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Did You Ever Get Stung? Ch. 01

By: VMKane



Author's note: as with much of my work, this cautionary tale bridges the gap between D/s and romance, so please be prepared for a little light power play here and there. My thanks, as always, to Lisa Jones for editorial support; and to Halcyon Flux for encouragement in general and brainstorming those pesky desires in particular. If anyone is wondering what any of this has to do with dead bees, the title is in fact from the Rodgers and Hart songbook. Enjoy ... 

* 

Bothered 

The first time I ever heard the Velvets was - as God is my witness - on a Sunday morning, about nine o'clock, in the summer of eighty-nine. We were crashed out under a duvet on the living room rug at Su and Tom's place, where we had spent a glorious and uncomfortable night attempting not to wake anyone else with our moaning and panting. When Su bought some tea in, Jill instinctively grabbed the duvet to protect her own modesty and left me in the middle of the floor with my tits on display to all and sundry. And that's when I heard it, floating in from the kitchen on the mingled scents of incense, weed, and Earl Grey: I found a reason. 

I was listening to it again, near on quarter of a century later, hunched in my headphones to drown out the banality of office chatter as I did my best to triple-check my space calculations. Not the Velvets this time, but the sore-throated childlike vulnerability of Cat Power, one chance in several thousand. That was the moment Nigel took me aside and told me that my own reason for living was dying. So of course I dropped everything and ran ran to her, not that she was likely to thank me for ... 

She stops and looks at the screen, reaches for the half-pint glass and takes a drink before pressing her right middle finger down on the Delete key and watching moodily as the cursor chases itself all the way back to the top corner of the page. 

Fuck's sakes, Lizzie, give it a rest. This is not what your readership - be it ever so numerically humble - wants. More sex, less maudlin introspection. Come on, shake out of it and get to work. 

What had we even done under that duvet, can I remember? I suppose I should be able to, how can you forget your first whole night with the girl of your then dreams? 

"Hi Liz." 

She looks up and smiles her acknowledgement for the kindness in the tone. 

"Heather." 

Heather goes to the bar and joins that new girl she's been seeing for months now. Heather, of all people, in something that looks suspiciously like a serious relationship. How that would make Martine smile. Stupid thing to think, but she can't help it, any more than an amputee can help wiggling their phantom toes every now and then. She has come here for an hour after work, just to soak up the sounds and smells of the old atmosphere in the hope that it might spark something, but it doesn't help. It just makes her more down than she was before. She unplugs the keyboard from the tablet, packs them both in her bag, and drinks up before heading for the bus stop. 

*** 

Jenna was in no mood to be philosophical about the contradictions, at that moment they just pissed her off. The big thing - the most important thing of all - about bondage was the ritual. Even though she had never actually done it, she was as certain of that fact as she was of anything. The irritating, inconvenient, pissy thing about self-bondage was that ritualising it very quickly tipped over into unacceptably pathetic. Dream all you want about the idea of Mistress making you squat and pee in the shower before crawling on hands and knees to Her bed, start doing that malarkey on your lonesome and it's more sad than sexy. 

So now she was padding through the close-curtained gloom of her studio flat in a T-shirt just barely long enough for decency if anyone happened to peek in the kitchen window; carbine clips chinking away on her ankle cuffs and her abused nipples making her feel dizzy. She opened the icebox, punched the cube containing the handcuff key from its mould and jiggled it from hand to hand as she carried it back to the foot of the bed. Honestly: safe and sane was all well and good but this was such an insufferably passion-killing slog to arrange. 

She worked her way efficiently through the checklist. Key-laden ice cube in the saucer on the card table, in reach of where her hands would be and near enough to the radiator to encourage melting at an acceptable rate. T-shirt off, sit on the bed and shackle her ankles to the spreader bar secured behind the bedhead rails. Ready-lubed dildo up herself, the actual act of insertion neither erotic nor particularly comfortable. Steel cuff over right wrist, double-checking the keyhole was facing the right way. Padded blindfold comfortably down across eyes, blacking out everything. Deep breath, preliminaries over with and time to act decisively. Carefully, working by touch alone, she slipped the nipple clamps off as gently as she could and tossed them aside. Then she lay back, put one hand either side of the central upright rail at the foot of the bedstead and clapped the second cuff over her left wrist. 

She was spread across the bed on her back, legs spread uncomfortably wide and vagina invaded by that motionless cock-shaped mass; arms above her head with enough play to thrash helplessly about but far too little to get her hands anywhere near her body. The blood started to come back into her nipples now, stinging and smarting unbearably. She wanted to cup her poor breasts in her hands and soothe them, but she could do nothing but lie spread-eagled in the dark and whimper as they throbbed to match what her cunt was doing around the dildo. Oh God she wanted to be whipped and fucked and have her face sat on while she was helplessly bound in this position. 

She slowed her breathing and let the darkness and endorphins take her off to a fantasy world that, appearances to the contrary, was entirely her own. Admittedly she had lifted the precise details from one of her favourite Ellie Malone stories, but only because that had clicked so strongly with the thoughts and fantasies she already had. No, it wasn't anything as superficial as the pose or the toys that she had really taken for inspiration. Instead it was an attitude: those stories were always overtly consensual, tests rather than rapes. Each of Jenna's handcuffs had a quick-release trigger that she could spring with the simplest movement of her opposite thumb. 

It wasn't because they were cheap, or because she wasn't capable of devising an absolute failsafe system of timed strict bondage. It was because she wanted to have the freedom to stop whenever she decided. She wanted to make herself wait for the ice to melt, even though it would be easier not to. And so she lay in the dark, and took the pain in her breasts and the discomfort in her hips, as if there really was a demanding but breath-catchingly pretty girl perched beside her on one knee, daring her to impress with her resilience. 

***** 

Jenna had no intention of crumpling her interview suit in standard class for two and a quarter hours, so instead she stretched out her legs in first and took as much advantage of the complementary toast and drinks as her nervous stomach allowed. Her confidence had taken such a battering recently, she was feeling far more trepidation than the job honestly deserved. It wasn't for the job itself, of course, as much as the opportunity to relocate a couple of hundred miles and put all the poisonous memories behind her. No more going to the old haunts; no more chance of accidentally bumping into each other in the too-small world they still shared; no more caring despite herself about who Molls might be with when they did. Leaving all that behind, without abandoning her career to do it, was a big enough deal to turn her bladder inside out and make her wish she'd had less coffee. 

The train rattled slowly through endless points on its way into the heart of a city that she had never visited before, and yet felt weirdly familiar from her reading. She actually found herself thinking, as it rolled over the canal bridge: oh yes, isn't that where ... 

There was the curious thing, she was about to meet one of her closest friends, and for the very first time. Everyone else was already on their feet, but she had over an hour to kill and no wish to bustle, so she waited until the carriage was almost empty before standing up and tugging her wheeled case out onto the platform. She took her time strolling to the gates and then followed the tail of the morning commuter mob up into concourse, stopping at the corner of a coffee shop to look around. Her eye went clear over the woman at the first pass, before catching the discrete friendly wave and knowing grin on its way back. 

She was mid forties or thereabouts, in a calf-length denim skirt and loose check shirt with unfashionably large sunglasses slipped down the front. She was flustering with a tablet in one of those combination case-cum-keyboard things, slipping it into a well-used leather shoulder bag as she stood up. Her hair was shoulder-length, greying, framing one of those straightforwardly handsome faces that seemed to go with middle-class parents and girls' high school. She didn't, to Jenna's practised gaze, look particularly like a lesbian; any more than she looked remotely like her mental image of Ellie. To be entirely honest, Jenna didn't really have a clue what a pornographer was meant to look like, but she was fairly sure it wasn't that. As she held out her hand, Jenna was overwhelmed by the temptation to say something remarkably silly. 

"Elspeth Malone, I presume?" 

Liz Kinsella went decidedly pink about the cheeks and dropped her eyes momentarily towards their gripped hands. 

"You know, you're the first person who's ever called me that to my face. It feels more than a little surreal. Hello, Jen, this is a real treat." 

It had all started three years before, at the time it first went sideways with Molls; the time when in retrospect they should have recognised it wasn't working and parted as friends. But of course they didn't handle it well, any more than they did any other crisis: Molls got high and drank too much as was her habit; and Jenna retreated into a fantasy world of all the sex she wasn't getting from Molls, as was hers. She read industrial quantities of assorted smut and found depressingly little of it truly satisfying. When she stumbled across Elspeth Malone she was feeling so down and desperate that she took the absurdly uncharacteristic step of sending off a fan email. 'Elspeth' replied, they got chatting and time passed. 

Since then both their worlds had collapsed around them in ways that were devastating yet intensely private, both found it easier to talk through their troubles to someone they had never laid eyes on - who had never known Molls or Martine - who understood about the sexual things that neither felt she could share with her other friends. It was an intense but peculiar relationship, one which both were slightly nervous about tipping over from the virtual world to the physical. And yet Jenna was here for two days, in the city where Liz lived and wrote about. Ignoring each other would have been ridiculous. 

So Liz met her at the station and pointed her on the way to the interview before going to her own work, and they arranged for lunchtime drink and evening meal. Tomorrow being a Saturday, Liz would give her the guided tour. It would be either an adventure or a disaster, and either could make a useful introduction to her potential new home. 

* 

"So, going to take the job?" 

"I haven't been offered it yet." 

"But when you are?" 

Neither of them fancied the noise and distraction of Friday evening in the gay village, so Liz took them to an extraordinary Victorian gin palace that she had used as a recurring location and was conveniently equidistant from the city centre and Jenna's hotel. It was a pub from the old school, a warren of tiny bars that had never been knocked through for efficiency. They were in a snug corner, surprisingly alone and cosy. 

"Yeah, I think I will." 

The job wasn't any different to the one she was doing now: junior secretary in another national law firm, if anything a step down on the ladder. But it would be somewhere new; somewhere she had never been called in to for a senior partner to ask her - oh so very considerately - why she had turned up that morning with a black eye; somewhere the grapevine didn't know that her neighbours had ended up calling the police a couple of times. Getting away from all that was worth losing a year or two, she would still make more than enough to get by. 

Liz was looking at her, shrewdly observing. They had never argued over it, but Jenna knew very well that Liz thought she should have pressed charges. She should have, on pure principle. When it came to the cold light of day, the whole thing was too humiliating to get into. What possible satisfaction could she get from parading the whole sordid mess in public? What happened next, Ms Saunderson? Well then she slapped me one, because I was pissing her off by nagging on again about how she never tied me up. Thanks, but really no thanks. To her surprise, Liz went off on a totally different tangent. 

"When you get settled, you should try writing again." 

"You know I'm no good at that." 

"I don't know anything of the sort." 

Jenna set down her glass, wishing that the subject would lie down dead where it belonged. 

"What would I write about?" 

"Anything you want." 

"I don't know anything!" 

"Oh not this again, please." 

"I mean it. I've never done all the stuff you have." 

"Jen, sweetheart, I haven't done half the stuff you think I have. I extrapolate from what I do know, and I try to empathise with the characters, that's all. Fancy another?" 

Jenna checked her phone with half her attention as Liz went to the bar, the rest of her mind pondering on what Liz had said. The four months since she had moved out hadn't made any difference, she felt just as oppressed as she had when they were screaming and fighting. 

Liz came back with the drinks. 

"Half the time I feel like I can't breathe for the weight of my own ignorance crushing down on me." 

"You just up and say things like that, and you don't think you can write? Listen to yourself. Look, I've made a few contacts in this business since I've been doing it. I know a handful of reasonably prominent authors of decent gynephile kink: a couple of them are guys, and I'm not going to tell you which; another one is very monogamously in love with the most vanilla woman you're ever likely to meet; and yet another barely gets to see her wife for ten days a month. I was a married woman's mistress for sixteen years and then she ..." 

Liz stopped, as if she had walked into a wall. It had been eighteen months, and Jenna had not once known her to use the word 'died' when she talked of losing Martine. Instead she took a deep breath and carried on. 

"... None of us write this stuff because our own sex lives are so bloody brilliant we just have to share them with everyone. It's a way to cope with the imperfect real world by creating a perfect fantasy one where things go the way they should." 

"I didn't just mean writing about it. I'm thirty, Liz, and it feels like my sex life hasn't even really begun yet. There's all these things I want to do. Not to mention the really bizarre shit in my head that even I wouldn't be stupid enough to do for real." 

Liz grinned conspiratorially and bent her head forward. 

"Such as?" 

"Absolutely not." 

"Oh go on, I'm always looking for ideas." 

There's something surprisingly easy about confessing your dirtiest fantasies to someone you have never met and never will. Jenna had been worried that this journey might spoil it, that face to face they would suddenly become shy and giggly. Apparently it wasn't the case. She dropped her voice to a suitably discrete whisper. 

"I keep imagining this really butch dyke doing me in the arse with a strap-on; serious gender play and humiliation, making me admit all these dirty things ... umm ... in front of an audience that are - you know - getting themselves off over the show." 

It wasn't just the dirtiness that she was reluctant to admit. Liz had an aversion to writing butch dommes - aesthetically because they simply weren't her thing, philosophically because that automatic link between power and masculinity irritated her. For a moment Jenna felt she should apologise, and then she remembered whose fantasy she was talking about. 

Not that she had needed to worry. Liz grinned even wider, blushing to match her own face. Dammit, the woman looked so normal, and yet what came out of her head ... 

"Sweetness, I thought you said you were thinking bizarre shit?" 

"Oh shut up, that is kinky and you know it." 

Without warning, Liz sighed deeply and rested her chin in her hand. There was a tear shining in the corner of her eye, brimming over the lid. One secret, it seemed, deserved another. 

"I can't remember what it tastes like." 

"Beg pardon?" 

"Oral sex. I can't remember exactly how it tasted when I went down on her. I know it was wonderful, and I don't believe I'll ever forget how it made me feel to do, but the other day I was trying to describe the taste and I can't." 

Not that it mattered, as far as writing was concerned. Liz had never been one to dwell on those sort of physical details, that wasn't her focus. But what could Jenna possibly say for comfort to the point itself. There really wasn't anything at all, so she didn't even try. Liz seemed to come out of it of her own accord, as if a passing thought had briefly distracted her but was now gone. 

"So where do you fancy going tomorrow?" 

***** 

She took the job, and found an affordable basement flat in a Victorian red-brick terrace near the university, a twenty-five minute bus ride from work. It would do whilst she looked for something more permanent, and with summer coming on the cool gloom of the place could be a blessing. She wasn't quite so sure about still being there for the winter, but that was something to worry about later. At least it had a large shared garden. 

Moving to a new city was disorientating, which after all had been the point. She badly needed shaking out of the toxic rut that the last few years had been. It was both unsettling and exciting to be in a different environment, where everything from the accents to the rugged scenery was unfamiliar. Liz was the only person she knew, the only friend who popped round to help her unpack or share tips on shops and restaurants. Jenna knew full well that she was struggling with her first historically-set novel, it was touching that she put the research aside to lend a hand. 

It was impossible to imagine Liz in jeans and trainers, even in the chaos of Jenna's box-strewn cave with a hammer in her hand. She was invariably in skirts or dresses, always with an open neck that showed the ever-present necklace with an amber teardrop like polished butterscotch, always in sandals or courts. They were hanging Jenna's prints, Liz being subtly careful to help without interfering too much, letting Jenna step back and direct as she made minor adjustments until they were straight. 

As they worked they chatted, about the local pubs and how easily Jenna could get by without a car, the dire state of current television, the difficulties Liz was having with her research. 

"The problem is, women didn't really get dragged through the courts or write porno memoirs the way men did, so there's this huge hole in our knowledge. We know about gay individuals here and there, but not about gay culture. There must have been one, on some level, which doesn't seem to have been recorded in any detail." 


Did You Ever Get Stung? Ch. 01



"No gay bars back then?" 

"No women in pubs back then, gay or otherwise. Not except prostitutes or derelict working class drunks anyway. But logic says there must have been some sort of network. It's a pain, I don't want to just make stuff up as complete fantasy, and I need a way for characters to meet. Never mind, I'll get there. Talking of bars, did you want us to go out at all?" 

