Murder on the Rocks

by Clara Nipper

  Sophie’s back thought about things. Marny and I waited, exchanging glances. “Come inside,” Sophie finally said, starting to walk to the house again.

  “Oh, yeah!” I crowed. “Gotcha right here.” I wiggled my pinkie as I stood up in triumph.

  Marny kicked me in the shin. “Jill, no! Bad, Jill, bad!” Sophie just kept walking. “You make this work!” Marny said through clenched teeth. “Because I’m not coming over here again.”

  I limped after Sophie. “I’m in!” I gloated. “You can go.”

  “Good. I have a…” Marny paused meaningfully, “houseguest. Friend of the family.”

  “I’m one of those too.” I grinned, licking my lips. Marny rolled her eyes. “Oh, Jill, I’ll call you in fifteen minutes to see if you need a ride home.”

  I waved her off and followed Sophie back into paradise.

  Chapter Thirty

  I walked through the front door to find Alistair engrossed in his computer again. “Bedroom,” he said to me. I blinked in surprise but followed the hallway to the master.

  There, on top of all the comforters was Sophie, nude. My eyes bulged, my mouth flooded with moisture, and my heart trip-hammered. I became humble and insecure at the glowing magnificence of her skin. I had stopped in shock at the doorway. I was being ungallant because she must have been freezing, but I was struck dumb and immobile. “Are you sure?” I whispered, beginning to tremble.

  “For God’s sake, how many signals, hints, and clues do you need? Do you ever hook up?” Sophie slid her legs open in a snow angel arc.

  In my mind, I was sprinting over and leaping on top of her like a ravenous bear onto a plump salmon. But I was stuck. I had lead foot. My voice would merely click.

  “Jill?” Sophie sat up and gathered pillows and blankets over her.

  That broke the spell. “Sophie,” I said. I felt Marny’s rolled up newspaper, swatting my nose in warning. “Sophie…it’s too much pressure.” I felt my internal tide switch abruptly to stormy high seas, and I choked on a sob. I fled down the hallway to the warm living room with the crackling fire and sweet lamplight. I collapsed on the couch, shaking and gasping, willing back tears. I hung my head and tried to calm down.

  “Did the earth move?” Alistair said.

  “I lost it, man,” I said simply.

  Alistair turned to me and shrugged. “She does have that effect, doesn’t she? Keep trying. It’s rather like riding a bicycle.”

  “Have you ever ridden a bike?”

  Alistair laughed and continued typing. “Can’t say that I have, actually.”

  “Well, she’s the Tour de France, and I don’t feel like a champ.”

  “Come on, sport. You’re Les Armstrong,” Alistair said.

  “Lance. Lance Armstrong,” I corrected him.

  “Oh? Right you are then. Keep your pecker up. Off you go.”

  I stood up and returned to the bedroom. Sophie was lying on her side, her back to me, buried in blankets. I sat on the bed. I felt Marny rubbing my nose in my mess.

  “Sophie, I’m sorry,” I said, tears clotting my voice. I cleared my throat several times.

  She rolled over and smiled. “It’s okay. It is a big deal.”

  I exhaled, relieved, all my joints loosening.

  Sophie lifted the edge of the comforter and motioned invitingly. “It’s warmer in here.”

  “Okay, but no funny stuff.” I began removing my clothes but felt bashful. “Turn your head.”

  “Lock the door.”

  At last, I was nestled in bed. Sophie and I didn’t touch. I lay stiffly and stared at the ceiling. I reflected on how easy it had been with all those other women. Effortless. Like riding a bike. I laughed.

  “What?” Sophie asked.

  “Something Alistair said.”

  “He gave you some tips?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.” I rolled to face her. “Why don’t we just start with…” I slid my hand to hers and knit our fingers, “this?”

  Sophie looked scared too. “Okay.” Then she giggled. “I’ve never been so nervous. Not even my first time.”

  “We’re not doing anything. Just this.” I stroked her hand for emphasis.

  “Yes,” Sophie said, nodding. “Just this.”

  We lay in bed, our hands curled together like timid baby bunnies. Our breath became synchronized. We blinked and smiled in unison. The sun was obliterated by clouds, and the room grew dim and gray. Soon, we heard the ominous tick of raining beads.

  “Ice again,” Sophie said happily.

