STARLET
A Lesbian Femdom Erotica by Dove Harper (8300+ words)
⚠️ - Rivals to Lovers | Explicit F/F Sexual Content | Power Dynamics / Dominance & Submission | Emotional Manipulation
Authors note: enjoy ❤️
Anna sat on the cold stone edge of the campus fountain, watching the autumn festival break down around her. The smell of fried dough and spent oil filled the air and vendors dragged folding tables across the brick walkways, dismantling the funnel cake stands and button-making booths that had crowded the center of campus since early morning. The giant maple tree in the center of the quad dropped a single red leaf onto her knee.
Almost like a dramatic movie.
She ignored it because life isn’t like Twilight and she wasn’t the main character.
Yet.
She kept her eyes locked on her phone screen.
“If you stare at it any harder, it’s going to catch fire,” her roommate, Chloe, said. She dropped a half-eaten caramel apple into a nearby trash can and licked her lips and fingers with annoyingly oblivious slurping sounds. “The cast list doesn’t go up until five.”
“It’s four fifty-eight though.” Anna rubbed her thumb over the yellowed edge of her phone case.
“So you have two minutes to stop vibrating. I feel like you’re going to explode girl.”
Chloe sat down next to her, pulling her denim jacket tighter against the November chill. “You fucking nailed the audition. You were the only freshman to get a callback for the lead right? Like, forreal Professor Hayes loves you right?”
“Professor Hayes loves anyone who cries on cue honestly.” Anna checked the time again.
Four fifty-nine.
“And it’s not just a lead. The university is sending this specific production to the regional showcase in Boston actually. If I get the role, actual casting directors will be in the audience. I am not spending the next four damn years stuck in Massachusetts pretending to care about liberal arts. I’m going to be a starlet.”
“I don’t think people don’t use the word starlet anymore, Anna. That’s like, Marilyn Monroe type shit.”
“I do though.”
The phone buzzed in her palm. The screen lit up with an email notification from the Theater Department.
Anna stopped breathing. The cold wind sweeping off the brick buildings suddenly felt sharp enough to cut. She tapped the notification. The PDF loaded slowly, the spinning wheel agonizingly sluggish on the overloaded campus Wi-Fi. The document finally rendered, displaying the cast list for The Glass Menagerie.
She scanned past the supporting roles. She looked for the lead.
Laura Wingfield: Sarah Jenkins (Senior).
Anna stared at the screen. The letters blurred together. Sarah Jenkins was a graduating senior who had spent practically the entire callback reading her lines in a monotone whisper.
“Well?” Chloe leaned over her shoulder. “Did you get it?”
“No.” Anna locked the screen. She stood up so fast her vision swam for a second. “I got the fucking understudy.”
“Anna, an understudy as a freshman is incredible right? You beat out like thirty other girls.”
“An understudy means I sit in the dark and watch someone else go to Boston.” Anna shoved the phone into her coat pocket. The sharp sting of rejection burned the back of her throat, tight and humiliating in that way not even swallowing fixes.
She looked toward the Psychology Building at the edge of the quad, its floor-to-ceiling windows glowing yellow against the darkening sky. “I have to fix this.”
“You can’t fix a cast list.” Chloe stood up, her voice dropping lower. “Don’t do anything stupid. Hayes hates when students argue with him.”
“I’m not going to argue with him.” Anna tightened her scarf. “I’m going to make him change his mind.”
“How?”
Anna ignored her and left her at the campus fountain, still licking her sticky fingers.
Anna stood outside the closed wooden door of Professor Hayes, listening to the muffled sound of a piano playing from the practice rooms down the hall. The smell of old carpet filled her nose and she scrunched it, annoyed.
She checked her reflection in the glass of a framed theatrical poster. Her hair was neat. Her coat was buttoned. She looked exactly like what she was: an eighteen-year-old freshman She pulled her shoulders back, forcing herself to stand taller, swishing her hair back and forth and twisting her neck as if she was about to enter a fistfight.
She had not come to dinky Sterling College in podunk Massachusetts to be a fucking backup plan.
She knocked twice.
“Come in,” a voice called out.
Anna opened the door. The office was small and cramped, lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves overflowing with scripts and biographies. Professor Hayes sat behind a messy desk, a red pen in his hand and a stack of student essays in front of him. He looked up, his expression immediately shifting into a practiced, tired patience.
“Anna, right?” he said, setting the pen down. “If you’re here about the cast list, I’m afraid my decision is final.”
“I’m not here to complain,” Anna lied smoothly. She closed the door behind her and stepped forward. “I just wanted to understand the feedback. If I recall correctly, you said my callback was the strongest read of the day.”
Hayes sighed, leaning back in his chair. The leather creaked under his weight.
“It was. You have raw talent, Anna. More than most students who come through this department.”
“Then why give the role to Sarah?” She was unable to keep a hint of steel out of her boice.
“Because actually Sarah has discipline.” He picked up the red pen again, rolling it between his fingers and raising his eyebrows at her tone but choosing not to address it further. “This isn’t some high school play. This is a regional showcase. The lead carries the entire emotional weight of the production. You are a freshman. You have no experience with a run this demanding. You rely entirely on instinct, as evidenced by you coming here, and instinct burns out by week three.”
“I can be disciplined.”
“You don’t know how.”
Hayes gestured to the empty chair across from his desk. “You want to be a star. I can see it in how you walk into a room. But a star is just someone who got lucky. An actor is someone who knows how to work.” He softened his tone a little. “Listen. Take the understudy role. Watch Sarah. Learn how she paces herself.”
The condescension in his voice frustrated Anna. She did not want to watch Sarah Jenkins pace herself. She wanted the spotlight.
