Arthur Alexander - Emily_s Lips

Her heels beat against his sides; she straightened him along the new road; she kicked him into a frenzy again; she gave him all the rein; and she was thundering along the edge of the woods, her mind plucked out and left back there at the turn.

Pure ecstasy surged through her. She had done it! She had turned the horse and still held the lead. But again Adrian's stallion drew up on her right. And this time she knew she couldn't get more speed from her gelding. Already he was working up a froth and was nearly blown. Now the two horses were neck-and-neck, barreling up a slight rise. Emily saw the straining sinews of Adrian's stallion as he began to pass her. They were at the top of the rise; they were over it and hurtling down the other side to the crashing of hooves. And just at that moment two other horses trotted calmly out of the woods and into their path.

Emily had just a split-second to recognize them as the couple of the morning before she was instinctively reining hard right and pulling up. Adrian was attempting the same thing, but his stallion was going just that little bit faster: the two horses brushed together with all the force of their speed. Emily's gelding screamed and went up on his hind legs, rearing and kicking the air. Adrian managed to pull his mount into a tight stop as Emily's horse came down again and she catapulted over his head and into the air. As she left the saddle a lance of pain shot through her right knee, which had just been ground between the two flying horses, and then was sharply twisted as it left the stirrup.

The horses milled to a stop. Emily came down hard on her chest and side, knocking the wind from her lungs.

All was confusion. She could neither breathe nor speak. It was not painful, just overpowering. Hands reached her, turned her onto her back. A swirl of faces above her, mouths opening and spilling questions. She could not answer. Her rib cage heaved with its efforts to breathe. Then Adrian grabbed her by the buckle of her belt and lifted her torso from the ground. Back down again. Up. And then down again.

The pressure in her chest was beginning to ease. Up again, and down. Her hands fluttered to push his away as she drew her first shuddering breath. With the breath came the pain. Her poor, abused breasts upon which she had landed. Her knee.

God, her knee! It felt like fire. Her face squeezed into a painful grimace. She began to hear again. "What is it?"

"Where are you hurt?"

"My knee," she managed to gasp.

Then hands were pulling up her pant leg, feeling her joint with care.

"A sprain, I think." It was Adrian, his voice calm. "I'm sure it's just a sprain. You'll be all right in no time."

"It's better now." She tried to sit up. "God, to be able to breathe! Thanks."

"Don't mention it."

The young man of the harmonica-Larry, wasn't it?-was apologiz ing profusely.

"Hey. It's okay. I'm fine. Don't worry about it."

"We didn't see you."

"I know." She placed a palm over each bruised breast and groaned. But then she caught the eyes of the young woman twinkling on her, and she made a rueful grin.

"That's something these men don't have to worry about." They chuckled together.

"Yeah," responded the blonde, "and they save money at a pay toilet, too. How do they have all the luck?"

Everyone was relaxing now. "Help me stand," she asked. "Are you sure?"

"Sure I'm sure."

"Well, if you're sure… " I m sure.

Adrian and Larry helped her up. She took a few steps on her knee, and, aside from the pain, everything seemed to work all right. "Well, I guess I'll live."

"I'm glad to hear that," replied Adrian, and he walked over to his horse. Both the stallion and the gelding s eemed a little spooked by it all, but Adrian calmed them down easily enough.

Emily hobbled to her horse's side and nuzzled her face against his neck. He was pretty lathered up, but he didn't seem horribly overworked. "Boy, that sure was one hell of a race," she laughed. She patted the horse affectionately and then turned to Adrian. "I would have had you, too."

"No way, lady. No way." He was grinning back at her.

"You were starting to fade out, buster, and I would have had you."

"You were the one who was fading. I was just coming up strong."

"Ho ho! So you say."

"Care to try again?"

"I think I'll wait just a bit, thank you very much."

"Chicken."

With a laugh, Emily made the sound which the Victorians liked to write "Pshaw."

"It really was a magnificent sight," opined the blonde in an excited tone. "I've hardly seen anything so dramatic as the two of you suddenly bearing down at us."

And, of course, that brought them all into the conversation, and they had a good, jolly laugh about the whole thing.

It turned out that the girl's name was Angela Wilcox, and that she and Larry had only been married for three months. She was Mrs. Black's niece-Laura's, that is-and they were staying on here at the estate for the summer. Like everyone she had met so far, Emily found Angela prepossessing, calm, and attractive.

But at the same time, she felt the strangeness of the situation. Save for the one glimpse of her this morning, the last time she had seen Angela the girl had been eager to catch her husband's come in her round mouth. Emily easily pictured that pretty throat gulping and gulping as the hot juice shot down it. Not that there was anything particularly strange about that. Emily was herself fond of the sudden jet of a man's come against her tongue and throat. But the point was that this meeting was simply another in the seemingly endless series of sex-oriented events in the last day.

Of course, none of the rest of them knew about that. None of them knew how she had lain shamelessly in ecstasy last night. And then it occurred to her also, which caused her to start and a blush to creep up from her throat, that Angela was Laura's niece. If she remembered correctly-and she certainly did-it had been the vision of Laura as her lover which had caused Angela's orgas mic triumph upon the couch.

Her own aunt! And Larry had been describing the situation as though he knew whereof he spoke. What was going on here?

It appeared to Emily then as though she were living on two different planes of existence at the same time. She felt curiously detached. On the one hand, she had run out of gas, had stumbled in here, had been put up for the night, and now had just been enjoying the pleasure of a hard gallop with her host. Everything was perfectly ordinary. This was a world in which people chatted about nothing in particular, as they were doing now, ate food, smoked cigarettes-Adrian had just offered her one-and, as they say, just generally lived it up. But on the other hand, there was a second world. This second was a smoky and insubstantial landscape, one superimposed upon the ordinary realm. It was a land of undiluted lust. Sure, she had run out of gas, a perfectly normal phenomenon, but after that somehow she had been in a hovering tension between the two worlds. She had begun masturbating after she had been here only five minutes! And the access of this lustful dimension seemed to continue from that moment. With the exception of the moments of her gallop, there had hardly been an instant during the last eighteen hours when she was not in the throes of some sort of sexual activity. And when she wasn't actually masturbating or making love to Karen, she had been thinking about doing so!

Just as now. Here they were, four attractive people, sitting on the greensward and smoking cigarettes while their horses browsed quietly in the background. A scene from another time, perhaps, one in which more people had real leisure and wealth.

So here they were. But as she spoke of the adventure of driving without gas last night, and made as charming and humorous a story of it as it deserved, she was watching Angela and vividly imagining her long blond loins. Her eyes were one-half full, as it were, with the staggering knowledge of her abrupt introduction to female homosexuality. It was disorienting and rather uncomfortable. Why did she like this girl? Was it just because she was a cheerful conversationalist? Or was there something kinky there too? She had herself heard Angela in ecstasy at the thought of lesbian love.