Best Lesbian Romance 2009 Read online

  “What do you think of the show so far?” Angel leaned toward me as she spoke.

  “It’s, um…” I scrambled for the word. “It’s very postmodern.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Sure. I mean, I don’t really know what that means.”

  Angel burst out laughing. “Neither do I, but I’m sure you’re right. This show is very postmodern.”

  “I think it might even be post-postmodern,” I added.

  “It’s so postmodern,” Angel continued, “it’s practically modern again.”

  Now we were both laughing, and just like that I felt closer to her again. The cocktail server returned with our beers, which I paid for as Paula Scott announced the next performance. I didn’t catch the artist’s name, only that the performance was called “Blood Money.”

  A woman who looked like a librarian in a skirt and tweed jacket walked onto the stage with a satchel. She set the satchel on the ground, reached in it, and pulled out fistfuls of Monopoly money, which she began scattering on the floor. Then she took out a red ketchup squeeze bottle, stood up, lifted her skirt, and held the bottle to her crotch like it was a penis. I couldn’t help but observe that she was wearing the same kind of white cotton panties that I usually wore, and that tufts of dark pubic hair stuck out from the elastic around her crotch.

  “Oh, no she didn’t,” Angel said under her breath.

  The woman squeezed the bottle. A long stream of ketchup arced out, splattering over the pastel money on the floor. The vinegar-sweet smell of ketchup immediately overwhelmed any other odor in the club.

  I glanced at Angel. She looked at me. “Let’s get out of here,” she mouthed.

  “Right.”

  I was up in an instant. Angel grabbed my hand and pulled me through the crowd, back to the door. We fled outside and took off running down the street screaming and finally stopped after a few blocks, when we were out of breath. Angel put her hands on her knees and was breathing hard. Her sides shook with laughter. She glanced up at me, a grin spread across her face.

  “Holy shit,” I panted. “I have to pee!” The need became urgent. I was near the point of peeing my pants. We had run deep into a residential area and were surrounded by houses.

  “Come on.” Angel grabbed my hand again and pulled me into an alley. “I have to go too,” she said. “You watch for me and I’ll watch for you. You first.”

  I didn’t argue. I dropped my pants and crouched down, barely making it before the dam broke and the pee burst out of me, splashing my shoes. Relief, sweet relief. After giving my rear a quick shake, I quickly stood up and refastened my pants.

  Angel went right after me. I made sure not to look, and kept my eyes open for anyone who might be heading in our direction. In a moment she was back next to me.

  “Nice panties,” she said. “You dropped this.” To my utter mortification, I saw that she had the dental dams. “I’ll hold onto them,” she said, sliding the baggie into her suit coat pocket. “So, what next?”

  “What do you want to do?” I asked.

  “Whatever you want.”

  And then she did the most beautiful thing. She stuck out her arms, her head tilted up to the sky, and spun around. “The night is young,” she said to the nonexistent stars. “The world is ours!”

  CHRISTMAS BLIZZARD

  Teresa Noelle Roberts

  Another cancellation,” I sighed as I hung up the phone.

  “Merry fucking Christmas to you too!”

  The promise of a “blizzard of the new century” threatening to rival the infamous, deadly Blizzard of ’78, here on the far tip of Cape Cod where snow rarely sticks at all, had cleared the few winter tourists out of Provincetown long before the snow actually hit. I’m sure some of the locals were pleased, but it was making for a less than happy holiday at our bed-and-breakfast. We’d been booked full for tonight, Christmas Eve—women who’d decided on a romantic holiday in P-town and either breakfast in bed or a big pajama-clad, family-style breakfast on Christmas morning—but one by one they’d been canceling. The couple who’d just called had been our last holdouts; they’d gotten as far as Providence, Rhode Island on their way from New York City, creeping through a near whiteout, and had decided to hole up in a hotel there for the holiday instead of risking the rest of the drive.

