Best Lesbian Romance of the Year

by Radclyffe

  “Oh, fuck.” Her hand was ice cold against my overheated sex and the contrast was strangely arousing. She stroked me inside and out, inside and out until I buried my face in the pillow and yelled my surrender.

  Game over. She’d definitely bested me.

  She pulled out slowly as she peppered consolation kisses across my shoulders. She smoothed her hand down the arch of my back and over my bare ass. “I can see a lot of potential here,” she said, stroking my glutes.

  “What? Wasn’t that enough of a spanking you just gave me?”

  “Mmm. The score was close, but I think I won.” She climbed off the bed and I flopped onto my back to watch in fascination. She still wore her T-shirt, but it wasn’t long enough to completely cover her cheeks as she ducked back into the bathroom. She reappeared a moment later with her rinsed pants on a hanger and crossed the room in front of me to suspend them over the heating unit by the window.

  I smiled. “I can see your butt.”

  She looked over her shoulder. “You like that, don’t you.”

  I wiggled my eyebrows. “Yeah. Very sexy.”

  She finished hanging the pants to dry, then winked and turned her back to me again. She wiggled that incredibly cute ass. “Wiggle-wiggle-womp.”

  I groaned and she teased me with a series of wiggles.

  “Lucky for you,” she said, “this is a double elimination tournament.” She tugged her T-shirt off. “Let’s see if you can win this round.” She climbed onto the bed and straddled me. “Then we’ll be forced to hold a playoff to determine the winner.”

  “Sounds like a win-win situation to me,” I said happily.

  I pulled into the driveway at home and sighed. The tournament was over again until next year. My team didn’t win and I missed cheering next to my girl, but it was still the best tournament experience I could remember. I smiled at the memory of Haley and waking up the next morning to an empty room and the badger staring at me from the pillow next to mine. Relax and enjoy the rest of the tournament. Sorry I can’t stay, the note said. I plucked the little guy from his spot on the dash of my truck, grabbed my duffel and went inside.

  “Honey, I’m home.” Her car was in the driveway, so she was here somewhere.

  “Hey baby, did you have a good time?” Her muffled voice came from the laundry room.

  “Probably the best tournament ever,” I said, placing my little badger buddy on the kitchen counter.

  “Throw your duffel in here and I’ll add your dirty clothes to the ones I’m washing.”

  “Why don’t you come out here first. I brought you a little present.” I could almost see her rolling her eyes, sure that I’d brought home the hundredth free basketball T-shirt they throw out into the crowd at every tournament.

  Still, she dutifully appeared and I pulled her into my arms for a long kiss.

  “Wow,” she said, when I released her. “I thought you’d be pouting because our team lost the final.”

  “Nope.” I grabbed the badger and held him up. “I brought you a souvenir.”

  She took him and I dropped my hands lower to cup her. Yeah, I’m an ass woman, for sure. She squeezed his little paw and I palmed her butt when he growled out “wiggle-wiggle-womp.”

  She wiggled her eyebrows at me and I laughed, feeling so free and relaxed and loved.

  “But Haley…really? That’s the name you came up with?”

  “She’s your favorite player. You’ve been drooling over her all season.”

  “She a twenty-year-old child, and I only drool over you.”

  I kissed her again, then drew back and looked into those Carolina-blue eyes that could almost make me forget I’m a diehard Duke fan. “I’m going to have to work hard to top that little role play.”

  She laughed. “You liked it, huh?”

  I tossed my duffel into the laundry room and stripped to throw my clothes in after it. Then I winked and turned my back to her and wiggled my ass.

  “Wiggle-wiggle-womp,” I said, sprinting to the bedroom with her hot on my heels.

  LONG DRIVE

  L.C. Spoering

  The drive to the airport was long enough to make my legs twitch, my foot in danger of hopping off the gas pedal at random intervals, as though it might find a way, Fred Flintstone–like, to speed us up, dash along the pavement under the car so that we met our destination that much sooner.

