Best Lesbian Erotica 2013

THE HORSE AND HOUNDS Rachel Charman

They come from miles to be here, I think as I feel the car’s tires scrunch on the gravel drive. Peering through the rain-washed windscreen I remember what you told me. You sat in my kitchen, a ray of sunlight on your hair and mouth, being an island of fun in this silent, open, empty place. You smirked at me, knowing you were twisting my heart with every filthy word as you told me when and where to show up. I hadn’t known if you were teasing me or not. Now I am here, jittery at the thought of finding it all true, and I want to phone you in your new home with him and tell you that I have gone after all, to see if it hurts you.

The place is the usual English country pub, too far out from anywhere for a former city-dweller like me to walk to. It is square, brick and thatch, with a chipped wooden sign swinging and squeaking over the door: THE HORSE AND HOUNDS. It could be any pub anywhere in the country, but you—my lovely, teasing, unobtainable you—told me this place was special.

“They’re coming from all over the county to this place, for a little, you know…” you said, looking at me from the corner of your cat’s eyes. I do know. I had seen that look on your face before, as your head rested on my pillow. It was a look that denoted pleasure; private, individual pleasure. Holding a coffee cup as you lay in my bed, one eye on the clock, because you knew your husband would be home for dinner within the hour, you told me about what happened that time at the pub, and that it was going to happen again. A week or so later you were gone, and I suddenly understood why you had told me to go there: to ease the pain of your departure.

When I walk into the place, holding a newspaper over my head to catch the rain, I am hit by two things: the hot, dog-like smell of pubs now that smoking is banned, and secondly, how inconspicuous the women are. I scold myself for my silliness. Had I expected them to be sitting beneath a banner? You would have laughed at that, in your high, sighing, skipping laugh that made your throat work beautifully.

I make my way to the bar, flapping my wet paper and tugging my coat open. I order a bitter shandy from the barmaid, who is a squarish, middle-aged woman dripping in bangles and earrings, and survey the women for a moment.

At a table in the farthest corner, partially hidden in a nook in the wall, is a group of six women. The age difference between them all strikes me, as I savor the first glug of warm, earthy beer. There is a woman headed straight for sixty if she is a day, but another who can’t be older than twenty-two. I mentally shake myself again for making assumptions. Did I expect them to all look just like me?

In a way, though, they do all look like me. I can see, as I walk past the fireplace across the red, sticky carpet, the brand of loneliness in their faces. It’s the kind of loneliness that hangs from the features of a woman’s face, like moss or cobwebs; the kind of loneliness that builds up over time in this desolate place the rain never leaves alone. It is the kind of loneliness a chat at the post office, or the hand of a husband, or the glow of the TV can’t wipe away; the loneliness of a woman with love all around her but who can’t love, and who feels her heart is beating loudly and alone in all these wide open spaces; not thrumming in time with the world or someone else. My face looks like theirs now, since you left my heartbeat to slow alone.

I get to the table and the woman who is in charge, Justine, looks up and smiles. We had a stilted conversation on the phone a day or two ago to confirm times. She is around forty, with dark hair, and a fashionable wax jacket on her thin frame. I can tell from her accent and the slightly patronizing way she looks at her little group that she is a former urbanite like me, and wealthy to boot.

We exchange hellos. I hadn’t really thought about what to say next but fortunately someone is pulling a chair over and someone else is shuffling along to make space and there, I’m seated among them with the least fuss possible. They don’t want to draw attention to themselves. I feel as though I’ve just sat down with a new book group.

