by Sacchi Green
“You’re so beautiful,” she managed to whisper.
“So are you,” Nina said, her voice low and husky. Her lips grazed Alice’s throat, making her shudder. And then they kissed.
Alice melted into the sultry heat of the girl, pulling her close as they mashed their lips together. Nina’s tongue sought entry and Alice devoured her, tasting her sweetness. She wanted to stroke Nina’s breasts, to bury her face in them, to kiss every dusky inch of her. But she was trapped by the seat belt.
When they finally broke the kiss, she unlocked herself and took Nina’s hand. “Come on,” she said. “In the back.”
Nina clambered over the seat eagerly and curled there waiting until Alice joined her. She arched her back, a wordless invitation. The little crescent pendant dangled enticingly in her cleavage, a splash of blue against her skin. Alice didn’t hesitate. With trembling hands she unfastened the knot in Nina’s blouse and peeled it open, exposing her breasts. Alice let her fingers trail down the outer swell as they tumbled free, and then took them in her hands, caressing the soft flesh.
Nina shivered and gave a soft little whimper of need, spreading her legs wide as Alice knelt between them. She drew her thumbs across the little stiffening buds of Nina’s nipples, and then lowered her mouth to kiss them. Each time she flicked her tongue across one, Nina moaned, her own hands fumbling blindly at Alice’s shirt until both women were topless. Alice pushed her breasts against Nina’s, pressing their nipples together. The sensation sent jolts of pleasure through her body.
The sky blazed with wild fiery colors, like a Martian landscape. Alice had never seen anything like it. Her hands shook as she unfastened Nina’s cutoffs and slid them down. A pair of lacy black panties came next, the gusset as damp as Alice knew her own would be. She skinned down her jeans, eager to feel her nakedness against Nina’s.
“Beautiful,” Nina murmured, sitting up to look at her lover. Her gaze was so piercing that Alice blushed, fighting the urge to glance away. Nina just smiled again, that sly little cat grin, as she pushed Alice onto her back. She played with Alice’s breasts, stimulating her almost past endurance with her fingers, her lips, her tongue. From time to time Nina raised her head for another kiss, angling her knee between Alice’s legs as she pressed her mouth to Alice’s.
For a moment Alice wondered if she had slipped into some kind of fantastical dream. But Nina lowered her head and Alice felt the girl’s lips against her sex, then her tongue. It was hot and wet, and Nina lapped eagerly at the swollen knot of Alice’s clit. Waves of pleasure and desire swept through Alice, making her dizzy. Nina swirled her tongue round and round, softly at first and then with more vigor. With her fingers she pulled Alice’s thighs wide apart, pressing her mouth hard up against her, sucking her clit and sending little spasms of shock through her.
Alice had been clutching the seat backs, but she let go to bury her hands in Nina’s hair. It spilled across the girl’s naked back like ink. Alice fisted a hand in the ebony locks, twisting it tightly as she guided Nina into a harder, more desperate rhythm.
Nina obeyed the silent command, nipping Alice’s clit with her teeth before soothing it again with her tongue. She varied her ministrations, fluttering her tongue across the sleek folds and then pulling away to stroke them with her fingers. Alice didn’t think her legs could go any wider but Nina urged them even farther apart, then slipped two fingers inside her. Then three.
Alice had to bite her lip to stop herself screaming when Nina took her clit into her mouth again. The combination of sensations was almost too much to bear. Nina’s fingers pushed deep inside her, finding her G-spot as she kissed, licked and sucked the hot little bud that was beginning to throb with the building climax.
All around them the desert winds blew. Dust swirled in the warm air, painting alien designs across the sky. Alice imagined herself lost in the vast openness, a tiny statue made of sand. And Nina was the wind, stroking her, caressing her, slowly carrying her away, grain by grain, setting her free.
At last the pleasure overwhelmed her. It swept her up and under, flooding her body with ecstasy. Alice screamed, loosing a wild cry into the bronzed desert and the sunset sky. Her body quivered and pulsed with each little surge of bliss and she was lost in the moment. She was flying, soaring unfettered in the burning sky, the pulse of the earth throbbing within her. Time seemed to stop as she drifted, euphoric and free.