  Early morning, the sun rose off to the left of me, making my arm appear as the desert, or untouched snow, slowly turning pink and orange and gold, inching up my limb to warm the side of my face. I tilted my head into the light and hummed with the radio, against it, my own tune in contrast to the beat from the speakers. The day was finally here.

  I felt as though everything had been meticulously scheduled, turned into an orchestrated event that could fall apart with one missed step: flight delayed, baggage lost. What kind of expectations could be dashed by the carelessness of the totally ignorant? I tried not to dwell on it, parked the car in the garage and tipped my head back for one final cigarette, breathing in the smoke like I was a dragon, and it was my life force.

  The giddiness lay in my stomach, curled and purring like a cat. If I was in a movie, I thought, I’d pull out a photo of her now, trace the curve of her cheek with one calloused finger, admire the slightly lopsided angle of her smile. I thought of that, before leaving the house: the photo I kept of her on the refrigerator, something enough to embarrass her. The rest of the photos, though, lay on my computer, sent over a year of emails, snapshots requested and swapped, like pen pals at childhood summer camp, SWAK written in sloppy letters over the seal of the envelope.

  I ground the cigarette out in the ashtray and looked at the doors of the terminal again. I remembered the days when you could meet people at the gate and the movie scenes that came out of that, of running to planes, of waiting for a person to disembark, holding a single rose. I would meet her outside the train doors, which I tried to tell myself was the next best thing. There was still a sense of romanticism in that sort of greeting—we could be Edwardian, standing in the mists of a London evening, rather than the recycled air of a twenty-first-century airport.

  I was getting ridiculous. I locked the car and hurried into the airport to check the flight times. The place smelled like floor wax and French fries, and I breathed it in like a perfume. Her flight was due in fifteen minutes, and as I walked, my brain drifted, lifted like a balloon toward the ceiling, and I hummed, again, that same purring feeling in my stomach raised to my mouth, as though emotion had a sound, as if feelings could be made into a rhythm. I cast smiles at everyone I passed, and I’m sure I looked like someone deranged: hands deep in pockets and hair a mess from fingers delved into it a few too many times. I’d agonized over my dress and then ended up in jeans. It was the way these things went, I thought—elation that turns to panic that turns transcendent.

  I checked the arrival boards again. Gate A34. I could imagine her, shuffling down the aisle of the plane with the other passengers, that incredibly slow disembarkment like water slowing to a trickle. She didn’t check a bag, her text said, she had everything in her carry-on. I tried to envision the contents and then stopped myself. Even I have a desire for surprise.

  I hummed again and bought a cup of coffee. She didn’t drink coffee, she told me early on, only tea. I had bought tea and lined up the boxes on my kitchen counter, each one another brick of anticipation that had become something like a totem, a physical path built to her arrival. She didn’t like to fly, but was flying out to me. She always wore skirts. These were absolutes, and my heart clawed at the backs of my ribs in excitement. It was a new feeling, and one that was familiar, in a way. The response to her, her presence or the promise of, did this to me, like a drug that rushed to the head with the first inhale and pushed out through my veins and arteries until my extremities tingled.

  I waited, holding my phone in my hand, turning it over and over against my palm as if that would change the time, would pull a message from her out o
f the air, plucked like a bird. I wanted her mouth, and my eyes slipped closed for just the barest of moments and I sucked in a breath, feeling the shiver work its way down my spine to settle at my lower back, wrap around my waist like arms and delve down into the cradle of my pelvis to rock there, warm water in a tub. I stood on the moving walkway and the faint tremble of the device shot to my already aching clit. I wondered how badly I’d freak out visitors if I moaned. I felt like a bottle, shaken, all the carbonation stirred with no outlet until uncapped. I needed to be uncapped.

  I went as far as security allowed and stood, my forgotten coffee cupped between two hands. The airport was slowly awakening. Early flights left the place eerie and quiet, and I found I liked the atmosphere. It felt like my own anticipation colored the air, rising like clouds, and I checked the arrivals board once more. At Gate.