The conversation too feels like that of a book group. It is the nervous, extra-polite talk of women keen to make a good impression. I take them all in. Justine used to be something flash in the city before she and her husband upped sticks to the country to start a family. It is clear from her manner she is used to exercising authority. Kim, the young one, is plump and mousey with a baby at home with her farm-laborer husband. She’s a local girl who has barely left the county. There is Marge, a weather-beaten woman in her late fifties, whose partner, who died last year, is alluded to regularly in non-gender-specific terms. There are two thirtysomething friends, Sam and Lisa, with identical glossy haircuts and trendy Ugg boots. It is painfully obvious, to me at least, that they are lovers and think it is a secret. Then there is a wiry, clear-skinned woman of indeterminate age, dressed boyishly in denim and a checked shirt, her blonde hair cropped close to her head and her hands writhing for want of a cigarette.

Into this I throw my story. Yes, I’m new to the next village, having moved in just a year ago. No, nobody back at the cottage I bought petulantly, believing I was too old to need city distractions anymore. What do I do? Well, I’m a writer. I don’t mention how I have barely written a word since I saw you over the garden fence, tucking a strand of hair from the corner of your apple-red mouth behind your ear. I leave out how I had hated the place instantly but stayed because after living next door for six weeks, you appeared in my kitchen and then in my bed, and then came over every day at 12:00 to drink coffee and make love while your husband worked without thinking of you. I forget to mention that when he took the new job you refused to make any plans to see me again, as if plans lent some sort of calculation to our affair, whereas slipping in my back door every day you seemed to be able to write off as a series of one-off slips of judgment. Then off you went, leaving flowers on the kitchen table as the removal van belched and shuddered away.

He’d been trying to make you pregnant and you didn’t want him to. You said the feel of my skin on yours made you feel like a woman and not a reproductive machine made of fluids and membranes. Then you left me in this countryside hell, and I ache.

Keeping all this to myself I observe for a while. The conversation steers toward neutral topics like the weather, the TV, and the last good fair of the summer. It is not stimulating but my guts are fluttering with nervous excitement. You had told me about this little gang, and now that I can’t have you I want to live in the little story you left behind.

You can’t quite remember how it happened last time, you said, leaning on one elbow in bed, your hair soft and straggled by my hands. You whispered, running a finger from my chin to my breastbone, it actually was a book group to start with. Justine brought together this group of strangers and you went along for something to do. Perhaps it was because they were all lonely at the right time, or perhaps it was because the right amount of chardonnay was drunk. Several factors led to an occurrence, you said. Things were done, privately, you said. They hardly mentioned it afterward, you smirked as you kissed me, but then months later Justine sent out an email to say the “book group” was meeting again. “You should try it,” you had said, and looked sad, although I didn’t know why at the time.

I had turned up just half an hour before last orders, wanting to minimize any awkward chitchat. At 11:00 p.m., the bell rings and Maureen, the barmaid, starts slinging the locals out with a clanging singsong of “Finish up folks please!” As she trundles by with a cloth and a bottle of anti-bac spray, Maureen drops a key discreetly onto the table in front of Justine. Nobody else in the pub would have seen her do it, but we hear the light clack of the key on the wood and the mood steps up a gear. I sense them grow more tense. Justine, used to being followed, downs the vodka and orange she has been nursing and everyone else copies. Jen, the boyish blonde, tucks a roll-up cigarette behind her ear in preparation. As the last punter leaves and Maureen locks up the doors behind him, she nods to us. Justine zips up her wax coat and smiles at us, but her smile has changed. It’s not the wide-mouthed, cheery grin of earlier, but a small, sly, knowing curl of the lips. Wordlessly we all get up and follow her to the side door and out into the passage between the pub and its surrounding walls. As the others file by I borrow a light from Jen. We exhale and I say, “What’s in it for Maureen?”

“Last time she joined us,” says Jen in a low voice as she walks ahead. “Not tonight though.”

I want to say something conversational but Jen’s tone tells me the time for jabber has passed and all my questions will be answered some other way. I smoke hard in the cold night air and follow her into the dark.

