by Sacchi Green
“You could lose a button that way,” notes Elizabeth, as carefully she pushes one free of its mooring. And then another. And then another. “If you lost a button down here, you’d never find it.”
“It’s good you’ll restrain, then.”
“Yes,” Elizabeth says, as she fills her hand with the weight of Catherine’s breast. No tedious lingerie to mangle through, most women having given up the attempt in favor of outward patriotism and personal enjoyment. There is only tender skin and pebbled nipple, hardening beneath her thumb, before Elizabeth ducks her head to bring it past her lips with a whisper: “God save rationing.”
She fills her mouth and hollows her cheeks, and stroking her tongue against the firm nub, sucks lewdly loud. The sound is lost, between their sighs and their shifting, beneath the blanket they’ve made and beneath the earth itself. A curse escapes Catherine when Elizabeth relents with a cooling sigh to seek the other in turn. She tangles one hand in Elizabeth’s curls and skims the other beneath the hem of Elizabeth’s skirt. Up high to the band of her knickers, over a pointed hip, the thin material tugged tight when she finds the coarse curls of hair between her legs. Catherine tightens her grip at the back of Elizabeth’s head just enough to catch her attention, and part her lips damp from around Catherine’s breast as she lifts her eyes to Catherine in quiet question.
Breathless, her fingers tease across the soft swell of Elizabeth’s belly, and Catherine whispers, “I’m going to—”
“You are,” Elizabeth says, asks, hopes, pleads.
“And you?”
“I will,” she answers, searching between Catherine’s eyes before a wide smile breaks free. “Even though we should not,” she says, hoping the whisper of laughter doesn’t sound as desperate as it feels. “Even though you should not pull harder—”
Elizabeth gasps, words cut short and neck arching as Catherine snares her hair tighter, her body rigid in rough delight. She stretches a leg to twine with Catherine’s, palming her breast and scraping her nails down the plush swell of it. Their breath shortens between them, so loud now there is no mind for sirens or conversations outside—no world at all outside the one in which they rut in furtive, schoolgirl secrecy. Twisting Elizabeth’s panties aside enough to push her fingers further within, her wetness slicks hot against Catherine’s touch, their gaze settled together, near enough to kiss but only brushing their lips, slow, soft, panting.
Catherine rubs her palm flat across Elizabeth’s mound, setting her hips into motion. Curling forward to meet the subtle ridges of Catherine’s hand, its delicate textures made luminous in detail against her lips when Elizabeth is so sensitive already. She moans low when her hair is released, and sets her brow to Catherine’s shoulder. One by one, fingers press deeper, parting her wide, and a brush of contact where Elizabeth stiffens snaps her hips rigid.
“Not there,” Elizabeth whispers, a laugh caught on her words. “Definitely not—”
Catherine’s fingers still against her clitoris, holding a steady pressure, enough to dizzy her. A wry smile fills her words as Catherine asks, “Not there? Well.”
“No, I mean that—I mean, I don’t mean that,” says Elizabeth, helpless, smiling so wide it nearly hurts as their game falls apart between them. “Please don’t stop.”
“You mean it?”
“I mean it.”
Her moan is muffled by the coat over their heads when Catherine rubs firm and fast against her. Slick fingers glide quickly across her hardened nub, and Elizabeth tries to stop her limbs from trembling but fails, wonderfully fails, instead wrapping her hands in Catherine’s open shirt to catch herself. She can do little more than grind down against Catherine’s hand in response, little more than whimper hitched sounds that rise, quickening, like a warning of her own imminent fall. The world shifts beneath her, and whether it’s from this tender barrage or the bombs up top, Elizabeth hardly cares. A shiver cinches her body tight, twisting deep in her belly, so taut she can’t draw breath, until all at once the roar in her ears detonates. She uncoils, breath and body and beating heart. Expansion and implosion. Squeezing her thighs against Catherine’s hand as dampness trickles down her leg.
