Best Lesbian Erotica 2013

WOMAN-TIME Rebecca Lynne Fullan

She walked into the classroom late as usual, a tight black skirt riding halfway up her ass. She almost always wore heels, and today was no exception. Red heels so sharp and pointy you could’ve used them as pencils, if they’d been leaded. I watched her black skirt and her red heels and her brown legs and then refocused on my notebook, hunching my shoulders under their light-jacket shield. In my case, bare skin was a risk rarely worth taking.

She was smart, too, picking up quickly where we were in the discussion and piercing the conversation with words and phrases too well chosen to annoy with their directness. This did annoy me, of course, and her toes annoyed me as she pushed one shoe off with the other foot, and her ankle annoyed me as she rubbed the arch of her now-free foot against it. I looked at her hair, a contained firework of an Afro, and I glanced at her shoulders under the red tank top that completed her outfit. I avoided looking at her face. I knew it would be beautiful. And smug. Instead, too distracted now to follow the discussion, I scribbled a sketch into my notebook; just a few quick, angry lines: pointy cat-face, long back, tail. Slash-slash-slash for stripes. Tiger. Then squat, rounded, all low-to-ground, long lined snout. Badger.

The section ended and I gathered my things in hasty disorganization, out the door before I’d even put my backpack on properly.

She caught up with me on the campus green. She’d taken off her heels and was holding them in one hand by the straps. Her feet looked good against the grass, like they belonged there.

“Hey,” she said. “You late for something?”

“No—”

“Just in a hurry,” she finished on my behalf. I could hear the smile in her voice, glanced quickly up to catch its edge. Her face was beautiful. And smug. Sure of herself, of what she thought she knew.

“I have a lot to do.”

“I could see a little of what you were drawing. Do you have more like that?”

I didn’t answer. I walked a little faster. My notebook worked its way free of my arms and she caught it before it hit the ground. I stopped, unwilling to ask for it back, and instead began stuffing the things I’d been carrying into my backpack. Then I stood waiting for my notebook but not reaching for it.

She looked at me and opened the cover. Beside and across and over my notes were the pictures. Animals and more animals. Small, big, predators, prey. Women’s bodies working in and out, hinted at and started. Most broken in some way: arms twisting and elongated, heads vanished, legs bent at odd angles. A few were explicitly changing, feet growing claws, fur sprouting. She closed the cover and handed it back to me.

“You’re really good,” she said. “But how do you get such good grades in Anthro, if this is what you’re doing during class?”

“I don’t get good grades,” I said.

“Yeah, you do,” she insisted mildly. “I saw your test paper when it came back last week.”

I put the notebook into my backpack, zipped it up and started walking again. She stood where she was.

“Hey,” she called after me, “I moved into Forest House this semester. I bet we’d give you some commissions if you wanted. They’ve been talking about having murals and paintings and stuff, and this would be perfect.”

Forest House was this co-op of mostly lesbian wiccan types. Bitches. Girls playing with dolls, that’s what they were, and calling it real life. Just the thought of those bitches and their crystals and their spirit animal totem shit made my gorge rise. I swallowed it again.

“We’re having a party this weekend. If you wanted to come by.”

I turned back to look at her. She was still standing there, beautiful, smug, and hopeful. Her shoes dangled crimson from her fingers. She was not small. She took up space and she smiled.

“Fuck Forest House,” I said, loud enough for her to hear. I turned again and made my clumsy, fast way back to my dorm room.

My dorm was not a co-op. It was concrete and tall, bland to the eye and the touch, but insulating, which is what I required of it. I ran up the stairs to my room and threw my backpack to the floor. The room was small and crammed, but I liked it. It was decorated, multicolored scarves strewn and hung everywhere. I had gotten some of those washable wall crayons and scrawled lines and colors all over the wall, but no discernable shapes like in my notebook. No good to have specific suggestions staring at me all the time. I felt good about the space, though no one but me ever came in.

