by Sandy Lowe
“Look at me.” Roxie’s voice was principal’s office quiet.
Lauren looked.
“I don’t know Emma. I can’t speak for her. But if she reacted badly, then maybe that’s because you told her the thing she doesn’t like about sex, that it makes her nervous, was the thing that turned you on.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Lauren said. “You know I didn’t.”
Roxie rolled her eyes. “Give me a break, Lauren. You did mean it. It’s unfortunate that Emma’s nervousness comes from a bad experience. I know you didn’t mean to upset her, but don’t kid yourself that you weren’t really honest about what makes you hot. You can’t just go around acting out your little role-plays with any old woman. You can’t ask that of people who aren’t walking into it with their eyes open, and you definitely can’t ask it of Emma, when she reveals what sounds like might’ve been honest-to-God trauma. Please tell me that you didn’t tell her what you do at Kink’s. Tell me you had the brains not to bring that up at least.”
How was it possible to actually still be alive and breathing when you wanted the earth to swallow you as badly as Lauren did right that second. “I didn’t tell her. I honestly didn’t mean to freak her out. I didn’t tell her anything like what happens at Kink’s.”
“What happened next?” Roxie sounded thoroughly unimpressed.
“I tried to explain, as best I could. Like, that I wanted her to be vulnerable and surrender because those things meant she trusted me.”
Roxie let out a windy sigh that was lost instantly to the swirl of the weather. “You guys really suck at first dates.”
“I know.” Lauren didn’t mention that she’d told Emma her sordid history, or that Emma had been nothing but supportive. She didn’t tell Roxie that Emma had asked her about Kink’s, or that Lauren had told her the reason she’d gotten her tattoo, or that every time she looked into Emma’s endless brown eyes she never wanted to look away. All of that was heavy, and none of it spelled first date.
“You can’t tell her, you know.” Roxie put a hand on Lauren’s shoulder and squeezed. “I know you like this girl. I can see it all over your face. But so-hot-Emma has been through something, something real, and you can’t ask her to role-play with you. It sounds like regular vanilla sex costs her. What you want is a price too high for her to pay. You know that, right?”
Nodding, Lauren turned away from Roxie and stared out across the town. All the falling-down houses full of falling-down people. The whispers, the jokes, the death stares that would’ve killed her seventy times over if the pain they’d inflicted was physical. She hardly saw any of it. Instead there was Emma’s bare back, turned away from her, distant and cold and unwilling to accept what Lauren needed. Unwilling even to accept what she needed herself.
Unwilling to surrender.
“What are you going to do?” Roxie asked.
Lauren watched as a group of women in pastel puffer jackets and fur-lined duck boots approached the table. Odd that they weren’t watching the parade. “No idea. Nothing I guess. It’s not like it was going anywhere anyway.”
Yeah, right. Keep telling yourself that. It could have gone a lot of places if you hadn’t fucked it up.
“Well, look who it is, Lauren West, front-page scandal in the flesh. You look better with your clothes on. The getup you wore to that slut club was so trashy.”
Lauren barely registered what Jessica Norman had said. All she could see when she looked at her was the way a teenage Jessica had laughed at and belittled Emma. Emma who’d done nothing wrong but be genuinely attracted to her. She wanted to wring Jessica’s scrawny neck so badly she didn’t trust herself to speak. Jessica Norman, the quintessential mean girl, reigned supreme as the biggest fish in the smallest pond.
Jessica raised her eyebrows and laughed. “What? No pithy response? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You had nothing to say when you destroyed a Christian marriage for your perverted sex games. Why should you start defending yourself now? You can’t, can you? You did everything they say. Did she pay you? Was that what it was about? Did Caroline Bennett pay you to whip her, or something equally disgusting?”
“Why don’t you shut the fuck up?” Roxie stood shoulder to shoulder with Lauren and stared the group down.
“I’m just saying what everyone is thinking,” Jessica said.
“Not everyone thinks that,” Roxie said. “Some of us believe that other people’s personal lives are just that, their business.”
