by Lea Santos
“You need dry clothes first.”
“Tori, I’m f-fine.”
“Then humor me.” She arched an eyebrow, then left the room and returned with a flannel robe for Iris, a towel for herself. She lifted her chin toward the hallway. “You can change in the restroom.” At Iris’s hesitation, she added, “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right here.”
A few minutes later, wrapped tightly in the robe that held Torien’s alluring scent, Iris returned to the living room. She hadn’t expected to feel self-conscious, vulnerable—but she did. Tori had dried off and slipped into jeans with wear-holes in various places and a dry, faded T-shirt. Her feet were bare, which struck Iris as achingly intimate and poignantly sexy. She recalled that day in the garden, catching Torien with her shirt off in the potting shed. Where it all started… Torien glanced up, and Iris cleared her throat. “Hello, again,” she said, wistfully. Remembering…always remembering. “I’m surprised to see you here.”
Torien’s still troubled eyes keyed on the cue immediately, warming slightly. “I’m staying here, remember?”
Enough play. Iris claimed a chair across from where Tori stood with her shoulder propped on the door jamb. “I’m all ears.”
Torien’s focus moved inward. Her throat constricted several times, over a memory that was obviously so painful, she could hardly verbalize it. Finally she asked, “Do you recall our conversation about my father?” The words empty, raw, hushed.
The subject one-eighty surprised Iris. She blinked. “Of course I do.”
Torien’s chest rose and fell with unshed tears. “That I was angry? After he died?”
“Yes.”
“The truth is…I did not want to care for my family when it happened. I wanted to live out my big dreams, too.” Torien’s voice came out laced with shame. She flicked her arm out in disgust. “So, you see? I am no better than him.”
“No. No, Tori, that’s not true,” Iris implored.
“It is. It’s my truth.”
Jesus. Iris never imagined this was the anvil of guilt weighing on Torien’s conscience. She’d been mired in her overblown sense of responsibility for so long…this on top of everything else was too much. Iris wanted to cross the room and hold her so badly, her knees trembled. But she sensed Tori’s need for distance. “You were a young woman. Young women are supposed to dream.”
“Didn’t you hear what I said?” Torien’s voice raised, but not in anger. She sucked a couple ragged breaths. “I didn’t want to support them, Iris. Please listen.”
“I am, honey.”
“I wanted to walk away from my family and chase my own selfish dreams. What kind of woman am I?”
Iris frowned. “But that’s ridiculous.”
Torien stiffened, the shock on her face swiftly crumbling into tightly controlled tears. She slid down the wall and buried her face in her hands.
The show of emotion seemed so uncharacteristic, it caught Iris off guard. Regaining her composure, she stood. “It doesn’t matter what you felt. You didn’t walk away.” She closed the distance between them in two long strides, knelt, and enveloped Tori—strong, steadfast, sorrowful Tori—in her arms. She pressed her forehead against Torien’s knuckles and simply let her silently mourn. “You faced your responsibilities like a woman when you weren’t much more than a teenager. For God’s sake, you have nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I do.” She sniffed, smacked away the tears. “I resented him, Iris. Resented the hell out of his burden being thrown in my lap. And yet, I am just like him.” Her eyes sought understanding, lashes spiky and dark with tears.
“I’m not…sure what you mean.”
“Don’t give up your life for me, mi ángel. God help me, I am my father’s daughter. De tal padre, tal hija.”
“It’s not true,” Iris said, emphatically. “You didn’t walk away—”
“It doesn’t matter.” Torien extracted herself from Iris’s embrace and backed away. “You believe me to be someone I’m not.”
Iris wrapped her hands around Torien’s wrists, not wholly certain of the connection. “How’s that?”
“I am still chasing foolish dreams, just like Papá,” she rasped. “I could have taken Moreno’s blood money and kept my easy job, kept helping my mother and sisters…but I didn’t. I didn’t take the money. And now I have nothing and they will all suffer.”
“I’m…so sorry.”