Jenna took a breath and hid her hesitation in pulling the bubble wrap off the big Ute Lemper photo. It was difficult to know where to stop: she appreciated the help and treasured the friendship, but she was both nervous that she was imposing too much and at the same time reluctant to be seen as Liz' acolyte rather than her own person. So far Liz was her only friend, she wasn't her partner. She didn't want to reject that friendship. 

"Would you mind if we didn't?" 

"To be honest, I'd be a little relieved if we didn't. I'm getting too old and out of touch with that scene. I pop down there now and again, to remind myself of the atmosphere, but every time I feel more out of place. It's for your age, I hardly know anyone anymore." 

"Did you ... sorry, forget it." 

"Go on." 

"Does it hurt to talk about her?" 

"Everything does. Remembering hurts, so does forgetting. What's your question?" 

"I was just wondering if you went out together. Like that." 

"Sometimes, not often. He knew; he wasn't happy but he was prepared to tolerate it. You see the thing is that she honestly did love us both, she couldn't choose one and I guess both of us must have loved her enough not to demand that she did. What she wouldn't do if she could help it, was embarrass him by acknowledging me, so in that sense she did choose. I took her to Arches a few times, and introduced her to some of my friends, because she was curious about the whole thing. She wasn't interested in being seen hanging round Ferry Lane on a regular basis. Where do you want that striking lady?" 

Jenna pointed to spot on the wall. Liz held the black and white portrait up experimentally, adjusting to Jenna's instructions. Her voice hadn't changed from the casual tone that she had been using about her writing, Jenna had no idea whether she was prying or providing some sort of service. She didn't like to ask, surely it should be something she could tell on her own. Even though she knew she couldn't begin to comprehend the scale of Liz' loss, she had some faint idea of how unwelcome the easy platitudes about life going on and plenty of fish in the sea must be. She thought for the hundredth time how helpless she felt at the inevitability of Liz' sadness. 

"How do you cope, Liz? How do you handle being alone?" 

"You know ... keep myself busy, don't think too far ahead. I write very hot but very soppy hardcore romance, sometimes I drink more than I should, I talk to my very good and supportive friend Jenna. When I get too horny and desperate to bear it anymore I watch Sinn Sage videos and try to come before I start crying. It's what it is, innit? Here do?" 

Jenna nodded, so Liz set the frame down and reached for a pin. That was the pattern she was used to from emails: admission of loneliness, followed by self-deprecation and sudden change of subject. She supposed it made sense, after hiding the truth of her feelings for so long, it couldn't be easy to be open about them even now all reason for discretion was past. 

"Don't just dismiss it like that. We always end up talking about my problems." 

"Because your problems can still have a solution. OK, if you want a true story to depress you, here's a thing. For the first few years, you both honestly believe all those hopeful well-meant untruths about 'I'll leave him when ...'; and then time passes and you gradually come to accept that this is it. That the time you're together at work, and the few stolen evenings and weekends that come up, are all it's ever going to be. And then - because she loves you, and because the good reasons she has for staying put don't mean she doesn't feel terribly guilty - she says she would understand if you need to find someone to share your bed for the three hundred and fifty days a year when she can't. In sixteen years I didn't so much as kiss another woman, not because I'm a saint but because I honestly was never tempted. I loved her so much, I couldn't imagine wanting anyone else. I still do love her that much. I can't say that will never change - I can't explain this but it feels disrespectful to her memory to say I know now how I'll miss her in five years' time - but at the moment it doesn't feel like it will." 

And that was that, Jenna realised that it was time to stop pushing and let Liz prattle on about the glories of Yorkshire chip shops if she wanted to. She listened with half an ear as she reflected that they were divided by as much as they had in common. Liz had lost something that Jenna had never found, and that loss was irreplaceable. She wasn't looking for someone, but Jenna was. So after a couple of weeks, when she had got herself squared away enough in home and job for her curiosity to take wing, she took an evening stroll or two down Ferry Lane on her own. 

She might be looking for something, but she had no imminent intention of getting laid. She went into the pub just to submerge herself in the ambience and that indefinable solidarity that was still real even if half of them were overtly eying her as fresh meat. The music was loud and the atmosphere heavy with prowling sexuality. The barmaid with long blonde hair and sleeve tattoos - and an accent that Jenna couldn't pin down any more specifically than American - made amazing cocktails. That woman over there was blatantly checking her out, the one in the pink jacket, with the sharp nose and perfect cheekbones. Jenna wasn't remotely interested - too cold a beauty, and too old for her - but she couldn't pretend it wasn't flattering to have a stranger staring so appreciatively at her arse. 

"Can I buy you a drink?" 

She had glided up on Jenna's blind side, draping languorously against the bar before she even realised the space next to her was occupied. She was strawberry blonde, wearing two grands' worth of navy blue McCartney suit in a way that made it obvious her good clothes were still at home, and Jenna couldn't begin to guess her age. The gravitas and confidence just did not go with the twinkly eyes and flawless skin. There was something about her private school tones that set Jenna's teeth on edge. She was the sort you could imagine coming out to her parents by saying 'yuh Pops, can you buy me a lesbian?' 

"Thank you. I'll have another Sea Breeze." 

"Gabby. Sea Breeze please, and I'll have whatever you call one without the cranberry. No salt." 

The drink appeared in front of Jenna, as if by magic. The woman immediately put her back up, she had every intention of politely refusing - and yet there it was, and she could have sworn she had asked for it. Weird. How many of these things had she knocked back already? 

"I haven't seen you around much." 

"I haven't been around much." 

"Can I ask you a very personal question?" 

"Shy, aren't you? You know, unless I'm really rude and offensive, I think you're going to ask anyway." 

The eyes twinkled again, and perfect shining teeth peeked out from behind full scarlet lips. Jenna didn't like that smile, it was insincere as a politician's - which was hardly unique at this bar - yet the big brown bedroom eyes above the mouth did seem genuinely interested in what she might have to say. She didn't like it, but she could feel her face returning it, as compulsively as asking for that drink she didn't really want. It was like listening to one of those talented old comedians who told vile reactionary 'jokes' so well that she laughed in spite of herself and then felt sordid at her own weakness. She was being seduced, but perhaps not in the obvious sexual way. 

"What do you want?" 

"I'm sorry, I think you started talking to me." 

"No, not like that. What do you want? Specifically what draws you through this door on a Friday evening?" 

What she really wanted was to lose the feeling that those brown eyes were looking straight through her. Not to mention shaking off the disturbing temptation that a quickie with someone she really didn't like might be very hot indeed. 

"Excuse me, I really need to go." 

Jenna stumbled off into the back on suddenly trembling legs, and found herself grateful for the solidity of the toilet underneath her. Those cocktails were far too easy to drink, and there was something in the atmosphere itself that made her feel recklessly aware of how long it had been since she'd shared any real intimacy with another person. Not the woman in the navy suit though, she was seductive and repulsive in equal measure, and Jenna was damned if she could explain either reaction. No, that had all the hallmarks of a seriously fucking bad idea. Which was unfortunate, because when she opened the door to the cubicle she found her standing directly outside, leaning back against the basin opposite. 

"Sorry, I think there's been a misunderstanding here." 

"Which is?" 

The self-assurance needled her, and she was more than a little tipsy. She didn't usually snap at people, truth be told she was far too much of a doormat for her own good. At this particular moment though, she had had enough. 

"No offence, I'm getting a little old to be frigging anonymous strangers in a public loo." 

"Is that so? I wouldn't dream of calling you a liar, but I am surprised to hear it." 

"You know what, why don't you just fuck off." 

"Oh brava! Very fierce. Are you alright?" 

She wasn't in the least. The building was spinning in one direction and her stomach in the other. Dark suspicion niggled at the back of her mind, but she was positive that she'd kept a close eye on her own drinks all night. 

"Need some air." 

She found an exit and staggered out into a narrow alleyway, breathing deep and slow to the sound of a train rattling overhead. The woman joined her, putting her hands in her pockets and leaning her shoulders against the grubby brick with no apparent concern for her jacket. 

"Any better?" 

"Who are you anyway?" 

"Call me Lucy." 

"Hi Lucy, I'm Jenna. What do you want?" 

"That's my question, remember? What do you want, Jenna? Truly?" 

"I dunno. Sustainable development and a secure pension, no Third World War. What does anyone want? You do know you are very weird, don't you?" 

"And you are very scared of telling the truth." 

The drink was talking for her, there was no other way she would ever have let it all slip out the way it did. 

"Of course I am! Admitting what you want is admitting you haven't got it, isn't it? I want sex. I want to make love to a pretty girl, who isn't a drama queen and won't scream and break plates if I smile at someone else. I want to put my hand on her pants and feel them soaked through just from kissing me. I want to fuck all night and wake up in the middle of the day, and not fight about it afterwards. I want it to be that simple for once. What about you?" 

"Me? Oh I like to play games. Goodnight Jenna, I think you've probably had enough to drink." 

Lucy gave her an insufferably smug look, then turned on her Saint Laurent heel and went back through the side door of the pub. Obnoxious as she was, she did have a point. Jenna set her unsteady steps in the direction of the street. 

She rounded the corner and almost walked into as pretty a girl as she had ever seen.



Did You Ever Get Stung? Ch. 02



Beguiled. 

"Ooops, sorry." 

The girl danced lightly round her, swaying sinuously out of her path and straight back onto it again. It was a pleasant surprise, contrasting politely with the hint of drunken threat that Jenna could already feel in the air. More than that, it was simply beautiful to witness for its own sensuous sake. She couldn't resist the temptation to turn with her, watch her flow past like a thick heavy stream of massage oil. She was drunk - or something - and not at her most subtle about staring. 

She had seen her before, a week or so ago. A face that jumped out of the city centre shopping crowd and grabbed her attention for that second look that asked 'is she? I think she is'; and then had gone. Enough to turn her head and kindle a passing wistful pang, but surely she hadn't looked as stunning then as she did this evening. 

She stopped, turned back and looked Jenna full in the eye. She couldn't meet it, was too aware of her own gobsmacked face and the fact that she probably looked pissed too. She glanced away from the face that made her legs feel even weaker, and instead came to rest on her right arm. Emerging from the pale sleeveless top was toned and tanned bicep - not bulging but firmly smooth. There was a Celtic knotwork cuff around it, like those tattoos that were so common now, but pewter instead of ink and biting slightly into the skin. It drew all her attention to the muscle that was there, tied her stomach into a knot of her own at the thought of it tensing against the metal band. 

She had been walking up the slope, from under the railway bridge, and her momentum had carried her to the front of the pub. Her head, which had been tilted slightly to the side as she regarded Jenna, nodded towards the door. 

"Want to come in for a drink?" 

Of course she would like to go in. Not so much to drink any more herself, but to watch this new vision tilt her head back and let the swallowing ripple down her throat. Raising even so insubstantial a weight as a glass would flex the arm under that band, wouldn't it? It wasn't worth the risk, the pavement was pitching like a trawler and she was in that awful in-between state of knowing exactly how drunk she was. Somewhere she retained enough self-control to know she really didn't want to make a fool of herself in front of this one. 

"Better not." 

"Want to do something else?" 

* 

Her name was Lynsey. She mentioned that she was a nurse but appeared far more interested in listening to Jenna on their half-hour walk through the raucous city centre than talking about herself. She seemed normal, pleasant and friendly, letting Jenna ramble on in her own way rather than firing questions - a stark contrast to the eerily inquisitive Lucy. The walk helped clear Jenna's head, but she knew she must have been babbling to start with. Part of it was about Lucy and how weird the whole thing had been, her mouth ran away with her and she realised she'd just said that business about frigging strangers in the lady's. 

"Not your thing then?" 

"Not really. I think I'd have to know someone very well to do that. Or not at all." 

Lynsey laughed, loud and natural, something that came from herself rather than booze. 

"Naughty. Well don't worry, I'm not expecting anything like that." 

It was meant kindly, she realised that even as she felt rejected and unattractive. Was she really that much of an embarrassment? 

"Charmed." 

"Taking advantage isn't one of my failings, darlin', and you've had quite a night. Why don't we put you to bed with a hot chocolate and see what we both feel like in the morning?" 

Lynsey led the way round the back of the hospital to the sort of tree-lined road of subdivided Victorian villas that invariably attracts students and nurses. She had a small neat flat on the first floor, with a big leather-effect sofa and a couple of the more famous Schiele prints on the wall. Jenna had seen enough of those in student houses but she had never taken to the style, other than that inevitable redhead with her cheek resting on her knee. They were too ugly and ungainly for her taste. Lynsey made the promised hot chocolate, and Jenna felt even more drowsy. It wasn't just drinking a few too many, the Lucy business had wound her up and yet now she was feeling as relaxed as she could remember. She apologised again for nodding off. 

"Nonsense. Do you want to crash there, or come to bed?" 

Which was the unspoken yet self-evident point of everything since Lynsey had stopped and turned round outside the pub, but somehow it didn't feel like she had been picked up and taken back home for a quick and desperate fuck. Jenna's earlier resentment had evaporated too, it was more than obvious than Lynsey was interested. It was just gentle and easy-going - no pressure, no drama - exactly what she needed. 

"Can we go to bed? Just to kiss and be close, and see what happens?" 

"Come on." 

They went through into the bedroom. Lynsey started undressing naturally in the light from the hallway, taking off trousers and top as if Jenna wasn't even there. She glanced over her shoulder and noticed Jenna looking hesitant, smiled encouragingly and kept her knickers on as she pulled back the duvet. Jenna scrambled out of her jeans and got in beside her, accepting Lynsey's arm around her shoulders and letting it draw her T-shirted chest against the wonderful temptation of Lynsey's petite but full-nippled breasts. She reached out a tentative hand and felt Lynsey's cheek fill her palm, stretched her face to meet it... felt herself falling into some ridiculously girly sensation of weightlessness on Lynsey's lips. They kissed, until her eyes lost focus and her skin seemed to dissolve into the memory foam underneath her. She badly wanted to make love to this girl, join and melt together mouth to mouth and cunt to cunt, but she was too tired and comfortable and just plain safe to make the effort. Her hand found the warm comfortable security between Lynsey's legs. Lynsey gripped it between her thighs, sighing at the touch. Jenna felt herself smiling: how wet they were, just from kissing her. And then she fell asleep wrapped in Lynsey's limbs. 

It only took a second or two to realise where she was. That was surprising, she wasn't used to waking in strange beds spooned against strange women, but this seemed perfectly comfortable and normal. The hall light was still on, bright enough through the half-closed door to look across Lynsey's shoulder and see the bedside clock reading two-seventeen. She slid herself carefully out of bed and tiptoed off to the loo. 

Lynsey was nice. Lynsey was really nice, sweet and thoughtful, taking mercy on a poor pissed stray like that; taking a complete stranger into her home and not using it as a pretext to just barge into her knickers when she barely knew up from down. Lynsey was nice, and fit, and Jenna couldn't think about those firm flat-topped nipples without imagining her tongue against their clearly defined edge. She had woken to a head cleared of booze and intoxicated instead with the close warm smell of the woman's hair and skin against her nose. She cleaned herself up, remembered just in time not to flush and wake the whole building, and crept back towards the bedroom. 

"Turn out the light." 

The voice came through the bedroom doorway when she was still in the hall, soft and sensual. She flicked the switch and felt her way back along the wall. When she stepped into the bedroom, Lynsey was sitting up, with the duvet pulled down into her lap, skin pale and luminous in the moonglow, the band round her arm even more prominent than it had been earlier. Jenna pulled her T-shirt over her head. 

"Nice." 

It stopped her, just like that with the cloth still halfway over her face. That feeling was several years in the past. She and Molls had fallen out of first passion and into routine. They went to bed together and had sex, because they had drunk too much or they needed to make up after another fight or they were a couple and sex - at least what Molls defined as 'sex' - was what they did. Molls fucked her because Molls did, in her own way, care very much for her, and because she was there to fuck. It was too damn long a time since she had felt someone looking at her body as if it was attractive for itself. The simple practical act of removing a suddenly unwelcome piece of clothing changed midway; she stopped tugging and instead slid it slowly up her arms and took her time dropping it onto Lynsey's carpet. She took a pace to the side, where the window lit her properly, and teased her way out of bra and pants whilst Lynsey watched. She let Lynsey's eyes kiss her breasts and caress down her belly, and felt her stomach go tight at the way they moved over her body. 