The six of us slip through the long grass at the back of the pub to the woods behind. Here the lights from the pub kitchen fade and I have to keep my eyes on Jen’s coat to stay on the path between the trees. The air is cold and the leaves drip with rain that chills my hands and the back of my neck. I begin to feel jumpy in the shadows, feeling the mud slick under my boots. This is how people end up chopped into pieces in the trunk of someone’s car, I think. Then Jen glances over her shoulder to check that I am still there. I like the strong curve of her chin and the sharp cut of the hair at the nape of her neck. I feel a flutter of vague, basic lust and follow.

We walk until we reach a large shed with brown paint peeling from its brick walls. Justine, with a sly glance up the mud path, unlocks the door and opens up. From my place at the back of the crowd I can smell the inside: earth, dead leaves, paint and wood. We file in.

Inside the place is dark until Justine lights a camping gas lamp and a few candles that stand on a chipped old coffee table. Moth-eaten rugs and a few damp cushions are scattered around the small, low space. We sit cross-legged on the floor.

The atmosphere presses down hard on all of us. There is an overriding sense of longing in the room, as if our collective wants are spilling out onto each other. Most of all there is expectation, a hint of desire, and something almost cannibalistic. I realize all eyes are on me. Kim and Marge are looking politely from lowered eyes, but Sam and Lisa are restraining the urge to nudge each other and nod at me. Jen is looking at me with the kind of bold, butch appraisal I would usually object to, but doing so would seem churlish under these circumstances.

Justine smiles levelly at me and places a hand on my arm. She seems to be the one most comfortable with what we all know is about to happen.

“I know a friend told you to come along,” she says. “Did she tell you what happened last time?” She squeezes my shoulder lingeringly.

You did tell me. “I ended up sitting in the middle of them and taking everything off,” you said. “I showed them how I do it when I’m alone,” you breathed, your hand following your thoughts and my hand following yours.

I begin to unbutton my coat and Justine nods encouragingly. I pause after that, not sure if and how to go on. Jen, who had been leaning back in the shadows, kneels closer to me and removes my shoes, so tenderly and with such confidence that I realize whatever girl she is brooding over must have been worshipped.

I take off my shirt and jeans. I find it hard to meet anyone’s eye as I do it, though I can see Marge’s arm curled almost supportively around Kim’s shoulders, while Sam and Lisa hold hands. I imagine you undressing here in the cold, under these women’s eyes, and thrill to echo you as if it brings you closer to me.

I can feel the pent-up lust my still-young body naturally creates, but also, the deep-seated, instinctive fear of other women’s eyes on my body, and most of all, the overwhelming pointlessness everything has had since you disappeared. I have halted.

This time it is Marge who snaps me out of it. She waits until I look up and meets my eye. She is steely gray and blue-eyed, with a strong, trustworthy face. When she speaks her voice has a rich timbre and a warm West Country burr.

“It’s only flesh and blood, chickadee,” she says. “Don’t have to give us no more than that.”

Somehow she sounds warm and wanting at once. I want to show her, this old and grieving woman, my body, my poor starved skin, and see how my pain might match up to hers. The thought of sharing something that is so close to passion—grief—turns me on and I slip out of my underwear quickly before I can change my mind.

I am naked in a darkened room with six women. I blame you for this. You always make me do things I wouldn’t otherwise. I realize that I have been living every second for a year as though you have been watching me, even those hours when we were apart, and it has made me brighter. I have written not a word of the novel I set out to but the hundreds of love letters I have written to you, sent or not, are the best work I’ve ever managed. I couldn’t have done it without you having drawn me clearer like an artist tidying up her masterpiece.

Jen is looking at me like a woman in a drought confronted with a lake. She is slim, strong, silent and sewn up with chivalry. I can see the lean muscle of her shoulders and the frown quiet, moody women wear. You taught me how to want a woman when I hadn’t before. It is easy to want her, so I do. I decide to perform for her.

