Best Lesbian Erotica 2011

CARRIED AWAY IN SANTA FE Charlotte Dare

She moved around the kitchen in flannel boxer shorts and a faded University of New Mexico T-shirt, collecting eggs, flour and milk for the mixing bowl. Last night’s hairdo poked out every which way. The smell of sliced strawberries wafted over to me as I stared at Katrina’s tanned legs and tried to recall at what point during this visit I had become sexually attracted to my best friend from high school. When had I started leering at her legs, her breasts in snug tank tops or those glistening peachy lips, craving to make contact?

Katrina turned to me with batter ladle in hand. “I can make waffles instead of pancakes if you’d like.”

What I’d like would probably embarrass you, I thought. “Pancakes are fine. Waffle irons are a bitch to clean.”

“It’s been almost fifteen years since we’ve had the chance to spend a week together. I think I can handle a little extra scrubbing.” She grinned and turned her back to me again. I didn’t mind. I liked the view from that side, too.

“Has it been that long?” I absently fondled the fringe on her placemats, colorful things that resembled some kind of Indian blanket.

“Uh, yeah,” she drawled over her shoulder. “I moved out here after college and spent the last ten years begging, pleading and threatening to get you to come for a stay.”

“Hey, I was here for your wedding.”

“Yeah, a four-day weekend of commotion seven years ago.”

“Don’t be mad,” I pleaded. “Sometimes life gets in the way. You were in law school, and it took me forever to get my master’s. Besides, I hated your husband.”

A surprised grin bloomed on her face. “You never told me.”

“I’ve done my share of stupid things, but one thing I don’t do is come between friends and guys.”

She shrugged. “Smart policy. Anyway, I’m surprised you didn’t hear my shrieks of pleasure back in Andover last year when the divorce was final.”

Shrieks of pleasure—to me that phrase had a whole different connotation at that moment. While she poured in the first batch of waffles, I shuffled to her L-shaped granite counter and leaned over to scam a closer look at her glorious body.

She smiled as the batter sizzled. “You look good, Ally. At least your breakup with Tara didn’t do any physical damage.”

“I was lucky. The bruised knuckles after slamming my fist into the wall healed quite nicely. The heart’s a little worse for wear, but I’m fine.”

She offered a sympathetic frown. “I wish you’d come sooner, like right after it happened. Then I could’ve been there for you.”

“You were there, over the phone, like always.” I stood up straight and stretched. “Can I help you with anything?”

“Sure. Bring the OJ and syrup to the table. Do you like the strawberries on top of the waffles or on the side?”

“I like it on top,” I said and immediately blushed.

“Really?” she teased. “Sometimes I do, too.”

“You know what I mean,” I insisted, my cheeks still on fire.

“Uh-huh,” she drawled, enjoying my mortification.

I clutched a thin vase holding a single fresh tiger lily. “How’d you like this vase up your ass for dessert?”

She giggled. “I don’t take it that way, but it’s been about six months since I’ve had a good romp.”

Katrina seemed to be forgetting she was bantering with the queen of comebacks. “You must be desperate if you’re making offers to lesbians now.”

She raised her eyebrows flirtatiously. “After my divorce, I promised myself I’d be open to all kinds of new horizons.”

I studied her waiting. “You’re joking, right?”

She flipped open the waffle iron, peeked in and then folded her arms with spatula still in hand. “What if I’m not?”

I giggled. “Would you knock it off and give me my waffle?”

She quietly turned back to the waffle iron, no smile, no return giggle. Was she actually propositioning me, inviting me to present her with a new horizon, and I just shut her down? Impossible—or was it? In high school, she’d been a bookworm who hid her natural beauty behind eyeglasses and intellectual observations that the boys hadn’t had the patience to figure out, but now she had a surprising ease about her, a self-confidence dripping in sex appeal. Even in silly boxer shorts, she could give Sharon Stone on her best day a run for her money.

As she approached the table with our plates, I forced my eyes away from her.

“I hope you got enough sleep last night,” she said, showing no traces of the awkwardness that had momentarily seized the kitchen. “We have another action-packed Santa Fe day ahead of us.”