I dropped to the floor, onto a braided rug one of my aunts had made, round and spiraling and a little rough. I pulled off my jacket, shirt and bra, and lay with my stomach and breasts pressed to the rug. The prickly soft grains scratched at my nipples. I pulled open my jeans and shoved my hand inside. My vulva and clit were warm and swollen. I touched them through my underwear and quick pleasure stabbed me. I rubbed until my breath came fast, pushing my breasts harder against the rug. I rolled over onto my back and arched against the rug. My first two fingers stroked firm and slow, all the way down and up again, and then focused, circling and circling my clit through the fabric.

My breath stopped. I pushed against my hand, sucked in more breath and came, in fast, shuddering waves.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I muttered. I got up, wiped my forehead with one hand, left my jeans on the floor with my shirt and bra. It hadn’t been enough: not the kind of arousal that would be satisfied with orgasms, not the kind of anger that I could stave with odd outbursts on the green. My body was quivering, under the skin, way under. The basic level, the level almost nobody can feel. Muscles, bones quivering.

Inside your body, there is a whole code, everything working together, keeping you you. Every cell cooperates, participates, lives and dies according to this, so that you stay perceptibly yourself. Everyone knows this, right?

My code is fucked. My code is magic. I don’t stay myself. There is no center.

My body shook, convulsed. I lay on the bed. The pain started, like a crazy burn-itch all through me, like a muscle you want to stretch, like a cramp you can’t relieve, pain growing and unremitting. I was consumed and I panted in it.

Then compression. Small, small, small. Quivering, twitching. Settling. Now relief. No more pain. No more words. Hunger. Heartbeat. Fast. Run run run. Skitter. Forever. Food. Small opening. Squeeze. Run run run. Fast. Fear, frozen. Big eyes big heat near me. Frozen, frozen, fear. Claws at me, flying. Run run run. Fast fast. Run.

I came back to myself in the basement of my dorm, naked and covered in sweat and small scratches. I moved quickly, too quickly still, and found the simple pullover dress I’d hidden behind the washing machine. I tried to keep my clothes widely scattered and available, but of course it was hit or miss. I smelled my skin and thought back as best I could. I hunted around and found a small pile of droppings with a finger. I hated mouse-times. Mouse-times were dangerous and scary, especially because some assholes insisted on sneaking kittens into their dorm rooms. But really, all times were dangerous and scary, to me, to others. Even woman-times. Maybe woman-times the most, because in woman-times I knew.

I made my way back up to my hall on shaky legs. I slipped into the bathroom and showered, then pulled my dress back over my wet body and headed back to my own room. I fell into bed, piled on covers despite the stuffy heat and slept.

The next day I found a flyer for the Forest House party, jammed in with hundreds of other flyers on a corkboard. It was light pink, with a drawing of a woman who seemed to be turning into a tree, her curves winding and sensual, melding with bark and trunk and pushing into the ground. FUN FUN FUN, the flyer said in big letters to the side of the tree woman. FOREST HOUSE FALL MIXER, SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 18TH, 10-??? The poster made me smile, then laugh. I touched the tree woman with a finger and traced her outer lines. What would it be like to be a tree-person, a plant-person? Safer, or would you have to rush to soil and take root and hope to be large enough not to be stepped on or eaten? Perhaps it was all more or less the same. Still, irrationally, I liked her; felt she had a freedom, a pleasure, something I did not. I took the poster down and hid it in my room.

For minutes together, later that week, looking at the tree woman’s form in half darkness, touching my own body and rising and falling, sea-like, I felt something like forgiveness for those crystal-wielding, herb-taking, cunt-licking bitches who prayed, secretly and openly, for the changing of their limbs and the release of animal-selves, animal-muscles.

But even as I opened, ascended, came and came again, I shut off the sensation of forgiveness when it approached myself.

I went to the party. Wore jeans and a Harry Potter T-shirt, with an open black hoodie over it. The shirt was kind of a joke. Women and a few fey-looking men hung around in doorways drinking spiced ales and fruit wines and touching lightly. There were candles, incense, a couple circles of people earnestly casting spells. I saw a woman on all fours by a couch, stretching her back out and making a little growling noise. I took a few steps toward her. She was white, really pale, with reddish-brown hair. A little like Polly, but skinnier. She looked at me, human eyes all dilated, and snarled. I took a step back again.