  I dropped the coffee into a wastebasket and waited. I wondered if she was nervous. I knew I was not. I tasted my lips with the tip of my tongue, the flavor of lip gloss and coffee, faint tinge of tobacco.

  We met on the Internet. A forum, a chat room, and those words were enough for people to roll their eyes almost immediately.

  “How do you know she’s not a fifty-year-old guy in diapers living in his mom’s basement?” a friend asked, a variation on the same theme as everyone else. How did I indeed, of course. And there was no way I could really say it didn’t matter. I knew, though, and trusted her, and her photos were always the same: blond hair, brown eyes, a slight gap between her front teeth. In those photos, she held balloons at a surprise party, a cup of tea between mittened hands at the park, wore a baseball cap in the glaring sun of a game. Her gaze was always the same, her smile crooked, as though she was never completely comfortable having a camera aimed in her direction. I loved her before I met her, and the photos were just a bonus.

  I rose up on my toes and searched for her over the small surge of passengers streaming out of the terminal shuttle. It was early enough that she wouldn’t be lost in the crush, but still I worried. I worried that after all this time, all the waiting, she would somehow slip past me in the crowd and we would be forever destined to be apart, to never quite meet, to never quite touch.

  I had never been so dramatic in my life. I wondered what she’d done with my rational mind. I held my breath, and then there she was: same shy gaze, same unsure smile, though it was only my eyes and not the Cyclops of the camera upon her. She had a purse over one shoulder, a small suitcase in her other hand, and her toes touched when she hesitated at the gate, giving me the chance to hurry forward, push past the stragglers, and finally reach her.

  “Hey, you made it,” I said—not the greeting I’d really been going for. But her smile made up for it, the light behind her eyes, and she nodded with her tooth caught at the corner of her rosebud mouth.

  “I made it.” The same voice from over thousands of miles of Internet connection, now in person rather than over digital pathways that crackled and dropped too often.

  I grinned and, without thinking, cupped her face with both hands, fingers pressing into the freckles that dotted her jaw like a spray of sand. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  We kissed and, after a moment, she let the bags sag to the marble floor so her hands could rest softly on my shoulders and then grasp at my neck. She had a light, sweet touch, like her lips, and my heart bounced in my rib cage once again, my blood rushing to my fingers and toes, the pit of my belly to rush between my legs, a hard, delicious ache.

  The kiss broke and I curled a hand around hers, lacing our fingers together so that our palms, both damp, pressed against one another and stuck, like glue. “Come on.”

  She didn’t budge right away, and I picked up her suitcase, pulling her closer so that our hips touched, even through the fabric of my jeans, of her skirt. She looked out of breath, flushed, and I was about to apologize when I caught the gleam in her eyes and the poise of her mouth, bottom lip pouched and still wet, glistening from our kiss.

  I pulled in a breath over my own bottom lip and then smiled. “I said, come on,” I told her, raising my eyebrows, though my feet were already pointing in a different direction.

  I knew the path to the car; the airport was no stranger to me. Instead, I led her down the long terminal under the overhead walkways and the trees, planted in the center of the airport, stretching toward the ceiling and the sunlight just filtering through the skylights. The clouds turned a sort of pink against the lightening blue of the sky. My heart pumped in my ears, and she squeezed my hand, as if she knew.

  I pushed open the door to the bathroom with one hand, still pulling her along with the other. It was on the far end of the terminal and empty, and I don’t know what I would have done had it not been because, quite immediately, I had her pushed up against the wall. Trapping her there with my body, I had my mouth on hers again.

  It welled up from somewhere inside, and the kiss that had been something sweet out at the gate turned into one more desperate, marked by the hour driving out there, the days waiting for her flight, the months of nothing but Skype and emails.

  Her bags dropped to the tiled floor and her fingers threaded in my hair, clutching at the locks I usually kept tucked behind my ears. Her fingertips were blunt and soft, her nails short but scraping over my scalp, and pressed against her, I could feel her heart thrumming in time with my own, as though they, too, were making an attempt to leap out of our bodies and clutch at each other in kind.

