Back Talk

“That was nice,” Emily said, rolling off her and scooping her up in her arms.

“Very nice,” Hilton murmured, her face buried between Emily’s soft breasts. She licked the beads of sweat that lay there.

Emily pulled off her shorts and rolled Hilton on her back. She slid her thigh between Hilton’s leg. Hilton could feel her wetness.

“Come here.” She pulled Emily on top of her. Hilton tugged at Emily’s nipple rings. Emily leaned in toward her and Hilton sucked her nipple and the nipple ring. She could feel Emily shudder. “You like?”

“Oh, yes,” Emily said, offering up her other breast. She kept rocking toward Hilton with her breasts while Hilton nipped and suckled them. Hilton cupped her hand between Emily’s leg and thrust her fingers inside. Emily moaned and then ground against Hilton’s hand. “Oh, just like that.”

Hilton thought there was nothing quite so erotic as watching a cute girl move against you as you ran your hand across her breasts.

Hilton knew it would be the wee hours of the morning before Emily would leave.

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Copyright(c) 2006 by Saxon Bennett

Bella Books, Inc.

P.O. Box 10543

Tallahassee, FL 32302

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechani-cal, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper First Edition

Editor: Christi Cassidy

Cover designer: Sandy Knowles

ISBN 1-59493-028-7

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My undying love and appreciation to Lin, Gu, Sarah,
Annie and Jane for putting up with all the time spent lost
in the tunnels of my mind.

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About the Author

Saxon Bennett lives in the East Mountains of New Mexico. She is an avid lover of red and green as long as it comes on the side. She still pursues various forms of sporting extremism with a healthy disregard for the onset of middle age—always be nice to your elders, you’ll be there one day.

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Hilton Withers pulled up in front of her old Victorian house in Seattle’s university district. It was pale yellow with a faded red shingle roof. The house needed a paint job and the yard was a mess. Hilton ignored these facts. Her pea-green Volkswagen bug barely squeezed into what was left of the driveway. It was Friday night and the house was filled with Queer Nation people and who-ever else wanted to come. This was party zone central. Shannon, her great white Pyrenees, licked her lips, having just finished her McDonald’s cheeseburger. It was her Friday night treat.

“You know, those things are bad for you,” Hilton told her.

Shannon barked.

“I know I do bad things too.”

Shannon licked Hilton’s face.

“Ick! I find leftover burger juice offensive.”

Shannon barked again and her black lips curled up in a smile.

Hilton laughed. People who did not know animals would think her 1

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crazy to believe a dog could smile and have opinions, but Hilton was convinced that Shannon was more intuitive than most of the women she knew. She kept this information to herself.

Hilton and Shannon went around back and nearly tripped over a couple of shaved-headed, seriously pierced women fornicating in the wisteria bushes alongside the house. They were stepping all over the Japanese peonies. It was going to be one of those nights, Hilton thought as she unlocked the door to her garden cottage. Set back twenty yards from the house, the cottage had once served as the mother-in-law quarters. It had large lead-paned windows on all four sides. When the long burgundy velvet curtains were open Hilton felt like she was living in a giant fishbowl. The cottage was surrounded by her grandmother’s overgrown rose garden. Gran had died two years ago and ever since then everything had slid into a steady decline. Every once in a while, Hilton would get a wild hair up her ass and do a bit of trimming. The entire backyard was overgrown and it had occurred to her to hire a gardener but she wasn’t certain she could handle the commitment.

She unlocked the door and Shannon bounded through it and jumped up on the king-size waterbed.

“Be careful,” Hilton warned. The waterbed, complete with a velour comforter, was a throwback to her teenage years. She was hard put to part with it. The mattress had been patched several times due to Shannon’s exuberant leaps. A hundred-and-twenty-pound ball of fur with huge toenails was not a waterbed’s best friend. Hilton told herself when the mattress flooded the place she’d buy a new bed.

She wondered if this was a holdover attitude she had gleaned from her grandmother along with the house mantra, “Follow the straight and narrow.” As a child Hilton had looked for straight and narrow pathways thinking this was what her grandmother meant.

Her grandmother, Nettie Ella Withers, had grown up during the Great Depression. At the age of thirteen she had started selling pickles on the streets of Seattle during those lean years before FDR put the whole country on the dole, as her grandmother put 2

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it. She grew the cucumbers, saved the seeds, perfected the recipe and went on to make more money than her son, Percy, or grand-child, Hilton, would ever need. Hilton hated pickles and so did her grandmother. There was never a jar of Withers Homegrown Pickles in the house. Despite all this money, Gran never threw anything away until it had completely exhausted its lifespan.

