiped her mouth. She wiped her mouth after every sip. Every bite. I used to think it was adorable. Now I wondered what the fuck was wrong with her.

  We held our dialogue close to the script.

  “How’s your job?”

  “It’s stupid. It’s not my real job.”

  “Are you quitting?”

  “Yeah, I need to quit.”

  “But are you looking?”

  Silence. She looked out the window pretending that she recognized someone, which I knew was just a bullshit way of avoiding the question.

  “Fuck it. Find something else.”

  Silence. A sip of coffee and her napkin across her mouth.

  “I’m serious. You hate that job. You should find something else.” I kicked myself again. What the fuck do I care? I’m not her goddamn mother. I’m not her girlfriend.

  “I’ll work it out.”

  It went like this. On and on. Pointless. Irritating. Me saying shit I didn’t really want to say, her avoiding my stupid questions. Rubbing our raw wounds up against one another. Stupid. I got another cup of tea. We sat mostly silent. I tried to remind myself why I was sitting there. “Let’s stay close,” we’d decided, “Let’s not be stupid and ignore each other and pretend this never happened or feel like we have to hate each other.” I was so sick of that bullshit. The scene was too small for that crap. So many people you had to call up before a party and tell them, “So and so, your ex, will be there,” and blah blah blah and then phone call after phone call about what a shit this or that person was and how they can’t stand her anymore and won’t be in the same room and fuck that fucking crap. Fuck it.

  Right. Okay. That’s why I agreed to go sit down over coffee and watch her stare silently and mumble about her new girlfriend and pretend that we’re all casual with each other and it’s cool. I blew out my breath and ran my fingers through my hair. I leaned way back in my chair and spread my knees wide. Butch to butch, here we were. We could be buddies, right?

  I cleared our glasses and we headed out for a cigarette. I hate smoking, but I always smoked with her. It seemed sexy. Still does. I liked the way we walked down the sidewalk together. Side by side, boots hitting the pavement hard. Jeans slouched down resting on the curves of our asses. Her vintage shirts. Her perfect cuffed sleeves. I usually had my jacket on. Zipped up tight. Shoulders hunched. We walked in silence. Smoking. I crushed my cigarette out under my heel while she lit up another. I jammed my hands deep in my jeans pockets and nudged her with my hip. She laughed. I looked at her. “C’mon,” she said and jerked her head toward one of the dozens of bars open in the morning in the city. Our city. The city that felt like ours, together, because we met the first week we both lived here.

  It felt so good, so right, to drink those beers together. It wasn’t ten in the morning yet, and I felt the buzz hit me halfway into the bottle. We didn’t say anything. We drank and read all the words on the coasters, the labels on the bottles, the signs behind the bar. She turned around and leaned her back against the bar and looked at the empty tables and the one old man sitting there with his drink. She stared at him when she talked to me. “Listen. I’m glad we’re going to do this. Stay friends, I mean. I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she said. That felt like bullshit. She started fucking some other girl and dropped me without warning weeks ago. I was pretty sure what she’d do without me was exactly what she was doing already. But I didn’t want to lose her either. “Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

  “You’re my best friend, you know,” she said, and I shoved her hard enough that she fell off the bar stool and had to grab the spinning seat to keep from landing on her ass. “Fucking jerk,” she said, and we laughed. I ordered us two more beers and two whiskeys. Fuck it. We were going to get drunk enough, I guessed. We deserved it. I didn’t think we’d fall out like we did. But we did. Fall out of line, I mean. Fall out of our senses. Maybe I should have known. I just didn’t think she was still into me in that way. So I didn’t look for it. Or maybe I did. Maybe it’s what I had planned the whole time. Sitting there with my knees wide and my hand resting between my legs. Sucking on the bottle good and hard. Looking stoned. Looking dead to everything. Hard and stiff, just like she always liked me. Just like I wasn’t.