When at last she came back to herself, Nina was smiling, her eyes like black diamonds. Alice could only gaze at her in wonder for several seconds. She had so much she wanted to say and do, but her mind was a haze of sweet delirium.
“Oh my god,” she panted. “That was… I’ve never…”
“Shhh. There’s no need to say anything.”
Alice wrapped her arms around Nina and pulled her close. They lay naked and curled together, gazing up at the sky as the colors faded and the stars began to appear. A sliver of moon sailed between them like a ghost.
When Alice opened her eyes it was still dark. The moon had disappeared but there were hints of pale yellow and pink on the horizon. She sat up slowly, blinking around her in a daze. Where was Nina? With a gasp she realized she was naked, wrapped only in her shirt. Her jeans and panties were folded neatly beside her and she dressed quickly, then climbed into the front seat.
Her body was sore, but it was the sweet ache of strenuous sex. Her sex still pulsed with the memory of the night before and she slipped a hand down between her legs and sighed as she remembered Nina’s touch.
She peered around at the early morning desert, but there was no sign of the girl. Her heart sank and she pressed a hand against her breast, willing herself to remember only the bliss. There was something around her neck.
Startled, she angled the mirror down to look. It was a turquoise pendant of a crescent moon.
Alice smiled as she revved the engine and guided the Mustang back onto the highway. She floored the gas pedal and savored the rush of speed as she raced toward the horizon. She had made a decision. Her sister could take care of herself for once. Alice had her own life to lead.
And as the sun began to spread its wild colors across the sky, Alice saw a figure standing on the side of the dusty road. Alice slowed the car and pulled up alongside her.
“Going my way?” Nina asked, a playful grin on her lips.
Alice nodded. “Oh yes,” she said. “I am now.”
ASCENSION
Louise Blaydon
They met first in a place Annie shouldn’t have been. It could hardly have been otherwise—Cat was just that sort of girl, always to be found in places where nice girls didn’t venture, hanging desultorily around the docks or walking out with the lads. Everybody knew about Cat. They said she didn’t walk out with lads the way another girl might, but walked instead with razor blades under the lapels of her blazer, a tall, upright figure like Hepburn with her long legs in tight jeans, auburn hair piled up messily on her head. She lived in Woolton, a nice bit of Liverpool, with some poor old biddy of an aunt who despaired of her, but her mates were all these lads from Speke and the Dingle, tough as old boots. Cat looked tough, too, bright and sharp and ruthless as a blade.
Annie had seen her often on the bus, and watched from a distance with a mixture of morbid curiosity and awe. It was coming up to ’61, now; girls were doing new things, being new people. Whatever Cat was, whatever she did, it wasn’t as much of a shock as it might have been ten years ago. But they didn’t meet—really meet—until the day Annie took a wrong turn on the way back from dropping off some sheet music for her father, and there was Cat all alone with her spine pressed to the back wall of a blind alley, one foot propping her up, fag smoldering between two fingers.
Annie’s gut went cold for a full five seconds before Cat smiled at her. It wasn’t safe around those parts for a girl on her own, Cat said. Annie, trotting to keep pace in her buckled school shoes and pleated skirt, refrained from pointing out the obvious. It was quite clear what Cat meant.
S
he said her name was Catherine, but she said it with a sneer that made the word stupid, ill-fitting to this slim-hipped creature with her fine long nose and russet-colored hair, her man’s shirt and imposing boots. Her long eyes were an exact match to her hair, and carefully lined. Annie’s fingers ached to draw her.
“What were you doing there?” Annie asked, feeling daring.
Cat laughed and said, “Waiting for my band.”
“Your band?” Despite herself, Annie slowed, watching Cat carefully.
Cat shrugged, a loose jerk of her shoulder. “Aye, but they never showed, did they?” She snorted. “Crap, really, the lot of ’em. I’ve got half a mind to ditch them for someone who can actually bleedin’ play a guitar.”
The words made their way out of Annie’s mouth unbidden, on the back of a strange clenching in her chest, an unfamiliar rush of eagerness. “I can play a guitar,” she said. “I’m good,” she added. Her mother had always warned against false modesty.
Cat snorted, not even a pause for thought. “You’re kidding, aren’t you?”
Annie frowned. “Why?” A moment ago, she had been wondering what had possessed her, but Cat’s immediate dismissal stirred a defensive contrariness in her.