  Lucie circled her arms around me from behind. “Look on the bright side. We have Christmas to ourselves! When was the last time we got to spend a holiday, any holiday, without an inn full of guests? And we can enjoy the inn all decorated and pretty instead of hiding up in our little cave.” Her hands slid up from my waist to cup my breasts. “What’s the point of owning a lesbian romantic haven if we can’t enjoy it ourselves sometimes?”

  Good point, I thought, as her small, hard hands sent waves of sensation radiating out from my breasts. Our apartment above the garage was the only part of the property we hadn’t succeeded in making luxurious, the only part we hadn’t bothered decorating for Christmas/Solstice/generic midwinter cheer. But left alone, nothing would stop us from enjoying all the amenities we offered to guests. “Let’s start in the Lavender Room,” I whispered. “I’d gotten it all ready for the folks who just called.”

  We all but ran there. We’d had a fire going against the window-rattling gale, and the room was toasty warm, the flames casting dramatic shadows on the lavender walls. We shared a quiet moment enjoying the sensation of pretending to be guests, appreciating the beautiful color scheme we’d chosen, the richness of plump pillows, velvet duvet cover, brocaded drapes. The room smelled delicious, like Christmas cookies (we’d gone crazy baking for the guests and would now be eating gingerbread women and pfeffernüsse for weeks), wood smoke, pine, and, of course, lavender. Yeah, our guests had it pretty good—and today, so did we.

  Then clothes began flying everywhere. Soon we were naked and lying in each other’s arms on the Oriental rug in front of the fire.

  Just long, languid kisses at first, and pressing together, loving how our breasts brushed against each other, how our legs intertwined to allow maximum skin contact. The warmth transmuted into heat and the heat filled me, igniting nipple and clit and pussy and every inch of skin in between. From her movements against me, I could tell Lucie was in the same place. It had been ages since we’d taken the time to just make out like this.

  Finally I pulled away, sat up. Lucie’s skin glimmered with a fine sheen of sweat. Her nipples were hard, crinkled with excitement, and moisture gleamed between her parted legs. “Beautiful,” I breathed. I moved to touch her, but she shook her head. “The floor’s hard, and I’ve always loved that sleigh bed.”

  If I could have picked her up and carried her, I would have. It seemed appropriate in that room with its Victorian aura. Alas for that fantasy. Lucie, while shorter than I am, does chimney work in fall and winter and landscaping in summer, and she’s dense with muscle. So I just gave her a hand up instead and whirled her over to the bed.

  It was high and puffy and enveloping, and her café-au-lait skin—Lucie’s background includes Cape Verdean, French-Canadian, and Mohawk—looked both darker and creamier against the purple velvet duvet. I dove onto the bed next to her, squealing “Whee!” and for a minute all we could do was giggle. Then I began to stroke her, and the giggles faded into sighs.

  Silken skin over firm muscles, and small breasts with prominent, plum-colored nipples, and the tight, black curls that drew my eye to her pussy, just as plum-dark as her nipples and currently juicier than any plum I’d ever encountered—I stroked and kissed my way down Lucie’s body to that spot and began to lick.

  I’ve given a lot of thought to what Lucie actually tastes like. The briny sweetness of oysters—Wellfleet oysters, eaten in Well-fleet just hours after they were harvested—always come to mind, but there’s a hint of smoke and spice there too, and a fragrance that adds to the mystery. Lucie tastes like Lucie, I suppose, and she’s delicious.

  She filled my mouth, my nostrils, all my senses. In turn I filled her wi
th two fingers, crooking them to tantalize that sensitive little node that someone unpoetically named the G-spot. Slick and smooth and gripping, she rode my hand and mouth, cooing and mewling to herself. Strangely ladylike noises, as if she was afraid of being overheard. But that was just Lucie’s way. At other times, she’s outspoken, with the hearty voice of someone who works outdoors a lot. In bed, she becomes deceptively quiet. (For the first year we were together, I tried everything I could think of to make her scream or at least moan when she came. Then I decided it was just the way she was wired, and since it didn’t interfere with her enjoyment, I wouldn’t let it interfere with mine.) There was nothing quiet or ladylike about the way she was thrashing around, though, or the way she clenched around me.

