Best Lesbian Erotica 2014

BRIDGE LINE Anamika

My accidental meeting with Nisha Gulati occurred in the best tradition of a B-grade Hollywood romance, though the gorgeous ex-model later revealed that she had purposely collided with me on the second floor of Ansal Plaza just to make my acquaintance. I managed to gather all four shopping bags—three hers, one mine—and scramble to my feet before a roving shop assistant rushed in—not to help us but to check out whether the clothes racks had been despoiled by our fall.

“Thanks,” said the dusky woman, collecting her bags. Her pretty, oval face, framed in a mass of frizzy, shoulder-length hair, seemed familiar.

“It’s okay,” I mumbled, patting my trousers and checking the bag that contained my cheap Vivaldi shirt.

“Did we meet before?” she said, focusing her dark almond eyes on my face. I shook my head even as I felt mesmerized by her feral looks and her musky perfume. She was in casuals—jeans and a gauzy, lemon-yellow cotton top—and I could see that she was tall, in fact taller than me by at least four inches, slender and over-thirtyish.

“Maybe I met your lookalike somewhere,” she said, smiling effusively, revealing her sparkling uneven teeth.

“Quite possible.” I nodded and approached the exit.

“Let’s have a cup of coffee,” my accidental companion suggested as we stepped onto the escalator moving downward.

The unexpected invitation set off a warning bell inside me. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she were a stocky, mustachioed male, attracted by my delicate features, but why should a pretty woman, even though she might not be in her prime, seek out a thin ordinary-looking girl like me?

“Thanks for the invitation, but I… I have some appointments to keep,” I blurted out, wondering if she was a pricey call girl looking for an errand girl for her massage parlor. My shaky voice must have betrayed my concern and anguish, for, as soon as we stepped onto the solid floor, my companion said: “I thought you’d recognize me. I am Nisha Gulati, ex-model.”

“Rhea Sen,” I mumbled, feeling relieved as I remembered seeing her mug shot occasionally on Page Three of the Hindustan Times supplement—HT City.

Several heads turned as I followed the gorgeous ex-model into the coffee shop and took a corner table.

“Espresso or cappuccino?” asked Nisha, piling up her shopping bags on a chair.

I had no idea about the latter variety, but chose it all the same on the strength of its exotic-sounding name. She ordered cold coffee for herself.

“Are you a Bong?” Nisha asked, looking once again at my face with an intensity that made me flinch.

I nodded.

“I am half-Bong. Father Punjabi Sikh; mother Bengali. Mom was from a place called Chandannagar which, I have heard, was once a French principality and was renowned for its electrical wizardry.”

I told her that my village, Chandipur, was only two stations away from Chandannagar even as I tried to follow her drift. Obviously, the ex-model hadn’t invited me for coffee to explore our Bengali heritage and discuss Tagore songs and rosogolla, the two much-maligned obsessions of an expatriate Bengali.

“You have the figure and looks of a model, Rhea,” Nisha said, after taking the first sip of her coffee.

“You must be joking,” I said, feeling slightly elated. “I definitely don’t look like a model.”

“All models don’t have to be tall and pretty,” said Nisha, sizing me up with her dark almond eyes. “What are your vital stats, by the way?’

I said I had never measured myself.

“You should,” Nisha said emphatically. “You have a finely chiseled face and very good collarbones, Rhea. You must be doing a lot of exercises and dieting to maintain your anorexic figure.”

I gulped, unable to decide whether I should laugh or cry. The ex-model would certainly be shocked if I told her that I had been maintaining my “anorexic” look since my birth and had been taking Revital capsules to gain a few kilos to look like a normal, healthy girl.

“Now, Rhea, would you mind opening just a couple of buttons of your top and letting me see…”

“Please, Miss Gulati, you are going a little too far,” I protested, recovering from the shock.

“Call me Nisha, just Nisha.”

“Well, Nisha…”

“I need your help, Rhea, and I am sure, as a compatriot you will not disappoint me.”

Nisha set aside her coffee, pushed back a few stray ringlets from her face and introduced her problem. Delhi’s top models had all gone to Mumbai to participate in the ongoing Indian Fashion Week (IFW) and Richa Sharma, Nisha’s best friend and one of the few fashion designers who wasn’t participating in the IFW, had chosen to show her Bridge line of clothes for the fall/ winter season next Saturday at the Park Royal, before a select gathering of marketing managers, socialites and fashion journalists. Nisha was on the faculty of Le Modelle, one of Delhi’s most respected modeling agencies, but she could rope in only half a dozen not-so-hot models for Richa’s show. To make things worse, two had just dropped out and dashed to Mumbai to earn better wages from the IFW jamboree, landing Nisha in a quagmire. With just five days left, there wasn’t enough time to hunt for suitable replacements and put them through the rigorous drill of ramp modeling.

