The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica

by Barbara Cardy

  I removed the clamshell top and her breasts fell free for me. I felt their weight, before resting my face against them. I wanted my face all over them. She moaned as I opened my mouth wide and put one tit in, licking and sucking while the other nipple nuzzled the palm of my hand. I reached down and put my hand inside her bikini bottom. Her pubic hair was soft, her cunt already moist as my fingers stroked her lightly. She had invaded my garden, my house, my bed. I would invade her.

  She moaned.

  “Fuck me.”

  I knew just what to do. I’d lain in bed for so many nights, pleasuring myself and imagining this very scene. Slipping down the bed, I put my face to her cunt. With my artist’s eye I took in the many colors of her labia, moist and shining, the sweet curls of her pubic hair trimmed short. With my face to her cunt, I spread her lips as I pressed my tongue against her clit. It was hard against my tongue as I licked and teased it gently, feeling my own rising excitement while tasting hers.

  I am a steady and patient craftswoman. I took my time as I licked her pussy. I licked her slow and gently, slurping up her cunt juice like life’s blood. I licked her hard and fast, pacing myself against her breathing.

  My stroking tongue was encouraged by her hands gently pulling at my hair, her moans of pleasure, the steady flow of moisture, mixed with my saliva, wetting my face, my sheets. I was excited to feel the perfect fit as my tongue pushed against the inside of her pussy. Her moaning was getting louder. There was no one to hear us, and outside the sea raged. She was close to bucking up against my mouth, but I didn’t want her to come, at least not yet, not that way. I would make her wait.

  I pulled my slobbering mouth away.

  I spread her legs and was face to face with the entrance to her perfect cave.

  I knew my fist would fit entirely inside her. I had imagined such a portal for many years as I lay alone in bed. All I needed was a strategy for entrance. I pushed in one finger, then two, then three. She groaned as my fingers vibrated inside her. I pulled them out and shifted my angle slightly. I plunged back into her, pushing with quick thrusts. She squirmed, her cunt hungry to meet my fingers, to take them in. Her juices ran freely over my sopping hand. I stopped for a moment, this time to tease. She grunted, low and deep, “ Please . . . fuck me, fuck me hard . . .” I pushed my fingers in again, harder this time, getting further in. She wrapped herself tight around my fingers as she adjusted to their presence.

  When finally I plunged my entire fist up her cunt she gasped, and because she seemed to shudder with the intensity, I went slower and more gently as I pushed in further, feeling her pulsing energy as my fist spread her apart. I plunged in deeper and deeper, as far as I could go. When my fist was perfectly contained and the boundary between her and me unclear, I let go, pounding and grinding inside of her, my fist pulsating to her rhythm, to my rhythm, a wild sound emanating from us both. She rocked and bucked against my fist, as I pounded her wet cunt over and over again, her nails digging into me as she throbbed and screamed and climaxed. Oh Jesus, Oh Jesus, Oh Mary, she sang as we both collapsed, her body shuddering with wave upon wave of orgasm.

  We lay there silently as our breathing steadied. The cool air was drying my dampened face. The sweet smell of pussy was everywhere. Reluctantly, I removed my hand and I shimmied up to place my cheek upon hers.

  I knew I would soon fall asleep, but before I did I found, in the tumult of the bed sheets, her bikini top. Gently, I placed each breast back into its clamshell cup, but not before placing a tender kiss on each nipple. I felt a remarkable sense of well-being, knowing that her breasts were so encased, order returned to the universe.

  Then I fell asleep. She was gone when I woke up. I went to the window of my studio to check the garden but it was empty. The sun was low in the sky but I could see that the high stems of two of my sunflowers drooped headless, their flowers gone.

  Refreshed in every way, my senses sharpened, I worked all night, creating an erotic piece, the first I’d ever done. It was a close-up of two glistening cunts, painted in every shade of pinks and reds you might imagine. It became the first in an erotic series. My dealer did not wish to show this series, but when a young curator from a museum of contemporary art saw them, she paid a substantial sum for the entire series. They created a sensation. Now they are on permanent display, and scholars of queer theory have written dissertations about them. It is my hope they’ve inspired more than scholarship.

