Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year, Volume 3 Read online

  I stroke her breasts, kneading them in my palms before moving down to her flat stomach. Gazing into her eyes, I slide a hand beneath the elastic waist of her leggings. Natalie squirms beneath me, hips gently grinding. Her sharp gasp shatters the quietness when my fingertips make contact with her sensitive folds. She’s soaking, dripping, and my fingers soon become slick with her juices.

  I stroke her clit, then rub harder, faster, my little circles making Natalie groan louder. I flick her engorged nub, then plunge two fingers deep inside her sex. They emerge drenched and, feeling devilish, I lick them clean.

  “Do I taste good?”

  There’s a wicked smirk on Natalie’s face and, ooh, yes, she’s sweet as honey. She always is. I’ve never tasted a woman as mouthwatering.

  “You’re scrumptious,” I say.

  I suddenly get the urge to pull off her boots, peel down her leggings, and bury my face in her smooth, shaved snatch. I want to eat her, lap up every drop of her sticky nectar . . . but I can’t. Not here. The bar staff may arrive at any moment.

  “Fuck me, please, fuck me,” Natalie urges, reading my thoughts. “Please, I want you.”

  I want her too, I really do. I watch her writhing, sighing, craving my touch . . .

  Oh, what the hell? Screw getting caught!

  I kiss her lips and probe her slick depths, sliding my fingers deep inside. She’s warm, wet. I smell the musky tang of her arousal. I need to make love to my Natalie.

  I drive my fingers into her, fast and hard, making her moan and arch her back. I thrust again. And again. I know how to please her, know exactly what she likes—the right depth, pace, pressure— to send her hurtling toward a quick, satisfying climax. Bent over, watching her, I fuck her with my fingers and my darling girl bucks her hips to meet my thrusts. Loud groans escape her throat and her soft depths clench my fingers.

  “Ooh . . . Yes . . . ”

  Natalie’s body stiffens, then jolts as an orgasm rips through her. She pants and whimpers while spasms shake her body. As the waves subside, she exhales slowly, her eyelids flutter, and the most delightful smile illuminates her face.

  “You’re so good,” she murmurs.

  Grasping my wrists, she gently withdraws my fingers and guides them into her mouth. She sucks them clean.

  “Mmm.” She smiles. “I do taste yummy.”

  Puckering her lips, she kisses me. The kiss becomes increasingly passionate and I find myself being pushed backward onto the soft sofa. Natalie climbs on top of me, switching roles. She reaches around to unclasp my bra, removing it before I can protest. She sucks a hard nipple into her mouth and rolls the other between her fingertips. Breathless with bliss, I gasp for air.

  Suddenly, she goes for the zip of my jeans.

  “Natalie, no!”

  My mind fills with images of gawping bar staff and scandalized members of the public.

  “Shush,” she says, touching my lips. “Let me love you.”

  “But Nat . . . ”

  It’s no use, she’s adamant. And anyway, my modesty’s rapidly overcome by lustful desire. I want her. I need to feel her tongue upon me. I must have my release.

  Putty in her hands, I allow Natalie to unzip my jeans and yank them down. They won’t go past my ankles, not with my boots on, so I’m left shackled. Exposed and effectively bound, I’m completely at Natalie’s mercy and the impish glint in her eyes tells me she loves that. Moaning softly, almost purring, she rolls off the sofa and crawls stealthily between my thighs, gently parting them. My anticipation builds as she tugs aside my thong.

  My pulse is racing. I’m fit to burst. I gasp when, suddenly, her hot, wet tongue laps the length of my slit. It feels so good, so fucking good, sending delicious shivers racing through my body. Another lick creates a prolonged quiver and my hips move uncontrollably, as if bewitched.

  Natalie grasps my thighs and fucks me with her tongue. I feel it inside me, the warmth, the movement. I’m delirious with pleasure. My hips undulate to the steady rhythm of Natalie’s thrusts, like a dance; a horny, needy dance with an ever-increasing tempo. I love it. I love every moment.

  My head falls back, my arms are limp. In a change of tack, she seals her lips around my clit and sucks—hard. That’s it, I’m gone. Already approaching climax, my body gives in.

  “Oh fuck, Natalie. Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  I jolt, squirm, pussy muscles contracting in powerful waves while she laps, kitten-like, sucking up the juices that stream from my depths. And when the waves pass, she crawls onto my lap, curling against me.