“She’s totally into her wolf totem.” I turned around and saw one of the boys, his face a mass of acne but friendly underneath. “It’s kinda freaky at first, huh? But like, don’t worry, if she gets really feral, we can touch her with silver and she comes back.” He held out his arm and showed me the thin silver bracelet on his wrist. I put out my hand and touched it, running my finger over the surface. I raised my eyes to his, pulled back the veil a little and smiled.

He left the conversation pretty damn quick after that. The wolf girl had gotten tired and was curled up at the end of the couch on the floor, wiggling her butt a little like she had a tail. I turned away and wandered through the house, down the hall to the stairwell.

“Hi,” she said, and I was startled. She came down from the first landing on the stairs, mostly in shadow. I watched her outline: hair, shoulders, hips. She came out into the light on the first floor. She was wearing a navy-blue dress, simple but as tight and sexy as most everything else she wore. She wore it carelessly, wore the swell of her ass and her breasts like they were easy to carry, nothing to bother about. But she was still wearing heels, these a sort of faux-snakeskin in shades of tan. Her feet seemed to shade up from them, the lighter bottom visible against the tan, rising to the richer brown of her top-skin. Her feet were so much safer to look at, but not that safe. Also, it was weird to keep staring at someone’s feet.

“I’m glad you came,” she said. I looked at her face, her eyes. Her eyes were not smug. They were open, welcoming, dark.

“I saw somebody being a wolf,” I said, I don’t know why. Her smile blossomed out like sun coming through a cloud.

“Yeah, some people are a little showy about the magic stuff. You want a drink, or something?”

“Okay,” I said. She moved easily through the more crowded part of the house then disappeared into the kitchen. I watched her strong, wide back and the sway of her ass. She came back with two beers. I sipped and swallowed the sharpness.

“Look,” she said, “I know you’re a senior, right? So you were here before I was, and I figure maybe you used to hang out at Forest House, and—”

“Not really,” I said.

“But you maybe knew Polly.” She was less confident now, staring down into her beer can. “I heard she was kinda—she could be a nasty bitch, especially to women she was messing around with. So I thought maybe that’s why you don’t like Forest House. I’m glad you came, and I’m sorry if something fucked up happened to you here.”

My skin started to buzz. Jesus, twice in one week? That was rare. I set my beer down, carefully, against the wall. It was less likely somebody would kick it over that way.

“I gotta go,” I said.

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s not—I’ve just gotta go.” I began moving through the crowd. Right now I felt buzzing, tingling, a sort of pre-painful ache in muscles and joints. Soon it would be more, but I could tell I had time to get out. A stabbing cramp hit as I reached the door and I stopped with my hand on the doorpost, bent, waiting.

“Hey, you okay?” It was the silver-bracelet guy from before. “You should have some water, sit down awhile.”

“Not drunk,” I gasped. I pushed away his solicitous hand and made it out the door. The night was cool, but I was sweating. The ache grew stronger in my feet, knees, ass, back. I ran, a strange, loping gait, aided by urgency but hindered by pain and the stretch in my bones. There was an almost-forest at the edge of campus—deep enough to hide for a while, not deep enough for much hunting, if it was a hunter coming. I could get there.

I panted as I ran, sweat dripping down my neck and my back. I could feel my skin soaking in it, letting it out and marinating itself. I peeled off my hoodie and let it fall. I reached down and pulled off my shoes; my feet were all pins and needles and wanted to be free. My vision was changing, sliding, shifting. For a moment I thought I knew a wolf-time was coming and I laughed to be so suggestible. Then my tongue went heavy in my mouth and my thoughts slanted and I bent over, close to all fours but not quite touching the ground in front. I was moving faster now, faster than I could in woman-times. I was at the trees and then the pain was blinding for a minute and then I was sleek, sleek, fast, energy straight through, shooting silver out to ground and pleasure—

Pleasure of movement, pleasure of speed, pleasure of sweat on fur, heavy pleasure, feet quick and smell all over. Nothing to worry, all moving and smelling and listening and pausing. Yes hunger mouth hunger stomach hunger pit hunger. Turning turning smelling stillness eager. Other-kill yes growl gobble spin chase. Smell of not-prey, smell, too-strong, melt vanish go. Marking, smelling, moving. Not-prey still. Smelling. Knowing.

