by Harper Bliss
Camille’s hands dip further down, her fingers only lightly touching me, but they’re having a devastating effect nonetheless. I start to realize that, near the end with Rebecca, it was never like this. It makes this tryst with Camille all the more exciting. A thought burrows its way forward in my brain: was this what it was like for Rebecca when she first cheated on me? Is this how it made her feel: so wanted, so central to someone else’s joy? The answer can only be yes. Why else would she have stooped to such dishonest lows?
And I know I shouldn’t think of Rebecca, but I also know it’s impossible not to. She was the person who was everything to me for such a long time. The one my life revolved around. Is this all it takes to climb out of the massive crater of pain she pushed me into? Feeling like this with a woman who will only be in Australia for a few more days?
A woman whose fingers are dangerously close to my pubic area. I push down my panties and wriggle out of them as best I can. Her eyes are still on mine. Her gaze on me is intense and a little disconcerting, but also very hot in its demand. It tells me what she wants from me. I want the exact same thing. To be in this moment with her. To experience this extreme pleasure with another person, to no longer feel alone in our grief. In the relationship crimes that have been done to us.
Camille’s fingers skate along my pussy lips, which respond by throbbing and, though I have no way to verify, opening themselves up to her. My body is in control now. What did Rebecca call me one of the last times we had sex? Uptight. Too in my head. My head has nothing to do with what is happening right now.
I look into Camille’s eyes again. They seem a lighter brown in here. Her pupils grow wider as the tip of her finger enters me. A glimmer of a smile plays on her lips. It reaches her eyes. And I give myself up to her. I meet her thrust, which is very light and gentle. Like she’s discovering me. She is. And herself as well.
“More,” I urge, because my desire seems to have found a direct connection to my tongue. I never asked Rebecca for more. Maybe I should have. Maybe things would have been different if I had. Maybe I wouldn’t be enjoying the hands of a stranger on me in my rental flat.
Camille fucks me harder. My eyes have fallen shut, but when I open them for an instant, I see she is still looking at me. This must be the first time she’s seeing a woman enveloped in such rapture. The first time she’s the source of it. To mean this very thing to someone is an honor.
I give myself up to her more, because what we’re doing right now is a gift to both of us. It’s the pair of us saying yes to the rest of our lives. To stepping away from the mistakes and pain of the past. This is the moment when we choose the future. When looking back is still an option but no longer one we want to indulge in.
As good as her fingers feel inside of me, they won’t be enough. I’m not a stickler for reaching orgasm every time I have sex—another thing that used to drive Rebecca crazy—but this time, it feels like an absolute necessity. As though the experience wouldn’t be complete without me breaking free from this plateau and coming at Camille’s divine hands. All of this needs to happen on instinct, because it’s our instinct that has brought us here. It isn’t days and weeks we’ve spent in each other’s company, getting to know each other better, learning intimate details about each other. This is another kind of thrill. And as thrilling as the unknown and unfamiliar is at this moment—the different angle with which her fingers penetrate me and the undoing sensation of her gaze on me at all times—it’s not going to be enough to unleash the climax that is building beneath my flesh.
I open my eyes and look at her. I take in the intensity of her facial expression for a split second, just because it’s such a turn-on. Her brow is furrowed in concentration; her lips are pursed together. She has the loveliest pout I’ve seen on a woman.
“Lick me,” I say. “Lick my clit.” I’m not usually one to say such words aloud, and to hear them said in my own voice is surprisingly arousing. I give her a quick, encouraging nod of the head.
She nods back, then starts retracting her fingers.
I bring my hand to her arm and she looks up at me. “Leave those.”
She sinks her teeth into her bottom lip and blinks. I think she gets the picture, because the next moment, she hunches between my legs. Her fingers keep delving deep and I already feel her breath on my clit. It’s almost enough to push me over the edge. Another surprise.
Then her tongue lands on my swollen clit. Tentatively at first, exploring again. As soon as she finds something resembling a rhythm of circling her tongue around and over it, it does all become too much for me. I lose myself to her touch and let go. I picture her face. I can still recall every tiniest feature. The thin lines of her eyebrows. The dimple in her cheek even when she isn’t smiling. The lock of hair that falls across her forehead. The utter deliciousness of her French accent. The way she said she’d never been with a woman before. Her tongue. Her fingers. The emotions of this entire day come crashing down on me and transform into something else entirely. A release so great I find myself clasping the back of her head in my hands, holding on to something as the tingling heat spreads through me and reaches my extremities in record time.
I let out a high-pitched moan, filling the rooms of this apartment, which I was cursing this very morning—oh, the irony of that. This is all thanks to batteries and how they always die.
“Oh, god. Oh,” I moan as I try to indicate to Camille that I’ve had enough, that my body can’t take anymore. My muscles are relaxed, my limbs lazy, my lips spread into their widest smile.
She crawls up to me. Her smile matches mine.
“Mon dieu,” she says. I don’t need to know a lot of French to know what that means.