  And even less ladylike was the way she returned the pleasure once she’d caught her breath. She knows I like a little roughness sometimes, and there was something especially perverse about her pinning me down with her body weight and working me over in a lush Victorian space lavishly and sentimentally decorated for Christmas. Love bites on my breasts and fingernails raking my thighs were just the start, enough to make me wet and squirming and loudly excited.

  “Onto all fours, darling,” she said huskily. It wasn’t an order—we’re into sensation, not power play. I still rolled over obediently and stuck my ass into the air. Why not? I knew what was coming, and I knew I’d love it.

  With a thwack her hand came down on my butt. I jumped at the sudden sting, even though I was anticipating it, but heat blossomed from the impact immediately, spreading from my butt throughout my whole body. I arched my back up, raising my ass to show I wanted more and was promptly rewarded. The pleasure built as the spanking continued, spiraling from her wicked little hand through my pelvis, right into my cunt. Unlike Lucie, I’m not quiet when I get excited. Pretty soon I was yelping, growling, and occasionally giggling from the adrenaline rush.

  And pretty soon after that I was begging incoherently.

  “What do you want?” she demanded.

  “Please….” This was not the time to ask a girl to speak in complete sentences, but if I couldn’t say what I wanted, I certainly couldn’t string together a concept that complex.

  “Please what? Please stop spanking you?”

  She said that just as I grunted out another “Please.” It was poorly timed—she did stop spanking me.

  That provoked one other word: “Bitch.”

  “Your bitch, though.”

  I nodded. Then I raised my ass even higher and managed to squeak out, “Please make me come.”

  She leaned around me, nibbling my ear in passing. “Hey, that was almost articulate. Can’t have that.”

  Her fingers touched my clit, began to circle. With her other hand, she smacked me again, a little faster and sharper now that I was so close.

  I howled as I came.

  “Happy holidays,” she purred. “Consider this the stocking gift—there’s plenty more to follow!”

  Later, as the storm hit the Cape in earnest, we headed down to Race Point, bundled in our warmest clothes. We clung to each other as we walked, partly against the force of the wind, but mostly because we love to touch, even when the touch is muted through layers of fabric. The crash of the storm-fueled waves and the roar of the wind combined into a white noise that we couldn’t talk over. I love the ocean when it’s so wild and dramatic, but big areas of beach have been known to wash away when the seas get so rough—we lost entire buildings during the Blizzard of ’78—and Lucie finally dragged me away as the snow began to fall thicker and faster.

  It was flying fast by the time we got home, obscuring the Christmas lights that brightened the town and the sliver view of the harbor you can usually see from our apartment, the one saving grace of the cramped space. We stripped out of several layers of clothing (pausing frequently to smooch) and made ourselves hot chocolate (pausing frequently to cuddle up against each other and nibble).

  “I’m still chilled,” Lucie said after we’d finished our cocoa. “How about a hot shower together?”

  That sounded like a good idea, but as I rose to take her up on it, I looked out into the yard and got a better one. Snow fell steady and thick against the twilight. If you could ignore the howling wind, and the fact we couldn’t see the house next door despite it being blanketed in a truly scary light display in the shape of a buff Santa waving a Pride flag, it was an idealized Christmas Eve straight out of an old movie. The house and the privacy fence sheltered the back deck from the worst of the wind so it was falling straight down instead of blowing sideways like it was out on the street. “Ever made love in a hot tub in the snow?” I asked.

  Lucie grinned. She was already struggling back into her boots before she answered, “Not yet!”

  I don’t think we’d ever made it downstairs so fast. I made one detour, to turn on the outside speakers so our favorite offbeat versions of holiday classics filled the air, but that took mere seconds since the music mix was already set up.

  Certainly we’d never gotten the cover off the tub so efficiently for our guests.

  We eased ourselves into the water and melted together, kissing frantically. The snow, a heavy veil around the tub, was searingly cold on my skin at first, but within a few minutes the steam from the tub began to do its work and most of the flakes evaporated before they hit us. Some lodged in our hair, cooled our shoulders and necks, but it was just enough to feel good, to remind us of the power of the storm. The wind break wasn’t complete, but as long as we stayed mostly underwater, it was all right.

