by Lily Craig
I played with her, relishing the soft, warm welcome her body gave me. My fingers slid inside her, thumb rolling gently to bring her closer to a peak.
“Oh God,” she said. “I wanted this the moment I saw you.”
I bit at her neck gently, my right hand attentive to its tasks while my left grabbed the thick hair at the base of her head and pulled back slightly. The gasping sound she made was intoxicating.
While I was playing with Tara, she positioned her leg between mine, rocking her hips just enough to give me friction, to tease me and warm me. Before long, I paused our motions.
“I need to get out of these clothes,” I said, pulling off my pants while Tara unbuttoned my shirt.
“You’re damn right you do,” she grinned. Once I was freed, she lifted her dress off in a single fluid motion, revealing the kind of curves I’d fantasized about but hadn’t quite thought would be real.
They were sweet and full, her breasts carefully held in a lacy balconette bra that showcased her so perfectly I almost didn’t want to take it off. Almost.
But then lust took hold of me and I unclasped it, peeled it off, and revelled in the weight, the freedom of her in front of me. Before I could take a nipple in my mouth, Tara pushed me back onto the bed.
“Don’t think you get to call all the shots just cause you’re the famous one,” she said. Her eyes were twinkling with a devilish quality that made me hunger for her touch.
“And rich,” I said. She rolled her eyes amicably and pinned me down.
“Don’t forget humble,” she said. Her hair fell across her shoulders, cascading down her back and framing those hauntingly beautiful eyes. We were both breathing heavily, warmed to each other and sparking at the sight of more.
I wanted more.
She could tell, kept me lying on my back with just enough pressure so that I couldn’t escape her, and she kissed me deeply, slowly. I felt every inch of her skin nestled up against me, our friction so delicious I could barely take it.
Then Tara sank lower on the bed and kissed my stomach, her full lips grazing against my skin lightly, tantalizingly tracing the way down to my legs. She bent down and licked me, tentative at first as she began her work.
Even the first brush of her tongue against my clit was incredible, the long-awaited breaking of my dry spell with a hint of what was to come. Tara deepened her attentions, her tongue more insistent, her hands massaging my thighs as she worked.
It was heavenly, a series of escalating feelings that electrified the very air around us. I heard myself moaning and smiled. This was good, too good altogether. Before I even realized what was happening, Tara’s fingers joined her tongue in coaxing me closer and closer towards ecstasy. She worked intently, with passion and care.
I found myself spread beneath her, eyes screwed shut with the power of what I was feeling. The waves of pleasure began to intensify, Tara keeping up the pace as if she were listening to a metronome. Whatever she was doing, it worked for me.
Really, really well. My hands found her head, grasping at her thick, wavy hair as she kissed me into a bone-shaking orgasm. Her mouth never left me as I went through it, breathing a heavy, throaty sigh as I rode the feeling.
“My god,” I finally said. “Damn, you’re good.”
She looked up at me and smiled. “I know.”
I was eager to repay the feeling, but first I wanted to tease those nipples back into attention. Before I could, my phone rang.
Tara saw my eyes’ distraction.
“Answer it,” she said. Whether her voice concealed an undercurrent of frustration, I couldn’t tell. But the name on my call display was Steph, and I’d already brushed her off once this week.
I couldn’t do it again.
“Hey Steph, what’s up?” I answered, aware of my brisk tone but unwilling to compromise on it. I had better things to be doing, so the conversation ought to have gone quickly.
“You didn’t send me that email you promised,” she said. “Vanessa, we’ve talked about this.”
“I know, I’m sorry. Will do it ASAP.”
“For real this time?”
“Yes, for real.”
“Ok, well I’ll believe that when it’s sitting in my inbox. Also, you might want to be more careful what you’re seen wearing these days, hon. Those Honest Hater pics don’t flatter your new Dream Time 2 muscles.”
My heart nearly pumped its way out of my chest.
What pictures was she talking about?
I agreed mindlessly and sped my way out of the conversation. Tara caught the vibe from my frown and asked what was wrong, but I couldn’t answer until I found the site. Honest Hater was one of the meanest gossip blogs around town, purporting to be the authoritative source of unrestrained celebrity bitchiness.
Then I found it: a picture of me and Tara out hiking. We were coming down the mountain, my clothes billowing in the breeze, and were smiling at each other. The headline read “GAL PALS” and the text chattered about how maybe my new friend would help me dress better.
Nothing about romance. Nothing revealing in the slightest, unless you counted a vaguely unflattering picture from an exercise session as revealing. Which I didn’t.
Tara read over my shoulder and rubbed my head.
“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “They always call celebrities ‘gal pals’ even when it’s ridiculously obvious they’re together.”
A laugh bubbled up from within me. “You’re right,” I said. “Like Oprah could be frenching Gayle and they’d say ‘Gal Pal Saves Gayle through CPR’ or something.”
We both dissolved into peals of laughter as we came up with escalating examples of press obliviousness. Though it wasn’t the same as having the problem completely dealt with, my shoulders loosened their semi-permanent death grip on my neck. I breathed in, breathed out, and enjoyed the smile on Tara’s face still contemplating the news.