  The flower thief must have told her friends about me. Soon a fairly steady stream of women began appearing in my garden. I watch from my window, as they make the strenuous climb from the beach. It’s hard work, and they deserve the reward I always give them. And so do I.

  The House of the Rising Sun

  Alice Blue

  Sunset: hot day melting into warm night. Amina stood, watching the shadows lengthen, feeling a heavy breeze pass her by – the hard iron balcony rail a stiff weight across her belly.

  For a while she just looked at the people walking along the street below, calmly following their progress as they went wherever they were going. Not for the first time since Stanley had left her, she wanted to be one of them – any of them. A pair of Greek sailors; a young black man in threadbare jeans and a stained T-shirt, pedaling a wobbling, squeaking bicycle; a tourist couple in their pressed whites, standing out in their catalog-bought profiles; a fat man who didn’t walk as much as slowly swim through the heavy sunset atmosphere, his legs seemingly linked by some internal arrangement to his fat arms swinging rhythmically by his side.

  Many went by till the sun had dropped behind the filigreed rooftops, and the street lamps started to, at first, glow then burn brightly, but she sadly remained herself.

  Finally the night touched, hinted at, becoming cool, so she turned away from the iron curlicues of the balcony and walked across the small boarding-house room to robotically turn the antique light switch by the door. Yellow light snapped down through a dirty, cracked ceiling fixture, bathing the room in harsh realism: sink stained with a rusty high-water mark, mirror above cracked with an angry bolt, wooden floorboards that had been worn not into a smooth sheen but rather a broken and splintered forest. Wallpaper covered the walls, a tawny rainbow of mildew, and where it didn’t it curled away from the soft plaster in stiff tubes and torn twists.

  “Bathroom’s down the hall, girl; that’s why you be gettin’ this one so cheap,” the manager had said. A polished noir Buddha, she’d sat, rocked back on a low stool by the front door. A simple white dress, all lace and tiny red stitching, covered her great body. She was a momma, like a primordial soft bosomy comfort made into a breathing person. As she spoke, she’d cooled herself with a fan lettered with a gospel hymnal – too slow to deliver a good breeze, but too fast for Amina to see what it said. “But you be gettin’ a sink, so you ain’t bein’ completely uncivilized.”

  Amina hadn’t argued, and yet hadn’t agreed, either: the redbrick building across the street from the iron pickets of the cemetery had neither been her destination or even a way point. She been walking since dawn, a shocked sonombulation that had started with Stanley’s note on the kitchen table, and ending with this big black woman calling to her: “Here, girl; rooms for a tired lookin’ lady.”

  Money had been exchanged. How much Amina didn’t care. Not many thoughts inhabited her mind during that long walk, and even after she’d climbed the stairs under the simply lettered sigh: Rising Sun. Only a few thoughts had managed to make themselves known to her as she’d leaned over the balcony – wishes to be anyone but Amina Robinson.

  Then, as the sun set and the not-hot, but-warm night had started, she thought a few more. Not words, really, just a cool rationalization: she’d not brought anything with her. no razors, no gun, not even some pills. She was only two floors up, too low to jump. The ceiling fixture didn’t look strong enough to support her, even if she had anything like a rope. The mirror was obvious, razor-edged cracks promising – even without a handy bathtub.

  In the end, sh
e retreated to the mildew-sink of the too-soft bed, old springs complaining as she settled into it: not avoiding the escape she so desperately wanted, but rather not wanting to face even her fractured reflection.

  Amina sat on the bed for a long time. Listening with half an ear to the architectural mumblings of the old building: the hissing of water through pipes, the rolling creeks of footsteps next door and up above, the flapping of the shade in the open window.

  Like a toothache she couldn’t help tonguing, she replayed Stanley – hurting herself with his absence. Each act – the last fight, the daisies he’d brought home from work one day, the way he’d looked at her when she undressed in front of him, the colour of his nipples, his laughter – seemingly to press harder down on her shoulders. She cried, after a time, but her tears were long since used up.

  She couldn’t go on. She knew that, felt the truth of it somewhere down deep inside herself, but – still – she sat on the edge of that bed in the House of the Rising Sun and did nothing, except weep without tears.

