“Yes, darling, and why not?” Szuszu asked.
Naomi cocked her head, giggling a touch. “Uhhm…why not throw myself at random women I’ve just met?” She laughed again. “I think a lot of them wouldn’t have been too pleased about me pouncing out of the blue.”
Now Szuszu felt confused, because she’d done just that on more occasions than she could ever hope to remember and never met with acrimony. “But we’re gorgeous, darling, you and I. A gorgeous woman can go up to any random person, shove her hand down their pants, and receive nothing but accolades. And I’m not simply referring to random dykes, darling, or even men for that matter. Even straight girls wouldn’t object.”
This time, Naomi’s chuckle sounded a tad strained. “Well, speak for yourself, Szusz. You’re the gorgeous one. I don’t doubt you could get away with anything.”
Puzzling, Szuszu thought, for her spitting image to take on such a disparate worldview. “Darling, do you not realize how very much we beautiful people can get away with? Haven’t you noticed yet that you exist in a different category than all the plain people out there in the world? The power lies with us.”
Naomi wrapped her hands around Szuszu’s ankles and squeezed, released, squeezed, released. “You have got to be kidding me,” she said. The girl was shaking her head as well -- Szuszu could see that much. “You are kidding, right? Because at first I thought it was all jokes, but now you keep saying it and I’m just…”
Szuszu couldn’t bear the upset in the girl’s voice. Naomi was younger, she had to remind herself, and young people were so concerned about equality, weren’t they? It was true that beautiful people like she and Naomi existed in a class above the rest, but young people sought to abolish class structures. For the first time since Babs had gone off on holiday, Szuszu felt desperately worried that she might lose something precious.
“Kidding,” Szuszu said. “Yes, kidding, darling. Of course I’m kidding.”
The atmosphere seemed to sink below ocean level, and Szuszu reached for her drink in order to dull the heavy emotion pervading. She placed the glass back down when she realized Naomi had slunk from the ottoman, and now knelt behind it. Moving back and forth, from one foot to the other, Naomi kissed the pads of Szuszu’s feet, kissed her instep, kissed her heel, kissed every tender spot at the base of her being. Licked. Nipped. That mouth felt hot and wet and simply wonderful.
Each time they made love, Szuszu felt strikingly more alive. Perhaps this merely coincided with her lessened consumption of alcohol, but Szuszu liked to imagine it had to do with romance in some sense. The greater her bond with Naomi, the greater sensation they would experience together. It was a thought so lovely Szuszu was surprised it had bloomed inside her own mind. She wasn’t generally a romantic of any sort.
“What about you?” Naomi coaxed her feet to point and then blew on her toenails. “Not that you’re old or anything, but it mustn’t have been easy back in the day.”
Confusion again. “What wasn’t easy, darling?”
Naomi stopped blowing the polish dry and tilted her head upward. “Well, you know…meeting women and all that. It’s not like you could go on the internet and log onto lesbian forums or dating sites or whatever.”
Those days…oh, those long ago days…so spaced and so wasted, perpetually, chronically. Everything blurred together into an extended orgy of drugs and alcohol and, yes, of sex as well. Sex for sex’s sake, she’d always told herself, but the shutter of a camera in the back of her mind told her otherwise. “Oh…” She gasped, clasping her hand to her heart.
Naomi squeezed Szuszu’s tender feet. “What’s wrong?”
“I just…” Szuszu couldn’t quite believe it herself. “I had a…memory.”
Seeming not quite as impressed as Szuszu was with herself, Naomi asked, “A memory of what?”
Szuszu closed her eyes and watched the scene play out in a fog, describing each recollection as it came to her: “A photo shoot…before that centerfold you showed me, years before that. I was barely eighteen, already more street smart than I should have been, and yet still more naïve than I could have been. The drugs…they made us…he made us…”
Naomi rubbed Szuszu’s ankles and the base of her legs, those hands like silk, moving slowing, caressing her long-forgotten body. “Who made you do what?”
