Lesbian Romance: Collection: Her Obsession (LGBT Multicultural Romance) (Paranormal Historical Short Story Collection)

by Lovy Books

  “You tell me. We’ve discovered something about this place that I don’t want to believe is true. Is it?”

  “Is what true?”

  “Everything about what this place is. The additives in the food. The ultimatum. What happened to Mr. Delaney and Chip. You all have lied to us this whole time. What the hell is going on?”

  Michael looked back at Mr. Stephens sheepishly, pleading with him to give him help. “Look at me,” Fay signed aggressively. “Not him. I can only talk to you. You gave me my job, Michael. But it was only so we didn’t hear anything about your sick plan, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it? Look at me!”

  Michael — along with the executives — was stumped. He knew the jig was up. “You’re right,” he signed. “It’s true.” Then he told the telepaths everything: the entire premise of the Health and Safety Agency was to ensure the health and safety of the top tier of people in the country, mainly the rich, white population and no one else. They wanted to ensure the world would be safely theirs in the future and no tainted posterity could get in the way. The introduction of mercury into common fast-food production lines was the quickest way to contaminate the lower populations with this poison — it was a partnership with the CEOs and presidents of hundreds of fast-food restaurant chains, who could easily be bribed into government whims with a little cash. That’s all it was about for the agency, Michael admitted: a way to preserve themselves and their children and refresh the country’s population into the perfect demographic.

  Fay listened to Michael with a shocked and appalled expression. “So you were going to kill off people you didn’t like? People like me, because I look different from you? Because only one of my parents is white?” Then she gestured to her coworkers — her friends and the love of her life — behind her. “People like us, because you think we’re not as good as you?”

  Michael only stared at her. Fay looked for some remorse, something to grant him redemption. But there was only the same hard hatred in his eyes that there was in Mr. Stephen’s eyes behind him. “You betrayed me. I was excited for this job, and now….” Fay could barely speak, she was so enraged. She had leaned in close to Michael’s face, and now suddenly snapped to erect posture again. I can’t do this anymore. Emma, help me. Her girlfriend stepped up immediately and took Fay’s hand. Ben, Madeline, come on. Let’s finish this off.

  She clasped Emma’s hand tightly, and the four of them stood together in a line; the current that flowed through them empowered them and they felt hot with anger and fire at all the horrible things they had learned in the past few days. Their brains buzzed with the telepathic powers between them; the warmth of the familiar electric energy started to rise through their bodies, and then —

  The force burst and an atomic shockwave blasted through the room, straight from the minds of the four friends holding hands, into the minds of the three executives and the recruiter. The blast ruptured the silence in their minds; the neurons in their brains cried out in the pain as the communication was severed between brain and body, paralyzing Michael. All the executives went limp; their bodies were motionless.

  Fay stood there gasping for air, her head throbbing with the pressure and pain from expelling all the force in her brain outward and she leaned down on her knees to catch her breath for a moment. Emma placed a hand on her back gently.

  When she stood back up, all she could do was look straight into Mr. Stephens’s eyes. His body was still, but his eyes were screaming.

  The End

  The Once Forbidden Love

  Historical Lesbian Romance

  About the Story

  A sharecropper’s daughter and the town’s rich girl have nothing in common. Nothing that is except a bond that nobody can tear apart. Not even their fathers. In rural 1920s America where the rights of women barely exist and the word gay means something far different from today’s meaning Madeline Stewart and Goldie McGraw find each other and fall in love.

  Madeline’s gifts as a jazz singer will carry them from the red dirt of Georgia to the glittering lights of New York City, if they both fight for what they want. A love that surpasses all things endured, through the turmoil of being only friends in the South, to the first bloom of passion in New York. But betrayal awaits and Madeline must face her choices alone.

  One final decision must be made; go back to the past or take only what the future has to offer? Will a last bid at love bring Madeline and Goldie a passion that lasts forever or ruin and heartache for the rest of their lives? Choices must be made and only Madeline and Goldie can decide. Is their love strong enough to survive a world that rejects them or will they claim it all, for a chance at a love like none they’ve ever known?