“What if I prove I can handle the workload?” Anna asked. She kept her voice steady, refusing to let the desperation show. “What if I come to every rehearsal off-book by next week? What if I can run the scenes better than she does?”
“The list is set, Anna.”
“If Sarah gets sick or falls down the stairs or gets hit by a bus, I go on,” Anna pressed. “You need me to be ready. Right?”
Hayes stopped rolling the pen. He looked at her, his eyes narrowing slightly behind his glasses, assessing. Was his understudy threatening the star of the show? The silence stretched in the small office.
“Fine,” he said quietly and looked down at his hands. “If you want to prove you can do the work, you can run the blocking with the stage manager before the main cast arrives. Every morning. Six AM. If you miss a single day, I will not hesitate to pull your understudy credit entirely.”
The condition was brutal. Six AM meant waking up in the freezing dark of the dorms and walking across an empty campus before the dining halls even opened. It was designed to make her quit.
“I’ll be there,” Anna said.
The campus library was dead quiet at nine PM. Anna sat at a corner table near the back stacks, her copy of The Glass Menagerie open flat under the harsh fluorescent light.
She dragged a yellow highlighter across her lines, the neon ink bleeding slightly through the thin paper. Her head ached. The adrenaline from the confrontation with Hayes had worn off hours ago, leaving her hollow and exhausted. The fistfight had felt like more of a loss than a win or at least a draw like she could have hoped.
She looked up at the dark window. The reflection showed a tired girl with highlighter ink on her thumb. Six AM rehearsals meant giving up her evenings. It meant missing the parties at the student apartments off-campus. It meant dedicating every waking hour to a role she might never actually get to perform.
A star is just someone who got lucky, Hayes had said.
Anna closed the script. The sound echoed slightly in the empty aisle. She did not believe in luck. Luck was for people who waited for the phone to ring. She believed in leverage.
She opened her laptop and pulled up the university’s public directory. She searched for Sarah Jenkins. The profile loaded, displaying a smiling senior headshot and a list of extracurriculars. Sarah was double-majoring in Theater and Pre-Law. She was the president of the debate club. She worked a part-time job at the Grounds coffee shop near campus.
Anna leaned back in her hard wooden chair. The library’s heating vent rattled above her head.
Sarah was stretched thin. A double major, a club presidency, a job, and the lead in a regional showcase production. Professor Hayes had chosen Sarah because he thought she had discipline, but no amount of discipline could stretch a twenty-four-hour day into thirty.
Anna didn’t need Sarah to fail. She just needed Sarah to be too exhausted to succeed. And maybe fall down the stairs.
She packed her script into her bag and shut her laptop. The campus outside the library was dark, the streetlights casting pools of yellow light against the brick pathways. The church bell tolled in the distance, ten times.
Anna walked down the prominent front steps of the library and headed toward her dorm. She had an early morning tomorrow, and a very long week ahead. She was going to learn every line, every blocking mark, and every lighting cue. And when Sarah finally cracked under the pressure, Anna would be standing right there in the wings, ready to take the stage.
Grounds was packed as usual. The usual for a coffee shop of its sort. Exposed brick, reclaimed wood, Edison bulbs, and the thick smell of roasted beans and cinnamon hanging over a crowd of students hunched over laptops. Ceramic mugs knocked against saucers behind the counter while the espresso machine barked over the low folk music bleeding through the speakers.
Anna waited in line with a notebook tucked against her breasts and watched Sarah work the register.
She had spent three mornings at six AM marking blocking with the stage manager, three mornings cheering internally as Professor Hayes stopped correcting her after the second scene. She hit every cue. She learned every line. She stayed late and took notes she did not need. None of it changed the cast list.
So she changed tactics.
Sarah moved fast behind the counter. Hair pinned up high on her head. Black apron tied tight over a charcoal sweater. A yellow pencil shoved through the knot at the back of her head. She smiled at each person in front of her agreeably.
Anna hated her for that.
No, not hated. Carrying around hate wasted energy.
So Anna studied her.
The smile slipped at the edges when the line got long. Her left hand massaged her right wrist while she leaned against the register between orders to try to take weight off her feet. She glanced at the wall clock after every other order. Tired. Overbooked. Still composed. That took effort. But effort could be broken. Effort did not make a star.
When Anna reached the register, Sarah looked up and gave her that same public smile.
“Hey. Understudy girl.”
Anna tipped her head. “Lead girl.”
Sarah laughed once and leaned against the till. “You want the usual?”
“I’ve only been here twice.”
“Well I bet you order the same thing every freshman that’s not from Sterling orders.” Sarah tapped the screen. “Quad-shot oat milk latte. No sweetener.”
Anna tapped her card on the counter. “You memorize everybody?”
“Only the freshman.”
Someone behind Anna shifted. A boy in a slanted beanie sighed theatrically.
Anna slid her gaze over the chalkboard menu, then back to Sarah and pounced.
“You get off soon?”
Sarah’s fingers paused over the touchscreen. Not surprise. Interest.
“Why?” Sarah asked and tilted her head.
Anna let one shoulder lift and poked her bottom lip out. “I figured I owe you congratulations. You got Boston.”
“And you’re taking it beautifully.”
“I’m trying a new strategy.” Anna smiled. She hoped was a placating type and not a venemous type.
“Private bitterness.”
Sarah snorted and handed back the card. “I’m done at eight.”
“Great.”
“You’re very sure I’m saying yes.”
Anna took the receipt between two fingers. “You are.”
She moved aside and waited at the pickup counter, pulse steady, expression blank. That was the useful part of desire. People mistook appetite for vulnerability. They saw a pretty girl wanting something and assumed the wanting made her soft.