  “I need to piss,” I said and slid off the bar stool, walking slowly toward the bathroom, knowing my ass looked great in those jeans. I had a drunk smile on my face when I pushed the door open. I stood there to take it in. I love dirty bathrooms in bars. I love them. The sticky floor with wadded-up toilet paper jammed into corners. The tiny porcelain sink that would pull right off of that wall any day now. The floor was tiled with square-inch black and white tiles. Filthy. The toilet bowl permanently stained with a rust-colored ring. I wanted to stand to pee but I’ve never been good at that and especially not when I’m drunk. I squatted over the toilet with my jeans held at my knees. “Maybe we’ll fuck in here before we go,” I thought. Stupid idea. I shook my head to rattle the thought out of there. The water in the tap was hot, really hot. I cupped my hands and splashed my face over and over again. I ran wet hands through my hair until it was all slicked down. I combed through it with my fingers and wiped my face on my shirttails. I looked at my teeth. “I’m stalling,” I said out loud and turned to go back.

  “Rudolph Valentino,” she said, and whistled at me. I slicked my hair with a smile. “Errol Flynn,” I answered. I never liked Valentino. She never remembered anything. Why was I sitting here strutting for her. Preening. Fuck her. Nothing was right between us when we were going out. Nothing. The fucking was great. It was everything else that was a total disaster. But when the fucking is great. When you hook up the way we did. Lost little puppies in a big new world. Well, the fucking can get you pretty far. The fucking was unlike anything I’d ever known before. Jerk my pants down, bend me over, shove spit-covered fingers into my holes. That kind of fucking. Nothing about sweet kisses and polite little pets. No more fawning about how soft each other’s cheeks were. This was fucking. Like boys. Our tiny little cocks. Ramrod stiff. Stiff jeans. Shiny boots. Thick belts. Slicked hair. Fall in line, little boy, because this is how you show it here. I fell in line for her. Or she fell in line for me. Or we both fell in line because that’s what you fucking do.

  The fucking. The way we fucked. Tossing back and forth. You fuck me. No, you fuck me. We both wanted to be fucked. We both wanted someone stronger than either of us. Or weaker. We both wanted something that was more opposite. Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t think she knew. How could we know anything? How can you figure anything out when the fucking is so good and you’re both new? I remember the time she grabbed my stiff, black comb out of my back pocket and held it against my neck. It hurt like a knife. It felt dangerous. I didn’t feel like a kid playing dress up. I felt tough. Dangerous. How I wanted to feel. She cut my back with that comb. Raking it across my shoulders, she let it bite into me. Jagged red lines.

  I felt the booze swirl around in my brain. The warm rush in my belly. I stared at her with my wet lower lip hanging open.
A dog. She was telling me some story. Something dumb. She was shaking her head and laughing and telling me about some asshole on the bus. Something about makeup. Or maybe it was a pregnant lady. I wasn’t listening to her. “I want you to fuck me,” I said, too loud, in the middle of her story. She looked at her knees for a second and then grabbed my arm and we headed out the door.

  She walked ahead of me, still gripping my arm, and led me to her place. She stumbled off the curb once and nearly took us both down, but she never looked at me. Not until we got inside her apartment. When the door closed she turned around and shoved me up against it. She grabbed my crotch and spat her words at me. “You want me to fuck you? You don’t hate me yet?” she hissed. The words stung. Prophetic. I was going to hate her after this, I knew. It didn’t matter. Or maybe it did. Maybe that’s why I wanted it.

  I moved slowly as I turned around and put my palms flat on the door. My boots slid apart as I stuck my ass out for her. I closed my eyes and opened my throat when her arm snaked around me. Her hand grabbed my belt. All the anger left me. All the frustration and hurt melted. I had her. Now. Right now. She wanted me, and I was right here. Any thought of how she didn’t love me disappeared. All my tortured images of her fucking someone else vanished. Whatever pain I had would be made physical.

  She punched at my clit through my jeans. Her head pushed into my back between my shoulder blades. I could hear her crying. “Shut up and fuck me,” I said. I needed her angry or desperate, not sad. She shoved my head against the door. Pain shot through me. We were both suddenly struck as if by lightning. She unbuckled my belt but left my jeans buttoned as she scraped them down and off over my thighs. My underwear was pulled down too. She left it just below my ass. The elastic bit into my thighs. One hand held my head against the door and the other jerked my ass back against her. She slammed her hips against me. Slamming her jeans, her cunt up against my bared bottom. Without warning, her fingers jammed into me. Her other arm gripped me tight around my middle. Her head sunk against my back. I heard her boots scraping the wood. I heard her grunt. “Fuck me,” I spat out anytime I wanted to say something else.