Torien flicked the apology away. “I’m not looking for an apology. I’m just…trying to explain. Despite my responsibilities, I couldn’t”—her voice cracked—“I couldn’t bear to cheapen what we have, Iris. Not even for my family’s security.” She pounded her fists on her thighs. “You are the big dream I am chasing now, and again I’ve disappointed my family like Papá did. Except this time, it’s on me.”
“Tori, I will never come between you and your fam—”
“Irisíta.” Torien folded her into an almost desperate embrace, holding her so tightly, Iris couldn’t pull a full breath. “Jesus, babe, I don’t deserve you. Deserve this.” Her strong, work-worn hands stroked the sides of Iris’s arms gently. “And yet, I don’t want to walk away again.”
Iris wrapped her arms around Torien’s trim waist. “I don’t want you to.”
“Go to Paris.”
“No.”
“Please, Iris. I don’t want to be the cause of—”
“Shh. Listen to me. Your life is not like his. Geraline isn’t giving you a choice in the matter. Don’t sell your soul for her.” Iris kissed Torien’s damp eyelids, her nose, her tear-streaked cheek. “I’ve done that for far too long, sold my soul for what Geraline wanted, for what the modeling industry wanted. That’s why I’m not going to Paris, Tori. It’s not my dream.” She looked deeply in Torien’s eyes. “Not anymore.”
A small spark of hesitant hope caught fire in Torien’s expression, and Iris fanned the flames. “If we don’t fit in either of the worlds we’ve known, we’ll create a new one. Our world, Tori. Yours and mine. That’s my new dream. You’re my future.”
“Ah, mi ángel…” Torien reached for Iris, and she fell willingly into Tori’s arms, their mouths meeting with an inevitable passion. Through their kisses, Iris found her courage. Reaching between them, she untied the robe and let it slip from her shoulders until she stood in the safety of Tori’s arms naked—literally and emotionally. Her rite of passage from a life she hated to one filled with hope.
“Jesus…so beautiful.” Torien groaned, smoothing those palms over Iris’s skin, kissing, kissing, kissing her lips, forehead, neck, and back to her lips.
Breathless, Iris pulled her head back and regarded Tori through love-drunk eyes. She slid her hands under Torien’s T-shirt and up her body to cup her small, firm breasts.
Torien inhaled sharply, arched into Iris’s palms.
“Say yes, Tori.” She swirled her fingertips around Torien’s hard nipples. “Believe in it. In us. Tell me you do.”
Tori furrowed her fingers into Iris’s wet hair and studied her for a moment, then planted several light kisses on her lips, the corners of her mouth, her throat, her bare shoulders. “Yes,” she murmured, sliding her hands down Iris’s back to cup her shapely curved ass. She pulled Iris into her, thrust her hips into soft…wet…heat. “I believe in us, Irisíta.”
Passion surged through Iris’s veins, and she knew the only thing real in her life was this woman. This moment. “Love me.”
“I do.”
“No. I mean…love me, like I’m going to love you.”
Torien’s mouth came to Iris’s with a matching fervor, and they lost themselves in the safety of each other. Torien stilled, breathing jagged, the motions of her body speaking volumes of wordless communication. “I…have to—”
“I know.”
Torien pulled Iris onto one of her thighs, clasping her hips and increasing the pressure. Sweet tension boiled exactly where Iris wanted it most. “I need—”
“Me, too, Tori.” Their gazes tangled f
or just a moment before, in a fury of action, Iris found herself swept into Torien’s arms, down the hall, into a modestly decorated bedroom. She became aware of sensations in increments, cataloging them in her mind’s eye like snapshots.
More firsts.
She never wanted to forget…
The gentle give of the mattress against her back.
Moonlight slanting silvery through the window.
Torien kneeling between her thighs, pulling that T-shirt over her head as Iris reached for her button fly.
It could’ve been a nanosecond, it could’ve been a lifetime, but Iris sighed when Torien’s warm body covered hers, closing out everything but the beauty of skin on hot skin, Torien’s trembling breaths, her desire so stark and tender and real.
“Touch me.”