Chapter Four
Vanessa was so relieved by the way the blog had reported on our hike that I didn’t have the heart to press the issue. Yet underneath my smiles and laughter, I knew this wasn’t the end of her struggles. I wanted to be with her, really be with her, not thumb our noses at the hilarious homophobic blindness of her gossip blog coverage.
Should I have said something?
I probably should have. My words were queasily riding about in my stomach, but I just wanted to have a nice night. To keep Vanessa happy while we grew closer, both emotionally and physically.
I mean, talk about connection. The last time I’d slept with someone had been so unsatisfying as to completely escape my mind. This, however, was going to stick with me for a long time. And not just because Vanessa was famous beyond my ability to comprehend.
She longed for me. I could see it in the way her eyelids sank when she looked at me, leaving her gaze sultry and flirtatious. When she touched me, it was as if sparks were set off at each nerve ending, scattering up into the sky where they could light up the space around them. If she felt anything like what I was experiencing, this was special.
We had something, whatever it was.
I needed to see where it took us. And I wasn’t just thinking that because I was feverish with need to feel Vanessa touch me again, to tease me into a kind of trance-like bliss that could erupt with an intensity I wasn’t sure I’d ever known before.
Sure enough, when our laughter died down and the moment with the blog finally ended, Vanessa set her sights back on me.
There was something simultaneously unnerving and exciting about being fixed in her gaze. My skin tingled at the beautiful intensity of her attention and I closed the distance between us. Whether it was because I wanted her or because her eyes were almost too much to bear, I didn’t know.
The one thing that was certain was I needed her to touch me. I needed to feel her tongue on my body, soft reverberations of absolute pleasure following her every ounce of pressure, of placement.
Vanessa kissed me with those pillowy lips, nipped at my bottom li
p playfully while she laughed to herself and caressed my back.
“There’s something so free about you,” she said. We parted the kiss and she searched my face. “I don’t know what it is.”
“Maybe the freedom from earning a decent living,” I joked. But it didn’t land, or at least Vanessa clearly didn’t understand. She likely made so much money she had no idea anymore what debt was even like.
Lucky her.
Her place was like the set of a movie about wealth. All modern lines, James Bond-like vistas and sheets whose thread counts almost certainly outranked my credit score. If she saw where I lived, would she still be so eager to touch me?
Would she still want me to be photographed with her in public?
There were so many things I still didn’t know, but one thing became glaringly obvious as we continued: something inside me craved Vanessa more than all the powers in my brain could rationalize.
Logically, we didn’t belong together. I was a scatterbrained wannabe artist, and she was the kind of person who could pay for someone to do every single task she hated. Though it was hard to resist jealousy, Vanessa’s hands reaching for a vibrator and pressing it against me did the trick.
Soon my swirling insecurities were completely overshadowed by the rising feeling inside me, the reverberations of the vibrator so intense, so welcome, that my eyes were screwed shut. Vanessa’s lips encircled my nipple and she made me gasp, pleasure bright and vivid.
“I’m going to come,” I whispered.
“So come,” she said, her voice assertive, breath hot on my already sensitive skin.
And then the rising tide overcame me, a surge so powerful that I couldn’t have resisted it even if I wanted to. Of course, I didn’t. I let the feeling come, each wave a wondrous peak. My legs were shaking, back arched, and all the while Vanessa guided me through the ecstasy.
“You look so damn good like that,” she said. Her voice had a husky quality as if she’d been drinking bourbon for years rather than all the green smoothies she’d mentioned she liked. “Should we go again?”
“Let me catch my breath,” I said. I let my eyelids flutter open, our eyes meeting while my heartbeat slowed and air filled my lungs. It was a stunning moment, and I felt renewed in some way. “And then, absolutely.”
When she smiled, her eyes turned into little half-circles, edges crinkled ever so slightly by the expression. I liked Vanessa like this: quiet, intimate, and happy. I wished she could show that self in public more, but at least I was lucky enough to see it in private.
I had a shift scheduled for the afternoon, but my boss called me an hour before and cancelled.
“We’re actually ok today,” he said.
So I resisted the urge to worry that this was a harbinger of the job losses to come. Instead, I changed out of my business casual outfit and put on something much more relaxing. I could go on another adventure for photographs, which was really what I wanted to do most days anyway.
I texted Vanessa, who was busy shooting an emotionally harrowing scene with a character who dies in Dream Time 2. Not that I expected her to respond right away, just wanted to stay in touch.
“Work didn’t need me today, so I’m going out picture taking. Want to grab dinner later?” and I ended it with a kiss emoji. My heart surged even at that simple gesture. It had only been a few weeks, but Vanessa was gaining ground in my emotional life.
I thought about her constantly: her glossy hair, the texture of her laughter when I said what was on my mind, the way she leaned in and our shoulders touched when we sat on her couch watching movies.
She’d laughed so hard when I told her I mostly watched movies from the 80s.
“Don’t you have any desire to keep up with the times?” she said, eating a few kernels of popcorn while she awaited my response.
“Not really, to be honest. I like what I like.”
Vanessa snorted. “I guess that explains why you haven’t heard of me.”
