Taste & Hold

"Alright, V, let's get you on your knees," Louise said sweetly.

I heard some shuffling, and then a sniff, a wet sound, and a hiss. I'd thought ten seconds was short, but Vivian got a lot of licks in in that time, absolutely going to town on whoever's pussy she was eating. Lying back in darkness, the sound was a lot stronger, and so was the smell. I wondered whose pussy Vivian was tasting. Was it Rachel? Deedoss? Fumine? Whoever it was, they managed to control their voice after that first hiss. I guess that's not too surprising. They'd all done this before, together.

I reflected on that as V moved on to her next target: my friend group was surprisingly incestuous. I mean, I knew about Rachel. Everyone knew about Rachel. But suddenly I'd learned that Deedoss and Fumine had been with Vivian, too. This wasn't just a bunch of Rachel's curiosities gathered together in a friend group: it was a constellation. And now I was going to join that constellation. Or was I? Did this even count? This was just a game.

Vivian finished her second sampling, and moved on to her third. I guess I was at the end of the line. Louise maintained a gentle narrative throughout: okay, go. Okay, time's up. You think you know who that was? Okay, keep that in mind. Next one. Over here. Here, let me guide you. Yep, a little more to your left. Hey, hands to yourself. Tongue only, V.

Tongue.

V's tongue.

The third sampler complete, I felt breath on my knees. I heard Vivian shuffle toward me, crawling on the carpet. My breath caught as she wedged herself between my legs. I didn't think to spread them further to minimize contact. I couldn't think of anything. I heard Vivian breathe in my musk. I heard her exhale. My heartbeat battered my skull. I clenched my teeth. It would take everything not to scream.

And it did. When V's tongue probed me, I couldn't help myself. The darkness, the anticipation, the absurdity, the gentle touch: it was all too much. My jaw went slack, my mouth opened, and a shriek began racing its way up my throat. I didn't have the strength to stop it. I simply didn't have the wherewithal. Vivian was already on her second lick, running her tongue up the full length of my slit in a broad, slow stroke. My voice filled my lungs and lunged for my mouth--and then it stopped. It came out muffled: there, but quiet. I hadn't stopped it. Someone else had.

A hand clasped itself tightly over my mouth, over my entire chin and jaw. Despite my absence of mind, I noted the metallic tingle of rings against my skin and mapped their placement to the jewelry my friends were wearing. It was Louise, come to save my bacon.

Somehow my response to the hand was to go limp. I relaxed into the couch with a quiet "hmmm." Vivian gamely kept at my pussy, exploring between the folds, tasting me as was her task. Then Louise, from somewhere above me, said "time," and it was all too soon. Ten seconds? Ten seconds as a terrible amount of time. Long enough to rev me up, too short to get me anywhere.

With her hand still over my mouth, Louise asked Vivian to recite her guesses.

"Deedoss, Rachel, Fumine, Shirby."

Louise said, "Okay, noted. Remove your blindfold, but don't say anything."

There was a pregnant pause. I wondered how many Vivian had guessed correctly. She'd gotten me right, at least. Louise finally let go of my mouth, which felt horribly unfair, and then she ordered us to all put our pants back on, stretch, and take a water break. I tried to avoid eye contact with anyone as I went to the bathroom to splash water on my face, to cool down a bit. I couldn't shake the feeling all eyes were on me.

Why was I so fucking turned on? No one else was. Maybe that's what made someone a good slut: unflappability. But I wasn't about to suggest a new metric. I wanted to finish the game. Vivian's tongue... it was nice. But the thing I wanted most, I found, as I desperately tried to douse the flame in my cheeks, was that hand.

In short order, it was time for round two: Rachel's test. Once again, Louise blindfolded her and shuffled our seating arrangement. We put on our blindfolds and took off our pants. Within seconds, Louise was instructing Rachel to begin, and as she spoke, her hand descended on my waiting mouth.

My pulse quickened. Was I first this time? I waited, barely breathing. But no one crawled between my legs. I heard licking and heavy breathing from the other end of the couch. Louise kept up her instructions. Rachel moved down the line. I began to writhe beneath Louise's hand. It had previously produced submission in me. Now, with the false anticipation, it made me jumpy, impatient. I tried to shake it off, but Louise was clamped to my face. Fine. I thrust my tongue out, between my lips, and tried to dislodge Louise's fingers by tickling them.