“Well,” Cat said, and stopped walking, one corner of her mouth quirking up in a smile. Her hands were in her pockets, where her jeans were stretched so tight over her hips that the lines of her individual fingers showed through the fabric. “You’re like a bleedin’ choirgirl, love. What’s your name?”
Annie frowned. “Anne-Marie. But just Annie, really.”
“Well, ‘just Annie, really,’” said Cat, in an infuriatingly reasonable tone, “You’re hardly the sort, are you? Even if you can play the guitar, what’ll the lads make of this? You’ll be crying over your poor virgin honor, darling.” Cat reached out, caught at the hem of Annie’s skirt with finger and thumb. Annie jerked, and Cat grinned as if validated, taking her hand back. Her fingers brushed the soft skin on the inside of Annie’s knee as she withdrew, and a shiver skittered strangely across the base of Annie’s back.
“I know girls like you,” Cat said. “Bet you do everything mummy says, don’t you?”
“Me mum’s dead,” Annie shot back, snapping, and it was worth it for the look on Cat’s face, the sudden shocked slackness. “And I can play the—the f-fucking guitar, better than you, I bet.”
She turned, primed to leave this strange rude person where she’d found her, but Cat’s arm shot out, hand closing around Annie’s shoulder.
“Show me,” Cat said, soft now.
For some reason it seemed that refusing was not an option.
They never should have been friends. The tight-lipped expression on Mr. Mac’s face whenever Cat came round said as much; what was all the more curious to Annie was the fact that Mrs. Smith, the aunt Cat lived with, seemed equally averse to the presence of Annie in her home. Annie wasn’t used to being disliked by parents. She was clean and neat and did the ironing for her dad and her brother and herself, and still managed to get good marks at the grammar school on the far side of Liverpool. Her mum was dead. Annie had Suffered a Lot, which adults generally cared about. That Mrs. Smith didn’t was confusing.
Cat cared. Cat said, “You don’t have to do everything for ’em, you know.”
They were lying on their backs on Cat’s narrow little bed, staring at the ceiling. Annie was wearing a pair of Cat’s jeans that Cat had coaxed her into. They were too long in the ankle and Annie felt naked in them, exposed. That something about the feeling was curiously exciting was by the by.
“He’s my dad,” Annie said automatically, as if this explained everything. “He hasn’t got anyone else.”
“He’s got hands, hasn’t he? That could probably manage putting bacon in a pan without your help?”
“I’m his daughter,” said Annie, awkward.
“You’re not his slave,” Cat said. “And you’re not his property, either. You’re eighteen now, you don’t have to do what he says.” Cat pulled herself up onto her elbows and eyed Annie’s body critically. “Those jeans suit you. Here, take your blouse off, I’ve got something I want you to try.”
Annie didn’t bother to point out the hypocrisy. Somehow orders from Cat were not remotely like orders from Dad, who was bald and wrinkled and still thought a Lady shouldn’t ever wear trousers. “Dad’ll have a fit,” she said, fingers going to her buttons.
“Well, we’ve got a gig on Monday,” Cat said, “so we’ll have to decide what we’re wearing. We can pick tonight and then you can tell Matt and I’ll tell the rest of the group whatever we decide, eh?”
Annie paused, faltered, resumed more slowly. The weight of Cat’s eyes was palpable, and she felt herself blushing and cursed her pale skin for it. “A gig?” They had never played a proper gig. A gig would make the dream real, even if it remained only a real dream.
“Yeah,” Cat said, grinning, and handed Annie a plain black T-shirt. “So try that. See what we think.”
* * *
“Has he fucked you?” Cat’s voice canted up at the end as if she were angry, although, as far as Annie knew, she had no reason to be.
From the other side of the room, Matt was watching them warily, all angles and bones and stormy brow, long fingers gone white-knuckled where they clutched his guitar. Annie had known Matt since they were eight years old. Matt was her brother, or almost; and somehow it was in this spirit that she let him put his curious long-fingered hands on the prepubescent curves of her breasts when they were twelve, and in her knickers three years later in the McCartneys’ living room one night when the house was empty. But she could never… “Matthew?” she hissed, incredulous. “What kind of girl d’you think I am? And even if…” She trailed off. “Matt?”
