The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica

by Barbara Cardy

  “Anna, stop it!” I hissed.

  She grinned. “Play along, it’s a game,” she said.

  I couldn’t help grinning back. So while she brought herself off loudly, I interjected comments like, “Nearly there madam, sorry about the pain,” and, “Okay if you can just bend your fingers a bit I think we’ll soon have you out of here,” until she’d come.

  I led her out, into a circle of awed, chattering women. She shook her hand as though it hurt and clutched at me.

  “Thank you officer,” she said. “I couldn’t have done it without you.” Then she winked.

  I continued my rounds with a smile on my face. I’d misjudged her. I couldn’t wait for my adventure in a month’s time – Anna was well up for it!

  Bringing Back the Light

  Sophie Mouette

  We were in the kitchen, lingering over empty bowls that had held minestrone, watching snowflakes waft promisingly downward and then evaporate upon hitting the muddy ground, when Gail asked, “So, are you coming to my parents’ on Christmas?”

  I shrugged, trying to look nonchalant. “Not sure, yet. I appreciate the invitation, but . . .”

  Gail came around behind my chair and kissed the top of my head. “But the commercial holiday with the cast-of-thousands thing isn’t to your taste? It’s not really mine, either, but it’s my parents and my three siblings and their spouses and their kids. That makes it a little easier.”

  She sighed. “Would you believe Brett’s letter to Santa this year was three pages long?”

  “Big handwriting?” Brett was her seven-year-old son.

  “He used my dad’s computer to make sure Santa could read it! And most of the stuff on it is either TV tie-ins or war toys.” She shrugged. “What can you do? It’s not like I can separate him from the world.”

  I leaned back against her. “Even if you did, it wouldn’t help. When I was Brett’s age, my parents were living off the grid up in the Cascades and home-schooling me.” Which Gail probably had guessed, me having a name like Yarrow Dragonwind. “My grandmother sent me Barbies and I got hooked on them.”

  Gail roared with laughter. “Yarrow, admit it! You just loved those big Barbie breasts, even when you were little.”

  Relieved by the change of topic – and knowing she’d relish an opportunity for spontaneous sex while Brett was safely at a friend’s house for the afternoon – I turned around my chair so I could cup her breasts. “If I liked Barbie breasts, it was because I didn’t know how much fun real ones were. Especially yours.” Gail’s weren’t exactly Barbie-proportioned, but they were lovely and full on her otherwise small frame. That was nice, but what I adored about them was their sensitivity, how even a light caress would distract her and anything more serious would turn her brains to mush.

  It was always fun, and sometimes it was damn convenient. Right now I really didn’t want to talk about Christmas with her family.

  It’s not for the reasons you might think. After Gail’s disaster of a marriage, they were so delighted to see her with someone who made her happy that they’d have welcomed a fire-breathing three-headed Martian if it were good to Gail, let alone a harmless granola dyke. And all of Gail’s relatives whom I’d met were genuinely nice and eager to make me feel like part of the family.

  If anything, that made it worse. I could have handled a holiday soap opera in the role of The Queer Daughter’s Dicey Girlfriend. But the idea of spending Christmas with a close family made me want to hide under my duvet with a pile of hankies and not come out until spring.

  Concentrating on making Gail writhe in sexual ecstasy seemed like a much better plan than working myself up into a panic. But even that pleasure only took me so far.

  Her hot, responsive body distracted me nicely for a while. I tongued her nipples until she begged for mercy, then pulled her jeans off, knelt between her legs and savoured the smoky, spicy delight of her until she cried out. She came, squirting as she often does, splashing onto the kitchen floor, and I laughed and used her shirt to wipe it up. But when she went to reciprocate, I couldn’t lose myself in the sensation. Perched on the counter, I felt her clever hands and tongue doing things that would usually work like magic. Instead of getting all juiced up, though, I found myself getting more and more melancholy.

