She also chose not to tell Anandra about what she’d found under the shirt Anandra had loaned to her as they prepared to leave the cave. Underneath the shirt lay a flower, the same as the ones in the cornflower-blue, dried bouquet her grandmother had kept in her bedroom. Only this one was fresh, softly perfumed and a much brighter blue. Had her grandmother sent it to her? She decided she believed she had, and so she slipped the flower into her pocket, wondering if perhaps it would come in handy sometime in the future.
She followed Anandra to a hall of rock at the opposite end of the cave from where they’d slept and saw the torch from the day before still burning brightly in Anandra’s hand. “Do you think you have a better idea today of how to get out of the cave?” she asked her.
“I think I might,” Anandra said, but she sounded anything but positive.
“Maybe I can help,” said a high-pitched voice from above them, and Iris ducked down as a large, white-and-gray shape came swooping toward her head.
The shape stopped about a foot away from Iris’s face, and when she saw its true size, she got up from her crouched position, a little embarrassed that a tiny flying rat had scared her so. It wasn’t even as big as her head. Instead, it was about the size of her hand, pale gray with a white chest and a bat’s leathery wings, only these wings were also pale gray, with white around the edges and along each spot where the wings bent. “Name’s Jaheer, and I’d like to help you get out of here.”
“And why might you, strange cave creature, want to help us?” Anandra asked, sounding just as hesitant to trust the animal as her words implied.
“Because, you clearly do not belong in this cave, and because I like it better when it’s calm and quiet in here. And,” the rat-with-wings said, alighting on Iris’s shoulder and raising its voice, “because I am the kind and generous sort, and will do anything to help a gentle-looking pair of ladies.” It made a trilling sound, flapped its wings one more time, and nuzzled Iris’s cheek. She couldn’t help it—she made the high-pitched girly noise women like her reserved for cute animals and romantic gestures.
“Was that you, or the creature?” Anandra asked.
“Um, me.” Iris’s face heated up a few degrees at her question, but when Anandra grinned at her, she realized she was being teased, and she squeezed her shoulder. “Do you think we should accept its help?”
“I…I suppose we have no other choice, because it very well may have a better idea of how to get out of here than I do. I’m afraid this cave system has bested me.”
“Good!” The creature sounded happy, and it made that trilling noise again. “Go forward through this hall, then! Forward, onward!”
It sounded almost too excited to be helping them, so Iris guessed it had been telling the truth when it said it enjoyed helping others. Either that, or it was going to lead them to a sharp drop and knock them over the edge with its cute little pink feet. That seemed unlikely, though, because the creature had apparently taken a liking to Iris, nuzzling her now and then as it directed them through the cave’s many tunnels and rooms.
Upon reaching a large opening in the cave, leading to what looked like a tall, green hedge, the creature flew off Iris’s shoulder and waved them on, flying backward and in the direction from which they’d just come. “Good luck, ladies! Good luck!”
“Strange little creature,” Anandra muttered as they finally left the dark cave and entered the brightness of the outdoors once again.
“I liked it!” Iris announced. “And it seemed to have been telling the truth,” she continued, as she followed Anandra through an opening in the hedge and into a lush, flowering garden.
Now inside the hedge, they were surrounded by overflowing flowerbeds, and a huge marble fountain stood in the middle of the path. Next, Iris took in the various statues all around them, each a tall, strong-looking woman or man. They all held spears or swords and shields. And after she noticed them, she realized they were beginning to move, each of them stepping down from the stands they’d been on. The statues were coming to life!
Not only were they coming to life, but they were quickly advancing on her and Anandra, brandishing their weapons, and Iris realized the two of them were clearly not welcome here.
As she turned to flee back into the cave, she noticed a flowering bush to her left, full of bright-blue flowers identical to the one in her pocket and to the ones that had decorated Sallie’s bedroom dresser. She decided then that there was only one thing to do now, and it was not turning tail and running from this beautiful garden. No, she could think of only one possible way to rescue herself and Anandra, and only she could do it. She straightened her back and cleared her throat.
Then she began to sing, the same song her grandmother had sung to her the previous night. The words and tune were shockingly easy to remember, flowing from her lips like she’d been born knowing them. Also shocking was the fact that it worked just as she’d hoped it would. The statues stopped advancing on them, and then they joined hands with one another and danced, a flowing, graceful dance like people might have done to bring a good harvest, to bring rain or sun or life to one another’s land.
When the song ended, the statues stopped dancing, bowed to her and Anandra, and climbed back onto their pedestals, freezing in place and looking like solid stone once more.
“How did you do that?” Anandra’s mouth was slightly agape when she first spoke, and it was still slightly open when she’d finished speaking.
Iris didn’t know how to answer her, and she didn’t want to tell her the truth, so she said the first lie that came to mind. “I dreamed of that song last night.” It was close enough to the truth to sound true, or at least it sounded mostly true to her when she spoke those words.
“Must have been some dream! Shall we continue into the garden, then?”
“I think we should. I have a strong sense that we’re going to be completely safe here for the rest of our stay.” Iris kept her reason for saying this to herself; her grandmother and this garden were connected, deeply connected in some way. Had her grandmother lived here once upon a time? Had this been Sallie’s home?