I place my hand on my neck, running my fingers from there to my collarbone, and sigh as the familiar lines of my palm graze my breast. I wonder if this is too quick or too coy for the group. I look at Justine, who has slipped off her coat and unbuttoned her Levi’s. She is lying back on a cushion, still smiling around at us all as she trails her hand lazily across her navel.

I run both hands now to my hips. You loved to hold my hips. The day we first made love, you came into my kitchen as was habit, and as I stood with my back to you making coffee you said I had the proportions of a model, but scaled up. I laughed hard, unsure of whether it was an unwitting put-down or an innocent compliment. Then your hands were on my hips and your breath on my neck and my world fell apart.

My hips fit into my palms as softly as horse chestnuts fit into their silky shells and for a moment I am lost in myself. When my hand sweeps to my thigh and then to the softest skin where my legs meet I hear a sigh—I am not sure whose—and I am aware of the women again.

I look up and see them in flashes. Justine is ahead of me, her slim hand working smoothly inside her jeans. Sam and Lisa are kissing tentatively, as though it has never happened before, nipping at each other’s lips like nervous little birds. Kim has moved so Marge can cradle her across her lap, holding her in a close bear hug. Jen is still and soundless, her arms wrapped around her knees and her head cocked to one side as she watches me. I make it my mission to crack her. The need to make her react spurs me on as my fingers feather out across my cunt and I tip back my head.

In my mind’s eye you are here. You watch me, as you watched me a hundred times in bed, as the thick bulb of my middle finger finds my clit; the thin, vibrant seam of me; and then the deep opening below, before moving away, teasing and tasting. I become aware of the curling smirk on my mouth, the one I didn’t know I had until you pointed it out. Jen laughs in the back of her throat. She has seen that smirk before on the face of someone she loves. I settle into the smooth rhythm of my fingertips and open my eyes to see her crawling toward me on the grainy floor.

As she reaches me I see the others around beginning to let go as if they are in a sort of trance. Sam and Lisa, whose passion is so clearly near the surface, are the most susceptible. Sam has pulled Lisa’s scarf and blouse from her and is planting thousands of hungry kisses on her shoulders and throat. They only have eyes for each other and are only here because they need this secret mania to truly show themselves to each other.

Marge has her hands—wonderful, leathery brown hands that held the same woman for years—gently planted around Kim’s flushed round face. Kim is looking up at Marge with a kind of disbelieving joy. Kim slips up her own skirt and lavishes the attention her husband doesn’t know how to give to her own full, curved legs. Justine has shrugged off her shirt and jeans and is touching herself at an unabashed, luxurious pace.

Jen reaches me on all fours, poised and curious. I wonder if she wants me to stop what I am doing to myself and turn to her. Although I’m not au fait with the roles we are all playing, I realize from her catlike position at my side that she is rarely, if ever, “done.” It is clear from the way her eyes rush from my hand to my curling toes to the flush creeping up my throat that she revels in giving pleasure. She is waiting for permission.

I nod and she reaches out. She traces a cold fingertip across my starved lips. I haven’t been kissed in what seems like an age and my mouth trembles at her touch. She lowers her head to the curve of my breast and begins a slow, expert journey across my skin with her lips and tongue. I gasp, thinking first only of the sensation, then of her, then of you. Her lips close on my nipple and her tongue makes slow circles around it, sucking harder as she shifts to lie beside me. I reach instinctively to stroke the smooth hair at the back of her neck and press her harder to me. She groans softly and is answered by a little half laugh from Justine. I see her watching Jen intently and realize she is the one Jen is pining for.

Around the room, the mood is thicker and watching them I feel my own desire harden. Sam and Lisa are locked together on the floor, their arms and legs entwined, kissing frantically as their hips grind together with increasing urgency. Marge is still cradling Kim, but now she is working her hand inside the younger woman in time to Kim’s soft panting. Kim watches Jen and me, transfixed. I shut my eyes and listen to them all, the sounds of hands on skin and lips on lips in an ancient rhythm, almost trying to pick out those special sounds you made for me alone.