Jessica laughed again. “Seriously? It’s none of my business, even though it’s been in the news for months? The whole world not only knows Lauren’s business, but now they know what I’ve always known.” She turned to Lauren and said without a second’s hesitation, “You’re nothing but white trash. You think getting a college degree and moving to a big city made you better than the rest of us? It didn’t. You’re still making trouble. You’re a joke and still the laughing stock of this town.”
“Why don’t you go the hell home,” Roxie said, fighting a losing battle. No way Roxie was going to outwit Jessica, not with so much ammunition on the wrong side. Lauren knew she should say something, if not to defend herself then to make Jessica go away, but her throat had closed up and her stomach was seizing.
You’re nothing but white trash.
Intellectually, she knew it wasn’t true. No human being was trash and that Jessica thought so said more about her than it did about Lauren. Her brain knew this. But the soft mush of her insides where her heart lived was too busy battling a lifetime of shame to give a damn what her head thought.
Garbage. Waste. Rubbish. White trash.
“Oh damn,” said a friendly voice from behind Jessica. Emma casually walked around the group, a candy cane in hand and a Santa hat perched jauntily on her head. She circuited the refreshment table until she was standing by Lauren’s side. Looking at Jessica, she said, “And here I thought I was your best joke. Or was that just in high school? It’s so hard to keep up with all the things you find funny.”
Jessica’s mouth snapped shut for a moment, her eyes going wide. “Stay out of this, Emma. It has nothing to do with you.”
Emma brushed Lauren’s thigh before finding her hand and squeezing, her trembling fingers and too-tight grip the only sign she was nervous. Emma smiled at Jessica the way a serial killer might smile at their victim before making them very dead. “It has about as much to do with me as it does with you. More, actually, seeing as how Lauren and I went on a date last night. She wore the trashy getup.” Emma made a show of fanning herself and smiled her killer smile.
Some people went red when they were mad. Others got kind of pale. Jessica, though, her skin went a really interesting shade of blotchy purple. “You went on a date with her?”
Jessica actually pointed at Lauren, like she just had to be as rude as humanly possible.
“Sure did. Then we had amazing kinky sex, and she whipped me until I begged her to let me come.” Emma stuck her candy cane in her mouth and bit off a chunk, concealing the way her breath rushed out of her. “You should give it a go, Jess. You don’t know what you’re missing. I think I see Dan over there by McFarland’s farm stand. You should ask him to come on over. We’d be happy to give him some pointers. You need a pro like Lauren around when you do the whipping thing for the first time.”
“That’s disgusting,” Jessica all but hissed, glancing warily at her husband to make sure he hadn’t overheard Emma’s suggestion.
Emma just shrugged. “Well, I am desperate, so it’s not that much of a surprise, is it? Where do nymphos go for a good time except to kinky home wreckers? It’s a small town.”
Lauren heard Roxie snicker next to her.
“Bye-bye,” Emma said, waving them off as if they’d already decided to leave.
Jessica turned on her heel and stalked away, nose in the air, her entourage trailing behind her.
“Holy flying monkey dicks. You’re my hero.” Roxie burst out laughing. “That was brilliant.”<
br />
“Thanks. Wow. Did I actually do that? I can’t believe I really did that. Can I have one of those?” Emma said in a rush.
“Sure.” Roxie poured Emma a cup of hot chocolate and looked at Lauren as if realizing she hadn’t said anything at all. Nothing to defend herself and nothing to Emma. Roxie paused a beat, giving Lauren a you’re-failing-as-a-human-right-now look, before saying what Lauren should’ve said herself. “Thanks. That was really awesome of you to come to Lauren’s rescue like that.”
Emma smiled a smile that fell off her face before the corners of her mouth had even finished lifting. “It’s no big deal. Jessica isn’t my favorite person.”
Roxie nodded. “I picked up on that. Desperate nympho, are you?”
“According to Jessica. Quite a reputation to have at sixteen.”
Roxie looked at Lauren again, clearly putting two and two together faster than Lauren would’ve liked. A hurtful teenage thing hadn’t been vague enough apparently.
