The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels (36 page)

It wasn’t so much sex. Pell realized afterwards, as something simpler . . . if not love, then just
need
. A need for touch, sensitivity, contact. Even when Arc’s lips dropped
down to Pell’s soft nipples and started to kiss them, then suck, it was more a comfort, more a simple need than a burning passion. Still, lips were lips, and Pell felt her body respond
– a growing fire deep in her cunt. Not a throbbing excitement, no, but still an excitement all the while – and, despite the heavy silence in the tiny apartment, she found her throat
purring out deep vowels of pleasure.

In the soft, warm darkness, touching Arc’s skin was like touching something too hot, too smoldering. Maybe it was because she’d been crying, been holding herself too tight, too much
together – but the heat was there, nonetheless. As Pell slowly slid her hands down the tall woman’s long form, she mixed new sounds with her bass purr – a kind of hissing
excitement, a sensual amazement that one person could be so hot, so burning.

Soon – very soon – a patina of sweat slid under her fingertips, making it easier for her to see Arc’s body with her touch. Uniqueness added puzzlement to her amazement.
Pell’s was soft, full – gentle belly, plump breasts, large nipples, soft ass – but this one, this woman in her arms, allowing her to touch, she was so different, so unique. Soft,
yes; her skin was like oil over polished marble – the architecture of her body was quick and sudden . . . no languishing valleys, but rather hip-bone, cords of firm muscles, rib, rib, rib,
the even hotter swell of a breast – even more silken, soft – the surprising roughness of a hard nipple skipping across her fingertips, even more heated breath on her shoulder.

Muscles, her body was like a finely honed tool – sharp and hard, but there was something else, lurking just on the edge of her senses: tears, maybe? Arc seemed more open, more real than
the tall city warrior Pell had seen those other days, other nights. Her hand slipped down, found iron-firm thighs pressed too tight together, felt a brief scratchy tangle of ill-kept pubic hairs.
Gently – because she wasn’t altogether familiar – Pell pushed them apart.

Arc could have stopped her. Pell really had no chance of victory in their match: those cords of honed muscle could have easily stayed locked, could easily have resisted even Pell’s most
frantic of attacks. Maybe tears? Maybe because Arc seemed to be burning up with a tightly-controlled fever of need – supposition, wonder for another day. The fact was, Pell gently pushed and
– very slowly – Arc spread her strong legs aside for her.

The smell of her excitement was harsh and rich. Pell found herself, in the dark, sucking it in through her nose – a long nasal tone. It was so unusual, so strange . . . her own cunt, she
knew, was almost odorless, tasteless. But Arc’s, it seemed, had a hard-edge kind of smell – a deep, natural smell that reminded Pell of locker-rooms, of her own pits after a long walk.
It wasn’t unpleasant – but then Pell didn’t think that anything about Arc could ever have been that.

For some reason, putting her lips to where her fingers slowly explored never crossed her mind. Later – after dawn – she’d regret it, but understand a bit. She was inside more
than her lips and tongue ever could be: the strong woman had parted herself, opened herself out of need. Pell was in her deepest parts – to simply stick her face down there and lick . . .
like pissing in church.

So it was with her narrow fingers that Pell explored her. First, that tangle that continued from a hard mons down into a even thicker one. It was a complex knot, something that Pell instantly
knew may not have been untied by gentle touches for a long time. She hesitated, stroking calmly up and down the hairs for a minute, two, uncertain how much to push. But the heat – the burning
fires of Arc, the gentle glide of her body next to her, the smell of sweat, and cunt, finally pushed her into executing a gentle parting.

Wet . . . so wet. Wetter than anything Pell had ever felt – like thick, hot soup. Between them, a kind of steam built – something that completely obscured reason. Normally, Pell
would never have been so bold, but with her finger slowly licking up and down Arc’s hot, hot cunt . . . from deep cunt-hole to the hard, hard point of her too erect clit . . . she had to do
something with her mouth. Arc’s was too far away, a hot bellows on the top of Pell’s head, but something else was just as close . . . and just as tasty. In a beat of her heart,
Arc’s left nipple was in her mouth. Salt. Knotted hardness, the smoothness of the rest of Arc’s breast against her cheek, her lips. Pell sucked, filling the early part of her mouth with
Arc’s nipple. All she could hear was the pounding of her own heart, the heaving breaths of Arc, and the whispering of the sheets as they slid over her body.

