Best Lesbian Romance 2011

by Radclyffe

  Dozens of voices answered, and my heart stirred, my soul singing with them. I jumped up, shook myself and answered her call. Then we were running, legs pounding, muscles stretching, hearts pumping. The Pack broke into the forest and although I couldn’t see her, I knew where she was, just as I knew how to decipher the sounds and scents of the forest. I followed her trail along with a few others, joyfully, freely, with no sense of time, no beginning, no end. Only the thrill of the hunt and the feel of her ahead, calling me. I don’t how long I ran or how far, but I gradually became aware of the silence descending upon me. I caught a glimpse of silver slipping between the trees and realized that she and I had outrun the Pack. We were alone in the forest. I slowed and cautiously padded forward into a small clearing. She appeared like a whisper of smoke and I halted, waiting.

  She circled me, sniffed me, bumped her shoulder against mine. I waited still, shivering not from exhaustion, but excitement. She rose and set her chest on my shoulders, telling me my place—beneath her. I trembled under her weight, my heart pounding. Her hot breath teased my ear and I rumbled in pleasure. With a powerful thrust of her haunches, she dismounted and, gently setting her muzzle on top of mine, rubbed it back and forth. Then she dipped her head but not her gaze. She would never lower her gaze to anyone—Were or human. Tentatively, I stroked the underside of my jaw over her nose. She allowed the contact only for a few seconds before backing away. Then she turned and raced toward the forest, glancing once over her shoulder, one ear flickering. An invitation. This time when I rushed to follow, she slowed until I ran by her side, and together we hunted.

  When the moon slipped down and the night edged toward dawn, she led me to a shelter of fallen pines. She rested her head on her forelegs, studying me solemnly as I curled up by her side. Carefully, cautiously, I edged closer. When she didn’t move away, I settled my head on her shoulder. She arched her neck over my back, and together we slept.

  “I need to leave,” Sylvan murmured, “before the pack sees us.”

  I’d awakened with nude women I barely knew before, but never on a soft bed of pine needles beneath a crystal sky. And never had I fit so perfectly with anyone. I lay on my back with her head on my shoulder. Her hand rested in the center of my chest, her thigh over mine. I stroked her shoulder.

  “How many rules are we breaking?”

  “Too many for me to count.” Sylvan pushed away and sat up, running her hands through her hair. “Can you find your way back?”

  “I’ll follow you.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “I can smell you.” I ran my hand over my chest, down the center of my abdomen, and watched her eyes follow the motion. They were blue again, rimmed in gold, and I remembered her wolf shimmering in the moonlight, a great shining beast. “Everywhere I go, I carry you on my skin.”

  Her face was completely expressionless. “Don’t let anyone hear you say that.”

  I sat up, my skin still warm where she’d lain against me. “Is there an alpha male in the wings? Is that the problem?”

  “That’s not for you to know.” She stood quickly, her jaw set, the word whelp hanging unspoken in the air.

  “I know I have a lot to lear—”

  “Yes, you have a lot to learn.” She stared down at me. “And a place to earn. You’ll be challenged.”

  “Why?” I rose and took a step toward her, watching her muscles harden as she reacted to the threat of me in her space. I shook my head. “I’m not challenging you.” I dipped my head and said softly, “Alpha.”

  “You’re not submissive. You’re not Wereborn, and…”

  “And what?” I feathered my fingers over her cheek and she let me touch her for a few seconds before she edged back, a tight frown eclipsing the brief tenderness I’d glimpsed.

  “And you carry my scent,” she said sharply.

  “Why? Why do I?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. But…” She gestured to the ground where the faint indentations of our bodies lingered. “This can’t happen again.”

  I was powerless. I wasn’t even capable of shifting at will yet. She could tear me apart if she wanted, and she would be well within her right. The Pack would demand it if they knew I’d dared touch her. But I didn’t care. I crossed the distance she’d put between us, cradled her face in my hands and kissed her. After a heartbeat, her lips parted and her tongue swept over mine, hungry and unhesitant. She flooded me with her wild scent, her raw power, her hidden tenderness. I felt her call in my deepest reaches, and I moaned, aching to answer. She grasped my wrists, forced my arms down and broke away.

  “This can never happen again,” she repeated, her voice hoarse.

  I touched my chest, over my heart. “I am your wolf to command, Alpha. But you cannot rule what I carry in here.”

  I watched her race toward the trees, as graceful and strong in human form as wolf. There would be other nights, other hunts. Until then I would carry her on my skin, in my senses, in every part of me. I would find her again, when our hearts ran free.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  CHEYENNE BLUE (cheyenneblue.com) was born too late to be a hippie and is happiest when writing or traveling. Her erotica has appeared in Best Women’s Erotica, Mammoth Best New Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Lesbian Romance and many other sites. After many years in Ireland, she is now living in Australia.

  REBECCA S. BUCK hails from Nottingham, England, but has spent a lot of her time in Slovenia in the former Yugoslavia. Her first novel, Truths, was published in 2010 and her second, Ghosts of Winter, in 2011.

  ELAINE BURNES lives in Massachusetts where, after years of writing and editing nonfiction, she became sick of reality and turned to fiction. She has published numerous short stories, including “The Perfect Gift” in Skull and Crossbones, a pirate anthology.