  We lie in silence, holding each other while we come down. It’s a perfect moment. Quiet. Still. Another snippet of time captured in a bubble to treasure for a lifetime. But time doesn’t hold its breath forever.

  “I have to go. So do you.” I sigh. “Come on, we’ve got a show to do.”

  “Already?”

  Groaning, Natalie slides from the sofa and slowly uncurls. Glancing at her watch, she gasps.

  “Oh my . . . I have to go. The warm-up starts in five minutes and I need to change.”

  She hastily gathers her clothing and dresses standing, apparently not caring if she’s seen. It’s not so for me: aware of my surroundings again, I find my scattered clothes on hand and knees and nervously pull them on.

  Dressed, Natalie points to the crotch of her leggings.

  “Look what you’ve done,” she says, with a look of mock horror.

  Grinning, I shrug. “Well, if you will insist on going without knickers.”

  My sweet angel giggles, laughter lines creasing her face, but her gaze returns to her watch and her smile fades.

  “Hell. I’m late.”

  “Hey Nat,” I say, anticipating a swift exit. I trail my hand down her arm, stroking her downy hairs. “Good luck.”

  “Aw, thank you.” She kisses my forehead. “Good luck to you, too. Make me look ethereal.”

  As if she could look anything else.

  “I’ll see you after the show.” Blowing a kiss, Natalie backs away. “I love you.”

  My heart lurches. It does every time I hear her say those words.

  “I love you, too.”

  She beams at me, a beautiful, wide smile, then turns and scurries across the room. She hauls open the door, charges through, and clatters down the stairs. The door swings shut and silence envelops the room.

  I draw a breath. It may be a peaceful, quiet bar but I know it won’t be for long. And I still have work to do. Time to move. I straighten my clothes and sit up. Natalie will deliver a stunning performance but she needs my contribution to make her shine. All set to go, I waver.

  One more minute, to savor the moment.

  Resting my head on the sofa back, I pick up my lukewarm coffee and slurp. I lick my lips, tasting Natalie and coffee. A smile dimples my cheeks and I shake my head.

  Ah, Natalie.

  I can’t believe how lucky I am.

  STILL MARCHING

  Victoria janssen

  Rhiannon Farnon licked trail mix crumbs from her palm. She struggled to get her glove back on, cursing and juggling her oversized poster in the brisk January wind. The sign read, I Can’t Believe I Still Have to Protest this Shit.

  An inspiring speech boomed from a nearby amplifier on the Ben Franklin Parkway, but she had lost track of which city coun-cilperson was up, and was so far away from the stage that she couldn’t make out most of the words.

  “Ma’am?”

  When had she become a ma’am? Giving her motorcycle glove one last yank, Rhiannon turned to the young woman who was, unsurprisingly, wearing a vivid magenta pussy hat. “Yes?”

  “Is it okay if I take your picture? Both of you have the same poster.”

  Rhiannon glanced to her left, noting the duplicate sign actually read I Can’t Fucking Believe I’ve Still Got to Protest this Bullshit. Close enough. Then she looked up from the dark-skinned hands holding the profane version of her sign and gaped. “Mavis?”

  Mavis Jackson grinned, sidew
ays and sly. “Hey lady. Long time no see.” She threw her arm over Rhiannon’s shoulders, lifting her sign at a jaunty angle. Stunned, Rhiannon did the same, for one breathless moment unable to look away from Mavis’s perfect profile, and the one distaff earring dangling from her right earlobe.

  The camera clicked rapidly. As the photographer smiled her thanks and faded into the crowd, Rhiannon forgot about her completely, dropping her sign to seize Mavis’s shoulders. “What the hell are you doing in Philly? Where have you been?”

  Mavis tossed her sign onto the grass, leaned in, and grabbed Rhiannon around the waist, squeezing hard. Bemused, Rhiannon hugged back, her eyes welling with tears. “It’s great to see you,” she said.

  Mavis smelled like cocoa butter, a visceral reminder of when they’d met, over twenty-five years ago in DC, at a huge march for abortion rights. Mavis, wearing a leather bikini top, had inscribed My body, my choice in white paint on her bare back and stomach. Rhiannon had been carrying giant bundles of sage gifted to her by her mother and aunts from the coven, smudging away as she walked, alternating chants with nightmarish screams, her long broomstick skirt dangling with wire hangers and streaked with fake blood. They’d met because another marcher needed a tampon; Rhiannon always had supplies with her, and Mavis had been wearing several as part of a crown atop her brunette curls. And then . . . well. The back of the bus Mavis’s college had sent had been cramped but private. Rhiannon had ridden back with them, the beginning of the most intense weeks of her life.