Jen climbs above me. Her mouth is on mine, insistent yet soft. She tastes of beer and tobacco and I smell her: hair wax, wet grass and cheap soap. I feel as though I am being unfaithful to us, then I picture you with him and I wrap my legs around Jen’s waist.

Her belt is cold against my thighs and she is breathing hard against my neck. I tug at the buttons of her shirt and reach underneath. I press her breast hard, knowing she won’t like to be caressed. She allows herself to arch her back and groan. She isn’t like you. She is tough and moody and feels heavy. You were like sunlight in my arms. I want her to fuck me, to envelop me with brutal sensation and drive you away. I wrap both arms around her neck and press myself, hot and wet, against her jeans. She presses back and I growl, “Fuck me,” into her ear.

The words increase the tension in the room. Kim, her former shyness gone, has raised her knees and spread her legs wide as Marge presses her whole hand roughly against her cunt. Sam is lying on her back, her hands over her own mouth, as Lisa kneels between her legs, licking and gripping Sam’s hips. Justine is on her knees, her hand working furiously, watching us intently.

Jen’s fingers push into me and I forget everything for a few seconds. She holds still within me, letting me tense around her hand, before she begins to push back and forth. She uses the power in her hips and back to drive her hand harder, her whole body working in a fluid wave. She has her eyes closed and mouth open in an expression of pure oblivion. I wonder if she is picturing someone else underneath her and it turns me on. I picture you fucking me like this and my body responds with another wave of arousal although my heart cringes. I kiss Jen, my mouth open, pushing my tongue roughly against hers. I squeeze my legs tight around her and grind my clit against her belt buckle. I am pushing savagely against her, forcing her to fuck me harder with her hand trapped between us, and she loves the aggression.

In a corner somewhere I hear someone come. With my eyes squeezed shut I can’t tell who it is, but I hear the rushing thrust of hips and hands reaching a peak, then slowing and intensifying, then dying away. Like magic it works on the rest of us. Justine begins to make a low, humming sound in the back of her throat and Kim lets out a series of surprised, delighted gasps. The forbidden sound of another woman’s most private pleasure adds to my own and I begin to feel the familiar tension in my legs and stomach.

As I build to my orgasm, coherent, reasoned thoughts are pushed aside and random images break free in my mind. I see hands and mouths and breasts and shoulder blades moving to my rhythm in my head. I see myself in snatches. I wonder if any of these women fucked you like this and the idea takes hold. In my mind’s eye the women are in this room just as they are in reality but underneath Jen, bucking and gasping, is you, not me. I watch you in my mind, a drop of sweat clinging to the hair that falls over your eyes, your head thrown back, your toes crossed in that way that you do when you’re lost in it all. My head fills with echoes of your cries and I swear I can smell you. My body contracts and I let out a howl, half joy, half anguish, and shudder into climax. Jen clamps a hand over my mouth to quiet me and I scream out the pleasure and pain into her palm.

I hardly remember what happens immediately afterward but somehow we are all dressed, a little fatigued, and splitting off in the car park. Justine is the only one who meets anyone’s eye. Jen looks at her meaningfully but doesn’t say a word to anyone. I leave with a nod.

Driving home, too exhausted to cry, I wonder if I will go back again. I wonder if this is healing or hurting me. You had hoped it would heal me and help me learn now that you are gone, but I don’t know whether I will ever be able to make love to someone without you filling my head.

When I pull up at my drive I am so I tired I almost forget to lock the car. Dragging myself to the front door, I stop in my tracks. Sitting solemnly on the doorstep under the porch light, there you are, shivering and red-eyed. My brain fizzes when you look at me. I move to speak but you answer me with your eyes, pleading and dark and sorry.

“Is it too late?” you whisper, as I step unsteadily to the front door. I sink to my knees beside you on the step, unable to speak, and shake my head.