Running her hands along the sides of Sadie’s dress, she skimmed her fingers over satiny seams, suspecting their smoothness couldn’t rival the skin beneath. Pulling her lips slowly from Sadie’s, she slid the kiss across her cheek and up to her earlobe. Tugging and nibbling around the single diamond stud, she threaded her fingers through thick, dark curls.
“Sadie,” Jay whispered, as she swept the curls aside.
Sadie tilted her head, exposing the graceful curve of her neck for adoration. Jay obliged the unspoken request and kissed her way downward once more until she reached the place where dress and shoulder met. Then turning Sadie slowly, she kissed along the silky neckline to the zipper running the length of her back.
“May I?” she asked quietly.
“Please,” Sadie said between the rise and fall of shallow breath.
Jay lowered the zipper slowly as Sadie reached one skillful hand up behind her. She slipped her fingers into Jay’s hair and urged her back to the spot where the dress had clasped. Wrapping her arms loosely around Sadie’s waist, Jay pulled her close, back to chest, and kissed her neck and shoulders.
“You smell so good. I just want to breathe you in,” Jay whispered, as she inhaled the subtle scent of tangerines.
“I want . . .” Sadie’s voice caught, and she turned in Jay’s embrace. “I want . . .”
Jay nodded, afraid she wouldn’t be able to find the words for what Sadie had only hinted at with her simple statement.
Sadie kissed her again, then, pulling back, said, “I want all of you.”
“Yes.” Jay gently eased the straps of Sadie’s dress off her shoulders and watched in awe as it fluttered to the floor, revealing more beauty than Jay had even imagined, soft curves and smooth planes. Hints of black lace hugged full hips and breasts that made Jay’s vision swim. “Wow.”
Sadie’s thick eyelashes fluttered as she glanced down shyly, but Jay caught her chin softly and lifted. “You are the most gorgeous thing I have ever seen.”
Sadie tried to shake her head, but Jay held it still and kissed her again. This time Jay allowed her hands to wander across the soft expanse of Sadie’s body from curve to swell and back again, hoping to stroke away every unwarranted insecurity as she went. Then as Sadie relaxed into her once again, she urged her slowly backward across the room to the bed, stopping only when Sadie’s legs bumped against the mattress. Breaking the kiss, she asked, “Are you sure you want this?”
“Yes,” Sadie said in a rush of delayed breath.
“Tell me,” Jay said, but even she could hear the words pulsing with need.
“I want you,” Sadie said, running her hands up Jay’s side, pushing her shirt up and over her head as she went. “I want to feel you all over me. I want to be all over you.”
Jay unclasped Sadie’s bra with trembling fingers and watched it join the dress on the floor. Then she followed them both by peeling lace over the magical curve of Sadie’s hips. Her breath grew so quick at the unencumbered perfection before her, she worried fleetingly that she might pass out. Then she laughed softly.
“What is it?”
“I stood on one of the most hallowed courts in the world today, before thousands of people, and I maintained professional-grade command, but the sight of you so perfect and close has turned every joint in my body to marshmallows.”
Sadie’s smile dazzled her, only amplifying the effects she’d just put into words. “Then we’d better lie down.”
She eased back onto the bed, grabbing hold of Jay’s hips and pulling her along.
Once horizontal, some of the blood returned to Jay’s brain, or maybe her baser instincts took over as she kissed her way along the rise of firm breasts, running her lips in slow spirals. Sadie arched up off the bed, urging Jay forward until she captured a taut nipple in her mouth.
Sadie released a groan and sank back into the bed, clutching Jay’s head in her hands to hold her steady.
Jay lifted the other breast in her palm before kissing her way down along Sadie’s ribs and over her stomach. She had the brief realization that she might be rushing, but it had been so long, she didn’t trust restraint. Something primal churned at her core, and she needed, more than wanted, to be inside Sadie, to possess her, to fill her in the way she’d taken over every corner of Jay’s mind and body.