It didn’t. It wouldn’t. It couldn’t.
Sarah called her drink out eight minutes later and set the cup down herself instead of leaving it with the others.
“That was fast,” Anna said.
“You’re welcome.”
Anna curled her fingers around the paper cup. “Eight, then.”
Sarah’s eyes flicked over her face, searching for the joke, maybe for the trap. If she found either, she didn’t care enough to step back.
“Eight,” she said.
The student apartment cluster sat close enough to campus to feel temporary and close enough to the corner store to stay stocked on cheap wine, ramen, and bad decisions. Sarah’s building looked exactly like the rest of them from the outside, plain siding, narrow woodenstairs, weak yellow porch light, the sort of place where every front door probably opened to the same cheapo couch from IKEA.
Anna climbed to the second floor with a bottle of red she had little intention of drinking.
Sarah opened the door in gray sweatpants and a white tank top, damp hair loose over one shoulder. No bra. No apron. No careful smile for customers. Just a tired face and bare feet on cheap laminate flooring. Her apartment matched the campus version of adulthood: functional, lived-in, trying hard not to look shabby. A small couch faced a television in the common area. The kitchen opened off the living room. Two bedroom doors ran down a short hall.
“Your roommate out?” Anna asked.
Sarah took the bottle from her. “Bowling alley I think with her boyfriend.”
Anna stepped inside and closed the door behind her. The lock clicked. Sarah carried the wine to the kitchen counter and looked back over her shoulder before examining the label. “So. Are you here to poison me before tech week?”
Anna shrugged out of her coat. “Would it work?”
“No.”
“Then no. I suppose I’m not.”
Sarah found two glasses in a cabinet and held one up to the light before pouring. Not too streaky.
“You don’t waste time, do you?”
“I don’t have time to waste.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
Anna accepted the glass and leaned back against the counter. “It can be. But it’s more so that it sounds correct. But then again, neither do you, have time to waste that is.”
Sarah took a sip and watched her over the rim. “You really want this that badly.”
Anna did not try to fake humility.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t come here to peak in a black box theater in Massachusetts.”
Sarah barked out a laugh. “Wow.”
Anna met her gaze without blinking. “You asked.”
“You say things people normally hide.”
“Most people hide because they’re weak.”
“Or because they know how to function in society.”
“That too.”
Sarah set her glass down and put her palms flat on the counter. “You know…. everybody in the department thinks you’re really intense.”
“Do you?”
Sarah considered for a moment and but her lip.
“I think you’re honest in a way that probably ruins lives. I feel like if I asked you if you wanted me to get hit by a bus, you’d say yes.”
Closer to the truth than anything, Anna thought. Smarter than she looks.
Good.
She stepped forward just enough to take up the space between them. Sarah didn’t move back. The kitchen light caught the small gold stud in her nose and the pulse at the base of her throat.
Anna lowered her voice. “And yet you still invited me over.”
Sarah’s lip twitched as she countered. “You invited yourself.”
“But you opened the door.”
A beat passed.
Then Sarah reached out and touched the sleeve of Anna’s sweater, fingers dragging once over the fabric at her wrist. Testing. Not shyly but not wantonly either.
Anna let her.
This was usually the easy part. Watching attention tip into hunger. Letting somebody think the moment belonged to them while she counted cards under the table.
Sarah’s eyes flicked to Anna’s lips, then rose again. “Tell me something true.”
Anna could have lied. She was good at it.
Instead she said, “I walked in here planning to use you.”
Sarah went still.
There. A flinch under the skin. A lick of the lips. Tiny, but real.
Anna kept going because retreat was for people who needed to be liked.
“I wanted to see whether you were tired enough to slip. Distracted enough to miss a cue. Curious enough to let me close.”
She tipped her head. “I’m still not done wanting that.”
Sarah stared at her for a long moment, then another.
The smart move would have been anger. The smarter move would have been to throw Anna out.
Instead Sarah stepped closer and leaned on the counter until their knees nearly touched.
“That should make me shut the door on you,” Sarah said.
“Yes.”
“But you came anyway.”
“Yes.”
“And now you’re standing in my kitchen telling me the truth when a much prettier lie would’ve worked better.”
Anna took Sarah’s glass from her hand and set it on the counter beside her own. “Did you want a prettier lie?”
“No.” Sarah’s fingers gripped Anna’s waist. “I wanted to know what kind of girl keeps looking at me in rehearsal like she’s deciding whether to kiss me or kill me.”
Anna smiled for the first time that night without effort. “Still deciding.”
Sarah kissed her.
No hesitation. No question mark. Her mouth was warm from wine. She kissed back hard enough to make the counter edge press into the other girls spine. Sarah made a quiet sound, pleased, and slid one hand up under the hem of Anna’s sweater.
That was inconvenient.
Anna preferred control to surprise. Sarah kissing like this, confidently, with one hand flattening against the bare skin of her waist as if she had every right to it, threatened the precisely clean edges of the plan.
She deepened the kiss anyway.
Because control could include pleasure, right? Because wanting somebody and using them were not at all opposites. Because Sarah’s thumb dragged once over the soft lower curve of her breast and Anna’s thoughts scattered to the wind.
Sarah broke the kiss first, breathing harder now, eyes darker.
“Bedroom,” she said.
Anna should have made Sarah work for it. She should have kept this game in the kitchen where she had angles and exits and the counter under her hands.
Instead she let Sarah take her wrist and lead her down the narrow hall.