  Chapter One

  Madeline felt the man’s lips pressing gently against her cheek and that was about all she felt. Pushing him away she looked at him with cold, uninterested brown eyes before stepping to the other side of the door on her daddy’s front porch. Looking at Jim Cline she managed to work up a polite smile before thanking him for coming to visit with her.

  “It was my pleasure, Miss Stewart. I enjoy your company and I’d like to come again, if I may?”

  At 23 this wasn’t her first kiss, Jim wasn’t her first suitor, but like all the rest he left her cold, uninspired and he definitely did not make her hear the sound of wedding bells in her ears. She knew that her daddy was just in the house though, sitting on a couch listening to everything she said to the man. Maddy didn’t want to argue with him again, she just wanted to marry somebody and get it over with so her daddy would stop pestering her about it. Looking at Jim she figured he was just as good as any man, if a little more handsome than most, and settled. She felt like her soul was dying inside but she had to give in. Her daddy was going to toss her out if she didn’t.

  “That sounds lovely, Jim. Why don’t you come by Friday evening? Three days from now?” That might give her time to work up some more faux-enthusiasm. Suppressing a shudder she turned back to him, letting him run a hand down her blonde hair. She’d put on a dress because her daddy had insisted she take her pants off, but she knew she had the right to wear them. Earlier this year the attorney general said women could wear pants anywhere they wanted to and she’d taken it to heart. It was 1923, after all, not 1823!

  Jim finally left and Maddy walked into the house. She was trying to quietly go back to her room when her father called to her from the front room.

  “Maddy, get in here.” Her father looked angry, as usual. He sat on the edge of the seat, like he was going to jump out of it at any second. Maddy hoped he’d stay put this time and stayed quiet. She’d had enough of the yelling.

  “You know those men taught you a valuable lesson, right? Any woman that walks around trying to dress like a man with her hair cut up to her ears deserves to be treated the way you were! Walking around like a woman of the night is what you were doing. Shaming your mother and I. What were you thinking?”

  Bart Stewart was still angry about that then. A week ago Maddy had decided that she wasn’t going to pretend to be anything she wasn’t anymore. She enjoyed shocking her parents wearing pants around the farm but never into town. Her parents had learned to ignore her wearing pants, her father wouldn’t even look below her collar bones now but she’d never tried to go into town wearing them. Not until last week.

  A pastor from one of the churches had seen her and come running out of his church, screaming about harlots and the whore of Babylon. Other men had joined him and they’d started to throw rocks at her as well as insults! Maddy ran back home, thinking her momma would soothe her cuts and her daddy would defend her but he’d only blamed her and wouldn’t let her momma tend her wounds. Her anger had built towards him then and it had only grown when he slapped her for standing up for herself. After he beat her with a leather belt, though, she broke. She had to give in to him then, she just couldn’t take the beatings.

  “There’s a devil in you girl and a man like Jim Cline will take it right out of you. That’s all you need, a h
usband to straighten you out. I think he’ll do nicely. Now you mind me and you stop this nonsense of trying to look like a boy and not getting married. You’re lucky a man is even interested in a woman your age. I’m not taking care of you for much longer, girl, so you’d better convince this one to marry you fast because you’re going to be out on your own if you’re still here by the winter time. It’s July now, you got until November, you hear me? November and you’re out of here!” Bart looked like he meant it this time too.

  Hanging her head, Maddy walked away from her daddy. She just needed to get away, get out of the house, away from him and his hateful words. She went to her room, pulled the awful dress over her head and tossed it in a corner. Her anger was building again, the words he’d spoken to her replaying in her mind. How could a father treat his daughter like that? Was she just livestock to him? Something to raise and if it doesn’t become a prize cow, you just put it out to pasture? Get rid of it? It would seem so. Putting on a pair of trousers and a shirt she pulled her boots on and got into bed. She wasn’t going to leave the house until both of her parents went upstairs to sleep. Bart liked to check she was in bed before going to his own room.

