Best Lesbian Romance 2010 Read online

  Watching Tim with Suli on the ice always drove me crazy. When his hand slid from the small of her back to her hip I wanted to lunge and chew it off at the wrist. His boyfriend Thor, a speed skater with massively muscled thighs, would have been highly displeased by that, so it was just as well that I resisted the impulse.

  It wasn’t really the way Tim touched Suli that burned me. Well, okay, maybe it was, with every nuance of the traditional lifts and holds pulsing with erotic innuendo. Still, my hands knew her needs far better than he ever could, or cared to. But he was allowed to do it publicly, artistically, acting out scenarios of fiery love—and I wasn’t. Knowing that the delectable asscheeks filling the taut scarlet seat of her costume bore bruises in the shapes of my fingers was only small comfort.

  His other hand rested lightly on her waist as they whirled across the ice. Any second—in six more beats—she would jump, and with simultaneous precision he would lift, and throw… Now! For all the times I’d seen it, my breath still caught. Suli twisted impossibly high into the air, and far out…out…across the ice…

  Yes! Throw triple axel! A perfect one-footed landing flowing into a smooth, graceful follow-through, then up into a double loop side by side with Tim in clockwork synchronicity.

  It was the best. The audience knew it, the judges knew it. I knew it, and admiration nearly won out over envy when Tim lifted Suli high overhead, her legs spread wide, in the ultimate hand-in-crotch position known as the Helicopter. Envy surged back. Her crotch would be damp with sweat and excitement, not the kind I could draw from her, but still! Then she dropped abruptly past his face, thighs briefly scissoring his neck, pussy nudging his chin. I shook, nearly whimpering, as Suli slid sensuously down along Tim’s body. As soon as her blades touched down she leaned back, back, impossibly far back, until her hair brushed the ice in a death spiral. I tensed as though my hand, not Tim’s, gripped hers to brace her just this side of disaster.

  A few judges always took points off for “suggestive” material. What did they think pairs skating was all about, if not sex? But it was a technically clean and ambitious program, beautifully executed. Suli and Tim won the gold medals they deserved.

  I got no chance to go for the gold of Suli’s warm body that night. When I came up behind her in our room and reached around to cup her breasts, she wriggled her compact butt against me, then turned and shoved me away.

  “No,” she decreed, putting a finger across my lips as I tried to speak. I nibbled at it instead. “You have your long program tomorrow, and I know better than you do what you need.”

  I tried to object, with no luck.

  “Sure,” Suli went on, “fast and furious sex and complete exhaustion were just what I needed, but you’ll do better saving up that energy and channeling the tension into your skating.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said sulkily. “I can’t medal now anyway. I was thinking, in fact, that this might as well be the time…”

  She knew what I meant. “No!” Her scowl was at least as alluring as her smiles. “You can still win the bronze, if you want it enough. At least two of those prima donnas ahead of you have never skated a clean long program in their lives. Medal, and you get into the exhibition at the end. That’s the time to make your grand statement to the world.” She saw my hesitation, and gripped my shoulders so hard her nails dug in. “Think of Johanna! You can’t disgrace your coach during actual competition. And think of your fans!” Her expression eased into a smile she couldn’t suppress. Her grip eased. “Okay, your fans would love every minute of it. I’ve seen the signs they flip at you when they’re sure the cameras can’t see. WE WANT JUDE, PREFERABLY IN THE NUDE!” She drew her fingers lightly across my chest and downward. “Can’t say that I blame them.”

  Suli was so close that her warm scent tantalized me. I thought I was going to get some after all, but the kiss I grabbed was broken off all too soon, leaving me aching for more.

  “Please Jude, do it this way.” She stroked my face, brushing back my short dark hair. I wasn’t sure I could bear her gentleness. “Even your planned routine comes close enough to the edge. One way or another, it will be worth it. I promise.”

  So I did it her way, and skated the long program I’d rehearsed so many times. Inside, though, I was doing it my way at last, and not much caring if it showed.