Any wondering about whether that was the case escaped Iris’s mind as soon as she saw the picnic blanket and the retro wicker basket sitting in its center. Perfect timing, because her stomach seemed to think it was right about time for lunch.
“What’s this?” Anandra was clearly suspicious, and if Iris hadn’t figured out her grandmother’s attachment to this place, she’d have been suspicious as well.
“I think it’s fine. No, Anandra, I know it’s fine. Please, I’m hungry, and I’d like you to trust me so we can eat.” Iris started walking toward the blanket, hoping Anandra would follow suit.
“I’m hungry, too, but why should I trust whatever food is in that basket, should there be any? How do we know there isn’t something dangerous inside it instead? Like a poisonous snake, or barbed arrows, or…Iris, wait!”
Anandra rushed in her direction, but it was too late. Iris had opened the basket and was no longer safe from the sandwiches, bottle of lemonade, and deviled eggs that sat inside it. Or, rather, they were no longer safe from her.
“It’s fine, totally fine. Look!” And Iris tilted the basket and showed Anandra its contents.
“But how do we know the food is free of poison or magic?” She sat down and opened the glass box holding the sandwiches, then pulled a small chunk of chicken salad out from the edge of one of them. “I’ll try it first. Then we’ll wait thirty minutes, and if I’m not dead by then—oh my, this is delicious!”
Long before the thirty minutes were up, both of them were done with their sandwiches and had eaten a few deviled eggs and drunk a fair share of the lemonade.
“I know we still aren’t sure if we’re safe, but I believe that between this lovely, warm weather and our full stomachs, a brief nap is called for.” Anandra yawned and lay back on the blanket, propping her face up on her hand. “Unless you have a better idea?”
“I don’t
. Or, actually, I do, but my ‘better idea’ can wait until we’ve slept for a few minutes. Just a few, though, because I want to finish exploring the garden and see if there’s anywhere nice we can sleep for the night. I have a feeling there will be, to tell the truth.” Iris lay down beside Anandra, shutting her eyes and letting her body relax in the gentle sun. A light breeze licked at her skin every now and then, but it didn’t cool her too much to keep her from drifting into a sleep as delicious as the food had been.
She had no idea how much time had passed between shutting her eyes and reopening them, but the sun was clearly lower in the sky, and the first hints of twilight made the purple and blue flowers in the garden glow slightly. Anandra’s stars were lighting up a little too, just like they seemed to during every dusk, apparently doing what they could to match the actual night sky. But it was at least a few hours before true dark, which meant they would have more than enough sun left for what Iris wanted to do next. She shut her eyes and held out her hand, and when she looked at it again, it held some scary-looking nipple clamps and a ball gag.
“Hey, Anandra, check these out!” she announced, and Anandra awoke, shoving herself upright and glancing around.
“What? Huh? Are you all right, Iris?”
“I’m more than all right. Look!” She held out the two items for Anandra to inspect, who took the nipple clamps into her hands and examined them, and then did the same with the ball gag.
“What does each one do?” she asked Iris, and if Iris hadn’t known better, she’d have thought Anandra sounded a little proud of her. Maybe she was. Iris was proud of herself, after all. It hadn’t been that long since she had to get sex toys the old-fashioned way, although on Earth, she only owned a single vibrator and a small bottle of lube.
“The metal ones are something known as ‘nipple clamps,’ and I’m guessing you can figure out what they do. And the other one is a ball gag. You attach the straps behind someone’s head and place the ball between their lips.”
“I was hoping I would get to gag you at some point, although I’ve always just used spare strips of cloth.” Always? Damn it, Iris thought, she did not want to think of Anandra’s sexual past. It had started to seem like she’d had more than her fair share of partners, which was something Iris didn’t want think about for a second.
“I’ve heard a ball gag works much better,” she told Anandra, hoping that her knowledge of Earth’s sex toys might win her some points and push her standing beyond those other lovers. “And they look much hotter than a strip of cloth, too. I’ve seen pictures of women using them that have really turned me on.”
“Well, let’s make what you’ve seen in the past become a reality for you. Open wide, my little slut. Open up for me…” Iris did, and Anandra placed the black rubber ball between her lips, wrapping the straps around her head and then buckling it in place. Iris had never had her mouth held wide-open like this during sex before. Would it do something for her the way the photos had? Looking at hot, gagged women was one thing, but being one of those women was entirely another.
She didn’t have much time to think about whether it turned her on, though, because Anandra yanked up her shirt and bra, revealing her breasts to the cooling afternoon air. Iris shivered just a little, which was possibly what caused Anandra’s sudden smile to appear. She bit her bottom lip and then pinched open one of the clamps and placed it around Iris’s right nipple, which had been made hard by the slightly chilly air. And it just might have had some help from her growing arousal.
She didn’t have much time to consider this, though, because now she had to do her best to not cry out in pain as Anandra let go of the clamp and it attached itself to her nipple, a muffled gasp leaving her lips instead. Instead of crying out when the second one was attached only moments later, she writhed around on the blanket as it pinched down on her skin and moaned around the gag. It seemed like gags and nipple clamps were more than just fun to look at on other women; it seemed like they were more than just fun for Iris, too.