Easing between the legs Sadie opened for her, she glanced up once again to see dark eyes, nearly all pupil now, encompassing her entirely, and yet only her.
“Please.” Jay practically gasped the request.
“Yes,” Sadie managed, between heavy breaths that caused her breasts to rise tantalizingly, but Jay couldn’t be distracted from the promise before her. Dipping her head, she used her tongue to part delicate folds and run the length of her desire.
Sadie’s hips rocked up with each pass as she reached out, near frantic to take hold of whatever parts of Jay she could reach— shoulder, arm, hair— trying to hold her ever closer.
Sensing the urgency mounting between them, Jay wasted no time pushing inside, as she circled her tongue in ever more focused patterns.
“God. Jay. Please. Yes.” The words ran together, both incoherent and utterly complete, as Sadie’s thighs tightened around her.
She relished every uneven thrust, every ridge of muscle and nerve tightening around her, every cue from Sadie’s body urging her forward.
Using the flat of her tongue now and drowning in Sadie’s need as it mingled with her own, Jay rode the writhing rhythm of her hips. As Sadie’s breath grew erratic, Jay warred between the intrinsic drive toward satisfaction and the clutching compulsion to prolong. She didn’t want to leave this moment and the thrilling sense of wholeness it inspired in her.
And yet, as Sadie pushed her both emotionally and physically deeper, she couldn’t imagine giving her anything less than everything.
“Please,” Sadie called again, her voice high and thin as Jay pulled back then slid forward again, nearly delirious with the friction between them.
She answered the request with her final reserve of energy, and Sadie went rigid beneath her. Muscles constricted and shook. Her own breath caught tightly in her throat at the flawlessness of it all. Sadie twisted around her, breath and fists caught in a tangled knot of body and emotion.
They rode out the waves of release together, slowing but refusing to subside completely until Sadie went lax, her thighs sinking to the sheets and her fingernails slipping from their grip on Jay’s shoulder.
Jay kissed her way back up the glorious length of Sadie’s body and fell as gracefully as she could to the pillow beside her.
“It has never been like this before.” Sadie’s voice was filled with a wonder that made Jay’s heart flutter. “I always hoped, but I didn’t know.”
Jay rolled onto her side to face Sadie as she did the same.
“No, that’s not true.” Sadie corrected herself. “I didn’t let myself hope. I think if I had, I would have gone crazy trying to find you sooner.”
“I wish you had,” Jay said dreamily. “You could’ve saved me years of doubt and deprivation.”
“I don’t know what’s worse. Having been with a woman and knowing what you were missing, or never having had the chance to find out in the first place.”
“Hmm.” Jay didn’t really have the energy or focus for such heavy questions or in-depth responses. “Yeah. I don’t— wait, did you say never?”
“Yes.”
She sat up. “As in, never never?”
Sadie laughed. “Is there another kind of never?”
Jay’s heartbeat pounded for a very different reason than it had before. “Did I just take your virginity?”
“Whoa.” Sadie sat up, too. “First of all, you didn’t take anything I didn’t give. Second of all, I have a seventeen-year-old daughter, so I think the virginity ship sailed a long time ago.”
Jay frowned. “But, you said never.”
Sadie leaned forward to kiss her, and for a moment every other thought faded from Ja
y’s mind, but when she pulled back, she said, “You’re just the first woman I’ve ever slept with.”
“Oh, okay.” Jay made her very best attempt at not outwardly freaking, but she must have done a poor job.
Sadie cupped her face in her hands. “Hey there, Champ. Stay with me.”
She wondered if the wild fear glinted in her eyes, or if the sheen of cold sweat could be seen on her forehead. Or maybe all the blood had left her face, making the tan she’d started to get appear pallid and jaundiced? “So, you weren’t really a lesbian until I came on to you. Or . . . or . . . um maybe you’re not really a lesbian at all . . . maybe you identify as bisexual, or just curious, or maybe you didn’t really want—”
Sadie silenced her babbling with another kiss. Jay wished she’d stop doing that so Jay could think more clearly, and then again she wished she’d never stop doing that, because with those amazing lips against hers, she felt certain thinking was highly overrated.