  Just as she thought, her door cracked a half hour later. She pretended to be asleep, even throwing in a little snoring sound she’d heard her mother making before. Maddy listened as her father’s feet clomped up the stairs, and she jumped out of bed when she heard the springs of his bed screech. Time to go!

  Maddy sighed, a loud sound in the quiet surrounding the lake. She was on her back, totally naked, floating while she stared at the moon. Thoughts played through her mind, questions she had no answer for. Words she’d never spoken and impulses she’d never acted on, enhancing her shame.

  She remembered the first person she’d ever had a crush on. Not a boy. A girl. She’d been so ashamed, so mortified. She didn’t know what was wrong with her but she knew something was. She’d been taught that her feelings were wrong. It said in the Bible that she shouldn’t like women, she shouldn’t think about kissing other girls; it was a sin. If God made her though, didn’t he make her this way? Had he made a terrible mistake when he made her?

  Now her father was forcing her to marry, to do something she didn’t want to do. The thought of Jim Cline kissing her again made her want to throw up. This was the behaviour that was expected of her. Not that she’d go pining after women. She’d fallen head over heels for Betty Phillips when she was 16, a girl in her class. She’d been mortified, confused, with no one to turn to for answers. How are you supposed to justify wanting to kiss the girl that sat at the same table with you in science class?

  Turning over Maddy swam through the lake, trying to find answers she knew weren’t there. She was a pervert, she told herself and maybe she’d be better off dead than living her life like this. She couldn’t stand the thought of Jim doing to her what her friends had told her their boyfriends did. Well, back when she had friends, she told herself.

  Most of them had drifted away, married and with children, few of them had time for Maddy. Some had even moved away with their husbands, seeking a different life. Others had gone to a variety of ladies colleges. Here she was: a share cropper’s daughter, no future, no husband and no life. Close to the middle of the lake now she noticed how loud the sound of her swimming was. Looking around she knew there couldn’t be anyone out here; the moon was bright so she’d see them.

  The moonlight played over her body, highlighting the mounds of her breasts, her wide hips and curved stomach ghostly pale in the white light. The water on her legs shimmered, giving lustre to her shapely thighs. She wasn’t one of the needle thin girls that seemed to be cropping up of late in the sacks that passed as dresses now. Women were demanding their sexuality be respected and going on about freedom but they were hiding their shapes in dresses that had dropped the waists down around their buttocks, cutting off their hair to be less feminine. Maddy didn’t quite understand it. She cut her hair in an attempt to look like any of the other girls around but her face was pretty. Short hair highlighted her prettiness, rather than making her appear less feminine. Wearing pants and cutting her hair had made her look more feminine, in her mind.

  Men had so much more freedom than women did. She didn’t think she wanted to be a man or anything like that, she wasn’t trying to be one, but she did like men’s clothes. You could do so much more when you were wearing pants. That’s all she wanted, freedom and to be free of her desires for women. She wanted to be “normal”, be like her friends but no matter how hard she tried, the thought of a man touching her was just repulsive.

  “I reckon you aren’t going to need these clothes anymore since you’re not coming out of that lake. I could use a pair of trousers and these look suitable enough. Thanks!”

  Maddy almost drowned herself trying to turn around and see who was out there in the dark under the trees, where she’d hidden her clothes. Swimming to shore she felt panic raging through her as she realized that if the person took her clothes she’d have to run home naked, If her father caught her sneaking into the house naked, he may very well kill her!

  Chapter Two

  Maddy left the water, running on the sand of the shoreline, hoping to catch whoever it was that had her clothes. The voice had sounded strange so she couldn’t tell if it was a man, a woman, or a child. She saw her trousers waving at her from behind a tree and went in that direction, the thief obviously teasing her. She darted over to the tree, but found she was too late to grab the person. Her shirt flew at her from another, balled up to give it enough weight to throw.