“Oh, the drugs, the booze.” Szuszu sighed. “We were so young and so susceptible, and when the photographer told us to, we did. The luxury of that life, all the finest things, clothing and gourmet meals and jewelry -- they gave us everything we could ever want. All we had to do was kiss, to start, and then he told us to undress each other, and we did that too. We were so eager to please. We tore off the clothes, those gorgeous, expensive frocks, and we followed impulse as much as command.”
“The photographer’s command?” Naomi asked.
Szuszu nodded without opening her eyes. Everything was right there in front of her, the past, or at least that segment of it, playing like a filmstrip against her eyelids. “When he asked me to suck her tits, I did it, and eagerly. I wanted too. I was flying so high, so high above it all, and I wanted to consume her flesh. He told me lick between her legs, and I did that too. I’d never tasted her before -- never tasted any woman -- and there was no going back from there. I was sold, right from the start. The subtle curves of her body…oh, we were so thin in those days. We were nothing -- next to nothing -- and it was no wonder: all our lives, we’d been told we were nothing, and in time we became nothing.”
“Szuszu!” Naomi pressed her thumbs into the soles of Szuszu’s feet now. “Look at me, Szusz.”
With a start, Szuszu came out of her memory, like waking from a strangely sensual nightmare. “Darling?”
“You don’t still think that, do you?” Naomi’s voice pleaded. “Whoever convinced you that you were nothing is an idiot.”
It had been so many years since childhood had flashed before her eyes, but for a glimmer of a second she could see it all again. “My father called me a daft blighter, said I’d never amount to anything, said that to all us girls. Mum never contradicted the man. But I showed them, didn’t I?” And then she pushed it away. She made it go away.
Naomi was quiet for what felt like a very long time, brushing fingertips along Szuszu’s bare legs. “I’m sorry, Szusz. I mean…I’m really sorry.”
With a shrug, she tried to downplay the hurt. She reached for her scotch, and then stopped herself. No more swallowing the past. It never did sit well. “Babette had it much worse off. She had a funny uncle lodging with them, growing up, and…you know how that is.”
“No, thank God.” Naomi kissed the pads of Szuszu’s feet. “But I know what you mean.”
“Well, my father only drank, but he was a holy terror when he did. There were eight of us kids, you know. A ninth on the way when Babette and I left home.” It had been years since she’d reflected on those early years. She and Babs never discussed them.
“How old were you?” Naomi asked.
“Babs was nearly sixteen, I think. I was a year behind her. We’d more than outstayed our welcomes at home by then. She’d quit school to work in the shops. I’d never worked a day in my life, but we had our eyes set on America. We got there, eventually, but…” She didn’t quite know what to say. She glanced at her scotch glass, but the sight repulsed her. Naomi’s face, though, that was an inspiration, even if she couldn’t see it as clearly as she’d like.
“I’m sorry,” Naomi repeated. “Thanks for telling me all that.”
Szuszu felt her head nodding. Something seemed to break open in her chest, like an egg radiating sunshine, and the very idea made her smile. “It’s oddly wonderful to have someone in my life who will listen.” She felt more alive than she’d felt in years, all owing to this wonderful creature bathing her feet in humble affection.
Opening her silk robe, Szuszu parted her lips with her fingers, inviting Naomi to feast between her thighs. If there was one thing the girl seemed to enjoy eating mor
e than cakes and biscuits, it was pussy. “Would you care for a nibble, darling?”
Szuszu had to admit to herself that she couldn’t see Naomi’s expression clearly. That face was a blur of pale skin and unreadable features. More and more, that irked her because, more and more, she realized she actually cared what the girl might be thinking. Finally, Naomi shifted the ottoman out of the way and fell to her knees. She crawled forward like she was following the scent of a cunt. “Right now? Are you sure?”
But Naomi’s face was already planted between her thighs. That precious tongue wasn’t waiting for an answer, but she offered one anyway: “There’s a sense you arouse in me, darling, and it’s something more than passion. It’s more than arousal or attraction.”
Pressing her warm cheek against Szuszu’s mound, Naomi replied, “It’s love.”