I don't know what I expected, but I definitely didn't expect the fingers of her other hand to rake through my hair, gently massaging my scalp. This caused tingling throughout my body, but it also counteracted the hungry impatience, and my body calmed down slightly--just in time for Rachel to slide between my legs and kiss my vulva. I would have yelped without Louise's assistance. I thanked her mentally even as I felt tears trickling down my cheeks. Rachel's tongue ran up and down my pussy, then lathered my clit with attention Vivian hadn't thought to provide. I doubted this was necessary for the guessing game, but I let it rock me anyway. I ground back on Rachel's tongue, gyrating my hips as I strained meaninglessly against Louise's hands.

"Time," said Louise, removing her hands. I let out a sharp exhale, then caught my voice. "Guesses?"

"Easy. Fumine, Vivian, Deedoss, Shirby."

I just lay panting on the couch in the dark as everyone else put their pants back on and took off their blindfolds. I couldn't go through the motions. My arms weren't cooperating.

"Guess it's a tie," Louise said.

Rachel and Vivian both laughed about this, but Fumine suggested that either Vivian's taste-testing game was insufficient evidence or that the premise I'd drawn up sucked.

"You just want more than ten seconds of this tongue," someone said. Their voices were all blending together.

Fuck. Who cared who was the best slut? Who cared who had the best time with whose tongue? Who cared about numbers, or scores, or who anyone had been with? The only thing I cared about in that moment was that someone--anyone--finish the job.

I felt hands around my head, and gasped in anticipation, but they just released my blindfold. Vivian was at my knees, trying to get my pants up my legs.

"No," I whimpered.

"Shh." She looked at me with love in those amber eyes. "You're okay, Shirb."

"Noo," I repeated.

"Yeah."

I noticed, now that my vision was restored, that Louise wasn't in the room. Everyone else was there, sitting around with their drinks like nothing had happened. Like nothing had happened. This only made me feel worse. I was the immature, unadvanced one. I was the one who couldn't have her pussy licked without it becoming a whole thing. Probably because I didn't have the relationship experience the others had, because I'd never wanted it. And now that I wanted something, it felt so wrong and bad. I felt my flush deepen, then stumbled to my feet and ran outside.

The weather immediately challenged my decision-making. The rain was heavier than ever, and I got soaked through as I stumbled out into the woods in my bare feet. But I didn't regret my escape, even as my clothes became a stiff, saturated mess and my feet stung from encounters with pine cones and other plant detritus. Anything was better than staying in there, in the heat from the fireplace, the heat of the consequences of my own actions.

I could have said nothing. I could have laughed off the question. I could have objected to the game. I hadn't wanted to, somehow; now I wished more than anything that I had.

"Shirb!"

"Shirby!"

The voices, calling after me, were faint in the downpour.

What was my next move? Run off into the forest of Grizzly National Park, never to return? Die of exposure, more like. That briefly seemed better than returning to the cabin and admitting I'd been turned on for the game--not that it was any secret to Vivian, or Rachel, or poor, asexual Louise, who--who was standing right in front of me in a clearing. She was shivering. Was I shivering?

"Oh fuck," she said when she saw me.

"Sorry," I said, instinctively. She reached for me and I moved back.

"You came after me."

"I was just running away," I objected.

"Why?" Louise asked. "I'm the asshole who--who--who made that all happen."

She was wringing her hands. This show of contrition was rare from Louise, all fashion and poise, never an eyelash out of place or intention unclear.

"How do you figure," I said bitterly.

Rain fell on us, around us, between us. She didn't seem to know what to say, and I really wanted to keep running, but fuck, my feet hurt. I wonder how much damage I'd caused them with my reckless escape. Even Louise, whom I'd practically assaulted, had the presence of mind to put on shoes before running into the forest. Louise. One of my five best friends--or one of the five people I'd considered my best friends before my stupid answer to a stupid question ruined everything.

I crumpled to my knees. These people were my everything. Without them, I was no one in Georgeville: just a student from oft-derided southern Stewardland with no social ties to carry me through to graduation. I wept, well-aware that my tears were tears of self-pity, and well-aware that they didn't matter.

Then the rain stopped. Well, it didn't stop, but it stopped hitting me.

"Fuck, Shirby, what's the big idea?"