Lynsey pushed the duvet off onto the floor, raised her hips and hooked her thumbs under her waistband to pull her knickers slowly over bent knees and flick them into the corner of the room with a playful kick. She raised her left leg, straightened out and flexing at the hip like a gymnast, until her toes were pointed at the ceiling. Lowering it wide to the side gave promises of grace and flexibility that made Jenna's heart skip a beat; beckoning and exposing at the same time, inviting Jenna between her thighs. 

"What are you doing tomorrow?" 

"I'm on lates, don't need to be in until twelve. Come here." 

Jenna crawled up the bed. She dipped her head down and felt a nipple press back hard against her tongue at last, felt the breast rise against her mouth to match the soft 'mmmm' from deep in Lynsey's throat. She sucked on it, rocking her head gently back as Lynsey's leg wrapped round her waist and she felt her pressed wet against her belly. She couldn't keep her eyes off Lynsey's arm, stared at it as her mouth tugged softly at Lynsey's breast. It was so irresistible that she nuzzled against the band, rubbing the tip of her nose over the cool metal and licking at the tiny bumps of skin that pushed through the centres of the knots. 

"You like that, don't you?" 

"I think it's about the sexiest thing I've ever seen." 

"You are so cute." 

She raised her head, stopped kissing long enough to meet the fondly indulgent gaze. 

"I don't feel cute." 

"No?" 

"No." 

Steadily less cute since she had walked back through the door and taken off her clothes; slowly and gradually thickening her blood and tightening the pit of her stomach. She could feel her breathing slow, becoming deeper and more purposeful as her mouth discovered Lynsey's responses, and now she could hear it reflected in her own voice. Lynsey slid down the bed, her belly slipping under Jenna's; drawing her legs up and draping her knees over Jenna's shoulders with her face suddenly wearing that look of determined concentration that made her jaw jut forward. Jenna put her length onto Lynsey, pressing her weight onto the legs folded up underneath her, casual unconscious rubbing turning to purposeful riding. 

She held Lynsey's face in her hands and rubbed their noses together. They sighed and kissed; shared the quiet breathless chuckled secrets of how good it felt to move against each other like that; swapped monosyllabic gasps of mutual encouragement mouth to mouth. 

"Uhhh. 's good." 

"Yeah." 

Just what she had imagined when she first got into this bed: joined at the hip; sex mingling and merging until they dissolved into each other and their mouths met to complete the circuit. Lynsey's touch enfolded her face, fingers burrowing into the roots of her hair as her tongue delved luxuriously around Lynsey's mouth and her hand closed about the armband and the muscle beneath it. 

* 

She woke to sunlight brighter than she ever got in her own subterranean bed, and the feeling of Lynsey beside her. Her hand must have cupped over Lynsey's groin as they slept. She chewed gently on the earlobe in front of her, and woke the girl with whispered dirty sweet nothings about wanting her pussy for breakfast. 

She had honestly forgotten how good sex could be. It got old and had become something done for a purpose - in pursuit of orgasm or reconciliation or a way to pretend things weren't so bad after all - until the actual details of the sex itself became unwelcome and repulsive. Waking up today was like being reborn as a teenager with discovery and exploration ahead of her. Everything was exciting, headily new and sensual. The tenderness of her hung-over temples and dryness in her throat couldn't spoil it. She worked her way down into the sweaty closeness under the duvet and rubbed her face in it like a curious kitten. 

Making Lynsey come was wonderful, a satisfying reward of its own. She was so quiet - so utterly unlike Jenna herself, who had to smother her mouth in kisses or sucking on Lynsey's shoulders to keep from screaming the house down in the early hours - but the intensity Jenna felt against her mouth made her dizzy. It was like the bicep straining against her armband, potential power precisely controlled. Lynsey dragged the duvet aside once again and left them sprawled in the fresh morning warmth. Jenna tipped her head back, taking a moment to interpret the upside-down display on the clock. Considering that she had followed too many drinks with about three hours sleep, she felt amazingly alert and chirpy. 

"What about showers?" 

"What about them? Other than sounding like a good idea?" 

"You said you didn't fancy frigging strangers in the loo. What about in the shower?" 

"You're hardly a stranger this morning." 

She sat up and felt fragile after all. Lynsey got her water, followed at a decent interval by coffee and toast. They sat on the bed until ten, chatting idly and taking their time. Eventually Lynsey made some comment about getting ready for work and Jenna realised she was grinning helplessly. 

"Oh no, you aren't one of those are you?" 

"One of what?" 

"You're not going to ask me to put my uniform on..." 

Jenna blushed, for the first time since she had woken up she felt naked. The idiot grin refused to shift from her face. 

"Not exactly a bad look, is it." 

Lynsey shook her head and rolled her eyes. She didn't seem to be in the slightest bit angry, merely puzzled at how exotic others found her everyday. 

"Honestly, if you people had any idea how much of the time it spends covered in wee and sick. Anyway, you're out of luck, wearing it on the way to work's against the rules. Come on with you, let's get us both cleaned up." 

"Lynsey, thanks." 

"For what?" 

"Everything. Had a great night." 

"Fun, wasn't it? Do you..." 

Lynsey hesitated, perched on the edge of the bed looking thoughtful, as if she was nervous about what came next. 

"... Do you fancy doing it again?" 

"I'd love to." 

"Where do you live?" 

"Raven Mount, just the other side of Monument Park." 

"I could come round about nine if you like?" 

Jenna didn't trust herself to speak, she would end up trying to explain how welcome that tentative undemanding offer was, and failing miserably. She kissed Lynsey's cheek and smiled at her, and let Lynsey lead their way to the shower. 

It just seemed natural and automatic to reach for the gel bottle and take over, because making Lynsey feel good was such a treat, but Lynsey had other ideas. She put her hands gently but firmly on Jenna's arms and turned her round in the cramped space as she announced it was her turn to be pampered a little. She stretched her arms up to the tiles in front, letting the water run over her and feeling Lynsey's breasts press against her back through the lather. Lynsey's arms went round her, making her head swim in the steamy heat. Lynsey's hands massaged their way down between her legs, making her spread her knees as far as wall and door permitted, tensing her arms and pressing her back into Lynsey's belly. The water sucked and gurgled between them, trickling between the cheeks of her bum to tease with a hint of something she was far too shy to ask for. She finally let her voice go, safe and secure in Lynsey's embrace and the anonymity of putting her face to the wall. She moaned at the caress of patient fingers inside and out; swore and begged and told Lynsey no other woman had ever made her cunt feel so alive; and filled the flat with her cries until she felt her legs would give way beneath her. 

* 

After a roundabout bus trip home via Sainsbury's, Jenna sat down on the sofa for a brief rest and woke up at five feeling thoroughly disoriented but wonderfully vital. She was sure there was something boringly practical she was supposed to have done all day; she didn't begin to care. It must be almost ten years since she had felt this sense of light-hearted joy and sexual anticipation at the prospect of seeing someone again. She put some music on and within a couple of minutes was spontaneously singing her way around the flat as she tidied up. 

Quarter to nine brought Lynsey ringing the doorbell with a wide smile on her face and an overnight bag on her shoulder, and within half an hour of that they were sitting on the floor demolishing takeaway pizza and chatting at random. They decided to go for that drink in the week. Jenna would drop by Lynsey's after work and they would make their way to the pub together, maybe stop for something to eat on the way. She looked at Lynsey sitting cross-legged on her carpet, popping the last piece in her mouth before sucking each greasy finger suggestively in turn, and could not remember life feeling so straightforward and carefree since she was a student. Lynsey unfolded her legs and stood up. 

"Borrow your bathroom for a few minutes?" 

"You've got another slice yet." 

"Nope, enough already. You have it for me. Back in a while." 

She grabbed her bag and disappeared into the cubbyhole that housed Jenna's shower and toilet. Jenna tidied away, if there was one thing she could not stand it was waking on a Sunday morning to find takeaway detritus scattered across the living room. Then she went into the bedroom to put on the lamp and consider her options. Lynsey had been quite upfront about it, she had just worked an eight-hour shift and whatever else might happen, she did expect to sleep tonight. Would nudity be too pushy, too demanding of attention? Would it be better to wear something and let Lynsey take it off as and when she felt inclined? She turned round when she heard Lynsey clear her throat, and entirely forgot about her own clothes. 

It was practical and loose, but smart and just tailored enough to hint at the form beneath: dark blue trousers and short-sleeved, open-necked mid-blue blouse with white piping. Lynsey's hair was wound tightly back, showing off her neck and emphasising the amused sideways tilt of her head as she enjoyed Jenna's reaction. Jenna wasn't exactly a uniform fetishist, but she did share the true fetishist's conviction that the real thing was a dozen times sexier than anything you might find in the 'naughty nurse' section of the catalogue. Just as bondage was all in the ritual, dressing up was all in the detail. The simple chrome fob watch hanging against Lynsey's breast set the breath trembling in Jenna's throat. 

Lynsey reached up, leant her left hand into the doorframe above her and crossed left ankle over right. Her lips creased and her eyes widened in unspoken invitation. Jenna took two steps to join her; she did the obvious thing that Lynsey's body language demanded. The tips of her fingers probed up inside the easy hang of Lynsey's right sleeve and found the armband hidden inside. The astonishing eroticism of it made her close her eyes. She felt the arm move against her touch as Lynsey raised her hand and undid the top button. 

"You said you liked the uniform, but you didn't say anything about underwear, and I didn't want to get it wrong..." 

Jenna's other hand snaked up under the tail of Lynsey's blouse and thrust urgently down the waistband of her trousers. She grabbed hold of Lynsey's bum and let herself be pushed back towards the bed. 




Did You Ever Get Stung? Ch. 02



* 

After a weekend that reminded her exactly why everyone did make such a fuss about sex, the next two days passed in a weird daze that involved too long not seeing Lynsey and yet didn't really seem to amount to anything else. She could barely concentrate enough on her work to function, and spent far too much time staring out the window overlooking the river and remembering how she had reached up to undo the second bottom before raising her face into that blue-curtained gap to nuzzle between Lynsey's hanging breasts. They were so small and cute when she was lying down, it was a wonder how full they seemed like that. Jenna had only to close her eyes and she could taste them again, and hear the noises Lynsey made when she did. She was halfway to Lynsey's on Tuesday evening, striding briskly forward with her heart pounding in expectation, when she realised just how much of a daze she must have been in. She was going to ring to say she'd be there in fifteen minutes, when she realised her phone was dead flat. It must have been pipping away on its warning tone most of the day without her even noticing. Never mind, Lynsey's was bound to be working if they needed one. 

She knew. As soon as she saw the woman in the stairwell she somehow knew, but her mind wouldn't accept the obvious conclusion. She ran up the stairs, telling herself that this was a communal space shared by half a dozen flats; and yet she already knew, before her thoughts even caught up with her eyes and realised how she knew. 

Lynsey's voice answered her knock, telling her the door wasn't locked and to come in. She went inside and saw Lynsey crossing from bedroom to shower, stark naked save for the inevitable armband. Her voice was casually conversational. 

"You're early." 

Jenna felt sick. She leant against the wall for support and felt the floor shudder under her feet. She didn't need to see the tangled sheets or smell the sex on Lynsey's body, because somehow she already knew. 

"Who was that? On the stairs?" 

"Oh, did you bump into Sash?" 

"Who?" 

None of this made any sort of sense, least of all the matter of fact way that Lynsey continued about her business, turning on the shower to heat. 

"Sasha. She's my girlfriend." 

"And just what the fuck am I?" 

The water shut off. Lynsey took a deep sigh and stepped back into the hallway, as unconcerned about her nudity as at being caught out. 

"You're a lot of fun, Jenna, and I enjoy your company, so please don't be a pain in the arse about this." 

"What about Sasha?" 

"She doesn't mind at all, we've never been an exclusive deal." 

Jenna didn't bother to ask any of the dozen hurt questions welling up inside her, didn't even bother to scream or sulk or try to make Lynsey understand any of it. She had finally caught up with herself, and the realisation made her nauseous. Sasha was alternative-looking - loud hair and nose ring and grungy jacket with the sleeves pulled back - the bracelet caught Jenna's eye because it didn't go with the rest. It was silver, and now she realised it was Celtic knotwork and a near perfect match. Too perfect a match for coincidence. 

"She bought you that arm ring, didn't she?" 

"Yeah, she did." 

"Christ's sakes, you let me kiss it!" 

"I liked you kissing it." 

"Screw you, Lynsey, if you don't get what's wrong with that I'm not even going to try explaining." 

Jenna walked out and slammed the door behind her, and refused to let herself cry until she was in the clean fresh air of the street. 

***** 

This time Lucy wasn't leaning back on the basin when she opened the door; she was standing right outside, and stepped one foot into the cubicle before Jenna had a chance to move. 

"Excuse me. I already told you I'm not into that." 

"Oh really..." 

Jenna was angry: hurt, insulted, lied to and furious. She needed to take it out on someone and she hadn't liked Lucy from the beginning. She slammed the door on Lucy's knee, which Lucy didn't seem to notice. That was stupid, not to mention pointless unless she wanted to spend the rest of her life barricaded in a toilet. She gave up trying to break Lucy's leg and let the door swing back open. 

"Get out of my way please." 

"Sugar, I didn't bring us here in the first place... do you always sleep naked?" 

"What the fuck business is that of yours?" 

"Just curious..." 

Lucy cleared her throat and waved her hand vaguely about at chest level. Jenna looked down at herself, she wasn't wearing any more than Lynsey had been in the flat. 

"Oh Jesus Christ! What the..." 

She wrapped her hands over as much as she could cover and shrank back into the corner. Despite the shock and violation, she seemed to find time to wonder why it didn't feel colder. 

"OK, look: either you usually sleep naked, or you really want to screw me, or it's your sense of vulnerability and helplessness coming out. Flattering as the second would be, my money's on the third." 

"Are you saying this is a dream or something?" 

"Well... d'uh." 

"I'm not naked, alright? I'm wearing pyjamas, because they're comfy and they go with a bottle of wine and bar of chocolate and crying myself to sleep." 

... and if I can say that then apparently I'm buying this dream idea of yours. Jenna took what felt as if it was a deep breath and straightened herself up. She stared Lucy full in the eye as she pushed past her. 

"Really want to go out there in the altogether? Even if we both know it isn't real?" 

"Oh fuck." 

Lucy took her jacket off and offered it to Jenna, who wrapped it round herself. It didn't quite meet enough at the front to conceal her groin. 

"Might want to put your hand there, your fanny's showing." 

"Thanks for the advice. What sort of word is that for a grown woman anyway?" 

"It isn't. It's silly and childish and mocks your sexuality. See, that's what I do - give you a little dignity with one hand, chop it down with the other. I told you, I like playing games." 

"Who the fuck are you?" 

"Oh come on, Jen, try harder. Isn't the name even a teensy little clue there? I know nobody reads Faust in school anymore, but don't be even dimmer than you look." 

"I've heard of Faust. I haven't signed anything." 

"I'm always in the market, if you're looking to sell. Assuming you aren't, then we're back to playing games. I like to torment souls, it's kinda my day job. There's a thought, Jen - are you quite sure you aren't dead?" 

"This is not happening to me." 

"Of course it isn't, it's entirely impossible. Did you not enjoy getting exactly what you asked for?" 

"Fuck you very much, I'm going now." 

She turned her back on Lucy and walked towards the door. Of course... she should have know. Her feet worked the invisible treadmill and the door handle remained obstinately six inches beyond her reach. She stopped walking and turned back. Lucy was wearing her jacket again, arms folded and a smug look on her face as she idly surveyed Jenna's nakedness. 

"You have a nasty mouth. If you can't be a nicely polite young lady then we're going to have to take your clothes away until you are, aren't we now? Oops, that's going to turn you on, isn't it?" 

