Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year Volume 2 Read online

  As she rummaged through the first-aid kit, I tried to control my breathing. The heat of our bodies wrestled with the breeze coming in the shaded opening. Sweat pooled in my belly button and steamed in the crease of my thighs.

  Without a word, Phoebe took my hand and cleaned the tips of my fingers with antiseptic cloths. The sting helped distract me from her hip next to mine and her thigh under my arm and her strong hand turning mine this way and that. She put my hand down beside my head, palm up and fingers curled, as though arranging me for a cheesecake photo, then took my other hand and pulled it across my body.

  The angle of her shoulders and the curve of her back soaked into me. Leaning across me, one side of her waist formed rolls and the other stretched smooth. I wondered if she could smell my pussy.

  She released my hand and stroked my collarbone. Hope and fear froze me.

  “Your harness really messed you up. Let me put arnica on the bruises.” Her gaze flickered up to meet mine, then she looked back at the strap marks.

  “I don’t . . . ” Her eyes followed her fingers as they stroked my bruised skin and the shadow pain was nothing to the pleasure. “Phoebe, I can’t be calm with your hands on me.”

  “Are you really after calm, Vanessa? You seem to be running pretty hard from calm.” She slid her hand over my throat and down my other shoulder. My tits ached and maybe I arched toward her. Phoebe surveyed the low topography of my chest, my nipples too hard. “Wouldn’t you prefer excitement?” She put both hands flat on my tits and pressed them against my ribs.

  “Don’t fuck with me, Phoebe.” I screwed my eyes closed and balled my sore fingers into fists.

  “Shhh. This isn’t a tease, Van. You’re so tightly wound. Has it been a long time?”

  “I get myself off just fine.” She never stopped touching my tits, but her grip changed to a slow pull and roll of my nipples through the ribbed cotton of my tee. I never had an inkling of how a person could come like that until Phoebe did it.

  Her laugh was low, indulgent. “I bet you orgasm fast and fall asleep slow.”

  I opened my eyes. How did she know?

  “I’m going to touch you everywhere and take my time. I’ll get to know what you like, but I’ll give it to you on my schedule. Are you ready for this?”

  Was there any other answer? “Yes.”

  “That’s what you think.” Phoebe stripped my shirt off over my head, cotton wet with sweat. She squeezed a dollop of cream into her palm and recapped the tube. “Arnica.” With broad strokes, she spread the cream over my shoulders, between my tits, and along my ribs in the shape of the Odyssey’s harness.

  The ache of pressure on fresh bruises tasted like metal and made me aware of the layers of my flesh. She moved skin over muscle and bone, rubbing the cream into me. The massage continued down my arms, one at a time, and up my neck. Without hesitation, she unsnapped my shorts and tugged them off.

  A freshet of breeze circled the tent and my muscles clenched and released. I imagined her mouth on my pussy, her hands rubbing my clit, her knuckles rubbing inside me.

  She massaged my legs, slowly and firmly moving my limbs, stretching and pressing and rubbing. When her hands spanned my hips and massaged the tight tendons on each side of my pubic bone, I let her take the tension and anxiety. My legs lolled on the pallet and she knelt between them. I closed my eyes.

  Without a change in her manner, she worked her fingers deep into the muscles around my pussy. Her knuckles dug in without opening me up. Muscles I never thought about stretched under her fingers. The edges of her hands woke my clit without touching its tip and I remembered a diagram I’d seen about the clit’s wishbone shape, how it extends inside past the vagina.

  Phoebe rubbed my labia, pinched and pulled them. I looked up at her. Was this the signal? Were we going to start fucking? But she alternated her touch, deep massage, pulling, pushing, rubbing, nothing that felt to me like the flurry and hubbub of sex. I was heavy and hot and unraveling bit by bit, but I had no idea where it was heading. My tongue arched for the press of her nipples and my hands reached for her but fell short.

  “You’re so wet. Just pouring with sweat and pussy juice.”

