Mira Dancy, Motel Lazarus, 2015
NSFW: Sleek exclusively serialises Badlands Unlimited’s newest erotic novel – Cara Benedetto’s “Burning Blue” – in its entirety after selecting an excerpt for our current issue. We’ll publish a new part online every week accompanied by Mira Dancy’s paintings. “Burning Blue” belongs to the Badlands’ “New Lovers” series devoted to publishing all-female-penned works of erotica that explore the complexities bedevilling contemporary life, culture, and art today.
Part One: Blood Let III
One by one Josey extinguished the blue pool lights. She was nude save a white hip-strung apron. Her hair was swept up in a high ponytail. She stood coolly facing Trish.
It was dusk. The light was a deep purple playing off silvery forest skins. Trish sat fully clothed in a lawn chair, staring at Josey’s golden toned breasts. They both inhaled lightly as they anticipated the play about to unfold.
“Can I get you a drink, sir?” Josey asked politely.
Trish responded in a light southern accent, “Sure, honey. I’ll take a bourbon on the rocks and some of your pretty pussy.”
Josey walked past Trish and into the house. Trish kept her eyes on Josey’s long legs and tight ass. Her loose ponytail gently bobbed. Trish wanted to pull it. Her mouth watered. Her nerves felt sharp.
Appearing moments later with a tumbler of bourbon on ice, set on a sleek red tray, Josey approached. Taking her time, she dipped her big toe into the pool. The drink spilled onto Josey’s bare stomach. She dipped her finger into the drop and smoothed it along her breast, up to her bottom lip. Trish watched without moving. Silence became their lust-filled contract.
Josey’s hand returned to the glass, dowsing a few fingertips into the gold syrup. The hand that she was moving along her hip and thighs disappeared beneath the front of her apron.
Trish had no view. Her nerves bristled.
Josey looked directly at Trish. “May I touch myself, please?”
“Yes, you may.”
Josey balanced the tray with one hand while the other stroked her pussy. Born of a seashell, Josey’s posture took on contrapposto. Her head leaned back, hips swaying gently, eyes closed.
The women listened to the subtle sounds of Josey’s wet finger-play mimicking the lather of the pool and succulent moisture of the forest. Trish barely breathed as Josey’s sounds became louder. As she fingered herself, her brow began to furrow; her muscles took on a new tension. The drink slid to one side, the tray began to dip.
Just before the drink fell from the tray and the sun behind tree line, Trish, like a perfect gentleman, rescued the glass and set it on concrete. She stayed bent before Josey, inhaling the woman’s lilac scent.
Under Josey’s erotic spell, Trish closed her eyes and stopped her internal monologue. She stopped editing. She relaxed her trained senses and allowed Josey to take control. She no longer cared how things would look to other people and she no longer wanted to control how Josey saw her. She had to let go someday, and in that moment, kneeling before Venus in an apron, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to do so.
Trish watched the apron’s cool white surface ruffle up in flashes of red and pink just inches from her face. Her breasts were swollen. She felt a growing need to touch Josey’s trembling thighs. Her mouth skimmed the inside of a leg. Josey tasted warm and salty. Trish’s lips became a snake that lived in Josey’s pores. She would eat the entire leg in one gulp, first skinning the surface with her saliva. She bit in and closed her eyes, feeling the older woman’s quakes and shivers through her own lips.
Trish lifted the apron and found Josey’s swollen clit. Her tongue sucked in ocean-rhythm, fighting for space among Josey’s slippery fingers. Trish felt a hand grab the back of her head and she moaned inside of Josey’s hunger.
Trish succumbed and let Venus tell her what to do. Her mouth responded to the writhing movements. Her palms grabbed at Josey’s plump ass, pulling her deeper into her mouth. Trish couldn’t control anything anymore. She spanked Josey’s ass hard as she pushed her tongue and teeth as deep as possible. She gave in to it all. Trish wanted nothing more than to give everything she was and could be to this woman, this goddess at the tip of her tongue.
With the sun and drink and Venus in arms, Trish quit her job.
Mira Dancy, Buried-Images, 2014
She hadn’t known much about what she wanted until she gave in to giving. It felt great. She was excited to begin this new life that included Josey, but for the first time Trish didn’t know what to expect. Trish had had some young lovers, a few flings here and there, but nothing in comparison to how she felt when she was with Josey.
The sight of Josey, and the ease and laughter they shared, led her into new emotional territory. It wasn’t that she trusted Josey, it was that she had no way to not trust her; she was defenseless. It was a double bind of sorts, and this is what Trish imagined love to be. She couldn’t stand the thought of not being near Josey. She felt happy and safe when they were together.
And it was together that they shared a lust for life. They talked about everything: art, film, music, poetry, death. And sex. They spoke, ate, drank, and slept sex. Together they constructed a new body language that only they knew, and it revolved around their most intimate spaces. Trish felt confident about their relationship because there was no reason not to.
Trish knew that Josey was going through some things that were hard for her to understand. She also knew that Josey was married, and an artist, with a whole other life in New York. She felt she had no right to expect promises or commitments, but at the same time couldn’t help but dream of a home with Josey in it. She hoped that Josey would eventually open up to her about her life in New York. She had no choice but to hope, because otherwise she knew she’d lose Josey. It seemed that just when Trish began to have an awareness of this fact, their love began to slip like a stone across the lake.