I know. I am still. Looking. Stillness. Looking at her, in her stillness. Alive, right here, surface. Fear and pleasure. Deep. Strong. She opens her fingers, at her side. I want to smell them. Step. Step. Close now. Nose raised. Nose to fingers. Strong smell, deep smell. Sweat and the brass tang of her just-starting menses. I can see her with new sharpness. Must be coyote-time. Woman-time things bleed through in coyote-time. I keep my stillness and her eyes. Then I run.

When I came to myself again I was crouched at the far edge of the forest. I sat, exhausted, in my own sweat, feeling moss and dry leaves against my knees and thighs. I stayed there for a moment, letting my breathing come down, muscles quivering under skin. Then I remembered. Had she really been there? Had I imagined? I turned around, slowly, getting to my feet. I could barely see in the early dawn. I couldn’t smell a thing, the worst part of woman-time. Humans can’t smell for shit.

I figured my clothes were back closer to the campus, maybe shredded a bit but hopefully wearable. I started walking back, slowly, touching the trees as I passed. After a long change, a full night like that one, I was always both tired and strangely rested. The sun coming up was warm and bright. I watched it coloring in all the night grays of the almost-forest.

Back at my clothes, there she was, dozing against a tree with the remnants of my Harry Potter shirt under her arm. I tried to wear mostly clothes I didn’t care about, but sometimes I felt perverse. I watched her, the pull of her party dress over her boobs and her belly, the fabric carelessly riding up her thighs. I looked at my shirt in the crook of her elbow. She opened her eyes. We watched each other.

She held my shirt out and I took it, examining the strain, the rip caused by a claw as I worked my way free. I pulled it over my head. I started to walk away.

“Your pants are over there,” she said, pointing. I saw them and moved toward them. “Wait,” she said. “Don’t get them yet.”

I stared at her. “You’re not scared,” I accused. “You oughta be.”

“I’m scared,” she said.

“You’re into this, it turns you on.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“It’s fucking scary shit,” I said. “It’s not a game. I turn into animals, all kinds of animals; did you think I was a werewolf like that stupid girl? She’s not anything; she’s just a human being who likes being trippy and weird.”

“You were a coyote.”

“Yes.”

“But you’re not always a coyote.”

“Do I look like a coyote right now?”

“No.” She smiled.

I sighed. I lowered myself to a crouch. I was tired. “I’m lots of different kinds of animals,” I said. “Some of them, I don’t even think are real. Some are definitely extinct. I don’t always know, when I change, what I am, what the English name is or the human idea about it. I can’t make it stop, usually, and I don’t decide when it happens, and there’s no rule, that I can tell, except that—it happens when I’m feeling something. Not one thing in particular, just—strong things. And not even always then. I don’t know why.” She nodded. I sucked in a breath, dug my fingernails into my palms, and said it fast. “I turned into a bear when Polly broke up with me. And I scratched her. Badly. That’s really why she transferred.”

She laughed. I blinked at her. Then I laughed. I landed full on the ground, with a bump, and laughed.

“It was bad,” I insisted when I’d stopped laughing. “I mean, yeah, she was a bitch, she really was, but I attacked her. As a bear. It’s not…”

“You didn’t kill her,” she pointed out. “I mean, you might have, but you didn’t.”

“Bully for me,” I said.

“I mean it.”

“You don’t seem scared.”

“I am,” she said. She reached and put her hand on my thigh. She crawled her fingers up and brushed them over my pubic hair, this way and that, her eyes rising to mine. “I’m scared,” she said. She cupped her fingers over my vulva, and I could feel it warm and swell beneath them. “Is this okay?” She waited a moment. “It turns me on because it’s magic and because it’s yours.”

