by K L Hughes
Leigh could still remember the first time she’d seen the woman. She’d only been 14 years old at the time, and Beth had been twice that, but Leigh hadn’t cared. She couldn’t help herself. Her brain had always been years ahead of her body. It had been a constant curse, one that no one seemed to understand. She forced herself into the woman’s life, befriending her, pouring out her damaged soul to the woman, the wounds of her abusive childhood and the losses she’d experienced, and before long, they’d fallen in love. It wasn’t something either of them had planned. It just came to be. Beth had been married, though, wrapped up in a strained marriage where she was never appreciated and rarely seen at all. They’d been each other’s respite, each other’s sanctuaries, only to be ripped apart in the end. Leigh shook her head madly to rid herself of the memories washing over her. She was done with the past. All she wanted to focus on was the here and now, and possibly, the future.
“Where did you go just now?” Beth’s whisper touched Leigh’s ears like a prayer, pure yearning adorning every syllable. Leigh knew that the older woman wanted her, that she wanted to embrace her, wanted to talk—really talk. But could Leigh do that? Was she ready for that? She cleared her throat and finally allowed herself to look up into the cerulean eyes of her first love. Her heart fluttered wildly in her chest when their gazes met. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep up the walls that only this woman and J had ever managed to tear down.
“What do you mean?”
“Just now, where did you go? Your eyes glazed over. You seemed a million miles away. Where did you go?”
“Oh…back,” Leigh answered her repeated question, choking a bit on the last word.
“Back? Back where?”
“Back to before. Back to…us.”
“Oh…”
Silence.
The two women stared at each other, the silence between them quickly growing into a deafening ring of intimidation. Suddenly the roomed seem very small, filling with silence, choking the two women until one of them felt compelled to speak.
“This is a nice apartment,” Beth said, clearing her throat, and glancing around the massive, open space. It was clearly an industrial-style space. Vaulted ceilings, smooth concrete floors and walls, track lighting, exposed ductwork and piping, and a massive sliding door. Leigh had fallen in love with the space and refused to move even after her salary quadrupled. To Leigh, it screamed style. Art. She absolutely adored the space, and it had an incredible view, too. It wasn’t cheap, but it wasn’t off the charts, either. She could easily afford something much nicer, but she couldn’t bear to leave her studio behind. It had become her haven over the last few years.
“Thank you. I fell in love with it instantly. Signed the lease the same day I viewed it. It’s surprisingly affordable, too, which is nice.”
“Affordable? Aren’t you like a millionaire now or something?” Beth asked teasingly, testing Leigh’s mood to see if they could maybe have a more relaxed encounter.
“Not quite, but close,” Leigh answered her, a very slight grin tugging at her lips, which she quickly tried to hide, but Beth hadn’t missed it. God, she wanted to see the woman smile. She loved Leigh’s smile. It was absolutely breathtaking, always had been. Beth had recorded every TV interview Leigh had done and had bought every magazine that featured the younger woman. She cherished the ones that featured that radiant smile, staring at it for long minutes at a time, desperately wishing she could be the cause of one of those smiles, though she feared she was forever doomed to remain as nothing more than the cause of Leigh’s years-old heartache.
“What about you? I assume from the way you spoke yesterday that you’ve been in the city for a while now. Do you have a job here?” Leigh asked, pushing for further conversation. She didn’t care much for the boring topic of money and work, but she’d talk about anything to avoid the pain of flooding memories or the awkwardness of the anguish-filled silence.
“No, but I would like to. I just haven’t been concerned with finding a job. I’ve spent almost all day every day at that coffee shop. I got a nice settlement from my divorce, so I’m living off that for now.”
“Ah…”
“Yeah…”
Silence.
