Lunatic Fringe (21 page)

Venus shimmered over Archer’s right
shoulder as the sky gave up the rest of its blue for purple. Her
eyes were soft and deep, catching the fading light like polished
precious metals. Lexie pleaded with her mind to memorize the
moment, when lust and the fruition of lust flowed effortlessly, one
after the other.

Without intending to, she
thought again of her mother, that Summer had once been eighteen
too, beneath a lover’s body, falling in love with a certain person
at a certain time. Then she considered her grandmother and what she
may have felt beneath the weight of the most perfectly beautiful
person in the world, at the moment when stricken with a thousand
ways of saying
Yes
.

Did love-making beneath stars feel
similar from one generation to the next? Did cultural perceptions
of gender and political bodies stretch their knotted hands back
that far? Were they strong enough to infiltrate a moment as clear
as two eager bodies falling in love?

Lexie struggled to remove the context
and constructs restraining her in her memorization of the moment,
lying supine beneath her lover. She returned to the clarity of the
scene, the breeze tracing across the saliva on her breasts, the
warmth entering her hand through the crown of Archer’s skull, so
much happening and so much left to do.

Lexie whispered, “I want you,” and it
was true. Archer searched Lexie’s face with half-gentle,
half-hungry eyes and the faintest hint of a smile. This was
fun.

In one swift move, Archer dove onto
Lexie, pinning her left wrist above her head and sinking her teeth
into her neck. Lexie gasped a quick, startled breath. Archer’s
mouth remained fixed on Lexie’s bare throat, teeth gripping the
skin. Oh God, oh God. Lexie held her breath as Archer’s teeth dug
into her flesh, saliva dripping down her neck and cooling in the
evening air. Archer’s tongue slid against Lexie’s throat, catching
her pulse through her skin. Archer sighed through her nose. As her
breath released, Lexie’s body relaxed. She was not in danger or
under attack. She was being loved.

Archer squeezed Lexie’s wrist tighter
and with her free hand unzipped Lexie’s jeans. Lexie closed her
eyes as Archer’s fingers reached into her underwear and stroked her
hair. She tensed and released again, a flood of warmth overtaking
her, starting at the crown of her head and moving downwards,
bathing every cell of her body in watery moonlight. Archer’s
fingers danced, stroking, teasing. Lexie wanted Archer to be rough,
to grip her with strength, to pin her and pull her hair. Instead,
Archer played, teasing her, and Lexie knew it.

But not teasing for long. Archer
grabbed the front of Lexie’s panties in a fist, pulling up, rubbing
the fabric roughly against her and forcing her hips to rise. She
slipped Lexie’s jeans over her hips and to her ankles, where Lexie
kicked them off, along with her shoes and socks. A chill sank into
her skin, fighting with the heat of her body. Lexie felt grateful
for the deepening darkness; being exposed to someone like this was
new and thrilling, but intimidating all the same.

Archer slid her fingers around Lexie,
learning from touch, a delightful trial-and-error of pleasure
response. She slipped one, then two fingers inside and stroked,
making Lexie’s spine coil and release in spasms and stretches of
joy, each muscle and nerve ending pinging with delicious
tension.

Lexie opened her mouth wide and inhaled
from her lower belly. She tightened around Archer’s fingers as they
slid along the ridges of her inner landscape, pushing forward
through her flesh and triggering pulses of electricity to jolt to
the surface of her skin.

Lexie’s eyes shot open, the purple in
the sky had given way to inky black. The stars peered down to them,
and Lexie’s eyes fixed on Cassiopeia, the jagged shock of the five
brilliant stars like the scar from a bite wound. Over the tree line
was a hint of the hazy corona of the full moon.

Lexie rocked back and forth with
Archer’s hand. Her vision sharpened, the edges of everything crisp,
the lights brighter, the shadows deeper. Lexie took in everything
in her field of vision at once, with no judgments or discernment,
every aspect of the world carrying equal weight as it bathed her
brain in beauty.

Desperate to feel Archer’s flesh
against her own, Lexie pulled at the hem of Archer’s shirt. Archer
took her cue and threw her shirt over her head, allowing it to hang
at the wrist of the hand she pressed into Lexie. Archer unbuttoned
her jeans and kicked them off. Lexie dared not shut her eyes and
erase this image of her lover undressed beneath the night sky,
despite the sensations in her body demanding her undivided
attention. Archer pressed against her again, kissing her, her
tongue rolling over Lexie’s like thick, warm syrup.

