Girls like her

Janice was shocked at just how painful it was to hear those words. She reached across and took Janice's hand. "I know. I really like you too. It's just- look, like I said, it's complicated. And I think you'll really like-"

"It's not about if I would like her, okay? I'm just not the sharing sort. I know some girls who had a thing going on when I was an undergrad and...it was a mess. Girls who want things 'open' just want to fool around, to not commit. And I want something serious."

"So do I. Like I said, I think this will work."

"How long have you been with her?"

"About a year."

"Okay...so what, you dipping your toes in singlehood? You getting bored of your girlfriend already, sniffing around for someone new?"

"No. And um..."

"Um?"

Yeah, Janice was not looking forward to this part. "It's actually a he."

There was a pause. Trish closed her eyes. Looked up at the ceiling. Took a deep breath. And then said to herself, "Oh, please save me from thirsty bi couples everywhere."

"Wait-"

"Let me guess, he wants a threesome and asked you to seduce some gullible lesbian?"

"No, listen-"

"Fuck, I can't believe I was stupid enough to-"

"I'm a woman like you, okay? I don't have any interest in men!"

Trish smiled at her over steepled fingers. "You have a boyfriend- wait, is this one of those beard situations? Is he covering for your family or something? You mentioned they were really religious-"

"No," said Janice. "Um, the thing is... this is probably easier if I show you."

"Show you?"

"I kind of...asked him to show up today. To meet you? Look, it would probably be easier once you've met him. You'll understand then."

"No."

"Look, he'll be here any minute."

"No." Trish stood up. "Look, Janice...you're funny, you're sexy and most importantly you're interesting but whatever if going on here...I don't want any part of it. Thanks for the offer and goodbye. Please don't call...again..."

Janice watched as Trish's eyes went wide. As her mouth opened in shock, as her hand went to her heart. As she bonelessly sat back down on her seat.

She smiled and sipped her coffee and didn't bother to turn around. "Hey there, baby."

Movement. Daniel bent down to kiss her on the cheek. "Hey." He turned to the stunned woman. "You must be Trish. Um, Janice told me a lot about you."

"Mmm." Trish's eyes flickered to her as though to say- is this real? Am I dreaming? Janice just smiled as her boyfriend left to order a coffee.

"He...he...wait, you're dating the D-"

"Just so you know he really hates that nickname."

"I thought he was just an urban legend." Trish murmured, shivering. "Holy shit."

Her boyfriend wandered back over with a latte in hand. He said, "Everything working out?"

"Yes," said Janice, taking his hand. "I think everything's going to be-"

***

Six Years Ago

-Fine. Everything was going to be fine. Today was the day that she'd finally tell him.

Janice smoothed out her dress, checked that her crucifix was straight, applied the last little bit of makeup and then and headed out the door. She had a very important task to perform today. A vital task. A blessed task.

She was going to introduce herself to her future husband.

She strode through the campus, eyes straight ahead. She- well, to tell the truth, she didn't like this place. Her parents had expressed serious reservations about letting her come to this university- it was, they said with soft tones of people speaking of strange and distant lands, a college with a very liberal reputation. She'd gone on and on for a while about its excellent reputation, about her ability to resist temptation, about how they had a right to go where they wanted, it was their country still, wasn't it? Despite what the queers and liberals thought. All- well, not exactly lies, but a sort of vague haziness about her actual reasons. Truth be told, she had come to this college to test herself against the allure of sin; to wander the desert, so to speak, while the devil whispered in her ear.

That and it really did have an excellent literature department.

She walked carefully along footpaths where people laughed and played and flirted. A group of boys smiled at her as she passed; she ignored them. A jogger- wearing little more than a sports bra and tight yoga shorts- ran along the path, and her eye was drawn to her; to the way her body moved, free and agile and graceful; the gleam of her tawny skin; the way she smiled at her, her dark eyes offering a silent invitation-

She jerked her eyes away and quickened her step. Pushed the sight of the girl out of her mind and fixed her eyes on the right path ahead.

Soon. Soon she wouldn't need to worry, soon she wouldn't feel temped, soon she would be who she wanted to be. Who she was meant to be. A good, righteous Christian girl with a good, friendly boyfriend that she wanted like she wanted-

Ahem. She was nearly there. She kept on walking until she reached the cafeteria.