  She grabbed it and searched the dark, trying to find the person. She couldn’t see anything now; the moon had gone behind some clouds. Fear and panic rose in her chest, making it hard to breathe. Her clothes were gone, she couldn’t see a thing and she was going to have to walk back to her house, a ten minute walk, in the dark. What if she stepped on a snake? What if someone saw her?

  Collapsing on the ground she brushed shimmering tears from her eyes, feeling completely hopeless. She even felt like wailing but the noise would draw attention. Suppressing the urge to scream didn’t stop the sob that built up in her throat until she couldn’t hold it back anymore.

  “Now look here, there’s no need to cry like that! I was only playing. Buck up kiddo and stop that blubbering!” It was a female voice then. Not a threat then, just somebody playing a prank on her.

  Maddy had most of her nudity hidden simply by the way she was sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest but she still tried to use her arms and hands to hide what she could. Whether the thief was a woman or not Maddy was still indecent. Lifting her head with a sigh she looked at the woman and her jaw fell open.

  Goldie McGraw, live and in the flesh! Bud McGraw’s only daughter; spoiled little rich girl extraordinaire, the subject of much gossip and a party fixture throughout the South. Maddy had even heard that Goldie had been to New York and California for parties with her daddy paying for everything she needed. Maddy had seen her a few times in town before but she’d never actually met her. Goldie had been sent to boarding schools; no grubby state education was good enough for her parents so Maddy had never really run across her but she’d heard about her often.

  “I see from the look on your face that you know who I am. Well, that’s good because I know who you are too, Missy. Or should I say mister, what with you wearing trousers in public and all. That was brave of you to waltz down main street in trousers, a step so far even I wouldn’t take it. How did you ever get it into your head to do something like that?” Goldie wrapped Maddy’s trousers around her neck as she spoke, sitting down beside the other woman.

  “Why yes, yes I do know who you are. And what’s it to you if I walked down the eastern seaboard in trousers? Women are allowed to, the attorney general said so. It’s just backwards people like my daddy that want to keep women open and pinned down in dresses. I hate those things, I always have. I guess you think you can look down on me because I’m poor white trash
and I like wearing trousers?” Maddy’s ire was rising as she spoke, heat entering her voice and erasing the quavering that had been there when she first spoke. Pulling her trousers away from Goldie’s neck she quickly jumped up and put them on while looking around for her shirt. She’d dropped it after Goldie threw it at her.

  Goldie sat still, watching Maddy storming around the clearing. A smile made her beautiful face, blue eyes, and golden blonde hair light up to make her look even more like an angel.

  “I really ought to just punch you right in the nose for this. I really should! And then to think you’re better than me because you live in that fancy house, wearing fancy dresses, prancing off to parties. I’ll show you trash!” Maddy pulled her arm back and stalked towards Goldie but stopped when she saw the woman with the moonlight casting its glow around her. Maybe she really was an angel?

  “What?” Goldie asked when Maddy let her arm fall and let out a long breath.

  “You’re really quite lovely aren’t you?” Maddy said, unaware she was speaking out loud.

  Goldie looked surprised for a moment, the complete change of thought confusing her, but she soon caught up with Maddy and the smile came back.

  “I’ve been told that a time or two, yes. And no, I don’t think you’re trash, I think you’re brave and wonderful and I’ve wanted to meet you for a while now. I wanted to get to know the woman brave enough to wear trousers in our little town. Not just that, you’re swimming naked in the lake at night. You’re just a rebel, aren’t you?” Goldie didn’t sound like she had any malice in her voice when she spoke, Maddy noted. Her eyes almost appeared to be wide with wonder, but surely someone like her couldn’t be impressed with Maddy?

  Maddy ducked her head down, trying to hide her smile. It had been a long time since she’d heard any kind words and for them to come from such an unexpected source was thrilling, but she didn’t want Goldie McGraw knowing she was thrilled. Peeking out from the fringe over her eyes she saw Goldie sitting looking out at the lake now. Something about the woman drew Maddy to her. Maddy couldn’t stop herself, didn’t want to stop herself when she sat down beside Goldie, fully clothed now. She’d even found her boots and put them back on as well.