In the Distance There Is Light

by Harper Bliss

  I plant my lips on the toy. It smells rubbery, not-human, strange, but I’m overcome by an unstoppable urge to take it into my mouth. This is me reduced to my most base desires. This is me in front of Dolores, about to give her everything I have left in me, again. Or no, it’s not that, I think when I open my lips over the head of the dildo. I’m not giving her anything. I’m restoring myself. I’m putting myself back together, tiny piece by tiny piece, with her, by acknowledging this lust, this fire between us, this inevitableness, this bond. And how I move my mouth along this dildo Dolores bought for us to play with, is all part of it. Everything is. From that night she asked me if I wanted to stay here, and us meeting in the darkness of the night in Ian’s old bedroom, and me ending up in her bed, my mind on nothing like this at all. My soul so shattered all I could see and think was blackness. And how, night after night, we crept closer inch by inch until there was no space left between us.

  This is us now. This is my desire unbuckled, my lust unleashed. Because I’m alive and I want to live. These are our truest moments. This is what I’ve missed the most. Dolores so close to me there’s no room for my grief to spill over into self-pity. I love her. I love this toy she got for us. I love how it says that she, too, believed we weren’t done yet.

  My lips skate over the dildo and I take it deep into my mouth, as deep as I can, and while the tip goes as far as it can go, I do have a flimsy second during which I come to and wonder how I came to be kneeling in Dolores’ bedroom with my lips clasped around a dildo.

  Then Dolores’ hands are in my hair and the moment of clarity is eclipsed by her touch and by the intensity of what I’m doing. This is just like that first kiss, I think, only more. A moment during which I let go of inhibitions completely and follow my gut. This time, I have no regrets.

  I let the toy slip from my lips, and look at it. It’s all slick and wet. How did Dolores know this would turn me on so much? It was probably a gamble. Or experience. I push myself up and sit on the bed, immediately scooting backwards. I’m still wearing my panties, but I want her to take them off.

  Dolores hops onto the bed with me, the toy dangling deliciously between her legs. She comes to lie half on top of me and the dildo presses against my thigh. The saliva I covered it in leaves a wet patch on my skin while Dolores kisses me and I kiss her back with more zest than I knew I had in me.

  Her hands roam across my skin, fumble with my bra cups, set my breasts free. Her fingers pinch my nipples, her teeth bite my skin.

  “God, I’ve missed you,” she whispers in my ear when her mouth hovers there. “I’ve missed you so much.”

  I’m the least me and the most me I can possibly be. With Dolores, I come home every time, whether she prepares me a meal, puts a gentle hand on my shoulder, or is about to fuck me with a strap-on dildo. With her, everything always feels way beyond any sensation of feeling good I should be allowed to have only four months after losing my life partner. She has turned everything upside down for me.

  She kisses her way down my torso, maneuvers my panties off—and I help her greedily. Then, she sits between my legs, silicone cock at the ready. It’s the most strange and exhilarating sight I’ve ever seen. It’s bewildering and arousing and sets my skin on fire.

  Dolores brings her hands behind her back and takes off her bra, only adding to the sensuality of the picture in front of me. My entire body is flooded with yearning. My clit throbs out of control. My skin sizzles with anticipation. My mind is a blank slate because it has already fully surrendered to this moment. To her.

  I spread wide for her, making it clear, I hope, that I’m ready for this.

  Dolores shuffles closer, the movement of her knees making the mattress quake a little. She’s so close, I can feel the tip of the dildo against my inner thigh. Dolores scans my face.

  “Please,” I murmur, to spur her on. My voice is just a flimsy whimper. Just an instrument for begging.

  She inches nearer and I feel the insistence of the toy now, its rigidness. She palms it and, ever so gently, slides the tip over my wet, wet pussy lips. It’s as though I can feel myself open up for her. The dildo slips and slides with a bit more intent now and seeing it between Dolores’ fingers like that is more of a turn-on than anything else. She’s a power lesbian all right, the very definition of one. Outside the bedroom and in. In my head, I compose a line for the article about her I will never write. The way she holds a dildo between her fingers, so delicately but masterfully, is enough to make any woman want her. Thus is the power of the power lesbian. It’s silly, and perhaps the beginning of an inside joke between us. Something to remember how this all began.