“Ah, Iris…” Tori whispered. She caressed Iris’s body like no other woman ever had—as if Tori were starved for her but fearful of consuming her whole. Iris’s senses filled with Tori, the sight and scents and warmth of her.
Hitched breaths.
The hot warm places tightening…opening…throbbing.
The dizzying pull of Tori’s mouth on her nipples.
Iris moaned, lifting her hips to press closer. She wanted Tori on her, in her, around her until she couldn’t inhale without Tori having to exhale. She had known Torien wouldn’t be a tentative lover, but her intense focus and passion was like a drug, and Iris? Hooked.
Tori raised up on one elbow, reaching her other arm behind Iris to pull her tighter into the rocking motion of their bodies connecting. “Tell me what you want.”
Iris smiled. “I don’t have to tell you, sweet. You already know.”
Tori slid one hand between the pressure of her insistent thigh and Iris’s slickness, rocking, rocking. Her touch was a promise, her gaze a caress. “Inside?”
Enough talking. Iris reached for that tantalizing wrist and pushed Torien’s fingers deep inside her own body. “Yeah…” she sighed. “Right there.” She kissed the gasp from Tori’s mouth, then started to move, undulate. Hot and throbbing, Iris raised up to take more of Torien inside her. She opened herself to Torien, their gazes, bodies, hearts connected.
Torien pushed into Iris’s warmth. “Like that?”
“Harder. I’m not going to break.”
Torien sucked a breath in through her teeth, resting her forehead on Iris’s breasts and closing her eyes, allowing her body to take over and give Iris exactly what she craved. The room filled with the erotic scent of their bodies, the whispers, sighs, and moans from their lips and hearts. Torien needed to be so deep inside Iris, they would never be separated again. She wanted to hear her name in Iris’s sighs, feel the quiver of her legs and know that they’d connected so intimately, no one could ever breach the safety of their love.
Iris’s breath quickened; her back arched. Torien could feel the impending orgasm gripping her fingers, but didn’t want it to end. Not yet. Sliding out of Iris’s warmth, despite the moan of protest, Torien nibbled her way down Iris’s body until her mouth captured that warm aching center. Iris’s body bucked, and she cried out.
Torien lifted her head. “I want to take you there, Irisíta, with my tongue.”
She watched Iris’s abdomen contract. “Yes,” she hissed.
Reaching her hand up, she slipped a moist finger into Iris’s mouth at the same time she claimed Iris again with her tongue, gently with her teeth. The sensation of Iris sucking her finger fired her desire, and she pulled and swirled that most womanly part of Iris until her rapid breathing and shaking thighs told Torien…this was the spot.
Iris gripped her wrist and arched up, her entire body tensing as she moaned and cried out and came in a rush of heat against Torien’s tongue.
Torien managed to smile, never breaking stride. She wanted all of Iris. Now. Not just her body—all of her. Just as Torien thought Iris had melted into a boneless aftermath, she found herself flipped deftly onto her back.
Torien blinked up at the woman she loved.
Iris reached between their bodies, her eyes fluttering shut when she touched Torien’s hot, wet need.
“This isn’t over,” Tori said, “is it?”
A smile lit on Iris’s face. “Tori…mi adora para siempre—my forever love,” Iris murmured, sliding easily into Tori’s body, “not even close.”
*
Much later, as Iris and Torien lay tangled in each other and near sleep, Iris whispered, “I love you, Tori.”
Torien shifted, pulling Iris closer. “Te quiero, mi Irisíta.” She kissed the back of her neck, sending a wash of shivers down Iris’s spine. “You know…I would give up the world for you.”
“I know. As I would for you. But guess what?”
“Mmm?” Torien asked.
“Neither of us has to give up anything for each other. We simply have to…be. It’s our world now, Tori. And no one can touch us here.”
“It’s like a dream.”
“But real.”
“It’s us.”
Iris sighed. “Yeah. It is. And it couldn’t be more perfect.”
Epilogue
The sunshine hit the large Victorian house in such a way that Iris thought she had never before seen anything so beautiful. It had been hard work converting it into a workable center of operations, but they had pulled it off, and today they would present themselves to the world. News vans crowded the streets and throngs of people had begun gathering around the front yard, which was closed off with a fat red ribbon.