  I skated to a medley from the Broadway show Cats. My black unitard with white down the front and at the cuffs was supposed to suggest a “tuxedo” cat with white paws. The music swept from mood to mood, poignance to nostalgia to swagger, but no matter what character a song was meant to suggest, in my mind and gut I was never, for a moment, anybody’s sweet pussy. I was every inch a Tom. Tomcat prowling urban roofs and alleys; tomboy tumbling the dairymaid in the hay; top-hatted Tom in the back streets of Victorian London pinching the housemaids’ cheeks, fore and aft.

  Suli had been right about storing up tension and then letting it spill out. Like fantasy during sex, imagination sharpened my performance. Each move was linked to its own notes of the music, practiced often enough to be automatic, but tonight my footwork was more precise, my spins faster, my jumps higher and landings smoother. I had two quad jumps planned, something none of my rivals would attempt, and for the first time I went into each of them with utter confidence.

  The audience, subdued at first, was with me before the end, clapping, stomping, whistling. I rode their cheers, pumped with adrenaline as though we were all racing toward some simultaneous climax, and in the last minute I turned a planned double-flip, double-toe-loop into a triple-triple, holding my landing on a back outer edge as steadily as though my legs were fresh and rested.

  The crowd’s roar surged as the music ended. Fans leaned above the barrier to toss stuffed animals, mostly cats, onto the ice, and one odd flutter caught my eye in time for a detour to scoop up the offering. Sure enough, the fabric around the plush kitten’s neck was no ribbon, but a pair of lavender panties. Still warm. It wasn’t the first time.

  Suli waited at the gate. I gave her a cocky grin and thrust the toy into her hands. Her expressive eyebrows arched higher, and then she grinned back and swatted my butt with it.

  The scoring seemed to take forever. “Half of them are scrambling to figure out if you’ve broken any actual rules,” Johanna muttered, “and scheming to make up some new ones if you haven’t.” The rest, though, must have given me everything they had. The totals were high enough to get me the bronze medal, even when none of the following skaters quite fell down.

  Suli stuck by me every minute except for the actual awards ceremony, and she was right at the front of the crowd then. In the cluster of fans following me out of the arena, a few distinctly catlike “Mrowrr’s!” could be heard, and then good-humored laughter as Suli threw an arm around me and aimed a ferocious “Growrr!” back over her shoulder at them.

  Medaling as a long shot had condemned me to a TV interview. The reporter kept her comments to the usual inanities, except for a somewhat suggestive, “That was quite some program!”

  “If you liked that, don’t miss the exhibition tomorrow,” I said to her, and to whatever segment of the world watches these things. When I added that I was quitting competition to pursue my own “artistic goals,” she flashed her white teeth and wished me luck, and then, microphone set aside and camera off, leaned close for a moment to lay a hand on my arm. “Nice costume, but I’ll bet you’ll be glad to get it off.”

  Suli was right on it, her own sharp teeth flashing and her long nails digging into my sleeve. The reporter snatched her hand back just in time. “Don’t worry,” Suli purred, “I’ve got all that covered.”

  Don’t expose yourself like that! Don’t let me drag you down! But I couldn’t say it, and I knew Suli was in no mood to listen.

  I was too tired, anyway, wanting nothing more than to strip off the unitard and never squirm into one again, but Suli wouldn’t let me change in the locker room. Once I saw the gleam of metal she flashed in her open shoulder bag—so much for
security at the Games!—I followed her out and back to our room with no regret for the parties we were missing.

  The instant the door clicked shut behind us she had the knife all the way out of its leather sheath. “Take off that medal,” she growled, doing a knockout job of sounding menacing. “The rest is mine.”

  I set the bronze medal on the bedside table, flopped backward onto the bed, and spread my arms and legs wide. “Use it or lose it,” I said, then gasped at the touch of the hilt against my throat.

  “Don’t move,” she ordered, crouching over me, her hair brushing my chest. I lay frozen, not a muscle twitching, although my flesh shrank reflexively from the cold blade when she sat back on her haunches and slit the stretchy unitard at the juncture of thigh and crotch.

  “Been sweating, haven’t we,” she crooned, slicing away until the fabric gaped like a hungry mouth, showing my skin pale beneath. “But it’s not all sweat, is it?” Her cool hand slid inside to fondle my slippery folds. It certainly wasn’t all sweat.