The bedroom at the end held a wrought-iron frame, white linens, a desk under the window, a bookshelf half-full of scripts and casebooks, and a lamp throwing soft gold over the bedspread. Clothes hung over the desk chair. An uncapped bottle of ibuprofen sat beside a highlighted prompt book.
Lead girl, Anna thought. Busy girl. Cracking girl.
Sarah turned, backed Anna against the closed door, and kissed her again. Slower this time. Thoroughly. Their tongues clashed. The smell of wine on their breath filled the small space as they panted. Her palms slid up Anna’s sides and over her shoulders, coaxing the coat free, then the sweater, then the thin black camisole underneath. Anna let the layers go. Let Sarah look.
Whatever softness most people found in being seen, Anna never had. Exposure sharpened her. Made her colder. More exact. That’s why she was fit to be a star.
But Sarah looked at her with open hunger and no apology, and Anna’s body answered before her mind could frame it as leverage.
“Still using me?” Sarah asked between kisses against her throat.
Anna’s hands found the waistband of Sarah’s sweatpants. “Obviously.”
Sarah laughed into her skin and bit lightly at the slope of her shoulder. The tiny sting sent a pulse between Anna’s legs so abrupt she almost cursed out loud but stymied it with a sharp intake of breath.
They stumbled to the bed.
Sarah fell back first and pulled Anna over her, warm limbs and steady hands. Anna straddled her hips, pinned her wrists above her head for half a second just to see what would happen, and watched Sarah’s breath hitch.
Interesting.
She bent and kissed down the center of Sarah’s chest while Sarah arched under her, fingers slipping free only to grab at Anna’s waist and push her lower. Every response Sarah gave away became inventory. The catch in her breathing when Anna sucked at the inside of her thigh. The way her knees parted wider when Anna traced her mound through the fabric of her panties. The tremor that ran through her when Anna pressed down on her clit, slow and direct, and kept her eyes on Sarah’s face while doing it.
Anna liked that part most. Not submission or affection or anything like that.
Impact.
The proof that she could touch somebody and make the rest of the room disappear. That she was the star of the room.
Sarah rolled them with surprising force, climbed over her, and shoved Anna’s skirt up her thighs. “You talk big,” she murmured.
Anna hooked one leg over Sarah’s hip. “Keep testing me.”
Sarah did.
Her hand slid between them, skillful and unhurried to push Anna’s panties to the side. No need to take them off fully, this would do. She circled the clit slowly until Anna’s spine bowed off the mattress and she muttered curses under her breath. Anna grabbed a fistful of the white sheet and held on. She hated making noises that weren’t words. It felt careless. Sarah coaxed more out of her anyway, low and broken, and smiled sweetly like she had won something.
That smile irritated Anna enough that she dragged Sarah down by the back of the neck and pressed their lips together hungrily until the smile disappeared.
Then Sarah’s mouth moved lower.
Anna stared at the ceiling, at the cheap off-white paint and the faint water stain near the corner, and let sensation strip her clean of every clever thing in her head. Sarah’s tongue, Sarah’s fingers, Sarah’s careful, escalating pace. Pleasure built with humiliating speed. Anna had planned to stay detached enough to learn something useful, maybe to leave Sarah flushed and distracted and a little stupid and even a little more drunk before morning rehearsal.
Instead she felt like she was the one losing ground.
Her hand tightened in Sarah’s hair. Her thighs closed hard around Sarah’s shoulders. When the climax hit, it hit mean, dragging rough pants and moans and curses out of her that she would have denied under sworn oath.
Sarah came back up the bed smiling again, smug now, mouth wet.
Anna hated that smile too.
She kissed her anyway, tasting the wine and her own pussy juices mingling on the other girls tongue.
After, they lay tangled in the warm dent of the mattress while the radiator clanked somewhere in the wall.
Sarah drew circles on Anna’s bare stomach with a drying finger. She sometimes snaked up her sternum and thumbed a nipple. Anna let her. The lamp on the desk threw a thin bar of light across the prompt book still sitting open by the window.
There.
Useful.
Anna turned her head just enough to read the page from where she lay. Blocking notes. Cue changes in blue ink. A circled rehearsal time for Saturday. An asterisk beside Hayes’s note about reworking the final monologue after Boston feedback from the invited panel.
Boston feedback.
Anna rolled toward the edge of the bed and reached for her camisole on the floor.
“Leaving already?” Sarah asked.
“I have a six AM call.”
Sarah propped herself up on one elbow, sheets pooled low across her now bare breasts.
“So do I.”
Anna pulled the camisole over her head and crossed to the desk as if casually searching for her hair tie.
The prompt book sat open exactly where she wanted it.
One glance. Two.
Enough.
Hayes had changed the final emotional beat for the showcase cut. Sarah knew. Anna hadn’t. Not until now.
She picked up the hair tie from beside the desk lamp and turned back with it looped around her fingers.
Sarah watched her for a long moment. “You got what you came for?”
Anna paused.
There it was. Not accusation. Not quite. Just a question asked by somebody smarter than she wanted.
She could have lied again. Said no. Said not yet. Said something sweet and rotten enough to keep the door open another week.
Instead she smiled while fastening her hair.
“Part of it.”
Sarah’s mouth flattened.
Good. Better, maybe, than good.
Anna stepped back into her skirt, found her sweater, and buttoned her coat without hurry. “See you at rehearsal.”
“You’re kind of awful,” Sarah said offhandedly. There was an undercurrent of obvious irritation under.
Anna opened the bedroom door. “I know.”
She left before Sarah could decide whether to be angry or impressed.
The night outside bit through her clothes the second she stepped onto the walkway. The porch light buzzed over the stairs. Beyond the apartment cluster, campus sat dark and waiting, brick paths shining damp under the streetlights.