"No, this really isn't very attractive." 

In fact it wasn't much of anything, neither sexual nor truly demeaning nor even scary now that she recognised it wasn't real. More than anything it was irritating. She knew she was arguing pointlessly with herself, she wanted to either wake up or slip deeper into sleep, to be done with this nonsense either way. But it would not let her go. 

"Why don't you tell me the truth? What do you want? Anything in the world, anything whatsoever to get you off. Are you honestly telling me it would be kisses and cuddles?" 

"Would that be so wrong?" 

"Be kinda boring, actually, but the real problem would be with you not meaning it. The mucky corners of your mind, Jenna, are a lot muckier than that. Go on, shine a light in the dark places for us." 

"You know what, what about you?" 

"Me? Oh I would go for more exotic stuff than love." 

"Such as?" 

"Hmmm... let me see now. I'd like a dick, just for a couple of days for curiosity's sake - long weekend, five-star suite and room service, me, fit tight virgin girl and a pretty boy who knew how to suck me dry; I'd like the university women's hockey team fighting over me in a hot tub; porn star wearing nothing but a crop-top as she drives me across the desert in a Barracuda convertible. Nasty, decadent, hedonistic things." 

"Do you have any idea how pathetic and banal that sounds?" 

"Show me up. Do better." 

Lucy smirked as if she had cream stuck in her whiskers. It was so very transparent, she wasn't even trying to manoeuvre Jenna into saying something, she was just playing with her to make it obvious she was playing. 

"Why should I?" 

"Because you know that I already know. We're having this conversation inside your mind, I know what you're thinking. And I know - and you know - that you want to say it out loud, because that is the whole point. What do you want, Jenna?" 

"I want... I want to be taken and dominated; to be humiliated, degraded, given the excuse that I'm being forced and I don't really want it. I want to be pushed so hard I that I admit how much I do want." 

"There, that wasn't so difficult, was it now?" 

She came to with a start, feeling as if the duvet was crushing the life from her. Her pyjamas were soaked through with sweat, and more besides. The dream might not have done anything for her whilst she was inside it but she awoke so wet it chafed. She pulled them off and tossed them far enough across the bedroom that she couldn't smell them anymore. She was hot, sticky and palpitating, and her mind would not stop whirling through a kaleidoscope of explicit images: her face pressed to Lynsey's as they ground on each other and their eyes met in what she naively thought meant something; Lucy's grotesquely pornographic hermaphrodite threesome; everything in between... up to and including that equally nasty fantasy of her own that she had confided to Liz weeks before. She hung there for hours in the middle of the night, neither truly awake nor asleep with her imagination churning through dreams that were both lucid and lurid. It was like being in a fever that gave her no rest and constantly teased her. She gave in to the nagging physical temptation and rubbed herself sore but couldn't seem to come. She saw the dawn through the window and only fell asleep in time to make her late and woozy on the way to work. 

God alone knew what had got into her - which was an ironic enough way for an agnostic to think about that ludicrous dream. She was obviously not possessed and she had, equally obviously, let Lynsey make a total fool of her. Was there any connection - beyond dire timing and uncanny coincidence - between what she had said to Lucy and what had happened afterwards? Impossible. Even if Lucy and Lynsey were some sick couple who screwed lovestruck girls over for kicks, there wasn't time for them to collude in setting her up. How long had elapsed between saying it to Lucy and bumping into Lynsey? Two minutes? Surely not more than five at the very outside? It was simply not credible. 

And yet she could not shake off the feeling that Lucy was in some inexplicable way to blame for her own lamentable stupidity. She needed to confront her. If for no other reason that someone needed to be shouted and sworn at, and she didn't want to break her own heart by doing it to Lynsey's face. After work she went down to Ferry Lane to pick a fight with someone, almost anyone would do. 

Lucy wasn't in the pub, thankfully neither were Lynsey or even Sasha. There were a few faces she vaguely recognised from last Friday, nobody she knew at all. She was standing in the doorway, just about to go back into the street, when something caught her eye. She couldn't say what it was, but it made her turn back just as the woman in conversation over by the pool table glanced towards the door. 

She must have been a couple of years younger than Jenna herself: perversely delicate in appearance despite her skinny black jeans, donkey jacket and No.2 cut. Except for her fair hair and thin eyebrows, Jenna could almost have taken her for those first childhood memories of Sinéad on her brother's wall. She seemed to lose interest in whoever she was talking to. Her hand came out of her coat pocket and very deliberately pointed at Jenna. Even more slowly and carefully, it twisted through a quarter-circle and she gestured towards herself. No doubt that it was beckoning, but it was also thoroughly blatant in its sexual implication. 

Who the fuck did she think she was to stand there in front of the whole bar and mime at fingering her? Bloody cheek! She was overdue a piece of Jenna's mind. 

***** 

"Do you want something from me?" 

"Jack. With ice, thanks for asking." 

Jenna laughed, despite her anger. The combination of wide-eyed innocence and casual cockiness took the wind out of her fury. 

"And what makes you think I want to buy you a drink?" 

"Because you do. I'll be over there." 

The woman nodded towards the most out of the way nook in the place, a round table slightly too large for the square corner it occupied, near the corridor that led to the toilets. Jenna could not say what sent her towards the bar rather than back out the door. It wasn't, exactly, attraction. Not that the woman was ugly if you liked shaved heads, which Jenna didn't particularly. Something in her manner aroused curiosity. She should be obnoxious, but she wasn't, and Jenna wanted to work out why. 

She took the whiskey and an orange juice over to the table, sat down and studied the other woman as frankly as she was being studied herself. Ice-blue eyes, not shy but steady and appraising; chrome scaffold in her left ear; no visible tattoos, that was a bit of a surprise. She apparently drank whiskey for the taste more than the effect, took a small sip and rolled it slowly round her mouth. Jenna didn't like the way the woman looked at her, neither for itself nor for how it made her feel. There was just enough lingering spark of righteous irritation to point that out. 

"You're pretty sure of yourself, aren't you?" 

The woman shrugged, doing her perhaps best to look innocent but failing miserably. 

"What, me? No I'm just shy, this is all front to cover up my nervous nature..." 

It wasn't that funny, it had no business making Jenna giggle like that. She choked on her orange juice and felt as if half the place was staring at her. 

"... You've got that look." 

"What look is that?" 

"The look that makes me feel... brrrr! You really think I'm arrogant?" 

"Totally." 

"I promise you, hand on my heart, I didn't feel it until you walked in. And now... maybe, a little. OK seriously, no kidding around - some people you can just tell, straight off, and you're one of them. I think being around you could make me feel really arrogant, and I think you might get a kick out of that too. If I'm wrong, tell me now and no hard feelings. I'll buy you a drink and I won't misbehave any more. Well?" 

She sat back, settling herself in the corner so she could put both arms up on the seatbacks, letting her eyes wander over Jenna's plain black Debenhams suit. Wasn't somebody who looked at her like that very near the top of Jenna's fantasy list? 

"I... umm... I've just done something really stupid..." 

"I know, that's written all over you. Come here tonight to throw a glass of wine in her face?" 

"More or less." 

"You haven't answered my question." 

Her voice was surprisingly soft, reassuring. She didn't seem to be pushing for an answer so much as nudging the conversation away from a painful topic. Nor did she make any empty promises. Lynsey's mouth hadn't either, she left that to her eyes and her touch. Jenna had let herself misinterpret hints and spin them into something she wanted but wasn't there. This new face offered no such illusions, she wasn't looking at Jenna like that because she wanted them to make love. The honest clarity in her eyes did promise that being fucked by her might be very hot indeed. 

"Alright. I'm -" 

"No. I'm Fran. If you ever feel uncomfortable, you just say 'stop now, Fran' and we'll stop and talk about it. Other than that, you call me Frankie, and I don't want to know your name. You don't want me to want to know it, do you?" 

I'm going to use you, impersonally and anonymously, because that's what you desire from me. What exactly had she said in that dream? To be humiliated and degraded, wasn't it? To be made to admit that's what she wanted... 

"No, Frankie." 

That gesture again, beckoning her closer. She bent her head forward, bringing her ear to Frankie's mouth. 

"I suppose you're wearing something sensible and practical under that skirt?" 

She couldn't find the voice to answer. It felt as if Frankie could already see them, as if her underwear was displayed as obviously as all of her transparent dirty little secrets. She nodded. 

"Go to the ladies', take them off, put them in your pocket and come back here. If you keep me waiting too long, I'll confiscate them." 

Dreams and confrontations and drunken musings, it seemed she had done every variation on sex in these loos short of the act itself. Best not to think about that. Best not to think about Frankie catching up to her with the door half-closed, barging in and pushing her legs apart from behind... No, best not to get sidetracked by that fancy when the real thing was so temptingly near. She found she couldn't do it, it was too much to nip quickly into a cubicle just to pull her pants down to order. She had to sit down and will herself to pee just a little as she did her best to fold them flat enough not to make an obvious lump in her jacket pocket. 

She walked back on trembling legs, acutely aware of the way the front of her skirt hung against her. This was so much worse and dirtier than total nudity had felt in the dream, but of course that was only a dream and this was actually happening. Her head was full of ridiculous possibilities: catching her skirt on something; a sudden impossible updraft doing a Marilyn on her; that her pubes were somehow making themselves obvious through the cloth. 

Someone had put music on in her absence. It was pounding out of the speaker above their corner, almost too loud. She sat back deep in the seat, smoothing her skirt demurely down over her knees. Frankie just beckoned to her again; nod of the head and gesture of the hand drawing her closer. She obeyed, bum sliding forward to drag her skirt up her thighs. Frankie shuffled up beside her until their legs touched under the table, denim to skin. It was a secluded corner, and the table was concealing, and Frankie's was hardly the only hand in the pub to drop casually down and rest on a girl's knee. 

She rested her chin in the other hand and looked into Jenna's eyes with her head tipped a little to the side, looking for all the world like a sweet lovestruck teen. 

"So tell me about you. Tell me why you came storming in that door all dressed up and looking for aggro?" 

Degradation and humiliation. Jenna let Frankie's hand ease her knees apart and slip up her thigh, and proceeded to tell Frankie what a stupid simple-minded tart she had been. 

"I met this girl on Friday night, just outside. I was a bit pissed, and she was really sweet. So she asked me back to hers..." 

Her thighs parted for Frankie of their own accord, as if her body knew it was Frankie's property and didn't need any instruction from her brain about making itself available. It was so casual and artless that she realised someone would have to be really watching them closely to know. That didn't make her feel any less exposed. The fact that Frankie must have had practice at working round backhanded like that just made her feel cheaper. She was very obviously not the first to get touched up like this. That was more of a thrill than it should be. 




Did You Ever Get Stung? Ch. 02



Frankie's fingertips found her, peeled her easily open. She offered no resistance to the middle one probing at her with no ceremony or preamble; she was already wet for it. She was such a cheap fucking slut. Frankie touching her cunt made her gasp. 

"No. Don't react. If you let it show, I'll stop." 

"... We had sex. Really hot sex actually. All... ahhh... oh God, all weekend, and it felt like it really meant something but..." 

She could feel a tear coming, without knowing whether it from the memory or having to talk about it like this. 

"Hush, it's alright. You don't need to say if you'd rather not. Have a drink." 

How pathetically grateful she felt for that. How totally she had let this person violate her privacy; in every - distractingly good and demeaning - way. She swallowed some orange juice, because Frankie had told her to. Frankie's finger flicked up to tickle her clit in passing and she almost choked. She could feel it in her nose. Dear God, she was this woman's sex doll - she'd let her do anything with her. 

Frankie's hand emerged from under the table, from up Jenna's skirt. She stroked it slowly down her arm, the same sort of small physical endearment you might see from any couple in any pub. Frankie looked into Jenna's eyes and deliberately wiped her own juices along the inside of her wrist. Jenna recognised the sound of her own voice. It seemed to be as beyond her control as her legs had been, responding as demanded by Frankie's silent command. 

"Thank you." 

Thank you? Thank you for groping me in public and making me ashamed of myself. Did I really just say that? What an amazing fucking turn-on that was! 

"Why don't you come back tomorrow, about eight. Don't dress like that: casual, trousers. Walk up to me and ask me very nicely to use you. Ask me nicely enough, and I might take you home and give you a seriously hard time. Like that?" 

The music had stopped. She didn't know when, it suddenly wasn't there anymore and she could hear the general background murmur of conversation in its place. She looked down, away from Frankie's hypnotic face and towards her own half-finished orange juice. 

"Yes." 

* 

Jenna's mind wandered badly at work, her imagination going through her wardrobe and trying every combination she could think of. She eventually settled on denim, which only left the question of what went underneath. Last Friday had just happened, accidental and spontaneous. It was a long time since she had set out with the conscious plan of having sex with a new woman. Difficult as it was to recall the exact details of her thoughts years before, she was sure she had never obsessed quite so much over choice of undies. Of course she knew she was hardly dressing to impress, and that made all the difference. 

Nothing she wore would be good enough for Frankie, that much was more than clear. She had been promised a hard time and she believed that, as much as she wished for it. Frankie would find a way to turn how she dressed against her self-esteem. How did she want to be humiliated: cheap or desperate, perverted or frumpy? She closed her eyes and wondered how it might feel to pull her jeans down at Frankie's command and be caught wearing those filmy crotchless things that she'd bought as a laugh a while ago. Then she stopped imagining possibles and remembered last night and the way she had reacted to the trace of amused contempt in 'sensible and practical'. That feeling, carried from tease to consummation, would do very well. 

She went home, got changed and decided that denim didn't look right in the mirror after all. It was a warm enough evening, and would still be light when she arrived at the pub, something summery and feminine would suit Frankie's victim. She went back to the wardrobe and selected light drawstring trousers and a blouse with buttons for someone to undo later. 

As soon as she saw Frankie, she felt relief wash through her as a physical sensation. She was bent over the pool table, and the first thing Jenna noticed was her tight-jeaned backside. Strange that, she was here to be Frankie's sex object, head teeming with thoughts of feigned reluctance not far short of rape fantasy, and yet she could apparently objectify the woman in terms that would have made her very uncomfortable with anyone else. That girl had an arse on her. The thought of that powering the sort of things that Jenna dreamed of Frankie doing to her... 

"Excuse me, Fra-" 

Frankie didn't reply. She walked round the table for her next shot, holding the cue right at the butt end and pointing it casually towards Jenna's face: woman, know your place. What had got into her, that being insulted in public like that was such a thrill? She stood back out of the way and watched Frankie play. 

It was the classic look this evening: leather jacket too clean and perfect ever to have fallen off a motorcycle; tight white T-shirt; faded jeans turned up at the cuffs. Thank God Jenna hadn't worn blue denim after all, hers would have looked ridiculously affected next to Frankie's, and that particular embarrassment didn't appeal in the least. Frankie was wearing the same black desert boots as the previous evening. They made Jenna smile with a surprisingly fond feeling: suede head and toe. 

Frankie stepped away from the table. She didn't speak or smile, the only permission she gave Jenna to approach was a slight nod. Jenna walked up to her, standing close with her mouth in the protecting shadow of Frankie's jaw. 

"Frankie, please. Please will you..."



Did You Ever Get Stung? Ch. 03



Bewildered 

Frankie parked in the driveway of an interwar suburban semi. For a moment she slipped just enough out of character to pull a bashful face that a single woman in her twenties owned a house which must have set her back the best part of two hundred thousand. Then the mask slipped back into place as she walked round the car and opened the door for Jenna. She showed her indoors, motioning straight up the stairs with no polite pretence of being shown around or offered a drink. 

The back room looked at first glance like a den that could serve at a pinch as an occasional bedroom. A single divan built in under the window doubled as a deep sofa, making the most of the limited floor space. Jenna looked nervously around as Frankie took off her biker jacket and tossed it casually on the bed. The clues were there if you looked for them: an unobtrusive zinc-plated screw eye in the top of the doorframe; a mirror on the wall opposite that was ideally placed to reflect someone who might find their wrists chained to that hook. Frankie pulled down the blinds before flicking on a stark black uplighter that glared a little too harshly off the white ceiling. She pulled her T-shirt over her head and threw it after the jacket, standing arms akimbo as she looked Jenna possessively up and down. She was wearing a surprisingly pretty and delicate red bra with lacy trim: pure Nineties shaven-headed dyke chic. 

