by Sacchi Green
“Stop it.” She spoke as much to the voice in her head as anything, but Cat laughed as Annie caught her around the waist, threw her down onto the mattress. The muscles in her thighs pulled long and taut under the skin and Annie couldn’t help but run a hand up them. Cat was dark between her legs and hot and forbidden and it made Annie’s throat tight, thinking about it, what this was, what they’d done. Spurred by a sudden impulse, she pushed two fingers together up into Cat where she was still wet from earlier and Cat surged up half-off the bed, gasping and clutching at Annie’s shoulders.
“Not the little virgin anymore, are you?” Cat said, voice strained and teasing.
Annie pressed a thumb against her, feeling Cat flutter reflexively, and opened her mouth to speak, but Cat cut her off, put a hand flat over her mouth.
“You’re not,” she said. “I’ve had you. You’re mine.”
Something hot flared in the pit of Annie’s stomach, then licked across her shoulder blades. “Oh,” she said, and felt suddenly combative, but delightfully so. “We’ll see about that,” she said, and set to work.
Girls don’t count girls don’t count girls don’t count...
But this would count if anyone knew, if anyone saw; this felt like it counted when Annie was pressed to a backyard wall with Cat’s mouth between her thighs; this felt like it counted when Cat fell asleep on her shoulder after a gig and a fuck and it was fucking, when Cat rolled her hips down hard against Annie’s and worked her with her fingers and took her apart with her tongue.
Girls don’t count girls don’t count girls don’t count.
But Cat counted; Cat was counted, and she’d made sure Annie counted, too. Annie wasn’t just a girl anymore. Since she’d met Cat—since they’d played together in their narrow jeans and shinned down the drainpipe in Mansfield Road in the dark; since they’d bunked off school and bickered over lyrics and stretched their hands to shape new chords—she and Cat, they were just people, and that was all.
Cat, Annie thought, was the sort of woman the world needed to meet. The sort of person.
“We’ve got an offer,” Cat said, brandishing a piece of headed notepaper and grinning fit to split her face. “Proper club an’ everything, Annie. This is serious.”
Annie couldn’t help but smile back immediately, but a question niggled at the back of her mind. “Do they know about us, though, love? Do they know who’s actually in the band?”
Cat tossed her head, pressed her lips together firmly. “No,” she said, folding the letter and stuffing it into her pocket, “maybe they don’t. But trust me”—and she took Annie’s hand—“they fucking will.”
TOMATO BONDAGE
Teresa Noelle Roberts
“Well, that’s it!” Julia exclaimed proudly. “Two hundred tomato plants in bondage.”
“More than that. I counted two hundred and eight. And we’ll have to do it again as they grow.”
“But at least we can do that round a little at a time.”
I took off my hideous but useful gardening hat and let the breeze ruffle my short, sweat-damp hair. “Damn heirloom tomatoes anyway.”
I smiled as I said it. Julia and I both loved the flavor of heirloom tomatoes, and so did our customers at the farmers’ market and the local restaurants who bought from us. But these delicious older varieties grew on huge plants that needed to be supported by stakes or trellises, too big to fit into those wire tomato cages found at any hardware store during planting season. We’d rigged up a trellis system out of the scraps and oddments that farmers tended to save—some had come with the place, stashed away by the old couple who’d run dairy cows here until the market gave out. We’d planted the tomatoes on Memorial Day weekend. Today, they were finally big enough to tie to the trellis, using a combination of string and strips of worn cotton sheets. The farm had come with a supply of those too, forgotten in a linen closet.
The sun had moved closer to the western horizon but still beat down hot on this late June afternoon. Both my arms and Julia’s sported a yellow-green coat of what I thought of as tomato dust—I’d never learned the technical term for the powdery substance that stained you after wrestling with tomato plants. Julia’s forehead was streaked with chartreuse and dirt-brown where she’d brushed away sweat.
She looked amazing. Dirty, but amazing. Defined muscles, built by our shared hard work, in her arms—and, as I knew, her back, abs and thighs as well. The sun caught the reddish lights in her long, dark brown hair. The colors on her skin looked like part of some primal ritual and she could have been the high priestess. No, the goddess.
