If You Dare

by Sandy Lowe

She nodded. Her anxiety was a sixteen-year-old, too full of herself to listen to the logic of an older, wiser Emma. But like any rational adult, she gave it her best shot, even though she knew it was useless. Lauren didn’t want a Californian Barbie doll princess bikini model and she liked the way Emma looked. If she didn’t, then they wouldn’t be here, right? Emma could take her clothes off with confidence. She had nothing to worry about. She absolutely, positively, should not inquire as to whether they could have sex fully dressed.

  Emma slipped the dress down and let it fall to the floor. She didn’t suck her stomach in. She really badly wanted to, but she didn’t because Lauren had said she liked her curves. She had plenty of them, and from the look on Lauren’s face, she liked them a lot. Emma stepped out of the puddle of silk and crouched to unstrap her heels.

  “Oh no.” Lauren tugged her back up. “Leave those on.”

  Emma laughed, the sound so nervous and shaky she winced. “You can’t be serious.”

  “As serious as my tenth-grade math final,” Lauren said. “This is much sexier than math, though.”

  Emma could almost feel Lauren’s gaze raking over her skin.

  “You’re stunning,” Lauren said quietly.

  No jokes. No teasing. Just truth.

  Emma blushed, then groaned, then laughed. “Thank you. Maybe we can even the score though? I’m dying to see what’s under your shirt.”

  “Are you now?”

  Emma felt heat rise up her neck. “I mean your tattoo. I got a peek at dinner, and I’m dying to know what it is.”

  “Ah.” Lauren’s face did that annoying as hell impassive thing. “It’s not all that sexy, I’m afraid.”

  Emma shook her head and went to work on Lauren’s buttons. “Impossible. The tattoo part makes it sexy, whatever it is just adds weight.” She parted Lauren’s shirt and read out loud the sentence in simple script on the left side of her chest. “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

  Huh. That’s an interesting statement to have tattooed across your heart.

  Emma traced the script with a fingertip. “Nietzsche. Impressive.”

  “It’s not. I didn’t even know it was that German philosopher guy when I had it done. Then I found out later that he was part of Hitler’s inspiration for the Holocaust, so…”

  Emma shook her head. “The Bible was used as inspiration for the Crusades, does that make it evil? Tell me about this. Why did you get it?”

  Lauren gave her a very slow, very thorough once-over. “I’d really rather be doing something else.”

  “Talking is my thing. Humor me.”

  Lauren sighed. “My childhood wasn’t easy. Mom is awesome, and she did her best as a single parent, but we scraped by. I felt bad about that for a long time, like I was less than other people. Then I got to San Francisco and realized all that hard stuff had actually really helped me. I was more confident, had more courage, knew myself better, because I didn’t have it easy. So, I got this tattoo to remind myself that sometimes hard things can have good results.”

  Emma traced the word “kill” on Lauren’s heart. She had a feeling Lauren had glazed over most of the truth. Lots of people grew up poor and didn’t get tattoos to remind themselves they’d survived. But now wasn’t the time, and as badly as she wanted to know the answer, Lauren had already revealed so much tonight. Asking her for more felt wrong somehow, like she was seeking a degree of closeness they didn’t have.

  There were some secrets a one-night stand didn’t have a right to know.

  “That’s very brave and self-aware. Most people run from adversity their whole lives. It takes a special strength to face it and come out stronger.”

  “Or a special brand of masochism.” Lauren shrugged her shirt off. “Now, if you insist on talking, I insist that we change the subject.”

  Emma hadn’t intended on talking. She was more than a little preoccupied drinking in Lauren’s small breasts in her simple black bra, her flat stomach with just a hint of muscle, and all that glorious, glorious tan skin that looked oh-so touchable. But now that Lauren had said that, Emma wanted to know what the next conversation would be. “I can agree to that. Do you have something in mind?”

  There was a gleam in Lauren’s eye that Emma didn’t trust one little bit. “I do. This is all about getting to know each other, right? And talking is your thing, but it’s time to switch to my way to communicating. Plus, it will help you relax. You’re jumpy.”

  “I’m not,” Emma said, even though she totally was. That Lauren had picked up on it was both comforting and annoying. Couldn’t Emma at least pretend to be cool? How did Lauren just know these things?