She brings her fingers in between our faces and looks at them intently. Her smile fades, then deepens. She spreads her fingers and traces them over my lips. I smell myself on her, then taste myself as she slips them inside my mouth again. While her fingers are in my mouth she kisses me on the lips. As though she can’t get enough of me. Maybe she can’t. The thought fills me with lust again. Depletion of desire is no option in this bedroom. Not with Camille lying half on top of me and thrusting fingers into my mouth. How long before she goes? No, I shouldn’t think about that. The night is only half over. We have time. I haven’t had my wicked way with her. A desire so great, I push her off me and assert myself on top of her.
She looks up at me doe-eyed, as if she can’t quite believe what just happened and what is about to happen next. There are so many ways in which I want her. So many images of Camille all over me, and me all over her, run through my mind, but I think it better to keep things simple for her first time. To bestow upon her the simple but deep pleasure of a woman bowing down between her legs with the sole intent of making all the lust that’s been building inside of her explode. I don’t ask her what she likes. I’ll find out as I go along.
I kiss her, our lips spreading wide from the get-go, letting as much of each other in as possible. Her hands are in my hair. Her breasts are soft against mine. I can feel her wetness on my knee, soaking through her panties.
I’m overcome by the acute desire to get the last piece of fabric off her. The last barrier between my tongue and her sex. I kiss a quick path down, then settle between her legs. I gauge the fabric of her underwear. It’s black and sheer and I don’t have the patience to take them off her delicately. I hook my fingers underneath the waistband and yank them down. They stop halfway down her legs. I pull again to get them off completely, and hear the noise of tearing fabric and I see the panties have come apart at the seam.
I look up at her. What must she think of this madwoman sitting between her legs. Perhaps she’ll never rent an Airbnb again. But a smile plays on her lips. Her eyes have narrowed. It seems to me that my little display of brute power turned her on. All I wanted to convey was exactly how much I want her. Enough to rip apart a fine piece of French lingerie.
I glance down at the glistening wetness in front of me. I can’t wait any longer.
I need to taste her, have her all over my face, ravage her. I bow down to her and let my tongue touch down softly.
Chapter Six
I wake to a finger caressing my skin. Then lips press against my shoulder. Before I even open my eyes, I break into a smile. Camille. My gorgeous Frenchwoman. Can it be more dramatically romantic? Being swept away by a tall, dirty-blonde stranger with a French accent. Because that’s what she did. She swept me right off my feet.
“Bonjour,” she says, her finger now stroking my cheek.
“Hey.” I open my eyes. I want to lie here like this for a little while longer. Just look at her. How the morning sunlight catches in her hair, makes her eyes shine. Bask in last night’s glory for as long as I can. I’m going to have to call Caitlin later today—if I can ever wrestle myself away from Camille long enough to do so—and tell her she was right. This was exactly the kind of distraction I needed.
“Did you sleep well?” Camille’s accent is more pronounced upon waking. It makes her sound all the more endearing.
“Hm-mm,” I hum. I suppress the urge to kiss her, even though it’s strong and seems to be overtaking me quickly as I awaken more. I have no idea what the one-night stand protocol is. Do I leave and wash her scent off me at home? Do we have breakfast together? It’s Saturday. I’ll just go with the flow.
“What are you doing today?” she asks.
My heart skips a beat. I need to think for a minute. Whatever plans I made for today seem to have slipped my mind completely. I rack my brain and remember. “I have a yoga class scheduled this afternoon and I was going to see the new Malick movie with my friend Jason tonight.”
“Oh.” Is that a shadow of disappointment crossing her face?
“Did you, er, want to do something together?”
“I don’t want to mess up your plans.” She clears her throat. “I also understand if this has to be goodbye. If it makes it easier.”
“I don’t want that. I’d like to see you again. When do you leave exactly?”
“My plane takes off at eleven thirty on Thursday morning.”
“That gives us five days.”
“Oceans of time.” Camille scoots closer.
“I’ll cancel yoga. You can either join me and Jason for the movie, or I can brush him off. If I tell him it’s for a woman, he won’t mind at all.”
“Won’t he, now? What will you tell him?”
“That I met a woman named Camille who gave me a whole new perspective on my sad life.”
“And I thought we French were dramatic.”
“You should meet my family. Indians take drama to a whole new level.”
“As much as I’d love to, let’s wait a while for family introductions.” Camille chuckles.
“Oh, no. I didn’t mean—”
“I know.” Her hands are on my belly. “I’m just joking.” She kisses my shoulder, then finds my gaze again. “Let’s make the most of the five days we have left.”
I take a deep breath before we enter the Pink Bean. We could have gone to breakfast somewhere else, but Camille said she enjoyed the croissants the day before—and I wouldn’t live it down if Caitlin, Sheryl or Micky saw me having breakfast with Camille somewhere else. They’d accuse me of trying to hide something—or find other allegations to throw at me, no doubt.
“I’m starving,” Camille says. “Must have worked up quite an appetite.” She slips her arm through mine as we line up at the counter.