Lexie squeezed her eyes shut, creating
a catalogue of sublimity. Lips on breast. Fingers tangled in hair.
The gentle scraping of teeth on flesh. The weight of body upon
body. The sound, a quiet vocalized breath, of Archer’s own pleasure
as she moved her hand in Lexie. Like trying to catch a torrent in a
teacup, Lexie felt ashamed for missing all the subtleties flowing
over her now.

Lexie’s fears and anxieties untangled
and dissipated, leaving only one emotion to take their place:
gratitude. Her eyes welled with it, her heart swelled with it, her
spine stretched with it. The cells of her blood rose to the surface
to exalt the beauty she witnessed. Like flakes of steel to a
magnet, her nerve cells reached skyward in a unified sensation of
grace. She imagined that this was what salvation felt like to
religious types, a concerted gratitude to have life with which to
experience such beauty.

Archer’s jaw tensed, and the pressure
of her fingers inside Lexie increased. Leaning back on her
haunches, her back curled with engaged muscularity, Archer’s hand
worked Lexie hard and fast. Lexie had never felt such a sensation
before; it was like needing to pee, but pleasant and sweet, like a
desperate thirst quenched. Through the layers of muscle and skin
between Archer’s hand and the open air, fervent energy moved,
pacing within the confines of Lexie’s body like a predator caged.
Her flesh expanded, each cell breathing with its own needs. Lexie’s
moan came from that deep, predatorial place: a guttural, animal
sigh. Archer thrust hard and smooth against her insides, bicep
flexing powerfully with each stroke.

Archer traced a path with her tongue
from Lexie’s throat to her pubic bone, sampling the multitude of
flavors her body offered. As Archer’s tongue eased over her flesh,
tension gripped Lexie’s body like an aura of surging spring water,
swirling through her abdomen. Tasting her, Archer sighed a low
growl of lust, the vibrations of her voice driving into Lexie’s
pelvis, buzzing throughout her skeleton.

Behind Archer’s curled back, the edge
of the full moon peeked over the shadowy tree line. A breath caught
in Lexie’s throat as the silvery light draped their naked bodies.
The warmth grew unbearable. Too much, too much, her brain sighed.
But her body refused to listen, praying in its own language. Yes.
Yes, it sang. Archer’s hand heeded the latter’s call until Lexie’s
brain ceded its call for queller.

Moonlight limned Archer’s body in
silver, her dewy flesh reflecting the moon, prostrate as if in
prayer between Lexie’s legs. Tongue, lips, spit shared, fingers
curling, arms strong, cheek, voice, back, all driving forward
toward an edge.

Instead, she sank. Into warm depths
beneath the surface of the world where it was dark and silent, far
below the crashing waves that swirled overhead. For once, the
voices did not follow her into this dreamtime. She was utterly
alone in this hidden place, at peace away from the chattering
nonsense. Lexie could hear and feel her breath, but nothing
more.

From the distant and invisible horizon,
a voice. Her voice, dragging her to the surface of the world. It
surged forth from the deepest part of her belly, a shattering,
plaintive howl that echoed against the rock faces, flying to the
ocean to dive into the breaking waves. Tree branches shuddered
around her, shedding their orange leaves in the wake of startled
birds. Her cry seemed to outlast her breath, a howl that Lexie was
unable to control, she could only release. For the moment that she
cried out, Lexie forgot that she was in the woods, surging beneath
Archer’s body. She forgot and was happy to do so. She ceased
corporeality and for that sweet moment became a flood of simple
grace. It pitched her like a seaweed forest in the high tide,
curling and tangling, mingling and dragging apart. Her howl echoed
and faded.

Then, silence. Neither woman breathed,
neither moved. The first thing Lexie noticed when she came back to
herself was the warmth. Like incense in a church, it spread from a
central point just below her navel to every part of her being. Then
came the scent, potent and undeniably hers. It was her body, her
sex, her signature. It was herself, and it was everywhere. As clear
as a written word, she understood the smell swirling around her
head to be her own person. She inhaled deeply, learning the
subtleties of her nature as clearly as the letters in her
name.