  “Don’t care,” I said, trying to completely absorb all the beautiful complexity of Sophie’s face.

  “Streets will be even worse now that it’s melted some,” she added.

  “Good. Power crews have no hope of finishing soon.”

  “Comme il faut,” she said.

  I didn’t ask what that meant. We closed our eyes and slept simultaneously, drifting sweetly in our bed island, needing only each other’s heartbeat to feel completely content and nourished.

  The room was the color of twilight when we both opened our eyes. Our hands were still joined, and Sophie had such a look of luminous peace that I had to cough into my pillow not to cry. I might be unfit for the force if I continue to fall in love, I thought. So what? It’s worth it, came the immediate response. “I love you,” I whispered hoarsely, to my own surprise.

  Sophie smiled. “I know you do. God help me, I love you too. I’ve tried not to, God knows I have, but I can’t help it, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” Then she rolled on top of me, her silken skin caressing and fitting mine as if a satin sheet had been fluffed, shaken, raised, snapped, and allowed to float down to cover me. At the jolt of pleasure, I stiffened. Sophie rolled her eyes. “What’s wrong now?”

  “We should wait. To be sensitive to Alistair and all.” Suddenly, I understood how painful it must be to try to live without Sophie. To have had her touch and her smile and then to try to get on with life without her…impossible. Excruciating. My heart broke for Alistair, sitting alone in the living room.

  “No, Jill, he’s a grown-up. He’s fine. Believe me; this will solve all our problems.”

  “What if you’re wrong?” I said, turning my head to avoid her kiss.

  “Let’s find out.” Sophie’s mouth on my ear, my neck, and then my shoulder, was so convincing that I almost agreed.

  “Man or woman, I’ve never had to work for this,” Sophie said.

  “I’m trying to—” I gasped, clutching the mattress and sheets, “be a better person!”

  “Do that on your own time. Right now, you’re mine.” Sophie sat up and straddled my chest. Any scrap of sense I had left was obliterated by the sight of her slow undulation over me. She leaned all the way back onto my legs and opened her knees wider. I struggled to get loose, but I was pinned good.

  I was finally able to get one hand free, and I stroked her thigh. She moaned, and like a pebble dropped into a sweet, still pond, at my touch, her skin rippled with goose bumps. Sophie took my hand and caressed her cunt with it.

  “Know me,” she whispered. She raised her other knee for me to have my trapped hand loose, and I cupped her buttocks and pulled her closer.

  “Know me,” she repeated.

  “I am starting with my eyes,” I said. I gorged on the delicious sight of her. I loved that her pubic hair was a soft, cinnamon sugar brown in contrast with her riot of golden curls on her head. Her delicate, tan eyebrows, like butterfly antennae, were a preview to the secret, barely brown Venus hiding below. Then the juicy split in the center like a sliced pomegranate, bursting with ruby seeds, protected by fragrant folds of flesh. To know her, I had to weigh, measure, sniff, feel, taste, and memorize. Her right labial lip was slightly plumper than her left; her pubic hair was a mat of crazy curls in absolutely perfect corkscrews. She had a dark mole on her upper, inner left thigh. Her skin on either side of her mons was slightly abraded, from shaving or waxing. She had a simple, fresh, clean smell lik
e pineapples in the sun.

  The hair on her thighs was so fine and white, it was nearly invisible. Her navel was a perfect cup. I longed to drop an orchid into it. Her skin was rosy with a sandy undertone, like milky cocoa and blush roses. She had a few stretch marks on each hip, white zigzags in her peachy, caramel skin. From a teenaged growth spurt, I assumed. Her breathing was deep and steady but with an intense ragged edge of passion. I found a cayenne sprinkling of freckles on the top of one turgid leg muscle. I arched my neck and kissed the inside of her thigh. She groaned. I tasted electricity and very faintly, salt. I suckled and bit. Sophie gyrated as well as she could in her awkward position.

  “Calm down,” I said to her throbbing skin. “It takes a long time to know you.”

  A low laugh gurgled from her throat, and she was still.

  I ran my fingertips lightly over her skin, which rose in a glissando of pleasure.