  I hummed in response, though she didn’t seem to need any. The hum felt good, though, vibrating low like her touch. When she pressed deep, I hummed again and she nodded. “That’s right. Feels good.” The abstraction in her voice and the intense concentration of her hands pushed me to arch and circle. The ever-smaller part of me observing had nothing to say about it. It didn’t matter if it was sexy, if it looked good. It felt amazing.

  Phoebe spread my labia wide and massaged their wet inner surfaces, stroking path after path before her fingers dipped inside me and kept stroking. She traced ovals with long sides, still with the pressure and pacing of her massage. Flooded and overflowing, I realized that this was sex, that we’d been fucking the whole time.

  I reached for my clit and flinched at the stinging salt juice on my abraded fingertips.

  “Don’t. You don’t have to chase this. This come isn’t a wild bronc you need to break. It’s a skittish horse, full of heart, and you need to let it come to you.”

  I didn’t know what she meant, but I let my hand fall away. Heavy, full of pressure and slow friction, Phoebe surged against me like tidal waves. She filled my pussy and touched every part of my clit at the same time. She ground into me and withdrew and I groaned low.

  Heavier, she pushed in and I pushed back. We rode the same wave and my gasps and groans resonated in the air between us. Instead of a click and tumble, I built and built, so far past orgasm that I realized I must have been coming forever.

  I stared into Phoebe’s fierce eyes, her lips drawn back in triumph. That thing I chased into the desert, chased from my lungs, and hunted all my life. She tapped that well and it poured from me in an abundance I’d never imagined.

  I don’t know how long we rode those waves, but for the first time in my life, I came slow and fell asleep fast.

  Several hours later, I woke to watch the sun set over the brilliant, living desert with Phoebe. Then I showed her that, though I was a teacher by trade, I was an even better learner.

  SUPER

  Heather Day

  The amazing thing is, I met her in a comic shop. Not one of the big ones down in London either; that wouldn’t have been so incredible. No, it was just the local dive, the one smelling of old books, with torn Vampirella posters on the walls and a sun-bleached, cardboard cutout of R2-D2 in the window.

  It was a Saturday afternoon and, as per my usual routine, I’d rolled up at Comicool to collect my weekly stash, check out any new titles that had arrived, and flirt with Josh, the geek behind the counter who worked on his own comic in between serving customers. But today, something stopped me in my tracks. The shop was normally busy on a Saturday, but it was usually full of excitable children and gangs of dorky teenage boys. There was not normally a superhot chick in stripy, knee-high socks and a combat dress perusing the indie comics section. I caught my breath and steadied my nerves.

  Trying to play it cool, I waved hi to Josh and idled over heather day to the superhero section. This was purely to get a better look at her, you understand; I would not be caught dead reading that stuff.

  Peering furtively at her, I noticed that she had already chosen a thick pile of books and comics and was now trying to balance them on her left hand while taking another off the shelf with her right. I tried to squint at her choices and from what I could see it looked like she had good taste. And she was definitely hot; tall and slender and rocking the geek look. I guessed that she was several years older than me. She wore thick-rimmed glasses, had several ear piercings, and her hair was tied in ironic bunches. It was mostly black with a few green streaks. I should start a conversation with her, I decided. After all, how often does this kind of chance, or this kind of girl, come along? Okay so there was no way she’d actually be interested in someone as dorky as me, but I’d had so much experience of rejectio
n, surely I was immune to it by now . . . .

  Thankfully, my obsessive procrastination was stopped in its tracks by the work of gravity. The object of my adoration placed another comic on top of her already wobbly pile and that was enough to cause a landslide effect. Enraptured with her as I was, I noticed this before she did and leapt across the shop in order to save the plunging books. As I did so I dropped to a crouch, which put me in the embarrassing position of having to look up at her as she first noticed me, as if I’d just proposed to her or was trying to look up her dress.

  “Wow, thanks! How heroic.”

  I was too busy enjoying our new proximity to worry about whether or not she was being sarcastic. Up close I could see a light sprinkling of freckles across her face, and that there was a little green mixed in with the brown of her eyes.