"So, tell me: just girls? Or boys as well?" 

Jenna's throat closed up on her when she tried to speak. She barely managed to croak out the single word before sudden shyness stole her voice away. 

"Girls ..." 

Frankie retrieved a cigarette packet from her jacket and lit up without offering one to Jenna. She was laughing, chuckling quietly away to herself. 

"Just girls, but ... I told you yesterday, you're about as easy to read as a book. Unbutton the blouse now ..." 

Jenna undid it as Frankie watched, unsure how fast she should go or how much of a show she should put on. Frankie gave her no encouragement, simply standing and smoking with her eyes fixed on Jenna's bosom. She didn't know what to do when she had finished; was she supposed to strip, or at least to open it enough for Frankie to see more. 

"... Leave it there, don't take anything off yet. You can undo the bra as well." 

She fumbled behind her back, felt ungainly and clumsy for struggling under the blouse. When the clips came loose she let her hands drop limply at her sides and looked at the polished floorboards. 

Frankie stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette and bent down to pull out one of the divan drawers. Underneath a folded throw that concealed them from casual inspection, Jenna could glimpse matt black leather and shiny chrome, a collection of assorted BDSM restraints that she couldn't make out in any sort of detail. Frankie rooted about for a moment and produced a deep padded patent leather collar, tall enough to force the chin up and garnished with several D-rings. 

"You know, if you were mine I'd fasten this round your neck with all appropriate ceremony, and then I'd keep you crawling the whole weekend long. Would you like that?" 

Jenna wanted to say yes, but her voice still wouldn't answer for her. She nodded her head. Frankie ignored her, putting the expensive craftsman piece carefully back in the bottom of the drawer and instead taking out a worn and floppy old tan dog collar that was obviously exactly that - pet shop rather than sex boutique. She slid it across the floor to stop against Jenna's shoe. 

"Put that on. Down on your knees." 

The meaning was clear enough, clearer for not being said in so many words. You aren't mine. You aren't a valued piece of property to be pampered and dressed up. You aren't even a useful slave. You're just a stray bitch who's wandered onto my property. She had cuffs at home, which she had only ever used alone and in secret. She had never worn a leather collar before in her life, had never put any of this gear on in front of someone else. It was utterly humiliating to fix the buckle round her own neck as she knelt at Frankie's feet. It wasn't how her fantasies had imagined - both better and worse, exquisitely embarrassing and making her ears pound. What it was doing in her belly was delicious, not to mention mortifying. Which only made it even better, which only made it worse ... 

With the collar in place, Frankie dropped two wrist cuffs between her knees and told her to put them on too. They were soft purple nylon and black Velcro webbing, the sort of practical inexpensive toys that you might buy if you fancied a quick experimental game of tie-me-up for a laugh. One look in that drawer made her realise that was hardly Frankie's scene. She was being insulted, told that she wasn't a serious enough player for the real kit, told once again that she hadn't done anything to deserve being Frankie's property. 

One last thing before Frankie pushed the drawer closed with her foot. She took out a dog lead, crossed the room and squatted down to slip the chain around a radiator pipe and feed it back through the leather wrist loop. She left it lying on the floor as she stood up and turned her attention back to Jenna. 

"Your cunt wet yet, or do you need to stick your hand down your trousers and check?" 

That, she knew, wasn't a rhetorical question. She could force her reluctant voice to make an utterly degrading admission right now, or she could do it in a couple of minutes after fingering herself for Frankie's amusement. Or she could say 'stop now, Fran', but there was something about the knowledge that she could do so which prevented her. This was harder in reality than she had ever thought it could be, and that made it better than her wildest hopes. She had to cough to clear her throat. 

"My ... my cunt's wet, Frankie." 

"Good. Wait." 

Frankie picked up her jacket and walked out, leaving Jenna alone on her knees and reflecting on just how true that shameful admission was. Had she ever been this horny without any physical contact at all? Well, maybe when reading, but that didn't count. Never from just being in a room with another person, sharing words and looks and promises of who knew what to come. She took deliberate deep breaths to calm herself down and listened to Frankie moving about in the main bedroom. She heard footsteps coming back. 

Frankie was wearing her leather jacket again, unzipped and gaping open under its own weight, with nothing underneath except her pretty feminine bra and a black crotchless harness. Her hands hung loose at her sides, not limp and defeated like Jenna's but as lightly poised as her prowling walk. 

"Just girls, but ... But ..." 

Jenna wasn't great at judging dimensions, she had always been suspicious of the improbable precision of porn. She guessed the dildo must be five or six inches long. It was what the websites called 'realistic', thanks to the veined circumcised shape and the balls moulded at the base, although she'd never seen anyone in her life whose skin was that weird salmon mousse shade of pink. It wasn't entirely rigid, there was enough play in its length to flop stiffly as Frankie's steps brought her closer. It didn't look remotely organic, but it seemed entirely at home standing out from between Frankie's legs. Wearing it put an edge of cruelty into her voice that hadn't been there before. 

"... Suck my dick." 

With it waved in her face like that, her nose was full of its rubber smell. She understood, without needing to be told, that Frankie didn't expect her to use her hands. She stretched out her jaw and put her head forward, trying to capture the knob with her tongue. It escaped and prodded her cheek, leaving her with nothing in her mouth but the unpleasant taste. She felt like an idiot. Her second try managed to trap it, suddenly it was in the back of her throat making her gag. To her surprise, Frankie didn't take her by the hair and fuck her face. She just stood in front of Jenna and let herself be fellated, accepting the worship that was her due. 

Jenna had never done this before - not once, for male or female. She had never added a gag to her solitary bondage games. She had done all sorts of wonderfully rewarding oral things to mouths and breasts and clits, but she'd never been penetrated and filled like this. It felt like her mouth was being used for a cunt. It was both strangely comforting and entirely violating, like nursing on a nipple and being raped all at once. She knew Frankie was looking down at her and watching her stretched lips sliding up and down the shaft, could see the way it was making her drool out of the corner of her mouth. Frankie reached down, pushed her face away and tilted her chin back to look up. 

"Ask me again. Be polite." 

"Please use me, Frankie." 

"As what? Cook? Do my housework?" 

"Use me for sex. Please." 

"Call me 'sir'." 

Jenna's mouth moved, lips framing the words but no sound coming out until Frankie's grip tightened on her jaw and made her mumble in response. 

"Please fuck me sir." 

"Up." 

Jenna scrambled to her feet as Frankie lifted her face. Frankie smiled at her, cool and catlike. She let Frankie take her by the wrist and pull her hand inside the jacket, found herself kneading Frankie's breast through the lace. Frankie's eyes closed, her lips parted and she sighed. Jenna could feel the nipple growing to her touch. Frankie pulled her other hand downwards and made her wrap it around the shaft of the dildo. She was a doll again, letting Frankie pose and manipulate her: her right hand was pushed up off the breast and over the neck, stroking Frankie's pretty feminine face as Frankie made her rub her left up and down the dick and its covering of her own saliva. Frankie's cheek was fluttering in her palm, breathing as quickly as if Jenna really was wanking her. She didn't stop stroking with both hands when Frankie let go of her wrists to fiddle with the drawstring of her trousers. 

"Say it again." 

"Please fuck me sir." 

Frankie took her by the shoulders and turned her round to face the mirror, raised her arms and pressed her palms to the wall on either side of her own reflection. She felt her trousers being dragged forcefully down, then her knickers after, both of them tangling to a halt halfway down her thighs. Her breath was fogging the glass, making her own face unfocussed in front of her nose. 

"Say it again." 

Third time, looking into her own eyes from inches away as she felt the rubber knob pressing against her. 

"Please fuck me sir." 

"Tell me again, are you wet yet?" 

"Yes sir, my cunt's wet for you." 

Frankie's hands went up inside her blouse, slid into her bra from underneath and took her nipples between thumb and forefinger. Frankie rubbed them, surprisingly gently, and leant in to whisper surprisingly softly in her ear. 

"Not what you want me to take, is it?" 

Jenna closed her eyes. She rested her forehead on the cold glass and smudged it with sweat that came from far more than the warmth of the night. She let the chill steady her enough to whisper the one word. 

"No." 

The pressure in Frankie's fingertips was increasing, building slowly from firm to crushing, starting that dull throbbing ache she knew from her own clamps. Frankie's voice remained soft in her ear as Frankie began to hurt her body. 

"Disgusting slut, aren't you? Let anyone do that to you?" 

"No. No ... never. Just you." 

"Listen to me, this is what you're going to do. You're going to beg. You're going to tell me how much you want it. You're not going to repeat yourself, and you're not going to stop talking as long as I'm doing it to you. You're going to say every dirty, filthy word you know while I give you exactly what you've asked for. Now open your eyes, look at yourself, and say it for me." 

Frankie pinched and rolled her nipples, making her suck in shallow little gasps as she watched the pain dilate her pupils in the smeared, fuzzy glass. 

"Please sir, I want you to fuck me in the arse." 

She gave herself completely into Frankie's control; let herself be turned and guided two shambling, trouser-hobbled steps before being pushed to her knees. She let herself be bent forward until her forearms were resting on the floor and the boards were just in front of her face. She let Frankie clip her wrist cuffs to the lead, chaining her to the radiator; and she bowed her head down to the floor and submitted in silence to Frankie's fingers methodically working lubricant into her anus. Just that on its own was the consummation of years of yearning: what she'd been too shy to admit to her first few girlfriends; what she had begged Molls for in vain; what she imagined when she read Elspeth Malone or tied herself to her own bed but was always too embarrassed to do any more than the lightest teasing play at when she masturbated. She'd wanted a dominant powerful woman to do that to her for so long, and Frankie was so good at stringing it out to be every bit of what she had hoped for. 

Frankie's knees were inside hers, spreading her legs as far as her trousers and knickers allowed, Frankie's hand was guiding the firm enough but slightly squidgy tip against her terrified lube-slick entrance. 

"Beg for it, bitch." 

"Please sir, fuck me in the arse. Please Frankie, please bugger me. Oh ... Oh fuck, Frankie, that's hurting a bit." 

"Want me to stop?" 

"No, it's OK. Please ... please fuck me slowly. Want you to hurt just a tiny bit. Please sir, make it hurt when you sodomise me. Please ..." 

Frankie fucked her slowly, taking her with just enough force to give her the sense of violation that she needed; taking enough time and enough obvious pleasure to make her feel used and owned. Frankie did the most demeaning thing she could imagine to her, in just the way she had always wanted. She gave herself entirely over to Frankie's hands grasping her hips, and Frankie's leather jacket creaking behind her with every thrust, and Frankie's strap-on plundering inside her. She let herself go in the security of Frankie's domination, let her mouth run filthy riot and wallowed in the ecstatic joy of rolling in the gutter because Frankie told her to. 

Frankie's right hand slipped off her hip and slid down in front. Frankie's left took her by the hair and pulled her head back. Frankie's touch was making her insides dissolve and her thighs tremble. 

"Beg for it." 

"Oh please Frankie. Please don't stop doing that. Oh please yes, Frankie, make me come with your cock in my arse." 

* 

Frankie was away for the weekend, and anyway they had been clear that what happened on Thursday night wasn't a relationship. They left it that they had both had a great time and maybe they'd do it again some day. It was probably for the best, Jenna had a worrying feeling that she might be tempted to fall in love and ruin the impersonal dirtiness of the kinky sex. She blundered blearily through Friday at work, amazed that nobody had seen fit to pull her up over the obvious emotional rollercoaster and fatigue that she had brought in with her all week. 

She went home and collapsed on her bed, with her bum just sore enough for a teasing memento and her mind swarming with hardcore memories. The lingering post-sexual high made her remember what Liz had said about trying to write again. She liked imagining the scenarios but had never quite reached the point where writing the actual description was not an embarrassment. It was weird to look at the screen and see 'fuck me in the arse' there in the stark black on white of her own words. She supposed it must be something you got used to with practice. Perhaps she would talk about it seriously with Liz when they met for a lunchtime drink. She put the laptop aside, went to bed early, and stroked herself to slow indulgent orgasm as she remembered how Frankie had treated her. 

The pub wasn't busy yet when she arrived with a couple of shopping bags just after midday. The atmosphere was a little strange, as if she had walked in for the first time as a stranger. Perhaps she was, perhaps this was a different crowd to the weekday evenings she was used to. She got a couple of very funny looks, had the distinct feeling that the couple over by the door where whispering about her behind her back. The barmaid wasn't Gabby; she smirked away to serve someone else instead. 

"Hey Jen ..." 

Liz had walked in behind her, looking as much like a suburban mum as always. She took off her sunglasses and gave Jenna a strange brittle smile. 

"... Have you got a minute? I didn't want to say it over the phone, but there's something I need to talk to you about. Outside." 

Jenna abandoned her attempt to get served and followed Liz out onto the pavement. Liz took one look at the bondage-harnessed mannequin in the window of the shop opposite and tutted to herself. She put a hand lightly on Jenna's arm and guided her down the hill. 

"What's going on, Liz?" 

"Do you know a girl called Frankie?" 

She didn't like the sound of Liz' voice at all. It was ominously gentle, preparing her for very bad news. 

"Has something happened?" 

"Not exactly. Look, Jen ... this isn't really any of my business and I don't really know how to say it. Please don't be offended. Do you follow her blog at all?" 

"Didn't know she had one. Why?" 

The pieces didn't connect in her head. Unlike Sasha, she didn't remotely see it coming. What did Frankie's blog have to do with anything? 

"So you don't know about the video?" 

"What?" 

"There's this video. Of you and her." 

The ground fell out from underneath her. She actually had to lean against a shopfront for support. She knew it could be only one thing - they had only done one thing - but she had to ask. 

"Me and her what?" 

"Christ, Jen, I don't know. You're my friend, I stopped watching as soon as I recognised you." 

Frankie's hand in her hair, pulling her head back. At the time it seemed so natural, so obvious to pull her hair along with all the rest. Lifting her face towards wherever the hidden camera must have been: please make me come with your cock in my arse. She let Liz lead her away from the crowds, stumbled blankly along for five minutes until they were in the comparative privacy of gentrified flats around the old canal dock. She stood looking at the ornamental water plants until her brain began to function again. 

"Why were you watching anyway?" 

"I didn't have a clue it was you, or even anyone local. A friend sent me the link overnight, just because ..." 

"Just because what? Are you telling me this has gone viral or something?" 

Liz looked away and muttered something about big splashes in small ponds. 

"When I went in there just now it was like the bad guy in a western. They've all fucking seen it haven't they? Christ's sakes, I'll never be able to show my face in that place again." 

"It'll die down, Jen. People forget, you know what it's like these days; famous for fifteen seconds." 

"That's easy for you to say. You know what this means, don't you? I'll have teenage boys and dirty old men wanking over me from Norway to New Zealand. What about people at work? Shit! Fuck! What am I going to do?" 

Liz put a hand on her arm and spoke very slowly and calmly. 

"You're going to do what we all have to, sweetheart. You're going to get back on your feet and carry on, because it's not easy but there isn't any other option. Come on, let's you and me go find somewhere quieter for a drink or five." 

* 

Liz came round on Sunday and did her best to wheedle Jenna out of her self-pitying bed for a walk somewhere green. Eventually they compromised with her getting washed and dressed to sit in her own front garden. In the event that turned out to be as busy as the park, Dan from the top flat invited them to the barbecue he was holding in the back. Jenna politely refused, and so they sat beside the path on a blanket and watched guests wander back and forth through the house. It was hardly suited to the sort of intimate confessional atmosphere Jenna's mood demanded, the conversation stuttered in fits and starts of temporary privacy. 




Did You Ever Get Stung? Ch. 03



"Nobody's going to hold Lynsey against you." 

"I was an idiot." 