  “You are. That’s okay, but I think some talking might help. Ease us into things. It’s an experiment. We’re going to trade confessions,” Lauren said.

  “Confessions?” Emma asked as if she were an echo.

  “Yup. So, let’s talk. I’ll even go first to make it easy on you.” Lauren tapped her chin exaggeratedly. “Let’s see, I could start by confessing I was late getting up this morning because I was having this amazing fantasy about a certain dark-haired lusciously curved woman above me, rubbing her pussy all over my stomach, her head was thrown back so all her beautiful hair fell down her back. She was having a very, very good time.”

  “Oh my God.” Emma was sure the house was going to burn down because the bedroom was suddenly an inferno. “You can’t say stuff like that.”

  Lauren raised her eyebrows. “Why not?”

  “Because…” Because no one ever admitted to stuff like that out loud, did they? And certainly not when it involved her. “I don’t know.”

  Lauren took Emma’s hands and placed them on her belly. Held them there. “Can you see it? Sliding yourself all over me, getting me all nice and wet?”

  Emma’s head filled with the image and her face flamed. She couldn’t speak. Her vocal cords had been switched off as all the blood rushed between her legs.

  “It’s natural you know, to imagine it. Now it’s your turn.”

  “My turn?” Oh, this was a bad idea. A very bad idea. She’d skip a turn, thank you very much.

  “Yup. Confession time. Did you think about me last night? Maybe this morning?”

  Emma twisted her hands in front of her. Ugh. Why was this so embarrassing? Almost everyone masturbated. Lauren was right, it was natural. But there was a hell of a big difference between knowing in theory and facing in reality. Especially when the star of your X-rated highlight reel was standing right in front of you. “Last night.”

  Lauren waited and when Emma didn’t say anything else, she laughed. “What’s wrong, Ms. Talking Is My Thing? Cat got your tongue?”

  “Shut up.” Emma tried to shove her, but Lauren caught her and pulled her close. Lauren kissed her, making her melt into a puddle of pleasure goo. Pleasure goo was totally a thing. With Lauren’s shirt off and Emma in only her underwear, their skin slid together and she moaned. She ran her hands up and down Lauren’s back, luxuriating in the feel of her body. Lauren was so different. Not hard, but taut and firm and toned in a way that Emma just wasn’t. She traced the definition in Lauren’s shoulders. “You feel so good.”

  Lauren made an agreeing sound that didn’t comprise actual words as she drugged Emma with kisses, trailing those very talented fingers all over her in caresses far too light and oh so tempting. “Don’t think you can distract me with your feminine wiles. Tell me about last night.”

  Emma couldn’t look at her, so she stared at the ceiling instead. “I thought about us in the library, what might’ve happened if we hadn’t stopped.”

  “Oh, so you are into librarian porn. Nice.” Lauren grinned. “Did you come thinking about us getting down and dirty in the stacks?”

  The question cut through her, slicing her open and exposing all the places she kept hidden. “Yes.”

  “Tell me your fantasy.”

  “I can’t.” Emma hauled her eyes from the ceiling to look at Lauren. When Lauren met her gaze, h
er expression was so warm, Emma wanted to get lost in the maze of her eyes.

  “You can. It’s easy. Will it help if I tell you that I came thinking about you?”

  Emma hissed out a breath. God. Thinking about Lauren coming, coming because of her, was too much for her mind to process. She throbbed and ached in places she wouldn’t have even known were erogenous zones before tonight. This conversation experiment was making her crazy. “How did you do it?”

  Lauren gave her a look. “You know how this works. If I answer that, you’ll have to as well.”

  She bit her lip, considered her options, and weighed her desire to know against her desire to die in embarrassment. “Okay.”

  Lauren cupped Emma’s breasts over her bra and whispered against her ear, “I have a wand vibrator that curves just slightly at the end to hit my G-spot. I used it on myself while I imagined you above me getting off. The vibration was nice, but the look on your face when you came is what really made me explode.”

  Lauren’s voice rushed over her like a stampede of wild horses. She was blown away. Scattered into a million pieces, her thoughts scampering in twenty different directions. “Oh my God.”

