by Heidi Lowe
"And what if I never get used to it? What if I'm always going to be too sensitive?"
"You won't."
I turned to face her, eyes filled with apprehension. "But what if I am?"
"Then we'll just keep trying and trying until you get better." She was stroking my stomach while she spoke, and it soothed me, though I couldn't wrap my head around why. "It doesn't matter to me whether it takes hours or seconds for you to reach climax, Lissa. It never has. I just love being the one to get you there. That's what makes me happy."
I let her kiss me, and it felt so good. So good, in fact, that the crippling sensation returned.
My moans must have signaled to her that I was ready for round two, because she looked at me and said, "Would you like to try again?"
I nodded, and shuddered. The desk was one thing, but I was almost certain that, lying in bed, a far more intimate place, would get me there even faster, if such a thing were possible.
It was agonizing to watch her leisurely pull her sweater and trousers off, agonizing to watch but not touch, knowing that doing so would send me over the edge. She was so perfect it hurt.
"Come here," she said in a sexy whisper, as she helped me out of my T-shirt. She did everything so gently, as though she was handling a piece of fine china.
On top of me, she kissed and kissed, and even that, after a little while, was too much for me.
"No, stop," I moaned, feeling myself inching closer to the edge.
"What?" she said, brow furrowed. She swept her dark hair back.
"Don't kiss me, it just makes it worse."
"Okay, I won't kiss you on your lips. Can I kiss you everywhere else?"
I wasn't sure, but let her kiss a trail down my body. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to think about something else, anything else, that would keep me going longer. I squeezed tighter when she caught my nipple between her fingers and began to play with it.
"Is that all right for you, my darling. Hmm? Am I too rough?" Her words dripped with sex, and I moaned loud and deep as though she'd already reached the promised land and wasn't still in foreplay mode.
"Don't talk. Your voice...I can't take it, not with the other stuff." I sounded hysterical.
"My voice? But you've heard me speak a million times, Lissa," she said. Was that a hint of amusement I heard?
"It's hotter than usual, just like everything else you're doing."
"Okay, I won't talk."
She took my nipple between her lips and lavished it with her tongue. My murmurs and whimpers filled the room. When I heard myself, heard how much of a ruckus I was making so early on, I felt ashamed.
She didn't spend much time on my breasts, just enough to wet them and leave traces of her saliva there, as though marking her territory.
She kissed me once more and I opened my eyes to look at her as her hand traveled between my thighs. I wanted so badly to hold her gaze while she worked my bean, wanted those deep, dark eyes to drink me in. But once she'd made contact, I was gone.
"Stop, stop, stop!" I said, squeezing my legs together to curtail her strumming.
"What's the matter?" There wasn't an ounce of impatience in her voice, which surprised me. I would have been furious by now had I been in her shoes.
"Can you not look at me when you're touching me?"
"Lissa, now I can't look at you?" She let out a shocked little laugh. "I can't kiss you, I can't speak, and now you don't want me to look at you. What am I supposed to do?"
"It's not funny!" This was turning into a complete disaster.
"I'm sorry, honey. I know. I shouldn't laugh. Give me another chance?"
"Fine," I agreed sulkily.
It made no difference, anyway. Because just as before, within mere seconds of her touching my bean, I climaxed.
"Just leave me alone," I told her, once I'd pulled up my panties and turned my back to her again. I had no more to give, and I had nothing to show for it. I couldn't even enjoy her body.
"Lissa," she coaxed, trying to get me to face her. "We can try as many times as you like."
"What's the point? It's going to keep happening. Just go away."
"Will you let me try something different with you? Do you think you have enough energy left?"
I was certain I didn't, that my body would break down on me if I went for another go round only minutes after the second orgasm. But I wanted desperately to get it right, to get back to some semblance of a normal sex life. Besides, I wanted her, despite what my demeanor suggested. I always had, and I always would, even if we were fighting. Especially when we were fighting.
I turned to look at her again, and she lovingly brushed the hair from my face. She gave me a sad smile. "We'll get there, Lissa. I promise. If not tonight, another night. But we'll get there." She wasn't just talking about the sex, I realized, but our relationship in general. This was her way of saying that she wasn't going to give up on me, on us.
That was why I submitted to her for the third time, and believed every word she said.
She straddled me again and we kissed for a while, innocently. And when she broke away, she smiled down at me. "Look at me the whole time, no matter what. Focus only on me."
Her hand gradually snaked between my legs, and I almost broke eye contact, my breathing growing heavy. Just the promise of contact was enough to get me worked up.
"Shh," she whispered. "Just stay with me. Don't think about what's happening, just focus on me, on my voice."
"That's making it worse," I moaned.
"Will you tell me something?"
"W–what?"
"When did you know you were in love with me? Tell me the exact moment you realized."
I had to think about it, but only for a few seconds, and in that time, while I was conjuring up that memory, she'd begun a gentle, steady rhythm with her finger against my nub.
I moaned out my answer. "It was the night you rescued me from drowning. When I woke up in your bed and saw you sitting in the chair. I knew right then that I was in love with you."