"Jen, she's almost a rite of passage. The odd lesbians out round here are the ones who haven't slept with her." 

"Have you?" 

"You're forgetting what an old lady I am. I haven't been single since she was about thirteen. Back in my student days, when the world and the Arches were both young, I notched a couple of equally notorious bedposts. It happens - Hi there, just go on through." 

Jenna lay back and closed her eyes, taking advantage of the latest interruption to hide away. A lawnmower buzzed into life a couple of gardens over. Everything seemed so normal and domestic, like a memory of the safe simplicities of childhood all those years ago when her parents still talked to her. How had she managed to fuck her life up so badly since? There were times she almost wondered if there might even be some truth in the hateful things her father had said before showing her the door. She was such a magnet for strange destructive girls. 

"What the fuck is wrong with people in this town anyway." 

It wasn't a question. She had made a terrible mistake in moving here, one that could not be easily undone. The cramped knot of fear over the reception she might get the next morning was making her sick. Sorry, Ms Saunderson, but you're not really fitting in here, are you? Perhaps we both made a mistake. They wouldn't fire her for the video, not in so many words, it would be too easy for her to twist into an Equality Act claim. It wouldn't be hard to find another excuse. Or perhaps it would just be giggly office gossip behind her back for the rest of her life. There was bound to be at least one guy with a thing for girl on girl who got seriously creepy over the whole fucking shambles. Liz was talking to her. 

"You're being a bit hard on us, sweetheart." 

"You think?" 

"Look, I'm not judging your morals for one second; even if I wanted to, I've got no room to criticise. You've done nothing wrong, but you could have been a little wiser. Would it really have been any different down south if you'd walked into a new environment like that with a sign round your neck saying 'available'?" 

"Thanks a lot for the sympathy." 

"I thought we liked the fact that we tell each other the truth. Or does that have to change now we're not doing it over email?" 

"I guess not. Oh Liz, I've screwed everything up so badly in the last ten days. I don't know what's got into me ..." 

Which wasn't strictly true, but she was too shy to mention Lucy. Taking that surreal encounter seriously would make her sound somewhere between a superstitious fool and completely certifiable, so she kept it to herself. The underlying fact remained, all her wishes and fantasies were biting her painfully in the bum. 

"... I just wanted to feel the things I was missing out on, and they're twisting round into something ugly or hurtful." 

Open eyes and look up at the clouds, play that old childhood game of picking out the ones that look like countries. Why does one always remind her of Australia? Which option would enable her to escape with at least some trace of dignity: letting the thing die away without acknowledging it, or suing Frankie to hell and gone? It was like Molls hitting her all over again, too embarrassed at being victimised to make a fuss over it. 

"First principles, Clareece ..." 

Liz was sitting up, arms wrapped round her knees and sunglasses on the end of her nose like a disapproving librarian. She seemed as distractedly insular as Jenna, speaking almost to herself. 

"Come again?" 

"I don't sit down and think 'today I'm going to write something with strap-ons and bondage and a shower scene'. I start with why X is into Y, and that decides what they do together. What is the fundamental purpose behind it all, what gives it any meaning? Seriously, did you want to be buggered by a girl with stubbly hair because you wanted to be buggered by a girl with stubbly hair?" 

"No ..." 

No, you're right. It's some sort of symbol. I want to give myself totally to someone, someone I can trust so utterly and implicitly that I can let her tie me up and put something in my backside. Someone who won't betray that trust the way Frankie did. 

She watched Liz reach up to run her finger absent-mindedly inside the fine silver chain of her amber necklace and decided she must have been right in her assumption that it was a gift from Martine. 

Boisterous sounds from the barbecue were drifting through the open doors of the house, making her wonder if they should have said yes after all. Dan was something sporty - rugby she thought, but she hadn't exactly been paying attention - he was 'normal': mid-twenties, girlfriend, mates with girlfriends. She wanted to socialise, to just let go of the angst and chat to people about mundane everyday stuff. She wanted to socialise in an environment that didn't include all the awkwardness of rugby boys chatting her up as soon as they got a little tipsy. She wanted to be herself without predatory psycho bitches doing the same thing. Why was it so fucking impossible to put sex aside long enough to fall in love with someone first? 

"... Why are real people such pricks, Liz? God, sometimes I so wish I could just be Ellie's pet." 

Liz shook her head self-consciously. It must be weird, thought Jenna. Trying to write something of her own had been bizarre enough, but she couldn't help wondering if part of her reluctance was the sick fear that she might one day get round to publishing it. Right now, she was quite certain, somewhere or other in the world there was at least one man watching her on her knees in front of Frankie as he tugged on his wotsit. That idea disgusted her enough to wish she could hide in the shower for the rest of her life, but she knew it was entirely impersonal. For all that he probably imagined spunking all over her face when Frankie pulled her head back and she said that thing about a cock in her arse, she was still just a vacant puppet dancing to Frankie's command. How must it feel to create something from your own desires and experience, someone who was both a reflection of yourself and a character you liked, and then get emails from complete strangers telling you how much they wanted to fuck her? 

Liz had once told her that she wrote, in part, as a way to satisfy the creative void of childlessness. In what other situation is it acceptable to tell someone you enjoy wanking over their daughter? She had done it herself, of course, in the beginning: Dear Ms Malone, I'm just writing to say how hot I thought ... She still did, every time Liz let her read a work in progress, that was part of their relationship. It didn't seem so appropriate sitting next to each other on the grass like this. She was making her friend blush. 

Liz grinned, simultaneously sad and reassuring, and leant across to give Jenna's ankle a friendly squeeze. 

"So do I, that's why I started writing her in the first place. You know I was never tempted to cheat in life. I won't pretend I didn't sometimes need a fantasy where things worked out the way they should have. This barbecue business has got me thinking how miserable eating alone gets, do you fancy coming round sometime for a meal and cheer us both up?" 

Jenna liked the sound of that. She liked the safeness of Liz, the way that they could both relax because they knew the boundaries. Whatever happened when she went to work in the morning, she wasn't going to drop dead. Life, as Liz had said more than once, went on even when you wished it wouldn't. She could hide in bed from her own stupidity for as long as she wanted, that wouldn't make it go away. 

"Why not? What about next weekend?" 

"Tricky, I'm popping over to York Castle to hang around Kirkgate and try getting a feel for the everyday details. Doing anything this Wednesday evening?" 

"Haven't got any plans." 

Which, in its way, was perhaps the most truthful thing she had ever said to anyone. 

***** 

There was a candle on the kitchen table, a plain thick white half-burnt candle sitting in a glass dish. Liz muttered an apology that Jenna didn't catch and moved it out of the way. Jenna almost said that she liked candles anyway, then realised that they might perhaps raise inappropriate memories. She could have kicked herself, she had somehow managed to be almost half an hour early and had caught Liz still tidying up. If the last fortnight had taught her anything at all, it should have been not to blunder unannounced into her friends' homes. She made polite conversation and tried not to get in the way as Liz cooked. 

"How's writing?" 

"Bloody awful, this is about the worst period of sustained block I've had since ... since I started writing again. I got so frustrated last night that I tried to knock out a bit of kink, just for light relief and get my brain working." 

Liz' style had been changing over the last year. Jenna didn't like to ask if the shift from fetish scenarios towards more conventional sex was something to do with the grieving process, or if she was just bored with bondage. It must be difficult enough to keep thinking up new variations on the formula. She liked the explicit romance stuff, but when she was honest they were times she missed the really dirty. 

"Going to let me read it?" 

"When it's finished ..." 

Liz tipped a shy nod towards the abandoned candle. 

"... Been so long, couldn't remember what hot wax even feels like." 

Jenna grinned self-consciously. That was their relationship in a nutshell: outrageous sexual chitchat without flirtation, always on the verge of far too much information, somehow just managing to keep it appropriate. Shared smiles and guilty laughs. 

"I see." 

"Oh no you don't, that's what they call research." 

"Course it is. What's it like?" 

Liz smiled. That was a line, just as much as Jenna's need to hide her small stash of toys and restraints in the back of the wardrobe before Liz came round to help with the unpacking. She shook her head. 

"Wait and read." 

They laid the table. As if it was an afterthought, Liz dug around in a drawer and produced a couple of conventional tall red candles that looked like Christmas leftovers, which she set in holders. They sat down and ate in the summer evening that didn't require any illumination at all. Liz said that she liked the smell, that it didn't feel she was properly entertaining without that warm hint of smoke in her nose. 

"I want to thank you for this, it's really nice. I know it was all my own stupidity, but my faith in human nature has taken a bit of a beating recently." 

"Don't mention it." 

"You alright, Liz?" 

"I'm fine." 

Jenna reached for her wine. Liz wasn't fine, but she obviously didn't want to discuss it. Jenna looked down the table at her friend and wished there was something she could do to help. It was one of those times when she wanted to give the woman a good cuddle and promise her things would be alright in the end, which was absurd and insulting. The candlelight was catching on the amber necklace. Not for the first time, Jenna reminded herself that tiniest shadowed tease of cleavage was off-limits as far as her imagination was concerned. She did her best not to wonder exactly where Liz had been dripping wax for purely research purposes. When they finished the main course, Liz tidied the plates away and announced that she had vanilla cheesecake in the fridge. 

"Now you're spoiling me." 

"Nonsense, I owe you anyway." 

"For what?" 

"Nothing ... sorry." 

Liz set the plate on the table in front of Jenna. She glanced away as she did, as if she had said far too much. 

"What is wrong Liz?" 

Jenna reached out for Liz' hand moving from her plate. Liz flinched slightly as she touched the back of it, making her pull away again. What was happening? Why did they both suddenly feel so uncomfortable in each other's company? Liz took a deep breath. 

"I keep thinking about that video. I'm sorry, I know that's unforgivable of me." 

"Thinking what?" 

"That I'd like to see more of it." 

How could she even object, when she had spent so much time so deep into Liz' mind and all its sexual secrets? It really was very late to stand upon privacy now. She couldn't help thinking that of all the people who might sit in front of their computers to watch Frankie screw her up the arse, Liz was perhaps the one who would embarrass her the least. She knew Liz wouldn't despise her for it, in a way she wished ... 

"I've always imagined Ellie doing that to me." 

Liz picked up Jenna's fork and cut the point from the cheesecake segment. She held it for a few seconds, then slid it slowly off the tines and lifted it between the tips of her thumb and forefinger instead. Her voice was small and faint, wafting past the candle flame like a summer breeze. 

"I'm not Ellie, sweetheart." 

"I know." 

Jenna dipped her face to Liz' hand, taking the cheesecake from her fingers. She closed her eyes and let it melt into her mouth. 

"I think you should go." 

"I'm sorry, Liz, I didn't mean to -" 

"I can't do it here. Not in this house." 

* 

Jenna got a text message, as she was standing opposite the petrol station in Alderbeck waiting for her connecting bus: Play or make love? She didn't even need to think about the answer, she valued Liz' friendship far too much. Please Miss, can we play - if I promise to be a good girl? Her thumb hovered for a second over the screen, feeling herself throb just at the thought of sending it. Liz was very wise; far too wise to give her a lift home and risk them coming off the boil together in the car for fifteen minutes. Wise enough to know that there had to be some sharp unambiguous division between what was past and what was about to happen. Liz, after all, was an expert in setting up these situations. Jenna pressed her thumb down. 

She got home, hung her work jacket on the hook and put the kettle on just in case. She wondered whether she should do anything else to prepare. Liz had given her no instructions, was she supposed to be obediently passive or try to anticipate her Mistress' desires? All she had was another text: I won't tie your legs - tap feet alternately means stop, OK? She had acknowledged the message, and thought again how clever it to get that chore out of the way without speaking. 

Her indecision didn't last long, she had been home barely ten minutes when the doorbell rang. Liz was on the steps, standing back from the door so that she was higher than Jenna. She was wearing an unseasonal coat that hung almost to her patent black peep-toe heels, her old leather satchel looking fuller than usual over her shoulder. Instead of her usual smoky grey sunglasses she was wearing a pair that covered her eyes in iridescent curtains like a film of oil. Her usually loose hair was twisted back and tied severely, highlighting her throat and the absence of her necklace. She didn't give either of them time for small talk. 

"I don't want to hear one pronoun out of your mouth. You call me 'Miss', nothing else. If you earn a title, I'll give you one, until then don't refer to yourself at all. Is that understood?" 

"Yes Miss." 

"Invite me in." 

"Please come in Miss." 

"Blouse off, show me the tits. Now!" 

She was unrecognisable. The flat clipped monotone in place of her usual warm voice was entirely unexpected. It was irresistible, it made it possible - almost easy - to do the unimaginable. She couldn't have stripped for Liz without terrible awkwardness on both sides, and yet here she was with the front door barely closed and her bra already dropping to join her blouse on the carpet, those shimmering lenses looking her casually up and down as the voice continued. 

"Proper training is a long process, one which Miss is not currently in the mood for. Miss wants to fuck, not to educate. There is no carrot here, if you are less than adequate there will be punishment, your only reward will be lack of punishment. Hesitate, refuse, question, fail to perform to Miss' satisfaction, and Miss will hurt. What is the purpose of your mouth?" 

"I don't -" 

Miss slapped her, open-handed across her left cheek. It smarted, more than that it shocked her. It made her flinch away and raise her hands. She wasn't used to being hit. The sound of it echoed round her living room. Could the couple upstairs hear it? 

"Hands behind your back, don't move them again without permission. I told you about pronouns and I have no intention of repeating myself. The purpose of your mouth is to please Miss. You please Miss with your mouth by making sounds that Miss enjoys, by providing physical sensations that arouse Miss, and demonstrating that you are the cheap dirty little slut that Miss is in the mood to abuse. Do you understand that the first time, or does Miss need to smack you again?" 

Trick question: 'I understand' has a pronoun; 'Miss doesn't need to slap me' could be taken as impertinent. She couldn't deny that Frankie had been fun - at least at the time, before the betrayal - but 'fun' was what it was. Naughty games, and letting herself have Frankie's phallic desires imposed upon her. This was entirely different, someone who knew enough of Jenna's own secrets and focussed on them from the moment she opened the door. Someone who knew Jenna well enough to simply push her to the wall and fuck her mind. 

"Understand." 

"Sex toys. Where are they?" 

No asking if there were any, no hint in the voice that everyone had them and that was perfectly normal. Just the chill contempt that said 'I know you've been nasty and I want to see the evidence'. Little more than an hour before it had crossed her mind that she had needed to hide them from her friend Liz. 

"Bedroom. Wardrobe, in a carrier bag." 

It kept them together and out of the dust, that was all. Saying it aloud sounded so tacky, so shameful. She should have a nice tasteful box or decent bag to hide them in. Surely Miss didn't keep hers in an old supermarket carrier bag. 

"Fetch. Don't forget, hands behind back." 

Miss implied, with her choice of words and her casual reminder. Miss didn't tell her to carry the bag back between her teeth - she simply hinted that she expected it, that any other way would get her slapped again - and let her make the humiliating decision of her own accord. Jenna walked back from the bedroom, head bowed as much from shame as the weight dragging at her teeth, the bag swinging and bumping against her belly and groin. She felt entirely exposed like this, with her breasts on show and her hands behind her back. She dropped the bag between Miss' feet. Miss nodded towards the wooden chair that she had carried through from the kitchen and set uncomfortably close to the bay window in the living room. 

"Sit ..." 

Jenna sat down. Her back was to the window. She knew very well that you had to be squatting on the lip of the front lawn in order to see into the room at all. Nobody had any business doing that at any hour, let alone ten-thirty at night. She knew it very well, and it didn't matter in the slightest - she was naked to the waist and sitting in front of an uncurtained window. Miss reached out and slapped her right cheek, not quite as hard as before. 

"... Disobedience gets hit as punishment, disappointment gets attention-slapped like that. Miss doesn't want dignified, nor pretty. Miss wants cheap, dirty slut. Try again. Sit." 

Jenna stood up. Miss stepped as far back as the room allowed and folded her arms expectantly. Jenna dragged her plain black work skirt up her legs until it was gathered at her waist. She sat her bum down on the wooden seat and opened her knees. Her knickers, as chance would have it, were white today. She could feel them sticky against her as she spread her legs, imagined that Miss could probably see them stained already. 