“Awesome,” I said through a yawn.

She wasn’t kidding. Our hike to the top of Atalaya Mountain nearly killed me, but the view of the Rio Grande Valley was breathtaking—so was Katrina, all sweaty and cute in her khaki cargo shorts and hiking boots. We sat side by side on a large, flat boulder, gazing out into the valley as we ate roast beef and avocado wraps and guzzled bottles of green apple Vitamin Water. We’d never been so quiet together. Something about the dry breeze in the higher altitude, the smell of nature, dirt and trees all around, Katrina’s powerful presence—what could I possibly add to the experience with words?

After a surprise afternoon at her favorite day spa, she barely gave me enough time to shower and dress before we were off to dinner at Tia Sophia’s.

“How did you like the adobe clay body wrap?” she asked, nibbling a tortilla chip. “Bet your body’s all soft and tingly now.”

“Yes, you might say that.” I retracted my leg swiftly when Katrina stretched hers across the booth and brushed my ankle. The things I’d been thinking about her all day, especially when she was nude from the waist up getting an herbal exfoliation treatment on her back, made me paranoid about the slightest touch or lingering glance.

“So how am I as a tour guide? Think you’re getting your money’s worth?” she asked.

“I’ll say. I’m going to need another week off to recuperate.”

She laughed and licked the salt from her second margarita off her lip.

“This vacation has ruined me,” I added. “How am I ever going to be able to eat Mexican in the Northeast after this?” I swiped more guacamole from the stone bowl with my finger even though I was through eating.

She smiled as she stuck her credit card in the leather binder. “Well, you’re just going to have to come around more often I guess.”

“This dinner was supposed to be on me,” I protested.

She shook her head. “I figure I owe you, after dragging you up that mountain today.”

“That hike was one of the most incredible experiences of my life.”

She nodded. “The view is something, isn’t it?”

The view was only part of it. I was finding it harder to keep my private thoughts from hitting the air. I thought what I was feeling for Katrina was plain, uncomplicated lust, but as my flight home loomed three days away, the thought of saying good-bye to her filled me with a soft, sweet ache.

“How about a soak in my hot tub when we get home? That’ll soothe those out-of-shape muscles of yours.”

I shot her an evil glance. “You’re hilarious.”

“Besides, you’ve never seen anything like a Santa Fe night sky.”

She was right again. The stars twinkled like diamonds on black felt in a Tiffany showcase. I reclined against the side of the hot tub, letting the thundering jets massage my upper back.

“Remember that stud hockey player, Rob Milner? I recently ran into him at a gay bar in Boston.”

“Really?” Katrina said. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since he made a ritual out of shoving boys into lockers and calling them faggots. Remember Lucinda Coleman? I always thought she was a lesbian.”

“I wish,” I said. “I had the biggest crush on her all through high school.”

“Her?” she screeched, nearly piercing my eardrum. “She was the biggest bitch in cleats—softball goddess, prom queen. ‘Hi, Purina, meow, meow,’ she always said to me in front of everyone. God, I hated her.”

“She was still hot.”

Katrina sipped her pinot noir and giggled. “I hope she developed cankles.”

Our cackling over Lucy Coleman’s cankles drowned out the shrieks of cicadas echoing in the night. I stretched my leg out midlaughter and accidentally brushed up against Katrina’s. She hadn’t moved hers, and since I was feeling my third Corona with lime, this time neither had I.

“How does one know one’s gay?” she asked with the graveness of Diane Sawyer probing a death-row inmate.

I laughed. “What do you mean? You just know.”

“Then what about all those women who get married and have kids, then end up divorcing the guy for a woman?”

“Do you know any of those women personally?”

“Yeah, Gail, my secretary. Married seventeen years and now she’s with Maria. She said she had no idea until her twins were in high school.”

I shrugged and sipped my beer. “Clearly, it’s different for everyone. Why are you asking me this?”

She absently ran her fingers over the surface of the bubbly water.

“Kat, what’s going on?”

“I’ve just been very contemplative lately—since my divorce, your breakup with Tara.” She paused, staring out into the night sky. “I’ve also been wondering why my feelings for you seem different now.”

“Different? How?”