  Mavis’s hair, now worn in chin-length dreadlocks, was streaked with gray; Rhiannon’s, cut to bristle a decade before, had gone white early. Mavis stepped back and stroked Rhiannon’s cheek. “Holy shit, lady. Nobody heard anything from you after you went out West.”

  Rhiannon’s cheeks flamed. She cast her eyes down at Mavis’s T-shirt, which read, succinctly, Emoluments! “Oh. Yeah. I, umm, I went out there with some, well, bikers.”

  “Bikers?!”

  “Lesbian bikers! Not, like, the Pagans. I mean, they were pagans, some of them knew my aunties—”

  Mavis was doubled over laughing now, hands on her knees as she whooped and gasped for air. After a moment or two, Rhiannon was laughing, too, at the very thought of them, two middle-aged women in the middle of a massive Women’s March, overcome by a reunion that had taken far too long.

  The speeches, as she’d predicted, ran late. Slowly, Rhiannon and Mavis drifted ahead of the remaining marchers, where folding chairs had been set up in front of the stage. In the front row, Rhiannon leaned against Mavis’s strong shoulder while her old lover videoed impassioned speeches on her phone.

  Later in the afternoon, after most of the marchers had wandered home to their lives, there was a final rousing song Rhiannon didn’t know, and the speaker was encouraging everyone to take their trash with them. Mavis offered Rhiannon the last of the water in her red bottle. Rhiannon swigged it gratefully and handed it back. Their eyes met and held. Time contracted.

  Mavis’s eyes, gorgeous translucent brown and gold, shimmered now with the beginnings of tears. “Rhi,” she said, “I didn’t have a lot of hope when I showed up for this thing today, but now . . . .” She looked down, ostensibly to stuff her water bottle into her sleek leather messenger bag.

  Rhiannon dug in her jeans pocket for a tissue. “I was thinking more like, ‘at least we’ll have each other for the apocalypse.’”

  Mavis snorted and ran her hand over the top of Rhiannon’s crew cut. “You are still the most cynical Witch I’ve ever met.”

  “My moms and aunts are a lot bitchier these days, too,” Rhiannon said. “So—why Philly?”

  “Know how I said I was joining the radical separatists, and my granny had other ideas?”

  “Yeah?” They joined the stream of marchers leaving the parkway.

  “I went to law school.”

  Rhiannon grinned hugely. “I bet she loved that.”

  “She does! She lives in Orlando now. But anyway, I just took a job in Philly, with the DA’s office. Started first of the year. It’s mostly outreach, recruitment—get some People of Color into the power structure.”

  “You’re going to make changes, real changes. Probably without even getting punched in the face. You sure you’re okay with that?”

  “I’ve come to terms with it,” Mavis said breezily. “And you?”

  “I still have a bike,” Rhiannon said, “but now I teach math. Little kids, in West Philly. I have a big old house on Osage all to myself and my cats. Plenty of room, if you ever want to slide by.”

  “I bought a condo,” Mavis said, then caught Rhiannon as she pretended to faint. “I didn’t have a lot of transition time, and I’m not locked into it for another six months—quit laughing at me! It’s right on the parkway, you could come use my nice clean bathroom right this minute!”

  “Done!” Rhiannon said, happily.

  And so Rhiannon found herself looking out a twentieth-floor window, down Philadelphia’s answer to the Champs-Élysées, while Mavis made coffee in the open-plan kitchen. The extent of her decorating was an open suitcase just inside the bedroom door, a stack of law journals on the living room carpet, and a bright red puffer coat, dropped on a folding chair near the door. Their discarded signs lay on the blandly neutral carpet, beneath Rhiannon’s motorcycle jacket and rainbow-striped scarf.

  She’d gone to the march out of duty, her heart and her feet heavy with thoughts of a world in even worse shape than the year before, her gut twisted with fear for the future of her classrooms full of kids. But right now . . . she drew in a deep breath, smelling rich fresh coffee, centering herself here, in this moment.

  “I swear I’m getting furniture,” Mavis said. “Just haven’t had time.” She set their mugs on the floor, atop journals, before joining Rhiannon on the floor.