  “Do you like that?”

  Emma nodded. It was as if Lauren had described a scene straight out of her own fantasy. A thousand of her fantasies. There was something primal about watching your lover pleasure herself. Somehow both all for you and all for her at the same time. Incredibly satisfying and undeniably frustrating. “I wouldn’t mind seeing you touch yourself like that.”

  “That could be arranged, if it’s what you really want. I was kind of hoping you’d want to participate though.”

  Emma swallowed. She wanted to participate so fucking badly she couldn’t breathe. “That could be arranged.”

  Lauren kissed the curve of her ear, finding a sensitive spot and lingering there. “Your turn.”

  Time to pay up. She almost didn’t even care, hearing Lauren say the look on your face made me explode was worth any price. “The library was open and busy. You cornered me in the encyclopedia section no one uses anymore. This time when you kissed me, you slid your hand up my skirt.”

  Lauren groaned and pulled her in even tighter, crushing their breasts together and caressing down her waist to the small of her back, an inch from her ass. “Fuck. Did anyone catch us?”

  She bit her lip. No one had. But that was only because… “You had your hand over my mouth so I couldn’t make a sound. You made sure no one heard us.”

  Lauren’s voice was sand mixed with gravel as it rolled over Emma. “Was I rushing? Urgent? We could’ve been caught at any second.”

  “You…” The words stalled in her throat, but Lauren was looking at her like this fantasy was the sexiest damn thing she’d ever heard, so Emma mentally shoved past her embarrassment. “You took your time, as if you couldn’t care less if we got caught. You stroked my clit over and over. I couldn’t help but come, my moans trapped under your palm.”

  “Couldn’t help it?” All teasing was gone from Lauren’s tone.

  “I had to come. I knew I shouldn’t, but you wouldn’t stop and I couldn’t speak.”

  Lauren cupped her ass and squeezed, pulling Emma into her body in a way that made her desperately wish Lauren didn’t still have her pants on. “Do you often have fantasies like that?”

  Lauren’s hands on her ass made her knees tremble and all thought blurred for a second. “Huh?”

  “Do you like to fantasize about being taken like that?” Lauren asked, an unexpectedly serious note to her voice.

  Being taken. A shiver crept down her spine.

  More or less, pretty much, exactly on target, complete and total bull’s-eye what she liked to fantasize about. But Lauren saying it out loud made it way too real. Admitting it turned her on was one step away from admitting why it turned her on. That was a level of fucked up Lauren didn’t need to know about. Nothing to see here. Don’t dig any deeper.

  Emma shrugged. “One of many fantasies. It just fit with our kiss in the library.”

  She wasn’t really lying. She didn’t exclusively fantasize about being taken, and it did fit. Not telling the whole truth wasn’t lying, was it? Plus, Lauren had gotten away with explaining her fantasy in a sentence or two. All these questions weren’t fair.

  Lauren was silent for a beat too long, her expression more intense than it should’ve been. Then she made that vibrating sound Emma was growing to love. “You have no idea how sexy you are.”

  Emma let out the mental breath she’d been holding. Lauren was going to let it go. She scoffed. “That’s not sexy. Or at least not any sexier than you.” Lauren sliding a vibrator inside herself was approximately twenty billion times hotter than her own fantasies.

  “Not true. It’s incredibly sexy. Did you get yourself off with just your fingers?”

  Emma nodded.

  “How long did it take you?” Lauren asked.

  “You’ll think I’m really fucked up,” Emma said quickly. If Lauren was expecting the answer to be weird, then maybe it wouldn’t be as shocking.

  Lauren caught Emma’s chin in her hand and tilted her face so she had no choice but to meet her stare. “I’d never think that. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. But there’s nothing about you that’s fucked up.”

  She sighed. Lauren only thought that because she didn’t know the truth. She didn’t know the real Emma. The raw, dirty, needy Emma who didn’t require more than her fingers because the images inside her head were more than enough to send her over. That Emma was fucked up. “I haven’t timed it. But around five minutes.” It was a lie. It’d been less than two because the kiss had her so on edge already she didn’t need any warm-up. But five sounded more reasonable. Less like she was a sex addict who got off on a breeze blowing in the right direction.