  Then Dolores’ fingers are between my legs, gliding along my pussy where the dildo did before. If she’s gauging my wetness, my receptiveness for her and her toy, it can’t be misinterpreted. My clit buzzes as though wanting to scream, Yes, I’m ready.

  “Fuck me, please.” There’s my begging whimper of a voice again. I seem to have lost control over it. Nothing my body is doing right now is conventional, or expected of a mourning widow. Dolores and I, we’ve violently cast off any expectations the world may have of us and we’ve created our own. No one else will dictate the amount of grief we’re supposed to feel, the amount of time for us to hide away and suffer. What we do here in this bed in her room is our decision, our way of giving the finger to death and its grim, ever-lasting consequences.

  Dolores rubs her wet fingers over the toy, making it all slick again. I crane my neck to get a better view—this is a show I don’t want to miss—and the violet of the dildo glistens in the low light of the room. Dolores’ eyes shine. And my heart is about to burst out of my chest.

  Then, at last, she brings the toy to my entrance and, slowly, inch by inch, pushes inside. This is an entirely different sensation than having her fingers inside me. With this toy, which isn’t even part of her body but might as well be, it’s as though she takes possession of me—as if she didn’t have me already. It says she loves me in all the ways words fail. It cuts off my breath when she pushes deep, when she spreads me wide, when she claims me.

  She folds her body over mine, thrusting gently, holding herself up on her arms, gazing into my eyes. I fear I might faint because of too much sensation. Too much of everything. Too much of her, of us. We are so close, everything else seems far away. The things we did when perhaps we shouldn’t have and the ones we didn’t when we really wanted to.

  Dolores looks at me when she fucks me and I try to keep my eyes open, try to drink in every little grimace of her face, her beautiful, beautiful face with that radiant smile, that is serious now, because this is serious business. This is our toy, our moment of reunion. Perhaps it’s the beginning of the rest of our lives or whatever this may become. Neither one of us has that crystal ball, and the odds might be against us, but here and now, everything, every last atom in the atmosphere, is in favor of us.

  Dolores ups the pace and I start meeting her thrusts with my pelvis, start losing my mind a little, because this might be the most surreal moment of my life. Dolores fucking me like this is not something I could ever have imagined, just like so many other things that have happened between us. But this—this pleasure, this surrender, this yielding of my body to hers—is the pinnacle. It’s everything. It’s much more than I could have hoped for in this wretched post-Ian life in which all I have is his ghost and memories that hurt because they can’t be relived properly and a bunch of letters I’ve written him.

  What is happening between us now is purely carnal, it’s two bodies going at it, expressing through base instincts what is in our hearts. It’s not just longing and desire, but also the expulsion of pain, of nights spent alone and awake, of thoughts of a future so bleak and teary it made us cry just conjuring it up. Perhaps that’s why Dolores’ strokes inside of me are so fierce. But it’s nothing I can’t take. I match her every thrust, accompanied by a guttural groan, and each one makes my flesh sing more, makes my pleasure more pure, takes me to this place I co
uld never reach alone.

  Dolores blinks a couple of times, as though she stepped out of her body and is only now coming to. She stops thrusting and says, “Come sit on top of me.”

  I nod and she slides out of me. As quick as I can, I straddle her, surely dripping wetness everywhere, that’s how aroused I am, and lower myself onto the toy she holds up with both hands. Once it is inside me, I find a good angle, and while I do, Dolores expertly unclasps the bra I’m still wearing and tosses it somewhere into the room.

  She cups my breasts with her hands, slips my nipples between her fingers, and we find a new rhythm.