  “I have furniture at my place, not just cats,” Rhiannon said. “You are welcome any time. For as long as you want.”

  “I—really? I mean, it’s been like twenty-five years. Are you sure?”

  Rhiannon studied Mavis’s face. “I’ve had twenty-five years to think about it. And to regret that I didn’t follow you.”

  “I . . . I couldn’t have stayed. But I wanted to. I really wanted to.”

  Rhiannon lifted her coffee mug and they toasted. “To hope, for a pair of cranky middle-aged ladies. We’ve done all right for ourselves, after all.”

  “To living in the midst of apocalypse, together,” Mavis said, and they clinked mugs again. They drank. After a long, silent interval, she said, “I don’t have a couch, but I do have a bed. You’re invited to visit me there.”

  Rhiannon smiled. “I am happy to accept your invitation.”

  Mavis’s bedroom was still sparse, holding only a lamp and her suitcase in addition to the big bed. “I bought a new mattress,” she said, with a shy smile, as she slowly unbuttoned Rhiannon’s plaid shirt. “The first I ever paid for myself. At my age.”

  “I only bought my house five years ago,” Rhiannon admitted. “After I finally split with Marina.”

  “Come to think of it I did hear a few things through the grapevine. She’s still in New York?” Mavis pushed the shirt from Rhiannon’s shoulders, followed by her bra straps.

  “Yeah . . . ” Rhiannon caught Mavis’s face between her hands and kissed her, kept kissing her as Mavis unhooked her bra, and unbuttoned her jeans, caressing her ass and thighs as she pushed them down her legs to the floor.

  Then Mavis knelt on the carpet, embracing Rhiannon’s hips. “I still fucking love giving head,” she noted.

  “I seem to recall you were pretty good at it,” Rhiannon said. “If I’m remembering right.”

  Mavis caressed her ass and nuzzled until Rhiannon shifted her feet farther apart. “Well, let’s see if I can remember how to do this. . . .”

  Sometime later, as they lay side by side on the mattress, Rhiannon murmured, “I want to finish undressing you now. May I do that? Then I want to get you off.”

  In ans
wer, Mavis took Rhiannon’s hands between hers and placed them at the waistband of her jeans. Rhiannon summoned the energy to sit up and crouched above her, tugging the jeans down and off her feet, taking the time to remove her fuzzy socks as well. “These are cute,” she noted, sleepily. “You do cute now?”

  “I do if they’re also warm,” Mavis said.

  “I got over the thing with dildos,” Rhiannon remarked. “Did I tell you?”

  Mavis giggled. “That did not come up in conversation yet. They’re no longer tools of the patriarchy?”

  “It was On Our Backs in the nineties that did it for me,” Rhiannon said, tossing the jeans and socks onto the pile decorating the bare carpet. “I didn’t bring one with me to the march, though.”

  “I don’t carry one everywhere, either.” Rhiannon gave her a look. “Not any more, anyway. My toys are still in Chicago, with the rest of my stuff.”

  “We’ll make do,” Rhiannon said, lowering herself into Mavis’ waiting arms and chewing delicately on her earlobe, to distract temporarily from the finger teasing her labia.

  Mavis gasped and pushed into Rhiannon’s hand. “There’s a vibe in the suitcase, though.”

  “Mmm?”

  Mavis hooked her knee over Rhiannon’s shoulder, grasping fitfully at her arm. “There, right there, hold it there—”

  The vibrator was a wand type that plugged in, right next to the bed. No worries about the batteries going out. Rhiannon circled the soft head gently where Mavis gasped the loudest, while watching her eyelids flutter, her mouth twist in pleasure. “You’re so beautiful. I feel like I’ve never seen you before today.”

  Mavis didn’t reply, busy shuddering through another orgasm. Rhiannon lifted the vibe away when Mavis flapped her hand in its general direction, then lay down to cuddle with her in the sweaty sheets. Her breathing slowed and steadied. Rhiannon snuggled closer. She murmured, “You know what? I am not going on the Internet for the rest of the weekend.”

  Mavis huffed out a laugh. “Big words, lady.”

  “Do you want to come to my place later on?”

  “Yeah.” Mavis tipped their foreheads together. “I want to see what kind of home you made. I always thought you would be good at that.” She paused. “Not like in the patriarchal way, you understand.”