Anna tucked her chin into her scarf and started walking.
Her body still hummed from Sarah’s hands. Her mouth still carried the taste of her. In her head, though, the useful thing kept replaying: the changed monologue beat, the Saturday note, the proof that Sarah’s room held what the stage manager didn’t.
By the time she reached the corner, Anna was smiling. Now she knew where the cracks were.
Anna sat in the first row of the dark auditorium. Professor Hayes stood near the stage edge, tapping his pen against a clipboard.
Sarah stood under the harsh white work light, running the final scene. She looked exhausted. Dark circles shadowed her eyes. The glass prop clinked against the wooden table as she set it down a little too hard.
“Line,” Sarah said, dropping her chin and mouthing a silent curse.
“I didn’t go to the moon,” Anna called out from the dark. She didn’t look at the script in her lap. She knew every syllable.
“I went much further.”
Sarah glared into the shadows, not quite making out where Anna was. “Thank you.”
“Try the new blocking, Sarah,” Hayes interrupted. “The turn on the second sentence. Like we discussed.”
Sarah frowned. “We didn’t discuss a turn.”
Anna stood up. She walked down the aisle and climbed the side stairs to the stage. “He wants you to cross downstage right,” Anna said, stopping two feet from Sarah. “To isolate the character from the memory. Like this.”
Anna delivered the line. She hit the exact emotional beat she had stolen from Sarah’s prompt book three nights ago. She turned, dropping her voice to a perfect, hollow whisper that echoed in the empty house.
Hayes nodded slowly. “Exactly. Thank you, Anna.”
Sarah stared at Anna. The exhaustion in her face vanished, replaced by a cold, hard focus. “Can we take ten?”
“Take ten,” Hayes agreed, looking down to his notes.
Sarah walked past Anna, her shoulder slamming hard into Anna’s collarbone. “Costume shop,” Sarah grumbled. “Now.”
Anna smiled. She followed Sarah into the dark wings.
The costume shop smelled of mothballs and dust. Racks of ostentatious dresses crowded the narrow aisles.
Sarah shut the heavy fire door. The latch slammed into place. She turned and shoved Anna backwards heavily into a rack of heavy wool coats.
“You read my fucking book,” Sarah said.
Anna caught her balance against the metal pole and caught her breath before firing back. “I read a book left open on a desk.”
“You used me to steal direction notes.”
“I used an opportunity. Besides, I told you I would.” Anna stepped forward, refusing to cede the space.
“You’re too tired to do the work, Sarah. You missed three cues today. Step down and let me take the showcase.” Her tone was just as full of malice as she wanted it to be.
Sarah laughed. The sound carried zero humor. “You fucking bitch. You think you’re a mastermind because you let me bend you over my bed while you squinted at my desk lamp?”
“It got me the blocking.”
“It got you exactly what I wanted you to see actually.” Sarah grabbed the lapels of Anna’s jacket. She pushed, backing her up again, slamming Anna’s shoulders against the concrete wall. The impact knocked the air from Anna’s lungs. “You’re a freshman with a massive ego and absolutely no idea how this department works.”
“I know how to act better than you do.”
“Act this, bitch,” Sarah snarled.
She kissed Anna roughly.
Sarah’s teeth scraped Anna’s bottom lip hard as if to draw blood. Anna shoved at the other girls shoulders, furious at the immediate, treacherous spike of heat between her own thighs. She wanted to win. She wanted to humiliate Sarah. She did not want to need the exact hands currently pinning her wrists against the concrete.
“Stop,” Anna said against Sarah’s mouth.
“Make me.” Sarah dragged Anna’s hands down and pinned them together at the small of Anna’s back.
Anna struggled, kicking out. Sarah caught her leg, hooking her knee over Anna’s thigh, trapping her completely. The physical dominance was absolute. Sarah was older, much stronger, and running on pure spite.
“You like control,” Sarah murmured, her mouth trailing down Anna’s jaw. “You like running the game. How does this feel, bitch?”
“Let go of me.”
Sarah ignored her. She slowly moved her knee upward, pressing hard into the warm junction of Anna’s thighs under her denim skirt. Anna gasped, her spine bowing off the wall. The friction was somehow agonizingly precise.
“You want the fucking lead role huh,” Sarah whispered, her hot breath grazing Anna’s ear. “You want Boston. You want me out of the way. Then fucking beg for it.”
“Go to hell.”
Sarah pressed harder, rolling her hips. Anna bit her own tongue to keep quiet but couldn’t quite disguise the moan that lept from her throat as anger. Her body betrayed her perfectly laid plans, melting under the pressure. The wool coats scratched her bare arms. The concrete chilled her back. But the heat radiating from Sarah burned through every defense she had. She hadn’t expected Sarah to resist further. The younger girl had formulated no defense against this.
Sarah’s free hand slid up Anna’s thigh, pushing past the denim skirt. She deftly invaded the understudy’s panties, dragging two fingers directly over the wet skin of her pussy and palmed it.
Anna jerked her head back, hitting the wall.
“Fuck.”
Sarah easily found bud of her clit and began stroking it, eliciting yet other curse and a low moan.
“Shut the fuck up,” Sarah hissed. “Hayes is fifty fucking feet away.”
Anna squeezed her eyes shut. She hated Sarah. She hated the smug, calculated way Sarah took apart her composure. She hated herself for melting completely under the girls physical dominance.
“Tell me I’m the fucking lead,” Sarah commanded. She set a ruthless pace with her fingers.
“No.”
Sarah withdrew her hand completely.
Anna whimpered and raised her arms to grab Sarah’s forearms, chasing the lost contact before she could stop herself.