Her response was so simple, yet Szuszu’s whole body froze at the mention of that word. If it wasn’t for the face between her legs, she might have fled, but she wouldn’t bring herself to abscond from this pleasure. Naomi’s hot tongue melted her resistance to the very idea of love, and she realized all at once that it was compassion she’d been seeking all her life. How could she have gone so long without something so vital, so fundamental to the existence of anyone…of anything? There were animals in this world that were treated better than she’d been treated, and yet she’d never realized it until Naomi gave her what she needed and showed her what she didn’t.
Szuszu ran her fingers through Naomi’s hair. It was longer than it had been, more silky, less spiked. Dark. Szuszu couldn’t be sure why she’d thought Naomi was blonde like her -- never had been, never would be -- but even her own natural color was growing in, or so Naomi had informed. Szuszu was at odds with the mirror, just now. Everything was an almighty blur.
The heat of arousal flooded Szuszu’s belly as Naomi licked her clit in rapid succession. She was a wonder, this girl, and so confident in her abilities. Szuszu heard herself murmuring faint messages of approval as her fingers gripped Naomi’s hair. Her body moved of its own volition, writhing, bucking against that powerful tongue.
She closed her legs around Naomi’s head, trapping the girl at the center of her being. Naomi cupped her ass in those generous hands and gave her cheeks a squeeze. Szuszu took her own tits in hand and pinched her nipples sharply, sending bolts of pure electricity down to her core.
When Naomi took her clit between those perfectly plump lips and sucked, Szuszu nearly lost her mind. Clutching the sofa with one hand, and her breast with the other, she thrust into Naomi’s mouth as if she had a cock between her legs. “Suck it,” she heard herself saying, whispering at first, and then calling out louder and louder still. “Yes!” she hissed, bucking, ramming her cunt into Naomi’s face. “Suck it, harder!”
Naomi not only sucked, but nibbled and bit at Szuszu’s engorged clit, making all sorts of noises, from kittenish mewls to tiger-like growls. This was every sort of heaven Szuszu could imagine, and she gave herself over to the push erupting from her core. The explosion was magnificent, as it always was with Naomi, and Szuszu wondered what pleasure had felt like before now. She suspected she’d never truly been present for it, that everything she’d experienced throughout her adult years had been trapped in a haze of substances, everything dulling her perception of experience. Well, no more of that. Naomi was a treasure, and Szuszu planned to cherish her always.
Chapter 6
“I’m looking forward to meeting Babette when she gets back from her trip.”
Szuszu obviously tried to stifle her laughter, but it didn’t work. She cackled against the painted fingers covering her mouth. “Oh darling, she will not be fond of you.”
Naomi tried not to react, but she could feel her expression falling. “Why not? What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing. Nothing, darling, you’re perfect. It’s only…well, you see, Babette might not see you the way I do. And she does get jealous. Only, we’ve known one another since we were children. She wants only the best for me.” Szuszu was back-peddling now, a move that had become increasingly recognizable over the past six months.
Naomi liked to tell herself it wasn’t Szuszu’s fault she was so rude at times -- she’d lived so long in a world drastically different from Naomi’s. It was like they were from different planets, both meeting here in Szuszu’s penthouse and trying to make life work.
“How do you like the lamb?” Naomi asked, steering clear of the whole Babette issue.
“It’s divine, darling. You are a fabulous cook.”
A little tingle jumped across Naomi’s heartstrings, not so much at the compliment itself, but at the fact that Szuszu was finally eating regular meals and enjoying them. The first few months they were together, Naomi nearly had to cram food down the woman’s throat, and even then she’d only accept morsels. It had little to do with her cooking, she realized, and more to do with the fact that Szuszu was hardly drinking at all anymore, and certainly not using drugs. That was the real compliment: Naomi’s love had filled that hole poor Szuszu had spent so many years shoving a bottle into. That was her true success. How could this Babette woman ever hate someone who could do that for her friend?
“I’ve heard English cooking is horrible,” Naomi finally replied. Even after all these months together, she still felt too bashful to acknowledge Szuszu’s compliments, like they might flutter away if she did.