When she pulled back once more, Jay opened her mouth, but Sadie pressed her index finger to her lips. “I am a lesbian. I started to suspect I was a lesbian when I was fifteen.”
Jay cocked her head to the side as she pondered that math.
“Then Tad came along— and listen closely, because I don’t ever want to talk about him in bed again— but he was kind, and he was fundamentally good.”
“Was?” Jay managed to get out.
“Is,” Sadie amended. “He’s an exceptional human and a loving, hardworking father, and there was a time when he looked at me like I was the most wonderful thing in the world.”
Jay’s stomach tightened. She knew the feeling and felt torn between jealousy that Sadie had seen the emotion in someone else, and gratitude that Destiny’s father had at least given her the care she deserved.
“And when he made love to me for the first time, I felt loved and desired, but I couldn’t return any of those feelings for him. I remember looking at him, watching his face change and his gaze intensify, and I could tell how much it meant to him, how much the physical melded with the emotional to make something bigger than I could even comprehend.”
“You didn’t feel anything for him?”
“I felt a general sort of affection, and until that moment I thought that could be enough, but the contrast between the magnitude of what he seemed to be experiencing and the mundanity of my own feelings made me realize something wasn’t right.” She smiled, then added, “And if I couldn’t feel something for Tad, the odds of me feeling something for any other guys were slim.”
“Okay,” Jay managed, her heart rate decelerating to something below a constant thrum. “But you had Destiny seventeen years ago. And still you used the word never.”
“Well, you might find this hard to believe,” Sadie said, her smile seeming more tired than before. “But good-quality, single women don’t generally hit on teenage mothers who are attending nighttime GED classes. And they don’t hang out at children’s dance classes, and they don’t generally attend PTA nights. That was my life for ten years.”
“Fair enough,” Jay conceded once again, marveling at how different their lives had been. While she was running through supermodels, Sadie had been running errands for an active elementary school kid. Had she felt as lonely then as Jay had?
“By the time Des got into tennis and we actually got to know a wider circle of people, I didn’t want to get involved with anyone. We were a team, me and her. We’d spent years defying the odds and battling expectations. I didn’t want anyone to mess with that dynamic and, once again, sex and love had never meant to me what they did to other people. Maybe if I’d known then what I learned tonight, I would’ve felt differently.”
Jay’s heart rate kicked up a notch again, and she suspected falling for Sadie did more for her cardiovascular health than any interval workout she’d ever done. “So, I guess I’m sorry.”
“For?” Sadie prodded playfully as she trailed her fingers up Jay’s bare arm.
“For letting my fears of the past get in the way of seeing you clearly.”
“And?”
“And for underestimating your ability to know your own mind.”
“Oh, that’s a good one.”
“And for not realizing it was your first time, and maybe making it . . . I don’t know . . . more special.”
“Well, yes, I can see where making love with a beautiful, funny, professional athlete with the lights from the Eiffel Tower illuminating the windows of my four-star hotel room might feel like a letdown.”
Jay snorted. “You’re teasing me now.”
“I am, because you’re being silly. If that had been any more special, I might have spontaneously combusted and left you in bed with a pile of ashes.”
“Well, in that case, I’m glad I stopped when I did.” She flopped back onto the bed. “I just have some baggage, you know.”
“I do.” Sadie lay down beside her more gracefully.
“I need to know that you’ll be open and honest about what you want, and what you don’t want. No matter what.”
“I can do that.” Sadie scooted close enough to rest her head on Jay’s shoulder. “But I have to warn you, now that I know what I’ve been missing all these years, I’m going to want to make up for a lot of lost time.”
Warmth began to burn at her core. “Makes total sense.”
