The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica (21 page)

When it was over, Corrine laid down next to Nicki and they kissed and touched for the longest time.

“I’ve never done that before,” said Corrine

“Done what?”

“Took a risk like that and prayed you wanted me as much as I wanted you.”

“I’m so glad you did.”

They spent the rest of the weekend in bed, getting out occasionally to scrounge around the kitchen for food. They did drive to the beach once more before Corrine headed back down state. That
weekend started a weekly pilgrimage for Corrine, leaving work early on Fridays, driving the interstate, and singing along with Anita Baker as her heart soared and her body ached. Almost always,
Nicki would be out in front of the house, staring down the road for Corrine’s car, except when she surprised her by not greeting her. Then she would be in the bedroom, either naked or whored
up in a black garter belt and hose, smiling to herself with anticipation as she heard Corrine slam in the screen door. That September, on Corrine’s fiftieth birthday, she packed up her
belongings and moved north, settling in with Nicki in a house near the beach.

Even now, they delight in laughing about the courtship that lasted all of one day. When their friends preach about another couple bringing a moving van to their second date, they glance at each
other and smile. It’s their naughty little secret – that morning one June when they pulled out all the stops. Now they’re an old married couple, but the passion still smolders
under the surface of their comfortable life. They go to sleep every night in each other’s arms – and wake up each morning, still together.

A to Z

Kristina Wright

I met Zoe in the library near the biography section. I was sitting in one of the big, overstuffed chairs by the window reading
People
when I looked up and saw her
staring at me. She sat in the chair opposite me. She wore a long flowing dress the colour of a summer sky, her legs tucked under her, her brown leather sandals lined up neatly on the floor. Her
eyes were the same colour as her dress and they watched me, unblinking. She held a book but I couldn’t make out the title because she had it turned face down in her lap, as if watching me
were infinitely more interesting than reading a book. I was flattered and annoyed. The library is my sanctuary. I don’t go there to get cruised.

Funny thing is, I was never much of a reader before her. In fact, I’d only been going to the library for two or three months when I met her. I’d never been to the big Ft Lauderdale
branch library, even though I grew up three miles away. One day I was paying a ticket at the courthouse down the street, so I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone and pick up some tax
forms at the library. By then, it was already the middle of March. I’m a bit of a procrastinator.

I had no idea how wonderful the library was. Once I got out of high school, I made it a point to avoid all things academic. But that first visit made me a believer. I’d make a trip to the
library once a week, maybe two, not for the books but for the silence, the utter sense of solitude. Everyone whispers in the library, everyone is deferential to your need for peace and quiet. It
was so unlike my job as a waitress at one of the clubs on the strip , I couldn’t help but return again and again. I’d have been happy to sit by the window on the second floor and watch
the traffic go by, but the librarians gave me funny looks. Sometimes homeless people go to the library to cool off in the summer. I didn’t think I looked like a homeless person, but I figured
if I had my nose stuck in a magazine, they’d leave me alone.

I looked up from an article about the summer blockbusters to see her still watching me, her finger stuck between the pages of the book, marking her place. Her hair was long and loose around her
face, a halo of dark, wavy ringlets shot through with strands of silver. She was a few years older than me, I thought. It was hard to tell. She had an exotic look, maybe Indian or Saudi, all sharp
angles and good bone structure. Her eyes threw me, though. They were blue as blue can be. I wondered how that recessive trait had popped out.

I realized I’d been staring at her and felt myself blush. I’m as fair as they come, pale skin, short spiky red hair, light green eyes the colour of sea glass. It was a funny joke God
played on me, making me be born in a state that has sunshine three hundred and twenty days a year. I skulked about in long sleeve blouses, long pants, sun screen and sunglasses, protecting my pale
flesh from the harsh rays that would turn my creamy skin into a mottled canvas of freckles. My last girlfriend, Maggie, used to bitch because I never wanted to go to the beach. But I never heard
her complain when she explored every inch of my sun-free skin.

“Aren’t you hot?” the woman across from me said finally.

I flinched. Her voice seemed to echo throughout the wing. No one else seemed to notice. I shrugged. “Not really.”