Rachel was holding an umbrella over me; Deedoss and Fumine were helping Louise to her feet and providing her the same shelter. Vivian was on the edge of the clearing with her own umbrella and a flashlight. In its light, I realized for the first time that it was getting dark. I was objectively lucky I'd been found, but that didn't stop me from bitching about it.

"Fuck off," I said. "Leave me."

"No thanks, love," Rachel said cheerily.

I was too tired to struggle. My friends got me and Louise back to the cabin without anymore fuss. Vivian drew a bath, and Fumine stripped me and helped me in. They left me to it without a single untoward glance at my naked body.

Slowly, my core thawed. I was sitting in a luxurious, four-person tub in a party cabin in the middle of a beautiful national park. I had friends who'd lick my pussy for a game, forgive me despite my inappropriate reaction, and even rescue me from the forest when I bolted. I was the luckiest girl alive. I just had to control myself, to moderate my reactions. But how? How was I supposed to control myself, after feeling V's and Rach's tongues probe my depths? How was I supposed to control myself, after feeling Louise's strong hand stop my moans?

My moans...

Any aspirations of control went out the window along with the bath steam as I reached between my legs and tested the waters. The forest episode had obviously killed my previous arousal, but now, safe and warm in the tub, thinking of my friends' tongues and Louise's hand--fuck--I felt the need building. My pussy was soft to the touch, not too sensitive, ready for a resumption of the afternoon's activities. That wouldn't be happening, of course, but I knew how to get myself off and I set to it.

With one hand gently rubbing circles around my entire vulva, I tentatively raised the other hand to my mouth and grasped myself, cheek to chin. It wasn't what I'd felt on the couch--not even close--but it was something. I reacted to my own grip, and my clit howled for action. My fingers acceded to its demands. I felt the edge on the horizon, and I tried one more thing: I closed my eyes. This, too, was not the same as wearing a blindfold. It was a cruel struggle to replicate the feeling of control I'd had under Louise's ministrations, the submission I'd felt on the couch. But I was getting somewhere--

And then the bathroom door opened. My eyes popped open and I yelped and moved both of my hands to my side.

"Sorry," said Louise. She was standing there in a towel, another, thinner towel wrapped around her hair. She'd apparently received similar treatment in the other bathroom, but finished sooner. Probably because she wasn't masturbating.

I knew I was flushed, but I tried to pass it off like I hadn't been doing anything. I mean, a hot bath flushes you, right?

"Sup," I said.

"Well, the girls said I should talk to you."

Of course. Ambush me in the bath. Just what we both needed.

"Can I get in?" she asked.

I felt my heart racing. It never did that before, when we skinny dipped or sunbathed together. We'd bathed together before, too, that month abroad we'd all done in Starsource. Then again I hadn't been masturbating any of those times. That's all it was, probably. And anyway, I had no reason to deny Louise, so I scooted into a corner, nodded, and looked away as she took her towel off.

"Hm," she said, climbing in.

We sat there in silence for a minute, then she spoke up. "That game was really hot," she said.

I raised an eyebrow in incredulity.

"I'm asexual, not frigid," she said. "I don't have normal attraction to people. But seeing your best friends eat each other out..." She sighed.

"Makes you run for the woods?" I asked.

"No," she said, looking away and drawing a wet strand of hair behind her ear. "No, I could have watched that all day. Of course, at some point I would have needed to take care of myself."

I winced.

"Cheri," she said, softly. "I ran because I was scared of what I'd done to you."

"Done to me?" I asked. "What did you do to me?"

"I went outside the rules of the game." Louise rubbed her neck. "I laid hands on you."

"We touch each other all the time," I said. Hugs, massages, doing each other's hair. Well, mostly her doing ours; she didn't trust us with hers.

"If I said the same to you," Louise said, "playing it off like it was nothing, would that ease your mind right now?"

I went beet red at that.

"Didn't think so." Louise sighed. "All I can say is that I'm the one at fault. And I wanted to come apologize properly, before either of us does anything stupid again."

"Anything stupid," I repeated quietly. Anything stupid, like fucking myself silly while you hold my mouth shut?

"Like running off into a storm," she clarified, reading my mind.

Despite doing my best not to stare, I was becoming increasingly aware of those sharp shoulders, her pronounced collarbones, the curve of her neck, her small tits shimmering just below the waterline. I decided to face the wall.

"Shirby," Louise said, after another minute.

"Mm?"

"I love you."