Torien approached her, looking ill at ease in her new suit, but her face softened when their eyes met. She touched Iris’s cheek. “You almost ready, mi ángel?”
“I have never been more ready.”
“Te quiero, Irisíta. More than I ever thought possible.”
“Didn’t I tell you everything would work out if we stuck together?” Iris kissed Tori, long and slow and private.
“I should listen to you more often.”
Iris laughed. “Can I get that on tape?”
Hand in hand they approached the house. Cameras flashed like lightning bugs, capturing the house, the newly erected sign, their glowing faces. Under the watchful eyes of television cameras, they placed the oversized scissors in cutting position over the ribbon, and hesitated. Torien’s eyes went to the large sign, and Iris followed her gaze. Her heart constricted.
OUR WORLD: Growing Communities One Plant at a Time was the most important and ambitious project the Iris Lujan Foundation had ever undertaken. And the one closest to their hearts. They had hatched the idea for the partially grant-funded enterprise the day after Iris had turned her back on Paris. They’d spent all day in bed at Torien’s Círculo de Esperanza town house, making love and trying to figure out where their unmoored lives would take them. Eventually, they’d docked here.
It had taken more than a year for that initial idea to sprout into a fully bloomed concept. But they had done it. OUR WORLD’s mission was to mentor volunteer groups all over the country, teaching them to bring community gardens to economically disadvantaged areas. With Iris as their spokesperson, they had already raised millions of dollars, and Torien at the helm inspired people to work hard and reach for their goals.
“Ms. Lujan!” someone hollered.
The media was waiting. Iris and Torien looked directly into each other’s eyes, and after a quick kiss, she whispered, “Ready?”
“Sí. Always ready for you.”
Their eyes never left each other’s faces as they closed the oversized scissors. One slice and the ribbon fell away. Around them, cheers filled the sunny block. Toasts and applause and glee-filled embraces. Tears stung Iris’s eyes as she wrapped Torien in her arms, rained kisses on her face. Soon Madeira had joined the hug, followed by their mother and the twins, Paloma, and Emie and her partner, Gia. Volunteers from the Rainbow Project surged forward, showering them with honeysuckle blossoms, whooping and hollering.
Reporters began lobbing questions, but they were both too chok
ed with emotion to answer.
“Where is the first garden going to be?”
“How many volunteers do you have on board so far?”
“Iris! Torien! One quick question, please.” They turned, and the reporter held out a small tape recorder, a wide grin on her face. “From world-class model to philanthropist. The world wants to know. How’d this idea come about?”
Iris lost herself in Torien’s eyes, knowing she had never been so happy in all her life.
“Tell them, mi ángel,” Torien encouraged.
Iris kissed her, unmindful of the flashbulbs and footage, only knowing this was their moment, their world.
She turned to the reporter, who had flushed bright red from their infectious passion.
“How’d this come about?” Iris repeated, raising her voice so the murmur would cease. When it did, she wound her fingers with Torien’s and squeezed. “Let’s just say it all started with one big dream.”
About the Author
Lea Santos has been concocting tall tales since she was a child, according to her mother. Usually these had to do with where she was, who she was with, and whether or not she’d finished her math homework (which she hadn’t). When it came time to pick a career, Lea waffled, then dabbled in everything from guiding tours in Europe, to police work, to bookkeeping for an exotic bird and reptile company—probably not the best choice, since (1) she never did finish that math, and (2) the Komodo dragons freaked her out. (A lot.) She eventually decided to go with her strengths and continue spinning wild stories, except this time, she’d turn them into whole books and call it a career. She rarely lies anymore about where she’s been or who she was with…
Books Available From Bold Strokes Books
The Devil be Damned by Ali Vali. The fourth book in the best-selling Cain Casey Devil series. (978-1-60282-159-0)
Descent by Julie Cannon. Shannon Roberts and Caroline Davis compete in the world of world-class bike racing and pretend that the fire between them is just professional rivalry, not desire. (978-1-60282-160-6)