  “You don’t have to restrain me,” I said, finding her hands and pulling her upright. We embraced. My face was happily smothered by her breasts. But this was too important to rush. So instead of biting a hole to her heart, smearing myself in her hot, tribal blood like ownership paint, throwing Sophie onto her back and ravishing her so hard that she would be permanently crippled, I gently stroked her breasts. My touch and her skin were both so soft that where I ended and she began was indiscernible. I slowly moved to place Sophie on her back. She watched me, unblinking. I unfolded her legs and placed them chastely together. Then I wrestled part of the comforter to cover all but her feet.

  “I will start here,” I said. Sophie stretched and wiggled her toes in response. I caressed her feet, studying every detail. They were bony, long and thin. The longer I stared at them, the more they resembled an alien flipper. Her soles were hard like leather, and the tops of her feet were crisscrossed with bulging veins like a 3D topography map. I had never seen so many veins and capillaries in one place! I looked at my own feet briefly. Smooth and square, dull and boring. But Sophie’s feet—I could trace the path of blood from her calf, down and around her ankle, curling into her arches, fanning out to her toes. I pressed on a blue-green vein and then watched, fascinated, as the color drained from the vein where I held it and then returned, quick as lightning, when I released it. “Can you feel that?” I asked.

  “Your finger on my foot?”

  “No, the blood stopping and starting.”

  “No, are you playing?”

  I laughed. “A little. I’m learning you.” I stroked the deep hollows between the bones that led to the toes. They were as prominent and taut as harp strings. As if her toes were marionettes secured by these lines. Her toes were tiny, almost inconsequential, as if they belonged to another foot entirely. They were thin with clearly outlined joints and small, perfect nails. I rubbed each of them to discover the miniature bones within. I dug my knuckle into her sole to feel the toothsome meat. Then, I breathed on her toes. Sophie moaned, her eyes closed. I licked very deliberately in between each toe before engulfing her big toe in my mouth, causing Sophie to gasp and spasm. I sucked. I raked with my teeth. I bit and licked. I tasted river bed. I tickled the smooth river rock of her toe with my tongue. I sucked all ten toes this way, letting my mouth memorize their bends and curves. I only switched when I saw that she was trembling with desire. I placed pillows over her feet to keep them warm. I put my thick socks and parka back on, but was otherwise naked.

  Sophie’s calves! Small, compact, neat. Like little packs of dynamite on her legs, the muscles were dense and dangerous. Sophie’s shin was as long and sharp as a razor; the bone felt barely sheathed in skin. I expected it to cut through any second and slice my hands. Her ankles were round like pulleys and her knees were smooth demi-spheres like oak knobs. I grabbed a fistful of muscle and kneaded it. Sophie groaned. I stroked her legs hard and enjoyed the rough stubble from her ankle all the way up to her knee on both legs. Her skin was chafed and rosy when I moved on to her thighs.

  As I rearranged blankets, I noticed that Sophie was laid out and dopey as if I had poured her onto that spot.

  I kissed her mouth and felt tension gathering. I cupped Sophie’s cunt and felt her slick and swollen. She pressed against my hand. I left her mouth and bent over her turgid clit.

  “Please,” she whispered.

  “Just for a second,” I said. I licked the seawater from her pulsing cunt. Sophie cried out and began gyrating. I poised my finger right at her liquid center. How beautifully her cunt shone—full of life and lust.

  “Oh, my God, Jill, please, please, please. I’ve never wanted anyone so much. I can’t stand it. Please, please, please.”

  “Yes, Sophie, yes.” I nuzzled her clit and drew it gently into my mouth. I was going to build this orgasm gradually. Stoke by stroke. No hurry. Sophie would come so hard and long, they would hear her at police headquarters downtown.

  “Just relax. Let go. I’ll take you there,” I said to Sophie, whose arms and legs had begun thrashing.

  “Fuck me!” she screamed.

  “I will. Let it happen,” I said, sliding two of my fingers deep into her.

  “Ohhh,” Sophie moaned ecstatically. I removed my fingers and sucked off the delicious glaze. “No!” Sophie yelled.

  “I’m not finished knowing you yet,” I said smoothly. I caressed her clit.

  “Yes, yes, yes.” Sophie’s eyes rolled back and she spread herself so wide, I thought she would split in two. The blankets and pillows were thrown to the floor. Her pelvis rose in supplication. “Love me, Jill,” she begged, “I need you.”

