"Repeat after me," she said. "
I am
never '
obnoxious
.'
I am entirely lovable, delectable, and delightful... however I feel
."
Allie laughed. Screwing up her face in imitation of a five-year-old having a tantrum, she cried, "I won't! You can't make me!" She got all the way through, "Shut up, you're not the boss of me" before breaking into a grin.
Diana didn't laugh. She tightened her hold on Allie's shoulders. "
I am lovable. I am delectable. I am delightful
. Say it."
Still grinning, Allie told her, "All right, you've made me feel better. Thanks." When Diana didn't release her, "Chill. It's all good."
Up close, Diana's gentian eyes showed a rim of deep brown around the iris, so dark it was almost black. There aren't that many people in the world with truly blue eyes. Usually they're blue-gray, or blue-green, or contact lenses. Allie still wasn't used to seeing Diana like this; little physical details kept catching her off-guard.
"I'm not letting go until you say it."
"Really?
Really
?" She sighed. "Oh for crying out loud... OK. I am lovable. I am—what was it?—delectable." She smiled. "I'm delightful, I'm delicious, I'm de-lovely."
"Nope." Diana shook her head. "You're not even saying it as though they're words. You're just parroting sounds you think I want to hear, like you can fool me into dropping it. That crap might work on a dom—if he's really thick, or off his game—but I'm sub like you, Allie. And I've been doing it a lot longer. I know all the tricks." She leaned closer. "Even the ones you haven't thought of yet."
"I never claimed to out-sub you, babe. You're queen sub of the subdom."
"Say it."
"Sure you're not finding me just a little bit obnoxious right now?"
They'd known each other for months. Wait—it was over a year now. Well over a year since that first e-mail from a woman half-way around the world, responding to the very first story Allie ever posted. She'd received other e-mails, and responded to them all, but this one woman had written back again... they'd become friends, in the strange, unpredictable way that individuals occasionally do through the technology that everyone kept whining was isolating people from one another.
They both wrote about sex, and they read each other's writing; there had never been anything sexual between them, not really. Allie assumed that Diana was pretty exclusively straight, so she didn't worry about her intentions being misread. Their correspondence was marked by growing mutual affection, offering edits and suggestions, swapping ideas, encouraging one another, exchanging jokes, commiserating. When Diana mentioned that her academic research would be bringing her to a city about fifty miles from where Allie lived, she didn't immediately assume they'd meet, but as her travel date grew closer, a few "ifs" and "maybes" were tossed back and forth. Their tentative inquiries about actually getting together crossed in cyber-space.
Allie had driven down so they could get together for coffee. They'd spent a fabulous couple of hours walking and talking, poking around a few antique shops, getting comfortably lost in a used-book store.
As they were retrieving their bags from the front counter, Diana asked if she'd mind if they stopped by her room so she could change into something cooler. The temperature had been in the low sixties when she'd dressed that morning, she said; who knew it would be in the eighties by mid-afternoon? Everyone who lives here, Allie laughed; and thinking nothing of it, accompanied her back to her hotel.
Diana stepped into the bathroom to change, which Allie didn't take personally; everyone had different levels of comfort with dressing in front of someone else. After about five minutes, though, she called out, "Girl, what are you
doing
in there? Getting an extreme makeover?" and Diana came out wearing a cotton skirt and a big men's-style shirt, tails tied at her waist.
"Oh, sweetie, take your time," Allie apologized. "Don't mind me. I'm just irretrievably obnoxious at times."
That, as they say, is when the trouble started.
Now a slow, grim sort of smile bloomed on Diana's full lips as she stepped in closer, her grip hardening. Without realizing it, Allie took a step back. Another, as her friend continued to advance. Her heel hit the wall behind her, startling her.
She should say something. Diana probably didn't realize the effect she was having. It wasn't fair to let her continue, not when Allie could feel her own response to those hands, those eyes... the things beginning to happen in her body were not, she was sure, within the boundaries of their friendship.
Diana's voice dropped lower still as she brought her mouth close to Allie's ear. "You know how to act obnoxious. You're a good little actress, I'll give you that." She closed the last scrap of distance remaining between them, her willowy-looking body warm and full of unforeseen strength.
OK, maybe she
did
realize. Maybe she knew exactly what she was doing, far better than Allie did.