As Lexie blinked open her eyes, Archer
eased her mouth away and raised her face to meet Lexie’s gaze.
Lexie could barely see in the lost light, but the moon now
full-bodied above the trees cast depth on Archer’s features. Her
amber and blue eyes gleamed deep in their sockets. Short black fur
feathered against the edges of her eyes like charcoal. A ridge of
mottled grey ran from the tip of her moist, black nose up her
forehead, where two pointed, furry ears twitched. Her mouth curled
at the edges into a lupine grin, highlighted by cream-colored fur
that curved in the shape of a butterfly wing on each
cheek.

Tiny sirens sounded somewhere deep
within her brain. Lexie grasped the thick coat of scruff on
Archer’s neck and pulled her back into the moonlight. Lexie
inhaled, not losing sight of those eyes, inexplicably knowing that
Archer was still inside of this creature.

Archer’s throat trembled, like the
stifling of a cough. Tiny, high pitched chatters came from Archer’s
lupine mouth, though her black lips barely moved. Lexie’s ears
perked up, trying to catch the subtlety of her sounds.

Lexie
, Archer said, so quietly, so strangely, Lexie wasn’t sure if
she was really hearing her name at all.
Lexie
, Archer said again.
This is a gift. It belongs to
you
.

Lexie smiled, unsure of Archer’s
meaning, still reeling from the hormones that cascaded through her
body. Lexie floated against her love, freeing the scruff in her
grasp to stroke her lover’s furry face. She smiled at Archer’s
softness.

The gentle moment shattered when she
noticed her own hand, curled in the shape of a paw. Five long claws
curled from it like polished scythes. The sight hit her like a
punch in the kidney. She pulled her hand away from Archer’s face
and placed it inches in front her eyes to be sure she wasn’t the
victim to any passion-induced tricks.

Horror grasped at her with its icy
fingers as she scanned the rest of her body, still open below
Archer’s. Her flesh was covered in light brown fur. A tail rose
from between her legs, entwined snakelike with Archer’s.

Lexie whipped to her feet in one
movement, throwing Archer onto her back.

Lexie, it’s okay,
Archer chattered urgently.
You’re okay.

But Lexie’s shocked mind saw nothing
beyond the black haze of her own horror. She launched herself off
the platform, hitting the ground on four feet with a soft spring
before tearing off into the dark forest, running from Archer and
the beast she had made her become.

Chapter 13

Lexie ran until it occurred to her that
running was ridiculous. Archer was not pursuing her; no one was.
Each pace only reminded her of the beast she now was. A creeping
disgust seized her for taking such profound pleasure in something
so wrong. She wanted to slough off this skin like a sunburn. She
didn’t want this new body to fit, though she knew it did. She was
disgusted with herself, a feeling she had known years before but
tried to forget, a perverse pleasure in the midst of something very
wrong.

Her thick paws bit deep into the dirt
as she ran, and her muscles flexed and stretched against her bones.
The breeze blew the tiny hairs on her neck. She felt beautiful. It
unnerved Lexie that her body needed such a transformation to feel
right.

In the distance, Lexie could hear the
rushing of the Rogue. She had run northwest, up into the mountains
where the air smelled like clouds and salt. She arrived at the cusp
of the forest and the mountain, where a wildfire years before had
obliterated all the foliage, leaving a black-scarred tract of rock
and char. Tree trunks, as naked as match sticks, stood tall and
ashamed, mourning the bounty they once possessed. A thousand
questions poured through her mind, but she could not bear to face
any of them. Alone in the vast landscape, she felt bound and gagged
by circumstance.

The night deepened and expanded, while
Lexie remained still and silent in the void. She tried to silence
her mind like the charred tract, empty, stoic and dead. Though the
woods behind her bore the hiding places and infinite dark instincts
of fierce creatures, here in the dead zone at the cusp between the
trees and the alpine lichens, she felt more vulnerable that she had
ever felt as a girl exploring the forests near her home. She
considered turning back and heading home to Wolf Creek but shunned
the thought immediately. How would she get there? Run the
seventy-plus miles? And once she was there, she would surely be
shot on sight. No. She’d have to stay here, hidden until this
witchcraft was sure to burn off with the sun.