My eyes were trained on hers, just as she'd instructed, my mouth slightly ajar, letting the murmurs escape as she worked on my sex.
"Did you ever think we would be together?"
"No," I breathed, "but I was never going to stop trying with you. I didn't care what it took."
"Do you still feel that way now?"
I let out a cry, becoming cognizant of what was happening to me, and almost coming undone.
"Stay with me, my love. You're doing so well," she said in a hushed voice.
What was her question again? Disoriented, close to climax, and sweaty, I said, "Yes, I still do. I still love you as much as I did back then. You're still the woman of my dreams. You're still the only woman I ever want to be with."
She broke eye contact, brought her lips to my ear and said, "Ditto." That was all it took. I exploded immediately.
She couldn't touch me anywhere for several minutes after that. I was far too sensitive. I didn't even have the energy to speak or move. I simply lay there as though paralyzed, coming down from the most powerful orgasm I'd ever had, the after effects of which seemed never-ending.
Even though I'd lasted longer, it hadn't been much of an improvement. A couple of minutes tops. I still didn't feel any better for it.
"Practice, that's all it takes. You did so much better that time," she said after a while.
It wasn't meant to be condescending, but in my embarrassed state I'd become easily offended, and so took it that way.
"Don't speak to me like I'm a fucking virgin!" I snapped. What the hell did she think this was, a Madonna song?
"I wasn't, I–"
"You can leave now. Go back to your book, go find another piece of ass that can last longer than me. I don't give a shit."
I knew she was glowering at me, I could feel her glare burning into my back.
"Why do you always resort to this, being nasty to me when I'm only trying to help?"
I snorted a derisive lau
gh. "Help? It's thanks to your "help" why I'm in this mess, why I'll probably come every time I wipe myself when I take a piss!"
She shot out of bed, gathered up her clothes and put them on. "I really thought we were making progress. How foolish of me."
"Just because I let you fuck me, you thought we were friends again? You thought we could kiss and make up?"
I'd never seen her look at me with such venom before, and it sent a chill along my spine.
"Ah, there it is," I said, laughing spitefully. "I was wondering when you'd snap. No one can be that calm all the time. Come on, tell me how you really feel about me."
I wanted her to flip out. This righteous crap, this patience was driving me mad. It only made me feel worse. At least if she hurled insults at me, I knew I deserved them. I wasn't pure or innocent anymore, I was spiteful and nasty, and I wanted her to treat me as such.
But her scowl vanished. Her eyes were big and melancholy.
"You want to know how I really feel about you?" she said. "I love you. More than anything in this world. More than I love breathing. I love you more each day, no matter how much you try to get me to hate you. There isn't anything you could do, Lissa, that would make me hate you, so you might as well stop trying. Goodnight."
I'd tried so hard to restrain my tears through her speech, but alas, they poured out, right before her eyes. She always got the truth out of me in the end.
When she left the room, I bawled my eyes out all over our sheets.
SEVEN
She poked the fire with the stoker, and the flames danced wildly. After replacing the stoker in its stand, she sat in the armchair. On the old vinyl player (which she'd brought up from the den) that had come with the house, Vivaldi played in the background. Whoever owned the house before, she mused, had good taste in music – her taste.
She closed her eyes and let the warmth of the fire and the melody engulf her, relax her.
Why couldn't everything be solved by starting a fire and putting on some classical music? Wouldn't life be grand if that were the case?
Swearing in the foyer dragged her from her reverie. She knew from whom the profanities had come, and she leaped to her feet to check. Lissa was searching her jacket pockets for something.
"Hi," Jean said, watching her search aggressively, going from jacket to jacket. When did she get so many jackets?
"I can't find my goddamn keys," she said. "Have you seen them?"
"Are you going out?" Jean inquired, trying to sound casual. It would be the first time since the change that she'd left the house; the first time in almost four weeks.
"Have you seen them or not?" Lissa said impatiently.
Jean reached for the keys, which were sitting in the designated bowl next to the door, where they had been since the last time Lissa had used them.
"Thanks," Lissa said, snatching them from her.
"Where are you going?"
"Out."
"Would you like me to come with you?"
"I'm good." And with that she was gone.
Jean watched the door, thought about wrenching it open and calling after her, to say what, she didn't know. Their interactions had been reduced to this, ships passing in the night. Angry, hurt ships, one of which never had anything nice to say to the other.
Jean sighed long and hard. She couldn't do anything right. There was always something between them. She had become public enemy number one, two and three. It was as if Lissa knew her deep, dark secret, knew about that impossible choice she'd made. It felt that way.
"She'll come around," a voice behind her said. She spun round to see Sandra.
Jean offered her a doleful smile. "I doubt that more and more each day. There's a gulf between us that increases in size every time we see each other."
Sandra fished out some tissue from her cardigan pocket and handed it to her crying boss. This wasn't the first time she'd been ready with tissue, and it wouldn't be the last – not while Lissa was in their lives. She'd learned to carry tissue around with her just in case. Sandra noted that Jean had cried more since Lissa entered their lives than she ever had the years preceding their relationship. She wondered how miserable a person would allow themselves to get before they called it a day.