“You are a godsend, Rhea,” Nisha warbled. “You’ll fit nicely in Richa’s Indo-Western segment. We will pay you ten thousand rupees for your appearance.”

That was, in fact, almost half of what I earned in a month from my eight-hour-a-day grind as an assistant in a travel agency. Still, I had doubts that needed to be cleared before I took the plunge.

“I am only five-four,” I told my prospective employer.

“Don’t worry. A snazzy pair of stilettos will add two inches,” Nisha assured me. “You have very smooth skin and good bones.” Nisha gently touched my cheek, nose and collarbones. “And you are so young and fresh looking.”

“Thanks,” I said, closing my eyes for a moment as I fancied myself an accomplished model, strutting the ramp with the poise and grace of a famous model like Meher Jessia or Madhu Sapre.

Nisha whipped out her BlackBerry, tapped the numbers and, as she got a response from the other end, whispered excitedly: “Good news, Richa. I have just found Neha’s replacement. Come over to my place within half an hour, right?”

“I am not exactly in a mood to join your caper, Nisha,” Richa spat out, exhaling a stream of acrid smoke from her cigar, when Nisha presented me to her friend. We had descended, via a spiral staircase, to Nisha’s basement, where we found the plump, moon-faced designer, clad in a pair of tight Levi’s and loose round-necked top, sitting gloomily on the edge of a T-shaped wooden platform, dangling her legs, smoking her slim cigar. “Look,” she said, holding it up like a seasoned politician lecturing his minions. “After struggling ten long years in this bloody, cutthroat profession, I can’t risk my reputation by putting up a short amateur to display my wares. The sponsors…”

To my relief, Nisha dragged her infuriated friend away to a corner to argue my case. Meanwhile, I occupied Richa’s vantage position on the T-shaped platform (which I later learnt to recognize as Nisha’s practice ramp) and tried to identify the models displayed on the four walls. Four of them turned out to be none other than Nisha herself in her heyday, arrayed in colorful ethnic costumes embellished with dazzling gold and brocade.

The heated exchange between the enraged designer and the cool, persuasive ex-model continued for about ten minutes and then Nisha came back to whisk me into a small but well-appointed anteroom fitted with a large mirror, a dressing table, a couch and a few clothes racks.

“Look, honey, I will apply a light makeup on your face and then fit you out in a short denim skirt to prove my point to my fastidious friend,” Nisha said, as she sat me on a stool with my back to the mirror. “If she doesn’t like you, I’ll say ‘sorry’ and pay you the taxi fare for your return journey. Okay? But, first I must have a look at your body.”

Ignoring my mild protests, Nisha unbuttoned my shirt, unhooked my bra and then asked me to stand up so that she could unbuckle my belt and pull down my trousers to my knees to have a good look at my androgynous figure. “A boy-girl, huh?” Nisha said with a smile, even as I cupped my small breasts, which I had been trying to augment with Revital, with my palms.

“You have a fine figure, Rhea,” Nisha certified and then gently but firmly removed my hands from my breasts. “Honey, we come in different sizes and shapes but all are equally good for my profession if only we know how to present each one.” Nisha now placed her left hand on my flat tummy and with her right hand she stroked my breasts, gently tweaking my nipples to make them taut and pointy. This was, of course, not my first encounter with a woman who was interested in my body, but with her kind, encouraging words and gentle touch, Nisha made it easy for me to appreciate her advances. In fact, I wondered if the ex-model would eventually allow me to explore her fabulous body—if Richa took me on for her show.

As if she could read my mind, Nisha whispered, nuzzling my neck and earlobes, “Look, Rhea, I don’t know if Richa will approve you or not, but we shall remain friends and there will certainly be other assignments in future where I can fit you in. Right?” And with that assurance, Nisha kissed me lingeringly, exploring my mouth with her tongue, her hands stroking my abdomen and then slipping under my panties to make my pussy hot and humid. “You need a good shave down there, honey,” she said as she reseated me on the stool. “Now, let’s get back to business.” Nisha picked up a brush from the dressing table and started cleaning up my face with some deft strokes.

Nisha took about half an hour to “do” my face, working briskly with her brushes, tubes and gels. When she finally turned me to face the mirror, I found myself staring at a pretty, modish girl with kissable lips and a sexy look.

“Do you like what you see in the mirror?” Nisha asked.