He was there. Talking to one of his friends- some girl with a boyish, ugly haircut. She'd have to talk to him about hanging out with girls like that, when they were together. She'd noticed a lot of girls like that while she'd been observing (not stalking or anything like that, just...keeping track of him. Girls did that with guys they had crushes on, right? It was perfectly normal behaviour) him. Maybe he was just being friendly. He was like that, she knew. Friendly. Cheerful. Big and goofy- the sort of guy that looked like he would be a good father. A good, funny friend, cuddly, a good lover...

She took a moment to saviour the sensation; the welling of tight, pleasant heat between her legs as she spied him. She wanted him. She wanted to sleep with him, to marry and do her wifely duties with him. All sorts of wifely duties. All the time. She marvelled at the sensation and marvelled more at the strange liberty that it offered. The path to holiness and happiness both; to romance and righteousness without guilt. Something she'd been denied her entire life.

She took a deep breath and then took the seat next to him. He looked up at smiled. "Janice, isn't it?"

"Um. Hi." She turned and glanced at the short-haired girl- would it be awkward, confessing in front of her? Would she snigger? Would she be a distraction? But she just laughed and got up. "I wouldn't have guessed."

"Seriously, Belinda? You think?" Daniel asked, glancing back and forth between the two of them.

"Yeah," the woman said. "I know the look. She's a woman like me. Be gentle. I'm off to see Dana." And with that she left.

Daniel turned back and Janice put on her best smile. "So."

"So."

She forgot what she was going to say. Screw that, she never actually figured out what she was going to say. She just kind of assumed she'd sit down and the topic of the fact that she was in love with him and they were meant to be together would just naturally come up. But that wasn't happening and so she was going to have to bring it up like some crazy woman.

She cleared her throat. She looked at her hands. She coughed. "Um."

"What is it?"

She took a deep breath. "I really like you."

"Oh." He blinked. "Oh."

"Look. I really like you. I've been wanting to tell you this for a while. I think- I know you probably think I'm crazy, but please- I think that we're meant to be together."

"Oh?" He was smiling. She was pretty sure it was a good smile.

"I saw you walking around the quad and then I just felt a rush of, of wow, and I never really feel that with any gu- with anyone. And then I sort of, um, I introduced myself to you. As a friend! Which is really dishonest. I know." She was babbling. Full on babbling. She had finally met the right man, the only man for her, and she was babbling. "Look, I'm really sorry but I think you're really hot and sweet and that sounds like good marriage material so will you um, go on a date with me?"

"You just...started to like me? From the moment you saw me?"

She nodded.

"Um, right of the bat."

"Right. I always," she coughed. "I always believed in true love, and then I saw you and."

He coughed. "Tell me something?"

"What?"

"Was I... was I the only boy you've ever had an interest in?"

Keep smiling, keep smiling, keep smiling... "Well. It's only because I figure God has someone special for everyone, right?"

"Yes, but am I the only man you've ever been interested in? No one else?"

She tried. She really did. But the smile faltered just an inch for a heartbeat as guilt- horrible, awful guilt- filled every inch of her soul. "I don't- I don't know what you mean." This wasn't right. This wasn't right. She was fucking it up. Again. She always fucked things up, she was always doing things wrong, always getting unnatural crushes and she-

"Hey. Hey. It's okay." He was hugging her and she was crying. She was doing every single possible thing wrong, she was making an absolute fool of herself and he was still hugging her and he smelled of musk and sweat and he was soft like a teddy bear and Holy God in heaven she was so horny right now.

And he smiled. "Look, I think you're actually pretty cute. And funny. The thing is, you're not the first person that's kind of wanted me to, um, save them from themselves, so to speak. There was this Indian girl... but she didn't like what I told her."

"What are you going to tell me?"

It's something about me," he said, "and well- about you. I know this is going to be really hard to-"

***

Seven Years Ago

-believe what she was seeing.

Dana was...Dana was reserved. Stoic. Some people- men, mostly, who lusted after her trim, taut body- thought her cold. Belinda's girlfriend wasn't the sort that gave much in the way of emotion. Their courtship had been a patient thing, a slow removal of the many barriers that the dark-skinned woman had put up. She was as slow to warm in bed as she was in public; lovemaking with Dana was a slow dance, where Belinda slowly brought her lover from the frigid cold and into the warmth, until finally she would give in her reservations and surrender- and return- the pleasure that Belinda brought.