  Night: warm darkness pushed back by street lights, diluted by flickering advertisements. The sounds of passers by seemed louder, as if the sunlight of only a few hours before had done its own kind of pushing back, their volume increased by its absence. Now free, their voices and the sounds of their cars, bikes, and trucks echoed up into the small room.

  Amina stood and went to the window, intending to close it. She stopped, though, in mid-stride. What did it matter? she thought to herself in sentiment if not in those exact words; I won’t be able to hear anything very soon.

  Then she did. Hear something, that is: a knock – thunderclap, pistol shot loud in the small room – and a voice: small, quavering, weak, helpless. “Hello?” someone said from the other side of her door. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

  She didn’t have to. Still, she did: turn, walk to the door, slip the cheap chain, turn the knob, and open it just so much.

  “Thank God, I thought someone wasn’t in here.” She was small, young – maybe twenty to Amina’s thirty, with hair as straight as dried pasta and as yellow as polished gold. Freckles dotted her pale cheeks, and her eyes were puffy and swollen from tears. “Please, can I come in – please?”

  She didn’t need to, but Amina did: open the door wider. Stumbling over the first words in many hours, “S-sure” sounded like gravel pouring out of a coffee can.

  “Thank you, oh, thank you—” the young girl said, hunching down and moving quickly into the room. Then she turned, and before Amina could do anything, had wrapped her thin, surprisingly warm, arms around her.

  Wet tears seeping through her dress, onto her shoulder, Amina’s arms moved without her. The girl was so slight, so small, putting her arms around her was like hugging a doll.

  “I just – I just didn’t want to be alone,” the girl said. Then she repeated, as much to herself as to Amina: “I just didn’t want to be alone.”

  Amina patted her warm back, feeling – distantly – the knots of her spine and the planes of her shoulder blades. “I’m here,” Amina said, without really feeling like she was.

  “Can I . . . can I stay with you for a while?” the girl said, pushing herself back just enough to look up into Amina’s eyes.

  Amina still wanted to leave, just not be . . . there or anywhere else. But the girl’s eyes, tugged at her, needed her. She didn’t want to stay – in that room, in this world – but she also couldn’t leave this sad, lonely girl, either.

  Midnight: the darkness still warm, the sounds of sunset and early night chased away by the weight of hours. Twelve, it seemed was too deep, too back, to allow anything but a single wandering drunk who tried to sing – and failed – a song Amina didn’t recognize.

  Under the blankets they were warm. How they’d gotten there seemed so quick as to be part of a half-performed dance. One step then another: “I just don’t want to be alone any more. Please, I just don’t want to be alone.” Then, “Thank you, thank you for opening the door. Thank you for being here.” Her sobs had turned to shivers, and between her sobs she’d managed to slip, “Please, hold me close.”

  And so, in bed. Curled around each other under the thin blankets against a turgid breeze – shivering, ever so slightly until their mingled heat stilled the tremors.

  Amina didn’t speak. Instead, she stroked the young girl’s yellow hair – a soothing motion that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside herself. She thought about saying something, the first real thoughts she’d had all day, but didn’t. Words wouldn’t have been enough – so, instead, she just stroked the young girl’s hair.

  The girl, though, spoke – or rather mumbled sleepily into her shoulder: “I don’t want to be alone any more – don’t want to be alone. Hold me, please, hold me. Don’t want to be alone any more . . .”

  Sleep started to tug at them, then pull in earnest. Before she was even aware of it, Amina’s eyes closed and to the soft, rhythmic breathing of the young girl, she drifted off.

  She dreamed of Stanley, of a time when the two of them had rolled around on their tiny bed in the back of their little house. It was like a slippery body memory, the touch of Stanley’s rough hands on her thighs, the weight of his hips on hers, the slight tang of beer on his breath, the slight burning of his stubble as they kissed. The way his sharp toenails occasionally grazed her ankles.

  From this she drifted up, floating away from the dream and back into that warm, dark room. The girl, invisible under the blankets, was molded on top of her – the gentle weight of her small body pressing lightly down, pushing Amina into the thin mattress. One of the girl’s hands cupped Amina’s right breast, her fingers calmly stroking the sides, delicately pinching her nipple.