Then it was my turn to laugh, cracking up at her continued confusion that I hadn’t known who she was. It had become a running joke in our relationship, along with a bit where we both talked about ourselves as ‘gal pals’ in aggressively perky morning show announcer voices.
That we had inside jokes warmed my heart. There was a consistency there, common ground. We were building something, even if I wasn’t sure how we could maintain a life together, if we wanted it.
I also knew that the fact I was considering a life together meant I was falling, and hard.
Vanessa meant more to me than any other girl I’d dated. There was just something special about the way she held my gaze, or brushed my hair out of my eyes when she wanted to kiss me. It hadn’t been long, but we’d been together long enough for me to feel that jolt.
It was unusual, but it was magical.
So it was through the lens of feeling the wonders Vanessa had brought to my life that I photographed that afternoon. I concentrated on the everyday beauty of Los Angeles as I got out of my car and walked around the Sunset area. Hardly a street you’d consider breathtaking, but I loved the stream of traffic inching along, the snippets of conversations you’d hear from convertibles and open windows.
It was a surprisingly busy afternoon, and I took pictures of abstract angles, buildings, and vegetation as per usual. But I also found myself drawn to the people I saw. My newfound happy heart wanted to document others’ connections.
The two young women leaving a store with full bags, their conversation excited and nearly manic.
The man in the car driving past who was on his cell phone and nodding along to music at the same time.
And the couple sitting at a cafe down a side street whose relationship clearly had just blown up. They were yelling, faces red as they tore down what had once been a refuge from the world. The man turned and suddenly ran towards me, refusing to answer to the shrieks of his ex from behind him.
I got a shot of that, too, before I sidled out of the way and spotted another group of paparazzi, some in a huge black SUV, taking pictures of the woman, who was now crying at her table.
When I turned back to see if the man would return, more paparazzi were hounding him.
What on earth? Los Angeles is a weird place to live sometimes.
“Did you get him?” said a voice, and I turned to face a man who was wearing a shiny bright sports jersey of some team I didn’t recognize. Beneath his ultra-reflective aviator sunglasses, he seemed to be staring me down.
“What?”
“Did you get a picture of that guy running away? Tad?”
My chest froze, a sudden chill rushing over my skin despite the balmy temperatures.
“Tad like Tad Brandon? The Tad Brandon?”
“Who the hell else do you think we’re trying to chase? Yes, Tad Brandon. If you got a pic of him, I’ll buy it off you. This breakup will be gold.”
And then the man handed me a business card for a gossip blog I’d actually heard of and left to go confer with his friends, who were now reviewing shots on their cameras together.
“Wait!” I said to the retreating back of the man’s jersey. It had the number 69 on it, which would have made me roll my eyes under different circumstances. He turned. “How much?”
I nearly gasped out loud when he came back and told me.
“I’ll think about it,” I said.
“Let me know,” he hollered at me while he trotted over to his compatriots. “Time’s ticking to get this up!”
It was a lot of money. Enough to tide me over if I wanted to look for new work. Or maybe I could start my photography business, finally.
But it seemed wholly wrong to capitalize on invading someone’s meltdown like that, even if it was in a public place.
Plus, I probably hadn’t even gotten a clear shot of Tad.
I checked to be sure. Strangely enough, Tad was in focus, his anguish clear from the expression on his face. You could even see the girlfriend in the background, frowning at him as he skedaddled
.
Damnit, Tara.
I knew what I had to do.
Vanessa called me at 8 that night.
“Hey, I’m going to be another hour or two at the earliest. I’m sorry it’s taking forever, turns out the boom operator’s grandma died recently so he’s kind of distraught. It’s been messing things up. Can I take a rain check? Or maybe I could just swing by your place for the night?”
My stomach contracted and my muscles froze. It would be strange to insist she not come over. And I really wanted to see her, to tell her the good news. So I found myself agreeing despite the pit of fear roiling inside me.
Vanessa was going to see what my apartment was like. Even worse, there wasn’t enough time to clean the shambles into something slightly more palatable for someone of her means. Not that I knew enough about home decor to really make that happen.
Despite knowing that it was a losing battle, I wanted to see her. I felt myself awash in her affection when she thanked me profusely and promised to make it up to me with a nice dinner out sometime after Dream Time 2 was done shooting.
Then when the call was over, I jumped into frenetic motion. Old socks, piled into corners whenever I’d thrown them off, were assembled into my laundry hamper. I took the plates and dishes scattered around the room and put them into the dishwasher. It would run through before she got here.
Tidying? Yes. Decluttering, definitely. I even tried to dust, though I mostly succeeded only in making myself sneeze.
An hour later, the apartment looked…better. Not good, but at least improved. There was only so much you could do to a dingy studio apartment with a razor thin budget of both time and money. I went to the mirror and smoothed my hair, breathing carefully to calm myself.
Vanessa came up, and I tried to mentally quieten the internal shrieking of my nerves. She looked gorgeous, though tired, and kissed me firmly. There was a big paper bag in her hand.
“I brought take-out!” she exclaimed, and I could have fallen on my knees to thank her.
She then glanced around the room. “Nice place,” she said.