Dana was elegant. Dana was self-composed, even in the throes of passion. Dana was contained.

The woman on the bed- who's face was twisted into a rictus of pleasure, who grunted and moaned like an animal being tortured, who thrust her hips back to allow the man- the man- embedded in her pussy to fuck her deeper- she wasn't- couldn't- be Dana. Not any Dana that Belinda knew. This Dana was a beast; a strange erotic doppelganger that twisted and twitched like a woman being murdered even as- when she could speak- she begged for more. Who babbled like a child, who's legs were wrapped around the thick bulk of the huge man atop her. Who's breasts shook with every thrust, her eyes wide and unseeing, staring right at Belinda but not seeing her. Forgetting her.

She had dreamed of scenes like this- not Dana, of course; with other girls, who had abandoned her or rejected her for big, stupid boys and cruel, sniggering frat bros. Tormented herself with thoughts of what they were doing and what was being done to them by those men. And always when she did, when she lay there late and night and pictured the images, it was as a nightmare. As the worst thing she could possibly think of. A torment.

It wasn't meant to be something she agreed to; lusted over. Wanted. It wasn't meant to be so fucking hot she was losing her mind.

Belinda couldn't breathe. She wasn't fucking her girlfriend- her love- nor was she being fucked. And yet her body trembled with exertion, sweated as though she was running a marathon; tension rippled through her body, muscles in her core contracting and pulsing to the machine-gun beat of her heart. She sat on a bed, one hand clamped over her plump breast, the other furiously, desperately frigging herself. Her short hair was plastered against her temple. She stained the cushion underneath her with sweat and desire as her hips thrust greedily against her fingers.

She was close. She was so close but already so far behind. How many times had Dana already cum? Three? Five? Did she just start and keep going? Was her girlfriend just cumming and cumming, was she being driven insane with pleasure?

He was speeding up. He was speeding up, his fat cock- a fat cock for a fat man, she thought giddily- vanishing in and out of her girlfriend's cunt, a cunt that she normally needed ages of foreplay to open up, a cunt she greedily gave up minutes after she got naked. Belinda imagined what it must be like to be filled with that thing, better than her fingers, better than any dildo, better than Dana's tongue and she moaned not with the pleasure that wracked through her body but with need, desperate need, the need to take Dana's place; to be the one impaled on that cock; to be gloriously fucked.

And as though understanding her, as though sensing her need, the man- the monster, the angel, the glorious ogre who had utterly upturned her world and taken her sexuality into places that she couldn't even imagine- looked up at her. And smiled, as though this- this fever dream, this mad erotic nightmare- was a joke shared between two old friends and then he opened his mouth and he said,

"You're up next."

And then her fingers stabbed and her pussy clenched and she twisted her nipple and his words threw the orgasm at her, slamming into her mind like a freight train, and she was falling off the seat and writhing on the floor with her fingers still buried inside her and cumming and cumming and cumming even as he shot into-

***

Seven Years and One Week Ago

"Dana?"

"Um."

"Dana." Belinda stared at her girlfriend. She'd gone pale, her eyes wide and staring at something past Belinda's shoulder. And so Belinda turned and looked.

He was...he was big. Like some huge, shambling ogre that someone had slipped into a t-shirt and jeans and scruffy sneakers. He had a beard- and as young as he was (and he was young, he couldn't have been more than twenty at most) it was already big and impressive. He was big and fat and hairy and he was... he was...

He was the sexiest thing she had ever seen.

She blinked and looked around her. Yes, she was sitting down. Yes, she was with her girlfriend Dana. Yes they were in the Twister Sister, the best- okay, the only- lesbian bar in town. Yes, they were surrounded by the usual Friday crowd- femmes in their pale skirts and butches in their shirts and trousers, tattoos and coloured hair and piercings all around, with the odd scattering of indie straights here to soak in the queerness and get away from the frat-bros and- for reasons that no-one had quite ever been able to discern- Mister Thompson, who was eighty years old, straight as a ruler and always unfailingly polite to the women around him.