  I rolled my ass higher for her. I wanted her to see how I craved her fingers deep inside me. “Don’t you want to fuck this ass?” I snapped. She pulled her fingers out of my pussy and grabbed my neck, starting to drag me down the hall. I straightened up and stumbled toward her bedroom. Shuffling with my pants still around my knees. I crawled onto her bed without being led and pulled my jeans down to my ankles for her. “This,” I said, and wagged my ass at her on all fours, rolling my back. I heard her open the closet. I felt the hairs on my neck stiffen as I listened. Her box. The glove snapping onto her hand. The wheezing sound of her nearly empty bottle of lube. “This?” she said hoarsely, and I felt her in my ass. “Yes,” I said, and now my own big fat tears rolled down my face. I buried my hot, shameful face in her blanket and brought my fists to my chin. I pounded my ass against her as much as she slammed into me. “Harder,” I spat through my teeth, “Harder. Harder. Harder.”

  I wanted her to hurt me until I couldn’t feel anymore. None of the pleasure was there. Nothing left of the way it feels when you’re in love or think you’re in love or at least aren’t in that category of ex, lost, already used. That’s how I felt. Already used. The empty wrapper of something that tasted good a long time ago. I was crying. She was yelling. No words, but something animal. Something hurt.

  This is what I needed. This last fuck where everything felt desperate and wrong. The one that would remind me not to do it again. This is what I wanted. I don’t know about her. I didn’t care.

  She fucked me hard in the ass for a long time. I finally reached down between my legs and jerked my aching clit off for an orgasm that hurt like a pulled muscle, a deep cramp. I doubled over on my side and held my knees to my chest. I felt the snot dripping on my upper lip. I didn’t care. She was on her back in front of me. Her chest heaving up and down. I saw her smile. Her wide grin. Her eyes open and darting around. That clean look she gets after she fucks me.

  I fucked her too. Her knees thrown up by her shoulders. All of my fingers and nearly my whole hand inside her. I leaned my weight onto her shins. She held her knees. I fucked her hard and fast. Nothing mattered but her feeling the ghost of me in her cunt after I left. The raw places on her skin.

  She held her breath just before she came. The veins bulged in her neck. I watched her. I waited. It was time. She jerked her whole body and nearly knocked me off the bed. I slid off the mattress onto my feet, pulling up my pants. I didn’t say anything as I turned to go. “Wait,” she started to say but the word got cut off halfway. “Yeah, never mind,” she ended.

  Walking home, I lit a cigarette and took a deep drag and very suddenly felt more drunk than I’d thought I was. My stomach pulled back into a tight ball and I knew what was coming. “Just get home,” I said to myself. A mantra I chanted block by block until I turned the key in my door and ran to the toilet to throw up. “Fuck,” I said to myself, my head in my hands, and let the tears cleanse my sweet face. I was okay. I really was. I knew it.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  NAN ANDREWS is a trained pastry chef who finds food and women equally erotic. Her stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, including Spankalicious, Voyeur Eyes Only and Where the Girls Are: Urban Lesbian Erotica. She is a member of Sapphic Planet, the Erotic Authors Association and ERWA; she lives in Northern California.

  AVERY CASSELL (averycassell.wordpress.com) is a writer, painter and cartoonist. Their work has appeared in Anything that Moves, Whipped: 20 Erotic Stories of Female Dominance, Sonic Erotica and More Five Minute Erotica. They live in San Francisco and are currently working on a memoir, a graphic novel and an erotic novel.

  Called a “legendary erotica heavy-hitter” (by the über-legendary Violet Blue), ANDREA DALE (AndreaDaleAuthor.com) writes sizzling erotica with a generous dash of romance. Her work has appeared in twenty years’ worth of Best volumes as well as about a hundred other anthologies from Soul’s Road Press, Harlequin Spice and Cleis Press.