“Immensely.”

“Excellent. Now I will dress you up in a tight-fitting skirt to wow Richa.”

But Richa was a tough customer, who refused to be impressed solely by Nisha’s clever makeup and my body-hugging miniskirt. She made me walk the ramp a couple of times with the strobe lights focused on me, and then strike an aggressive posture with my hands poised on my hips. She then scrutinized me for about ten minutes from every possible angle and finally declared somewhat grudgingly that I was “just passable.” “What size is she, by the way?” Richa asked Nisha.

“Rhea is a seven.” Nisha then rattled off my vital statistics, my height, weight (which she correctly quoted as forty-three kilograms without putting me on the scale) and a few laudatory words about my good bones and smooth skin.

After Richa left, Nisha took me back to her anteroom and made love to me on the couch. She urged me to be her top girl and encouraged me to be aggressive, a real butch, and punish her by savagely chewing her lips, her lovely face and tits and then pushing three of my fingers up her smooth, clean-shaven pussy. Somewhat coy and hesitant at the beginning, I soon started enjoying my assigned role and molested Nisha’s slender, gym-toned body to my heart’s content. I employed my mouth and fingers to bring on her spasms and in the process reached my own orgasm with Nisha’s long little finger delectably teasing my asshole.

“Attitude is the most important quality in a model,” Nisha lectured me in between two long, intense sessions during which I practiced catwalking on her makeshift basement ramp, trying to exude elegance, confidence and style. Later, Nisha showed me the video clips of some famous models in action, in slow motion, which of course, included some prime footage from her own big shows. Richa had slotted me for her Indo-Western line of clothes featuring mainly short kurtis and spaghetti tops in different shades and colors, teamed with flared pants or miniskirts. Exposed legs and a sizable chunk of midriff being de rigueur for this particular line, Nisha whisked me to Eleganza, her favorite beauty clinic, on the second day of my grooming to put me through the basics of body care that included hair removal and an elaborate fruit facial. Three hours later, when I returned to Nisha’s basement to resume my drill, I had two Dalmatians, brought in by her housemaid, as my audience. As I sashayed down the ramp, the exceptionally well-behaved Dalmatians sat primly on two chairs and encouraged me with an occasional yelp and tail-wagging. Nisha and I shared our sandwiches with the fashion-loving Dalmatians during the lunch break.

On the third day, Richa turned up in the evening with an odd assortment of strappy, body-hugging georgette kurtis and stringy, backless cholis to try them on my spare frame. It was during this trial before the big, oval mirror in the anteroom that Richa made the spectacular discovery that I was not entirely flat chested. I cringed a little and blushed as Richa gleefully tweaked one of my nipples even as Nisha glared at her friend disapprovingly.

“Well, Rhea has the measurements of a petite model,” Richa finally said, after Nisha had hurriedly covered my bosom with a stole. “It would be a good idea for her to allow a little wardrobe malfunctioning and casually expose one of her boobs just like those Paris models do these days to create a ripple in the audience.”

I firmly rejected Richa’s suggestion; Nisha came to my rescue and pointed out that since I came from a conservative background, Richa shouldn’t expect me to be too bold in my first appearance.

That evening, I gave a more energetic and versatile performance on the couch as Nisha’s top girl, bringing tears to her eyes. “To be candid, Rhea,” Nisha said, cupping my face in her palms and looking deep into my eyes. “I have had several lovers in the past, mostly models, but you are probably the best of the lot. You aren’t going to leave me for a girl your age, are you?”

I responded with a fierce kiss and said: “I like mature women, Nisha. To tell you the truth, I fancied you the moment I set my eyes on you, though I was a little afraid of making advances to a celebrity model like you.”

“Onetime celeb, honey,” corrected Nisha. “Now I am just like any other wage earner on the street. So don’t treat me deferentially, right?” And with that little homily, she drew me tight on her bosom and started licking my face, catlike, as a prelude to a searing encore.

The Park Royal greenroom was big enough to accommodate fifteen models, but there was some unavoidable bitchiness and heartburn in our ranks because the senior models, who had already distinguished themselves by appearing in music videos, serials or TV chat-shows, claimed all the fine big mirrors, forcing us juniors to share one mirror between two or even three of us.

Ten minutes before the show, Richa came to the greenroom to exchange pleasantries with the senior models and found just a few seconds to blow a gust of cigar smoke and a kiss in our direction. Nisha visited the greenroom as well, to boost the morale of her models. “Take care of this new girl from my stable,” Nisha requested of Lisa, a senior model (referred to as a “sex kitten” by the fashion magazines). She then advised all of us junior models: “Don’t panic, hons; remember, even the best models trip on the ramp once in a while. Play cool and never make eye contact with the audience.”