It was familiar. Comfortable. It was her world- if not the one she grew up in then the one that she had chosen for herself. A little bastion of sane queer sanity in a world that exhausted her with its hate.

She turned back and yes, the man- the strange, ugly, inexplicably gorgeous man- was still there. He was with someone she thought she recognised as a regular- wait, were they holding hands? And he was staring around at the gathering of dykes with something like mounting horror. "I think," he said in a deep voice, "that this was a mistake."

"What?" His- his date?- turned back to him. "What do you mean?"

"Um." And the date turned around and stared and saw the same thing he saw; the same thing that Belinda was witnessing unfold in front of her. Lesbian after lesbian staring at him with wide, disbelieving eyes, each one undergoing a second- entirely unexpected, entirely unwanted- sexual awakening in real time. Each one suddenly finding themselves plunged into the utterly unfamiliar waters of heterosexual desire.

The date looked out at the mass of the suddenly gay-but-with-one-exception women and, realising that she'd just created an entire bar full of competitors, hustled the man out as fast as she could manage. Dozens of pairs of eyes tracked him as he was all but shoved out the door by a rather nervous looking girl. Dozens of mouths sighed in sudden, disbelieving longing.

Belinda turned to see Dana staring at her, her expression a mirror of her own: What the fuck had just happened?

"Who was that?" she asked.

"I don't know," said Dana. She'd got pale, her voice hushed. "He was with Jennifer."

"Jennifer? Your ex? I didn't know she was bi."

"She wasn't!" Dana leant forward and hissed. "She's gold star!"

"Well that's gone and changed." Belinda looked around and saw dozens of conversations that were no doubt playing out just like her own. "Did you see what happened? He walked into the room and then-"

"Yeah. I saw. Every single queer girl in the building just got an epic crush. What made it happen?"

"I don't know. Maybe..." Belinda shivered. "Maybe he's doing something?"

"Like, hypnosis?"

"I don't know!" Belinda thought back to all of the sci-fi shows she'd watched as a kid. "Maybe it's like a pheromone perfume or something? That makes women go crazy?"

"Or subsonics or something. Or maybe," Dana paused, "like some sort of spell? Like dark magic?"

"This isn't some fantasy story."

"Well he's fucking fantastic! I mean, what other explanation is there?"

"I don't know!"

"Do you think.." started Dana.

"What?"

"Do you think that he's going to...to...you know...come back?"

"What?"

Dana leant forward. "Come on. Everyone knows men are untrustworthy. Giving them that sort of power..." she shivered. "He'll probably come back here. Or that whole girlfriend-boyfriend thing was an act. I bet he'll try to seduce us."

"Us?"

You could see the mental backpedalling. "You know. All the women here. I bet he has some weird fetish about 'conquering' lesbians. About making us his," she licked her lips, "his slaves or something. Or he'd sleep with us," she shivered, "one by one until he'd had his way with every girl in this bar."

"Shit." Images- horrifying, oddly compelling images- danced before Belinda's eyes. "You're probably right." She leant forward and took Dana's hand. "Look. He's...he's using whatever mojo or power or whatever to make himself look sexy. But we're together, remember?"

"Right."

"If he tries anything on us...we've got each other. We love each other. Okay?"

"Right. If he goes after me- I'll resist. Because I've got you." Dana squeezed Belinda's fingers and the two of them smiled at each other, the awful, evil, sexy man forgotten. Then he expression shifted back to one of dread. "What if..."

"What if what?"

"What if he...he tries to seduce both of us? At the same time?"

"That's stupid. We just resist him. Women like us, we can resist him. We just say no. Look, he's hot," how odd it felt to admit that, "but it's not like we're ruled by our lusts. We're not men."

"Right." She paused. "So we're agreed. If he comes to us and he tries anything..."

"If he," Belinda said, "suggests that both of us spend a night together with him...both of us together, naked, with him, on the same bed..." she blinked. "If he tries to blind us me with the thought of you and him at the same time..." Fuck it was hot in here. "Then we resist. We say no."

"No."

"Definitely no."

"No."

"We don't need to do it, even if it's just a one-night thing."

"Right."

"I mean, it's not something we would ever think of doing. Ever. We're not like that."

"Right."

There was a snigger from the table next to them. They both turned. A lean, muscular woman eyed the both of them with an expression of weary cynicism. "It's both already too late for you."