  Her moves were a blend of ritual and raw sex. The steel flat against my inner thigh sent tongues of icy flame stabbing deep into my cunt. The keen edge drawn along my belly and breastbone seemed to split my old body and release a new one, though only a few light pricks drew blood. The rip of the fabric parting under Suli’s knife and hands and, eventually, teeth, was like the rending of bonds that had confined me all my life.

  Then Suli’s warm mouth captured my clit. The trancelike ritual vanished abruptly in a fierce, urgent wave of right here, right now, right NOW NOW NO-O-W-W-W-W! Followed, with hardly a pause to recharge, by further waves impelled by her teasing tongue and penetrating fingers until I was completely out of breath and wrung out.

  “I thought I was supposed to be storing up energy,” I told her, when I could talk at all.

  “Jude, you’re pumping out enough pheromones to melt ice,” Suli said, “and I’m not ice!”

  It turned out that I wasn’t all that wrung out, after all, and if I couldn’t talk, it was only because Suli was straddling my face, and my mouth was most gloriously, and busily, full.

  The chill kiss of the blade lingered on my skin the next day, along with the heat of Suli’s touch. I passed up the chance to do a run-through of my program, which didn’t cause much comment since it was just the exhibition skate. Johanna, who knew what I was up to, took care of getting my music to the sound technicians with no questions asked.

  There were plenty of questioning looks, though, when I went through warm-up muffled in sweats and a lightweight hoodie. Judging from the buzz among my fans, they may have been placing bets. Anybody who’d predicted the close-cropped hair with just enough forelock to push casually back, and the unseen binding beneath my plain white T-shirt, would have won. The tight blue jeans looked genuinely worn and faded, and from any distance the fact that the fabric could stretch enough for acrobatic movement wasn’t obvious.

  It was my turn at last. Off came the sweats and hoodie. I took to the ice, rocketing from shadows into brightness, then stopped so abruptly that ice chips erupted around the toes of my skates. There were squeals, and confused murmurs; I was aware of Suli, still in costume from her own performance, watching from the front row.

  Then my music took hold.

  Six bars of introduction, a sequence of strides and glides—and I was Elvis, “Lookin’ for Trouble,” leaping high in a spread eagle, landing, then twisting into a triple-flip, double-toe-loop. My body felt strong. And free. And true.

  Then I was “All Shook Up,” laying a trail of intricate footwork the whole length of the rink, tossing in enough cocky body-work to raise an uproar. Elvis Stojko or Philippe Candeloro couldn’t have projected more studly appeal. When my hips swiveled—with no trace of a feminine sway—my fans went wild.

  They subsided as the music slowed to a different beat, slower, menacing. “Mack the Knife” was back in town: challenge, swagger, jumps that ate up altitude, skate blades slicing the ice in sure, rock-steady landings. Then, in a final change of mood, came the aching, soaring passion of “Unchained Melody.” I let heartbreak show through, loneliness, sorrow, desperate longing.

  In my fantasy a slender, long-haired figure skated in the shadows just beyond my vision, mirroring my moves with equal passion and unsurpassable grace. Through the haunting strains of music I heard the indrawn breaths of a thousand spectators, and then a vast communal sigh. I was drawing them into my world, making them see what I imagined…. I jumped, pushing off with all my new strength, spun a triple out into an almost effortless quad, landed—and saw what they had actually seen.

  Suli glided toward me, arms outstretched, eyes wide and bright with challenge. I stopped so suddenly I would have fallen if my hands hadn’t reached out reflexively to grasp hers. She moved backward, pulling me toward her, and then we were skating together as we had so often in our private predawn practice sessions. The music caught us, melded us into a pair. Suli moved away, rotated into an exquisite layback spin, slowed, stretched out her hand, and my hand was there to grasp hers and pull her into a close embrace. Her raised knee pressed up between my legs with a force she would never have exerted on Tim. I wasn’t packing, but my clit lurched with such intensity that I imagined it bursting through my jeans.

  Then we moved apart again, aching for the lost warmth, circling, now closer, now farther…the music would end so soon... Suli flashed a quick look of warning, mouthed silently, “Get ready!” and launched herself toward me.