  ALEXANDRA DELANCEY has had a passion for words ever since she could first speak, and in later years developed no less a passion for sexuality. After graduating in English Lit, she’s worked as a commercial writer by day, while combining her twin passions by night. She has just finished writing her first novel.

  SACCHI GREEN (sacchi-green.blogspot.com) has published stories in a hip-high stack of erotic books, and edited nine anthologies, including Girl Fever, Women with Handcuffs, Lesbian Cowboys (winner of a Lambda Literary Award) and Wild Girls, Wild Nights, all from Cleis Press.

  TINA HORN is a writer, educator, and media-maker who produces and hosts the sexuality podcast Why Are People Into That?! She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from Sarah Lawrence. Her publication credits include Vice, Nerve and Best Sex Writing 2015. Born in Northern California, Tina now lives in Manhattan with a very sweet bear.

  THEDA HUDSON’s (thedahudson.com) work has appeared in Best Lesbian Erotica 2011, Best Lesbian Romance 2011 and 2012 and Dyke Valiant, an erotic urban fantasy novel. For those wishing to learn more about cancer or folks just wanting to poke a stiffy at the Big C with “Fuck Cancer” merchandise, visit letsfcancer.com.

  CAMMY MAY HUNNICUTT is Mississippi choirgirl and athlete corrupted by beauty pageants, lingerie modeling and much worse. She writes erotica, mostly scantily disguised memoirs. Her first book, Considerations Prior to Shooting Your Boyfriend Right in The Nuts was a flash-in-the-pan best seller on Amazon.

  DEBORAH JANNERSON’s work has been published in Bitch, Curve, Vertigo, Redlands Review, Bust, Nola Live, BookByYou, Deconstructing Glee, A Room of Her Own, Crazy with a Side of Awesome Sauce and Women’s Review of Books. Jannerson resides in New Orleans.

  LEE ANN KEPLE is an educator and comedian. Strategist by day, she inhabits any number of characters by night, as part of Vancouver’s vibrant improv scene. She is an aficionado and defender of all manner of human commun
ications—including porn.

  KATIE KING, a longtime member of the common name club, is probably not the Katie King you are looking for. Her most recent writing project is inspired by the misdirected erotic emails to her doppelgangers worldwide that end up in her inbox—beware! Her favorite writing location is in bed.

  CATHERINE LUNDOFF (catherinelundoff.com) is the author of Silver Moon: A Women of Wolf’s Point Novel (Lethe Press, 2012) as well as the short-story collections Night’s Kiss (Lethe Press, 2009), Crave (Lethe Press, 2007) and A Day at the Inn, A Night at the Palace and Other Stories (Lethe Press, 2011).

  JEAN ROBERTA (JeanRoberta.com) has taught English in a Canadian university for a quarter century. Over one hundred of her erotic stories have appeared in print anthologies, including five previous editions of Best Lesbian Erotica, plus The Flight of the Black Swan: A Bawdy Novella (Lethe) and three single-author collections.

  MIEL ROSE (mielrose.com) is a rural queer femme raised in the wilds of Vermont. She is a witchy healer, textile artist and hairstylist. Find her writing in various erotica anthologies including The Harder She Comes and Leather Ever After, or look for her book Overflow: Tales of Butch-Femme Love, Sex, and Desire.

  LISABET SARAI (lisabetsarai.com) writes in many genres, but F/F fiction is one of her favorites. Her lesbian erotica credits include contributions to Lambda Award-winner Where the Girls Are, Ippie-winning Carnal Machines, Best Lesbian Romance 2012 and Coming Together: Girl on Girl. Lisabet currently lives in Southeast Asia.

  BD SWAIN (bdswain.com) is a butch dyke who started writing queer smut because of a deep need to do so. Pushing her sexual expression is what makes her feel the most alive.

  ANNA WATSON sends big big love to her queer brothers and sisters in Western Mass. For more sexy butch/femme lovin’, see Best Lesbian Erotica 2012, Take Me There, Best Lesbian Romance 2012, and The Harder She Comes among others. Also, take a look at Laz-E-Femme Press on Facebook. Kick off your pumps and read!