"Thank you," Jean said, wiping her eyes and nose. "She's just so angry at the world, at me especially. And I know it's a phase, I know I went through the same thing when I turned. But I didn't think it would hurt so much to be on the receiving end of it."
"She needs time. This is all new for her. When she's ready, she'll need you, and the important thing is that you'll be there when she comes looking."
Sandra didn't know whether Lissa ever would come around, but she didn't dare say that to her boss. The hope she saw in her eyes melted her heart. She wouldn't take that away from her. It wasn't that she didn't like the girl; on the contrary, when Lissa wasn't being a pain in the rear she was actually a breath of fresh air around the house. Fun-loving, youthful, hopeful. A least, that was how she'd been before the change. Whether or not that sweet girl would ever resurface remained to be seen, but Sandra wasn't optimistic.
The doorbell rang, and she went to answer it.
"I just saw Lissa," was the first thing Robyn said when the door opened and Sandra let her in. No greetings. She tugged off her coat and passed it to Sandra, shivering from the cold. "How did you get her to leave the house?"
"I didn't," Jean said drily. "I don't know where she's gone, but I wasn't invited."
Robyn and Sandra exchanged looks, watching Jean mope back into the living-room. Robyn followed her.
"No change?" She knelt in front of the fireplace and rubbed her hands together close to the flames. It was a bitterly cold evening, with the promise of snow in the air. She'd regretted forgetting her gloves on Nadine's kitchen table.
"No, there has been a change. Apparently she hates me even more than she did before."
"Why do you take it so personally? You know why she's lashing out. It isn't about you this time."
Jean snorted a laugh. "How can I not take it personally? She reminds me any chance she gets that I made her this way. And that's without knowing the full story..."
"Give her time," Robyn said, as she'd said a dozen times. Her advice had landed on deaf ears ever since she'd suggested Jean take a step back and let Lissa discover for herself how dangerous her Were-friend was. She believed Jean still blamed her for that, possibly for everything. But, well, for as long as they'd known each other she'd been her adviser and confidante, and she wasn't going to stop putting in her two cents.
Jean tutted. "Time. Why is that everyone's answer to everything? Is that an American thing? She needs me now, she just doesn't want to admit it."
A change of subject was in order, Robyn mused. She reached into her purse and took out a pamphlet. "Take a look at this place. I mentioned it the other day. I sent copies of the surveyor and electrical reports to our team to look over. Everything looks great."
"Is it the casino?" Jean took the documents from her and flicked through them. Printed images of a luxury casino coupled with complex-looking reports from the building inspector. She had no idea what a lot of the stuff meant, but she trusted Robyn when it came to business. The woman could sniff out a deal like a K-9 dog could sniff out cocaine.
"Guy ran out of money and couldn't afford to finish it. All the groundwork is done, most of the electricals have been fitted. It shouldn't take long to get it up and running."
"How much is he asking for?"
"Twenty, but I reckon we could get it for nineteen and a half. He wants a quick sale."
She raised an eyebrow. "That's a lot of money, particularly for an industry I'm not familiar with."
"It is, but you said you wanted to add a casino to your portfolio. This has the optimum location, and most of the work is done."
Jean studied one of the images, a picture taken from the outside. It was a fancy glass building, economical, too, due to the solar panels attached to the roof. She did lik
e the aesthetics, but a casino was a huge undertaking.
"Hmm, I don't know. What with everything that's happening here, throwing myself into such a large project might not be wise."
"You mean with Lissa? Even more reason to do this. It will give you the space you need from each other. Will keep your mind off everything."
Jean considered this. Was space really what they needed? More space than they currently enjoyed, seeing each other only when they settled down to sleep in the basement?
Then she had an idea.
"You know, you're right. A project would solve a lot of problems. She could use a distraction..."
Robyn stared at her blankly, not sure where she was going or why she looked like she'd just solved the riddle of the day.
"I saw a For Sale sign on a gallery a couple of weeks ago. It's the one near the old brewery. Can you find out if it's still for sale, and if so, how much?"
"You want to buy an art gallery?" Robyn gave her an incredulous look to match her incredulous tone. "Whatever for?"
"Do you really have to ask?"
No, she didn't. She rolled her eyes, but didn't dare try to talk her boss out of it, because that would have been an exercise in futility. She'd already made up her mind.
"And what about the casino?" she said instead.
Jean took one more look at the picture, then said, "I'll buy it, too."
EIGHT
Jean's office door was ajar when I snuck out of the bedroom and hurried past it, hoping she wouldn't hear me leave this time. Foolishly hoping, seeing as she had caught me every other time.
I didn't want to get into it with her. She might have thought I got a kick out of arguing, saying hurtful things, but that wasn't the case. If I had to explain myself to her, explain where I was going, we would fight again, and I wasn't in the mood.
"Lissa," I heard behind me. Dammit! Did she just wait by the door, listening in case I crept by, or what?
I sighed loudly so she could hear how irritated I was. How many times would we have to go through this rigamarole before she finally got the message that I wasn't in the mood to talk to her?