Leigh groaned inside her head. The silence was back. It kept finding ways to creep into each moment, slipping between the two women. The tension in her muscles pained her. She knew most people would offer up an obligatory “I’m sorry,” upon hearing about a person’s divorce, but she refused to do that. Besides, it wasn’t like she was anywhere in the vicinity of “sorry” about this particular matrimonial failure. She always figured that if two people got divorced, it was undoubtedly because they no longer wanted to be together. “Sorry” was something you’d say if a person’s spouse had died or was involved in some tragic accident. A divorce, though? People choose divorce. It doesn’t just happen to them, so honestly, why not congratulate the person? Then again, that seemed inappropriate, too. So, instead she just nodded. God, this silence! She had so many questions, but only one that she really felt she needed the answer to. So, she took a deep breath and broke the silence once more.
“Beth…” she began timidly. She’d been avoiding the blonde’s gaze, but finally decided to look up, locking onto those beautiful, blue eyes, and letting out a long, labored sigh before continuing. “Why did you come looking for me? It’s been twelve years. Why now?”
“Your book,” Beth answered, searching the brunette’s eyes for even a fragment of hope. If she was asking, then maybe she really cared, and if she really cared, then perhaps there was still a chance for them. “By the time I’d heard about it, it was already everywhere. I had no idea it was about me…about us. So, when I read it, it really was like a cold, hard slap to the face. There hadn’t been a single day that I hadn’t thought about you or regretted what I’d done; I just thought that there was no point in finding you, because you wouldn’t want to be found. I thought you could never forgive me. I thought you hated me, but when I read the book…there was just so much emotion, so much care and elegance and detail put into every word, every phrase, and every incredible image that flew off the pages. It was beautiful, what you wrote, even if it did reopen old wounds and old regrets, but it also made me realize that maybe you still cared. Maybe you still…loved me, some part of you. Maybe some part of you could still love me.”
By the time the blonde woman finished speaking, her eyes were consuming the floor. She hadn’t been able to look Leigh in the eyes while she’d spoken. She was surprised she’d even been able to speak at all. She’d never been good with serious conversation, preferring to avoid it altogether, but Leigh had always been a stickler for it. The brunette cherished honest communication and believed that it was vital in order to maintain a healthy, respectful relationship, and this was a lesson that Beth, a woman twice the brunette’s age, had learned from the younger woman. So, she gave it up. Everything. She’d made a vow to herself the day she’d gotten on that plane to fly to the city to look for Leigh that she would never hide herself again, never avoid those integral, vital conversations. She was ready to throw herself, her entire self, into whatever the younger woman was offering, if she offered anything at all.
Chapter 11
“You’re different,” Leigh finally said after listening to the blonde go on about Leigh’s book and about her hope that Leigh might still love her after all these years. Beth had grown a lot in the way of communication; that much was obvious to Leigh. It used to be like pulling teeth trying to get that woman to talk about anything serious or emotional. It was a beautiful improvement, though Leigh wished she knew how such an improvement had come about. Images suddenly presented in her mind of Beth with someone else, having an emotional, loving relationship in which the blonde actually communicated her feelings in a way she’d never done with Leigh before. Leigh’s cheeks and chest and ears flushed madly, skipping pink and shooting straight to crimson as anger flooded her head to the point of making her dizzy. She tr
ied to shake the images, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t stop them.
“So are you,” Beth replied, blushing shyly at the brunette’s comment.
“Yeah, I’ve grown up,” Leigh said, a small bit of bite to her voice that she hadn’t meant to use, knowing it had come from the images suddenly assaulting her mind, and with it came a another rush of unexpected anger that she couldn’t cap down quickly enough. It spilled through her lips like verbal vomit, all the repressed emotion spewing out into the open air—sour, bitter, and incredibly potent. “And I’ve become a withdrawn wreck of a woman when it comes to relationships, with more trust issues than any lover should ever have to deal with, and I have you to thank for that. You fucked me up. You did that. You! And just when my life is getting good, really, really good, you just show up. You show up, and everything, my entire world, just comes crashing down around me. I can’t think. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t fucking breathe. Why couldn’t you just stay away? Why couldn’t you just disappear? Why couldn’t I just forget you?”