“He touches you like he’s fucked you,” Cat said flatly. “Like he’s had you.” Her eyes were dark and shuttered and Annie sighed, and bit her lip.
Before Cat could make her say it unwillingly, drag it out all wrong, she said, “It was just kids’ stuff, that’s all. Just to see.”
Cat’s tone didn’t mirror Annie’s at all, cutting over her strident and angry. “Oh! Oh, just to see? And that means he’s not had you?”
The break in Cat’s voice stirred a sudden heat in Annie, blood in her cheeks when she tossed back, “Christ’s sake, Catherine, it was only his hands. That’s not fucking, is it?” She leaned in, said sharply, “It’s not fucking without someone’s prick in you.”
Cat swallowed, mouth setting. Her eyes took on a different cast, amused, somehow, as she leaned back and crossed her arms, buttons on her cuffs glinting in the yellow lights of the club. “We’ll see about that, McKenzie,” she said, and something dipped in the pit of Annie’s stomach, hot and strange and good.
* * *
“Watch my folders,” Annie said, cautionary. It was half past four; she had arrived home to find Cat skulking on the doorstep, and she was still in her school uniform, blazer and skirt and tie, A-Level Art portfolio tucked under one arm as they moved up the stairs. Useless, staying on to do art, her dad had said, but here she was doing it. More than once, she had questioned whether she would have done it if Cat had not been there that day by the docks.
“You want a cuppa while we write?” Annie asked, glancing behind herself as she leaned the folder carefully against her wardrobe.
“Annie,” Cat said. Her voice sounded strange, urgent, and Annie was just on the cusp of asking her what was wrong when Cat moved forward jerkily and cupped her face.
A thousand things rattled through Annie’s brain at high speed, looking at Cat like this, her pupils grown black and insistent and her expression curiously pleading. Cat didn’t plead. Cat always held the balance of power, and in this moment, Annie realized dully, she did not.
She knew she ought to say, “Cat, stop it,” and pry Cat’s hands away, take a firm step back. Instead, she said, “No tea, then?” and her voice was low and shaky, her stomach dipping.
Cat’s expre
ssion wavered, corners of her mouth lifting. “No,” she said, and tilted Annie’s jaw, holding it captive as she kissed her.
Annie had been warned about Cat, about girls like this. But somehow, Cat had broken through, broken in.
Cat had strong fingers, square shoulders, muscles in her arms. Annie felt soft beneath her when Cat’s weight bore the two of them down onto the little single bed and Annie’s legs splayed unconsciously, skirt riding up, but it wasn’t an unhappy softness. It wasn’t the sort of vulnerability she felt when boys touched her like they thought it was their right, and Cat was cleverer, anyway, than any boy; surer, though the look on her face was almost fear. Cat’s palm found the inside of Annie’s leg, smoothed its warm way up past her knee and then hesitated, suspended somewhere on the soft plain of her inner thigh. Annie reached down, clasped Cat’s wrist, and her whole body seemed to thrill, uncertain of whether she meant to stop Cat or to encourage her.
“Let me,” Cat said, remembering herself, and ducking her head, mouthed at Annie’s lower lip. Annie sighed, chest clenching; lifted her mouth, open, and then they were kissing properly, fully, Cat’s tongue hot in Annie’s mouth. Her hand shifted, then, sliding upward, and this time Annie didn’t interfere, only gasped and spread her thighs when Cat knuckled at her through shamefully damp cotton.
“Please, love,” Cat said, running a firm thumb up the center of her, and it wasn’t like Matt’s tremulous too-eager touch, not at all. Annie rolled her hips against Cat’s hand, bit her lip. Her father would kill her if he found out.
“All right,” she said.
Afterward, they smoked with the window open, furtive.
“Gonna rain,” Cat said, flinging her long legs over the end of the bed and standing, peering out shortsightedly into the street.
“ Cat—” Annie reached for her wrist, clutched at it, tugging. “Come away from there, you nit; someone’ll see you.”
“What’s to see?” Cat said, but she was smirking as she turned, body long and pale and bare. She moved toward the edge of the bed, stood there with her legs astride and ran a slim hand through Annie’s tousled hair. They probably looked horrors, Annie thought. You look a right clip, she heard her mother saying.