  My knee found its way between her thighs, my foot sliding between hers to widen her stance. She came down on my thigh harder than she expected and let out a yelp-moan into my mouth, her eyes popping open and fingers grabbing more harshly at my hair.

  “That flight took forever,” she informed me, her voice still that shy timbre, but eyes alight with something I didn’t think I’d seen before, even in photos, even in the video chats where I watched her come.

  “This year took forever,” I corrected her, lifting up onto my toe to press the firmer part of my leg to her crotch just to hear her catch her breath.

  “This year,” she agreed, and our mouths drove back together of their own accord, tongues tangling and teeth all but scraping. The kiss was sloppy and hard, and I kicked her suitcase in the direction of the door, an ineffectual doorstop, but I didn’t dwell on it.

  She wore skirts all the time, she told me once, but I liked to think this skirt was picked specifically for me, for the way it fanned out over my thigh so I could slip my fingers up under the hem with ease. Her panties were made of a slick material, soft, and when I edged my leg back down so her feet landed with a small slap on the tile floor, my hand slipped easily under the panel of fabric that covered her cunt, to that warm wetness I could practically smell.

  She wiggled and let out a breath that was colored by a squeal. “Here?”

  Her body dropped onto my hand, my fingers slipping over and through her crevices and folds.

  “I can’t wait.” I pushed her more solidly against the wall, forcing her hips to meet me.

  Her fingers curled at the back of my neck and her head tipped back against the wall so I could see her staring at me through slitted lids. Her lips were still parted and wet, a bruised red and purple, cheeks flushed. Even in the harsh light of the bathroom, she looked stunning, and I leaned in close as my fingers grazed her clit and bit at her small smile.

  “You’re all mine now,” I whispered against her bottom lip.

  Automatically, as if on a string, she whimpered and bore down on my hand. My fingers breached her opening with that motion and slid hard into her cunt, which contracted around me. The noise she made sounded surprised, and she rolled her head to the side to press her cheek against the blue tile wall that ran behind her, her hair scattering over her shoulder. With my free hand, I reached up and brushed it away from her face, tracing the line of her cheek. I didn’t want her hiding now.

  My thumb moved to her clit and swept a circle over the hard little nub, pulling a groan from her mouth. I’
d dreamed of fucking her, and had told her so on more than one occasion but, as with dreams, the reality was something different, something thrilling and better, and I could feel my heart beating all over my body—in my ears and at my wrists, the arches of my feet and at the small of my back, behind my nose, even, like my blood was pulsing with every breath of hers, surging with every noise that escaped her.

  Her fingers dug into my hair with a renewed grip, and she tipped her hips closer. She rocked back on her heels and then rose up on her toes, back and forth, fucking my hand in unconscious abandon. My mouth landed on her cheek, jaw, neck, bit and sucked there, and her gasps tilted another way, a little shriek, my name hissed out on a low exhale.

  My pelvis felt filled with lava, with that persistent, nearly annoying, certainly needy, tingle at the apex of my sex making me fuck her harder. Her cunt grasped at my fingers, the muscles strong and eager, and I pushed into her hard, thumb rolling shapes over her clit: a circle, a star, a heart.

  I could feel her orgasm rising in her, and the noise she made just before it sounded almost a little panicked. My mouth covered hers then, so she could shout against my tongue, the sound absorbed by our saliva and lips, and my hand worked her until she sagged back against the wall, shaking, gelatinous now, whimpering under my kiss.

  “Finally.” I sighed and leaned my forehead against hers, lips brushing against hers with my words.

  She nodded and her fingers dug into my hair again, if a little weak now. “So much better when you do it,” she said, a giggle in her voice. The shyness was starting to ebb off as it always did after a few minutes of conversation, after a good fuck.

  I bit at her bottom lip. “Still love watching you.”

  She sucked in a breath. “I know.” She paused. “I love you.”