Movement . . . Arc twisted her body slightly, shifting herself onto her back. For a moment, her nipple popped free of Pell’s hungry lips. A frown whipped across Pell’s mouth, but the
heat was on her and – beyond reason or thought – she quickly climbed on top of the larger woman, spreading her legs wide to straddle her – lips again seeking the cool wetness of
her well-sucked nipple. It took some twisting of her own, but in a moment Pell’s hand was once again deep in Arc’s hot cunt.

Another slight twist, Arc lifting her body slightly – frightened for a moment that this was some kind of way of trying to get her to stop, Pell released the hot nipple and tried to see
Arc’s face in the darkness. Nothing. Nothing but a soft sound, the sound Arc had been making all that time – a kittenish moan, a childish groan. The hand was a shock, but one that built
the heat right up again – Arc’s hand hunting out for Pell’s, taking it and pushing it back down into Arc’s molten cunt.

Again, Pell started to work her, feeling her own cunt turn fluid, melt in its own hot juice. As her fingers energetically worked Arc’s lips, hole, clit and all three quickly, Pell felt
something – a glancing touch. For a moment, puzzlement flashed through her – then she realized, the knowledge like a skyrocket bursting through her. So fast, hot and bright that Pell
had to put her own free hand down between her own hot thighs, into her own volcanic recesses. So hot, so tight, so good.

Meanwhile, Arc continued to fuck her own asshole with one, then two, then three fingers. The bed softly smelled of earth, shit and hot cunts.

Arc came, a primal female cry – deep and bass. Her body went rigid, a board with tits, a hard body pushed to the limits of hardness. Her breath exploded into Pell’s face as she
panted, heaved and cried out.

Pell felt her come – felt Arc’s hands work her asshole as Pell’s worked her cunt. Later, Pell couldn’t remember if she’d come as well – the explosion from Arc
was so special, so shattering, that it had torn away any memories Pell had had of anything she’d been feeling. That moment was pure Arc – a night in a secret, deep church. She’d
been lucky to have witnessed the service, the ecstatic blessing being a witness.

Sleep came like a velvet blanket thrown over Pell. No dreams, again, but the cloudy memory of sometime during the night, a kiss landing on her cheek.

The next morning she awoke to find Arc, again, gone.

Pell saw her again, soon after. Living in the city for as long as she had (was the difference between tourist from the suburbs and resident?), Pell was finally starting to
understand the clockwork of its people. A day or so before and the desperate Sad-SACs would be prowling for anything or anyone that could mean bucks till their next Subsistence Allotment Check. A
day or so after and the streets would be filled with walking psychotic landmines – having spent their biweekly fortunes on whatever chemicals they preferred.

The fifteenth or so of the month was the best time to go out and get supplies. Anyone who depended on their Subsistence Allotment Checks would be too busy haunting their mail drops or be too
happy that they would be coming to bother her. Random crazies were impossible to predict – so you always expected someone or something. Feeling good that she’d taken living in the city
to heart enough to anticipate street insanity made Pell feel more like a resident, less like a prisoner.

The day was crisp, edging towards too warm. But since the HotFace
^TM
personal scorcher her father had given her was too big to carry in a pants pocket, she had
to wear her leather coat again. Stepping out and quickly locking up her place, Pell knew – with a flash of heat as quick and as sharp as the single small arm’s round that echoed from
the Minimal Income Housing Facility up the street – that she’d be sweating streams by the time she made it to the market, two blocks away.

The street was vibrant in the unexpected sunlight. The expectation of income made the Sad-SACs giddy and flirtatious, without the cruel desperation which other days – such as when the
money started to run out – brought to their eyes. Pell’s place was one of a sagging parade of typical San Francisco tattered Victorians. Hers was somewhere between the worst –
metal-plate window-shields bolted to rotten wood, the whole bay front sagging from the weight of too much fear – and the best – a lady’s paint only five years too old, streamers
of older, better paint jobs, peeling from its peaked roof. Hers was simply gray, with boxed edges from a previous owner who had somehow decided to convert 1890s gingerbread to 1950s stucco.