If I’d look half as good as Julia did covered with tomato dust and glazed with sweat, I’d start painting myself with yellow and brown streaks and spraying myself with salt water before we went out for a night of dancing. Not that we hit the bars of Northampton much between May and September. Occupational hazard of being farmers: our growing-season social life was pretty much nonexistent.
On the other hand, there was a lot to be said for the summer months being the Julia and Molly show. Privacy, work we loved, collaborating with no one but the weather and each other to make our schedules, and did I mention privacy on our isolated homestead?
Privacy, for instance, to slip behind Julia and wrap one of the sheet strips around her wrist. She gasped in surprise, but didn’t resist. Not Julia. Instead, she moved her other hand so I could bind her wrists together.
“Shirt off first,” I said. Otherwise, what I had in mind wasn’t going to work very well.
That command provoked a snort, but her objection had more to do with common sense, which she had in spades, than inhibitions or personal modesty, which she lacked in spades. “What about bugs?”
I grabbed the bottle of citronella-and-herb bug repellant out of the wheelbarrow and brandished it at her. “I’ll respritz us both.” It wasn’t exactly a taste sensation, so I’d keep it away from nipples and other nibble targets, but it should help. And we’d both put sunscreen under our clothes in case it got so sunny we risked burning through our shirts—or in case it got so steamy we indulged in outdoor shenanigans.
“Well all right then.” As she answered, she pulled her Fedco Seeds T-shirt over her head and flung it onto the grass path. Her bra quickly followed.
She gave me a second to look at her beautiful breasts, slightly glazed with sweat. Then she kicked off her sneakers and wriggled out of her shorts. No effort to do a sexy striptease, just getting from dressed to gloriously naked under the sun in the most efficient way possible.
That’s my girl.
Julia and I have been together for ten years, but I still stopped and stared in appreciation at her delicious combination of curve and muscle, the way the late-day sun played games with light and shadow on her skin and caught reddish highlights in her brown ponytail. Julia rocks the high femme look on those rare occasions when we have a chance to get out and play. I enjoy it when she’s wearing heels and an itty-bitty cocktail dress, the kind of outfit that would look stupid on my blockier build even if I had the inclination to dress that way. But I think she’s most beautiful to me at moments like this: unguarded, unfashionable, glazed with the sweat of our shared labor and eager for me.
I could have spent hours studying the familiar but always stunning lines of her body and that would have been a great way to while away the rest of the afternoon. But the strip of garish flowered sheet on her right wrist reminded me of my other plans. I shook myself mentally from the pleasant daze that a naked Julia always induces, grabbed her arms and brought them together in front of her. Wrist to elbow, elbow to wrist. A few quick ties with sheet strips and Julia’s strong arms were immobilized.
Then, as I’d promised, I applied a light coating of bug spray.
Someone who went in for elegant rope bondage might have been appalled by the effect. I hadn’t even bothered to pick strips from the same sheet, so several different faded floral patterns clashed on her body.
But her bound arms framed her breasts, accentuati
ng her crinkled dark nipples, so the makeshift bondage was just about perfect. Her eyes were bright, her lips slightly parted in a sensual smile. She stood proud and tall in her makeshift bondage, her long, strong legs slightly parted and her bare toes curling in the dirt.
I ran my fingers across the plump curve at the top of her breasts, dipped into the valley between them. Ran my calloused palms over her nipples until she writhed under my touch. “Please, Molly,” she sighed. “I need…”
Julia didn’t finish her sentence, but after all these years I knew what she craved when her voice took on that breathy, lost-little-girl quality. I drew back and slapped each breast, not with a farmer’s full strength, but hard enough that dusky red handprints blossomed on her skin.
“Thank you,” she breathed, and then, “More?”
She didn’t need to ask twice.
By the third round of slaps, we startled several small birds that had been exploring the mulch for worms. I don’t know if it was the smacks or Julia’s happy noises that scared them off, but we both laughed as they chirped in alarm and flew away.