Undulating with the shock waves, Elizabeth’s hips hardly slow, and she couldn’t stop them if she tried. Catherine’s patient fingers spread her open farther, seeking lower, and Elizabeth parts her legs so that heated fingertips caress her opening, for now simply stroking.
She should feel some sort of shame about this, she imagines, meeting women in holes underground, ones that are strange beyond just being strangers. Is she so desperate as that, to ride to release the first woman to offer easy company and an easier laugh, with boisterous talk of royalty as they lie tangled together?
Perhaps she is. Perhaps the time or place has made her so.
When Catherine kisses her again, her worries fade. One must always find a way to keep one’s chin up.
REUNION TOUR
Harper Bliss
You’re a cocky little thing up there. The way you wriggle your ass—I can’t wait to stripe it with my belt. I watch you from the side of the stage. If this were a festival in Europe, my band would be headlining, but here in our home country, yours gets the number one spot. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t smart a little. I may have to take that out on you as well. It’s a win-win, really, the way you bat your lashes—your head twisted up to me— when my hand comes down on your flesh, always defying me to give more. And, when it comes to you, I never fail to have more to give.
You shimmy to the edge of the stage, lifting your arms high above your head, giving your fans—and me—a glimpse of your pale, taut belly and the little silver ring driven into the delicate skin above your belly button.
“No one will know what it means,” I said, when I arranged for Lisa to administer the piercing. “Only the two of us.” Now, every time you flash it, every single time you bare this glittering symbol of whatever we have between us for the world to see, something pierces me, too. A wave of something I don’t wish to define washes over me. I’m old enough to recognize it instantly, but still foolish enough to deny it.
Because you drive me crazy, make me feel things I haven’t felt in years. Not even taking the stage again, after a nine year hiatus, flanked by Tommy and Matthew and Sam, my brothers in arms since 1981, affected me in the same way as the first time I saw that glint in your eyes. All it took was one glance, and I knew.
You flick your head to the right, momentarily pinning your gaze on me, and the whole motion thunders through me, leaves my panties drenched. Speaking of, you’re wearing a pair of mine underneath those leather trousers—the ones that hug your ass so sublimely I need to catch my breath every time you present your back to me on the stage.
“Please allow me to present to you the next big thing,” my manager said. “The Harriettes.” You were obviously their leader, the way you hung back a bit—the way I learned to do all those years ago—to allow the others to shine during moments of lesser importance, like being introduced to a band long past its prime.
“Oh my god,” your bass player giggled. “We are such huge fans. You are our biggest inspiration.” It sounded a bit rehearsed, what with her not even having been born yet the year we broke through. You appeared smarter, more composed, shrouded in that cool sort of silence that no one can take issue with.
When we shook hands, though, I detected the slightest hint of sweat on your palm, and when you met my gaze, I knew. I’m old enough to know.
You take your first of many faux-modest bows. After five months on the road together, I know your routine by heart. I can only imagine the adrenaline coursing through your blood right now. Not that it doesn’t still happen to me, but the years have taken away the highest highs. I’ve learned to put it all into perspective more, to see the long run—the endgame. But I hope you’re enjoying this moment because it truly is glorious. Unencumbered by self-consciousness, lifted up by the incessant roar of the thousands of people in front of you, that one
moment you sang and strutted your ass off for over the past forty-five minutes. The higher your high, the more you’ll want me after.
You and your band members exit the stage, walking right past me, as usual. The first time it happened after we’d been together, it hurt a little bit, but I never held that against you. It would be like holding being young against youth. You’re pumped, ready to go back out there, to soak up whatever precious minutes of adoration you have left after your gig. Yet, for all your bravado, your magnetizing stage presence, and your—admittedly—raw, powerful vocals, you never let it go to your head.
“I need you to do this to me,” you said, the first time. But I didn’t need you to tell me that.
I wait patiently, glaring into the bright lights of the stage, the corners of my mouth lifting spontaneously as the people out there scream your name, scream for you to come back. Our own fans, like ourselves, are older now, and rarely call for encores in this unbridled, shameless, self-effacing way.