  “No problem, it’s my sworn duty to protect comic books everywhere.”

  “That’s cute.”

  “Heh, yeah.” I straightened up and handed back her comics, preparing to continue my poor attempt at flirting when I realized with horror what book lay on the top of her pile. The telltale primary colors and bulging muscles made my eyes hurt.

  “Oh . . . you like superheroes?”

  “Hell yes, doesn’t everyone?”

  “Erm, yeah, they’re great,” I lied. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Josh raise an eyebrow at me.

  “I’ve got all the classics,” she went on, “and I love the new ways artists are experimenting with the genre.”

  Our match rating was going down before my very eyes. How could fate be so cruel, to send me such a beauty only to reveal her as a superhero fan? And yet, I found that this unfortunate fact didn’t stop me from imagining what it would feel like to have her legs wrapped around me, her mouth on mine . . . .

  “Oh yes,” I said, “I totally agree.”

  “Cool,” she said, before going to pay for her comics. Once she was done and on her way out the door she turned round to look at me. I pretended to be absorbed in a display of horror movie memorabilia in order to disguise the fact that I’d been staring at her the whole time. I don’t think the ploy worked.

  “Bye,” she laughed.

  I blushed and waved.

  “Wow,” I said, turning to Josh once she was outside, “I think I’m in love. Did you see her? The hair? The glasses?”

  “The love of superhero comics.”

  Josh looked at me pointedly as he handed me my comic stash. We’ve had many discussions over the years about the relative merits of different comic genres and he knows full well how I feel about superheroes. He knows that when it comes to comics, I want complex, layered stories and avant-garde artwork. What I don’t want is improbably proportioned people in spandex spouting morality at me.

  “I know, I know, you think I’m a snob,” I retorted, “but I can’t help how I feel. Do you think there could ever be a future for me and her?”

  “The way you two looked at each other? I’m sure a little thing like that wouldn’t get in your way.”

  As I handed over most of the money in my purse, Josh did a quick drawing and slid it across the counter to me. It was a cartoon version of me and my new crush, locked in a passionate snog, my hands on her perky boobs.

  “Josh,” I said, “you are such a pervert.”

  As he rang up the sale on the till, I folded up the drawing and slipped it discreetly into my pocket.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, not looking up.

  I laughed as he handed me my change.

  “See you, Josh.”

  “See you, supergirl.”

  I had a quick check to see if there were any kids around before flipping him the finger as I left.

  I couldn’t get her off my mind for the rest of the week. Her pouty lips and lengthy legs haunted me as I slept, as I read, as I got ready for work and mooched around the office. I thought again and again how amazing it was that we’d even met, that we’d been in the same shop at the same time. Fate must have had something to do with it, surely?

  After all, I was planning on that trip being my last to the comic shop for a while. Much as I loved the place and needed my weekly comic fix, the simple truth was that I was broke. In my final year of university, the economy had decided to take a nosedive and I ended up graduating at the most inopportune time in decades. As I entered a ridiculously competitive marketplace, suddenly my degree in graphic design looked comical. When my friends with firsts in business and management couldn’t get jobs, I knew I had little hope of landing anything within the creative industries.

  After lots of depressing rejections, I managed to get an admin position at a marketing consultancy. So far it had been a fun round of tea-making, filing, and photocopying, but at least I was in the right industry and, most importantly, earning my own money. With a bit of luck and a lot of discipline, it wouldn’t be long until I’d saved up enough to finally move out of my parents’ house and into a place of my own.

  That, though, was going to mean sacrifices. Sprawled on my bed later that week, I tried to imagine what I would do for entertainment when I didn’t have my regular supply of comics coming in. It was a depressing thought. Maybe I should go back to drawing my own, I thought idly, something I hadn’t done for years.

  Then I remembered Josh’s pervy drawing and went to fetch it from my bedside drawer. I’d been taking sneaky peeks at it all week. Josh can be an idiot, but he’s a good artist and he’d captured something about her, even in that quick sketch.