“Say it,” Sarah said. She rested her hand flat on Anna’s stomach, waiting.
Anna looked at Sarah’s face. The older girl looked completely untouched, perfectly in control, holding Anna’s climax hostage. It was the exact thing Anna had done to her three nights ago. The mirrored cruelty was infuriating. And violently hot.
“You’re the lead,” Anna choked out.
Sarah smiled viciously. “And what else do you want from me?”
“Your fingers…”
“Where do you want my fingers?”
“In me.”
“Oh, like this?”
She shoved her slick fingers into Anna’s mouth before she could even form another thought. Her fingers tasted like salt, sweat, and the unique warmth of her own pussy.
“Bite my fingers and you’ll pay. Swirl your tongue around them, understudy.”
Anna tasted herself, licking the fingers clean and moistening them with her own saliva before Sarah withdrew them pushed her fingers back inside the other girls waiting cunt, deep and fast.
Anna couldn’t stop herself. The tension was too much. The feelings. The shame of losing to this girl. Tears came to her eyes as she broke. She came against the concrete wall, her nails digging desperately into Sarah’s wrists, silent screams tearing up her throat while Sarah covered her mouth to keep the noise from reaching the stage.
Sarah stepped back. She wiped her hand on Sarah’s blouse.
Anna slumped against the wall. Her knees shook. She straightened her panties with clumsy, uncoordinated fingers, her lungs pulling in jagged semblances of air. She refused to look away. She forced her chin up, waiting for the lecture on morality.
“Professor Hayes never changed the blocking,” Sarah said casually while fixing her hair.
Anna stopped smoothing her skirt down. “What?”
“The note in my prompt book. The blue ink.” Sarah picked up a lint roller and casually ran it over her black sweater. “I wrote it the afternoon before you came over. I knew you were going to fucking snoop. I wanted to see if you were stupid enough to use it in front of him.”
Anna’s stomach dropped and she stuttered trying to respond. “But, he—he agreed with the blocking today.”
“He agreed with it because it works dummy,” Sarah replied. “But he also knows it isn’t in his director’s notes. And he fucking hates actors who improvise his vision without asking. He was just being polite to the little understudy.”
The trap locked shut. Anna saw the entire board now. Sarah hadn’t been breaking down. Sarah had handed her the rope that she’d used to choke herself.
“You set me up,” Anna said hotly.
“You set yourself up.” Sarah opened the heavy fire door. The bright lights of the stage spilled into the dusty room. “You want to be a star, Anna? Learn to spot a better actor.”
Sarah walked out, letting the door swing shut.
Anna stood alone in the dark costume shop. The scent of Sarah clung to her skin. Her body still throbbed with the heavy aftermath of the climax. She had lost the battle, handed over her dignity, and walked face-first into a beautifully constructed trap.
She leaned her head back against the concrete wall and smiled in the dark.
The dorms on the edge of campus offered exactly zero soundproofing and even less privacy. Anna sat on the edge of her narrow twin bed, staring at the closed door. Her roommate was at a biology study group until late. The hall outside was dead quiet.
Anna smoothed her hands over the front of her skirt. She had invited Sarah here because it was the only space where Anna still controlled the home-field advantage. The costume shop had been an epic disaster of overconfidence. Sarah had taken the board, the blocking, and Anna’s dignity in one clean sweep.
Tonight would be about reclaiming the script.
A sharp, double knock rattled the door.
Anna stood, checked her reflection in the small mirror above her desk, and opened the door.
Sarah stood in the hallway wearing a heavy wool coat over dark jeans. She didn’t smile. She didn’t offer a greeting. She pushed past Anna into the cramped room, glanced at the two identical desks, the narrow closet, and the single window overlooking the dark quad, and then turned to look at Anna.
“You texted me to come over,” Sarah said, dropping her bag onto the floor. “You have exactly five minutes before I leave and block your goddamn number.”
“I don’t think you’re going to leave,” Anna said.
She stepped closer, dropping her voice to the quiet, practiced register she used for auditions and callbacks. She reached for the lapels of Sarah’s coat, intending to crowd her backward against the door.
Sarah caught Anna’s wrists in mid-air.
The grip was almost painfully tight. Sarah didn’t step back. She stepped forward, using her height and leverage to force Anna backward instead.
“You still think you’re fucking directing this,” Sarah hissed.
Anna hit the edge of the mattress. Her knees buckled slightly, but she locked them straight. “I think you came here because you liked what happened yesterday.”
“I liked putting you in your place.” Sarah pushed Anna’s wrists down, forcing her backward onto the mattress.
Anna fell hard against the thin comforter. She scrambled to sit up, but Sarah followed her down immediately. Sarah straddled Anna’s hips, her weight pinning Anna flat against the bed.
“Get off me!” Anna snapped, the first real spike of panic hitting her chest.
“You invited me here,” Sarah reminded her. She caught both of Anna’s hands in one of hers, pinning them above Anna’s head. “You wanted to play the game again. So? We’re playing.”
“I don’t submit,” Anna spat, thrashing her legs.
Sarah ignored the struggle entirely. She shifted her weight forward, pressing Anna deeper into the mattress. “You submit when I tell you to. Because right now, you want my role, you want my blocking, and you want my hands on you. And you are going to beg for all three before I leave.”
Sarah moved with a cold, terrifying efficiency. She didn’t kiss Anna. She didn’t offer any softness to blunt the absolute control she was taking.
With her free hand, Sarah unbuttoned Anna’s skirt and shoved it down. The harsh fluorescent light of the dorm room illuminated exactly how exposed Anna was. Anna squeezed her eyes shut tight, turning her face into the pillow.