  Finally, Gail noticed that, while I wasn’t exactly crying, my eyes were at least as wet as my pussy. She stopped what she was doing and just held me. I wrapped my arms and legs around her, pressed my face against her shoulder and just shook. I couldn’t really cry. It had been too many years and I had cried myself out. Crying would have been easier.

  Finally I could talk. “I hate Christmas,” was what came out.

  “Something to do with your parents?”

  I nodded. “Dying in that fire when I was in college, with my little brother. It was Christmas night – that’s the part I don’t usually tell people because it bothers them too much. And Oak was . . .”

  Gail did the math. “He must have been about the same age as Brett. Okay, I can see why you hate Christmas, and why Christmas with my family is scary.”

  “It was never a holiday we celebrated, so I don’t even have good memories to balance the horror. It’s just the day my whole family died.”

  “You must have some good memories of this time of year. What about Winter Solstice – Yule?”

  Gail hadn’t been raised pagan as I had, but it was something she’d become interested in since we’d been together. She embraced the principles of it, but was still learning about the rituals and the history. Just yesterday we’d discussed the pagan origins of Christmas, agreeing that the Christian holiday itself had been almost buried in a snowstorm of commercialism.

  I sighed. “That one’s got too many good memories. My last Yule with my family was almost perfect. We did a beautiful ritual out in the snowy woods behind the house, and then came inside and lit candles everywhere and exchanged gifts – we never gave big presents, just some small thing that would be meaningful – and stayed up until dawn to praise the sun’s return. Only I was a little distracted because I had a new girlfriend and was leaving the next day to spend the rest of break with her. The house burned down while I was digesting my first Christmas dinner.”

  She shook her head, kissed me again, and pulled away from me long enough to put on tea water and let us both get re-dressed. By the time we were snuggled on the living room couch, tea in hand, I was composed again, trying to pretend my meltdown didn’t happen, and ready to apologize when it was clear that Gail wasn’t going to let me ignore it. “It was almost fifteen years ago. I don’t know why it’s affecting me this much . . .”

  She set down her cup and took my free hand between both of hers. “What did you do on the winter holidays until now?”

  “Hid. Went to the movies, got takeout, found something to read that would engross me. For a few years I took extra shifts at work – they always need nurses on the holidays – but the ER turned out not to be the best place to be. Sometimes I went on vacation to someplace like Martinique or Jamaica, where it didn’t feel like Yuletide. I’d like to try to be with your family, for your sake, but I’m afraid it’ll dredge up memories.”

  She squeezed my hand. “What we need,” she said, “is to make some holiday memories of our own. I’m going to go make some phone calls.”

  I must have made some confused noise, because she added, “The Winter Solstice is the twenty-first, right? I’m going to get a sitter and we’re spending the night at your place. And while we’re there, we’re going to create a holiday celebration that’s ours and ours alone.”

  The day of the Winter Solstice was cool and blessedly clear. Throughout the short day, I’d enjoyed catching glimpses of the mountains in the distance, unshrouded by rain or snow. I’d had to work, but Gail, a teacher, was off for the week and had spent the day at my house puttering. The sun was setting – a rare treat, in Seattle, to see a proper sunset instead of rose-tinged rain clouds – and a pale quarter moon was already hanging low
at the horizon when I got home. Gail came to the door carrying a sprig of mistletoe and held it over my head as she pulled me close with the other arm. We didn’t need mistletoe, but it made me smile.

  When I walked into the house, I gasped. When I’d left in the morning I had a bare Scotch pine in the corner of the living room and that was it for decoration. Bought on Gail’s instruction, it was the first tree I’d had in my orphaned adult life. Now pine branches and garlands of princess pine were festooned on the mantle and doorways, covering the tables, even strewn on the hardwood floor. The warmth of the house released their green, fresh-air fragrance. The room was full of unlit white candles – votives in protective glass holders, a nod to my uneasiness with fire. In the centre of the room sat the coffee-table altar we’d constructed over the last few days, a simple affair with cotton batting for the snow that would not coat the ground this year, holly and oak branches for the Holly King and the Oak King who battle for the love of the coming Spring, and a bunch of red roses in a gaudy peppermint-striped vase because Gail and I both love them and it just felt right. A picture of the two of us was propped against the vase.