I’m neither a classic Dominant nor a true sadist. I don’t feel the need to tell Julia what to do—a good thing, because she’d only listen if it amused her—and I don’t particularly enjoy administering pain for its own sake. What I enjoy is her reaction to a little pain, a little rough play. Same thing when she feels like having the upper hand. It’s not so much the bondage or the spanking I enjoy, although they’re fun enough, as her sheer turned-on glee inflicting her pleasant torments.
Now, though, she’d made it clear she wanted it to be my turn on top.
Pinching her nipple hard, I slid the other hand between her legs. She wasn’t quite as open as I hoped, so I slapped her inner thighs until she changed her stance. Okay, maybe her stance had been fine in the first place, but I liked the sounds she made when I struck her. Liked the way she canted her pelvis forward to meet my fingers.
And loved the slickness I found flowing from her pussy. “You’re drenched.” I circled her clit until she ground against me. “Just from that little bit of play.”
“I watched you tying the tomatoes,” she admitted, “and wished you were tying me up instead.”
“Funny”—I pinched the other nipple now, firmly enough that she squealed and jumped—”I went there too. Figured you’d be envying the tomatoes. I kind of was myself, when I wasn’t thinking about putting you in their place.”
Julia grinned and laughed, though the laugh was half a moan thanks to my busy hands. “You have to be gentle with plants. I don’t break that easily.”
I’d been planning to lay her down on the soft grass at the edge of the tomato plot and lick that luscious dark plum of a pussy. Maybe even kneel in front of her and do so. We’re not hung up on roles, and that way I could smack her ass while I ate her.
But it sounded like my lady needed something more intense this afternoon.
Challenge accepted!
I grabbed her bound arms, and pulled her in for a hot, hard kiss. Her lips were dry from the sun and wind, and so were mine, but that didn’t matter. Once our tongues twined and the kiss turned possessive and claiming on both sides, I didn’t notice the mild discomfort anymore. If I knew Julia, it added an extra fillip of arousal for her.
I thrust one denim-clad leg between her bare ones, and felt her heat radiate into my skin. She ground against me, heedless of dirt, heedless of anything other than need. As she rode my thigh and devoured my mouth, I spanked her. It wasn’t the best angle, but sometimes it really is the thought that counts. Being bound and spanked, however awkwardly, pushed Julia closer to the edge. Already, I felt her moisture soaking through my jeans.
I didn’t want to break away from that delicious kiss, didn’t want to lose contact with that wet, eager pussy. Even without any direct contact, my own clit swelled in sympathy, and my cunt began to flood. It would be so easy to shift position, rub against her and get that stimulation I needed. When the time came, I’d explode like an overripe tomato tossed against the wall of a barn.
But I knew how to make Julia even more juicy and aroused. And that, unfortunately for me, involved putting a little distance between our cunts for now. I broke away from the kiss. “Come with me,” I said, and was surprised by how gruff and gravelly I sounded. Almost as if it were a real order, not a good idea pretending to be one.
Grasping her bound wrists, I led her out of the tomato field. A little way from its edge was an ancient apple orchard that we were coaxing back to productivity. Even if we weren’t getting a lot of apples yet, it was a pretty spot, fragrant with blossoms in May, dappled in green shade in summer, redolent of fruit in fall. We’d set up a small bench back there, a place to rest from our labors and survey our domain.
And sometimes, a place to do other things.
“It sounds like you need a real spanking, not just a few slaps for foreplay. Is that right?”
“Please.” She squirmed against her bonds—not to escape them, but to feel them more keenly on her skin. “Please, Molly…”
I sat on the bench, patted my lap and then helped her position herself across it. Enjoying playful spankings was one thing. Falling off my lap and possibly hitting her head on a rock or the bench was another, and with her hands bound, it was a risk.