*
About two weeks after she moved in, Trish felt a change in temperature. Fall was edging in and Josey had become abnormally quiet. Trish noticed that Josey was spending a lot of time in the bathroom. At first she thought it was the regular ritual night bleedings, until she realized that Josey had begun making drawings in the tub. Trish figured she missed her art. She casually brought up the question one night over dinner.
Josey stared squarely into Trish’s face. “I’m glad you brought this up.” She said it like a challenge. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something…I was offered a show at MoMA in New York… my paintings are selling okay but I need to do a museum show to get to the next level.”
“That’s great! Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” she said coolly, looking away. “I need to go back to New York.”
Trish looked down. “When?”
“Soon. Tomorrow.”
“What? Tomorrow?” Trish looked away, afraid of what Josey was about to say.
“Yes, but don’t worry; you can stay here as long as you like. Ryan said it wa
s fine. I need to go deal with things…with my life.” She paused. She breathed. “This time…” She looked down and began again. “This time with you has been incredible. I have felt so much with you, a freedom in my body, in my mind—that I’ve never felt before, and it scares me, Trish, because every time I’m with you I feel farther away from myself, or who I think I am. And it’s really confusing, because I know myself. I’ve grown used to life’s disappointments, and I know from years of painful experience that love like this doesn’t last, and you’re making me think it can.”
Josey stopped speaking and looked out the window. “The truth is, Trish, I’ve painted a lot longer than I’ve known you, or anyone… and you’re so young…you can’t know…” She trailed off, her eyes becoming dry and hard. “I need to do this, for my work, for me. I still want you in my life…” She trailed off again, this time to absolutely nowhere.
Josey looked across the table at her wounded lover. Trish’s high cheekbones fell. Crushed, her eyes sank deep into her skull, narrowed. Venom filled her throat. Trish looked ready to spit. Her whole body caved in at the older woman’s terrible words. It was all Josey could do not to take it all back, because she knew better than anyone that once hurt had set its building blocks it was impossible to undo the damage.
Trish stood up from the table. Her body shifted stiffly. Everything that was once soft had been replaced with stone. Trish returned to pain. “So that’s it. You’re leaving. Tomorrow.” Silence, and then looking up with a dense glare, “Josey. You are selfish,” Trish took a deep breath, “and until now I had given you the benefit of the doubt, because you’re going through a hard time with whatever-the-fuck other life you have been ignoring for months now.
“You clearly have been on more of a vacation than I realized. You are vacant to yourself.” Trish heard her own voice getting louder, with an anger that she didn’t even recognize. “You can throw me away, but it will only lead to more of the same. I may be younger and dumber, but I allowed you to change me and now to hurt me. You put on a good show, Jose. I had no idea you were such a coward.” Without a last look, Trish strode out the door, straddled her Vespa, and took off.
Josey was on autopilot. She had things to do. She had to shut off. Feelings would not help her now. She had to focus. She had to stretch a new canvas. A new life.
She figured Trish would be upset but hadn’t thought she’d be volatile.
She laid out the facts—they’d only been sleeping together a couple of months and Trish was so young, with her whole life ahead of her, how could she expect anything or even want anything serious? Josey took a deep breath and got in the tub. She felt empty and let pain move her inside-out.
Josey was bloodless that night. She had to make her own marks. Gripping a razor she sliced two long lines across her right thigh. As she watched the blood seep into the hot bath water, Josey felt nothing.
Josey woke up an hour later to the sound of crying. For a quiet moment she didn’t know where she was, thought she was in her bathtub in Brooklyn, and that the sounds were from the apartment next door. It took a full second to realize that she was in a cabin and that she had broken a beautiful woman’s heart that night.
But who was crying? Had Trish come back? It wasn’t until she looked in the bathroom mirror at a puffy wet face that she realized it was her own muffled voice that woke her. Sobs in a drowning sleep.
Where are you? I’m sorry.
*
Trish knew how to deal. She went to the nearest bar and found a half-drunk half-dead man. She dragged the zombie out back. He was almost handsome, and hungry for flesh. His breath stank of gin as he raked her neck with his bleeding gums. His rotting spine barely kept him upright. She undid his zipper. His cock was surprisingly youthful, plump and ready.
She turned around and directed his fifth limb between her ass cheeks. She impaled herself on his appetite. She held on to the chain link fence as he ripped her in two.
She and the dead man became puppets for the life they consumed but had never had. They held one another in death’s grip, because disappointment was also something to feel.
He spit violently onto her back and rubbed her neck with a slick hand. He held her in a chokehold. Her breath staggered. She felt herself become purple and red as he fucked her. She liked it rough. She wanted it rougher.
Denying her death, he pulled out and rubbed his cock against her wet thighs. She was soaked. He fell to his knees to drink from her. She let it out. A black bile filled his lungs. She squirted rage into his gaping zombie hole. He drank hate like a gentleman sips lemonade. They were strangers and they were each alone as they came.
Trish may have heard the muffled buzz that announced a new text message, but she didn’t stop to check. She never thought twice about going back. She would kill Josey, and the love they shared, that night.
And just like that Trish returned to porn.
The fourth instalment follows next week..
Read the second instalment here
You can order Cara Benedetto’s “Burning Blue” as an e-book on Amazon or iTunes
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