I was quiet. I felt the throb and pulse push out from my center to her hand. She took her hand away.

“I want to fuck you,” I said, looking at the grass under my fingertips and not at her. “When I see you in class, the smart things you say, you get under the skin of things. And your hair and your feet in those high heels and the clothes you wear. The curves of your ass and your boobs and your belly. And the shape of your jaw and the strength of your back. I shouldn’t fuck anybody, this thing that I am. But I want to fuck you.”

I could hear her breathing as I spoke and then she was on me like a wild thing, leaping and pressing and tumbling me back against the floor of the almost-forest. Her hand returned to my labia and my clit, drawing me up against her like a magnet. My back arched and my hips pushed forward. She bit me and scratched me with her other hand and I giggled helplessly and then grew still.

I felt stillness, circling, and a throbbing hunger, great, fierce, in the center of my body, sucking away my breath and giving it back in bursts. The noises in my throat were strange but human, for all their ferocity. I felt her middle finger dipping and playing at the opening of my cunt, teasing the puckered edge and sending a jolt straight from there to her palm against my clit. My hips surged and bobbed like a toy boat in a rough current, and I came in sudden, pulsing jolts, and then I forced myself back, down, away.

“Take off your dress,” I said hoarsely, and she looked at me and did. Her bra was purple and satiny, and her underwear was a plain cotton bikini. She undid her bra and pulled her underwear off. I was on her breasts as soon as I could see them, raisin-dark nipple sucked hard between my lips. She made a quick, deep, grunting sound, and then a higher, floating cry. She got back her breath. “Your period’s about to start,” I told her. “I could smell it.”

She laughed softly, breathlessly, but I saw a real stab of fear in her eyes for the first time. She didn’t hide it, just looked at me as she pressed her back against a tree trunk and parted her thighs.

“I like it deep and slow,” she said.

I circled her breasts with my mouth and her cunt with my hand, taking in the shape and the soft folds that surrounded me. Different from mine, larger, more contoured. I swept my fingers over the top of her clit, felt her shudder and pressed in harder, circling and finding the opening, slick and warm. I straddled her thigh and rubbed my own cunt against her, drawing out bursts of color under my skin, all up and down. My thoughts whirled and splintered, and I let my first two fingers slide inside her, deep and slow. Her arm came around my back and gripped me, hard. We rode each other and I pressed her, deeply, inside and out, the heel of my hand and my thumb searching out her clit. I lost my balance against her leg, dropping to the side of her. I closed my eyes then opened them again to watch her face. Her mouth was opening, wider and wider, and she was almost silent, straining against my hand. She laughed, suddenly, and then choked on the end of it, and I felt her clench and rise and come, the tension in her bursting like a bubble, opening like the new leaf on a tree, fresh, green, fiercely connected.

I pulled my fingers out of her, showed her the blood at the very tips, and then put them between my lips to suck them clean. Threatening, warning, daring, accepting—I couldn’t have said. Woman-time without words. Her eyes were locked on mine, and when I ate her blood they lit like I had touched her. She groaned and pushed me back, grabbing my ass in both her hands and squeezing, lifting my hips toward her and pressing her face into my crotch, nuzzling and licking and then rising to kiss my mouth. She lingered there, long and sweet and dizzying, and her hand slid between my legs and stroked me until I came again and again, easily, without strain, fire-bursts in a show I did not have to control.

We lay on the ground afterward, separate and quiet, our fingers touching. At last I stood up and began looking for my pants. We got dressed, still silent. She picked a few leaves out of her hair, steadied herself against a tree trunk, and looked at me again. Her eyes asked questions. I wanted to answer them. I felt a change at a distance, hovering, not yet here, something with wings.

“Will you come back with me?” I asked. “I want to show you my room.”

She took my hand and squeezed ’til I could feel the bones beneath.

“Yes,” she answered. “Yes.”