Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One (30 page)

Mark stared pointedly at the slippers
crowding them and Emma shooed them away.

“
We think there’s a way up
to the surface,” he whispered, huddling close.

Ione
met
Emma’s glance, looked quickly
away
. They already knew there was
some
means
of
ascending to the Laplands; it was a secret entrusted to the
doyennes. B
ut
they
had
been
unable to
find
it
despite a careful if clandestine
survey of the Lap’s various neighborhoods and
apartments
.

“
Where?” Ione demanded,
squelching her annoyance before it told Mark anything.

The exit to the world above
turned out
to be
located in th
e hot pool itself. “It’s
a fair way down, but there’s a tunnel leading off,” Mark
explained.

“
Follow me.” He took a huge
breath and dove. Emma grinned in excitement, and they hurled
themselves after him together.

Cautious of Mark’s kicking legs, Ione
descended through his turbulent wake, squinting in the faint pink
glow from above. They dove farther than she had ever ventured,
reaching a point where it was barely possible to see. The narrowing
well was riddled with inlets breathing air and heat from some deep
source. Mark felt for an oval passageway, larger than the others
though barely wide enough to admit his burly shoulders. Ione
followed him in and they swam around and up, emerging in a narrow,
rounded flue.

Emma rapturously inhaled when they broke the
surface. “Ione, smell!”

She
could faintly
detect
fresh air
spilling
silently from high above,
bearing a vital,
living odor
. A
gnarled
passage le
d
up
into
blackness
, pocked with oval, fist-sized
fissures
.

“
What do you think?” asked
Mark.

“
You found it, alright,”
Ione confirmed.

“
How, exactly?” Emma
wondered.

Mark
shrugged.
“Nothing brilliant on my
part. Annie dropped her favorite mirror
and
I was just trying to be gallant.”

Ione closed her eyes to concentrate the
effect of fresh air in her nostrils. “Alright,” she finally
decided, interrupting the fervent speculations of her friends.
“Let’s get organized. We’re going up.”

They
returned to the Lap and set about
assembling
some adventure
gear
;
blankets
, soap and
juices
,
plus
a few toys
and
accessories
Emma hid in
the
rucksack
when she thought Ione wasn’t looking.

“
Are you sure this is okay?”
Emma fretted, trying to decide on a lubricant.

“
No. But we’re going anyway.
The only thing that really matters is starting well-rested. And we
are.”

“
And Mark and Manassa
are
both
coming?”

“
Yes.” Ione had considered
the situation more carefully than her brusque reply suggested. She
couldn’t imagine leaving Mark in solitary control of their society,
mostly because he would be mobbed by women. It wasn’t a matter of
trust—that was the reason she wouldn’t leave Manassa in
charge.

“
You think it’s daytime up
there?”

“
No way to know,” Ione
shrugged, shutting the front door to the doyenne’s apartment. “Hope
so.”

“
Did you tell the janes
what’s really going on?”

There were four women who were regularly
trusted to coordinate the whistle-equipped slippers patrolling the
various neighborhoods of the Lap. This was not due to their
superior language skills and physical charisma. Annie, Celestia,
Astrid and Val had reached a distinct midpoint between slipper and
doyenne—they were psychologically endowed to construct society from
self-image. Unlike slippers, janes could consciously negotiate the
world around them from the standpoint of their own identity. This
resulted in an obviously elevated wit, and Ione counted each one a
great success. She hoped to bring more slippers to the jane
mentality soon. And in time there would be more doyennes…

“
I told them we might be
gone for a while, but not where we’re going. We reviewed all the
contingency plans. Annie’s in charge.”

“
Good. She’s the right one.
Hopefully we’ll return before any problems arise,
regardless.”

“
Hopefully. You better get
going now,” Ione gestured to the hot pool. “Be discreet. I’ll see
you in a bit.” Emma nodded and left.

After a little Ione
followed her to
the hot
pool and dove to the oval aperture Mark had
found
, taking care to be certain she was
unobserved. She
swam through and
clambered out of the narrow passage to find her
lover waiting with the adventure bag.

“
You okay?” she
whispered.

“
I guess. It’s creepy in
here. I still think we should try to drag a glow gnome with us,”
Emma distractedly advised as she squeezed her blond locks
dry.

They argued about this till it was clear the
others were late.

“
What’s going on?” Emma
worried. “Mark should have been here by now.”

“
Why him first?”

Emma was confused. “I told Manassa to watch
him. Like you keep asking.”

“
Oh.”

“
What’s the
problem?”

“
I pretty much told Mark the
same thing,” Ione admitted.

“
Great,” Emma
winced.

“
Shush! Someone’s
coming.”

Mark burst through the tunnel, splashing
them. He peered about, then turned to Ione.

“
Look, I followed her around
as best I could, but I had to dodge the slips and she managed to
elude me. No idea what she was doing, if anything.”

“
It’s okay.” Ione shrugged
to cover their duplicity. “Think we can do this?”

Mark examined the fibrous shell of the
cramped flue enveloping them, felt into one of the numerous
openings they expected to use as hand and foot holds. His arm
disappeared to the elbow. “Seems alright for climbing.”

Ione was about to go check on Manassa when
she surfaced without warning.

“
Hi!” she giggled,
clambering into their midst, ready for anything.

“
Hey,” said Emma, smiling
uncertainly. They fell silent, crowded awkwardly close in the
passage.

Ione gazed up into the veering black tunnel
they would imminently ascend. What were they doing? Suddenly
nothing made sense. “Everyone good?” she bluffly inquired, trying
to stall a fierce apprehension. Emma squeezed her hand, signaling
fear and anticipation.