  “You’re so beautiful,” she whispers, but I understand. Each of my senses is heightened. I hear the rustle of the sheets beneath our writhing bodies. I smell the perfume of my sex all around us. I see every tiny expression her face makes. I see how the corners of her mouth curl up every time I push myself down and she meets me halfway. I see the glimmer in her eyes that I choose to interpret as love. I see—

  I stop seeing things when Dolores brings a hand between my legs and touches a finger lightly to my clit. Oh fuck, I’m about to lose it entirely.

  She circles my clit gently, to the rhythm of my slowed thrusts. When I go faster, she goes faster. We understand each other in this also. I feel part of her, I feel as though our bodies have melded together and when I open my eyes, I see her pleasure, and it escalates mine.

  The dildo inside of me, her finger on my clit, her hand on my breast, Dolores below me. It’s enough. More than enough. I fall over the edge of where lust transforms into pleasure. I fall and I fall and I scream and I howl. I let go completely. In this moment, I let go of the pain that brought us together. The pain that we made into this.

  “Oh fuck,” I stammer when I collapse into her receiving arms. My cheeks are wet from too much emotion, too much rapture. I try to hold the words back, but I’m too spent, so I say, “I love you.” It’s nothing but the absolute truth, after all. Nothing Dolores didn’t already know. But to say it like this, in this moment, makes it sound different. Like the romantic kind of love I believed to be impossible between us. So it startles me a little too.

  “I love you too.” Dolores wraps her arms around me so tightly I can barely breathe. My face is squashed against her chest, surely leaving a tiny puddle of tears between her breasts. “Oh, I do.” Only when her embrace loses a little of its power, do I push myself away from her, take a deep breath and look at her. There are beads of sweat on her forehead, and a tiny smile on her lips, but no sign of tears in her eyes.

  I look at her and am even more overwhelmed with love. I wipe the wetness from my cheeks with the back of my hand and lie next to her, an arm slung over her chest. “When did you buy this… present?” I press a kiss to her cheek.

  She turns on her side and we face each other. “A few weeks ago. I guess I was waiting for the right time to introduce it.”

  I glance at the toy still stickily pointing upwards between her legs. I wouldn’t mind trying it on myself some time, but not tonight. Tonight, I’m spent, but not too spent to push my own fingers inside of Dolores. To give her what she gave me.

  “Why don’t you take it off?”

  Dolores nods, does a quick raising of the eyebrows, then works the shorts and dildo off while the tip of her tongue sticks out of her mouth.

  “Let me see if this has in any way aroused you. It would surprise me if it had, but let me have a feel, anyway.” I give her the biggest smirk I have in me.

  She spreads her legs, eagerness lighting up her face. “Let me know,” she says, takes my hand, and brings it to her wetness.

  * * *

  When I wake up, Dolores is still fast asleep. I look at her in the morning light, then stretch my arms over my head, luxuriating in the fact that I’m back in her bed, still glowing from last night’s activities. I don’t look at the alarm clock. I don’t care what time it is. It’s Saturday and I have nowhere to be.

  I do know, however, that it’s important for me not to stay over again tonight. I’ll need to go back to my place—I can almost call it that without flinching now. Need to reclaim my independence a little bit more, the way I’ve been doing since I left Jeremy’s.

  Next to me, Dolores starts stirring and I watch her as she wakes up. Her eyelids flutter a few times, then she opens them. When she sees me looking at her, she smiles, and I can feel her smile radiate deep inside of me.

  “Morning,” she says, and reaches for me, pulling me close. “What a night, huh?” she whispers into my ear. “Maybe we should do that again some time.”

  “Maybe.” Dolores’ eagerness for me after we started seeing each other again keeps astounding me.

  “What are you doing tonight?” she asks.

  “Maybe I’ll cook you dinner at my place.”

  “Will you now?”

  “We could also do take-out, I guess.”

  “How about I cook you dinner at your place?” No hesitation before the your.

  “Sounds very tempting.” Beneath the sheets, I press a hand against her warm belly.

  “Do we need to talk about this? Process our situation, perhaps? Set some ground rules?”

  Dolores gives a light chuckle. “I’m not so big on rules. Besides, rules won’t save us, Sophie. We’re already so depraved. Look at us in bed together.”