  On a table next to the altar was the ritual meal we had devised: pomegranate seeds, baked brie with apples, locally made smoked salmon, a bottle of Pinot Noir from a winery we had visited together over the summer, and, in honour of those boar’s heads that turn up in the descriptions of old-time Christmas feasts, spareribs and pork wontons from our favourite Chinese place. A chocolate fondue simmered over a candle, the only one already lit in the house. Bright red and white candy canes decorated the areas not covered with plates. It wasn’t like any holiday meal either of us ever had (my childhood memories involved a lot of home-canned vegetables), and that was the point. And it was all chosen so we could feed it to each other. The food added its own fragrances to the scent of pine and the faint honey-sweetness of beeswax candles.

  “It’s so beautiful!”

  “No. It’s just decorated. You’re beautiful.” She kissed me again, helping me slip out of my coat. “Go change into something comfortable,” she suggested.

  I stripped off my uniform and shoes and threw on a loose, comfortable caftan. When I returned, she had poured wine for both of us, as well as some in the chalice on the altar.

  “Did you see the sunset?” she asked as we settled on the sofa. I nodded. “I spent some time meditating on it,” she said. “About how short the day was, and how long the night would be. I can understand how our ancestors would have been frightened by the days getting shorter and shorter, and how they felt they needed to have a ritual to bring back the sun.”

  I nodded, savouring the smoke and berry flavours of the wine. “It made them feel in control.”

  “Now we have scientific proof of how it works, but ritual is still important in our lives,” she said. “Which is why we’re doing this, even now. Right?” She stood, extending her hand to me.

  “You put it better than I could have, love.” I smiled and thought about what she had said. “Because I was raised pagan, it sometimes becomes a reflex to me, like going to church might be for someone else. It’s all fresh to you, and you remind me what it means. Thank you!”

  Together, we lit all of the candles in the room, bringing light into the growing darkness. As we did, we talked and meditated on the wheel of the year. The Solstice heralded the birth of the sun and also the divine son, the saviour god. Whether you called him Jesus or something else, the sentiment was the same: a promise of renewal against the darkness and cold of winter.

  Soon the room flickered with candlelight. Standing there, in the warm glow, I felt the stress melt away from me as the positive energy of the season coursed through me. This was our night, Gail’s and mine. This was our ritual. It wouldn’t cause the sun’s return, but it celebrated the growing sunlight, the inevitable change from one season to the next.

  We sat on the floor in front of the food, and fed each other bites: sweet pomegranate, smoky salmon, smooth brie, tangy Chinese, interspersed with sips of wine and luscious kisses.

  “I think,” Gail said, “we might be better off getting out of our clothes, so we don’t drip chocolate on them.”

  I willingly let her help me out of my caftan, and then I returned the favour, noticing that she had also worn things that were easy to get off. I didn’t usually do rituals sky-clad except in high summer – it wasn’t practical in the Pacific Northwest and paganism is at heart a practical religion – but in a cozy house with only my beloved there, it seemed like a wonderful idea.

  Make that an awesome idea, in the literal sense of the word. In that dimly lit room, rich with evergreen fragrance and illuminated only by candles, the beauty of her body stunned me. “You are Goddess,” I whispered, and knelt to press my face between her thighs.

  I felt her curl her fingers into my hair, fingers tightening reflexively as my tongue whispered over her clit. So I was surprised when she eased my head away.

  “Not so fast,” she whispered. “We have all night.”

  She pulled out the massage cushion and had me lie facedown on it. I purred as her fingers kneaded tension from my shoulders, as her palms lightly caressed my back. I shivered as she moved down to my ass, but alas, she didn’t stop there. Her hands trailed to my feet, and I relaxed into her famed, delicate foot massage.