When you shuffle past me again, it’s as though I can smell you. Your sweat. The state of arousal you’ve worked yourself into during your set.
“I’ll be there,” I whisper to no one but myself. “I’ll be there when you come down.”
And I am. After you perform two more songs—The Harriettes’ first hit, “Boyfriends,” and that cover you and the girls always insist on playing of our 1986 song “It’s Not Me”—I rush to my changing room. At least, due to my status as new wave goddess of the eighties, most venues, even festivals, easily grant me my wish for my own dressing room.
If I wanted to, I could count down the minutes it takes from the applause on the other side of the stage to die down until you knock on my door. It never takes more than five—just enough time to exchange some high fives with your bandmates—and you always knock.
“Come in,” I say, in my most earnest voice. No time for smiles just yet.
You close the door behind you and lean against it, sinking your front teeth into your bottom lip. Already, the first pang of hunger, of blind, delirious lust, shoots through me. To this day, it’s still unclear if you chose me or if I chose you. Perhaps we just chose each other. Perhaps, in that long first glance we shared, we saw what we could mean to each other.
As per our ritual, your back stays glued to my dressing room door. I forbade you months ago to lock it. I get up from where I was sitting—a rather dingy couch, unworthy of the backstage of a festival of this standing—and, slowly, take a few steps in your direction. The first thing I always do is unhook my belt and slide it, loop by loop, from around the waistband of my jeans.
Your eyes catch on it and your teeth sink deeper. There’s a twitchiness to your demeanor, a desire so great it shines through in every tiny movement you make. You don’t know this, but I feel it, too. It burns through me now, and destroys me a little every time you close the door behind you again, every time you leave. But I don’t think of the pain that is to come, because this moment is not about my pain. It’s about yours.
I fold the belt in my hands, enjoying the soft caress of the well-used leather. Your eyes are glued to it. They always are. The way you can never look me in the eyes beforehand, and how you make up for that afterward by sending defying glance after defying glance at me, as though you’ve just survived the greatest ordeal, the biggest challenge of your young life, always floors me a little, makes the crotch of my jeans go damp in a flash.
“Take them off.” As much as I admire how you look in that pair of leather pants, how they cling to you the way I sometimes want to, time is of the essence.
You kick off your shoes first. You know I want you totally naked, not a scrap of clothing lingering on your body to protect you from what I’m about to give you. I don’t go for anything less than complete surrender. Your top is next. I’m glad you’re not wearing that old faded T-shirt with my face on it. I hate to see myself crumpled on the floor like that. As usual, you’re not wearing a bra. And I didn’t even ask you this time. The sight of you, naked from the waist up, only clad in those leather pants— and those large, snaking tattoos that crowd the skin of your arms and shoulders—makes my pussy clench around nothing.
I don’t need to take a picture of you this way. I carry this image with me throughout the days. I see it in the morning just before I open my eyes and before I drift off into sleep at night. When did it become all you, I wonder? When did the balance I sought so hard to find in my life tip in your direction?
You don’t need me to tell you that I love you. I’m about to show you, again.
I arch up my eyebrows, indicating my impatience. Pants. Now. There’s no need for me to say these words, either. Your hands are pushing the leather down already, and it reminds me of the leather slipping through my hands, sliding through the gaps between my fingers. Leather and fingers. All you need. Maybe you should write a song about that?
I nod my head in the direction of the couch and, once you’ve kicked both your trousers and panties off your ankles, you patter over there. And, in moments like these, I do wonder where I get the strength to not push you down and ravage you immediately. This display of youth, so present in the smoothness of your skin, the agility of your muscles, the ease with which you take the pain…it shouldn’t be for me to touch anymore, but the fact that I can, that you let me, arouses me even more. Because, for as much as you sometimes claim this is a one-way street and complain that you barely get to touch me, this—you naked, at my mercy—is about all I can take. Any more of you, and my old, abused heart may give up.