  RACHEL KRAMER BUSSEL (rachelkramerbussel.com) is an author, editor and blogger. She hosts In the Flesh Reading Series and has edited over thirty anthologies, including Orgasmic, Passion, Fast Girls, Spanked, Bottoms Up and Do Not Disturb. She teaches erotic writing workshops nationwide and covers sex, dating, books and pop culture for numerous publications.

  MERINA CANYON began writing stories when she was six years old and much later earned an MFA in fiction. Her stories have appeared in Best Lesbian Love Stories, Sinister Wisdom and Fraglit.com.

  Want to read more by ANDREA DALE (cyvarwydd.com)? Check out Fairy Tale Lust, Sweet Love and The Sweetest Kiss, among others. When not writing, she’s a world traveler who hopes to visit Hawaii soon for a third time.

  CHARLOTTE DARE’s (myspace.com/charlotte_dare) fiction has appeared in Lesbian Cowboys; Where the Girls Are: Urban Lesbian Erotica; Girl Crazy; Island Girls; Wetter; Purple Panties; Ultimate Lesbian Erotica 2008 & 2009 and Tales of Travelrotica for Lesbians Vol. 2.

  CLIFFORD HENDERSON (cliffordhenderson.net) lives and plays in Santa Cruz, California, where she runs The Fun Institute, a school of improv and solo performance, with her partner of eighteen years. Her novels include Fore Word Review Book of the Year gold medalist The Middle of Somewhere.

  THEDA HUDSON is a writer and spiritual advisor/teacher living in Colorado with two semiferal cats, two thousand books and a Mary Poppins outfit complete with a big toy bag that she’s not afraid to use. She likes her writing to share the things women don’t usually get to talk about.

  SACCHI GREEN is based in western Massachusetts, but she does get around. She has contributed to dozens of publications, generally of the erotic persuasion, and has edited/coedited six anthologies herself, most recently Girl Crazy and Lambda Literary Award-winner Lesbian Cowboys.

  CATHERINE LUNDOFF (visi.com/~clundoff ) 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 teaches writing classes at The Loft Literary Center.

  ANNA MEADOWS’s latest work appeared in Best Lesbian Romance 2010. She is a part-time executive assistant, part-time lesbian housew
ife and a volunteer for the No on 8, Equality for All campaign and for ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives.

  COLETTE MOODY gets turned on by classic movies, witty banter, politics and women with big sexy brains. She has written two historical novels, including the Lambda Literary Award-winner The Sublime and Spirited Voyage of Original Sin and The Seduction of Moxie.

  L. L. RAAND (llraand.com) writes the paranormal romance series, The Midnight Hunters (Book One: The Midnight Hunt). Writing as Radclyffe, she has selections in Best Lesbian Erotica 2006-09, and her solo erotica collection Radical Encounters is a 2010 IPPY silver medalist.

  MIEL ROSE is a fierce, rural, low-income, high-intensity queer femme bombshell, just for starters. Her porn stories have appeared in Best Women’s Erotica 2008, Best Lesbian Erotica 2008, Best Lesbian Love Stories 2009 and Ultimate Lesbian Erotica 2009, and she has published a personal essay on femme identity in Visible: a Femmethology Vol.1.

  JAMIE SCHAFFNER is a 2009 Kirkwood Award finalist and has studied at the UCLA Writers’ Program. Get the Girl is an excerpt from the novel of the same name. She lives in Los Angeles with her wife.

  KATHLEEN WARNOCK’s work has previously appeared in several volumes of Best Lesbian Erotica, A Woman’s Touch and Friction 7. Kathleen edits books in the near-New York City area by day and has appeared onstage in Ed Valentine’s play, Women Behind the Bush.

  ABOUT THE EDITOR

  RADCLYFFE is a retired surgeon, award-winning author, and publisher with over thirty-five novels and anthologies in print. Seven of her works have been Lambda Literary Award finalists including the Lambda Literary Award winners Erotic Interludes 2: Stolen Moments edited with Stacia Seaman; In Deep Waters 2 and the romance Distant Shores, Silent Thunder. In addition to editing Best Lesbian Romance 2009-11 (Cleis Press), she has edited Erotic Interludes 2-5 and Romantic Interludes 1 and 2 with Stacia Seaman (Bold Strokes Books). Her solo erotica collection Radical Encounters and her romance Secrets in the Stone are 2010 IPPY silver medalists. Secrets in the Stone (an RWA Prism Award winner), the intrigue Justice for All, and her short-fiction anthology Romantic Interludes 2 are all 2010 Fore Word Review Book of the Year finalists. As L. L. Raand she writes the paranormal romance series The Midnight Hunters (Book One: The Midnight Hunt). She has selections in multiple anthologies including Best Lesbian Erotica 2006-9, is the recipient of the 2003 and 2004 Alice B. Readers’ award for her body of work and is a member of the Saints and Sinners Literary Hall of Fame.

  Copyright © 2011 by Radclyffe.

  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 or recording, or by 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 : 978-1-573-44695-2

  “Lost and Found” ©2010 by Andrea Dale first appeared in Lesbian Lust (Cleis Press, 2010); “Boiled Peas” ©2009 by Clifford Henderson first appeared in Romantic Interludes 2: Secrets (Bold Strokes Books, 2009); “When Hearts Run Free” ©2009 by L. L. Raand first appeared in Romantic Interludes 2: Secrets (Bold Strokes Books, 2009).