When she was settled, I ran my hands a few times over the curve of her ass, making her squirm and drinking in the moment. Her skin was soft, warm all over and almost hot where I’d already hit her. Her weight anchored me, rooting me in my desire for her. All around us, summer was rolling over our farm. Birds clamored overhead, and I thought I heard the chattering of a squirrel in one of the trees. Seen through green leaves and tiny apples, the sky was the soft, misted-over blue of high humidity. The air was sultry and smelled of dust and green, growing things. We smelled of dust and green, though those subtler aromas were quickly getting overwhelmed by the fragrance of Julia’s arousal.
I took a deep breath, enjoying everything including the keen ache between my own legs.
Then I began to spank her vigorously.
And when a farmer does something vigorously, that’s hardcore.
Julia loves pain, but she doesn’t take it quietly. She shrieks and screams and yelps and begs for mercy she doesn’t actually want unless she uses her safeword (which is radish, if you’re curious). This little grove of trees, far from the road and the nearest neighbors, was a perfect place for this kind of game. I wished I’d thought of it earlier and made a mental note to look into building a shed out here, something that looked like another small farm building, but on the inside would be a cozy sex retreat where she could scream and pretend-beg to her heart’s content. I doubted we’d have the money for such a project this year, but if we planned ahead, maybe next summer
Julia’s cries and the feel of her firm, supple ass beneath my hand quickly pushed that thought onto the back burner where it belonged. Julia deserved my utter focus. And she got it. I alternated fierce spanking with teasing caresses to her clit and pussy until she was rocking against me, gasping, almost sobbing with need.
If I hadn’t been so intent on her, I might have been sobbing with need myself. Her wetness, her scent, her beautiful, red ass, her hoarse noises all conspired to turn me on so much I might have been able to clench my thighs a few times and come.
But why tumble over the edge that impersonal way when I had a lapful of beautiful, wanton woman who’d be happy to take care of my little problem when the time was right?
Her cries intensified. She squirmed more in my lap. “Please… please,” she begged. And as I had before, I translated that incoherent plea for her.
“You need to come, baby?”
“Please…” I’d short-circuited her brain so much that for the moment it seemed she couldn’t remember any other words. Luckily I had years of practice in the language of an aroused Julia—limited in vocabulary, rich in possibility.
I thrust two fingers into her while I swirled at her clit with my ot
her hand.
She stiffened, convulsed, and came howling. Somewhere down the road, I was sure some weekender from Boston or New York was wondering whether a wildcat or a catamount had found its way into the area.
The noise and the spectacle of her pleasure were enough to make me follow her into orgasm. I closed my eyes, arched back and tried not to drive my fingernails into any part of Julia where it wouldn’t be a fun sting.
I’m not as loud as Julia, but I was still glad the neighbors were far away.
Especially when Julia recovered enough that she asked to be untied so she could turn her attentions to me. She ran the strips of cloth between her green-stained fingers and smiled suggestively.
And I found myself saying, “Sure. If bondage is good for you and our tomatoes, it’s bound to be good for me.”
Like I said, I’m not a Dominant, not a sadist. If you have to put a label on it, I’m a switch, or an experimentally kinky person partnered with someone of similar inclinations. I might be more on the toppy side, Julia more a bottom, but sometimes it was fun to mix it up.
But mostly what I am is a woman in love. And smeared and stained with our farm and with Julia’s juices, I couldn’t imagine much I wouldn’t do to make her happy. Bondage tomato-style? Bring it on.
THE ROYALTY UNDERGROUND
Megan McFerren
She recalls her father’s oft-spoken insistence to keep her chin up, and draws a deep breath. Oily smoke slicks acrid against the back of her throat, and Elizabeth decides that perhaps keeping her chin low might be better. She lifts the collar of her shirt across her nose and holds it there.
The queue shuffles forward, around the side of the Tube station. Toward either side spans Marshalsea Road—toward either side spans destruction. There are no fires she can see, so late in the day, but thick black streams still rise into the air from what once were houses. Despite how often the wireless now uses it, the word flattened doesn’t seem at all appropriate. To the contrary, the wreckage is tall and incongruous, all jagged edges and unidentifiable fragments of lives that Elizabeth—in a moment of piety—prays survived the raid.