Hilton pondered whether she was subscribing to this doctrine when it came to the waterbed.

Shannon whined.

“Oh, get over it,” Hilton said, rubbing Shannon’s soft ears.

Hilton rustled around in her closet for something to wear.

Finding nothing she liked she was forced to rummage around the cottage. She found a pile of clean T-shirts neatly folded on the countertop of the kitchenette that took up one wall of the small cottage. Her roommate Liz must have taken pity on her and done some laundry. She never used the kitchenette although it did have a small gas stove and an old porcelain sink. She had installed a stainless steel dorm fridge. The cottage was basically one big room with a bathroom off the kitchenette. Hilton had taken up residence in the cottage after Gran died because the big house, which Gran had left to her, had become too populated with parties, activist planning groups and all-night study cram sessions.

Digging through the pile she opted for a black T-shirt that said Teach Masturbation and a pair of camouflage shorts. She gazed longingly at the claw-footed porcelain tub. The pipes were so cor-roded that she would be collecting Social Security before the tub filled enough to take a bath. She scooped up her clothes and told Shannon to stay. The house would be too crowded and she was an overprotective parent. Shannon put her head down on the side rail of the bed and looked perfectly pitiful.

“I won’t be gone long,” Hilton said as she slipped out the cottage door. Shannon barked once to indicate her displeasure and then Hilton knew she’d settle down for a nap. That was one of the things she liked about her dog—she was predictable, unlike most of the other creatures in her life.

3

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Hilton snuck in the back door of the house, through the kitchen, which was only mildly populated, and up the back stairs of the house. The back stairs had once been used as the servants’

entrance to the rest of the house. The other set of stairs with its dark oak railings and balustrade had been used solely by the family members unless the maid was dusting it. There was no cleaning staff now but Hilton still preferred the back way.

The old Victorian house had three proper stories and then the attic. Each floor had its own bathroom, all in various states of dis-repair. Her three roommates each had a bedroom and a bath on one of three floors. This allowed all of them some privacy and more than enough space as there was a sunroom on the third floor and several smaller storage rooms and various alcoves spread throughout the house. The house was actually quite large although they didn’t use that much of it anymore. She was hoping to make it to the third-floor bathroom, which was in the best state of repair, without being noticed by anyone, including her girlfriend, Natalie.

Natalie was currently infatuated with someone new and Hilton always had trouble with these liaisons. Although there had been plenty of them, they still bothered her. This one’s name was Sherry and she was a biker chick. Hilton felt totally inadequate in dealing with this one. With most of Natalie’s girlfriends she had a chance of outshining them, but aside from donning leathers and buying a Harley she was out of luck. She was almost to the second-story landing when Nat caught up with her.

“I brought you a beer and something special,” Nat said. She handed Hilton a bottle of Rolling Rock and a hit of ecstasy. “It’s a little something to take the nip off the day.”

Hilton scowled.

Nat kissed her cheek. “Lighten up.”

“She’s coming tonight,” Hilton said, knowing it was more a statement than a question.

“Who?”

“Don’t play with me.” Hilton studied Nat’s face, trying to read what was written there. Nat was a petite woman, with short brown 4

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hair, pretty blue eyes and a pirate’s smile. It was times like these that Hilton suffered from what she called her caveman complex.

She wanted to lift Nat up on her shoulders and carry her off somewhere safe where they could live their lives out in quiet seclusion.

Nat was in her last year of college. The only reason she was going to college was to get her rather substantial trust fund. She had to graduate to collect. Nat had chosen her major accordingly. She was studying art history because, as she put it, “All you have to do is memorize paintings and dates. I can do that.” That was Nat’s basic philosophy on life. Do as little as you can to get most of what you want.

“Sherry’s coming tonight and I just wanted to warn you,” Nat said. She didn’t meet Hilton’s gaze.

“Just don’t bang her in front of me,” Hilton said. She clenched the Ecstasy in her coiled hand.

“We’re not doing that.” This time Nat looked at her.

“Not yet,” Hilton said, turning to leave.

When she got upstairs, she ran the bath and deposited the Ecstasy in an empty dark brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide with all the other pills. Hilton had a stash to be envied. She should really flush them but they served as a testimony to all the times Nat had wanted her pacified. Nat was a lot like the shrinks Hilton had seen while she was growing up who always thought she needed drugs to lessen her intensity and dilute her personality, to make her into somebody else.