It was much more than just fun to feel her mouth spread wide open; more than just fun to feel a bit of saliva pool in her mouth and make her lips as wet as her cunt; more than just fun to have the clamps pinch down on her nipples and bring heat to her chest like she’d never felt before.
She arched her back when Anandra pulled on the chain, but the sounds she made were only half from the pain it caused, or maybe even less than half. The second yank of the chain caused much more pleasure than pain, and the third time she pulled on it—much harder than the first two times—it was hardly unpleasant at all, sending blissful tingles up and down her bare skin, dancing across it like the heat of desire.
Desire was something that Iris felt strongly now, and she remembered the safeword for when she was gagged. She grunted three times, and Anandra quickly removed the gag.
“Are you all right? Was that too much?”
Iris panted for a few seconds, then swallowed the saliva that had filled her mouth. “No, of course not. Not at all. But I wanted to get you off, and I wanted to be able to do so with my mouth.”
“But if you use your mouth, I won’t be able to play with your tits and these nipple clamps while you do so. And wouldn’t that be a complete and utter shame?” Anandra’s eyes made it clear that there was only one possible answer to her seemingly rhetorical question.
“Of course it would…ma’am.”
“Now that’s what I like to hear! Get to work, then.” Anandra wrapped her fist around the chain, her grip on it more than solid, and Iris reached down and unbuttoned her lover’s pants. She shoved her hand deep inside them and found her way to Anandra’s clit. It was quite engorged, and slick with Anandra’s juices. She began to rub at it, feeling a little pride that she knew what Anandra needed to get off by now, and knew it well.
It didn’t take long before Anandra was thrusting her whole body against Iris, her muscles tight and her cunt wetter than ever as she came. But that wasn’t all that happened: something far more shocking than that occurred when Anandra yanked the hardest she had so far on Iris’s chain.
Iris’s own cunt grew tight and wet as the chain pulled at her nipples, and then she came, too, pressing her body as tight against Anandra’s as Anandra had pressed her own against Iris’s. She was coming hard, and just from some mere nipple pain! Although “mere” might not have been the right word, because as her orgasm ended, she yelped in pain. “Ouch!”
Anandra quickly removed each clamp, causing two more cries of “ouch!” to leave Iris’s mouth. “Too much, I guess?” Anandra asked with a goofy, lopsided grin. “Finally too much?”
“Oh, yeah. It really was.” Iris took a few seconds to lightly massage her tender nipples.
“So you have limits after all. I was starting to wonder. But did I…did I actually bring you to orgasm with just a pull of that chain?”
“A very strong pull of it! And yes, you did. I can’t…I can’t believe it myself. I used to have such a hard time coming with my ex, and she seemed to think it was all my fault. But I’m starting to wonder if she was wrong.”
“I think she was more than merely wrong, Iris. You’re amazingly orgasmic, if you can get off merely from what I just did to your poor nipples.”
“I just can’t believe it,” Iris repeated in a soft, awe-filled voice. “I just can’t.”
“Believe it or not, it’s getting cold out here. We should get our clothing back in place and find somewhere to spend the night.”
Anandra rebuttoned her pants and Iris fixed her bra and shirt. Much better, she thought, and then she realized that wasn’t true in the least. Much better had been when she was pressed up against Anandra, her strong, luscious body keeping Iris warm in the slightly chilly air, so divine against Iris’s. So very divine.
But they couldn’t have stayed out there all night, not with how cold the air was growing, with the sun now falling beneath the top of the hedge surrounding the garden, and so Iris followed Anandra through a row of what looked like
red and blue roses, choosing to let her friend lead the way. They reached a part of the path that went down a slight hill, and at its base sat something surprisingly familiar to Iris.
Upon seeing the familiar sight, she thought of the painting her grandmother Sallie had hanging on the wall in her bedroom: the one of her, Brenne, and an otter statue, right in front of a mansion. There may have been no Sallie and Brenne waiting for her on the mansion’s steps, but this was without a doubt the exact same place, complete with the same flowers near its porch, the ones Iris had never seen before in real life. Her grandmother had told her they were very rare, but perhaps that was just because they were nonexistent on Earth. They clearly existed here, though.
Yes, the mansion from the painting was actually real. Iris wondered if the stone otters would also be here, the ones whom her grandmother had spun tales about. Tales that very well could have been truth and not fiction as she had always thought.
The mansion below them was peach-colored and two-storied, with a sloping roof covered with large, darker-peach tiles. It had tall and narrow arched windows and a shaded porch, with chaise lounges and tables on each side of the front door. Iris couldn’t wait to get inside, not because of the oncoming night, but because she just had to know what her grandmother’s mansion contained. Because it had to be her grandmother’s mansion, she thought, as she descended the hill. Between the song that had saved them from the attacking statues and the painting she’d looked at many times throughout her life, not to mention the familiar blue flowers from Sallie’s dresser, it couldn’t have been anything else but her grandmother’s old home.
Out of This World Page 10