“It’s like anything,” Szuszu replied with a mouth full of potatoes. “Depends on the chef. My mother was a horrible cook -- burned everything from porridge to poultry. Babette’s mum was quite good. I ate rather a lot of dinners at her house -- anything to get away from mine!”
Szuszu talked about the past all the time now, as memories bobbed to the surface. Naomi didn’t let herself get too self-congratulatory on that point, but she couldn’t help feeling like she’d made a huge difference in Szuszu’s life. That was love’s greatest possible achievement, as far as Naomi was concerned: its ability to change people for the better. Szuszu was a much softer person now than she had been back when they met. And she was eating!
“What’s for afters?” Szuszu set her knife and fork down on a cleared plate.
“Oh…I didn’t make anything.” While Szuszu was eating more, Naomi found she was eating less. No more nights alone, snacking in front of the TV. She still craved sweets, but the sweeter Szuszu became, the more Naomi craved her woman instead. “How about we take a dip in the hot tub for dessert?”
Szuszu let out a seductive coo, reaching across the table to run her fingers up Naomi’s arm. “Naomi, you little minx!”
Her heart palpitated, nearly winding her as she stood to clear the table. “Let me just slip into my bathing suit and I’ll be right in.”
Szuszu was already half-naked and half-was across the room, but she turned as she slipped out of her around-the-house yoga pants. “Darling, I’ve been more naked with you than I’ve appeared in any magazine. You’ve seen right into me, straight inside my soul, and after six months together I’ve yet to see you in the nude?”
Naomi took their plates to the kitchen to escape Szuszu’s question, but no luck -- Szuszu followed right along. “I’m just not ready yet,” Naomi said. It was the truth.
“Darling, I don’t understand.” And it was clear from the expression of confusion on her face that she really didn’t.
Jamming their plates into the dishwasher, Naomi reasoned, “I’m not like you, Szusz. I’m not beautiful like you. I don’t have a body like yours. It’s intimidating, being with a cover model. I mean…” She closed the dishwasher and finally looked up into Szuszu’s eyes. “It’s easier just to please you. That way, I don’t feel self-conscious.”
Szuszu opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She looked stunned, and Naomi couldn’t understand why. It’s not like she’d said anything shocking.
“Self-conscious, darling? Why on earth would you feel that way? You’re gorgeous! You’re pretty as I ever was, and young to boot!”
“You keep saying that…” It was getting frustrating. She appreciated the compliments, and Szuszu seemed so sincere in issuing them, but they just weren’t true. “The mirror doesn’t agree.”
Shaking her head, Szuszu said, “Darling…” and simply trailed off.
“I appreciate everything you say, but…” Naomi struggled against self-deprecation, and lost. She always lost. “I think you’re seeing me through rose-colored glasses.”
And then Szuszu laughed, fetching the salad bowl from the table. “Darling, if I were seeing you through any glasses, you’d be more than just a blur.”
Naomi crossed her path to continue clearing the dishes. “What do you mean?”
“Oh, Babs has been on about me needing specs for ages now.” Szuszu made a dash with a damp cloth, chuckling as she wiped down the table. “I never could admit that she was right, but darling…oh, I can’t believe I’m telling you this…I’m afraid I’m blind as a bat!”
Naomi nearly dropped a water glass, but recovered just in time. “As a bat?” she stammered.
“Well, perhaps not a bat.” Szuszu smiled, tramping half-naked into the kitchen. “Blind as something else, perhaps. Something that sees fuzzy outlines of shapes, but not the real thing.”
Naomi stood gawping at the woman she loved. She just couldn’t bring herself to believe she’d been going out with Szuszu for six months and not once had it occurred to her that her girlfriend couldn’t see. How could she have been so self-absorbed that she couldn’t see her partner’s impairment? Maybe love was blind, even to blindness. Szuszu’s love was certainly blind to Naomi’s curvature.
“What do you see when you look at me?” Naomi asked. She walked from the kitchen into the sunny brightness of the great room, and stood with her arms at her sides, awaiting appraisal.
Narcissist Seeks Narcissist Page 3