“Well, for one thing, I don’t want you to leave.”

Suddenly, my head was spinning and it wasn’t from the beer.

“And the other thing?”

“I want to know what it’s like to kiss you.”

A chill shot through me in the hot water. She wasn’t kidding, but I still couldn’t grasp it as true. “Shut the hell up,” I said laughing as I flicked water in her face.

She giggled and shoved a palm full of water back at me. “You’re such a bitch. You know I could drown you and bury your body in the cliff dwellings, and no one would ever know.”

Challenging her with a smug look, I said, “Yeah, right. Girly little you thinks she can take on a butch dyke like me and win?”

She laughed, enjoying the teasing. “You’re not butch, and if I recall, I beat your ass getting up that mountain. You were huffing and puffing like the Little Engine that Could.”

“Oh, yeah?” Suddenly, we were in ninth grade all over again. I grabbed her by her calf and yanked her under the water. When she surfaced, she pushed me back onto the seat and straddled my lap, double-handing water in my face. I finally gathered her hands and when the water drained from my eyes, there was her taut, tanned stomach staring me in the face. She had an amazing, athletic body. It’s no wonder she kicked my ass up that mountain.

“What? Do you want me or something?” she joked, trying to twist her wet wrists from my grip.

“Said the woman sitting in my lap,” I replied through giggles. Katrina was making me throb like crazy, but I didn’t want her to get off me. Her skin felt so good rubbing over my thighs in the water.

She wrenched free from me but didn’t move, just stared into my water-clouded eyes as we both caught our breath. Suddenly, her wet lips met mine. She braced herself against the side of the hot tub, fencing me in with dripping arms, her kisses light, tentative, unbelievably tantalizing. I struggled to restrain myself from devouring her.

“I like this,” she whispered and kissed me harder, more brazen and sensual.

I placed both hands around her waist, ever so gently, in case she suddenly realized what she was doing and wanted to spring out of there.

She began caressing my arms, like they were too hot to touch. She wanted to but was afraid she might get burned.

I slipped my tongue in her mouth, just slightly, and then out of nowhere, hers plunged in. It was full on, open-mouthed making out with my best friend, straight friend, and I couldn’t say which one of us was more bewildered by the turn of events.

My hands crept up her ribs toward her bikini top, waiting to be pushed away. The intense arousal washed away any of my remaining inhibitions. As I slowly pulled the string of her top open in back, she moaned softly. Her breasts were cool from the water and night breeze as I cupped them and gently squeezed. I rolled my fingers around her jutting nipples, making them even harder.

“I can’t believe how turned on I am,” she said. She rubbed herself over my thigh as I played with her nipples and flicked them with my tongue.

My pulsating clit made me squirm in my bikini. The entire scene revved me up like a teenager getting some action in a public place—I knew I shouldn’t be doing it, but it felt too good to stop.

I looked up at her pleasured face and said, “Let me give you the whole tour.”

She released her grip around my neck and allowed me to navigate her through the water to her side of the tub. I slipped off her bikini bottom and lifted her to my mouth. Cradling her ass in my hands, I dove into her pussy, eating her slowly, patiently, making sure she got the most out of her first experience. Secretly, I hoped to spoil her for every man after me.

“Oh, Ally,” she sighed, “this feels so good.” She cranked her head back against the side of the tub and wrapped her legs around my neck, letting my arms support the entire weight of her body. Her round, glistening breasts bobbed in and out of the water like buoys, nipples reaching skyward.

Her whimpers and short, uneven breaths kept me apprised of every inch closer she got to climaxing. I swirled my tongue around her clit, sucking and licking, until her moans threatened to disturb the neighbors about a half mile away on each side.

As she lost herself in uninhibited groans and grunts of pleasure, to my surprise, I felt my own throbbing building toward climax. The growing sensation began distracting me until Katrina clutched the side of the tub and cried out, “Oh, Ally, oh, god.”

We came together in explosive, effervescent ecstasy.

Still naked and glistening, she raked her fingers through her wet hair and sighed deeply. “Damn, why did we wait so long to do that?”

“Because I thought you were straight.”