This was another thing we said to each other often, near daily. If I said the same to you, Louise's recent words played in my head, playing it off like it was nothing... I didn't know what to say.

"I think they all know," Louise said. "I think that's why Vivian never made a pass at you."

"Vivian never made a pass at me because I'm repressed."

"No, that was Rachel who said that, remember?"

She was right. Fuck. Where was my brain? Probably on the couch where I'd left it, drooling and panting. I don't know why I struggled on.

"Vivian isn't attracted to me."

"If that's true, she's blind," said Louise.

The implication rang in my head. Louise was attracted to me. Louise, who'd fucked Rachel and not found that worth writing home about.

"May I keep saying things?" she asked.

Still looking away, I shrugged.

"This feels like a minefield," Louise said. "If you're going to shrug, I'm going to get out."

I realized I wouldn't be able to bear it if she left. "Please stay."

"I'm going to keep going, then."

I nodded.

"Shirby. You're hot. I know that, objectively, even though my attraction is different. You're not hot like they're hot in Cauldron,"--true, but ouch--"but you're hot. And anyway, I never wanted anyone in Cauldron. Not like I want you. I don't know if my desire is like yours, or anyone's, really. I'm still figuring it out."

"I'm also figuring it out," I admitted. I thought it would be scary to say, but it spilled out so easily.

"I would really, really, really like," Louise said, so slowly I thought I might die, "if we could figure it out together."

I nodded. "Me too."

I heard movement in the water behind me, and my heart caught, and then Louise's hair towel was coming off her head and wrapping around my eyes.

"From the moment Vivian suggested that stupid game," Louise said, tying the towel tight behind my head, "I've been under a spell. I need this, Shirby."

I felt her chest against my back, and as her hand clamped over my mouth I knew what to do. I moved both hands between my legs, to my still-sopping pussy. I relaxed into Louise's arms. My mouth and jaw went slack. I played with myself, lazily, thinking a bit of the tongues that had visited me earlier, but mostly focusing on Louise's hand and all the sounds and sensations as I played with myself in the tub in the dark.

"You can do it," Louise murmured in my ear encouragingly. "Cum for me, Shirby."

And I did. Simple as that. With Louise controlling me, I got myself there in record time. I panted against her hand as I orgasmed, and when I was done, she reached around me with her other hand, grabbed my wrist, and directed me to continue. In her embrace I came twice more, finally wrenching myself free and gasping against the tub surround.

Louise untied the towel and pulled me to face her.

"We're going to be pruny," I said, and she just drew me into a kiss.

If I thought her hand on my mouth was hot, her kiss was an inferno. My body went limp again and I just fell forward into her, giving more and more of myself. She held me steady, pried my lips apart, and ravished me with her tongue. I didn't cum again from the kiss, but I think I might have if I hadn't already rubbed out three. Louise, for her part, moaned, squealed, and shook when the kiss finally broke.

"Wow," is all I could say, really looking into her eyes for the first time since the game had started.

"I was so scared I'd pulled you into something you didn't want," she said, her voice small.

"I thought I was the one pulling."

She giggled at that, and then she stood, water cascading down her tight body. "We really need to get out and eat some dinner."

At the mention of food I realized I hadn't eaten since that long-forgotten lunch, before we'd tried to get on the wifi, before we'd started the fire and the drinks and the game. My stomach growled, and I hurried to follow Louise out of the tub. We dried each other, shyly at first, then giggling, then lovingly.

I didn't fully understand what she saw in me that no one else in our incredibly hot, shockingly easy friend group had, but I also couldn't explain why I wanted her more than any of the others--why I wanted her more than anyone else, ever, more than any of the objectively hot boys or girls who had tried dating me before--so I just chalked it up to sexuality being unpredictable.

As we dressed, a thought intruded.

"Louise," I said, "I didn't--ah--well, I don't want to assume, maybe you don't want--but--I didn't get you off."

"Shirby," she smiled, "I had the time of my life helping you. Maybe someday I'll want you to return the favor. When I do... you will know."

I acquiesced to that, and we kissed again, and then we went down to the kitchen, where the other girls had prepared a feast of ribs, wings, salads, and mac and cheese. They didn't tease us for any of it--not for the obvious bath sex, not for storming off into the forest and needing rescue, not for the whole awkward lead-up. They just hugged us, tight, and told us they loved us, which was easy to say back. Then they fed us.