“I’m hot.” She hiked her dress up to mid-thigh and fanned her face with the hem. “It’s usually forty degrees in here, but today if feels like they’ve got the
heat on.”

She was appealing, but I didn’t want to talk about the heat. I wanted to read about the summer movies. I wanted to be left alone. I raised the magazine up and covered my face, hoping to
discourage any further conversation. I didn’t give in to the temptation to peek around the glossy page and see if she was still watching me. I finished reading about Jude Law’s newest
flick and moved on to a fascinating tale about liposuction in Hollywood.

I heard the swish of fabric and was almost disappointed that I’d run her off. I jumped when she pulled the magazine away from my face. “That shit will rot your brain,” she
said.

She dumped the book she’d been reading in my lap and then crouched by my chair. “A is for Austen,” she whispered close to my ear.

I flipped it over.
Sense and Sensibility.
I shook my head and tried to hand it back to her. “It’s not my style.”

She pushed it back at me. “Try it, you’ll like it.”

“I don’t have a library card,” I blurted.

When she laughed, I shivered. “It’s okay, I already checked it out. Just have it back in two weeks.”

Then she was gone, her dress billowing out behind her like a blue cloud, her sandals slap-slapping across the floor. I watched her until she walked through the door. Then I remembered to close
my mouth.

By the time two weeks had rolled around, I’d gotten through
Sense and Sensibility.
I still wasn’t convinced I was cut out for that literary crap, but I was kind of surprised
it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected it to be. I dropped the book in the slot in the lobby of the library and headed for my favourite chair.

She was already there, looking resplendent in a sleeveless red sun dress with a gold Batik design scattered across it. She looked up at me from the book she was reading. Another book lay in her
lap. “Did you like it?”

I shrugged. “It was all right. I’m not really into that highbrow English stuff.”

She arched an eyebrow. “You’re going to be a tough nut to crack, I can tell.”

I played it cool. I sat down across from her and thumbed through the magazines on the table by my chair. I picked up Cosmo. She looked as if she was going to blow a gasket. I smirked over the
top of the magazine. “I’m tougher than you might think.”

It was part challenge, part bravado. I was intimidated by her exotic beauty and her obvious intellect.

She didn’t disappoint. She glided from her chair and put both books on the arm of my chair. “B is for Bronte. Two books, two weeks.”

There was no way I was going to read two books in two weeks. Before I could tell her that, she was gone. I looked at the books.
Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Bronte,
Wuthering Heights
by
Emily Bronte. I vaguely remembered
Wuthering Heights
from high school. Actually, I remembered reading the Cliff’s Notes.

Somehow, I got the books done in two weeks. More amazing, I really liked
Jane Eyre.
I showed up at the library, puffed up like a peacock, and returned the books. I grinned when I saw her
sitting in her usual chair, dressed all in white. White shimmery blouse, white skirt with silver buttons up the front, white sandals showing off white toenails.

“Well?” she asked, looking up from the book open on her lap.

“I liked Jane. She had balls.”

“Like you.” She arched an eyebrow. “And Cathy?”

I wrinkled my nose. “Too whiny.”

She nodded. “I’m Zoe, by the way.”

I was surprised. I figured she’d go on being the mysterious woman from the library. “Amy,” I said.

She studied me, her dark lashes blinking slowly, languidly. She stroked the pages of the book in her lap with a delicate white-tipped nail. I felt my nipples tighten as the pages fluttered
softly. Her gaze never shifted from my face, but by her quiet smile I suspected she knew the effect she had on me. She stood and crossed the narrow expanse between our chairs. She knelt, placing
the book in my lap with a gentle caress of my khaki clad thigh. “C is for cunt,” she whispered, and I could have sworn her tongue slicked hotly against the rim of my ear.

When she straightened, I saw that several of the buttons on her skirt were unfastened. With a subtle adjustment, she parted the panels and revealed her cunt, with its dark, bare lips tucked up
tightly and a silky black patch of hair on her mound. I wanted to look around to see if anyone else had noticed her display, but I was too mesmerized by the cunt before me.

It wasn’t until she glided through the doors that I looked down and realized C was also for Agatha Christie.