  Stanley had been a ferocious lover, a two-armed, two-legged thrust needing something to penetrate. When his lips found her nipples, Amina usually paid for this nurturing need of his with an even more vigorous than usual fuck – as if he was forcing his prick through herself and into his own weakness. A fuck like that was more a demonstration of his force than a need to come. After a time, Amina had feared his chapped, thin lips near her breasts and had taken to wearing at least a T-shirt to bed, and sometimes even a bra.

  Sometime during the night the temperature had risen – and buttons had come unbuttoned. The girl’s lips were too soft, too delicate: it was as if a hint, and not firm reality, was kissing – then sucking – Amina’s nipples. The ghostly memory of Stanley’s rough lips, flashed through her mind – then faded with a great surging wave of tingling pleasure. Even the deep reflexes of fear that usually accompanied any kind of contact with her nipples was stilled by the loving touch of the girl’s gentle lips. With the wave, the swelling bloom of her body’s response -nipples knotted, heart beating faster, breath shallower, muscles tightening, cunt liquefying – Amina found Stanley fading for the first time. A small tongue ringed her crinkled tips, and against her will, she found herself arching to meet the accompanying gentle suction.

  It wasn’t so much a girl’s lips and tongue on her body – for Amina didn’t really think of her in that way. In the darkness of the room, with the hole that Stanley’s cruelty and departure had opened in her, it was just contact. Someone had looked down, saw the fragile, broken woman at the bottom, and had extended a hand down. Lips didn’t matter as much as the though of being seen, and desired – who it was incidental to that fact.

  Distantly, through the hot, heavy haze of the girl’s breath between kisses, between sweet nibbles, between sucks, Amina caught the falling bass note of a ship’s horn sounding on the river. The reminder of the heavy waters of the Mississippi, the still-turgid atmosphere of the night air, made it seem as if she were floating in bath water – buoyed by the girl’s touches on her body. The sucking, yes, but also her thin fingers dancing along her sides, the curves of her heavy breasts, the tension of her thighs, the gentle quakes of her calves seemed to lift Amina up, hold her above the bed, above even the sad exterior of the House of the Rising Sun.

  Squ
eezing her eyes shut against a sudden sharp peak of excitement, young teeth grazing her so-tight nipples as the girl’s fingers playfully pinched at the underside of her tits, brought stars to Amina’s eyes – completing the illusion of flight. Deep into a warm night, hanging above a vibrant tapestry of blue and purple starbursts, she floated on the girl’s tender desire.

  When those hands fell to the inside of her thighs, Amina parted them without a thought – save to be propelled higher into that starry canopy and away from the harsh earth, away from small rooms in run-down hotels, away from the pain of breathing, away from the pain of loneliness.

  The first kiss was a lighting tear across that velvet darkness, a quick flash of desire that made Amina grit her teeth and whistle a breath. The first lick, the girl’s tongue cautiously starting at the top of Amina’s already wet cunt – just shy of her throbbing, pulsing clit – was a shivering rush through her body, a chiming that seemed to race through her. Toes to nose, Amina’s body tensed and relaxed, tensed and relaxed to the accompanying strokes of the girl’s strong, stiff tongue along her labia.

  She crashed – down, down, down, through the ceiling, wham! into her body. Amina was a woman, on a smelly mattress, under a thin blanket, in a dive somewhere near the French Quarter, with a girl she’d didn’t know. Her legs were spread, her nipples were hard, and her cunt was very wet. She almost brought those legs closed to keep the girl away from her and the shimmering pleasure she was delivering. She even tensed in preparation, lifting a hand – feeling it drag and catch at the scratchy blanket – to put it on the girl’s head, and half-formed the words no, please. But she stopped, hand only raised, legs only slightly tensed, words completely unspoken.

  At first she didn’t know what it was. Later, in the morning and days beyond, Amina would look back at that moment with some sadness (too long) and much joy (looking forward to more) – but there in that little hotel, in the middle of a warmish night, it was just good. It was the best kind of good, a whole, pure, brilliant, good.