“Ack!” I yelp, half laughing, looking down. There’s a drip on the inner curve of my left breast. I’m not wearing a bra and this dress has rather a deep V-neck. The white trail winds down toward the cleft.
 
“Oh,” says Trev, looking too. “Oh ... that’s...’
  
"Hold on,” orders Matt. He drops his own ice cream back into the rack and then swiftly kneels before me. His fingertips graze my thighs. “Keep still,” he commands. I feel Trev’s free hand settle on the small of my back and my spine arches, thrusting my cleavage out a little more. Delicately – and it surprises me that this hearty, vital man is so careful – Matt leans forward until his lips are brushing my upper breast. I feel his breath on my skin: my own stops in my throat. I feel the tip of his tongue as he gently licks me clean.
 
My heart is pounding. The world seems to lurch. I stare over his head, wild eyed. We’re tucked away here, shielded by the first aid tent. Sunlight glints on the dark leaves of the hedgerow and the discarded cans in the long grass. His lips are on my breast in a lingering kiss, causing my nipples to respond greedily, hardening to points. And Trev’s hand slides up and down my spine, slow and firm.
 
Then Matt sits back. “Trev’s right,” he says softly, his eyes narrowing with hidden laughter. “That’s bloody good ice cream.”

Plot: Non-supernatural.  Abigail is a maker of gourmet ice ream, which she sells at summer festivals and fairs. She meets a couple of young paramedics who take a shine to her, and when she brings them ice cream at the end of the day they are more than willing to taste her wares...

Sexual Themes: m/f/m threesome

Notes: I've no clue where this one came from. Oh, I do go to summer fairs most years: it's  one of the few places you can take dogs for a day out, and so I've bought plenty of gourmet overpriced food in my time. So it seemed a natural setting for a nostalgic story. Why Abigail? No idea - It just sounded right. And why ice cream?  Well, I made a batch of basil ice cream for a friend's party last year, which was very strange and very yummy, so that sort of fitted.  And ice cream is of course sensual and dribbly and suggestive. Also ephemeral and luxurious - just like sex :-)  But I don't remember any creative process for this story: I just sat down and there it was.

The basil ice cream recipe!

I was actually quite surprised this one made it into Best Women's Erotica 2011. First of all, it's very very British, and I wasn't at all sure it would translate across the Atlantic  to where Cleis Press and Violet Blue (the editor) are based:

I do a lot of shows in the summer months. Agricultural shows (green wellington boots, horsey women and hard-mouthed farmers); game fairs (guns and spaniels and camouflage trousers); craft exhibitions (well-off suburbanites). The one thing they all have in common is food. The punters want to eat. They want to try something different, a little luxury: spit-roasted pig and hot waffles and venison burgers ... and Abigail’s ice cream. Even at the Strawberry Fair in Cambridge, which is the tattooed alternative crowd and beer in plastic glasses and loud live music.

(Alas, the Strawberry Fair in Cambridge has been closed down by the police recently. But I remember it fondly for henna tattoos and cowboy hats and the Norwich Anarchists.)

There are lots of little details that give the Britishness away and made me nervous. Roundheads vs Cavaliers ... St John Ambulance ... Sloe gin...
Oh: the paramedics call Abigail "love" from the moment they meet her. I don't know how that looks to an American reader, but that's not a come-on or (necessarily) a term of endearment in the UK. It denotes only the social class of the speaker ... and possibly gives a clue to which part of the country he comes from. (If he comes from the north-west he might say "duck" instead, from the north-east it could be "pet" or "hinny," but if he comes from certain parts of the south-west he might say  "m'lover" - !)

Most British of all is the niggling class tensions in the story. Abigail is a forty-something (upper-)middle-class woman with a grown daughter and artsy hippyish tendencies. The paramedics are much younger than her and soundly working-class. She admires them for their confidence and practicality and ballsiness: she also finds them intimidating and assumes they sneer at her. She's very conscious of her aging body and finds it hard to believe that they desire her (but Oh she wants to believe!).  So basically this is a sweet positive story about connections being made across social divides, about a woman finding her sexuality validated once more, about risk-taking that pays off, about loneliness and healing.