I was still making a couple trips to the library each week, but I only saw Zoe every other week. I looked forward to our meetings and, if I was being honest, I’d have to say I was looking
forward to the books she would choose for me. I’d expected something like Dostoyevsky for D, what I got instead was Daphne Du Maurier’s
Rebecca.
She handed it over with a feral
smile and a scratch of blood red nails against my wrist.

When I got home, I sucked the mark she left on me, imaging it was her skin. I read
Rebecca
in three days.

And so the weeks rolled by. Zoe gave me books: Zora Neale Hurston’s
Their Eyes Were Watching God,
Susanna Kaysen’s
Girl, Interrupted,
Anne Lamott’s
Tender
Mercies,
Toni Morrison’s
Beloved.
The books were eclectic, unpredictable. Wonderful because she chose them, exciting because I enjoyed almost all of them. Our flirtations grew
bolder, the brush of her face against my breast when she bent to give me a book , my lips pressing to her hand as she pulled away.

By the time she introduced me to Anais Nin’s
Delta of Venus,
I was starving for her touch. I returned the book two weeks later, breathless with anticipation. Only Zoe wasn’t
there; her chair was empty. I waited for three hours and she never showed. I thought maybe I was a day early, but no, it had been two weeks to the day. I left the library angry and hurt, and with
an insistent throb between my legs.

I spotted her at the back of the parking lot, leaning against my Honda. She was wearing a green sheath dress, darker than my eyes but lighter than my car. She didn’t smile as I
approached.

“Something wrong?” she asked, a lime green nail flicking at the corner of my mouth when I stopped in front of her. “Miss me?”

“Bitch.”

She smiled at that. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go for a ride.”

She sat in the passenger seat, window rolled down halfway, watching me fidget as I pulled into traffic. I tried to play it cool. It wasn’t as if we didn’t both know what was going to
happen. But, dumb as it sounds and as much as I wanted her, I was afraid if we got involved, if we fucked, things would change. The library would never be the same.

“Nervous?” she asked, watching me pick at the faux leather flaking off my steering wheel.

I shrugged. “Should I be?”

She leaned nearer, hiking my skirt up to my hips. “No, baby, you shouldn’t be nervous.” One lime green nail traced a figure eight on my pale thigh. “You should be
wet.”

I was soaked. I wasn’t about to tell her that, though.

“Green light, Amy,” she murmured, her fingers sliding up under my skirt as I belatedly let up on the brake and jolted into the intersection.

Her fingers were hot on my thigh. So close to my cunt I trembled. I kept driving, trying to focus on the street signs. Trying not to wreck the damn car. I felt her finger part my slick lips and
I gasped. So much for playing it cool. I wanted to pull over and beg her to fuck me, but I didn’t. I kept driving.

Her finger snaked into my cunt and I squeezed it with my muscles. She chuckled. “Hungry, baby?”

I didn’t answer. I turned the corner. I was heading toward my apartment, I realized. My cunt quivered.

She finger-fucked me slowly, teasing me. Her thumb nail scraped my clit and I nearly ran over a little old lady crossing the street. “Careful, careful,” Zoe chided. “Maybe
it’s time we headed back to the library.”

I didn’t question. I made the turn. The lights were against me, so it took a few minutes. By the time we pulled into the parking lot, she’d whipped my cunt to a froth.

Two fingers pumped me, she was half-leaning into my seat. I slammed on the brakes, jolting us both forward, and put the car into park. My thighs were shaking.

“Come on, baby.”

It was all the encouragement I needed. With the shadow of the library shading us, I came with Zoe’s fingers buried in my cunt, her lime green thumbnail flicking my clit. Rocking against
her hand, my fingers wrapped tight around her wrist, I came with a moan. Months of pent-up lust had driven me to this, a quickie in a parking lot, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care
because Zoe’s fingers were inside me and she was whispering how good I was, how pretty, how wet. I came and I came. And when I was done, she pulled her fingers from my wet cunt and sucked
them dry.

Before my heartbeat had returned to normal, she was gone.

The weeks went by in a blur. Books took on new meaning. I walked into the bookstore one day to buy a gift for my mother and had to go to the bathroom to get myself off. Just the smell of a book
was enough to make me cream my panties. I wanted to tell Zoe but I figured she’d laugh. I also figured she already knew.