Leigh wanted to slap herself as she bolted up from her seat, her anger and embarrassment overflowing to the point that it made her hate herself. She despised herself for opening the door to her past, for inviting the woman over at all, for letting her anger get the better of her, and most of all, for the hot, wet reaction that Beth evoked from her, no matter how ugly their history. She threw back her chair and shot past the woman still sitting there, a look of shock and hurt painting her delicate, beautiful features. Beth stood and grabbed Leigh’s hand from behind as the brunette practically sprinted past her. The physical contact blew through Leigh like bullet holes, puncturing her resolve so that it crumbled on contact, and she used the momentum to swing herself around and bring her mouth crashing down onto the blonde’s.
Her anger, her intrigue, her lust—it all fueled Leigh’s desire into a wicked frenzy, a torrent of emotions set ablaze on the other woman’s soft, thin, delicately pink lips. Leigh gripped the long, slender fingers of one hand around the thick, full flesh of her fantasy’s hip, and with the other hand, she slammed an angry fist into Beth’s loose, blonde locks, tangling her fingers in it and tugging forcefully as she bit down into the older woman’s bottom lip, sliding her tongue along the line of it, demanding entry. Beth eagerly granted access, opening her mouth to the assault. Leigh thrust her tongue into the blonde’s mouth, their tongues tangling, teeth clashing, lips slipping and sliding across the other’s, and the painful, tingling mass of quivering nerves collected at the base of Leigh’s spine exploded with the sensation, sending an epic heat rippling up her spine and out to every limb, covering every inch before gathering again in the center of her now-throbbing core.
The two women, having been separated for years and having never known the physical feel of one another, were so hungry with desire that they devoured each other in an instant, taking and taking and taking, leeching away every drop of sense, every ounce of logic. It was rough, painful even, but so incredibly, torturously good. Leigh reveled in it, sliding her hands down the blonde’s sides, over her plump, perfect ass, and latching onto her thighs. She used the power of her own exquisitely toned body to push the woman back toward the wall, slamming her into the cold concrete, letting it hurt. She wanted it to hurt. She wanted Beth to hurt her. They both wanted it hard, fast, and full. This wasn’t about love. It wasn’t about renewal. This, this very moment, was about need—raw, aching need and both women intended to sate the need right then and there.
“Bite me,” Leigh growled into Beth’s ear, making the blonde moan and arch her body against the younger woman’s. She did as she was told, forcing the neckline of Leigh’s button-up aside, and clamping down on the beautiful ivory flesh she found there as Leigh’s body shuddered into hers. Leigh’s hungry growls and moans did things to Beth’s body that in forty-three years, she’d never even known were possible. She arched her back forward again, her chest and stomach pushing into Leigh’s, her nipples taut and rigid, sensitive and painfully straining against the material of her cotton t-shirt with the overwhelming force of their mutual desire.
Leigh could feel the hard nubs of Beth’s nipples pushing against her chest and the sensation flooded her core with fresh moisture, until the need became so painful that she couldn’t handle it any longer. She wanted the woman’s flesh. She wanted to feel it sliding forcefully, heatedly against her own as she fucked every last memory, every drop of pain, as far away as her lust could possibly push it. She grabbed the hem of Beth’s t-shirt and jerked it up over the blonde’s head before quickly dropping her left hand, and with one quick flick of her wrist and fingers, popped open the latch of Beth’s bra with effortless skill. She smirked when she heard Beth’s sudden gasp at the quick motion, and before the woman could object or question it, Leigh was tossing the thin, black bra to the floor, ripping open her own button-up shirt, sending tiny buttons scattering to the floor in each direction, and exposing her braless, bare, and gloriously plump breasts, before quickly pressing her tall, lithe body into the dazzlingly naked chest of the woman in front of her.
Leigh groaned on contact, the feel of the woman’s skin on hers so shockingly sensual that her eyes blurred over, darkening substantially, as her lust momentarily hazed her vision. Beth moaned aloud at the sight of Leigh’s bare breasts. She’d dreamed about what it would be like to finally be naked with the younger woman, touch her, feel her, taste her, and make love to her. The small, sensitive bundle of nerves between her legs hardened and throbbed painfully against the light lace of her underwear, which now felt so heavy that she could hardly stand the feel of the material on her overly sensitized core, not to mention the fact that her wetness was utterly ruining them. She could feel it rubbing against her inner thighs, spreading, pooling, growing with each touch, every hard, biting kiss. She wanted more, needed more, and she intended to have it.