“She’s such a bitch,” Roxie said.
Since none of them could argue the point, silence fell. Roxie stared such intense holes into Lauren she expected to find them carved into her face when she got home. “I’m going to start packing up.” Roxie tied a plastic black trash bag and shoved it at Lauren. “Walk Emma to her car and take this with you.”
Lauren wanted to glare right back. Best friends had an annoying habit of never being able to mind their own business. But she didn’t want to be rude in front of Emma. Emma who’d come to her rescue by standing up to her teenage tormentor in epic fashion. Did she have to be so damn brave all the time? It would’ve been easier to put last night behind her, to let’s face it, start what was sure to be the long and arduous process of getting over Emma, if Emma would stop being amazing. Stop showing up looking so adorable in a Santa hat and skinny jeans and an ugly Christmas sweater under a classic black coat. Couldn’t Emma just do her a favor and be mean and horrible for five minutes so she could pretend she didn’t have feelings for her? Confusing, contradictory, warm and gooey, smile-for-no-reason-at-all type feelings. It sucked.
“I parked around the back,” Emma said pointedly.
“Sure. Come on.” Lauren turned and started walking. Walking away from Emma was becoming a habit.
Emma caught up to her and put a hand on her arm. “Hey, I’m sorry that happened. I believed you when you said people were gossiping, but I had no idea it was so nasty.”
When had this town ever not been nasty? But someone like Emma, someone people liked and respected, someone who wasn’t trash, would never understand what it was like to be treated as less than human. Lauren shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not your responsibility.”
Emma walked around in front of her, forcing Lauren to stop or risk flattening her. “That’s unfair. I know last night didn’t go as planned, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care.”
Lauren maneuvered past Emma and dumped the trash bag into a dumpster. “You shouldn’t have said all that to Jessica. Now the whole town is going to be talking about you, too.”
Emma laughed. “No, they’re not. No one would believe I’d actually want to be whipped in bed.”
Then, as if realizing what she just said, she closed her eyes and winced.
Well, there you go. If she’d needed confirmation that Emma wasn’t into anything kinky, she had it. By the way her hands were shaking and bile rose to her throat, she had needed it confirmed.
Read the damn memo. She doesn’t want you.
“That came out wrong,” Emma said.
“Wrong as in being whipped in bed is indeed disgusting and perverted, and of course no one would believe that sweet and innocent librarian Emma would engage in such a disgraceful activity? Is that what came out wrong?”
Emma sighed. “That would be what came out wrong. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry.” Lauren stomped toward the deserted back lot. “I’m well aware you’re not into anything kinky.”
“Because I said I didn’t want to surrender to you I’m not into kinky?” Emma’s voice was a hiss as she attempted to speak quietly and yell at the same time.
“Don’t even try to convince me you’d get off on being dominant,” Lauren said. “Not after the way you melted against me when I was on top of you.”
God. Why had she brought that up? Emma all lush and supple and pliant against her was the last thing she needed to be thinking about right now. Or ever again.
“I’m not trying to convince you of anything. I just think it’s rude to categorically assume that I wouldn’t be into kink because I have a problem with the idea of surrender.”
Lauren considered this. “Fine. Fair enough. You could still be kinky, and to assume that you’re not was wrong. But let’s be real here, you’re not, and telling Jessica that you are was stupid and is only going to create rumors about you. About you and me together.”
“Oh dear.” Emma’s voice dripped sarcasm. “People talking about you and me together, that sounds terrible.”
“God. I’m trying to protect you. Being gossiped about isn’t fun. You want people to start calling you trashy, too? Why are you insinuating yourself into all this?”
“If you have to ask that,” Emma said, each word a verbal punch, “then I definitely shouldn’t bother. And screw you for thinking I don’t know what it’s like to be called names that don’t apply—names that should never apply to anyone.”
Lauren walked faster, wanting nothing more than to leave this conversation, this ache in her damn heart behind her. Emma yanked on her shoulder, and she spun around to save herself from falling.
