Chapter 22

"I don't need you," Michele shot back. Her voice sounded like a choked howl.

"I know." Annie soothed.

"I don't." She sounded plaintive.

"I know. It's okay." Annie promised, petting her. Her hand felt cold against Michele's burning furrowed brow. She kissed her cheek, tasting the tears. Even as her own eyes brimmed with sorrow she was lifting the tears off the stronger girls cheeks with her lips.

Annie thought of a half-forgotten movie she'd watched with her mother when she was much younger. Japanese peasant woman kneeling on the ground, weeping and picking up individual grains of rice out of the dirt with chopsticks after their village had been attacked and pillaged. She hadn't understood what was happening, why the women were doing that.

"It's because they are so poor," her mother had explained, "they're desperate."

As her tears mixed with Michele's, and she continued to eat both their sorrows with her kisses, she could feel Michele's arms still masturbating beneath her. Less frantic, but mechanical, nothing in her movements expressed pleasure.

"Let me do it."

"I can't."

"It's ok."

"I don't need-"

"I want it." Annie whispered. She was scared by the sound of her own voice, she could hear how true the words were, hear her own desperation. 'Because I am so poor?' she wondered.

She felt Michele's arms grow still beneath her. Raising herself up onto her knees she looked down on Michele. Her eyes still closed, she had turned her face away.

'Hiding' Annie thought.

She reached between her legs and took hold of Michele's wrists, lifting her arms up and over her head, letting them rest there. As Michele hid her eyes in the crook of her arm Annie lifted one knee over the other girl's upraised thigh, and then the other, taking her place between the stronger girls long powerful thighs.

Standing on her knees she had studied Michele for a moment. Her torso looked sculpted in its perfection, but also in its abject wretchedness; like one of Michelangelo's slaves, laid out before her in the dark. She touched the smooth hairless skin of Michele's armpits. Smoothed her hands over the insides of those joints. The powerful muscles that emerged and met there. Michele hadn't showered after her run. Her skin felt tacky from dried sweat and she smelled strong.

Annie took her breasts in her hands, hardly able to hold half of what Michele had to offer. Wondered at how firm they were, how arrogant they looked rising off her chest.

She pinched Michele's nipples. Puffy domes, she listen as Michele moaned. The frustration was still there, but there was pleasure now too. She lowered her mouth to her suck. They were salty. Breathing through her nose, the rank of Michele's armpits filled her lungs.

Moving her right hand down the flat hard plain of Michele's belly, across her smooth hairless mons, taking hold of her pussy. Squeezing the meaty lips possessively, her heart hammering in her chest as she did. She thought of the stained crotch of Michele's panties. Of putting her thumb in her mouth for a taste of Michele. Of kneeling over the other girl's discarded jeans, sucking her thumb like a baby while she masturbated. The memory of that longing embarrassing her, even as she gloried in the longing of the moment.

Annie sucked hard at Michele, even clamping her teeth on the sensitive teat. Michele, arms still folded across her face and over her head had let out a small yelp, but twisted and pushed upwards, forcing her breast further into Annie's mouth.

Pushing her two fingers inward, wetly parting Michele's labia, she curled her digits through the liquid body heat. A sudden image of her mother's kitchen; of dipping her fingers in a pudding. She felt her her fingers press against the ruckled roof of Michele's vagina, even as her thumb began to circle the slick pearl of her clit. Michele squirmed. Annie thought again of the torso of the slave struggling to emerge from the stone.

Annie sucked and squeezed at Michele's breast hard enough to draw milk, wishing she could. Imagined feeding on Michele in that way. Suddenly hungry for it. She thought with a shock of shame of sucking at Nancy's clit, how she had mewed like an infant. In the dark she wondered what it would be like to suck Michele's pussy. Her mouth grew wet as she wondered if Michele would make her. With her fingers buried in the channel of Michele's cunt Annie tried to imagine they were her tongue, tried to imagine what it would feel like to eat her pussy. Pictured Michele forcing her. The image shocked her, breaking the last taboo between them.

As if she could see these thoughts, Annie felt Michele take hold of her hair, pulling it tight in her fist. Pushing her downwards. She released her suck, crying out at the viciousness of Michele's grip, but enjoying the violence of the moment, wanting to be forced. The pain of her scalp, the roughness of the gesture. It all spoke of Michele's need, of her lust. But it also released Annie from blame. She pictured her mother's angry expression.

This was happening 'TO' her, she thought.

As her face raked over Michele's pussy, her unwashed scent shocking Annie's nose, she obediently pushed her tongue forward, pulling her fingers out of it's way.

"NO."

Annie flashed to her mother's kitchen, to the pudding, to her mother's angry scolding. The cold furry of the word.

But it wasn't Annie's mother's voice who had scolded her, it had been Michele's voice she heard. Her grip, still viciously tight, pushed Annie past the rubicon she both feared and wanted so desperately to cross. Raising her knees to her chest and spreading them wide, Michele forced Annie's mouth against her asshole.

Humiliated by her brutally stymied desire, Annie's eyes stung. Dutifully she placed her hands on the backs of Michele's upturned thighs, and pursed her lips over the hard little entrance. Puckered and suckled at the bitter little knot. Loved it with her lips until Michele grew impatient, jerked her forcefully, eliciting and another squeak of pain; Annie began to lick the briny crease.

Still holding fiercely to her hair, Michele's other hand dropped to her sex, she resumed stroking herself as Annie looked on jealousy at her fingers, her eyes brimming with tears.

...