“Look at me, understudy,” Sarah ordered, spitting the words like they were toxic waste.
“No. Fuck you.”
Sarah dug her thumb into the sensitive skin just above Anna’s hip bone. The pressure was sharp and painfully arousing. Anna gasped at the touch, her eyes flying open.
“I don’t trust you, Anna,” Sarah said softly, leaning down until her mouth hovered over Anna’s ear. “I know exactly what you are. You’re selfish, you’re manipulative, and you would sell out anyone in this department to get on a stage in Boston.”
“Yeah. I would,” Anna breathed out, defiance still burning in her throat.
“Good. Honest. I like that. Makes this all the more justified.” Sarah’s hand moved lower.
She bypassed the fabric of her panties entirely, slipping two fingers directly inside.
Anna arched off the mattress so hard her spine almost cracked. The sensation was immediate and overwhelming. The tension had been building internally and she hadn’t even noticed it.
Sarah didn’t start slow. She started at the exact brutal pace she had used in the costume shop, picking up the thread of arousal exactly where she had dropped it.
“Keep fucking quiet,” Sarah warned, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “These walls are paper. Fucking. Thin.”
Anna bit down on the edge of her own sweater. The friction built a violent, building heat in her core. She hated Sarah. She hated the way Sarah looked down at her with total, unimpressed dominance. She hated that her own body was arching into the touch, silently demanding more.
“You want to be a star,” Sarah murmured, her thumb finding the most sensitive point and pressing hard. “Stars don’t break character. Let’s see how long you can hold this one.”
Anna shook her head frantically. The pleasure was too sharp. It was stripping away the protective layers of ambition and strategy she had spent years building. She tried to pull her wrists free, but Sarah’s grip was iron.
“Please,” Anna choked out, the word tearing out of her throat before she could stop it.
“Please what?” Sarah asked. She didn’t slow down. She pushed deeper and curled her fingers right into Anna’s most sensitive internal spot.
“Stop. Just—please.”
“You don’t want me to stop.”
“I do.” Anna was crying now, hot tears tracking sideways across her temples into her hair. The humiliation was total. She was losing the only thing she valued—control—and she was losing it to the girl she had tried to ruin.
Sarah watched the tears fall. She didn’t shrink back. She didn’t soften her expression. She reveled in the breakdown, her eyes dark and satisfied.
“Beg.” Sarah commanded.
“For what?!” Anna asked incredulously.
“To cum.”
“I won’t. Fuck you bitch.” She started working her mouth as if to spit in the stronger girls face.
Sarah gasped in mock shock, then pulled her fingers out completely and clapped a hand over Anna’s mouth.
“You would spit on me? You wouldn’t dare. Shame on you. Now, beg.”
The sudden, shocking absence of pressure and pure exhaustion of struggling broke whatever resistance Anna had left. A sob ripped out of her chest. She twisted on the bed, chasing the contact, completely unraveling under the fluorescent lights.
“Please,” Anna keened, her voice cracking loudly through sobs in the quiet room. “Please, Sarah. I need it. Please.”
Sarah smiled. It was the coldest, most beautiful thing Anna had ever seen.
“Good girl,” Sarah whispered.
She pushed her fingers back inside, plunging deep and fast. Curling her fingers deep in the back to hit Anna’s g-spot. Anna stopped struggling and succumbed to the pleasure. Guttural moans emanated from her mouth and she shuddered as waves of ecstasy rolled through her.
She screamed into her own sweater, her body convulsing violently under Sarah’s weight. She cried through the entire orgasm, sobbing out broken, disjointed sounds of surrender as Sarah rode out the tremors, holding her down until the very last aftershock faded.
The room went dead silent. The only sound was Anna’s ragged, wet breathing.
Sarah released Anna’s wrists. She sat back, swinging her legs off the bed. She stood up, smoothing her jeans and adjusting the cuffs of her wool coat. She looked down at Anna.
Anna lay entirely ruined on the twin mattress. At some point her skirt had bunched at one ankle and her legs were spread at an odd angle. Her face was flushed, her eyes red and swollen from crying. She didn’t move to cover herself. She didn’t have the energy left to pretend she wasn’t completely broken.
“Wash your face,” Sarah said, picking up her bag from the floor. “You look like a fucking mess.”
Anna stared at the ceiling glassy-eyed. “Are you going to tell Hayes?”
Sarah slung the bag over her shoulder. She looked at Anna, the coldness in her eyes at odds with the measured tone as she began speaking.
“What the fuck do you mean? I don’t need to tell Hayes anything,” Sarah said. “You’re the understudy. You’re going to sit in the dark. And you’re going to watch me go to Boston. And every time I hit that mark on stage, you’re going to remember exactly what you sounded like begging me to make you cum in your own fucking bed.”
Sarah opened the door. She didn’t look back.
“See you at six AM, Anna.”
The door clicked shut.
Anna lay on the bed, staring at the closed wood. Her body still throbbed. The tears dried cold and tight on her cheeks. She had lost the role. She had lost the game. She had been stripped bare and humiliated in her own room.
And as she slowly sat up and reached for her discarded skirt, Anna realized with a sick, terrifying clarity that there was nothing left that she could do about it.
She would never be a starlet.
The regional theater in Boston was at least three times the size of Sterling’s auditorium. Anna stood in the dark wings, her hands gripping the heavy black velour curtain.
The applause hit the stage, rising onto it in waves as it continued.
Sarah walked into the wings, her chest heaving, her face flushed with triumph. She held a bouquet of red roses someone had handed her from the front row. The stage manager patted Sarah on the back, shouting congratulations over the deafening noise of the crowd.