  Saturday was approaching once again and I’d already decided to go back to the shop on the off chance she’d return. I really couldn’t afford to buy anything, but maybe I could just hang around looking cool and impress her with my sharp banter and encyclopaedic comic-book knowledge. I wondered whether she was the type who liked to dress up, donning tight-fitting leotards, capes, and eye masks to add an extra edge in the bedroom. Maybe I could play the evil villain, tie her up, and have my wicked way with her . . . Hm, I thought, maybe this could work out after all.

  Once conjured, the X-rated visuals in my head wouldn’t leave, so I had no choice but to lock the door and wriggle my hand down under my jeans. As I moved it in tiny circles, the pace of my fantasies increased and soon my clit was soaking. I pictured stripping her down to bare flesh, all perky boobs and glistening pussy.

  I got as far as imagining crouching down before her to suck her all the way to orgasm, before shuddering my way through an incredibly powerful climax of my own.

  Oh god, I thought as I gradually came down from the high, I am so in trouble.

  The following Saturday I got to the shop at an indecently early hour and needless to say, she was not yet there. I wasted an hour trawling through back issues of comics I’d never heard of, trying to avoid the temptation to buy something, and chatting idly to Josh.

  Suddenly the bell above the door announced someone entering the shop. Josh and I both turned to stare at the newcomer. My heart started beating wildly; it was her.

  “Hello again.” She waved at me.

  “Hi!” I managed. She looked even better than last week; this time rocking a tight, strappy top showing a sexy anime character and baggy jeans held up with a studded belt. Her black-and-green hair was loose, just reaching to her shoulders, and she assessed me from behind those same hot-as-fuck glasses.

  “I love your top,” I said.

  “Thanks,” she replied. “Oh, I brought something to show you.”

  She walked over to the battered sofas kept at the back of the shop and I followed. She flopped into the corner of a couch and rummaged in her bag.

  “Here you go.”

  She handed me a rather well-loved copy of a fat little paperback book. The words Superheroes through the Ages were spelled out in bold, colorful letters on the front. I groaned inwardly; could I really let this facade go on much longer?

  “Oh . . . cool . . . ” I said, flipping through it casually and trying to feign interest. “I’ll have a proper look later.” I placed
the offending book on the arm of the sofa. “So, how’s your week been?”

  “Exhausting.” She flopped farther back on the sofa to emphasize her point. “I have a full-time job, but I’ve got this great idea for a comic that I’ve been working on in the evenings. The only trouble is, I stay up too late working on it. My coffee consumption’s through the roof.”

  “Oh, you draw?”

  “God no, I can’t even do stick men. I write. I’ll need to find an artist, if this idea ever gets off the ground. Know anyone good?”

  “Josh over there’s a great artist. And, well, I’ve dabbled a bit, too.”

  “Really?” her eyes lit up. “That’s so cool! I’d love to see your art. I bet we could create something amazing together.”

  She was holding me in her steady gaze and I felt excitement coming off her in waves. I was suddenly aware of just how close we were on the sofa, how easy it would be to lean across and kiss her lips, to take her reclining body in my arms . . .

  But then the doubts came creeping in.

  “I’m not that good, really,” I said.

  “I bet you are, can I take a look at your work?”

  “Maybe if you tell me some of your ideas, I could come up with some character sketches. Don’t feel like you have to use them, though.”

  “You need to have more confidence in your work, um—sorry, what was your name?”

  “Janice.”

  “I’m Beth. You need to have more confidence in your work, Janice. I bet I’ll love it.”

  She squeezed my shoulder in encouragement, causing my nerves to fire into life. We locked eyes for a beat.

  “So what’s the story about?”

  “In a nutshell? Dyke superhero.”

  “Wow.”

  “I just think we need more queers in comics, especially superheroes. Naturally, my heroine has a dual personality— shy, bookish girl by day, sexy crime fighter by night. And of course, women everywhere can’t help but fall for her.”