Best Lesbian Romance 2014 by Radclyffe Page A

what? There’s this bloody big cliff here, do you want to jump off?” I’d have actedjust the same. I nodded enthusiastically, and my hard hat fell down over my eyes. “Bugger. Yeah, all right.”
    â€œGreat!” I was right about her being soft. Gentle fingers came up to my throat and tightened the strap of my hat.
    I just hoped she wouldn’t think it strange I didn’t take a breath the whole time she was touching me.
    Least, not until Niccie prodded me and I gasped in air with a noise like a punctured whale.
    â€œAll set now?” Kim asked. “It’s this way. The passages get a bit narrow, but you’ll be fine getting through.”
    I nodded, and nothing happened this time, so I followed Kim and Niccie into this sort of crack in the wall of the cave. I couldn’t work out whether to go forward and let my hips scrape on the sides, or sideways, which meant my boobs got in the way. I ended up twisting awkwardly, all of me at different angles.
    â€œWe’re caving, not doing the sand dance,” Niccie said, laughing at me.
    â€œHey, we’re not all stick insects like you,” I muttered back.
    We could walk upright at first, but then the tunnel got lower and we had to bend down. It killed your back after a while. A bit farther on we were crawling—knackered my knees, but it was right muddy and all, so that padded it a bit. After a bit of that, it got even tighter, and then we had to inch along on our bellies like a load of bloody earthworms, and guess what?
    It was right then I found out I was claustrophobic.
    I could feel the weight of all those rocks pressing down on me, like they were squeezing the air right out of my lungs. I tried to remember—was it better to take deep breaths or quick shallow ones? Because one of those made you hyperventilate and I wasn’t sure which, and what were the chances of anyone having a paper bag for me to breathe into down here? There was no room to turn round and I couldn’t face trying to wrigglebackward—what if I got wedged in and couldn’t go backward or forward? Niccie and Kim wouldn’t be able to get out, for that matter, and they’d either have to wait till I got thinner like Winnie-the-Pooh or else chop bits off me with penknives like that poor bloke in Utah they made the film about.
    So I had to keep on going and try to breathe, somehow.
    Just as I was thinking I couldn’t take it any longer, we came out into this big cave—well, not that big, about the size of my mum’s front room, I suppose, but bloody hell, it was better than that tunnel. I tried to slow my breathing down to normal without anyone noticing, but my heart was beating so loud I wondered why it didn’t echo off the cave walls.
    We shone our torches around, seeing uneven walls, a floor with boulders big enough to sit on, and stalactites hanging down from the ceiling. Their stalagmites reached up, desperate to touch them. There were some lads already in there, and they were just about to go on farther through the passages.
    Kim said hi to them and told them to stick together and make sure they didn’t get lost. And then she turned back to us and said, “Right—ready to go farther?”
    â€œToo right!” Niccie said. “It’s like Lord of the Rings down here.” Then she made her eyes all big. “Where’sssss the preciousssss?”
    â€œIs it in its pocketsessssss?” one of the lads asked, with an admiring look over my mate’s figure.
    â€œWanna come here and check?” she teased back. She’s an equal-opportunity flirt, Niccie is. Always has been.
    â€œOi, get a room, you two,” I muttered. “Or a cave, or something.”
    She gave me a look and a fake cough that sounded a lot like “pot.” Fair dues, I was standing a bit close to Kim at the time. There was a boulder on the other side crowding me. Honest.
    â€œOkay,” Kim said.