“
Let’s climb,” Mark
grinned.

Ione realized he was looking forward to the
relative peace and isolation their adventure offered. She felt an
almost comical relief on his behalf, found her courage restored by
the notion that they were leaving danger and confusion for
something milder.

She took a deep breath of fresh air,
gathering her vitality for what looked to be a prolonged exertion.
Securing one hand then the other in a pair of oval fissures, she
found a third with her right foot and proceeded to haul herself
up.

“
Mark goes last,” she called
back. His great physical strength granted at least a chance he
could halt a slipping woman.

“
Not a problem,” he cheekily
deferred, staring up appreciatively.

Far above, Ione called for a respite, their
third.

“
Okay!” Emma tiredly
acknowledged. The passage was momentarily crowded by echoes, then
fell eerily quiet as they all ceased moving at once. Mark answered
from somewhere farther down, well removed from the plunging
detritus Emma generated as she struggled to find purchase with
hands and feet. She could barely resolve anything by the endlessly
bounce-propagated glow reaching from below, just a hallucinatory
outline of their route.

Manassa was a warm, fragrant presence above
her. Emma had kept close to the bigger woman the whole way,
frightened of any isolation that might develop in the twisted
inscrutability of the tunnel—which she had eventually decided was a
huge, hollow root. For a moment she was overtaken by a shapeless,
cringing trepidation; the product of her absence from the Lap and
its safety rather than the blinded immobility of her present
circumstances. It passed before long, leaving her to grapple with a
wake of more objective fears. It was unlike Ione to take chances
like this, and Emma wondered if her companion was being subtly
manipulated somehow. Or was Emma herself being maneuvered in some
tricky, triangular scheme? By whom, and to what end? These were
calculations Ione customarily fielded—she was usually three steps
ahead of everyone else, including Emma. But now her lover was
totally out of sight, and Emma’s pulse faltered in fearful sympathy
for her lonely obligation to lead where the darkness would go.

After a little she could hear Manassa’s
breathing, deepened from the steady exertion of their labor, a calm
susurrus on a silent river of black air. She shifted her position,
trying to find a better combination of handholds and her fingers
brushed the other woman’s ankle.

Manassa chuckled at this—Emma had been
“accidentally” feeling her up the whole way.

“
C’mon.” The big woman
reached down, tickling about her shoulder, inviting her to pass.
Emma sighed, guessing she was tired of these attentions, and
limbered herself up, forced for a moment into Manassa’s intimate
embrace by the claustrophobic radius of the tunnel.

She was sensually enveloped by the size and
stability of the other woman, found her head braced in the
extravagant valley of a huge bosom. Emma’s lips hovered in
inadvertent conjunction with a thick nipple and she drew it into
her mouth without thinking. Manassa could only giggle at this
presumption, inhibited by their precarious circumstances from an
inhibitory reaction.

Emma instantly recognized the unique
opportunity this represented and licked her stocky tit with a
totally natural devotion, swirling the nipple like a sweet berry.
It responded vigorously, stiffening to a thick, fleshy thimble that
played with her tongue. The other woman exhaled deeply from this
ardent connection. Her thick tresses brushed luxuriantly about
Emma’s brow, a soft and fragrant cloud.

Forgetting everything, she lowered herself to
Manassa’s crotch to confront the flawless nudity of her vagina.
Closing her eyes she inhaled, filling her throat with a mixture of
womanly musk, a faint soap aroma lingering from the hot pool, and
fresh air drifting down from above. She ran a dexterous tongue
along her vulva, proceeded to kiss her in mindless disbelief. Her
lips shaped themselves about the huge woman’s clitoris, the first
time she had made contact with this exquisite stud—the most
sought-after flesh in the Lap. She felt an unmistakable response.
Manassa was wet.

Emma settled her tongue on the other woman’s
pertly distended clit, proceeded to lick and suck this sticky,
ticklish stem, savoring its frustrated desire.

Manassa’s great thighs braced her neck and
shoulders, clenched and relented in little spasms, imprisoning her
in their muscular bulk. Emma never wanted to leave, felt all
conflict depart her mind as she committed herself utterly to the
other doyenne’s pleasure, consummating a need to submit that had
flowered from their awakening kiss. She left it to fate whether
Ione heard this helpless treachery. Manassa’s glorious womanhood
subsumed Emma’s loyalty to anything else.

Her lover exhaled sharply as she delivered a
tongue-twisting thrill to her clitoris, clutched Emma with an
intensity that for one aching moment bespoke a timeless desire.
Emma’s seething vulva was fantastically roused by their tryst,
needed only a brief visitation of fingers to bring climax. They
would come together…

“
Emz…” Manassa whispered
urgently, shifting a little.

Emma let one hand down, commenced to rub
herself with a clenched determination as she exultantly served
Manassa’s wondrous femininity. But a moment later she felt her
equilibrium shift, realized they were slipping, too few limbs at
anchor…

“
Oh fuck–

Manassa threw her weight back to a more
secure posture, grabbed Emma by the arm and hauled her to a higher
position, one hand lingering sentimentally on her ankle.

“
What’s that sound? What’s
happening?” Ione demanded from above.

“
Nothing,” Emma groaned.
“Nothing at all.”

“
Are you ready? I think
we’re close…” her companion reported.

“
I know I am,” Mark lustily
croaked from just below them. Emma squeaked in surprise at his
unsuspected proximity.

Not long after they
ascended
into a
faint, tear-inducing
brilliance
, plainly revealing to
estranged sight an environment only their hands and feet had
known.
They
drew
closer together.