“I did too.” She slipped on her bathing suit and got out of the tub. “I’m gonna take a shower. Just shut it down when you’re through.”

“Katrina, are you all right?”

She tightened the belt around her mini terry-cloth robe. “I think I might be gay.”

I wanted to reassure her. “Just because you had one experience doesn’t mean you’re gay.”

“What if I want you to meet me in my bedroom in twenty minutes?”

I smiled—big. “Then I guess we’ll have to discuss the matter in more detail tomorrow morning.”

“The scented candles are on my bookshelf.”

Over the last two days of my vacation, we were noticeably low-key. Although we enjoyed an intense, extremely satisfying all-nighter, neither one of us was brave enough to face the emotional fallout. Katrina and I still joked around and had fun, but I hated the idea of leaving us an unfinished book and having to imagine the ending.

The night before my flight, we decided we would try to make halfway decent-tasting pizza and indulge in a double feature of Meryl Streep’s campiest DVD rentals. I curled up on one end of Katrina’s sofa, a plate of pizza in my lap and a Sam Adams waiting on a coaster.

“It’s good, but it’s not anywhere close to what we call pizza,” I said. “I don’t know how you live without it.”

“It’s the flautas and the pico de gallo that get me through the dark times,” she replied with a grin.

That wavy chestnut hair, those sage-green eyes, the strong chin and girlish smile: she was so beautiful it hurt to look at her. I couldn’t figure out what had happened. As adolescents, we were inseparable for nearly ten years, even went to the same undergrad college, and all the while, I never looked at her as anything more than my best friend. Now, it seemed, she was the woman I’d been searching for my whole life—gorgeous, confident, driven, boldly sexual—and now I feared even the friendship was ruined.

“Remember the time we drove all the way down to New Haven because we heard they made the best pizza in America?” she said, before becoming aware of my sudden brooding. “Al, is everything okay?”

I nodded and contrived a smile for her. “Oh, watch this.” I diverted her attention from my demeanor to our favorite scene in Death Becomes Her when Goldie Hawn bashes Meryl’s character in the face with a shovel.

When the movie was over, Katrina broached the subject again. “Ally, are we going to talk about what happened the other night?”

I stared at the television. “It didn’t seem like you wanted to talk about it.”

“Well, I do,” she said quietly and then touched my arm so I’d look at her. “I didn’t just use you as an experiment.”

“I didn’t think that, Kat. I just don’t know what to say.”

She struggled to form the question. “Do you think you could like me in that way?”

I laughed at the question. “I already do, Katrina. But tomorrow I’m getting on a plane back to Massachusetts.”

“Don’t go.”

“I have to. I’ve got a schedule full of clients to see Monday.”

Reality deflated her. “Oh. Yeah, I guess that was a stupid suggestion.”

I clasped her hand. “No, it wasn’t. It was the sweetest suggestion I’ve ever heard.”

She leaned over and kissed me gently, her lips tangy from tomato sauce. “We still have tonight. And let’s face it. This pizza sucks.”

I pulled her on top of me and we spent the rest of the evening in various stages of undress cavorting around her living room furniture.

In Katrina’s car at the airport terminal, a pathetic cloud of gloom hovered, both of us on the verge of quivering bottom lips.

“I had such a great time. I’m so glad you came,” Katrina said.

“Me too—in every sense of the word.”

She giggled and swatted my arm. “Will you call me when you get in?”

“Sure. And make sure you let me know how that case turns out.”

“You’ll be the first one I call.”

We avoided eye contact, a lifelong friendship now more awkward than a first dance in junior high.

“God, how I hate small talk. Katrina, I think I’m in love with you.”

A limo driver behind us honked his horn.

“Oh, I wish you didn’t have to leave.” She grabbed my face and smothered my lips in a wet kiss.

Damn limo driver blared the horn even longer this time.

“You better go,” she said, pushing me away from her.

As the skycap grabbed my bags, I leaned into the passenger window with a helpless smile. “I’ll call you.”

I watched her drive away until her brake lights blended into the late morning sun. If this had been a Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan film, one of them surely would have run after Katrina’s car and jumped on the trunk as it left the drop-off area. I certainly wanted to.