“Why are you so angry?” Emma’s eyes blazed.
She was none too calm herself.
Because you’re so brave and beautiful. Because I want to touch you so badly I can hardly breathe. Because you make me want things I can’t have. Because you don’t want me the way I am.
“I’m not angry.”
Emma stepped closer to her, getting up in her space, until she was forced to take a step back, and then another and another until her back hit the door of Emma’s car, and she had nowhere to go. “Why are you so angry?” Emma asked again, standing so close they breathed the same breath.
Snow fell onto Emma’s eyelashes, and Lauren had to mentally restrain herself from kissing it away. “I’m angry at myself, for saying what I said to you last night. I didn’t realize I was being insensitive. I’m angry at you for not being able to forgive yourself. I’m angry that we’re arguing over all the names that Jessica Norman has called us. I’m angry that we have this…connection…that’s only going to hurt us.”
“It’s already hurting us,” Emma whispered, a war raging in her eyes, too many emotions battling each other for Lauren to decipher them all. She knew exactly how that felt.
“Why are you angry?” Lauren asked, unable to stop herself from running her fingers through Emma’s hair, damp from snow.
“You hurt me.”
Lauren’s breath stopped as if she’d flicked a switch to turn it off. How could such simple words have so much impact? She’d hurt Emma. She understood now, why. Emma fought against her nerves and anxiety on a daily basis, maybe even hourly. In many crucial ways, they defined her life. That Lauren found her shyness sexy, that her heart raced just a little faster when Emma got nervous, minimized the painful experience at the heart of Emma’s anxiety.
Lauren rested her forehead against Emma’s and breathed in the pine needle scent of her shampoo. She didn’t want to have hurt her. She’d much rather bask in her righteous indignation. She’d rather focus on Emma asking her to be vulnerable and then telling her to leave when she dared try. That she’d been as honest as she could be and Emma hadn’t even met her halfway. Anger was so much easier than hurt. Hurt meant you cared. Hurt meant this wasn’t about sex. This wasn’t a one-night stand gone wrong. This wasn’t casual. Hurt meant that feelings were involved.
Hurt was all that mattered because it confirmed she wasn’t the onl
y one feeling stripped and vulnerable. Her heart wasn’t the only one on the line. She didn’t want to have hurt Emma, and she’d take it back if she could, but knowing she wasn’t alone in her hurt, in her feelings, settled her deep down inside.
They were in this together.
Lauren kissed her.
Chapter Eleven
Impulse sucker punched Lauren’s better judgment, leaving it flat on its back with no hope for a second round. The air seemed to spit and spark like flames around them, as if the touch of their bodies had created energy all of its own. Lauren dragged her tongue along Emma’s lips, need flaring to an ache in the pit of her stomach when Emma moaned and twined her arms around Lauren’s neck. No matter how much they sniped at each other, neither of them could deny or resist the desire that was always there, just under the surface, rising to crash over them. Lauren kissed her slow and coaxing, teasing and tasting, tugging at Emma’s bottom lip and then sliding inside when she gasped. The heat of Emma’s mouth was a lightning strike to Lauren’s system. Everything short-circuited. Emma tasted like mint and Christmas and the heady unmistakable flavor of desire.
“This is insanity.” Emma pulled back, panting. “Didn’t we just agree that we don’t want the same thing in bed?”
Blood was rushing in twenty-seven different directions in Lauren’s brain, making it hard to think. “Did we? Good thing we aren’t in bed then.” Lauren slid a leg between Emma’s thighs until her head tipped back, her Santa hat falling to the ground.
“It feels so good when you do that.”
“Think how much better my hand would be. My mouth. Don’t you want my tongue on your clit?” Lauren ground her thigh shamelessly against Emma, knowing that under a thin layer of clothes was wet need. Need that was all for her. It was high time Emma stopped being ashamed of it.
“Lauren.” Her name on Emma’s lips, the want in it, made her shudder. Screw what she wanted, she would give Emma whatever she asked for, however she wanted it, if only she’d say her name again in just that way. If only she wouldn’t close her eyes.