  Hands on my shoulders, she pushed off, leapt upward, and hung there for a moment while I gripped her hips and pressed my mouth into her belly. Then she wrapped her legs around my waist and arched back. We spun slowly, yearningly, no bed, this time, to take the weight of our hunger. And then, as the last few bars of music swelled around us, Suli slid sensuously down my body until she knelt in a pool of scarlet silk at my feet. She looked up into my eyes, and finally, gracefully and deliberately, bowed her head and rested it firmly against my crotch as the last notes faded away.

  An instant of silence, of stillness, followed, until the crowd erupted in chaos, cheers and applause mingling with confusion and outrage. TV cameras were already converging on our exit. I pulled Suli up so that my mouth was close to her ear; her hair brushing my cheek still made me tingle.

  “Suli, what have you done? What will—?”

  She shushed me with a finger across my lips. “Sometimes, if you can’t stand to be left behind, you do have to jump without knowing exactly where you’ll land.”

  So I kissed her right there on the ice for the world to see. Then, hand in hand, we skated toward the gate to whatever lay beyond.

  YOU ARE A FULL MOON WITHOUT CLOUDS

  Pamela Smiley

  Chiang Mai was my city. I claimed it, even though I was hardly the first. The Rose of the North, nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas near the notorious Golden Triangle and its opium, had slid through history under siege: the Lanna Kingdom, Burmese invasions, American anthropologists, tourists, and ex-pats. The joke during the sixties was that every hill tribe family had its own resident anthropologist, so anxious were the Pentagon and CIA to track movement on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Traces of Chiang Mai’s siege identity remained in the sagging red brick wall and moat around the old city, in the Burmese-featured demons on temple murals, in the stories of the lion-faced Buddha who controls the rains being plastered over to protect him from marauding Burmese armies and then forgotten for hundreds of years until, during a move, the painted plaster cracked and the gold glinted within.

  Chiang Mai was mine—and like many a fabled seductress, she gave of herself without ever really giving herself. I knew Chiang Mai’s smell—fried hot peppers and backed-up sewer gas. I knew her labyrinthine streets in the Warorut Market where anything and anyone could be bought. I knew where to go for a great cup of coffee, a three-mile run, the latest ex-pat gossip, and email connections. I knew the children who sold leis of jasmine in the nighttime streets, the bar girls, the saffron-robed monk
s, the pretty young boys, and I knew her soul: Doi Suthep, the Buddhist wat floating as serenely above the complex street life as the lotus floated above the muck in which it was rooted.

  Now, as we pulled into the Chiang Mai train station, I wondered if my falling in love would change my relation to Chiang Mai. Superficially, things remained the same. Passengers scrambled for luggage, children and boxes, in reverse of their boarding. Rue, at my side, stretched to get the overhead bags and that made all the difference. Watching others make such gestures of intimacy and common purpose was not to feel the warm connectedness of performing them yourself.

  “You wait with the luggage and I’ll go get a tuk-tuk for us,” I said to Rue, relishing that we were in this together.

  Out on the street at the taxi stand, the light changed and traffic surged forward, waves of motorbikes vibrating like cicadas back home in Wisconsin. So many people, so many directions, so many desires—Chiang Mai was not about to be easily impressed just because I’d fallen in love.

  Across the street from the taxi stand, an old Chinese woman, so old it didn’t seem possible to fit any more wrinkles on her face and hands, struggled with a walker and headed toward us. She moved steadily forward, lifting her walker, taking a step, another step, lifting her walker, taking a step.

  The milling men and traffic paid no attention to her. Young men on motorcycles snaked through lines of stalled cars, passing on the sidewalk to avoid her. I sprinted to the old woman.

  “Grandmother,” I said. “Let me help you.”

  She didn’t seem surprised, though I’d never seen her before.

  “Is your husband back from America?” she asked.

  On which of the 108,000 levels of reality were we conducting this conversation? Not one I knew.

  “No.” I didn’t elaborate since the particulars of my single status usually elicit nothing but pity from Asian women.

  “I think you bought my song,” she chuckled, as if we were in collusion to outwit the rest of the world.