“For instance, right now, I want to get on top of you so I can feel as much of you against as much of me as possible. Then I want to kiss you all over, until I memorize your taste and your scent, and learn which spots drive you crazy.”
“I have a feeling that might be all the spots,” Jay murmured, her nerve endings alight as Sadie traced her fingers lazily down her chest.
“And then I want you to teach me how to do what you did to me with your mouth.” Sadie lowered her head to flick her tongue across one hard nipple. “Does that work for you?”
“Yeah,” Jay managed to squeak before clearing her throat. “I think we can manage that.”
Chapter Nine
Mallorca, Spain
“We should get up,” Sadie said, as she slipped her hand between Jay’s legs.
Jay rocked her firm ass off the bed to meet the stroke. “We really should. Someone’s bound to come looking soon.”
“I know you don’t want anyone to know about us yet.” Sadie coated her fingers with the wetness she thrilled at inspiring. “But at this point I wouldn’t stop if the pope walked through the door.”
“And I love that, but I want to protect you.”
“That turns me on,” Sadie whispered in her ear, then sucked the lobe between her teeth.
“Everything turns you on,” Jay said, more in wonder than teasing.
“Everything about you.” Sadie threw a leg over one of Jay’s, relishing the way the hard muscles flexed and rippled beneath her. The muscles turned her on. So did the way Jay’s eyes flashed open so breathtakingly blue even before they’d lost the sheen of sleep. Mostly though, she got turned on by the way Jay responded to her every touch as if she held some magic in the tips of her fingers.
Jay’s head pressed hard into the pillow as her hips rocked up, seeking firmer contact. Sadie might have been tempted to make her wait, but they really didn’t have a ton of time, and Jay had both a singles and doubles practice later in the day, so she decided to show a little mercy and tighten her circles where they’d do the most good.
Jay groaned and closed her eyes, her lips parting slightly to allow for her increasingly heavy breath. The sight reminded Sadie that her gift of a quick release wasn’t a completely selfless act. The thing she’d come to crave most over the last week was the way Jay surrendered completely under her touch.
“Yes,” Jay mumbled. “Sade, I’m so close.”
Sadie smiled as Jay’s smooth brow wrinkled in concentration as she poured every bit of her attention into the mounting pressure inside her. Sadie knew the feeling. It had knotted her insides in the most excruciatingly pleasurable way so many ti
mes, she could hardly imagine how she’d lived so long without the sensation. She craved the connection so fiercely now, it sometimes scared her. Yesterday she’d had the urge to pull Jay right from the court and push inside her. The thought made her own breath catch, and she slid her fingers low enough to work two of them inside while keeping her thumb where Jay needed it most.
Jay’s entire body grew taut from the added stimulation, and Sadie’s vision tinged white around the edges as anticipation clutched her chest. They raced toward release with steady pressure, and she gasped when Jay arched off the bed, one strangled cry escaping her lips before she crashed back down. Her muscles contracted around Sadie, holding her in place until every shudder had passed, and Jay went limp against the stark, white sheets.
Doing her best to memorize the feeling in hopes it would hold her over at least until that night, Sadie withdrew and lay down beside her.
“Well, that’s an awesome way to wake up,” Jay said with a contented sigh.
“I love the way you go from asleep to orgasm in under five minutes.”
“I don’t do it on my own.”
Sadie smiled. “I’m happy to help.”
Jay rolled onto her side and pushed a strand of curls from Sadie’s face. “You know the feeling is mutual, and I’d love nothing more than to repay the favor.”
“I do.” Sadie kissed her just long enough to keep from losing focus again. “But we really do need to go.”
“And, by we, you mean me.”
“I’m not the one who wants to hide our relationship.”
Jay’s smile tightened. “I know, and I appreciate that, really more than you can imagine. And for the record I don’t want to hide us either, but if we tell Des and Hank, it puts them in a terrible position of lying to the press or, worse, defending us to the press.”
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