Did You Ever Get Stung? Ch. 03



Miss didn't acknowledge what she had done, but neither did she tell her to do it again. She tipped the carrier bag out onto the sofa, put the handcuffs to one side and told Jenna to feel her own tits up while she waited. The coarseness of her language was liberating, it told Jenna not to caress her breasts but to grab nipples between finger and thumb to tug and jiggle. That incredible rush of rolling in the mud again. Miss didn't strew the contents of her own satchel over the room, she sorted calmly through it and only took out what she wanted. The first sight of what she chose did strange and wonderful things to Jenna's insides. She had to fight to keep her legs open the way she knew was expected of her, her knees wanted to snap shut and hide the turmoil that she felt sure must be visible in her cunt. Miss' mouth smiled beneath her sunglasses. 

The O-ring, Jenna was quite certain, was nowhere near as thick around as Frankie's strap-on and that had - just - managed to fit. If she could take that without dislocating her jaw, she could take a gag. As it advanced towards her in Miss' hands, she wasn't so sure. It looked absurdly, brutally, too much, and the sound of Miss' voice wasn't doing anything to reassure her. 

"We were saying, your mouth exists to please Miss. When we've finished using you for the night, you will spend a nice long time thanking Miss with the slowest, best and most intense orgasm your tongue is capable of. Before that there's going to be all the thrills of your poor little voice begging not to be hurt any more, all sorts of physical treats too. But first of all, we're going to use it to demonstrate subordination. Remember, Miss is not interested in dignity or beauty." 

She opened her mouth and let Miss put the ring in place behind her teeth. The steel core was covered in silicone, soft and squishy, almost tasteless. Miss fastened the harness round her head, trapping her hair uncomfortably at the back, dehumanising her with its riding school connotations. Her mouth seemed to be flooding with saliva before the buckle was even secured. She had offered no resistance from the beginning, but this involuntary gaping vulnerability turned her into a rag doll for Miss to arrange. She let her hands be put up to the back of her neck and felt herself being shackled with her own steel cuffs. Miss fetched a long leather strap from her satchel, which she used to connect the handcuff to the back of the chair. Jenna's wrists were pulled down, elbows against the side of her face and shoulders taking just enough strain for the first stirrings of discomfort. 

Miss went back to her satchel, put two candles on the mantelpiece and lit them, laid her phone alongside Jenna's speaker dock, turned off the lights. She worked slowly and methodically, talking at Jenna in the same calm flat, dismissive voice. 

"To answer your earlier question, wax doesn't have to be immediately painful. It depends on skill: how hot, how long, how fast ... so many variables. It can be quite a gentle warming sensation to drip on, gets slowly hotter as you leave it in place, and then after you peel it off there's this tingling sensitivity left behind ready for the next time. Overall it's quite a subtle form of nipple play, but skill and patience can create intensity. Unless those clamps of yours are just for show, I imagine you've got proper pain slut tits, haven't you? Should be an interesting challenge. Shall we begin?" 

Miss slipped her coat from her shoulders. Jenna almost choked on the gag. For all her reading she would never have imagined Liz - and for all the play-acting Liz was surely in there somewhere - in that barely decent leather mini and flat stud-fastened waistcoat. Neither had she imagined a body quite like that under her loose and conservative wardrobe. Miss stalked high-heeled to her phone, and Jenna marvelled at her bum undulating under the tight black surface. The music started with the thrum of a single bass string, working up through the chair legs and resonating in her groin, languid tinkly strumming leading into a hoarse dissipated female voice that promised sex at its most darkly decadent. 

Miss floated back towards her on swaying hypnotic hips in the candlelight, mouth miming to words that Jenna only slowly recognised as Smells like teen spirit. Her hand went over Jenna's eyes and her voice husked 'dirty words' softly in Jenna's ear, as the other voice swept Jenna up in the sudden darkness she felt teeth slowly bite down on her earlobe. She gasped through the gag, but the hand gripped her eyes tighter and the teeth bit harder until she learned to take her pain in silence. Two voices in her head, both cruel, one sighing 'yeah ... oh yeah ...' into her smarting ear and the other rambling through some sort of gloriously stoned poetic madness that reminded her of that camp boy at university who used to recite Ginsberg when he got pissed. Miss seemed to drift away behind her, one hand still over her eyes and the other taking hold of her throat with just enough force to make her pant. 

She would never have believed as simple a thing as a gag could have this much effect on how she felt inside and about herself. Sucking on Frankie's cock didn't begin to compare to feeling herself dribbling helplessly over her jammed open chin. It was utterly degrading, all the more so for being shut away behind the blindfold of Miss' hand listening to both those voices babbling through scratchy strings about entertaining their libido. She was falling into the sound, into the predatory sensuality of it. By the time the music ended it had already seduced and debauched her, leaving her entirely available to whatever her Mistress chose to do. 

Miss only took her hand from Jenna's eyes to take hold of her hair and tug her head back until she was staring at the ceiling. She squatted down, pulled Jenna's sodden gusset forcefully to the side and gave her a possessive but insultingly casual finger-fucking that made her teeth dig into the silicone with something between pretended shame and the real thing. 

"Miss needs to remember exactly what a subordinate sluttish cunt tastes like when its owner is being very kind to it ..." 

Miss' left hand pushed her head forward, the fingers of Miss' right pushed their thick coating of cum over her tongue and made her cough. Miss pulled her head to the side and kissed her, fierce and penetrating, no gentleness in it at all. 

"... Mmmmm ... not bad. I'm going to need to hurt you a lot more before we can even think about you earning my tongue in your tight little hole, but that is such a tempting goal. No more 'Miss' now, time to be honest. I want to make you beg and whimper ..." 

She stood up, unzipped the miniskirt and tugged it off, presenting Jenna with her tidily trimmed pubic hair and untidily apparent lustful intentions. How heady it was to have her hungry cunt shoved in Jenna's face to bathe her in the scent of how much she enjoyed holding this sort of power. She straddled the chair and settled herself into Jenna's lap. 

"... I am going to take my first orgasm from you. Take it, whilst I'm thinking about how I'm going to hurt. All the other times I come before I've finished with you: you're going to give me those, after we both know how the hurting feels." 

She wrapped her arms around Jenna's head and fucked Jenna's mouth with her tongue as she rubbed herself against Jenna's belly. 

* 

She woke up, tangled in her sweaty sheets with her nipples still weirdly warm and tender from the wax and Liz' smell all over her. She felt so good - so relaxed and at peace - that it took her a moment to realise she was alone. It took another to realise what the sound was. 

She tapped the shower room door, trying to make herself heard over the desolate sobbing without banging on it. 

"Liz. Liz, honey, can I come in please?" 

No answer, just more sobbing. The sort of sobbing, she knew too well from her own experience, that left your stomach sick and shoulders sore, that dragged misery up from somewhere down around your womb. She pushed the door slowly open anyway. 

"Liz. Liz?" 

Liz was sitting on the toilet, dressed in sensible everyday clothes that must have been folded into the bottom of her satchel, face buried in her hands and curtained off by her loose hair. Jenna put a hand on her shoulder. The crying stopped, Liz froze entirely. 

"Please don't ..." 

She lifted her head up and sighed, coughed to clear a space for her hoarse whispering croak. 

"... Not your fault, Jen. Not angry at you, but please don't ever touch me again. Sorry, need to go now." 

"Liz, please ..." 

Vacant, disbelieving whisper, as if Liz had witnessed some accident too horrific to comprehend. She stood up. 

"Need to go. Sorry, not your fault." 

Jenna was so shocked that she let Liz stumble past her. It was only then that the realisation broke. What the fuck had she just done? How many times had Liz explained to her how she felt, how often had she stopped herself from saying something kindly meant that could only have hurt? She had seduced her best and grieving friend; with no more excuse than one glass of wine she'd played on the vulnerability of someone she knew was struggling even more than she was. Liz had said she couldn't have sex with someone in her own home, so Jenna had invited her back here. She had encouraged Liz to tie her up with gear that must have been bought to use with Martine. For the last six hours she had managed to forget every tiny trace of decency, good friendship and plain common sense that she had ever possessed. And to top it off she had let Liz go without a word of apology. She grabbed her dressing gown and bolted for the door. 

It was too late. She stood on the pavement in her bare feet and watched Liz' tail lights rounding the corner. It was two in the morning, she had just made the worst mistake in her life, and she honestly wanted to die. 

"Reckon she'll ever forgive you?" 

Lucy was leaning against a parked car and managing not to set the alarm off. If there was anything left that could make Jenna feel sicker at herself than she already did, it was the smug look on Lucy's face. 

"What the fuck do you want?" 

"Isn't that blindingly obvious? Tell me, which do you prefer: being the one who gets abused, or the one doing the abusing?" 

Jenna wanted to hit her so hard, to put every ounce of regret from the last ten days into a slap that spun her clear over the hedge. She didn't, she was pretty sure it would never be allowed to connect and she would only end up feeling more powerless and ridiculous. Her legs buckled under her; she sank to the pavement. 

"Being abused." 

"Bingo! Always keep the best for last." 

"Why me?" 

"Why you? You mean what have you done wrong? See, that's where Faust falls down for me, it's a morality tale: guy doesn't know his place - guy overreaches - guy gets his comeuppance. Seriously, where is the fun in that? Why you, sugar? Because it is so easy. You're like a slobbery golden retriever puppy: awww pwease wuv me. As for Miss Nobility in Suffering, she's further up her own arse than Frankie was in yours. You're so desperate to do the right thing, but so naive and vulnerable you just fuck it up at the slightest opportunity. I have to tell you, this has been a real blast. Be seeing you around." 

Lucy banged her hand on the bonnet as she walked away, setting the alarm whooping at last so the whole street could be ripped out of their slumbers, and maybe a few would bother to look out of their windows to see Jenna crying in the gutter. 

"Are you alright down there, darling? Can you hear me?"



Did You Ever Get Stung? Ch. 04



Bewitched 

There was a hand on Jenna's shoulder, too close for her eyes to focus so that it overlapped itself like a shadow. She blinked and turned slowly towards the voice. 

"Can you hear me, darling? What's your name?" 

The face hanging over slowly resolved itself into some degree of clarity: round, made even rounder by the tight pixie cut, concerned and kindly. She tried to sit up, which made the world buck viciously about. There seemed to be some sort of wall behind her; she pushed her shoulders to the bricks to steady things. 

"Jenna." 

"OK, Jenna, I'm Siân. Are you alright?" 

Of course she wasn't, she seemed to have collapsed. Her mouth tasted foul and her face felt weird. It took a moment to realise she had been sick. That was great, there was this cute girl being sweet at her and she had vomit down her front. She struggled to her feet, letting Siân's hand steady her from in front as much as the wall did behind. They were in an alley. In fact they were in the alley at the side of that pub. How had she got back here? Why had she got back here? She was never going to do that, was she? 

Siân stepped back, letting her try to balance on her own but arms ready in case she toppled over again. She felt like she was in a centrifuge, the floor spinning so madly it held her on her feet. She looked down her front and realised it could be worse, she was enough of a mess to feel ashamed but not such a reeking disgrace she couldn't get a taxi. 

"Thanks. I'm ... ummm ... feel a bit weird." 

She was embarrassed. If she was actually aware of being embarrassed, she couldn't be really pissed. She took a deep breath and concentrated. She wasn't acting drunk, was she? Bloody strange. She didn't remember putting these clothes on either. Except she did, but that must have been almost a fortnight ago. She looked up and saw Siân watching her from the other side of the alley, with a look that was midway between concern and a rueful acknowledgement of having been there herself at some point. 

"Probably ought to get you home, yeah." 

They found a taxi, whose driver gave Jenna a cautious look but let her in anyway. She concentrated very hard, managed to remember and clearly recite her own address, and then subsided into the seat leaving Siân to field casual comments. When they arrived, Siân gave the driver a cheery 'coupla minutes, boss', then supported Jenna up the path and waited for her to get the door open before disappearing into the night. 

Jenna blundered into the kitchen to drink some water from the fridge, which immediately made her legs weak and reminded her how much she needed to pee. It wasn't until she was sitting on the loo that the various jigsaw pieces wafting about in her mind settled themselves into one picture. She dug her phone out of her pocket and stared at the screen for a long time. 

There was milk in the fridge. She checked the use-by date, then tentatively opened it and took a cautious sniff. She drank a little. Perfectly fresh. She sat on the sofa, switched on the telly and found a news station. She seemed to be stuck in a very convincing facsimile of Friday before last, but to be honest she was too damned tired to try making any sense of it. 

She must have got up from the sofa, because she woke up next morning in bed. Her head was tender and her mouth disgusting, she was grubby-dirty all over, but she wasn't quite as hung-over as she should be from the state she had been carried home in. The radio continued to assure her it was Saturday, so she forgot work and took a very long shower, reflecting that when she found somewhere permanent to live it needed a bath. It was Saturday, there was no getting round that. The whole shambles, from bumping into Lynsey to sobbing her heart out on the pavement outside, must have been some elaborate and involved dream as she passed out. 

It was incredible, how long had she been there? Surely only minutes, and yet she seemed to have lived through almost a fortnight. No she hadn't, huge chunks were entirely missing. She couldn't remember anything mundane or everyday. She could still feel the sick fear of going in to work on Monday, but now she realised she never had; there was a sudden jump from Sunday afternoon to Wednesday evening. She had thought, even as it was happening, that her own dreams and needs were turning on her; had there been anything at all that wasn't already in her mind? Any act that she hadn't fantasised about before; any person she hadn't already seen? Well there was Lucy, but other than that? When had she passed out? How much of that conversation had happened; had any of it? There was one thing more she needed to check up on. The only thing that truly mattered, and the one that she needed to confirm but was scared to even think about. She wrapped a towel around herself and picked up her phone. 

"Hello Liz, how's things?" 

The voice on the other end sounded a little puzzled, not resentful but simply curious at being rung at nine on a Saturday morning to be asked how she was. 

"Fine. You alright?" 

"Err, yeah. Sorry, I got a little drunk last night - a lot drunk actually - and I've got this vague feeling I was talking shit to someone over the phone in the early hours. Hope it wasn't you." 

"Not me, Jen. I was fast asleep." 

"You're sure? You're not just saving my blushes?" 

"I promise you, nothing to apologise for." 

"Thank God for that. Have you got any plans tomorrow?" 

"Not really." 

"Fancy coming over and let me cook you something? Apology for what I thought I'd done wrong." 

Her mouth was outrunning her brain, better stop that before she said something really stupid and difficult to explain. 

"Well it's hardly necessary, but it sounds fun. Lunch or dinner?" 

"Whichever you prefer. Oh Liz, do you know a girl called Lynsey? About my age, nurse, gorgeous?" 

She could hear the smile in Liz' voice, even over the phone. 

"Doesn't ring any bells, but I'm out of touch these days. Did you have an enjoyable evening?" 

"Never you mind. I'll see you tomorrow." 

Jenna pulled on some clothes and made her reluctant way to Sainsbury's and the shopping that would only get more unpleasant the longer she left it. By the time she got off the bus and toted her bags home, she was shattered. She collapsed on the sofa with a cup of tea and tried to think the whole thing through. It was bloody weird, as weird a thing as had ever happened to her. She'd never been much for recreational drugs, she didn't exactly have experience to go on. Had someone spiked her Sea Breeze? Or was it just the stress of so very long finally letting up just enough for her to snap? It had all seemed so real, and so long. Alien abductions were like that, weren't they - days apparently passing when there were only minutes unaccounted for. Or was it the other way round? She couldn't remember which. She had always thought the whole business about being carried off, strapped down and probed every which way was just weird frustrated sex dreams bubbling to the surface. If she was losing her mind, at least she was skipping the little grey middlemen. Her doorbell rang. 

Jenna had become used to opening the door and finding her callers looming in her face, as unavoidable in the cramped space as it was oppressive, but not this time. The woman was sitting on the top step, forearms resting on her knees and twiddling a grass stem casually in her hands. 