The vibration of Beth’s moan into Leigh’s mouth had been enough to push Leigh past the point of even wanting foreplay. She wanted relief, needed it, now. She pushed Beth over and onto the bed, throwing her down forcefully.
“Take your pants off,” Leigh commanded the blonde, her voice a throaty, slurring, growl echoing from deep in her throat as she rested her hazy, deep-ocean eyes on Beth and busied herself with her own tight jeans, popping the button and pushing them down over her thighs, kicking off her heels, and sliding the material over her feet.
“What?” Beth asked, her mind foggy, her ears going deaf to Leigh’s demands as she became mesmerized by the vision in front of her. The woman she’d dreamed about for so long was now standing stark naked in front of her, having pushed down her crimson-colored scrap of panties with her jeans. God, she was exquisite, in every way a woman could be, perfectly toned, and to Beth’s supreme surprise, covered in tattoos. She’d never expected Leigh to have so many tattoos, nor would any person who saw her with her clothes on. Then again, she did remember noticing several faint flashes of color visible beneath some of the more sheer materials in Leigh’s magazine cover shots. The only ink that showed while she was dressed was the small double-lined equality symbol etched into the salty flesh between her thumb and index finger. But here she was, both sides beautifully colored and scripted from her hips to the swell of her breasts, and Beth found the words and markings absolutely breathtaking. Her breath slammed from her lungs, refusing to re-enter until she was forced to gasp for air, her lungs aching, her eyes enveloping, devouring the sexiest sight she’d ever seen or could ever hope to see.
“Take your fucking pants off,” Leigh repeated herself, decorating her voice with an even greater sense of demand. She sounded urgent, desperate for contact. She didn’t want to wait even another second. She wanted to take the woman hard, rough, and fast. She needed it. She wasn’t going to wait any longer. Before Beth could even register the command enough to act on it, Leigh’s hands were at her waistband, her lips wrapping deliciously around one of the blonde’s taut nipples, taking it into her mouth, sucking and teasing it with
her tongue and teeth. Beth cried out as the sensation shockingly brought her close to climax. She’d never been easy to get off, but this was different. This was something she’d dreamed about, hoped for, fantasized about for over a decade, and it was actually happening, and she was fairly certain that she could get off on the younger woman’s gaze alone, let alone having her naked flesh sucked and pulled and licked and touched by the brunette.
In a matter of seconds, Leigh had Beth as beautifully naked as her, and took in the sight of the woman she’d craved for years. The blonde’s core was open and exposed to the brunette, glistening in the gleam of the track lighting overhead. “Fuck,” Leigh husked as she pushed Beth back, climbing over her, spreading herself atop her lover, so that nearly every inch of their full lengths was touching and tangling. Leigh planted her lips on the drumming pulse point at the base of Beth’s neck and sucked at it vigorously, making Beth cry out for more, while Leigh slid her hand quickly down the soft, smooth flesh of the blonde’s stomach, down past a thin strip of dark blonde hair.
The anticipation had risen to breaking point, and Beth was in so much glorious pain, she thought she might actually explode, and then suddenly, Leigh was there at her core, her fingers slipping through the other woman’s soaking folds, and without warning, because she needed it more than any words could ever explain, Leigh slammed two fingers hard and fast and deep into Beth’s opening, thrusting as far in as she could.
Beth’s piercing, aching scream was only partially muffled by the pillow she’d grabbed and smothered over her face. Leigh reached up with her spare hand and wrenched the pillow from the woman’s grip. She wanted to hear her scream, wanted to hear the effect she was having on her lover. She knew it wouldn’t take much. Beth was so wet that her hot, slick juices had already coated Leigh’s entire hand and dripped down onto the brunette’s wrist.