  “Tonight’s the longest night of the year,” she said as her fingers pressed into the ball of my right foot with just the right amount of pressure not to tickle. “The night when we celebrate that, in fact, it is the longest night, and the nights will now start to get shorter, and the days longer. When we celebrate the return of the light while savouring the night’s own joys.”

  Her voice was soft, hypnotic, lulling me into a trance.

  “Imagine a ball of golden light,” Gail continued. “It’s surrounding your feet. It’s safe and warm, bringing nothing but comfort and energy.”

  This was a basic meditation, but one I’d usually done alone. It took on a whole new dimension with her hands caressing me.

  Those hands, coated in eucalyptus-scented oil, slid around to my ankles, then up to my calves. Gently she massaged the muscles there, all the while encouraging me to envision and feel the peaceful light.

  And I did. Meditation has always come easily for me, probably because I learned it so young. It was a simple thing for me to slip into the mental state required, to blank my mind or to fill it with a particular thought or vision. I believed in the lines of energy that encircled the earth, and was able to tap into them. Now, that energy was golden light to me, moving up my body at the same rate as Gail’s hands, relaxing and reinvigorating me.

  When Gail reached my thighs, I started to tense with anticipation, but she crooned and stroked until I settled down again. It wasn’t that I wasn’t getting aroused, because I was – it was more that there was no urgency. My clit tingled, but I was more focused on the sensations of the intimate but not entirely sexual massage, and on the light that came with it.

  Bit by bit, inch by inch, my muscles lost their tightness. I floated gently, only half-aware when Gail helped me turn over. She massaged my scalp, caressed my temples, worked her way back down. She reached my feet again and, like a good masseuse, didn’t abruptly cease contact with me. One hand slid up my leg as she shifted, and I was dimly aware of her curling on her side next to me.

  The caress of her lips against mine was blissful. I thought I heard her say “don’t lose the light” before her tongue stroked against my bottom lip. Our kisses were soft, sensuous, rather than the almost-frantic quality they often took. How long had it been since we kissed this way, like new lovers exploring each other for the first time? I wondered dreamily. And why had we stopped?

  She kissed my throat, tongued the warm sensitive hollow behind my left ear. Her hands, still soft from the oil, didn’t miss an inch of skin on my torso, and her lips didn’t miss much, either.

  My right hipbone became the object of her worship. I had no idea of the nerve endings
that existed there, and how directly linked they were to my pussy. She worked with excruciating, but wonderful slowness from there across my belly, teasing the hollow of my belly button until I would have sworn it was glowing from all the bright and loving attention. Then my ribcage enjoyed the same treatment, each usually unregarded inch kissed and stroked.

  It certainly wasn’t a disappointment when she closed her mouth over my nipple, but it was almost a shock, this move from magical intimacy to something more pointedly sexual. But as she suckled the sensitive nub, I found the magical feeling growing rather than dissipating as I had feared. My whole body was filled with golden warmth, from my hair to my toes, but more and more it was focused between my legs. I was aroused, and my sense of need was increasing, but still I floated in a timeless, trancelike state.

  My mind was lost in sensation, but I shifted my hips restlessly as the pressure in my cunt grew, like an expanding ball of light. Then her hand was there, warm and gentle, stroking my lips apart, exploring my wetness. “You are Goddess,” she whispered, echoing my words from earlier, “Be thou light.” She murmured in delight as she brought her fingers to her mouth, then brought her mouth to my moist core.

  The golden glow bloomed within me, then exploded outwards as she brought me home.

  “How’re you doing?” she asked after sliding back up and spooning her body against mine, one leg thrown over my hips in warm possession.

  “All glowy and tingly.” Usually after an orgasm, I was happy but ready for round two (or three or . . .). This time, I felt languid, drifting, still feeling delicate aftershocks tremoring my clit.

  “Good,” she said, nuzzling her face into the hollow of my collarbone.

  Lest you think I abandoned her, I did rouse myself after a long and delightful cuddle and treat her to the same attention that she’d lavished on me. I took the light energy that she’d given me and shared it back with her, massaging and caressing her until we were wrapped together in its glowing strands.