“And don’t ask for a hike in your fees unless you have shaken your butt in a music video or mouthed a few lines of inane dialogue in a soap,” a disgruntled junior model riposted after Nisha had left the greenroom.

And then the lights went off, the invigorating sound of tabla and strains of sitar filled the Park Royal ballroom, an overhead spot focused on the sponsor’s banner and on the signal of the choreographer’s tiny handbell, we sashayed down the ramp, one by one, to display Richa’s Bridge line of clothes. The lights (blue when we began and yellow when we finished our walk), the pulsating music, the beautiful girls and the colorful clothes they displayed, all combined together to concoct a heady brew that went straight to my head. The backstage cribbing and carping over mirror, ribbon and hair clips at last gave way to a sense of bonhomie. Even the seniors abandoned their superior airs for a while to help out the juniors with timely reminders and warnings to make the show a success.

“Ignore the camera flashes,” advised Megha, a horsey senior who stood five-eleven and was often affectionately mentioned on Page Three as “the bimbette with the unending legs.” Now that everyone was so chummy, I asked Lisa, in between two sequences, a question that I should rather have asked Richa: “What’s this Bridge line?”

“I call it Shitline,” Lisa snapped even as she gave her face a once-over in her tiny handheld mirror. “It’s neither prêt-à-porter nor couture which, in fact, allows you to display all sorts of trash. Some designers call it Diffusion line. I bet someday Richa will hire us to display her Bridge line bras and panties studded with Swarovski crystals—with an Indo-Western segment thrown in for a few extra claps from the audience.” She was going to make a few more nasty remarks about Richa’s Bridge line but couldn’t as a helper came forward to fit her with a crepe blouse for the next number.

“Look, honey, Richa rakes in her moolah not from these tops and trousers she sells in her Houz Khas boutique, but from designing khaki and denim uniforms for the police, bus drivers, hotel staff and hospital nurses,” the knowledgeable Lisa confided to me when we came together a third time to display Richa’s denim-Lycra skirts and tops. “There’s much chaff and little grain in this business. So, keep your eyes wide open.”

“And your legs firmly shut,” Megha, the bimbette with the unending legs, joined in, tongue in cheek, as she overheard our chitchat.

It could have been a perfect show if only our compere hadn’t goofed up with the script. While I was trying to captivate the audience with my funky party wear, I was stunned to hear her casually mention the outfit as “office wear” and when another junior displayed traditional, embroidered kurtis and churidars, the compere heaped lavish praise on them as “party wear!”

Two days later, when I met Nisha in the sitting room of her red-brick house in Greater Kailash, a posh locality of south Delhi, she handed me two envelopes and said: “Open the small one first and count the money.”

I counted ten crisp, one-thousand-rupee notes and thanked Nisha.

“Are you happy, Rhea?”

I nodded and smiled.

“Now have a look at your photos. I think they are okay. You look very smart and professional in Richa’s denim-Lycra outfits.”

“Thank you!” I took out the photographs from the big manila envelope and fell in love with my new persona—Rhea, the model—fabricated by Nisha. I beamed at my mentor and she winked and then both of us laughed to celebrate my debut as a model. In her slacks and pink cotton top, Nisha looked comfortable and relaxed. Her sitting room was neat and uncluttered: instead of the mandatory bric-a-brac crowding the sideboards, it had only a trio of miniature Mughal paintings on the wall, a few crystals and pyramids set on low tables and a wind chime hung right above the entrance.

“Do you think I may get any further opportunities to walk the ramp?” I asked Nisha, sipping my tea brought in by her housemaid.

“We are friends and lovers, aren’t we?” Nisha said, smiling. “I will fit you in whenever I have a chance. In the meantime, why don’t you go for a portfolio shoot?”

Sensing my ignorance about the nitty-gritty of the modeling profession, Nisha handed me an extract of her recently published article in Zing, a glossy fashion magazine, offering some tips to the aspiring models on how to get started. “Ignore what I have written under ‘Portfolio’ and give me just three nine-by-twelve B&W head shots and one body shot in lingerie or swimsuit along with those action shots you already have. Put them all in an eleven-by-fourteen album, right?”

I nodded. Nisha now rose from her chair and came over to me to give me a tight, reassuring hug and a soft, grazing kiss on my lips. “Look honey, you are special to me because you’re my discovery.”

“And you are my Bridge line,” I said, reciprocating Nisha’s loving gesture with a peck on her fine nose.