"You can act obnoxious, and bossy, and tough. But you are not. You," she breathed, and she bit Allie's neck gently, "are," biting again, a little harder, a little higher, "
sssssssoft
," hot breath in her ear and the full weight of her pressing from shoulder to thigh, a strange firmness at Allie's groin, rubbing against her sex, drawing a gasp from her throat.
"Packing? You're
packing
? What kind of straight-girl sub are you?"
"Aren't you the one always spouting queer-theory dogma about busting up the binary and questioning the categories?"
"Well, yeah..." struggling for words as the hardness at her crotch found a gentle insidious rhythm, "but... that was... before you... you... pinned me to a wall with your
cock
."
Diana chuckled in a way that sounded positively feral. "That's the kind of sub I am, Allie," the motion of her hips unrelenting. "The most committed kind. I'll do whatever it takes. You're trying to change the subject. I told you, I know all the tricks." Her mouth went to her captive's throat again, tongue probing, teeth just grazing the sensitive skin. "Soft... and sweet... all the way to the center."
A wordless moan. Confusion. Warmth radiating into heat blossoming outward from the place at her core where those words seemed to pulse into life, glowing brighter as the mouth on her throat became more demanding, bringing another moan, and another.
"Oh, hear that? That soft, soft moaning? That's what you are. Soft." A hand left her shoulder, moved to her breast. "Sweet." Fingers caressing swelling flesh over panting breath. Stroking around, seeking out the point that hardened beneath the blouse and bra, fingernail raking through the fabric, making her cry out, quietly. "Even this," closing around it, inescapable, "this hardness here... surrounded by softness. And you feel it inside, don't you? The harder it gets, the softer it makes you... softer, and sweeter, and softer still..."
"What..." Allie rasped. She couldn't seem to make her voice work properly. "...what are we... what are you... oh
gods
" as those merciless fingers gripped harder and she felt the flood rush out of her, drenching her.
The other woman stepped back, less than an inch, just enough to create a breath of space between them. "Take down your pants, Allie."
Eyes fixed, voice immobilized, she stood.
"Take them down."
"I... you..." She shook her head, more in befuddlement than refusal. But she couldn't have done it even if she wanted to.
Diana's gaze was implacable. Unwavering.
She knew she was still breathing because she could hear the sound of air coming out of her mouth. She clamped her lips together, forced herself to breathe through her nose. It didn't help.
"Allie."
That didn't help either.
"Sweet Allie. I know you're stubborn. You don't have to prove that to me. But I can stand here longer than you can. Do you have any idea how long Robin has made me stand, waiting, wanting, craving him, his touch, his cock? Hours, Allie. You're beautifully strong. But you're going to run out of adrenaline soon, and very quickly after that you're going to get very tired. And the only way you're moving from this wall is with your pants down."
Still. She couldn't move. Could not.
"It's all right. You can do it," coaxing now, gently, "You can. Undo the button," her hands moved to the front of her trousers and the button was open. "Pull down the zip." Her hands obeyed. "Slip your fingers under your panties," barely a whisper now, "... push them down... over your hips, that's it... let them fall. There. There. That's it."
The air felt cold on the bared wetness coating her sex, her thighs.
Diana reached beneath her skirt, slid her underwear down and off. She gathered up the fabric in front and tucked it into the waistband, exposing the tool she wore strapped around her. A tiny portion of Allie's brain observed that at some other time, in some other context, the incongruence might have made her laugh—not in derision, but in delight. She loved the unexpected, the juxtaposition of images conventionally perceived as opposites.
Discourses of power, expansion of the imaginable, explosion of constructed categories... it all ran out of her futilely grasping brain, like sand from a split bag, leaving her mind empty and every bit of her awareness focused on the aching hollowness brewing, coiling, wracking her cunt.
Unable to look away, she watched one hand come up to hold the black phallus, fingers running fondly from base to tip, slipping back to guide it closer. Stopping just before it touched her sex. Pulling it upright so it rested between their bellies as she pushed her hips against Allie's once more. Stroking her hands up over Allie's legs, along her sides, one hand coming behind her neck to bring her mouth to hers.
Kissing girls was something Allie knew how to do. Grateful to be on something that felt like familiar ground at last, she slid one arm around Diana's waist, her fingers finding the small of her back and pressing in gently, intending to trace them up alongside her spine, knowing how a woman is hardwired to shiver under that sort of touch.