I go a bit soft on the inside at her touch—and her words. Thankfully, there’s no one here that I know. Not yet, anyway. It’s not my habit to spend Saturday morning in Darlinghurst and I don’t know what everyone else’s are. I do know that neither Micky nor Josephine work here on the weekend.
We order pastries, coffee, and fresh orange juice and find a table in the farthest corner from the door. I’ve already canceled my yoga class. Camille insisted I’d keep my rendezvous with Jason tonight. She can always get her own ticket for the movie if she can’t bear to be away from me by then—her own words. But I’ll probably cancel anyway.
“You should see Sydney,” I say once we’ve sat down.
She shakes her head. “I’m seeing all of Sydney I want to see right now.”
“That’s not what I mean. God knows when and if you’ll ever be back. There’s a lot to see.”
“The Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, the fish market, Bondi beach… Yes, I’ve read all about it. Yet, I have no desire to see any of it with my own eyes. What I would like to see, however, is how Zoya Das lives.” Her eyes are crinkled up in a smile.
“That can be arranged.”
“Do you live far from here?” she asks.
My attention is snagged by a loud group of people entering the Pink Bean. I recognize Micky, Robin, and Micky’s teenagers. They head straight for the counter and don’t see me.
“Olivia had a craving for Kristin’s sticky buns and arguing with a fifteen-year-old girl is very difficult on a Saturday morning,” Micky says to the person behind the counter.
“Our moment of peace and quiet may be disturbed imminently,” I say, knitting my brows together.
“I don’t mind meeting your friends. A person’s friends say so much about them.”
“Says the person who sometimes hangs out with Dominique Laroche. Have you met her partner?”
Micky and company occupy one of the big tables in the middle of the shop. They still haven’t seen us.
“I have met Stéphanie. Definitely the most unconventional first lady on the face of the earth. She’s keeping a low profile. When I met her, we talked about her role in Dominique’s public life, and she countered by asking if I had the faintest clue who Angela Merkel’s husband was and his role in her life.” She chuckles. “I had to admit I didn’t.”
“That might be true, but I imagine the interest in Merkel’s husband is far less than in Laroche’s much younger lesbian lover. It’s human nature. I have no desire to know anything about some bland guy, but my ears always perk up when I hear something about Stéphanie Mathis. I just can’t help myself.”
“You’re a lesbian. You’re more attuned to news about your kind.”
“Trust me, it’s not only among lesbians. What’s it like in France? It must be hard for her.”
Camille shakes her head. “It’s not. We are a nation who, historically, don’t care what our leaders do in the bedroom. We are truly not interested. We always have far more fascinating things to talk about. Although when Dominique first came out, a shock wave did travel through the country. But in the end, once things have settled down, what does it truly matter who the president is with?”
“She’s France’s first female president. That’s far more important.”
“And she’s progressive. At least on things that matter to me. That’s what’s most important to me,” Camille says.
From the corner of my eye, I see Micky’s son has clocked me. The first time I went to Micky’s house and he was there, he flushed so red I thought his skin would remain that color forever. The entire table turns to me now. I give them a sheepish wave.
“Here we go,” I say.
“I look forward to it.” Camille shoots me a confident smile. It makes her look so utterly gorgeous, I want to just leave the Pink Bean and go back to the apartment. I want to do all day what we did last night. Repeat performance after repeat performance. Goodness, she’s beautiful.
“Morning,” Micky says a bit too chirpily. She holds a hand out to Camille. “I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself properly yesterday. I’m Micky. I work here on weekdays.” She points her thumb behind her. “That’s my family over there.”
Camille gives her a very charming smile while taking Micky’s hand in hers. “Very nice to meet you, Micky.”
“Chris is about to faint again,” she says to me. “He has a huge crush on Zoya,” she adds as an aside to Camille. “But it’s better than him having a crush on my girlfriend, I guess. Which I believe he had when I first introduced them.�
� She rolls her eyes. “Teenagers and their hormones.”
“Oh, I know all about that. I have a nineteen-year-old son,” Camille says.
It makes me realize we’ve barely talked about her children and her life back home.
“All I can say is, don’t ever show him a picture of Zoya Das,” Micky jokes.
“I won’t.” Camille winks at me.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Micky says and—thankfully—saunters back to her family.
“Guess who was still in the closet less than a year ago after divorcing her husband?” I say.
“It seems to be a very common occurrence all around the globe.”
I nod. “When I first came out, you would not believe how much mail I got from women who were in Micky’s—and your—situation. Women feeling trapped in their marriage. Not knowing how to break free from a choice they made decades ago. More often than not, children are involved, complicating it all so much more.”
“And look at Micky now,” Camille says and glances over at Micky’s table.
“According to Josephine, she’s obnoxiously happy now.”
“I’m pretty happy right now.” Camille tilts her head. “As long as I get to spend the day with you.”
“That can easily be arranged. I can even make it so I don’t have anything to do tomorrow either.”
“Really?” Camille’s voice grows husky.
“But I insist on showing you at least some of the sights.”
Camille nods. “I can’t possibly have you ripping up more of my panties.”