Keeping her hand in the ring-trigger of the HotFace
^TM
, Pell moved among Sad-SACs looking expectant, happy and always hungry, other kids with haunted looks that
meant that they, too, were hovering on the edge of conscription, and the usual buzzing fringes either too far gone or too keenly focused to match either population.

Pell guessed that she probably appeared as the latter – her eyes clouded inward with a sudden thought of Arc. A fat, black ball of a man, legs spindly twigs, arms twitching from
involuntary palsy rolled by in a homemade electric cart – its donut wheels compressed down by his bulk till they acted more like treads. Pell noticed absently that he was naked, and shined
with a contouring mirror of perspiration as he rolled towards and past her. His left eye was a tubular prosthetic, darkly tunneling forward as he rolled.

A Latino boy proudly displayed willingness to drop off the dole and into combat by obviously spending most of his SAC on a pair of intense insect green, surely-as-soft-as-silk pants, and a
beautiful purple coat fringed with antique wooden rosaries as he moved with dancing steps from behind her, to next to her, to beyond her. His face was long and thin, with an expertly precise
mustache. The fingers on his artificial left hand were a dull matte of industrial design, humming butterflies as he played an invisible guitar, or clicked the trigger of an imaginary weapon.

Like a pool of deep cultural waters, a small knot of black-shrouded Arab women flowed by across the street. It was hard to say their numbers as their hands and eyes (all that was visible) seemed
to churn and emerge from one unifying mass of their robes. Watching them but not really looking at them. Pell caught one foot as it emerged from the cloth, it was chrome leading to a
finely-machined ankle and, no doubt, ending in an artistically-created leg.

A callow-faced young woman slouched in a doorway, hardness in her downcast eyes. The street had carved years on her cheeks and body with scars – like a prisoner’s years sloppily
etched on the walls of a cell. She wore a pair of slashed fatigues splashed with white and black urban camouflage, and an ancient T-shirt that might have said something a long time ago. As Pell
walked past, she caught a glimpse of the girl’s ancient steel-and-tubular arm, bent and broken, hydraulics (of all things) splattering her old uniform with glossy oil. She wrapped her
mechanical in her real, covering it – as if its malfunctions were disgusting, to be hidden.

The street rolled by her as she walked. A parade of average people. Keeping her hand on the tiny flame-thrower, she walked past a cross-section of the city. Reaching the corner (halfway there)
she was gently surprised that she hadn’t thought of Arc – and her eye – as she’d passed those who also opted for the cheaper-than-replacement option. It felt good, a
surprising justification for the way she felt about the tall woman.

A reflection caught her eye as she waited for the light to change, a convoy of squat Army personnel carriers roaring by at a shuddering 50 mph – automatic guns calmly tracking her heat
signature, seemingly too eager for their masters to release them to the task they were assembled for. Needing an excuse to escape the high velocity intensity of the tracking guns, she turned.

Something bright lanced into her eye, a splinter of sunlight off something silver and gold. Tourmaline and onyx. A chance of stature, placement and angle of reflection. Arc’s eye gleamed
at her from across the street as the woman turned, saw her, and smiled – quick, reflex – before frowning and turning to walk away, fast.

It was days later. The few groceries Pell was able to afford were safely in her cabinets and her rattling refrigerator. Jare, who’d vanished since that night at the
gallery, had shown up on her doorstep two days before, tears gagging in his throat as he carefully unfolded the conscription notice that’d been slipped under his door. It had taken most of
the night for her to calm him down – and, still, even after she’d finally managed to get him to stop crying for more than two minutes and out the door, he seemed ready to break into a
pile of pure porcelain at any moment.

She hadn’t heard from him since. The Conscription Notice had told him to report to the Treasure Island Induction Center in two weeks. She suspected he was either hiding in his tiny
apartment, too petrified to move, or was, in vain, trying to scheme his way out of it.

A sense of calm had visited Pell. She knew it was an eye, that winds were tearing apart everything she knew just outside her door but, still, her heart beat regular and her breathing was
clockwork. She knew it was just a matter of time before she got her own notice. She had worked through most of her SAC money already. The dream that she was going to be able to fulfill the
government’s cold illusion of crawling up the economic ladder with her SAC money was almost over. Wide awake and startlingly calm, she slowly began to clean her apartment.