Anna stepped out of the way and stared at her own feet. “Good show.”
“It was,” Sarah agreed. She dropped the roses onto a prop table. She reached into the pocket of her costume cardigan and pulled out a thick, embossed piece of cardstock. “The casting director for the New York repertory theater left this at the stage manager’s desk for me during intermission.”
Anna stared at the white rectangle. The bold black lettering listed a Manhattan address. The air in her lungs went completely stale.
“Congratulations,” Anna mumbled. Her voice sounded thin and hollow.
Sarah stepped into Anna’s space, backing her up against the brick wall of the wings. The stage crew rushed past them, shouting directions as they began to strike the set. Nobody looked twice at the two girls standing in the shadows. The star talking down to her petulant understudy.
That’s showbiz.
“You hate this,” Sarah said
“I actually don’t care.” Anna tried for haughty but it came out more whiny than anything else.
“Ha! You fucking liar.” Sarah pressed her forearm against Anna’s collarbone, pinning the freshman to the brick.
“You care more than anyone else in this building. You sold out every piece of your dignity just for the chance that I might fail.”
“You used me.”
“I used a willing participant.” Sarah leaned in, her mouth brushing Anna’s ear. “You offered yourself up on a platter because you thought you were smarter than me. You thought ambition was enough.”
Sarah’s was so close to Anna that nobody could see her slide her free hand under Anna’s coat and blouse. Only they could feel their breasts touching through the show costume and only Anna could feel her hot breath on her ear.
She gripped the waistband of Anna’s skirt, her knuckles and back of her hand pressing hard against Anna’s bare stomach. Anna shuddered and pressed her lips tight, her body betraying her with immediate, humiliating, want. She wanted Sarah to touch her. Even now, completely defeated, the addiction to the physical punishment overrode her logic.
“Please,” Anna whispered, her voice cracking. She didn’t care that there were stagehands and staff bustling around them. She didn’t care that the lights would brighten everything any minute now.
“No.” Sarah pulled her hand away entirely.
Anna let out a pathetic, broken sound. She reached out, trying to grab Sarah’s costume.
Sarah slapped Anna’s hand away. The smack echoed sharply in the dark corner.
“You don’t get this anymore,” Sarah said coldly. She took a half-step back, putting physical distance between them.
“I don’t need you. I never needed you. I just wanted to see how far you would let me push you before you broke.”
Anna sagged against the wall, choking back tears. The rough brick snagged the back of her sweater.
“I’m moving to New York in January,” Sarah continued, tucking the casting director’s card back into her pocket. “Hayes gave me early graduation credit for the showcase. I won’t be at Sterling next semester.”
Anna opened her mouth twice before any words came out at all. Voice trembling. “Y‑you… you c‑can’t… j‑just… l‑leave…”
“Watch me.” Sarah picked up her roses from the prop table. She didn’t look at Anna again. “Have fun in intro to acting, Anna.”
Sarah walked away, disappearing into the chaotic crowd of stagehands and actors heading toward the dressing rooms. Anna stayed pinned against the brick wall, her legs shaking, her core burning with an unmet ache that Sarah had left completely unresolved.
January in Sterling brought gray skies and a biting wind that kept the campus walkways entirely empty. Anna sat alone, out of the blustery winds at a reclaimed wood table inside the Grounds coffee shop.
The espresso machine roared over the sound of an acoustic folk song. The air smelled thickly of roasted beans.
Anna opened her laptop. The screen illuminated her pale face. Dark circles bruised the skin under her eyes. She had not slept a full night since November, or at least it felt that way. She pulled up the university’s theater department webpage and clicked on the spring audition schedule.
Mainstage Production: Our Town.
Casting Call: Open to all students.
Anna stared at the words. She did not feel the familiar spike of ambition. She did not plot a way to manipulate the director. She simply felt tired.
“Is this seat taken?” a voice asked.
Anna looked up. A sophomore boy she recognized from a psychology seminar stood holding a metal tumbler and a textbook. He gave her an easy, polite smile.
“No,” Anna said.
He sat down, dropping his bag onto the floor. “Are you auditioning for the spring play?”
“I don’t know.”
“You should. I heard you were the understudy for Boston. That’s a huge deal for a freshman.” He took a sip of his coffee. “You must have learned a lot from Sarah Jenkins before she left.”
Anna looked back down at her laptop screen.
She had learned that control was an illusion.
She had learned that playing a ruthless game only worked if you were actually the smartest person in the room.
And she had learned exactly what it felt like to be left behind on a cold floor backstage, wanting to give everything to someone who couldn’t give a fuck about you. And the conflict therein.
“Yeah,” Anna said softly, closing the laptop and shoving it into her bag. “I suppose that I learned a lot.”
She stood up, walked out of the coffee shop, and stepped into the freezing New England wind. She had three more years in this town, and absolutely fucking nothing to show for the first one.
She would never be a starlet.
Authors note: Here’s a cleaner version in a direct, intimate voice.[1]
I hope you enjoyed this one.
I’m tired of heroes. I’m tired of villains. I’m tired of morally gray people who are really just one or the other with better branding. I’m tired of stories that promise either a happy ending or a sad ending, like those are the only two choices that matter.
I wanted this to be something hotter, stranger, and a little meaner. I hope it was hot for you too.
If you want more lesbian erotica from me, tell me. I really love reading it, and I love writing it too.
thank you so much for reading ~ DH 🕊️❤️
Words may fail, but I'll try. Brilliant characters, compelling plot, butter-smooth prose. Oh, and, of course, highly erotic. Just outstanding!
Hot and compelling.