"Hello." 

"Morning. I don't know if you remember, but we met last night. I'm Siân." 

"Of course. Sorry, I was totally wasted, thanks for taking pity on me." 

Siân's mouth twitched at the corners, the shyest and most fleeting of grins, as nervous a gesture as the way she was peeling the blade of grass with her nails. Her voice matched the actions, as unsure of herself as Jenna invariably became when confronted by an attractive woman. 

"Wasn't pity, you just needed a hand. Anyway, I thought I'd pop by and check you were alright now." 

"I'm fine. Thank you. And thank you for coming round; now you're here, let me give you something for the taxi." 

Siân dropped the shreds of grass and waved her hand dismissively. She was attractive, wasn't she? Not exactly beautiful, at least not in the way that leapt out the first time you saw her face. She looked sweet, and thoughtful, hesitantly endearing. There was something about her that set Jenna at ease. 

"You were on my way, it's not a problem. Just thought I should make sure everything was alright ..." 

She stood up, looking everywhere but at Jenna. 

"... and ... ummm ... I wondered if you maybe fancied a meal or something. Some day. If you want, you don't owe me anything." 

"You're not serious ..." 

That sounded very wrong, not how she meant it at all. It had tumbled out of Jenna's shocked mouth before she had time to think. Siân shrugged and turned away. 

"... Sorry! No, sorry, didn't mean it like that. The last time you saw me, I'd thrown up on myself." 

Siân shook her head. That nervous grin was really cute, it sent Jenna's mind racing way past the appropriate pleasantries and made her think about other situations that might make her shy and hesitant. 

"Washed off, didn't it?" 

"I was about to make another cup of tea. Why don't you come in?" 

Showing Siân indoors felt strange. Jenna couldn't stop her mind running back to what hadn't happened with Liz but still seemed disturbingly real, she almost expected them to stumble over that gag abandoned on the floor. She really needed to stop thinking about sex now, with this sweet friendly newcomer in the space which suddenly felt far smaller than usual. Siân herself didn't help by giving Ute Lemper an appreciative passing look. 

"Nice. I knew there was a reason smoking seemed so cool when I was fourteen." 

"Tea or coffee?" 

"Whichever." 

"Please. You made an effort last night, let me do something for you. Which would you prefer?" 

"Coffee then, if you insist." 

Jenna put on the kettle. She had been right a few minutes before: not beautiful in the way that leapt out across a crowded bar, but that didn't have to mean not beautiful at all, did it? Sometimes it grew on you over time, as you came to know the person; sometimes what seemed so attractive at first glance faded with familiarity. There was something she couldn't quite define, maddeningly just out of reach of her understanding. Something about the way Siân had spoken to her last night, something in the look on her face that made Jenna want to reach out and stroke it. 

She realised that her hand was already halfway there. She let it drop and coughed over her embarrassment as she opened the fridge and took out the milk. Siân shook her head. 

"I prefer black. And you can if you want, I wouldn't mind at all." 

Jenna put the milk down. She stepped back, unsure of what to do or say. This wasn't making any sense, and she realised she was scared stupid of another round of 'too good to be true'. Could she be entirely certain that this was real now, or was it yet another layer of dream upon dream? 

"Why?" 

"Sorry?" 

Siân was attractive, and getting more so by the minute; and she had been as kind last night as she was sweet now, it made total sense for Jenna to feel something. How did it work the other way round? She had hardly made a good first impression. 

"Why? Why me? The first time you ever saw me, I was lying in the gutter rat-arsed." 

Siân grinned. If only she would stop doing that, it was so distractingly sexy and cute. 

"Actually the first time I saw you, you were looking pretty hot, but you were talking to someone. Then you disappeared together, and I was ..." 

More grin; even more colour on her round cheeks, eyes going everywhere but towards Jenna. Siân grabbed the coffee mug and beat her retreat to the living room. 

"You were what?" 

"Pretty jealous." 

"We didn't do anything." 

She said that too quickly, as if she was apologising that Siân could even think it. Siân noticed, raised an eyebrow over her mug. Jenna stopped herself from saying any more, from explaining that it didn't have anything to do with falling down drunk; that she wouldn't have wanted to in any state. This whole situation was getting out of her control, developing a momentum of its own that she barely understood. She took a seat opposite Siân and tried to catch up. 

She knew she could be too passive, she let herself fall in love and then she let them take over. Not just in bed, but everywhere, and she knew that wasn't really their fault. She created the vacuum and left other women to fill it, and then she felt sorry for herself because they were never exactly what she had hoped for. She didn't like being pushy, it wasn't her. Perhaps that extraordinary dream had just been telling her that sometimes she really did need to make things clear. 

"Look, I'm ... I'm really grateful about last night, but I've ... errr ... I've made a few really stupid mistakes recently and I need to be clear about stuff. I think I'd like to go out for a meal, if that's all it is. Or if it's part of something serious. I don't want to go out for the evening and then back home for a quick tumble, I can't do that right at the moment. I'm looking for a relationship. Sorry." 

"Hold on, let me work out of I'm being insulted ..." 

The grin didn't alter. Whatever Jenna had just said, Siân didn't seem inclined to take it too much to heart. 

"... OK, fair enough. Any other unreasonable demands?" 

She needed to say it some time. Last night - for whatever reason or due to whichever chemicals - she had experienced some sort of hallucinatory breakdown, and that had been at least partly down to the unbearable tension churning round inside her because she wasn't getting the sex she needed. She needed to say it now, not let herself get too far into something that wasn't going to work before she could bring herself to discuss the subject. She needed not to go through everything that went wrong with Molls again. 

"I'd like to make love." 

"Sounds good." 

"I need to look back on whatever we do and know then that it was making love. Sometimes - during - I need for it not to feel like that." 

"How do you want it to feel?" 

She had stepped too far now, there was no turning back once she had started. Better this way, better to be disappointed now than heartbroken later on. 

"Rough. Dirty. Cruel." 

Siân put her mug down. Jenna's watch seemed to be ticking slower as she watched the other woman uncoil from the sofa, gangly legs straightening with a surprisingly graceful action. Siân leant across the table and Jenna's head tipped back to meet her mouth without thinking. Moth-light touch on her lips, sticking ever so slightly to each other afterwards. No force, no tongue, just the delicate brushing caress matching the soft whisper that came next. 

"You, or me?" 

"Last night, when you looked after me. I liked that, I liked you being the strong one." 

Tongue this time: tip skimming gently along her lips, making them part in response but already gone when they did. 

"What about you? Ever want to try the other way round?" 

"I don't know." 

"Doesn't matter. We could try though, if you ever want." 

Hands on her face, not pushing it back any further but making it feel held there; making her feel safe. Opening her mouth like a baby bird and taking Siân's tongue into herself on the third pass. Feeling something full and giving in her hand, realising that instinct had drawn it up between them to find Siân's breast. Siân settled astride her, knees squeezing between her hips and the arms of the chair; pulling her top over her head and unsnapping her bra in one fluid natural movement. Jenna leant forward and kissed the breasts presented to her face. Siân's arms wrapped round her head and cradled her between their soft swell. The smell of Siân's skin filled her nose, she licked the warm valley of cleavage and felt the top of her head kissed in response. 

"Please." 

She wasn't even sure what she was asking for; she didn't want to ask for anything. Far better to just keep silent and let Siân take whatever she chose, but somewhere she needed to say 'please' with those arms around her. She felt them change when she did; felt the urgency twinge in their muscles as much as she felt it in the breath rustling through her hair. Siân leant away from her, reached down between their bodies to fidget with Jenna's zip; slid down onto the floor between Jenna's feet and dragged her jeans after. Struggle, Siân wrestling one of Jenna's shoes off to pull her out of one trouser leg, Jenna's own hands pushing her knickers away until Siân took over and finished the job. 

Sex - even the 'good' sex when they weren't fighting and years of practice made them skilled at satisfying each other's bodies - became routine when the spark between them had dwindled and faded. It was years since anyone had grabbed Jenna's hips in their hands and dragged her groin urgently towards their yearning mouth. Siân's tongue between her legs felt good, but even better than the physical sensation was the need in it; feeling like an exotic desirable treat that Siân couldn't wait to taste and rub her face against. She pulled off her T-shirt, desperate to be naked with Siân, desperate to feel the back of the chair against her skin and let Siân's hands stray wherever they chose. Siân looked up at her, running the tip of her tongue lazily over wet lips as their eyes met. 

"This all theoretical, or have you got loads of kit hidden away somewhere?" 

"Some." 

"Got any handcuffs?" 

Jenna was in heaven, a sweet and rather pretty girl had just interrupted going down on her to ask about cuffing her wrists. That only ever happened in fantasies, didn't it? She had honestly begun to think it never would be real in her life. She needed to take a deep breath before she could answer. 

"Want me to get them?" 

"Go on. Smack your botty if you don't." 

She could hear the laughter in Siân's voice as she scrambled up and scampered into the bedroom. She didn't feel she was being laughed at, it was laughing with and it made her feel light-headed. As she delved in the carrier bag at the back of her wardrobe, without a stitch on, she couldn't help but wonder whether what she had dreamed about Liz was even a little accurate. She couldn't begin to imagine Ellie getting all silly and giggly over it; was that the real Liz too, or could she have a laugh sometimes? 

Jenna took the handcuffs back to the living room and Siân. The mood of a few minutes before wasn't broken, but there was just enough of a stutter to make her understand that she was walking naked into the room and it wasn't awkward. Siân already set her at ease. She had also taken advantage of Jenna's absence to close the living room curtains and take off her shoes. She was standing in the diffuse summer light, pale breasts emphasising the dark fullness of her nipples and jeans button undone, looking as if she belonged in Jenna's home. She took the cuffs from Jenna's hand and turned them over in her own, prudently testing both the key and the other trigger. 

"Mind if we do rough, dirty and cruel sometime but not first time?" 

"I think I'd prefer that." 

"Good. Hold out your hand for me ..." 

She kept her eyes on Jenna's face as she slipped one cuff on, using Jenna's right wrist to push the loop through the lock and letting it flip back on itself. The way you were supposed to cuff someone; the way that suggested she knew exactly what she was doing. 

"... Know why you're wearing that? That's to remind you that you're not responsible anymore. You're mine, and you're going to do whatever I want you to, and no one's going to laugh or be shocked at you, because you aren't responsible for your actions. All you need to do is relax and enjoy us." 




Did You Ever Get Stung? Ch. 04



Siân smiled, wicked and knowing. She astonished Jenna by snapping the second cuff over her own wrist. They were linked together, bound as much by the shared tight bite of surprisingly cold steel as by three inches of chain. She reached up to cup Jenna's cheek in her palm, dragging Jenna's hand in her wake. 

Jenna opened her mouth to Siân's, felt Siân's other arm wrap protectively around her waist and take her bum under splay-fingered command. The chain was up under her chin, pulling her hand up to her own face, and without any thought she realised she was touching it. She was held between two palms as Siân's tongue caressed inside her mouth, feeling the motion of her own jaw and cheek in her fingers as she sucked on it. Siân's middle finger was pressing lightly along the line of her bum crack, making her stomach somersault with darkly seductive thoughts and pushing her groin to rub against the thick denim welt of Siân's fly. She buried her fingers in the sparse stubbly hair at the nape of Siân's neck and moaned over her tongue. 

They were dancing, moving in locked unison as Siân broke the kiss and turned Jenna slowly under the arch of their chained arms. Siân bent her forward, making her left hand reach for the sofa to balance. The tug at her wrist put her back into a shallow S-curve, tensing her body as Siân's fingers pushed between her legs and took possession of what was so wet and desperate for them. The touch of cold chain against her lips made Jenna gasp out loud, her wrist and the steel band around it were pulled tight were Siân's possessive hand had been two minutes earlier. That hand was now cupping her throat, loose and light as the collar of a blouse, but just as controlling. She could hear the chain react to Siân's deep gentle stroking, feel her hand being rubbed rhythmically against her backside. 

"Giving you dirty ideas, isn't it?" 

Oh God yes! Filthy dirty, shameless and depraved ideas that Siân made seem both entirely normal and even nastier at one and the same time. Ideas that Jenna wanted to admit as much as she wanted to do. 

"Yes ..." 

"You do know you won't be able to stop me playing with your arse whenever I want?" 

"Jesus, Siân!" 

"Oooh yeah, you can say my name as often as you want in that voice." 

She did want to; wanted to say it again and again; wanted to forget all the silly 'Miss' and 'Sir' nonsense to just grunt out Siân's name all thick and wanton, acknowledging that it was Siân's fingers doing wonderful things inside her and Siân's imagination fucking her slowly and indulgently every possible way. 

"Siân." 

She let herself go limp to Siân's command, let herself be turned and laid along the sofa. She opened her legs to welcome Siân's hand back where it belonged; accepted that her own followed everywhere in Siân's wake. Siân's left hand settled over her eyes, shutting her away in the safe non-judgemental dark with Siân's voice and the sensations flowing through her own body. 

"Say it, honey, say my name as we make you come." 

They merged into one being: Siân's mind conducting Jenna's reactions; the thumb that was circling Jenna's clit as subject to Siân's will as the fingers that were delving inside her; the hand toying with her left nipple as much Siân's as the lips sucking on her right. Except that a part of her still knew that hand was on her own, and that Siân must be getting a kick of her own from seeing what it was doing inches from her face. That was nice too, that was almost as deliciously naughty as raising her hips and offering that last and forbidden prize to Siân's dominant hand as she rubbed ever more frantically on herself. 

"Siân ... Oh please Siân!" 

***** 

Liz carries the plates through into the kitchen and reflects on an evening well spent in good company. That counts for a lot these days, and she realises for the twentieth time how fortunate she is that Jenna decided to move up here. She likes Siân too, both for her own company and because she is so very obviously what Jenna needs. Liz trusts her, in fact she trusts her so much that she has just about decided to come out to the woman when they next meet up. It's not fair on Jenna to be burdened with all that secret identity nonsense, even if Liz has been determined ever since the beginning that it stays that way. Siân, she is quite certain, can keep a confidence. 

It's nice to have them around, to see the love growing between them and let it rouse all those bittersweet memories of how she and Martine were at that age. God, sometimes they seem so young - like today when they came round and the music she had been listening to meant nothing to them. Jenna likes her cabaret standards, which is unquestionably very cool, and both of them are into all that dance stuff as befits their age. She does her best to accept the generation gap and not wax fondly lyrical about what it meant to be fifteen and feel Gloria break over her like a tidal wave of pure selfish woman to woman lust. It doesn't translate to their world, she'd end up sounding like the Three Yorkshire Lesbians 'call that deprived, when I were a lass we had nowt to watch but Cell Block H and glad of it'. 

She has rarely seen two people more obviously meant for each other, and that too reminds her of her younger self. Weeks ago - one sultry disturbed night about the time Siân and Jenna met - she had the most bizarrely inappropriate dream. The details have faded, the way they always do almost as soon as she wakes, but she's still aware enough that it happened that she almost wants to apologise to Jenna about it. Weird and unsuitable, not to mention that she's not interested in Jenna like that - lovely girl and as good a friend as she has; and she's certainly not ugly - but it simply wouldn't be right. Not for Liz nor Jenna, nor for Siân; not for Martine's memory. 

There's a germ of an idea in it though, one that calls seductively out to her as she thinks back over the hellishly slow progress of the last few weeks. She needs to write, it keeps her mind more or less together, gives her something to think about beyond the empty hopelessness of reality. When she can't write - and the novel is currently stalled like a wagon up to its axles in winter mud - she doesn't feel right. Perhaps it's time for a little tangent quickie to kick-start her creativity; and what's rattling round her head at the moment is a weird mix of autobiography, fantasy, and that silly film that had been on again recently. 

She leaves the plates to soak, pours herself the last of the wine from dinner, and sits down at her laptop. After a moment's thought, she begins to type 

Tessa had no intention of crumpling her interview suit in standard class for two and a quarter hours, so instead she stretched out her legs in first and took as much advantage of the complementary toast and drinks as her nervous stomach allowed ...