  Lauren closed her eyes and breathed slowly out through her teeth. Emma recognized the move as one she practiced daily. Was she okay? Oh God. She’d freaked her out. “I’m sorry. I can last longer, really. As long as you need. You know, as long as normal people do and everything.” The floor could open up and swallow her now. Really. The timing was perfect.

  Lauren opened her eyes. “Emma.” The word was guttural. Like Lauren had found it buried deep inside herself and dragged it all the way through her body and out her mouth.

  Emma blinked. “What?”

  “Don’t ever say that again. You’re not abnormal. You’re driving me out of my mind you’re so sexy.”

  “I am?” She was?

  The pure bafflement in Emma’s tone made Lauren lose it. She didn’t know how to explain with words that Emma being so hot that she got herself off in a couple of minutes with only her fingers and her thoughts was the hottest damn thing Lauren had ever had inside her head. Not to mention getting off on that fantasy. She couldn’t say that. So instead she used surprise to her advantage and gave Emma a gentle shove, tipping her backward onto the bed. It was high time they both stopped talking. She was going to show Emma exactly how turn-her-legs-to-jelly sexy she was. “Look at you, all gorgeous and spread out for me. I’m going to make you come.”

  Emma’s quick breaths were making her chest heave in the most delicious way. Lauren reached behind her to unhook her bra, exposing her breasts. “God, you’re beautiful.”

  “The most beautiful girl you’ve ever had, I’m sure,” Emma said sardonically.

  She leaned over her to brush her lips against Emma’s. “The sweetest.”

  She kissed between her brows. “The sexiest.”

  She kissed the tip of her chin. “The beautifulest.”

  She avoided Emma’s eyes and busied herself stripping off what remained of her own clothes. She ignored the warning bells clanging insistently at the back of her brain. Emma was beautiful. It didn’t really mean anything. It was just the kind of sweet talk people said to each other in bed when rational thought had been usurped by desire. It was all in fun. It wasn’t as if she actually meant Emma was sexier
than any other woman she’d ever known.

  “Wow,” Emma breathed when Lauren turned to face her, completely nude.

  Lauren laughed. “You’re good for my ego.”

  “I have no idea why you’d ever need an ego boost with a body like that,” Emma said, her mouth slightly open and her eyes glazed.

  Lauren shrugged. She looked okay she supposed, in a lanky, straight up and down kind of way. But Emma was gazing at her like she should be on the cover of Maxim. Not that she was upset that Emma thought she was hot, but the girl really had it all wrong when it came to what kind of figure was sexy. Emma, lying on her bed in nothing but blue lace panties and strappy heels, her skin flushed pink and inviting, was so fucking hot Lauren had to do multiplication tables in her head to distract her hormones. Add to that that Emma was as responsive as hell and more enthusiastic than every woman she’d ever been with combined, and “sexiest” was an understatement.

  Damn. She had meant it after all.

  She stretched out beside Emma on the bed. “I’m hoping that if I strip naked and snuggle up beside you, you’ll take pity on me and kiss me senseless.”

  Emma raised her eyebrows. “You want me to kiss you?”

  “I do,” Lauren said. “You’re very good at it, and I’m terribly impatient.”

  “I did notice that about you.” Emma pressed her lips to Lauren’s.

  Lauren held still. She wanted Emma to go for it. For Emma to act as well as talk. She wanted Emma to own all that desire simmering beneath the surface of the good girl she presented to the world.

  Emma frowned. She shifted closer, her breasts brushing Lauren’s, and kissed her again, longer this time, parting her lips and stroking her tongue over Lauren’s nice and slow. Anticipation circled giddily in her belly like a dog chasing its tail. Emma tasted like red wine and smelled like fruit and flowers, probably some specific scent she’d spent an hour choosing in the store. Lavender frosted coconut blossoms, or tea-rose infused frangipani petals. Possibly, pink peppercorn melded with sweet pineapple sorbet. Lauren was a girl, but she wasn’t the kind of girl who went for heels and lipstick and scents. She was the kind of girl who appreciated them greatly on a very sexy woman, though. Especially when said woman was whimpering little sounds into her mouth.