You know the position and you take it without direction. Your ass arched up high, your torso folded over the armrest, your legs spread wide.
I swallow hard as I approach, and take a moment to behold your beauty. The skin of your behind lost its smooth, silken, youthful unblemishedness after our first night together. When—not if—you ever decide to take another lover, I will always be there with you, and her. I push the thought from my mind, but don’t move just yet. I let you stew, anticipate, melt.
Then, at last, I run the side of my belt along the curve of your ass. Up and down, and I need to activate all my willpower to not let my fingers follow the track of the belt. The need to touch you is so much stronger than on any other given night. Perhaps because this tour of ours only has a few more stops left. Because I can feel something is about to end, again. I guess I’ll have to write a song about this, too, in veiled terms, and with a contradictory upbeat melody.
I love you, all of you, but when it comes to your body, I love your ass most of all. It’s so firm and bouncy—and those tan lines. I told you once, in an unguarded moment, that I found tan lines inexplicably sexy. You’ve been working on yours ever since, resulting in a white V tapering downward along your crack. It makes me feel things I haven’t felt in years.
When I let the belt drop off your side, I can hear you inhale. Your body tenses with anticipation, but I wait. Just a fraction of a second, just to throw you off guard a little. I know that you know why I do this, and you adjust yourself accordingly. You make it look as though you relax, while, between your legs, that clit of yours must be thumping—screaming, like mine. Like your fans earlier. Like my heart when you knocked on the door.
The leather cracks down on your pert flesh, but you take the first blow with a solemn sort of dignity that baffles me. All throughout this secret affair of ours, so many things you’ve done have amazed me. But this, this stoicism, as though it’s the most important part of what we do, has thrown me for a loop the most.
I don’t hold back, and a pinkish stripe has formed on your skin already. Time to paint your other cheek. The room is silent, apart from the threatening, exhilarating whoosh of the belt, your intake of breath and the stifled moan you expel as the leather touches down again.
As much as I admire how brave you are in the beginning, it’s the unraveling of you I crave the most. You make me work for it, though—although work is hardly the correct word.
“Is this what you want?”
I ask, as I pause and, with the slightest of touches, run a finger over your crack, all the way down to your soaking wet pussy lips. “Is it?” I insist.
“Yes,” you groan, your voice a flimsy echo of the one you use onstage.
I let my finger skate all the way down to your clit, and I revel in how ready you already are, but we both know we haven’t even started yet.
My finger retreats and I look you over. I can’t tear my eyes away from your behind—my biggest prize. I think of the platinum records I amassed over the years, all of them now stashed away in my basement at home, and I consider how none of them ever gave me as much satisfaction as leering at your blushing ass on display right now. My trophy. All mine.
You don’t know all of this yet—and, sure, you remind me of me when I was your age, and I didn’t have a clue either back then—but fame is always fleeting. And, most of the time, the highs barely erase the lows. This is not how I think about our romance—because, no matter the practicalities and our silently agreed upon arrangements, this is romance. I can ride this high for as long as it takes.
Still, today I need to ask. I need you to tell me what is going on in that pretty little head of yours, underneath the mask of your face, which I can’t see right now because you’ve pushed it into one of the couch cushions. At the previous stop of this tour, I had my assistant buy a T-shirt with your face on it. I was amazed to learn that they even still made those at first, but you and your band members always claim to be so old school, so I guess it makes sense.
I run the belt over the curve where your ass meets your thigh, again and again, marking the spot where it will land next.
“What are you thinking?” I ask, giving voice to my own weakness. It’s the first time I’ve asked you this question. I slap the leather lightly against the exact spot I will paint red in a few seconds, so you know I mean business. When I discovered that spot, when I found out how it made your knees buckle when flogged from the right angle and with the right amount of pressure, my clit throbbed so hard beneath my jeans, I wanted to plunge my free hand into my pants and come for you. Only, it wouldn’t have been for you. So I didn’t do it.