  “I am loving you, Sophie. You need to enjoy all of it,” I said with determined calm. “Let me finish.” I tickled and teased her twat. Sophie agreed, her limbs going limp. “I believe I was here.” I sat between Sophie’s thighs.

  Suddenly, there was pounding on the bedroom door. “Jill! Jill!” Alistair called. “Wake up!”

  “How polite of him to pretend we’re sleeping,” I said wryly. “Yeah?” I called, my voice gruff.

  “Some sort of emergency!”

  “Be right there.”

  Sophie murdered me with her glare as I stood and covered her with the comforter again. I had never seen eyes so black with fury. I put on my pants, shrugging.

  “What can I do?” I asked, loving the taste of her on my lips.

  Sophie said nothing, her eyes following me like a heat-seeking missile intent on my death.

  “I can never resist you when you’re so cute!” I cried. I climbed under the covers again and found Sophie’s aching, dripping cunt. I pulled her thighs apart and breathed in her salty, fruity, tangy fragrance. I plunged my tongue into her slippery honey. Sophie cooed and wiggled, but then she gave me the shoulder tap and closed her legs, knocking me aside.

  “Jill, it’s an emergency. Go.”

  “The sheriff is probably just out of donuts,” I said, still under the comforter, my voice muffled by the blanket. “Come on. Let me in.” I wedged my hand in between her legs and felt that succulent sizzle.

  “No, Jill, go ahead; I’ll be here.”

  “Baby! Don’t do this to me!” I rolled her on her belly and began biting and licking her buttocks.

  “Ohhh, gawwwd,” Sophie groaned, her legs loosening. I thrust into her cunt from behind and felt it clench to grip me. “Yes, yes, Jill, yes. Do it now. Fuck me forever!”

  I caressed her clit with my other hand and kept a steady, firm rhythm inside her.

  “Oh, God, oh, God…” Sophie began bucking.

  “Jill, mate, you there?” Alistair shouting, banging on the door.

  “That’s it; we’re done.” Sophie curled into a cold comma and buried herself in blankets.

  “Listen, I wouldn’t wake you if it weren’t an emergency,” Alistair said.

  “I know. I’m coming,” I answered, shoving my feet into my boots.

  “Well, you’re the only one,” Sophie said from the blankets.

  “Shut up. You think I planned this?” I said harshly. Marny shook her fin
ger at me. “I mean, I’m sorry, Sophie. Truly. I will make it up to you. Please forgive me. I don’t want to go.”

  “I know,” Sophie said from underneath a pillow. “Just hurry back.”

  “Like you won’t believe!” I said, finding her face and kissing her.

  As I walked away toward the door, I heard Sophie’s cries building to a crescendo emanating from the comforter cocoon. Her sounds of delight infuriated me. “Like hell!” I screamed, diving into the bed. I tore the blankets off and uncovered Sophie with a blue dildo buried to its base in her muff. She was working it like a stripper on payday. I snatched it from her snatch. “If I can’t; you can’t,” I seethed. Sophie shrugged. I threw the covers back over her and stumbled away when I heard the click and hum of a vibrator.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, fuck all!” I yelled, reaching into the blankets to see Sophie splayed out, receiving service from a Magic Wand. Her cunt was pumping and she was panting, delirious moans pulsing from her throat. I yanked the plug from the wall. This time, Sophie attacked me like a tigress. She clawed my face and kicked my stomach, trying to get the toys back.

  “No,” I ordered, fending off blows. “No. Down, girl.” I wrapped the dildo and vibrator together in the cord. “I’ll just keep these.”

  Sophie grinned maliciously and wiggled her fingers in my face. “I still have these!” She said triumphantly.

  I saw red. I dropped the toys, pinned Sophie to the bed, and secured her hands to the bedposts with zip ties from my belt. I was shaking with intensity. “No means no,” I said. “That is mine.” Watching her squirm seductively, I needed release or I would die. I felt my heart actually skip a beat. The pulse in my clit was like a kettle drum. “Okay, just once,” I choked out. I raised Sophie’s legs and parted them. I spread her puffy lips apart and placed my mouth on her cunt. My fingers slid home.

  “Yes, finally, yes…” Sophie wept, jerking on the restraints.

  “Yes, baby, yes, my love,” I told her stiff clit.