  “Utterly contemptuous.” I try to mimic an upper-crust British accent and it makes me think of Ian.

  “Here’s my suggestion.” Dolores sounds a bit more serious. “Let’s just do this the only way we can: take it one day at a time. See where that leads us. I want you in my life. In this very capacity.” Her hand flattens mine against her belly. “No other will do, for now. Which doesn’t mean that I don’t want you to be totally honest with me because honesty is all we have. It’s the very foundation of what we’re doing. If, one day, you don’t want this anymore, you need to tell me. I need to know that’s what you will do. Otherwise, this can’t work.”

  “I want you in my life too and all the same goes for you.”

  “Okay.” Her fingers intertwine with mine.

  “Good.”

  “We should probably give that toy a good scrub.” Dolores inches her face closer and kisses me on the nose. The entire room smells of sex, of exquisite times had. If love had a smell, it would smell of that too.

  “Yes, because it’s my turn today.” A tingle takes root in my stomach.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” Dolores frowns.

  “Why not?”

  “I think I hurt my back last night. Serves me right for doing something I haven’t done in a decade at my age.” The grin she paints on gives away that she’s just joking.

  “I thought dating someone younger was supposed to keep you young and spritely?”

  “I guess it hasn’t rubbed off on me yet.” She inches her entire body closer. “You’re going to have to rub me a bit more.”

  “I guess I have no choice but to respect my elders.”

  We both break out into a chuckle. The room is fully illuminated by a bright mid-morning sun. Dolores’ eyes sparkle in the light, mirroring how I feel inside.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Ian,

  I know I haven’t written for a while. I’ve been busy and… I’ve also been seeing your mother. I guess I should call it dating, but it doesn’t feel like dating. Not like the dating you and I did. I know Dolores so well already because of what we’ve been through.

  Let me give you a quick update of everything that has happened. I’m back at work. I write part-time for The Post’s weekend magazine and the rest of my time I devote to investigative journalism. It’s good to have that old part of myself back, but to also have found something new. I do write the more fluffier pieces now, but I try to keep it interesting for myself. I’m trying to convince Dolores to let me write a piece on her, but she won’t allow it. Even when I threaten to find other power lesbians to interview.

  I’ve decided to sell our apartment. I’
ve lived there for two months now and while I think it was important to return, to face some facts, I don’t think my future is there. It’s too much you. It was your apartment before I moved in and before you left it to me. Everything reminds me of you in a way that is hard to deal with sometimes. As if I’m not reminded of you every minute of every day already. I’ll put it on the market and then rent somewhere. I need a place where I can start anew, where I can put your things in a spot that I choose for them as opposed to them having been in that spot forever, or at least since you were still alive.

  In case you’re wondering, I still miss you every day. Every hour of every day even though it’s not like we were together every hour when you were still alive. It’s because of the sudden brutality with which you were taken from me, from all of us. The brusque cruelty of it all.

  Dolores and I talk about you more. In the beginning, after we started ‘dating’ it was often awkward, as if we no longer knew how to broach the subject of you, even though we’d talked so much about you before. After meeting with that truck driver and the things that happened afterwards, it felt as though some sort of barrier had been put up. Like if we talked about you too much it would ruin the magic of what we had between us. We talk about that too now, because once we started talking about you again, we could talk about anything.

  I guess what I’m really trying to say is that Dolores and I are in a relationship now.

  I know how it sounds, especially to you. I could give you a long speech about how Dolores saved me from the worst of it, how she made me see some light in a darkness I could not ever imagine receding, and perhaps there might be some truth to those things, but, you know what? The very simple fact is that I fell in love with her. We fell in love with each other.

  It was very difficult to tell Alex—who is about to pop, by the way. She and Bart are having a little girl. She couldn’t believe it at first when I told her. She thought I had lost my mind and was ranting and raving or that I was under the influence of a very powerful drug. In the end, she hugged me and told me to do whatever made me happy. As simple as that.