  More than all right. It was downright miraculous to be out here on Christmas Eve in the middle of a storm, buoyed by hot water and surrounded by Loreena McKennitt working her strange magic on “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” All the better to be in the arms of the woman I love.

  My hand slipped between Lucie’s thighs, finding a slick warmth, hotter than the water surrounding us. I started to stroke, but then had an inspiration and positioned her over a low jet on her hands and knees. She arched her back in pleasure, dancing multicolored lights illuminating her expectant face, her short dark hair spangled with snowflakes. “You’re evil,” she gasped. “Brilliant, but evil.”

  “Jets are a girl’s best friend—I can’t believe you never tried it before.”

  “Never had a chance. We’ve mostly used the tub when it was full of guests.”

  She was right, of course. We’d only put in the hot tub early this fall, after a successful summer gave us the spare cash. During the slower parts of the fall and early winter, we’d been busy with post-season repairs and redecorating and getting ready for first Thanksgiving and then Christmas, and collapsing in small, exhausted heaps when we weren’t up to our eyebrows in some house project. And we’d gotten used to thinking of the tub as the guests’ domain, not ours.

  Important safety tip: take time for ourselves more often.

  “Like it?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  She was purring, but she still sounded much too coherent. I crouched over her, cupping a breast with one hand, pushing two fingers of the other inside her. So hot and tight, gripping against my hand. Slow in and out fucking, pushing against her swollen G-spot, my thumb on her clit and the relentless caress of the jet. She was so hot that I expected the snow to sizzle as it hit her, but it just melted, joining the water that made her body gleam. “Are you going to come for me?” I whispered in her ear, and she convulsed silently.

  I didn’t let up, though. Lucie, once she got going, could come for a long time. There’s nothing I like better than seeing her becoming utterly boneless with lust, and she certainly obliged, bucking and contracting against my fingers in wave after wave of orgasm and cooing softly.

  Until suddenly her noises weren’t soft any more. She bucked back against me, almost pushing me over, arched, and howled her pleasure to the snowy night, drowning out the carols, drowning out the howling wind. Drowning out everything but the roar of my blood.

  The sound echoed throug
h my clit, ringing me like Santa’s sleigh bells, only much sweeter. I’d forgotten, after years with Lucie’s quiet ways, how hot a screaming woman can be. (Okay, I hadn’t forgotten it. I just hadn’t let myself spend too much time being wistful over the one thing missing in a great relationship.) These unfamiliar—yet entirely Lucie—noises galvanized me, pushed me toward the edge as fast as a touch might. I ground myself against Lucie’s shuddering body and added my own cries to hers.

  We slumped down together, limp and sated. Somehow, we managed to arrange ourselves so we were supported on the seat and not in danger of drowning. I can’t speak for Lucie, but I know in my case, brains weren’t involved in the process. I pulled her close, cuddled her still shuddering form against me.

  “Wow,” she choked out, and buried her face against my shoulder. A little while later she repeated it. “Wow.”

  “I’ve never heard anything that beautiful, love. What broke the dam?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. The jets. You. The contrast between heat and cold. You. This amazing storm. You. Christmas Eve magic. You.”

  All around us, the rooftops and holiday decorations of Provincetown were disappearing under snow. Our own deck was getting buried except right around the hot tub, and the lights on the backyard trees were obscured by snow. We’d freeze getting back to the apartment, and cleaning up once the storm was over would be backbreaking, and at some point I’d have to think about all the income we weren’t getting from the canceled bookings. But for now, safe inside our private Christmas Eve of steam, hot water, and desire, that didn’t matter.

  “Hearing you let loose like that was the best Christmas gift you could have possibly given me, love,” I whispered to Lucie.

  She giggled in a floaty way, still on a post-orgasmic high. “That’s good,” she said. “I didn’t have much time to shop. But I think I can give that present over and over—now that I’ve found it.”